Electronic Meltdown

This post has been updated: see postscript.

Despite my sensible decision a year or two ago to stop buying electronics "back home" -- the money saved was not worth the hassle of getting things repaired or replaced under warranty from here in Turkey -- I admit I've bought a couple of items in Canada since then, and have regretted it each time. 

Today my latest mistake arrived.  In what I can only explain as a sleep-deprived under-unusual-stress-induced impatient decision, I bought it online and found a way to get it here mid-year.  I'm embarrassed to say (but will do so in a minute anyway) how many people were roped into my obsessive plan and ended up contributing to this scheme in some way.

And then what did I do?  I plugged it and its 110V insides into my 220V sockets with a plug adapter forgetting that I also should have used a voltage adapter!!!  

What makes this really sting, though, is that the appliance was the "Tot Clock" I'd been looking forward to for months and that I'd gotten my 3-year-old all excited about.  I'd ordered it on Amazon because only they would take a non-American credit card, and therefore paid way too much for it, had it sent to a friend's house in Ohio, who had her husband bring it back to Istanbul, who in turn  had his assistant drop it off this afternoon.  I'd spent way too much time and energy on this silly thing, but so convinced was I that this would be the perfect solution for my son's too-early wake-up time, that I was blinded.    

There we were this evening -- my kids and I are on the floor, opening the box.  Everyone's grabbing at it, pushing the buttons, dropping it ... It's madness, and I'm acting just as crazy as the kids are.  B's grabbing the manual out of my hand and insisting on "reading" it, because that's just the 20-month-old phase he's in; K's pushing all the coloured buttons, trying to change the colour of the clock face, since he's colour-obsessed (always has been); and I'm trying to set the damn clocks while reading the instructions in the manual that keeps being moved, page-turned, flipped upside down.

And then the clock face goes dark and the digital clock on the back goes blank and it's game over.  I thought I'd smelled something funny a minute ago ... Turns out it was the insides frying.

And so once again, tomorrow morning at about 5:45, I'll be woken to the sweet lilting voice of my 3-year-old, calling from his bedroom across the hall: "Mommy?  Is it wake up time?"

"No, not yet," I'll softly call back.  But it'll be too late.  The baby will be standing at the crib railings and the dog will be stirring in her crate, and I'll have about two minutes until they start to noisily insist on being set free to start the day.

12 hours later: my older son did indeed wake up at 5:30am, and in his whole-house search for the clock, woke us all up.  But on the bright side, with the extra hour this morning, I decided to give the clock another try.  I dug up a screwdriver and popped four AA batteries into the battery compartment and ... it worked!  So as long as I keep those batteries charged, I should be able to forget this ugly incident ever happened.

Life Lessons (A Review)

This post has been updated.

Sometimes I can be a slow learner; I would have hoped that one aha! moment were enough, but today I clearly needed reminding that I can't control everything and everyone around me.

In my mind, it was the perfect plan: I would walk the dog for half an hour, and then take a shower.  If my husband could just get the kids dressed at some point during that hour, we'd all be ready to leave for the Şişli organic farmer's market at 9:30.  We'd all eaten breakfast and I'd even laid out the kids' clothes (--though, mind you, not for the sake of fashion, but rather because it was darn cold today and I wanted to make sure they were dressed warmly enough).

Traffic in Şişli can be a nightmare, and if one doesn't leave the market by noon, one will spend twice as long in traffic as one otherwise would.  Another incentive to leave the house early, get there, do our shopping, and head home is that it would decrease the likelihood of the kids falling asleep in the car on the way back, thereby increasing the likelihood that they'd have good long naps in their own beds.  (And perhaps I would too!)

Do I sound controlling yet?

As I should have/could have/probably subconsciously did predict, when I got home from my walk my husband and two kids were all in the exact same place I'd left them.  When I got out of the shower, they were still "playing."

