Gipsy House

beautiful

Karl is learning to use the potty. It is going well.

After his first pee at the local park en plein air, Karl said,
"That was a beauuuuuutiful pee-pee."

very very hungry

This afternoon, over a bowl of chicken noodle soup, after Karl had had a giant temper tantrum at Trader Joe's,

"All that crying made me very, very hungry."

A few minutes later, after Karl and I had a conversation about why we had to leave the park this morning (he was terrorizing the babies, which is very atypical for him)

"All that hitting made me very very hungry."

Hmmm. I took it as an opportunity to let him know that sometimes when you are hungry, you don't feel right. Sometimes people get grouchy when they are hungry. I told him to always let me know when he needs a snack.

On the other hand, Karl is reporting quite often that things make him hungry. School makes him "very very hungry" as well, apparently.

Karl on the subject of dreams

(Yesterday, in the car) "I wish I was a computer. Then I could sleep like a new computer. Computers have good dreams."

(This morning) "I had bad dreams. It was only a little scary. It was only half scary."

(At the breakfast table) "I have a short story. Once upon a time there was Smilla and Greta. Then they went to a meeting. Then they went home. And then it started to rain. It was only a little story."

Karl's bon mots

This is the beginning of a series of quick posts just to record those funny little things that three-year olds say (well, my three-year old). Karl also tells us stories sometimes. Expect to see those, too.

Background:One recent morning, Karl was stalling and wanted to keep watching a show on PBS Kids that was meant for older children. It was some type of math show, and they were covering fractions and percentages. OK, I let him, so I could check my email.

At four in the afternoon at the park:  "This tree is forty percent tall."

I should note that Karl was not talking about a tree per se, it was a "pretend tree" he made by holding up a branch rather instructively.

Goodbye, summer

The last few days of summer have felt bittersweet.

What a brilliant summer we have had. I never wrote it down before now, but I had a mental list of all that I wanted to accomplish this summer:

First our travel traditions:

1. July at the Jersey shore with Bill's family (check!)
2. a long weekend in Michigan at the Lakeside Inn during August (check!)
3. a weekend at a downtown hotel to use the pool and take advantage of proximity for shopping and museums (check! This year was our tenth anniversary and we celebrated by spending the weekend at the Peninsula hotel. It was amazing, but I forgot to take pictures, so the pool and the fancy tea will have to just live on the old-fashioned way, in our memory.)

Then, the random little goals I had this summer:

1. visit the beach, often (Fridays at Foster beach with the radical Unschoolers, yes, sometimes)
2. Montrose beach (check)
3. find a new beach (Yes! 12th street beach at Northerly Island is amazing)
4. hang out at the park (of course)
5. subscribe to a CSA box (weekly vegetables straight from the farm. This year, I went a step further ad volunteered to be a site host, which means having 40 boxes delivered here, managing the sign-in sheets, etc. What was I thinking????)
6. visit the farmer's markets (of course!)
7. attend outdoor concerts at Millennium Park (check)
8. visit Millennium Park during the day for the fountain and the kids' activity tent (check)
9. cool off in various museums (check)
10. begin using the library more regularly (check)
11. hang out at the rooftop outdoor pool at our new gym (just did this for the first time on Sunday, so it was under the wire!)

Some unexpected pleasures:

1. Seeing Karl's German really take off with twice-weekly German classes in July. Unfortunately, German class status is up in the air as they are offering it at really awkward times this fall and no one is continuing.
2. Finding a great pool/water park in Skokie.
3. Our family's first camping trip. Karl adored it. I'd love to go again this fall.

Here's the stuff I didn't get to:

1. take Karl to see Cirque Shanghai at Navy Pier
2. see an outdoor movie, either at a park or drive-in
3. visit the aquarium one last time before they close the oceanarium (dolphin show area)
4. start biking more regularly with Karl
5. Take a road trip to Milwaukee

Of course, it's still 90 degrees and sunny here in Chicago, so it may as well be summer. Except for the fact that Karl starts preschool on Thursday. So it really feels like we are saying goodbye to summer in a way that is much more painful to me than I expected.  Goodbye summer, goodbye babyhood?

I've downloaded a taste of summer pictures at Shutterfly. I'd gotten out of the habit lately, and didn't realize how many changes they'd made. There's a fancy new format, with our very own webpage for photo sharing!
Bear with me while I experiment with different options (and privacy settings) for sharing photos.
Our family's shutterfly page

How do you like my new look?

It's Labor Day 2008, and I have been working on relaunching the blog.

Check back this week to see new posts, new photos and more.

Christmas in June

Oh, dear. Many months have passed with nary a blog post or photo album made available online.

Karl is a toddler now. 'Nuff said?

And then there is the rest of it. Since my last blog post, I finished an article for NPN, finished my accreditation as a La Leche League Leader, travelled to Texas again, we had the whole Michalski clan in Chicago for a visit, my mother visited for mine and Karl's birthday, and so just this last weekend Karl had about three birthday parties with three different sets of cakes, two of which were homemade. Whew!

