Christmas Letter 2006

The Neil Family News

December 25, 2006

Uroru Gos tu Afriku
Annika has started first grade, at age 7 as they do in Sweden. Taking after her mother, her favorite subject is math. She completed her first short story, "Uroru Gos tu Afriku" (Aurora goes to Afrika) in which the heroine manages to fly on an erplan, meet Mark (who wus veri smart), get marid and of course they livd hapli evur aftor, written in creative but phonetical spelling.

In addition to violin, tennis and figure skating, she has started horseback riding and loves it. She spent a week of all-day riding in Switzerland in a throw-them-on-the-horse-and-go school, and then started at the local stable in the mom-has-to-lead-the-horse variation. Despite precautions (and mom’s lead), she still managed to get thrown, proving the merit of investing in safety gear, even at the entry level! She is back in the saddle again, and feels that she is one step closer (one fall closer?) to becoming a "real rider".

She would very much like a horse for Christmas, but understands that Santa requires parental approval (which is not very likely).

The Food Chain
Benjamin is a charming 5-year-old, and has just started mini-hockey, which he loves. Though he really has very little clue what he is supposed to do with the puck, and the facemask is mostly to protect him from the other kids’ sticks, his skating has improved immensely, and he can’t wait for the next class.

Despite his mom’s current occupation, he rarely plays with toys, preferring couch cushions and blankets, as he builds forts and houses – clearly a future real-estate professional. When not consumed with construction, he is setting up for a party or a store, or pretty much anything involving consumption of cookies.

Benjamin spent the summer learning to swim. After a couple of weeks of splashing around with no progress, he mastered the art of swimming forwards, and now looks remarkably like a fish in the water.

His most recent interests have been in the food chain and in understanding real and imaginary. Questions range from, "What do dragons eat?" to "Is Pooh real?"

Benjamin would like for Santa to bring him an ice cream machine so that he can expand the offerings at his cookie store.

I NOT Little
Christopher is a big 3, and the biggest insult you could deliver would be to suggest that he is little – which results in immediate tears and an insistent statement, "I not little – I big!" Of course, his constant companion is still Baby Two Rags, a blue teddy bear and two (or more) burp rags.

Not willing to be left behind, he tried skiing last spring (at age 2 ½). He LOVED it, going straight down the hill, held back only by the ski reins. He managed an hour or so at a time, before tiring so much that he put his head down on the snow to rest, like a tiny tripod. He is now ice skating as well, and enjoys it as long as he isn’t expected to do what the rest of the group is doing – Mr. Independent!

With all our travel over the past year, Christopher is now premier on United, probably one of the younger members, and one of the few who likes to take a bath with his silver card.


Cash Flow Crisis
David’s property business, Genesta, is doing well, and keeping him traveling to Finland and Baltics. At least there, nobody expects him to speak Finnish!

Leigh has now dived into internet retail with her toy store, ABC Leksaker (A, B & C after the children, and Leksaker meaning toys). The business is growing, and the inventory is expanding even faster! ABC is still a one-person operation, and Leigh is feeling a bit like Santa’s elf, packing and shipping over 1600 orders, 400 in December alone!


Unseasonably Warm
In a country where everyone complains about the length of the winter, we are surprised at the number who are now complaining about the lack thereof. It will be a green Christmas in Sweden, save for the lucky family who manages to win a truckload of snow in a newspaper lottery.

The warmer temps have not harmed our seasonal activities – skating in all its forms. We now spend three hours at the rink every Saturday with hockey, figure skating and beginning skating. However, the mud content of the kids’ clothes has even led us to dream of freezing temperatures - and snow!


Sad News
Last year, we were called back to the States right before Christmas, and last year’s Christmas letter never got sent… or even written. Leigh’s father was not doing well, and we expected the worst. His condition improved, and we celebrated his 75th birthday with him in Lubbock in May. However, he passed away in July, and luckily we were there with him. We miss him greatly.

We wish you a wonderful Christmas and a fantastic New Year!

The Neils

The Mysterious Uncle Benny

In Swedish dagis, the kids do lots of crafts and gifts, especially around Christmas time. They usually wrap them and take them home to be given to various family members. Imagine our surprise when we received a package labeled "Merry Christmas Uncle Benny from Christopher". We racked our brains, trying to imagine who he could be. Christopher's uncles are Mark (Mak), Doug (Duk) and Rob (Wap), but nothing even approaching Benny or even two syllables.