But how can I possibly insist on schedules when it would mean putting an end to the beautiful moments of "flow" my three men seem to be very good at creating for themselves?  I reluctantly shape airplanes and butterflies out of play dough because the dirty dishes and the unrefrigerated leftovers and the laundry nag at me.  But today my husband took parenting to new heights, painstakingly making a two-dimensional tree and a rabbit for our son, and showing him (and me!) a whole new world of play dough possibilities.  No toddler art class could have done that!

Not an hour after posting this, I read a New York Times "Motherlode" review of a book on minimalist parenting, whose (male) author felt the book described his parenting style exactly!  

My 'Stay-cation'

This post has been updated (photo).

For the first time in what seems like ages, I'm spending a holiday at home.  It would require too much mental effort to actually stop and think about what we did last year and the year before that during this two-week break between semesters in Turkey; but I'm sure we weren't here, at home in Istanbul.

And I am as happy as ... Well, you can supply your own simile.  Suffice to say, I'm love love loving being a stay-at-home mom with a full-time helper and one child in preschool half days!  At a nice, leisurely pace of approximately one errand per day, I'm crossing things off my to-do list that have been there for months: getting a second pair of Isofix hooks installed in my car so that both my kids can ride safely in their car seats; dentist; chiropractor; pediatrician; pedicure; a trip to IKEA.  I've even cleaned out and restocked my medicine cabinet.

And I'm busy at home, too:  you'd think I were pregnant again, the way I've suddenly found huge reserves of energy for domestic chores.  I finally attempted the New York Times no-knead bread recipe I've been saving for about five years; and I'm baking several batches of bran muffins so that I can finally use up the supply of All-Bran (not available in Turkey) an American friend who was leaving Istanbul gave me two years ago.  (Yes, the cereal is well past its expiry date, but I'm choosing not to be bothered by that.)  And a few days ago I made several jars of quince jam, one of my favourites.

I have a sneaking suspicion I promised photos in a recent blog; and here I am again, photo-less.  I won't promise, but hereby declare my best intention to snap a few shots of my handiwork and post them soon.

This morning, my youngest and I practiced saying a few more words (he's currently got either about ten words or zero words, depending on whether it counts that his mother is the only human being able to understand him); and in an hour, I'll take my oldest to the Thursday farmer's market, where he'll be given homemade string cheese by the cheese man, and a cucumber by the vegetable seller.

So here's the question I'm deliberating as I take our 10-week puppy out every other hour and wait for her to pee not-in-the-house:  would I make this good use of my time, were I indeed a full-time stay-at-home-mother?  Or am I making the most of these preciously long days precisely because I know I only have fifteen of them?

My first attempt at bread!

New Year's Miscellanea

New Year's is more than a week behind me, but I still wanted to put together a few random thoughts.

Even though this was my seventh Christmas/New Year's in Turkey, I'm still surprised each year by the way so much of western/Christian Christmas symbolism is used by Turks to celebrate New Year's!  For me, it means I get more Christmas spirit in December, as malls erect beautifully decorated trees, and stores sell wrapping paper and ribbons.

We were in Adana, and although, when we lived there I always longed for cold, snowy Christmases, this year, the blue skies and warm sun (16 degrees Celsius during the day!) was therapeutic for me.

The coal-smoke air from dusk until dawn was not!  Although I remember being mildly bothered by the smokiness of the winter air in Adana, as many people heated their homes with wood-burning ovens, this year, my throat was actually burning by 6pm, and I'd wake up coughing in the middle of the night.  It seems most households have switched to coal, which the current government is greatly subsidizing and sometimes even handing out free, to gain popularity.  What this does long-term for the health of people and the environment, seems to be a worry for another day.

On New Year's day we went to friends for brunch, and shared our resolutions for 2013 -- just the kind of meaningful conversation I love.  We also shared our new tradition, something I've gotten from a colleague, who in turn got it from a student: throughout the year, we will write down 'happy moments' and put them in a box, to be read on New Year's Eve twelve months from now.  Should be a great way to capture and relive the best parts of the year and be thankful.

