One plate at a time

I like food. Even if on this trip I was less likely to be eating some of it, I was doing my very best. For some reason, every time L and I passed a food stand at the market where there was sauerkraut, I had to have some. No idea what caught my nose, but I did have more than one plate of it during the visit to Vilnius. Lithuanians tend to add sugar to it, and this makes it less sharp. Well, and sweeter, of course.

And there were the mushrooms, and the pork cutlets, the berry drinks and the dark bread with garlic and sour cream. There was a lovely bowl of borscht the first night, which I will be trying to reproduce at home tonight for dinner. M must have been quite intrigued as he unloaded the grocery bag last night: sour cream, bacon bits, potatoes, a lot of butter,....

There were apples fresh from family gardens, and chocolate which was a completely different creature from what used to be available in Lithuania. I was quite impressed by the plain dark stuff, given that my palette is, um, well trained to that substance these last few years. We ate little fried cheese dough balls dusted in sugar, and rye bread coconut snacks.



It was a fine eating experience.

Oh, and I was happy to find that even the coffee shop chain made pretty good lattes. C'mon, Switzerland, you really have to step it up. Starbucks probably needs to go, and you need to start a homegrown label here. Please? It would make things all the more lovely. Ok? You'll think about it? No, huh?

Urp.

Turbulence soon overshadows the luxury of being able to sit in an exit row and not worry about buckling anyone's seat belt but my own. Guy next to me, perfectly capable of both buckling his seat belt and able to keep it buckled upon take off.

Hmmm. So is this nausea a combination effect? I haven't gotten air sick in many flights now, and on some I haven't taken any Dramamine. I wonder if stopping my antidepressants (as of a few days ago) has brought nausea back into my life. Granted, this is a bumpy flight but along with feeling more sensitive to the world of emotions, I seem to be more sensitive again to the world of inner ear imbalance.



(4 days later)

Yes, this is in fact a withdrawl symptom of the medication. Oi, oi, oi, being in a country where hospitality is underscored and threaded through and through with having guests eat, a lot, may not have been the best place to be to go through that. I was nauseous about 5-6 times a day, sometimes after eating something, sometimes when I was hungry, or in a car going down bumpy roads, or, in bed, lying still, and it just came over me. In retrospect, though, being on my own made it easier. I think a few relatives must have thought I was on a diet or something, but I ate when I could, and we all survived.

And my withdrawl side effects seem pretty mild compared to people who speak of "brain zaps" and other horrific-sounding things. Already today is starting to feel more stable.

I am home, back from Vilnius. When I download photos and have more than a minute to process the last 4 days, I'll write more. Let's just say it was a really nice trip and just set me up to be quite calm about going again, and looking forward to the opportunity.

Bored, gloriously bored, on a plane

Last time I flew to lihtuania, the first and only time,  was 1989. I was young, a junior in high school. Lithuania Was still under communist rule. 22 years ago. I still feel 25 years old sometimes so something being 22 years ago is hard to comprehend. 

I was in high school, having just spent a year at a Lithuanian boarding school in germany, and L and I and her parents flew there from....whoa, Zurich. Ha ha, I hated Zurich that night I spent at some random, Lithuania Swiss
S family friends apartment. I had taken a train
 From Germany to Zurich,
 Spent the day in Zurich alone, trying not to spend too much money, eating fast food probably, drawing in my sketchbook by the lake, then taking some tram (that I probably know well now) to some other tram
 (ditto),
 To some street in some neighborhood I probably have friends in now. It was late by the time I got to looking for this lady's street, and I w
As tired and hungry and getting a bit overwhelmed. I was in tears, ones I kept trying to hide,  as I reached her place after 15
 Minutes of walking down the empty cold looking street the wrong way
 Then the right way. My distress 
Didn't even register to this, get this, retired child psychologist! That explains a few things about the Swiss and how they deal with mental health.

I accepted a yogurt and a banana from her and went to b
Ed as soon as I could. And woke up as soon as I could, showered fast, and fled to the Zurich airport, where I'm sitting now, typing this. Airports felt safe and familiar, no matter
  What country they were in. A bit like catholic churches do to roman Catholics who may not speak the local language but can follow mass and find a kindred spirit if need be. In airports, even in the 80's, sometime was likely to Speak. Englsih,  and I could just 
Wait it out for L and her parents' flight from north America. InteRnational terminal, arrivals....even better. higher prwobability of English and even Americans. 

Their flight wAs late by more than an hour, and soon, laughing, hugging, and on. Our way (me, finally with my pack), we flew to krakow Poland. Our flight to Lithuania had long since left Zurich, so it was the loooong way around for us. Poland, to moscow, sleeping on airport benches, realizing we we at
 Te wrong one of 7 airports, my uncle practicing his probably no longer existent Russian oour cab driver whose car ceiling was falling on our head
S in the back seat. Lots of laugher. A quick stop at red square. Then long for something to Eat in a country that still didn't have much, and relizing the only stuff available was bread with lard spread. Or lard cookies. Lots of lard, as I remember. 

