On Our Way to France

Second blog after three weeks in Europe.

That's either totally deplorable or I'm too busy having a blast to keep up with it. You be the judge.

Last time we left you, we were about to head to Strasbourg. Well, Strasbourg was very cool. We partook in some of the local cuisine--tartes flambées:

Amie and Tartes Flambées

 We saw the sights, which included an enormous cathedral--the Cathedral Strasbourg, which was the tallest building in the world from 1674 to 1847. We dropped by the European Council building to say hello and "keep up the good work with the whole empire-building thing." We went to a great park called Parc de L'Orangerie, where Amie made some French friends and saw monkeys ingest their own feces--always a treat. But the coolest thing about the whole trip to Strasbourg was our hotel--Le Biblenhof. 

Cathedral Strasbourg

Parc de L'Orangerie and Amie's New Friend

Amie in Alsace Vineyard

Amie at the Germany-Italy Soccer Ga

It is set among acres of Alsace vineyards outside of Strasbourg. It was so picturesque, so charming, and quite relaxing. They have a pack of St. Bernards that were always quite interested in what we were having for dinner and we all had a great time walking through the vineyards and taking in the sights. 

Other than that, it's been business as usual in Wiesbaden, our de facto European home. We've attended a couple of barbecues with friends, gone swimming at the city pool (which beats any American city pool I've ever seen hands down), and we've been closely watching the European soccer matches. Last night, Germany lost...:-( Seriously very sad for Germany. I saw tears--real tears. Poor schlaaaand. Amelie said: "Oh, soccer lost, we can't say schland anymore." She was all dressed up with her Germany face paint and everything. 

In a couple of hours, we'll depart for the centerpiece of our Europe trip--France and Italy. One week on the French Riviera (and the wedding of course!!!) and one week in Italy before a stop to meet a friend in Switzerland, then back to Wiesbaden. Stay tuned!

-The Kershaw-Svamberk's

P.S. Check out my parents' blog: Tomandkaren.posterous.com 

The Jet Lag is Over

Well folks, we made it to Europe. It was truly a long and harrowing journey:

• June 11--leave for Newark--arrive in Newark at midnight.

• June 12--navigate New York City public transit system from Newark to LaGuardia airport with a mountain of luggage. This wasn't nearly as bad as we'd thought it would be. Hop on a flight to Ottawa, Canada. Here's where things get dicey. The immigration officials in Canada gave me a pretty hard time for some bad choices 13 years ago. Finally, we barely make it to our 7-hour flight to Germany, arrive in Germany at about 11 AM and, in an attempt to beat the jet lag, stay up the entire day. We went to bed around 8 PM. That's one helluva day--awake for around 30 hours straight. But Amie was an awesome traveler--which was the only nice thing the arrogant, smug Canadian immigration officer said to me as she and Dominique stood behind me during my "this guy's a terrorist" interview. Jerks.

The last few days have just been hanging out in Wiesbaden, eating good European food, drinking good European coffee, and staying out of the rain as much as possible. It's the European soccer finals right now and Germany is playing. This only happens once every four years and it's a really big deal right now. So that's been fun to see.

Amelie has been such a good girl. Today, we went out to a small German village to visit some of Dominique's friends. Between them, they have 3 daughters. Amelie played with them like they were three American girls, even though at first they talked to each other with looks of profound confusion on their faces. Eventually, it just turned into regular old little girls running around like maniacs. And between hanging out with her Oma (German for grandma) and these little girls, Amelie's German--and openness to learning it--have dramatically improved.

At this point, we're booking a last-minute hotel and rental car for Strasbourg, France. We'll be going there on Tuesday. I'm told it's a beautiful city and I'm looking forward to finally using the French I've been learning for the past year. Plus I just love France, which is the real reason we came on this trip anyway.

Stay posted, folks. What's coming is Strasbourg, the wonderful and charming French Riviera, our wedding, Italy, Prague, and Berlin. It's a lot to take in. Much love, people!