Then there are the technology-related excuses. My oft-maligned desktop no longer has a functioning disk drive. We bought a new Apple laptop (switching to an Apple is a huge milestone, isn't it?). So I am learning a whole new O/S. Whole new photo software.

Playing catch-up, here is the first of several photo albums to come. This might be the last one in Shutterfly, as exciting new Mac-related photo management/sharing changes are afoot here in the Kaiser-Michalski household.

Look for more posts and more albums here in the next few days, patient friends and family!!!

Click here for pictures of Christmas in Texas

Holiday Newsletter

A Virtual Edition of this Year's Newsletter.  Happy New Year!!!

"Uh-oh!  My mitten's back there!"

Christmas 2006 Newsletter

Winter  (Hilde)

It has become a joke in the Kaiser family that every time Karl and I attempt to visit with them, disaster strikes.  As you may remember from last year’s newsletter, the first time Karl and I flew to Houston to visit my parents, we had to turn right back around and return to Chicago two days later because Hurricane Rita was threatening the Gulf coast. 

At the time, I comforted the disappointed Oma and Opa with “We’ll come back for a longer visit in early 2006.”

Plans were made for a February visit.  I promised Karl warm weather and visits to parks.  Well, I guess I could say the weather was uneventful.

While changing Karl’s diaper immediately upon arrival at my parent’s house, I saw spots.  Hmm.  Lots of them.

Karl had come down with the chicken pox.

                So, no parks. No showing off my cute baby to old friends from high school or to my mother’s new friends from the Master Gardener program.  It was Karl’s first major illness, and I was away from home, Bill, and our pediatrician.  I was a wreck.  Karl was really grouchy.  Poor thing. At 7 months old, he was too young and uncoordinated to quite understand that what he was experiencing was itchiness; he mostly just sulked during the time between the oatmeal baths I administered twice daily.  That was our Valentine’s Day.

                Then, there was Easter.  Plans were made for all of Karl’s grandparents (both mine and Bill’s parents) to convene in Chicago.  I promised Karl warmer weather and visits to the park with his grandparents and no chicken pox.

                But then we all came down with the stomach flu.  By all, I mean: first Karl, then me, then Bill, then Bill’s father, then Bill’s mother, then my mother and father at the same time.  We were all pretty exhausted by Easter brunch.

                So, no one ever believes me when I say that Karl has almost never been sick!

Spring (Bill)

Most every other moment of our return to France this Spring was fantastic.  We tackled the towering Fruits de Mer at La Coupole with Hilde’s Mom while Karl charmed the waiters away from the other Americans.  We walked through the lush woods and farmland of Burgundy to return to a waiting lunch at the broad wooden kitchen table of Jacqueline Poirier’s warm home.  We spent mornings in Paris in the funky little apartment we rented on the Rue Pascal, munching pastries, planning our day in the city and watching Karl approach and retreat from the washing machine like it was a partially restrained bear.  These plans mostly focused on strolling through neighborhoods, visiting parks, eating overly well, and spending time with family and our wonderful, generous friends Jennifer and Philippe.

Then I had to take Karl swimming at une piscine.  Why I decided to do this is mysterious even to me.  Yes, I know that self-doubt is a natural part of fatherhood.  I understand that to question your own parenting choices generally means that that you are being a good parent.  I’ve read the…well, ok, Hilde has read the books.  But when you are holding your 1-year old son and he pees down your side in fear, you become immediately, acutely, soggily aware that a whopper of a lousy decision has been made.  Now, imagine that pee pooling on the floor in front of about fifty French men and women who have stopped swimming laps and silenced their chatting in order to turn and see whose whimpers are bouncing echoes around their beautiful, cavernous, original art deco brick pool house which had been fed (up to that moment) by artesian well water in the quaint Butte-aux-Cailles neighborhood.  The word lousy no longer quite cuts it.  Tragic?  Tragic sounds appropriate.

But you know, there is a level above the tragic, a level when we begin to enter the realm of  horrific recurring dreams and lifelong trauma.  You might ask, how could it possibly become worse?  How might this public display of foolish parenting be transformed into something so absurdly mortifying that it could only really happen in a nightmare?  Well, really, what else could it be, but being forced under extreme duress by odd Parisian citywide pool regulations to wear a Speedo. <shudder>

Summer  (Bill)

Charles de Gaulle was not the only airport I passed through this past year, nor, I think, the most glamorous.  Through the spring and into the summer, I reacquainted myself with the nachos at the bar and grill in the Richmond airport (available, oddly, with barbequed chicken on top), became fast friends with the late night shift at the Budget rental car counter in Greensboro, and succeeded where many have failed in finding the elusive return lot at Cleveland Hopkins International.

