The wall

Well I’ve hit the wall.  I first saw it there, not too far down the road, Wednesday late afternoon/evening when my in-laws were here for the Boychen’s birthday and I could feel it all starting to be too much. Too many people in the house. Too many conversations to keep track of. (Yeah, with only four verbal people in the room there were too many conversations to keep track of. I’d call that a wall.) Just too much. Thursday morning I woke up, got out of bed and smacked right into that wall. All I could think about was just making it to Small Boy’s bed-time. I made it through the day without losing it, though it certainly wasn’t the most graceful exhibition of parenting skills. I am exhausted and just tired to death of coordinating the morning and the evening single-handedly. R comes back tonight- after bedtimes, more’s the pity – and then I plan on going on a serious mama sabbatical.

A language lesson

Well I’m exhausted and I’ve got nothing today. Luckily for me, Trish asked in comments to this post how one pronounces Chlyni. Yay, a topic for today’s post! Thanks, Trish!

Chlyni Ma is Swiss for kleiner Mann, which is German for little man. The German klein is pronounced like Calvin Klein, or Kevin Kline. The Swiss is pronounced like clean. Or sometimes drop the final -n. The Swiss also drop the final -n in Mann and just say Ma . Actually that last sentence should read “The Bernese Swiss also drop the final -n in Mann” because there are, depending on who you listen to a few dozen Swiss-German dialects or almost one-hundred of them. Anything I say about “Swiss” should be taken to mean “Swiss as spoken by German-speaking Swiss born and raised in the Canton of Bern (but not coming from a small mountain village or valley because they kind of have their own dialects too) and I can’t be held responsible for how people in Zurich or Basel or heaven forbid the Wallis might pronounce this.”

(Yeah, this is why I speak what is called written German – the German learned in school, the German as spoken by (most) Germans in Germany and not Swiss. Though I do understand Swiss.)

So Happy Birthday Chlyni Ma translates to Happy Birthday, Little Man and is pronounced Happy Birthday klee-knee ma.

Happy Birthday, Chlyni Ma

Running on empty

This is all I got for you today.

Sleeping in Switzerland

Without fail, when R goes away Small Boy comes to sleep in my bed. He sleeps so much better – he falls asleep faster and stays asleep longer – when he’s with me. I, on the other hand, sleep worse. I’m constantly waking up to change over to the other side of the bed because the Small Boy has cuddled up this close to me and I’m about to fall off the edge of the bed. So I get out of bed, walk around the other side, and try to fall asleep again. About an hour later I’m being pushed off the other side of the bed. And so it goes.

Seriously. How can somebody just over one meter tall take up an entire king-sized bed??

Sunday

It’s been a long week. I don’t even know what to say at this point other than it’s been a long week but I made it through the weekend, which was the melt-down point the last time R was out of the country for two weeks, without anybody losing it.

I’ve even managed to find some of the shiny.

Self-portrait

(click on image for larger view)

Jetzt geht’s los!

Well I was right about one thing. R did miss the Boychen’s first real not-holding-on-to-the-wall-or-tottering-over-right-away steps. Perhaps five stumbling ever forward trying to keep up with himself feet – not steps, mind you, feet - from my desk in the office to R’s desk. Then again later in the day coming towards me across the living room not only walking but holding a child’s broom aloft like a torch to light his way.

To light his way into the future. One step at a time.

Administrative placeholder *updated*

Something’s gone wonky with my sidebar and it’s slipped all the way to the bottom of the page. I think I know what the problem is but have neither the energy or the time to fix it until…hm, until my husband/tech support gets back.

I could write about the melt-down Small Boy had this afternoon or how early Boychen woke or how, without fail, twelve minutes after pancakes Small Boy is running around the apartment all hopped up on maple syrup but I’m tired. Really really tired.

One week down , one to go.

And on that note, the most pathetic post ever to keep my NaBloPoMo hopes alive.

UPDATED on Friday night to add: Ohmygod I fixed my sidebar problem myself. It involved code. Wow.

Family

One of the reasons I’m glad we’re living in Switzerland right now – and on any given day there are many reasons I’m glad to be living in Switzerland - is that I have family here to lean on. My husband’s family lives on their family farm fifteen minutes outside the city. (And yes, the fact that there are family farms fifteen minutes outside the capital city of the country is one of those many reasons I enjoy the Swiss life.) This is the farm my husband grew up on, the farm his brother has taken over, the farm my older son loves. He spends one day a week with his grandparents and uncle on the farm and it often turns into a sleep-over. During a regular week, the fact that I can count on grandparental childcare is a relief; during these times R is away doing this degree program he’s doing it’s a life-saver. During the thirteen night-times R will be gone we’ve got four sleep-overs at The Farm planned. Tomorrow when the big one goes to Spielgruppe (sort of like pre-kindergarten) R’s mom will come and look after the little one and I’ll have THREE! WHOLE! HOURS! during which I do not have to worry about small children. When we go to hockey on Saturday, R’s mom will stay at the apartment taking care of the Boychen. We’ve got a weekend lunch at The Farm planned after which grandparents and grandchildren will go for a walk in the woods and I will retire to the guest room to catch a nap. So I’m grumbling a lot about these two weeks in London, but in truth I’ve got a lot of help.

If we were living in the US I imagine we’d be somewhere along the East Coast, far from what remaining family I have. And even if we were to live near my brother and sister-in-law, they have young children of their own, they’re not like my retired (mostly – farmers never quite retire, it seems, even when somebody else takes over the farm) in-laws who have time to take Small Boy for the day. We’d spend time together, but they would not serve as child-care. Even if my parents were alive I wouldn’t trust my mother alone with my children. I’d barely even want them to spend time with her under my supervision. In terms of having a support system to rely on, I’ve got a better one here in Switzerland – in this foreign land – that I would have in the land of my birth.

And my sons have a good life here. They have grandparents here, and they’re growing up having a real relationship with them. When I see them together I see what a gift my boys are getting having grandparents in their lives, these very grandparents who are so good to them and who love them so. When I first moved to Switzerland R and I had a plan about when we would move back to DC. But now? It would take a lot to get me to leave here now. I can’t think what would be worth taking these boys away from their grandparents, and these grandparents away from their grandchildren.

I can’t think what offer would be good enough to break up this family.