No Kids

Have you ever heard those people who say: "Who would want to bring a child into this topsy-turvy world?"

My response would be somewhat Socratic: "Have you ever heard of this thing--history?"

Even in the political and social near-utopia that was ancient Athens, only one out of four children survived past the age of 2 or something and people were dying at 35 from rotten teeth. (Not factual, by the way. I could look it up, but I'm not. You get the point.)

Or here's another one: I had this professor. I loved his class. We talked about politics and everything that was wrong with the world and we were realistic and engaged and he wore Birkenstock's in December. It was awesome.

So the class is going along and I'm having a good time and prof. says something about hating kids. Come to find out, he's like 60 years old and has no kids--but he loves his cats. Nothing wrong with that, I like cats. But he's on this anti-kid rant and he's not stupid, so he must have figured that some of us in the classroom probably have kids.

Well, I don't hold it against him, he's entitled to his opinion, but I pretty much stopped listening--not about politics though, this guy knows what's up--but about life. He doesn't get it. At 60 years old, he hasn't lived. Plus, I don't believe he hates kids. He's not Aleister Crowley, he's a nice guy, and a nice person can't just make a blanket statement like "I hate kids" and actually mean it.

Why don't these people just say what they mean?: I don't want to have a child because it will cramp my style.

That's pretty much it, isn't it? They don't want to spend their money on somebody else, they don't want someone else monopolizing their time, they just want their freedom. 

I can respect that. I don't want to spend my money on somebody else or give up my time to somebody else and I want to be free. I get it.

But there's a lot of wrong thinking that I would like to correct.

Here's what I gained when I had a child:

• Two best pals (Dominique and Amelie) that I love hanging out with. We go out to dinner, we sit at cafes and chat, we travel Europe, we watch movies, we go to concerts and tons of other great stuff.
• A new-found motivation to succeed in life. Whether it's my work or school or my music or writing, I take things a lot more seriously and I do things well and I do them right. 
• Someone who listens (and will continue to listen) to my rants about politics or society or music and art. See, Amelie just wants to learn about the world, just like we all did at her age. She's got questions and I get to use my ideas and knowledge and opinions to educate her in whatever way I feel is best (which is a great ego-stroke).
• Lots and lots of love.

Here's what I lost when I had a child:

• Getting hammered every night. Oh darn it. That sucks. It was so awesome to spend all of my money on a wicked headache. 
• Everything that isn't important. When you're limited on time, you tend to spend your time on more worthwhile things. I don't waste nearly as much of my life on video games, TV, loser friends, and pointless activities as I used to. Some, for sure, but not as much.

This is by no means trying to convince people to have children. It truly is a big responsibility to have some innocent, defenseless person be completely dependent on you. If you're not ready, you're not ready. I just don't want the excuses. 

So yeah, let's hear some of what you've gained and lost because of your kids down in the comments section.

Tough Questions

It's finally happened.

I knew this phase would come eventually and I thought I would be ready for it.

Amelie has been asking the tough questions. See, I always thought I had a creative idea for handling this. Take my plan for the classic "where do babies come from" question:

Amelie: Daddy, where do babies come from?

Daddy: Well sweetie, it all started back in the primordial soup, somewhere around 4 billion years ago. No one's quite sure, but some theorize that lightning struck a strategic combination of chemicals and life began. It didn't always work at first, see, and eventually over thousands and millions and billions of years, these little creatures developed what's called mitosis. That's when cells....

Amelie: (Sigh) Nevermind...

See, crisis averted. That was my plan at least.

But it just didn't work out that way. Here's a sampling of a few of the tougher ones of late:

Amelie: Daddy, if you're bad, the police officers will shoot you, right?

Daddy: What!? Uh, no. I mean, well, uh, it depends. I mean, no they shouldn't shoot you. They're not supposed to shoot you unless, like, you shoot them... or you're black or a G8 protestor or something... You're not going to shoot a police officer, right kiddo?

