Laterne, laterne, or the one where Stevie buys us a house-pony

Like he cares how many trees I cut out...

It's Laterne Fest time again. Seems like hardly any time at all since I was last coated with a fine layer of PVA and glitter, but here we are again. Last year it was all a bit of a mystery to me. I had no idea who St. Martin was or what exactly the celebration was meant to entail. All I knew was that I was told to make two lanterns out of cardboard and tissue paper and anything else that I could find that was highly flammable, insert two burning tealights, and set my children loose, swinging them and whacking each other until every last hair on their heads and eyebrow was burnt off. Fortunately, I had just misunderstood, and what I was actually being asked to buy was a 'Leuchtstaebchen' - which is a tiny light bulb on a stick powered by batteries and often with some kind of flashing mechanism. (Also doubles as a weapon/switch in the hands of a toddler, so you'll be able to coordinate your body glitter with the bruises across your knees and thighs).

Of course if you are embracing integration into German life with gusto, you can buy a 'traditional' kit and with a "Viel Spass!" to your toddling 2 year old flame-swinger, cast aside all your UK/USA Health & Safety ingrained paranoia. The irony of course is that your decidedly-non-German child will expose you as the hapless foreigner as they wander around setting light to all the other kids lanterns as they bash them together. So I would probably recommend spending an extra Euro or two and getting one with a bulb.

As regard the lantern itself, well you have 3 choices. You can buy one ready-made (most tend to look like paper ball-type lightshades with pictures printed on them); you can join all the mummies at Kita and make on on the day of your Kita's Laternefest (I have heard that it is normally a far more civilised affair at other Kita's, but it's a real 'elbow-sharpening' event at ours where there can be nearly 100 parents squeezed into a small room at a time all desperately snatching the nicest bits of paper); or you can make one in the relative peace and calm with or without child input.

In actual fact my greatest concern last year was not that there was a possibility of my children inadvertently setting the Kita alight, but that I didn't know what the 'theme' was meant to be. I assumed that all the lanterns should be decorated with let's say pumpkins or something representing the occasion, but it's a freestyle decorating event. Last year I made both Orla & Hamish's lanterns though they chose the materials. Hamish went for some lovely translucent flame printed paper that I thought would be hideous, but actually worked quite well. They also chose sparkly coloured card which I used to cut out the letters of their names - as I was clueless on the theme thing I decided to go 'neutral' in case ballerinas and tigers were a real no-no.

This year my work is greatly reduced as Orla is making her lantern at school. Hamish is interested in making a lantern as far as choosing the materials and giving the odd bit of art direction goes. He chose a black lantern frame with blue translucent paper, and green holographic sticky-backed paper. I was worried by my eh... creative limitations with the black on blue thing (I considered 'bruises' as a theme), but I decided on making it a dark sky with a green holographic forest and I am adding some foxes and a moon. Hamish heartily approves. Phew. I've started on it, but I have until next week to get it finished and I am bored of cutting out trees already.

Orla's Laternefest is this evening. Sadly, I don't think I can go as I already had plans for tonight. So Stevie will get to do his first Laternefest with Orla & Hamish. I was looking forward to it as well, especially after I did a double-take on the school newsletter which says "If the weather is kind the event will be held outside. There will be sausages and hot chocolate available after our lantern-lit walk through the woods. In order to cover the cost of the ponies we will have to ask for donations on the night.". Do you think we get one to keep? Or will we be eating horsey-sausages???

Links:
Info on St Martin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin%27s_Day)
Idee Laterne supplies (http://www.idee-shop.de/shop/index.php?page=vt_findologic&keywords=Laterne)
Songwords to 'Laterne, Laterne' - lower down they have the full song in both German & English (http://www.mamalisa.com/?p=444&t=es)

Colour Me Happy!

Yesterday when I was on my hands and knees I discovered that Orla had been writing her name in biro on the door slat-thingy between the hall and the bathroom. (n.b. for those of you learning German, here's a question: do you ever find that you forget the names of things in English - not that I know the name for that in German...). Actually, it was less like writing and more that teenage habit of 'embedding' her name in the wood of the desk in Chemistry.

As you can imagine I wasn't too happy, but at least these days I am able to identify the culprit as Orla's signature is becoming recognisable. Lot's of big 'O's' and 'l's' and 'a's' that look more like 'q's'. The 'r's' look a lot like the 'l's', so it's hard to pick those out but none the less, since I didn't end up calling Hamish 'Arlo' there was only one person to blame. We had a little chat about it, and Orla said she would NEVER do it again. I thought I was being smart as well, because I remembered to add that we aren't allowed to draw ANYWHERE on the house, rather than being caught out with only saying you can't draw on this part of the house, and then living to regret it.

But I shouldn't have worried. Less than 24 hours later, I wander into Orla's bedroom to discover that she's in the process of marking our ages on the wall under the window in great big stripes of colour. As a result I have confiscated her crayons, pencils, and pens and her brand new scissors which I bought her yesterday after a fair amount of begging. She's gutted, but I can't think of any other way of stopping her from doing this. And it drives me to despair when it does happen (...this was not the first time sadly.)

Stevie is constantly telling me I need to do myself a favour and relax a bit with the kids and not be checking on them every 5 minutes to see what they are up to. He says it does my blood pressure no good and he's right because invariably I catch them just as they are about to do something I don't want them to - yesterday's list included nearly smashing the living room window by swinging the heavy metal curtain pull at it, and pullling their little IKEA chairs into the kitchen to climb up at the cooker (which was on) while I went to the toilet. But I would argue that it wouldn't do my blood pressure much good either if I walked into the living room after a loud crash and discovered Hamish surrounded and impaled by shards of glass from a 5 ft high window, or heard screaming from the kitchen and found the two of them burnt or scalded and had to spend the evening or longer at the hospital.

But today I decided to ease off for a little bit as they were only messing around in Orla's bedroom and I was busy trying to tidy up while listening to Stevie throw up. Why when you feel dreadful would you think that Orange & Pineapple juice would be a good thing? So that's what I get for taking my eye off the ball. The only good thing to come out of this is the fact that it says that I am only 6 to Stevie's wopping 8 years of age. So that's a bonus at least.

A love of hammering in nails is passed on.

Orla has decided she doesn't really like Kita. Well that's not strictly true: she says she likes it, she just doesn't like everybody speaking German and she's sick of it. She has not sickened of saying her new favourite word though "bloomin'". This morning when we got up she alerted me to the discovery of an old discarded banana squished up against the glass door with the words, "Bloomin' Hamish, and his bloomin' bananas!". Obviously I'll be having words with the Kita and blaming them for her coming home with phrases like that...

One thing she does like about Kita is one of the toys they have. It's called Haba Nagelspiel, and basically it's a cork board, flat wooden shapes with tiny little holes in the centre, a wooden hammer and a big tub of tiny sharpish nails. It's easy enough to work out; you make pictures with the shapes a bit like fuzzy felts, but you have the pleasure of hammering them into place! I love the Germans sometimes. I love the fact that they haven't gone like the British and are worrying that they'll get sued every minute of the day. They let the kids who have just turned 2 play with this and grab big handfuls of little easy-to-swallow nails. I guess there hasn't been a perforated bowel yet. Maybe they're not as daft as us lot.