Sorry no photos ... Still haven't gotten them off my camera!

Sweeping Snow

Istanbul has been covered in what looks to me like a good foot of snow, and it's still coming down, which means tomorrow is the third snow day in a row!  Schools are closed, and I'm enjoying romping in the soft fluffy stuff with the kids.

One thing I do miss, oddly, are the chores that come with winter -- shoveling the driveway, deicing the car.  Now that I have the opportunity, though, I lack the equipment!  I felt like a fool, clearing snow off my car with my mitts; and was glad there was no ice to scrape off underneath that snow!

And this evening, I cleared the snow off our front steps ... with a broom!  Not as satisfying as with a snow shovel, but it worked surprisingly well.

2 Educational Apps for Toddlers

I subscribe to an excellent newsletter from Common Sense Media and just received their "Essential Apps for Kids and Teens."  I've downloaded two of the recommended apps for toddlers to my Kobo.

Kids ABC Phonics is recommended for three-year-olds under the Android category, and should feed my son's interest in identifying letters.  I'm hoping my 17-month-old will enjoy imitating animal sounds on Peekaboo Barn; a friend who's a speech therapist specializing in babies said that encouraging him to make even animal sounds is a step towards helping him form words.

Further to my recent post on kids and iPads, I think these apps will be a worthwhile way for my sons to spend some time playing with technology -- becoming comfortable figuring things out instead of being intimidated by something they don't know.

An early Christmas present; I'll see what my boys think of these two apps tomorrow!

Family Photo Shoot Co-op

Since my husband or I are always the ones taking photos of our family, we have very few pictures of the four of us together.  And the ones we do have were taken spontaneously by a friend on their phone ... and while great, don't lend themselves well to printing.

A few weeks ago, while chatting with friends at one of our kids' birthday parties, this issue came up; it turns out we aren't the only ones with this problem!  As we talked, someone had the idea of getting together one weekend to photograph each other's families.  The idea grew, and this past weekend two of my colleagues and I got together with our families for an hour on Sunday afternoon to take family portraits of each other.

It helped that one of my colleagues is our school's photography teacher, and the other an avid amateur photographer.  But with today's great digital cameras and user-friendly photo editing programs, there's no reason you can't organize a family photo shoot "co-op" too.  I hope that this will be just the first of such projects, and that in the future, I'll have developed my own photography skills enough to be able to get on the other side of the lens myself!

Note: my friend used Adobe Photoshop Elements to touch-up our photos, and his mini-lesson made me want to buy the software myself!

Aşure or Noah's Ark Pudding

This past Sunday we made aşure, my favourite Turkish dessert, in my admittedly too-big-to-have-been-a-practical-purchase copper kazan, or cauldron.

Glamour shot: I was in the kitchen or with the kids all day, not actually manning the cauldron!

I'd been lured by the cauldron's beautiful details and craftsmanship.  I refused to even consider the smaller, plainer, more sensible cauldrons nearby.  As my husband and I struggled home from the Tarsus bazaar that day, each of us carrying it by one of its handles, the few hundred metres seemed further than they ever had.  But I still had no regrets.  This was going to be the best souvenir of our three years in Tarsus.

Fast forward three more years, and my beloved cauldron was still sitting on the terrace, upside down so that  it wouldn't collect rain.  Too dirty to bring into the house; too big to store kids toys or throw blankets; too dangerous to leave lying around (my sons might fall in!).  Meanwhile, C kept insisting we use it to actually cook something.  

So finally this past weekend, the kazan was cleaned inside and out, and firmly propped on top of our barbeque.  We opened our doors and made it an open house, inviting any fellow expats who were interested in seeing how aşure was made, and any Turkish friends who just thought it would be fun.  Everyone pitched in in some way, and the result was a delicious pudding that I doubt we'll ever be able to duplicate.

