Ruminations

Remember when we met PC at my son's preschool? When they asked us to tell him not to make guns out of leggo blocks? Well Monika asked her if he had done that lately. She said no, now he makes swords. But it's OK, that's not against the rules. My cousin asked, "I wonder where he gets that from?" (Heavy sarcasm.) Jerzy sees Daddy practice Filipino Kali with sticks and Tameshigiri with a Japanese sword.

That last is major cool. It's sword practice by cutting a target to pieces. Classically it's a straw mat, but in America we've found that heavy cardboard mailing tubes work just as well and are lots cheaper.

My cousin asked, "Don't the neighbors think you're weird?" "Hey, nobody's complained." "Gee, I wonder why?"

Hey, it's a guy thing...

Monika told me I have to say something to promote La Leche League. She joined a while ago, after the birth of our daughter. She'd had trouble starting nursing with our firstborn at the beginning which I won't describe, those of you who know about it don't need to be reminded and I don't want to discourage the rest of you from having kids, but at any rate this got her interested in lactation counceling.

Now, I could see a club of guys getting together to discuss breast matters, but couldn't for the life of me imagine what women would talk about. Apparantly lots. Monika has a great time and has made a lot of friends. Women bring their babies to meetings (of course!) and evidently discussion ranges over a lot of infant issues.

They also joke a lot - and some of those are pretty rough, like guys wouldn't dare make. "Monika, look at the size of that baby! You must be making pure cream."

Must be a woman thing...

And speaking of which, Monika took the kids to a birthday party for the daughter of her best friend, a Mexican woman. Of course, the baby was a big hit. She got passed around and cuddled by everyone. The expression these women used was, "Que gordita!" Which translates literally, "What a little fatty!" but it's a good thing in Spanish. What would we say in English? Maybe, "What a big baby!" Doesn't quite have the same air of love and affection. Spanish is a beautiful language and Mexican culture is very child-centered.

And of course, since the baby takes after her mom, a Polish-blue eyed Slav, they think she's exotically beautiful. We think the same of their raven-haired doe-eyed little girls.

Now if the boy will only pick up the language, he'll have English, Polish and Spanish - all three major European langauge groups covered. (That's if you put English in the Teutonic group. Yes, sort of - but it's easier for an English speaker to pick up Spanish than German I think.)

You know when I think of it, it's not so much that I didn't believe Hillary, "It takes a village to raise a child" - it's that I didn't believe it from her.