Finally we made it, one tired, sweaty, huny, happy family bunch, to Vilnius.

And here I go again. 

Trams and trip to airport in Zurich, no problem. On the plane to copenhagen, no problem. My freitag bag and a loudly clicking carryon (I see what you mean, M, we do have to get that sucker fixed), a job,  a life, a husband, a kid,, a dog, and clothing I bought with money not from an allowance, check.

Last time i made this trip, we had huge suitcases, bringing all sorts of things other people had suggested our relatives in Lithuania could use - dollars, huge bottles of ibuprofen and aspirin, underwear, and a box of 400 dental fillings. Tis last item, still sealed, would apparently be used by the whole family within a week or two to go get all their dental work done. This time, I bring no gifts. I have no idea who I will see, from all 4 sides of my family (L and I share 2/4 grandparents, by definition, so we'll see our mothers families together, and I will try to meet someone from my dads dads side, leaving my dads moms side for next time). I don't have parents telling me what to bring, how to gift relatives, how to do any of this, and I have been worried about this part. 

But I will be back. I will bring my husband and my little Lithuanian girl. And we will figure it all out. 

Note: I wrote this on a plane and the spellcheck was apparently not on. Sorry.

Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahahahahahaaaaaa!

A trip all by myself.

Well, no, not exactly. My cousin, L, will be there, too. But I'm going away. Without M and A and the dog. So it will count as "by myself" in some key ways. I will pack for only myself and plan to buy a few things when on travel. I might even just open a bag 30 minutes before I leave for the airport and throw in the first 20 things that come to mind. I'm sure my phone and some underpants will make the list. And a pair of shoes or boots. And, hell, I'll be wearing clothes at the time, and if I really want, I can wear them for the entire length of the trip. All 4 days.

Don't worry, L, I'm just kidding. At the very least, I'll shower each day and hang my clothes to air out overnight.

No packing diapers, or wipes. Or bottles. Or 6 pacifiers. Or dog treats, or extra anything, really. I'm giddy. I'm planning to sleep...WHENEVER I'M TIRED. Might even go wild and eat....when I'm hungry. I bet you I'll even get to finish what is on my plate without small beings trying to steal my food (I'm talking to you, A and pupper). I bet you L won't look at me, then at my plate, back at me, stretch out her hand and say "egg!"

I can't actually believe it is happening. The thought of being on my own for 4 days is amazing. What did I do before I had a kid? How did I actually fill the time? I wonder if I'll run out of ideas of what to do.

Doubt it.

For those of you channeling my subconscious which is a bit worried at how happy I seem to be at the thought of leaving my family, especially my baby girl, for a few days, take heart. I've realized I'm not yet ready for her to be without both parents. But since M will be here, as will her daycare, and her beloved babysitter, I plan to travel guilt-free on this one.

Better go charge up my Kindle. I've got some reading to catch up on.

Science (teaching) Friday

Its not like we even get these NPR programs here at the correct time of week or day - Science Friday is being broadcast when it is already Friday night here. But I've been working on a physics lab TA training seminar this week, and I found an article I really like. It is a collaboration between chemistry and English professors at Seattle University (Alaimo et. al, 2009), and the topic is helping college students learn to write like scientists. Basically, they argue that writing like a scientist (and I'd add speaking like one) goes hand in hand with thinking like a scientist. The motivation for the paper is the difficulty the chemists saw their students having writing up a professional looking senior thesis in chemistry, even thought these students had done many lab courses and had to write up reports for them.

If you've taken a science lab class, chances are you know that lab reports are a weird little genre unto themselves, having little or nothing to do with actual scientific writing of the kind that goes into journal articles. The authors make a great point about this that is obvious once they've stated it - students who learn to write lab reports are learning to write for a totally different purpose than what a research article has. The audience is the TA who will grade the work, the data and experiments are preselected, there is almost no gathering of multiple instances of the same data, and, let's be honest, almost all unexpected results are chalked up to "human error" and not really explained by the students. So why should we be surprised that students who know how to write a lab report have no idea how to write like scientists?

The authors discuss how they redesigned a yearlong chemistry lab course to mirror actual science data acquisition, analysis, and writeup. And they start with the easiest (e.g. lowest Bloom's taxonomy level) cognitive tasks like writing up the data results and analysis, followed by the harder (higher level) cognitive tasks like the discussion and introduction. They spend time on issues of audience (a person with similar or slightly less chemistry knowledge than you, the student), and purpose of these different sections.

Sounds like a great idea to me.

In control

I'm a control lover. I don't know that I'd go as far as calling myself a control freak (although M might, at times), but I like to plan. Especially for trips. I like the feeling that if I just pack the right things, everything will go well. I am the person you want to have on your Eurail trip, or vacation in Costa Rica or Ghana. I'm the one who brings tiny mosquito nets, and Cipro (for, um, traveller's, um, food related illnesses), and Ibuprofen, and sunburn cream, and sea sickness pills, and extra ziploc baggies for stuff, and a lock for your huge ass backpack. And cards, and a small pair of binoculars, and a camera with a waterproof case for underwater photos, and extra batteries.