Aşure contains an unlikely combination of ingredients, which only makes sense when one learns the origin of this dessert -- towards the end of Noah's journey on the Ark, as those on board were running out of food, this dish was made with whatever was left.  And so the whole grains of wheat, chickpeas, dried white beans, dried apricots, figs, raisins, nuts and sugar, cooked separately and then added, combine to form a delicious albeit unexpected treat.  Traditionally, aşure month follows the second bayram or Eid, although some bakeries serve it all year round.  

We surprised ourselves with our yield -- over a hundred servings!  

Online Organizational Tools

I am always trying to be more organized, and am easily seduced by the promise of a more efficient, more productive, able-to-multi-task, me.  About a year ago, I saw this video promoting Microsoft's Outlook and how it could sync my work and home calendars, and was hooked.

I've since switched to Google Calendar, which syncs more seamlessly, but I still wanted something to help me organize my projects -- those endless to-do lists with sub-lists of their own.

First, I tried out lino, which is really just an online bulletin board.  It lets you post "sticky notes" with lists, photos and other attachments.  You can also have several "canvases," which is nice if you have larger projects which need several sticky notes of their own.  You can also send the notes to others, but I admit I never used that feature.  Although I don't really have anything negative to say about lino, I didn't use it much and it didn't help me get more organized.

I'm currently trying out Trello, another online organizing tool, and I think I'm going to stick with this one.  My test case was a photo wall project I've been sitting on for over a year now.  This project is just one item on my to-do list, which is itself only one "card" on my household "board."  But Trello allowed me to put inspiration photos, checklists, and other notes, all on this photo project card.

Trello is actually meant for collaborative projects, but its format works well with the way I think.  I'm happy to say that my photo wall project is well on its way to completion!  I promise to post a photo of it soon.

Word Clouds

Wordle is not only a fun teaching tool but also something you can just play around with yourself or with your kids.  To create the Tagxedo one above, I quickly collected a list of words that represent me, then played around a little with colours, fonts and orientation.  Are you ready to try your own "word cloud?"

Pomegranate Syrup Revisited

A few weeks ago we finally tried making our own pomegranate syrup, or nar ekşisi.  I've written about this delicious staple of our household's diet before, so click here and here if you want a little history of our love affair with this condiment.  

C bought 15kg of pomegranate from a small local grocer's for about 20 Turkish Lira, a bargain in Istanbul, and one Sunday afternoon after brunch, we put our friends to work peeling the lovely fruit!  There's nothing like good company and conversation to make a job fun and easy!

We then squeezed the juice out of the seeds, drinking several glassfuls of the sweet-sour juice in the process.  (Hint: if you're careful about separating all the white pith from the fruit, you don't get any of the bitterness that comes with pressed pomegranate juice, where an entire half fruit is simply squeezed.)


We lit the mangal and let the juice condense in a cast iron pot for several hours, until it reached the consistency we wanted.  15 kg of pomegranate produced 1 Litre of pomegranate syrup, which explains why the pure stuff is so expensive and difficult to find!

iPads for Kids

I've toyed with starting a second, professional blog, but I've decided instead to marry the teacher and the mother that I am and combine them -- with a twist.  From now on I will periodically include posts about education that are specifically of interest to parents.  In other words, I'd like to share with my non-teacher friends, trends and developments and hot topics in education that they might be interested in as parents, aunts and uncles, or grandparents.

Now straight to my first topic: do you give your toddlers, never mind your primary school-aged children, iPads?

We don't have a TV in our home, and I am the first to cringe when I see kids frittering away hours with various technology.  But a recent conversation with Dr. Shabbi Luthra, Director of Technology at the American School of Bombay, confirmed my growing hunch that 'protecting' my children from technology would be doing them a tremendous disservice.  The key is teaching your children how to responsibly and correctly use technology.  After all, it's as much about the skills that 21st century learners need to navigate this new digital age, as it is the incredible possibilities for creativity and collaboration that technology opens up.