Of course, Annika should have prepared us... One day when she was about 2, we were looking at an IKEA catalog (as one does in Sweden) and she started pointing at the pages and saying "fuck". Given that that particular four-letter word doesn't make up a large percentage of David's and my vocabulary, we wondered where she could have picked it up. I asked at dagis, and they were as mystified as I was, until we realized that the place for all their papers is a FACK, with a very long Swedish A-sound. Of course, we haven't met any French seals yet... (foque)

So back to Uncle Benny... we finally realized that Christopher tends to drop a few letters in various words. His word for "everybody" ranges from "eh-be" (which I mistook for Eva for a while) to "eh-biddy", and somewhere in the middle, the dagis must have heard Uncle Benny.

Christopher and language will be interesting. He is very talkative, and demands his share of attention. Many car journeys are made with his insistent "Mama, tak ME!" repeated over and over again. Benjamin gets so frustrated because Christopher's demands for air time interfere with his thought process, not to mention sibling peace.

Christopher has learned that most people understand him even if he speaks English. Every morning he starts the day being greeted with a "God morgon - hur mår du?" to which he replies without fail, "Good." However, many of his words are not so clear. Benzie and Aka are his siblings, "Piss" is fish and milk is a two-syllable word (me-yulk). Anything beginning with an S gets pretty creative. "Kwong" is strong, "bleepy" is sleepy, and snow is just plain "no".

Prinses Uroru gos tu Afrika

(This is Annika's story for Grandma)

Ther was wuns a prinses and hur namm wus Uroru and she wus a rili biudufol prinses.! and she livd in a biudufol kasol. And she was 9 years old. And wun nit Uroru hurd her mom and her dad takin ubawt goin to Afriku and tehen she kam rasin dawn teh sters and sed I dont wunt to go to Afriku Uroru sed. But wi haf to sed mom we ar goin tumaro sed dad I dont wunt to Uroru sed. Kin David sed at last win he wok up teh sam tim Qin Leigh sed Uroru its tim olredi sed Uroru. And tenin teha wint. And win Uroru and Kin David and Qin Leigh wor an teh erplan Uroru mad a frind and his namm was Mark and Mark wus veri smart. And win thei got of the erplan thei had tu sei good bai and the did. And win hur dad and hur mum wur slipin and then she klim out the windo and bfor she noo it she wus in a humugngis junggol. And then she met a gurl and hur namm wus Annika and she wus veri nis and she brot Uroru tu har trihaws and ther wus Mark. And then theai gru upp and then Mark and Uroru got marid and then thei livd hapli evur aftor.

Uroru = Aurora

Still Life with Fruit

What names do children typically give their artwork? Probably not "Still Life with Fruit", but maybe at least something about the picture itself... Our creative Benjamin has given the following titles to his latest 5 watercolors:

"Footprints of tjuvs (theives) - you must hop over this. Move back and forth so the bad guys don't get you."

"Mamma - a frogman, puddle, duckie-moose, grass and part of the wind"

"A sky monster blowing a pipe - and then a cat bited it on its butt."

"Benjamin and Christopher when they were monkeys. They will eat the pear, the köttbulle and the apple."

"The baby stuck its head up out of a hole and a monster saw it. The mama named the baby Christopher. Please go over to a man and if you see a monster then go like this to smush is toes. You must hop backwards a lot of times like this - 1-2-3."

Reality anyone?

The Mother-of-One?

I picked up a parenting magazine today, and they had an article on a family who has no schedule. Their 2-year-old decides when he wants to eat, when he goes to bed, and when he gets up in the morning. He goes to restaurants with his parents, and apparently eats anything from Asian to Greek, though he prefers McDonalds. And the thought struck me - this is a family that has only one child.

In English we have the expressions "mother-of-two" or "mother-of-three" - you see it in articles. Gina, a mother-of-three, did thus and so... In Swedish, the same expressions exist. Två-barns-mama or tre-barns-mama, and even fyra-barns-mama, which would be the equivalent of sainthood in my book. But there are no expressions for a "mother-of-one" or an "ett-barns-mama".