And, you get it.

With the arrival of baby A, and her who-knows-what-it-was sleeping problems almost 2 years ago, I turned these skills onto managing her environment. It didn't work, but it gave me something to obsess about, and make myself calmer.

She has now had 3 chest infections in the last few months, complete with horribly constricted airways that make her wheeze and breathe hard. And after bout number 3, I sit here at the computer, with baby Singulair in an unopened box. The pediatrician has suggested it, and said emphatically how it has no side-effects. And I chose it instead of an inhaler with spacer that she'd have to learn to take 5 deep breaths from. Last night, before opening the box, I went....yes, online.

I know. Dumb. But it is one of those basic-good-parenting things, where at least I want to see what side effects are written on the drug's website for this stuff she is supposed to take all winter long once a day. And even the pharmacist said only that it might make her a bit drowsy (so I was thinking, "Score!"). Let's just let the website speak for itself:

"SINGULAIR may cause serious side effects. Behavior and mood-related changes have been reported: agitation including aggressive behavior or hostility, bad or vivid dreams, depression, disorientation (confusion), feeling anxious, hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not really there), irritability, restlessness, sleepwalking, suicidal thoughts and actions (including suicide), tremor, and trouble sleeping. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have, or your child has, any of these symptoms while taking SINGULAIR."

You have got to be kidding me! Aggression and hostility and sleepwalking?! I mean, ok, now I've also gone to the forums and heard from parents whose kids have night terrors from the stuff. But how am I supposed to know if they are from her medication or would have happened anyway? Depression? Ai, ai, ai.

The package sits, still unopened, on my desk. Between this keyboard and the screen. And I'm thinking that the inhaler isn't sounding so bad anymore. I think that for a kid who is already excitable, and who is going through the tantrum stage, while we are also trying to adjust, and already screams in the middle of the night, and who I've suspected might sleepwalk someday based on how she wakes from sleep,....this medication will have to be the only option for me to start her on it.

So this is one of those cases in which I can control. But if I couldn't, as I've realized will be the case with any future pregnancies and birth defects, or behavior disorders (let's just say that the NYTimes Motherlode blog has been going all out on posts about all sorts of scary things), those are the situations I start to get nervous. Maybe, if we decide to have another child, we should adopt. How horrible a thought is that, to adopt to avoid birth defects. What if we have a kid who says he/she wants to kill us, at age 5? There was a post on Motherlode about this, too. Granted, the follow-up from the mother calmed me down.

Even though my brain can imagine a kid with all the possible problems all at once, nature probably cannot, and it is only in my upper-middle-class existence that I even have the luxury of pretending that any of life is predictable. That serious illness won't strike, since we can afford medication when A's breathing gets hard or my depression sets in. That it is worth planning for 10 years from now since we can assume we will all be around. That life can't suddenly get turned upside down. I forget sometimes that it already has, two years ago, and that it sucked, it was hard, I hated being in the middle of all of it, but, that in the end, we all survived.

Time to get some predictable work done, in my predictable Thursday, with my predictably sleepy dog.

Pish time on the iPone

A likes my iPhone. Actually, she calls it my "ipone," on which her favorite toddler game right now is Fish School (which she calls "pish!"). We used it in Mallorca and then Milan in the car to help get over tired, cranky times. And on the trams or buses here, to help get over tired, cranky time. Or at a restaurant, to keep her at the table for more than 2 minutes when shes...you guessed it, tired, bored or cranky. That is correct, I use an iPhone as a babysitter for 5, or even 10, minutes!

But as tired and cranky time seems to be getting longer, and more enthusiastically cranky (ok, let's just say tantrum), I went back into child raising literature and found an idea that is working really nicely. In the book, the example was actually about an 8 year old girl and computer time, but it works with our little one, too. The concept that lack of structure is frustrating translates to A asking for "pish" almost anytime she realizes she is bored, and my having to decided on an instance-by-instance basis whether I say yes or no. If I say no, she protests. A lot. Loudly. And I was really sick of having to decide based on some unknown rules, or make some up, constantly. Anyway, the book suggests to schedule in an activity like this, and for us it has coincided very nicely with helping A get ready to leave the house in the mornings. We are trying to give her more structure to help ease tantrums, and now, 5 minutes before Mama or Papa are leaving to take her to school, she gets to play on the iPhone. She has to have her shoes and sweater on, or at least allow them to be put on, and be in her stroller. And after the first 2 days of toddler protest with the taking the iPhone away when the stroller is leaving the apartment with said parent, today she was fine with it. Now she knows there is a time for "pish" and we get a more cooperative little person, ready to leave for school.

All around win.

By the way, the app is called Fish School, from a company called DuckDuckMoose, and so far I love all their apps. Especially the music and sounds - I have yet to want to throw the phone across any large distance after hearing the same song 50 times. Well done, DuckDuckMoose.