Admittedly, I had been largely spared any significant travel during the past nine (is it really nine???) years in consulting, but my trips away from Chicago had been growing much more frequent of late.  Even when I somehow made it to my parents’ place at the Jersey Shore this past August, it was roughly akin to rolling down the car window to wave at my family and perhaps grab an ice cream cone like a train hooking an a old-time mailbag while I headed from a meeting in Eastern Pennsylvania to Terminal C and off to North Carolina once again.

So, on to the happy ending (it’s a Christmas newsletter anecdote, after all).  In September I started a new job here in Chicago, and as a welcome side effect of the switch, the business travel has ceased for the time being.  Now when Karl watches me leave from the back door window in the morning, waving goodbye and saying “Hi!”, he can expect to say it again to me a few hours later.  I’m still in the supply chain technology biz, working with a small logistics services firm (pause to recognize the irony re: the travel).  It’s a young firm with some new and ambitious ideas, and I’m really enjoying it.

Fall  (Hilde)

You poor, faithful readers of the blog!  My resolution for 2007 is to post more regularly on our family website, www.kaisermichalski.com.   In the spirit of year-end lists, here is a capsule summary of what’s “in” and “out” for Karl these days.

Out:  strawberries, peas, lentils                In:  carrots, rice, spaghetti

Out:  favorite plastic fire engine                In: wooden trains

Out:  construction sites                        In:  the el (train)

Off:  mittens and hats                 On: snow boots

Out:  farm animals                   In: penguins, cats (a perennial “in”)

Out:  midday three hour nap                In:  one and a half hour nap.  Rats!

Out:  walking on the sidewalk                In: still being worn in a sling by Mommy

Out:  gesticulating                         In: Words! “No”  “A(ll)- done” “dagwa” (yogurt)

                                                                                      “Eeeee!” (whee!)  are some favorites.

Speaking of favorite words, it wouldn’t be a newsletter without our yearly book recommendations.  I forgot to mention a favorite from last year:  a biography of the children’s book author of The Lonely Doll books; the biography is The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright by Jean Nathan.  It’s kind of about the author’s weird relationship to her mother and their weird relationship to, um, dolls. 

We started subscribing to a CSA this winter (monthly box of organic veggies from a local farm) so my  favorite cookbook is Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Soups.  My favorite novel can be described by a list:  rediscovered, unfinished, darkly absurdist, yet straightforwardly written.  It was written during the Second World War, and it is  Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemerovsky.  It’s about the exodus from Paris when the Germans invade.  But am I the only one who thought the current year’s crop of fiction was ho-hum?  Still,  it is with some pride that I can report that despite how busy chasing after Karl can be, I still manage to read more books than Bill!   Bill  does read everything by Haruki Murakami, so that author’s newest book, Kafka on the Shore, tops Bill’s list this year.

Plus, click here for pictures of the holiday card photo shoot (plus a few random pictures at the beginning of the album, like of Karl playing with toilet paper)

Frohe Weihnachten

It's Christmas Eve!  I love Christmas Eve.

This day, more so than Christmas Day, is the day my family celebrates Christmas.  The Kaisers always have the same thing for dinner on Christmas Eve, and this year it'll be no different: Champagne.   Filet mignon, potatoes anna, and asparagus. Chocolate Mousse.  Well, actually, I heard there will be Tres Leches cake for dessert instead this year.

I have some pictures for you, of us doing fun holiday stuff over the last few weeks.

Wishing you a lovely holiday,

Hilde, Bill and Karl

Click here for festive pictures

Playing catch-up

Is it any wonder that I fell behind on my blog posts just as Karl started walking?

Things have been busy here in the Kaiser-Michalski household.  Like all of you, I suppose we have been caught up in the whirlwind of the holidays all month.  Karl took his first steps a few weeks before Halloween.  The week before Halloween, his walking exploded and he stopped crawling and went straight to running.  Currently, he is enamored with tiptoeing as well as walking backwards.

He is also starting to talk.  Just a bit.  Karl just had his 18-month pediatrician's visit (he currently is 83 cm long and weighs 23 pounds) so I made a list of words or almost-words to report to the pediatrician:

"No"  This was an early word.  Then, Karl went through a phase during which whenever you asked him a question, he would say "No" or "Neh."  If he was smiling, we would consider it a "yes-no" (ie. a no that was really a yes).  Just last week, he started nodding in the affirmative.  That is much less confusing!

"Hi"  (this is the cutest one.  He says it softy but drawn out.  A petite little "Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh"

"Tway" (train), "Twuh" (truck), "Agay" (again), "Ah-duh" ("all done" or finished) "A-puh" (airplane)

"Mama" and "Dada" of course

"Dagwa" -- a made-up word, which can either mean yogurt or penguin.  He likes them both a lot.

Just this week, I caught him trying to say "baw" (ball, when looking at Christmas ornaments) and "Ka" ("quack") .

Never a dull moment around here.

Look for the ketchup shots in our catch-up photos:

Click here for late fall pics (including Halloween and Thanksgiving)