Reading the above article caused me to remember a news segment I saw on Today or some such show when I was in the US on "Diaperless Parenting". Wow - you can avoid the whole discussion over cloth versus Pampers by just potty-training your three-month old. The segment had moms with their babies, who were in real undies from extremely young ages. The moms just put them on the little potties every five or so minutes so that they would figure out when to go. Several thoughts struck me on this one, number one being that these were families without wall-to-wall carpeting, or even rugs, for that matter! Also, that these were moms that had ample time to spend with their child - and of course, that these were moms with only one child. Can you imagine the chaos of trying to put the baby on the potty every 5 minutes while your 2-year-old is throwing a tantrum? And how could you ever leave the house?

Anyway, back to the mother-of-one... How wonderful it must be to have the time, freedom and flexibility to be a mother-of-one! How much quality time has Christopher missed as the youngest child of mother-of-three? (He might not be 3 1/4 and still in diapers...) Of course, being a mother-of-three lets me really appreciate the times that I get to be a mother-of-one...

The Swedish Election (by Annika)

Annika's class (first grade) has been discussing the upcoming Swedish election. Though she hardly understands what a democracy is, not to mention representative government, she was quite intrigued by the political symbols and campaign information.

In Sweden, each party builds a little house (valstuga) outside each of the major shopping centers so that anyone who is interested can come in and talk. Mörby Centrum looks like a little playground with houses for 4 of the 8 major parites. I was having trouble defining the differences between the parties, so we made the trek to Mörby to see if the volunteers in the cottages could do any better. Here is her view:

"The Vs" or Vänsterpartiet, the far left. According to one of Annika's friends, if the Vs win the election, we will all have to move out to our summer houses and live in the country. Since we don't personally possess a summer house, this would leave us rather homeless, so they don't get Annika's vote. They didn't actually have a house we could visit - I guess our neighborhood is not their highest potential area for votes.

"The Ms" or Moderaterna, as far right of left that you can get in Sweden. Everyone got a box of candy, which was a big hit with Benjamin and Christopher until they tasted it, and then we all agreed, along with the people in the cottage, that it was "adult" candy. They also won extra points with the boys because the volunteer (female) who spoke with us had a super cool Harley that Benjamin got to sit on. The volunteer's picture was also in one of the brochures, as was a picture of our neighbor, so they scored points with Annika, though not enough to put them over...

"The Rose" or the Social Democrats. They want to help people, so they are good. They also gave us a real red rose and a button that said "Alla ska med" (Everyone should belong). Annika was fairly predisposed to like the Rose party, just by virtue of the symbol. They also had nice "playing cards" with pictures of all the important people in the party (though she couldn't recognize Göran Persson) that were good for school. High points.

The Folkpartiet had the coolest symbol (the blue thing), though we really couldn't figure out what it was. They tried to differentiate themselves to Annika on education - "We want grades and exit exams" - grades which are meaningless to a 7-year-old who has no idea what they are, and exams, which sound like fun to her - some points, but nothing special to take back - no buttons, no pictures...

The Miljöpartiet and the Kristdemokraterna did not do well in our investigation, the greens because they didn't have any information Annika could take back to school, and the Christian Democrats because their cottage was closed.

To sum up, after recovering from her inital disappointment that 7-year-olds are not allowed to vote, nor are their parents allowed to vote for them, Annika still investigated the project thoroughly. In the end, she said, "You know, mama, maybe it's good that kids can't vote. I might vote when I'm 18... but maybe I'll wait until I'm 40, like you."

How Perspectives Change...

Remember when we had one child, Annika, and we thought it was so difficult? Then we had Benjamin and began to realize how easy just one was! Of course, two was difficult, until we had Christopher, and wow - what a breeze it is to just have two! I have often wondered what it would take to make me think three was easy - a fourth?

The past week, we have been back at home after two months away, the bulk of the time spent at the Embassy Suites. Somehow this week has seemed surprisingly easy, and I just can't figure it out. Maybe the kids have gotten that little bit older... Maybe after two months of playing together they have finally figured it out... Maybe being back at home with familiar surroundings has calmed things... Maybe they are just happy to have their toys back... Maybe I'm just happy to be home... Maybe being at the Embassy Suites for 7 weeks was our "fourth child"... Whatever the case, this week has been great! The kids have been playing more together and they have been more cooperative. I have even begun to feel like a parent, rather than a firefighter.

This weekend, I have only Annika and Christopher - David has taken Benjamin to Copenhagen for an overnight with a good friend, but I just couldn't handle the thought of travelling again! Annika and Christopher have been so easy - I even had time to read a bit of a book - WOW!