I was pleased to see on the news tonight that my former abode continues to make headlines. From Atlanta we learn today that elephants are self aware.
Although I think they are sort of overstating. It could as easily be the case that he elephant was not self-aware until that moment, which then triggered an existential crisis of, well, elephantine proporations. I mean, there was that poor elephant, munching on some hay, looking at that New Elephant while peacefully contemplating the Reimann Hypothesis (or possibly remembering dreamily the time she stomped that hapless keeper to death) and idly wondering what that thing was on its forehead, when the reality slowly dawned...why, that was, not another elephant. That was, hmmm, poke about with trunk a bit, Zeta(z) = SUMk, look, that other elephant is poking about also...=1 to infinity, hey, that itches, (1/kz) ohmygoodness, that's me! Trivially zero at the negative even integers, but where are all the other zeroes? And oh, dear, the other two elephants here are wearing the exact same thing as I am, The only other zeroes known all lie on the line in the complex plane with real part equal to 1/2. I could just sink into the floor. Maybe if I take it off nobody will notice....
I mean I suppose this is one up on "damn, it's cold out here" which was I think the conscious thought most of us had first, but still.
Or maybe this is simply the only self aware elephant in the world and they just lucked up on the first go. Right out of the box they got the Da Vinci of elephants. Wel, it could happen and it isn't reported whether this elephant had any unusual habits, like taking notes or bemoaning the absence of opposable thumbs.
Of course half the chimpanzees fail the self awareness test; I wonder how many people do?
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Travel Plans
Okay, the tickets are bought, we are coming for Christmas. The bad news is, we are indeed going to be flying on Christmas Day itself and flying back the Friday before Daan's birthday. * Hopefully next year the holiday schedule works out better, what can I tell you.
This should be interesting.
Eh. what's so horrible about flying on Christmas Day?** Over the ocean and through passport control, to grandmother's house we go....
*Mom for god's sake don't fight with me, I promise you if there had been any other realistic option I would have taken it. Quickly.
** Don't answer that.
This should be interesting.
Eh. what's so horrible about flying on Christmas Day?** Over the ocean and through passport control, to grandmother's house we go....
*Mom for god's sake don't fight with me, I promise you if there had been any other realistic option I would have taken it. Quickly.
** Don't answer that.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Party season has begun
As most of you know, party season starts around here in October with The First Birthday and ends in January with The Last Birthday. With St. Nicholas, Christmas, and one more birthday squeezed in between. This year we started one day early because the bowling alley doesn't do parties on Thursdays so it was either Wednesday or Friday.
So today was the Kid Party with the pals from school and tomorrow is the real birthday.
It was fun. When you sign up for a bowling party you think that an hour of bowling* is not very long. But in fact when it is Disco Magic Bowling, wherein the room is darkish and strobe lights and flicker lights and mirrored balls in the ceiling and black lights and glowing flourescent colored bowling pins and bowling balls give the only illumination; when some kind of smoke pours down from the ceiling every now and again (in time to the music no less) and there are animated dancing things on the screens which in the olden days only showed the actual game score, well, then an hour is about as much as they can handle.+
It's more than the fours can handle actually, we had our two four year olds and one of the young fives in tears at least once each for no reason other than the top blowing off their personal central nervous systems. Though each of them went right back to bowling after being gently removed to a quieter venue and petted for a few minutes.
Douwe demanded a "Mars Cake" for his birthday. A "Mars Cake" has nothing to do with the planet. A Mars Cake it turns out is a cake which is just like a Mars Bar. An American Mars cake no less. Well, he did not demand it; he requested it. Firmly. So I said that there was no such thing. He said there certainly was: you make a chocolate cake, then you put the white fluffy stuff on the bottom, caramel on top of that, then you put chocolate all over it and that's a Mars Cake. He then cut a Mars Bar in half with a knife to demonstrate the layers. (Like I have never seen a Mars Bar). Oh, and it has to be a rectangle.
Let no one say I do not play requests. One package of Duncan Hines Chocolate cake mix, one jar of Marshmallow Fluff**, one bag of caramels later, here is a Mars Cake:
Okay, and some whipped cream. It isn't a cake in Holland without whipped cream. It's a dairy country, they don't do frosting.
