Speech therapy

This stay brought about a revelation that the illustrationg by Mauri Kunnas are an excellent aid in the speech therapy exercises we try to do with him. They help to discuss what different characters are doing and get Number One Son to learn new verbs and try to establish who is a 'he' and who is a 'she'. Sadly, the gendered English pronouns mean that all examples are selected on the basis of their traditional gender characteristics. This leads to stereotyping, but you have to give clear examples to a little boy a little behind his peers. His understanding of abstract concepts is not great, so in these exercises a 'shirt' equals a 'woman' and a 'tie' equals a 'man'.

Another revelation are the endless toy videos on YouTube. And the videos about the Minecraft game. Number One Son is happily building his own worlds and apparently using the tips from the YouTube. This shows that he has developed a more acute sense of grasping details from around him, but a school task about materials suggested that his visual understanding is much better than his oral. A longer sentence does not yet make sense.

Ice cream, geocaching and ‘bake night’

Waiting Cinderella to start

The first family trip to a panto was almost a screaming success with the easiness of finding parking space near De Montford Hall on the Monday after Christmas when nearly everybody else was heading to the shopping centres for the sales and the discussion afterwards of the next Christmas’s trip to a show. Number One Son was excited to see his big name-sake on the stage, although he would have been happy to go home when the interval started. That was the point when the standard length of a CBeebies panto was reached. I also believe that the love story in Cinderella is not a big hit with the little boys. The little girls with their mainly Frozen dresses were more a target audience for that content.

The panto in Leicester has an amount of BEMA talent rarely seen outside London. The fairy godmother and step mother could hit their blues and disco notes and Baron Hardup was a familiar face from Goodness Gracious Me. I also learned from the story and the programme who Buttons is and how he and the Prince Handsome’s valet Dandini became included in the standard British panto Cinderella. Naturally, the show includes bad contemporary jokes with references to both Leicester and current affairs. The ball scene contained a dance competition in the style of Strictly Come Dancing, but it also contained the traditional lines that a few years’ back filled me with puzzlement: “Behind you” and “Yes, it is” followed by “No, it isn’t” repeated several times. The audience participation seems to include also all people having a song and dance play just before the end. These sayings and customs are – part of the British Christmas ingrained in the national soul. In a similar way as the ever-so-puzzling Christmas crackers: why do you actually have them? They do not really crack with a bang, there are no sweets or chocolate inside and they are expensive: you do get the paper crown as seen in all British TV specials, though. Another puzzling British custom came to my mind when I watched audience queuing and eating: ice cream in the theatres at the interval. It is mid-winter, so what do you want: a small tub of extremely expensive, cold dairy product. I already was marvelling this habit many years ago in the West End.

Geocaching

I and Number One Son also took part in our first geocaching treasure hunt. In principle this was a large family walk in the Castle Hill Park with people who had got to know each other some time ago in the NCT coffee group. Now the then toddlers are tweenies or teenagers, so extra measures are needed to drag them outside from tablets, mobile phones and computers. Although watching our activities over Christmas, the family who reads their phones together, stays together. Number One Son got really excited about a treasure hunt in the snow and ice and he had a good run with some of his friends. Friends’ parents had also remembered to take a sledge with them, so all the children went sledging in the end. Some use for the A46 sound banks...

The long stay over Christmas also allows us parents to remember that we are not only trying to balance work and life and take care of our son, but are actually in a relationship. In addition all those irritating items on the magazines tell you how tired parents should work on their relationships. However, with all other family members elsewhere and friends in the same pickle as us (and many being single mums, too), allowing the partner sleep-ins seems to be the number one way of showing that one cares. Somehow, magically, you row less when you are less tired and can begin to think of other activities than sleeping when together.

So we tried to be extra romantic – with some unexpected results. Over Skype Archaeologist Husband asked me before my trip back home just after his parents and brother had been visiting what I want for Christmas. I tried to paraphrase Mariah Carey and say that all I really want is to be at home with you. This romantic gesture was met with a rather stern statement that he wants a dishwasher. I did comply and buy one for ‘us’ in the end, but have remembered to remind him that something more gallant had been expected as a response to my gesture. However, it turned out that Nana and Sister-in-Law had not been amused when they could not find a dishwasher after they had suggested clearing the table and washing up; a realisation that a dishwasher is now a standard feature in other families made Archaeologist Husband's demand more understandable. However, in order to balance the gallantlessness, I showed my bad wifeness relatively swiftly when Archaeologist Husband suggested a ‘date night’. I misheard this as a ‘bake night’ and was slightly puzzled aloud with his sudden eagerness in testing the Great British Bake Off baking book he had bought me together when he normally wants to rule the kitchen alone. I was quickly told that, actually, he wants to go to our usual pub together. That sounded better, so I have now booked a babysitter for a couple of pints so we can for a couple of hours try to remember how it was before Number One Son...