Imagine this: a grade one class in Toronto is learning to read and write.  Their teacher types up their stories and posts them on the class blog.  She uses her own Facebook network to spread the word and encourage teachers in other countries to read and comment on her class' blog.  The students check in daily to read and respond to comments, and add thumbtacks on a map on the classroom wall to represent all the places in the world their blog is being read.  They have live Skype chats with students at an international school in Seoul, Korea.  They write each other letters.  And this is just the beginning.

The above is not specific to the iPad, but rather shows how technology enables kids to collaborate and get outside of the classroom.  For more specific uses of the iPad in the classroom (or for ideas you could modify and use at home), click here for an October 31st post on Edutopia, George Lucas' educational foundation.

So do you think kids should have access to iPads or not?  

Thinking About Coming Back ...

It's been a year since I last posted to this blog and in that time, I've:

• spent delicious and challenging time as a stay-at-home mother with my two sons, 18.5 months apart in age (yes, I'm patting myself on the back just a little here ... it wasn't easy, but I got through those first difficult months!);
• traveled home to Canada with my family twice;
• returned to work after a 7-month maternity leave (incredibly long by Turkish standards);
• started a second Masters degree (an M.Sc., no less!);
• spent a night away from my kids for the first time ever -- twice!
• presented at two conferences (hence the nights away);
• watched my older son start preschool;
• attempted several times to get into a regular exercise routine;
• toilet trained a toddler;
• committed to getting a dog (she arrives in about two weeks).

Now I'm thinking of resuming this blog.  We'll see!

Universal Adventures in Motherhood

Well, you don't need to be an expat to have a "frustrating adventure of motherhood" like I did this evening, right smack in the middle of what my dear friend Lisa refers to as the witching hour.

First, a full bottle of syrupy Ariel stain remover fell from its shelf and emptied all over my bathroom floor; about half of it seeped under the washing machine, where it will stay. The other half took a roll of paper towels to absorb. In a hurry, though, I began the clean up process without rubber gloves; after all, my primary concern was to take care of things before my toddler got into the mess. As the skin on my finger tips began to corrode though (it felt like tiny shards of glass pricking me!), I thought better.

And then, not twenty minutes later, my toddler pooped in the tub. Diarrhea. And not a lot, either. But as any hygiene-conscious germ-phobic mother knows, there are no degrees of poop; even the littlest bit requires the total disinfection of the tub, the toys, the mat, and anything else it may have come into contact with.

And while I'm cleaning that, said toddler pees on the floor.

Meanwhile Baby starts crying, because he's hungry and tired and I've missed the sweet spot where he's sleepy and easily falls asleep. Now he's just cranky.

Now they're both asleep and I'm sitting here worrying whether my toddler has salmonella or amoeba. I'm glad I bought a bottle of wine at the supermarket on the weekend; this seems like an appropriate occasion to open it.

Mother's Guilt

After almost missing Halloween entirely, I bought my son's costume. Yes, I bought my son's first ever Halloween costume. I couldn't even find the time or energy to make this Martha Stewart no-sew easiest ever (and super cute) chicken costume. It would have been so perfect for the baby, but who am I kidding? Desperate times call for brutal triage-like decisions, and the toddler took precedence on this one.

Even though it was a very last-minute thing, I know that had I known weeks earlier I'd have the opportunity to take my boys trick-or-treating here in Istanbul, my best intentions would have somehow still landed me where I was the day of the big event: without a costume or candy.

But it gets worse. I didn't even do the shopping! A friend, who I bumped into by chance (coincidence #1), mentioned casually (coincidence #2) that he was on his way to buy his son a Halloween costume. I asked him to pick up something for my son, which he did.