I was assured that no self respecting Dutch child would ever eat such a thing, which was greeted with horrible shudders all round by the rest of my family. So I also made the same cake I have made for Douwe every year since we got here, which is really a cheesecake but they call it something else:
We invited eight kids and six came, which is pretty good for us. Since The First Birthday falls in a vacation period, we always lose a couple to travel and other vacation plans.
We had only one girl, who was in fact the first child I met at the Montessori School. She walked up to me and announced that she was going to marry my son. Quite seriously. So I congratulated her on her taste and said I was pleased to meet her. (Well, what was I supposed to say?) She went on to say that I should keep this nugget to myself as she had not told the groom yet. Oh, I said, well, you should probably mention it at some point. She said, "Oh, yes, but he can be so difficult, so I will tell him at the very last moment. Then he'll just go along".
Since I regularly use the same technique on him, I could find nothing to quarrel with about this and promised to say nothing and asked her what color dress I should wear. "oh, what you like" she said. "They will all be looking at me anyway".
Gotta like that kid. The boys were mostly the usual suspects, with a few new additions since the start of the new school year.
And after much bowling we moved on to the rest of the bacchanalia:
No of course that beer is not his. It wasn't that kind of party.
And may I just add that the horrible American Cake was entirely demolished, destroyed, right down to its last Fluffer Nutter soaked crumb. So There.
Well, okay, there are a couple pieces left, otherwise I would be baking another one right now. For the Second Installment tomorrow.
Stay tuned.
*followed by food, some kind of horrible punch thingie which the kids suck down as though they had recently been crawling on all fours across a desert, cake, ice cream, and then candy on top of that -- ooh, my kids' friends' parents are lovin' me right about now, as their offspring race around making crop circles in the carpet, screaming incoherently from the sugar rush. Like, say, this
Or maybe an impromptu conga line in the living room:
+ I know, in the real Olden Days they kept score on paper. With a pencil. Probably a grease pencil, the kind you pulled the string and unravelled it in strips. But I am not old enough to remember those.
** Real American! it says on the label. I never saw a jar of marshmallow fluff in my life before moving here but there you are.
So today was the Kid Party with the pals from school and tomorrow is the real birthday.
It was fun. When you sign up for a bowling party you think that an hour of bowling* is not very long. But in fact when it is Disco Magic Bowling, wherein the room is darkish and strobe lights and flicker lights and mirrored balls in the ceiling and black lights and glowing flourescent colored bowling pins and bowling balls give the only illumination; when some kind of smoke pours down from the ceiling every now and again (in time to the music no less) and there are animated dancing things on the screens which in the olden days only showed the actual game score, well, then an hour is about as much as they can handle.+
It's more than the fours can handle actually, we had our two four year olds and one of the young fives in tears at least once each for no reason other than the top blowing off their personal central nervous systems. Though each of them went right back to bowling after being gently removed to a quieter venue and petted for a few minutes.
Douwe demanded a "Mars Cake" for his birthday. A "Mars Cake" has nothing to do with the planet. A Mars Cake it turns out is a cake which is just like a Mars Bar. An American Mars cake no less. Well, he did not demand it; he requested it. Firmly. So I said that there was no such thing. He said there certainly was: you make a chocolate cake, then you put the white fluffy stuff on the bottom, caramel on top of that, then you put chocolate all over it and that's a Mars Cake. He then cut a Mars Bar in half with a knife to demonstrate the layers. (Like I have never seen a Mars Bar). Oh, and it has to be a rectangle.
Let no one say I do not play requests. One package of Duncan Hines Chocolate cake mix, one jar of Marshmallow Fluff**, one bag of caramels later, here is a Mars Cake:
Okay, and some whipped cream. It isn't a cake in Holland without whipped cream. It's a dairy country, they don't do frosting.
I was assured that no self respecting Dutch child would ever eat such a thing, which was greeted with horrible shudders all round by the rest of my family. So I also made the same cake I have made for Douwe every year since we got here, which is really a cheesecake but they call it something else:
We invited eight kids and six came, which is pretty good for us. Since The First Birthday falls in a vacation period, we always lose a couple to travel and other vacation plans.
We had only one girl, who was in fact the first child I met at the Montessori School. She walked up to me and announced that she was going to marry my son. Quite seriously. So I congratulated her on her taste and said I was pleased to meet her. (Well, what was I supposed to say?) She went on to say that I should keep this nugget to myself as she had not told the groom yet. Oh, I said, well, you should probably mention it at some point. She said, "Oh, yes, but he can be so difficult, so I will tell him at the very last moment. Then he'll just go along".
