Orange

Abendbrot, the closing meal of open-faced sandwiches was surprisingly entertaining this evening. Of late, Carolin, Felix, and I have been the only consistent attendees with Holger and Sabine making appearances later or even after the fact. Regardless of this fact, the table gets set with three sets of adult dishes on a matching plastic plate and cup from Ikea for Carolin. After a tiring day of swimming and taking the bus back home, Carolin was quite tired and rather crabby. We had had a clash of will a little bit earlier which was magnified by the girl's hunger and exhaustion so I chose the orange set out of the cupboard to put at her place.
Carolin's favorite color when I arrived here ten months ago was pink. This girl has pink possessions up the wazoo. But then, for some unknown reason, a couple of months ago she changed her mind and is now all about orange. So it is not surprising that when I looked up from buttering my bread I was confronted with a tableau of orange. My natural response was to share my observation with Carolin in the hopes that we could be mutually delighted in the abundance of her shade of preference, "look at how much orange there is there. Your plate and cup are orange, you fleece is orange. There's orange everywhere." To which comment she replied in a manner quite understated and serious, "yes, I know. And my underwear is orange too."
A bit later, in a rather rare moment of explicit affection as we were talking about my name, she declared, "you are my only Valerie. There will not be another one, and I don't want another au pair, unless it's Anja again." (Anja was the au pair before me, who stayed with the family for two years, and still comes by the house every couple of weeks).
I just thought I would share with all of you the fact that as difficult as this experience has been for me, especially in my relationship with Carolin, there are still those sweet moments that give me a glimmering of a notion that it has been worthwhile.

Swimming and earphones

Today was the first day of Carolin's new swimming class. She's in the seahorse level at the University here in town. It was so strange walking through the locker room with her, Felix on my arm, and having memories from two very different periods of my life flash through my head. The older of the memories came from the days when I first started learning to swim at BSU in a class with my brother and my cousin. We would all shower in a group, then chatter out teeth across the slippery tiles to stand in the gutter next to the pool and await our turn to jump in to the waiting arms of the instructor and start swimming. Although I was even at a very young age a quite timid kid, I remember looking at the tall strong teachers and thinking they were the most wonderful people in the world, and swimming must be one of life's great accomplishments, because "hey look what I can do!" The other memory was from at least a decade later when I worked as a lifeguard at the YMCA and all the instructors were my buddies. In the break room we would compare notes about the fact that the parents where both horribly meddlesome in trying to tell the instructors how to teach their children how to swim, and appallingly negligent in watching to see that their children did not drown, when they were not in lessons. As far as Carolin's experience went, I think it will take her another session or two to fully warm up to the very sweet teachers Kristina, and Coco, but I imagine that after that she will have a marvelous time with all the other Seepferdchen.
As Carolin was in the pool area, Felix and I were banished to the locker room (they figured out the meddlesome parent problem over here), and I was trying to figure out what to do to keep him entertained. As I had my ipod for me, I decided to entertain him with what is now the ol' mouth-as-improvised-speakers trick, that I learned sitting around with a group of particularly bored Gutenberg students in my living room (i.e. Erin, Molly, Noah, and co) on the night of it's discovery. If you've never tried it, this is a fun experiment in itself as you basically end up using the resonating power of you mouth to amplify the sound coming out of the tiny earbuds, but today it was particularly hilarious because of Felix's reaction. He has heard me sing multiple times every single day, so the boy is very familiar with the range and style of my voice, but he was utterly confounded by the drum, guitar, and male vocals that were issuing from my mouth. I wish I had had a camera along with me so that I could have captured his expression, but just imagine extreme bewilderment on the face of an adorable ten month old, and you've got it.

Introductions

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls I would like you to finally meet my charges:

Felix...
...is bigger now, but he looks just the same when he's sleeping on my arm.

Carolin...
...likes making messes when she bakes, and even when she doesn't

Felix
is in here twice because he's so cute, and I think this picture is funny

So now you have met them.

Really, they are cute

I rarely remember to talk about my two children (just when you thought you knew me). Part of the reason is because it is often so stressful and exhausting to care for such young people that by the end of the day I don't want to have to think about them anymore. Yes, that is a bit callous, but remember, they are not actually my kids, and I have only known them for three months so the whole love aspect is still forthcoming. Besides all of that though, they are cute. Felix is the most adorable child I have ever seen when he is sleeping on my shoulder. He's not so cute when he's pulling my hair to distract himself from crying. Every week I notice that his face is getting older. He sits with us at the dinner table propped up in his highchair with a pillow and tries very hard to be as grown up as the rest of us (quite a feat considering he is only five months old) i.e. he whines or grunts until one of us give him a bottle or a spoon to play with because he hasn't mastered consuming anything other than breast milk so far. Carolin has her own brand of living and play. Most of her conversation ist total Quatsch (nonsense) and it is also virtually non-stop. But some of the things she says and the way her mind works is hilarious. Today she tore a kleenex in half (because we, as a good European household conserve our resources), and proclaimed, "Schau mal heir, wie stark bin ich!" (check out how strong I am). So really, as exhausting as they are, they're cute.