And it gets worse still. When my friend asked me what kind of costume I'd like, I didn't indicate a preference for animal, super hero, vampire or witch; I didn't even say, "Oh, whatever you can find." My exact words, and I remember this with embarrassing clarity, were, "I don't care." Of course I didn't mean that I didn't care; that's just how desperate I was to get my son a costume and get Halloween 'taken care of.'

In the end, my friend and perhaps a little bit of kismet (those coincidences!) saved the day, and my son went as the cutest little Superman ever. The costume was perfect, the weather was perfect ... everything was perfect.

But what is it about motherhood that, even after the fact, you're still wracked with guilt?

Halloween

This blog has never been a journal, a record of all the daily "adventures and frustrations of life and motherhood for an expat in Turkey." But when I returned to the internet after my three-week 'cleanse' and saw that several of the bloggers I follow had posted about Halloween, I was overcome with a sense of 'Oops.'

How could I not have written anything about my children's first official Halloween, since the challenge of maintaining Canadian traditions for my kids here in Turkey is something I grapple with every few months? I felt it six months ago at Easter, then last month at Thanksgiving; both times I was 'saved' when friends invited us to celebrate with them, thus eliminating the stress of sourcing turkey and ham, chocolate bunnies and Easter egg dye.

I almost missed Halloween this year, swamped by the craziness that comes with two children under the age of two, a husband who works in another city and is therefore away Monday through Friday, and still being nanniless. But in the last minute a friend picked up a Superman costume for my two-year-old at a nearby party store and more than enough chocolates for the twenty-five trick-or-treaters we were expecting, and we took our kids around to the dozen or so homes here on campus that were participating.

It was better than I could have hoped: the crisp fall weather, the darkness (daylight savings time had just ended), people's decorations and costumes ... Somehow the atmosphere of the evening was exactly as it had been on my own Halloweens as a kid.

Internet Cleanse

I finally have another valid excuse for not having posted anything here for so long.

We just returned from three weeks in my husband's hometown, during which time I was internet-free. (Well, almost. The whole exercise almost turned around to bite me when I got a call from work since I hadn't responded to an important email about an appointment to renew my residence permit; I used a friend's internet the next day for five minutes to see if there were any other important messages I'd missed. I hadn't.)

What I noticed:

• I accomplished way more housework (mostly laundry, laundry and more laundry and all that goes with it -- hanging to dry, taking it down again, sorting, folding, the occasional ironing) during my 4-month-old's 40-minute morning nap than I do when the laptop is open and I check emails or look up something on the internet
• My to-do list became far shorter, as most of my 'to do' items are created from ideas sparked by blogs I read or emails I receive
• I read a lot more
• I wrote a lot more
• Although I felt somewhat 'out of touch' from my family and friends, a long phone call was far more gratifying and meaningful than three weeks' worth of short emails

And the wildest thing? When I returned to Istanbul and the internet, I found it just as I had left it. Except for the fact that Kim Kardashian was getting divorced. That happened while I was gone.

Moth Infestation!

Why is it that whenever we go away for a few weeks, we return to find our home filled with moths and my rice and bulgur teeming with white larvae?

I'm definitely guilty of keeping my grains and beans too long; on more than one occasion I've bought red lentils, only to find I've already got a whole bunch in the cupboard.

But that doesn't explain why things that lie dormant for months come to life while we're away! Is it the lack of air circulation, as doors and windows stay closed? Does the house get hot, providing the right incubation conditions? Does anyone have any ideas?

Me or My Kids?

Most mornings, I manage only to dress either my kids or myself, not both.

Which would you choose?

Beer and Baklava

Is baklava to Turks what beer is to Canadians?

There's been a lot of fuss in the papers lately about a particular Turkish television star (Kivanç Tatlıtuğ in case you're interested) and his "baklava." Turns out, everyone's talking about his abs, aka his "six pack."

Too bad both six packs and baklava are detrimental to my abdominal area.