Since I regularly use the same technique on him, I could find nothing to quarrel with about this and promised to say nothing and asked her what color dress I should wear. "oh, what you like" she said. "They will all be looking at me anyway".
Gotta like that kid. The boys were mostly the usual suspects, with a few new additions since the start of the new school year.
And after much bowling we moved on to the rest of the bacchanalia:
No of course that beer is not his. It wasn't that kind of party.
And may I just add that the horrible American Cake was entirely demolished, destroyed, right down to its last Fluffer Nutter soaked crumb. So There.
Well, okay, there are a couple pieces left, otherwise I would be baking another one right now. For the Second Installment tomorrow.
Stay tuned.
*followed by food, some kind of horrible punch thingie which the kids suck down as though they had recently been crawling on all fours across a desert, cake, ice cream, and then candy on top of that -- ooh, my kids' friends' parents are lovin' me right about now, as their offspring race around making crop circles in the carpet, screaming incoherently from the sugar rush. Like, say, this
Or maybe an impromptu conga line in the living room:
+ I know, in the real Olden Days they kept score on paper. With a pencil. Probably a grease pencil, the kind you pulled the string and unravelled it in strips. But I am not old enough to remember those.
** Real American! it says on the label. I never saw a jar of marshmallow fluff in my life before moving here but there you are.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Toys
I realize that I have far too much time to think about mundane things. Mostly on the bicycle, I think about mundane things. So now I am thinking about this: Why are boy toys so ugly? I mean seriously, at a certain age, the toys available just really do begin to lean strongly towards the grotesque. Why is that?
And at about the same age, it seems to me, girl toys become just nauseatingly pretty. I mean, it becomes all about pretty there for a while. And why is that, too?
I am thinking about this because Douwe's birthday is coming up, as you know. And everybody wants to know what he wants. In general: anything to do with dragons, anything to do with dinosaurs. Space. He has recently discovered Narnia. Anything to do with fast cars of course. He likes board games and card games. Model building kits. He has asked for a camera but I can't find a digital one (so he can see the picture of course) for anything like a reasonable price.
Due to some external pressure I made him a wish list at amazon.uk. Please understand, these are mere suggestions. Mostly you guys come up with really great stuff I never thought of.
I will see what I can do with dutch online stores but have had no luck so far in finding one that has a wish list feature.
And at about the same age, it seems to me, girl toys become just nauseatingly pretty. I mean, it becomes all about pretty there for a while. And why is that, too?
I am thinking about this because Douwe's birthday is coming up, as you know. And everybody wants to know what he wants. In general: anything to do with dragons, anything to do with dinosaurs. Space. He has recently discovered Narnia. Anything to do with fast cars of course. He likes board games and card games. Model building kits. He has asked for a camera but I can't find a digital one (so he can see the picture of course) for anything like a reasonable price.
Due to some external pressure I made him a wish list at amazon.uk. Please understand, these are mere suggestions. Mostly you guys come up with really great stuff I never thought of.
I will see what I can do with dutch online stores but have had no luck so far in finding one that has a wish list feature.
Since I have all this free time
I have taken on two new things.
Seriously, I am beginning to get tired, y'all. I begin to think I will never get my driver's license because every time I pick up the book to figure out the difference between a bike path and a bike-and-moped path something happens.
But I also have to get out of the house, and I really think I am in danger of becoming a recluse if I don't do something. So I figured I would do whatever presented itself. Really, I just decided that I would look around and if anything came up I would just say yes and see what happened.
I expect that since Fall has appeared in earnest I will become more motivated on the driver's license front soon. Nel is very upset about my bicycling in the rain. I don't mind it very much but I think I shall mind bicycling in the cold rain (or the sleet and hail and snow) quite a lot. Fall really is here in earnest. I know this because the heaters came on at night. And this time it only took me two days of wheezing and coughing to remember that it isn't a cold or a return of the evil walking pneumonia, it's that I have an annual reaction to the heat coming on at night and to put out the humidifiers.
This is an improvement over the, what was it, two weeks? That it took me last year.
Anyway, I am now singing with a gospel choir. It's real gospel, not blues gospel, which I would prefer. But hey, they tour and compete and everything. Gospel is all the rage over here. I would link the website for the choir except it's all in Dutch. (Ever see an all white gospel choir? It seems very odd to me but there you are).