White just after Christmas

The Christmas holidays are perfect time to recharge one's batteries and do the exciting and less exciting Christmassy things. This season started with the coffee group ladies' children's Christmas party on the Sunday before Christmas. This was a heartwarming British party with one of the mothers behind a lot of programme and one of the fathers expressing himself as a DJ. Otherwise our Christmas is every year decidedly an Anglo-Finnish affair.

Christmas preparations continued with strategically timed Monday food shopping spree that allowed us strolling in the Bradgate Park on Tuesday. The preparations were finished with gingerbread baking and cooking a kind of Finnish meal with duck (but with a genuine sweetened potato bake) on Christmas Eve. The first batch of presents was delivered to Number One Son on Christmas Eve as well.

Christmas Eve meal

Then it was a swap to the British Christmas and night-time Christmas stocking delivery for me and Number One Son with a second batch of Christmas presents. I thanked Father Christmas, a.k.a. Archaeologist Husband, with a bottle of less traditional Finnish licorice vodka (not consumed, yet - miraculously considering how much he likes the stuff). The Christmas lunch ended up being 'traditional' steak and chips due to the small amount of duck left from the previous night, but the third batch of gifts kept Number Son happy. Archaeologist Husband had taken rubbish out and observed that it was cold, so the rest of the day was spent on the sofa. We did however keep up with the cultural developments by watching Frozen at last.

The most important Christmas present had already arrived on Saturday before Christmas. We are now four with our Cat slowly getting to know our house. (S)he managed to pee in an extension lead box and defusing one of the plugs that meant no Netflix over Christmas. Otherwise it had found Christmas tree inresistable.

The sofa related activities continued throughout Boxing Day and the highpoint was the traditional Finnish Boxing Day fish meal in the evening. By this time it had started snowing, so we were not certain if Friend's son's three-year birthday walk was going to take place the next day. I was not too keen on driving in snow without proper winter tyres, but it transpired on the day that I was made to go, since Archaeologist Husband really wanted to go sledging. Thus we all headed to the Old John and had a cold, beautiful, eventful hour in the sun. Then Number One Son's hands were cold, his cheek had a frostbite and we were hit by a child's sledge. Nevertheless, the day continued with tea and hot chocolate in the Friend's house.

There is still more to come. A trip to London died a quick death on the planning board after the traditional British railway chaos started - even before the snow landed. Now we are heading to see the first panto I and Number One Son will ever see in De Montford Hall. It will be Cinderella with Buttons and ugly sisters. I think I will need some further enculturation to know who Buttons is...

I lost the vote

When Number One Son was a baby we had a cat named Shelly. Sadly, she passed away at 18 - while being the healthiest dead cat in the village after all the lab tests done in order to know why she did not eat and withered away. Ever since Archaeologist Husband has wanted to get a new cat. This urge has not been diminished by the fact that our neighbours hate cats. But they do have a gravel gardens both at the front and at the back, so you can guess what the cats do there. The urgency of this new cat has become more apparent with Number One Son loving cats and lifting and cuddling certain Biscuit on the way to and from school.

Shelly 2 (photo: AH)

I found it easy to make Number One Son to behave by saying that he will not get a cat for a Chhristmas. He was stroking the imaginary white cat when saying it... When I asked if we should get a cat, two voices said 'yes'. The women will always lose in this household! And apparently end up buying all the cat food as well.

Skype fighting

Now I have managed to return back to England despite of the best efforts of underground trains breaking down and motorway improvements closing motorways on my way back. The whole air control system broke down in UK happily only after I had managed to lose most of my sleep deprivation sleeping in my own bed. For a couple of weeks the normal life routines are in place and I will see Number One Son and Archaeologist Husband in the same country and in the same house. My blog entries are likely to be either duller or more interesting, depending on the normal way the life goes on on a daily basis. It will be about school runs and unwrapping Christmas presents with an added spice of multiculturality. But of a duller European fusion version that is more about choosing the different kind of Christmas food than anything else.