But, police are nice sweetie, very nice. They, like, are here to help and stuff.

Or here's a fun one from when we were on a family walk and we happened across a cemetery with flowers by the headstones.

Amelie: I want to smell the flowers!

Dominique: No.... I don't think you should smell those flowers.

Amelie: Why? I want to smell the flowers.

Dominique: It's, uh, because, you know, those people are dead and those flowers aren't for smelling, they're for the dead people. See, it's like they're not here anymore. They just have those stones there so people will remember them.

Amelie: (Looks at Dominique intently, actually listening for once).

Dominique: Uh.... See, people just, you know, go away and, uh, we don't want to forget them (rambling incoherently, panicked, hoping Amie will just come to the end of her attention span, but she doesn't).

Or here's one that arose because Amie put on a jacket she was wearing the last time we took a plane. The jacket had the Delta "wings" pinned to it.

Daddy: Oh, look! Your wings. You know, when I was a little boy, I got wings too! Back in those days, they let the kids go in the cockpit with the pilots and look around at all the buttons and knobs and gauges and stuff. It was really cool! But they don't do that anymore (to myself) because of 9/11 and everything.

Amelie: What's that?

Daddy: What?

Amelie: 9/11.

Daddy: Oh, it's a long story (forgetting that Amelie loves stories).

Amelie: Tell it!

Daddy: Aww man....

The moral of the story: You're never really prepared. The questions just blindside you and you'll be totally caught off guard.  Please, help me. What random questions did your kid ask you that you had no answer for? The more I'm prepared, maybe I can avoid a potential disaster.

Thanks!

-Tom

I'm Baaaack!

My lovely wife-to-be, Dominique, has informed me of a latent demand for my particular brand of daddy blogging.

If you didn't know, I was previously signed to a 5 month contract to write 5 blogs about being a daddy every month. Well, the contract ran out, the company went under, and I had no more financial motivation to continue.

Since then, I've been mostly focusing my efforts on the TOP Project and it's blog and social media sites and writing articles about the religious and political views of celebrities--and watching my beautiful and charming daughter grow up right before my eyes. Oh, and going to school. Yay.

But school's out for the summer, the weather's warm, we're going back to Europe for a couple of months, and if Dominique's right, there are some eager readers out there. So why not start up again, right?

Where to begin. It looks like in the last blog I wrote (and maybe I'll post the old ones periodically), Amie was struggling to assert her independence. That was a year and a half ago. She's still struggling to assert her independence. So... not much has changed, I guess.

Of course that's not true, she's growing and changing and evolving. She's a little person with her own opinions and ideas. She says the most random things, such as walking up to a lady who's daughter she was playing with and saying: "Your kid is telling me I'm little, and I'm not."

She's finally kicked her aversion to languages and seems open to learning words in German and French. She colors, OMG, this girl (and I kind of hate to say this because I had always hoped she would inherit her daddy's musical knack over her mommy's visual artistry) has got an eye. She drew mountains and I'm talking mountains with one side green and one side brown--like a rainshadow and stuff. She drew an electric kool-aid acid test caterpillar Santa Claus, which, I'll be honest, really got me thinking. She drew a building from BSU, having seen it once while we went on a walk, complete with windows and and doors and a roof. I was impressed. You would be too. Maybe I'll post photos of these masterpieces later.

Anyway, she's 3 now, going on 30. We love her to death. She's the glue in the craft project that is our lives.

In terms of a general idea of what to look forward to from this blog, it's hard to say. I just kind of write them as the inspiration hits. However, we are gearing up (as mentioned before) for a couple of months in Europe. We'll be leaving in about 3 weeks. Amie is now old enough to realize that she's in a different world where people talk funny and places look different. So that should be interesting. I'll keep you posted. And, just like the last round of daddy blogs, feel free to leave comments or suggestions about what you'd like to see me write about. I don't pretend to be some sort of daddy guru, but I've got a few tricks up my sleeve...

-Tom