Week in Review

This week I...

...picked four giant bowls of currants and helped Eva make jam. She has this awesome machine that you feed handfuls of currants--still attached to the stalks!--and the fruit comes out one chute nicely mashed. Another chute spits out the stalks and leaves and other matter that you don't want in your jam. The next night I helped her make apricot jam. Not quite as cool since you just de-pit the apricots and put them in the blender. But still delicious!

...explored the town and the surrounding areas through walks and runs. Here is an image of the mine that employs most of the town.

You can see the mine in the background of this one, too. In the foreground are "garden houses." They are like little play houses with gardens. People who live in apartments or who don't have big yards or who just want a garden house use them as afternoon or weekend getaways. During the communist era, they were very important because fresh vegetables were difficult to obtain. So people grew their own. Naturally, that would be difficult if you lived in an apartment or an urban area. So they had garden houses. I think it is a nice idea. They are pretty small, one or two rooms at most. Along this trail there were rows and rows of them.

...saw the blue plants again, and this time they were flowering! They line the roads and seem to be very attractive to bees and wasps.

...spent a hot and sunny afternoon outside in the yard with the baby and the four-year-old. We sat on a blanket, just hanging out. The baby had no diaper on, just his unbuttoned body suit. (Do you think it is crueller to let him experience a diaper-free world and then bind him up again in his Pampers prison, or just keep him diapered except at bath time? I think it must be fairly awful to always be in diapers, but if he doesn't know anything else maybe it isn't so bad.) Anyway, I was helping the baby stand (he is crawling now and loves to stand up!) when he clenched his little face. When his chubby cheeks started to turn red the alarm bells went off in my mind. "He's pooping! He's pooping!" my brain shouted. I immediately lifted him off of the blanket and into the grass. He stood, holding my hands in his tiny, strong grip, furrowing his red brow in concentration. Plop Plop Thud. Yes, like a cow. Right into the grass. Fresh baby pies.

I remained calm and controlled, since I didn't want to scream and drop the baby and run in front of the four-year-old. He didn't notice what was happening at first, but then saw it, looked at me in alarm, grinned and started to giggle. "Could you please get me the paper towels that are on the table?" I asked him. Or, more accurately, "Lukas, paper towels! Prosim!" (that means please.) Fortunately, and for some inexplicable reason, Lukas thinks "paper towel" is a hilarious term. So we often say it, and he has learned it. He fetched the roll for me, and I cleaned off the baby. Then I had to turn my attention to Lukas, who was standing by the poop, alternately giggling and gagging. If he threw up...! So I grabbed the baby and the blanket and Lukas and we moved several feet away. Things calmed down considerably and I was able to properly clean and diaper the baby and remove the poop. I shall think twice before un-diapering him again.

...played dress up. Here is the baby in my Duke hat. Darn cute! I thought this would be a nice addition to his application for the Class of 2033. We have spent a lot of time together recently and we have begun to bond. Now, he doesn't think of me as a big alien who has come to take him from his parents, and I don't think of him as a little alien who has come to destroy me.

...watched the baby learn to crawl and get two new teeth! Can you imagine? Learning a new method of locomotion and increasing your number of teeth by 1/3?

...was interested to see an article in English in a Czech news magazine. Sort of their Newsweek or Time, I think. Towards the back of the magazine there was one page in English about the British railway system. Some words were in bold, and on the right side of the page those words were defined in Czech under the heading "Vocabulary." Then there were four reading comprehension questions, a true or false section, and "word partnerships," ("shoulder...the burden"). Cool, huh? Can you imagine having Spanish or French or Czech or Chinese articles in Time?

...chuckled inside to see the four-year-old spend several hours running around in the yard completely naked and wonderfully oblivious that there is anything unusual about that. Ahh childhood. It was especially amusing when he pulled up a chair, sat down at the table outside, and began to eat his dinner next to his fully clothed brother.

...received pictures from Julie from our excursion to Vysehrad. Here is the sculpture of the hands I mentioned in the Vysehrad post.

And here is one of me reflected in mirrored pyramids in the underground chamber. The left one, in a khaki jacket. Cool picture! Thanks, Julie!...bought a pair of bright purple imitation Crocs. They are my outside slip-on shoes. I was tired of tying and untying and tying my shoes all the time. It was bright purple or pale pink...but I feel like Barney the dinosaur.

Well, that was my week. Hope yours was excellent.