The tedium and tiredness of the last weeks away did bring about that new spice of coupledoom in Skype Mums life: the Skype fighting. This is the way your specific personal traits are transformed into digital portal online. Are you a Shouter? Well, then you will shout at the camera and let your neighbours know that You Are Skyping and that Your Are Not Happy. Are you the Mute? Well, then your partner will not get anything than your picture over Skype. If you get angry like I do sometimes on a short fuse - you shut down the whole thing and disconnect Internet. And start getting angry, anxious texts to one or two of my mobile phones. Since as an Europe-wide juggernaut you will have more than one, don't you (and your partner is likely to use the last mobile number you have texted/phoned from - handy, if that is the one that lies closed in the drawer waiting for the next trip).

The row will continue as long as you dare to keep yourself off-line: I managed a couple of minutes. Then it was time to try to patch everything up. I must say, being in the same house, getting nagged about undone housework and being able to bang the doors is much more effective and somehow reassuring...

Christmas is coming!

Number One Son and our tree - apparently (Photo by AH)

The last blog post was passed, since I spent Sunday visiting my mother and having a coffee party with my childhood friends, some of whom I had not seen for 20 years. Monday was spent in an Institutes of Archaeology and Classical Studies team building day, almost directly from the ferry harbour. Then the reality hit and I spent one day sorting out admin and panicking over my vanished e-mail address where students were supposed to send course work. Thus, I decided that I put all my Christmassy thoughts together in this post. However, not all of them are smelling of gingerbread, but remind of the reality of a Skype Mom.

Luckily, I can move later this week to work at home and continue work with book projects and other matters in the same house with Archaeologist Husband and Number One Son. Nevertheless, due to the timing of meetings and other timetabling issues, I will miss for the second time my son's Navity play. Number One Son also tried to refuse to talk to me over Skype, because he will not get a hug from me at the end. Then was a good time to start counting down to my actual appearance next week. In addition, the Finnish Christmas calendar I got from Alex's godless mother is a real joy when we open one shutter lid every evening and look for right numbers. However, the flight home could not come any sooner.

I lost the run for gingerbread making :-> (Photo by AH)

My trip to Finland means I have now a bag full of gifts: more Moomin books, Mauri Kunnas picture books, DVDs with both Finnish and English soundtrack, an educational board game and clothing. I have also one old favourite for Archaeologist Husband, so that for 15 minutes he will be happy about my time away. I have a new photo of Granny and photos of my happy girl friends. The Christmas tree is up in the house and we can start finalising the fusion Christmas meals, since we celebrate both Christmas Eve and Day with fish on the menu on the Boxing Day. We also have to send Christmas cards to all older family members. Luckily, I did my Stockholm-themed e-card yesterday.

Connected, but not connected

One of the superior aspects of the modern living is that we have the instant possibility to connect [when there is an Internet connection and it works]. However, this will never replace the real connection and presence. As a Skype Mummy I do have a connection to my son and my husband every day, but it is not the same as taking Number One Son to school in the pissing rain or tackling the homework. Archaeologist Husband seemed to be somewhat stung when I tried to give advice on the way to get our son to do the homework - this week drawing something on a hobby and writing two sentences on it. The latter part is stretching it, since Number One Son really does not know how to write, yet. He can copy and struggles with fine motor action while doing it. However, he has started to write his name and spell it without urging. Sometimes there is a hint that he may be able to read single words or short sentences without help. But these are just glimpses of his progress while the others seem to be galloping somewhere further on the learning path.

Anyway, my suggestion was to try asking him to draw a cat, something he really wants. He has already named the non-existent cat, so that is an easy sentence: 'Cat is called Shelly'. But this may have been a suggestion too far, since Number One Son had been up at 5am again, so any 'wisecracking' from the away parent was heading to the shredders. I have heard that some parents have kept the Skype on all time in the evenings, but Number One Son's Skype is on his tablet and I think mother intervening with Dora the Explorer or playing Angry Birds Transformers would be frowned upon. I have heard the complaints when Mummy replaces a Dora cartoon...