The director is eyeing me oddly as I sang the first time with the sopranos and the next time with the altos, but they have too many altos so I shifted over to the tenors. Nice to find out I still have my vocal range, anyway. Though my soprano voice is not what it once was, too much fast living I imagine. I am informed she is planning to give me a vocal test to figure out where I really ought to be, as the answer I wrote down (where do you need a voice?) was probably not what they had in mind.
I am also going tomorrow to give my first lesson in conversational english. I didn't mean to do this, which means (if my life thus far is any evidence) that I will soon be doing it a lot. Here's how it went: Douwe has started swimming lessons. Daan is on a wait list, for a new class of Absolute Beginners.
During swimming lessons the parents all go and sit in this glass front viewing area above the pool. (Of course it's an indoor pool, they don't have outdoor pools around here as far as I can make out). So there I was sitting like that and I struck up a conversation with one of the other moms. She is muslim (I had assumed as she was wearing a head scarf) and we got into cultural differences regarding religion with your spouse. Like me, she and her spouse are of the same faith but from different countries. She was born here in Holland I gather and her husband elsewhere.
You know me, always keeping the conversation on a safe subject, strictly small talk, you know.
Somewhere in there we got into the Immigrant Experience and the learning of languages. She is now studying English I gather but having trouble with the conversational part. Then she just up and asked me if I would teach her. So I told her I did not have the first teaching credential (credentials being a very big thing around here) but that I knew several people in the english club who did. Nope, she said, she already had teachers with credentials; she wanted somebody she was not afraid to talk to.
Well, I said, I promise to tell you a hum'rous anecdote about my own verbal screw ups in Dutch for every one you make in English and then we'll be even. I'll have some left over, never fear.
Hell, I had one this week. The kids' school had a "studiedag" listed on the calendar. This means "Study day" and I thought no more than "oh, good, about time they got some studying done". Really, if I thought about it at all, (which I did not) I would have thought that they were getting ready for the various regular tests the different classes do. Douwe's class has one coming up in the next couple of months.
I should have thought of it when I woke them up and Daan said "We don't have school today, I want to sleep". But Daan has some variant of that every single day. His nose itches, he's sick, his shoes are wet (liked that one), whatever, he never wants to get up. Gets it from his dad no doubt. Slugabed.
So off we went to school and as it happens it was pouring buckets that morning. Um, "studiedag" translates as "teacher workday". So off we went back home. Duh.
In any event. Tomorrow I will be across town setting up a course of lessons in English conversation. And if I can figure out what to charge her, that would be good too. She certainly is planning to pay me but she probably has a better idea than I have what it costs. Oh, well, I guess I'll call the english club ladies and ask them.
Seriously, I am beginning to get tired, y'all. I begin to think I will never get my driver's license because every time I pick up the book to figure out the difference between a bike path and a bike-and-moped path something happens.
But I also have to get out of the house, and I really think I am in danger of becoming a recluse if I don't do something. So I figured I would do whatever presented itself. Really, I just decided that I would look around and if anything came up I would just say yes and see what happened.
I expect that since Fall has appeared in earnest I will become more motivated on the driver's license front soon. Nel is very upset about my bicycling in the rain. I don't mind it very much but I think I shall mind bicycling in the cold rain (or the sleet and hail and snow) quite a lot. Fall really is here in earnest. I know this because the heaters came on at night. And this time it only took me two days of wheezing and coughing to remember that it isn't a cold or a return of the evil walking pneumonia, it's that I have an annual reaction to the heat coming on at night and to put out the humidifiers.
This is an improvement over the, what was it, two weeks? That it took me last year.
Anyway, I am now singing with a gospel choir. It's real gospel, not blues gospel, which I would prefer. But hey, they tour and compete and everything. Gospel is all the rage over here. I would link the website for the choir except it's all in Dutch. (Ever see an all white gospel choir? It seems very odd to me but there you are).
The director is eyeing me oddly as I sang the first time with the sopranos and the next time with the altos, but they have too many altos so I shifted over to the tenors. Nice to find out I still have my vocal range, anyway. Though my soprano voice is not what it once was, too much fast living I imagine. I am informed she is planning to give me a vocal test to figure out where I really ought to be, as the answer I wrote down (where do you need a voice?) was probably not what they had in mind.
I am also going tomorrow to give my first lesson in conversational english. I didn't mean to do this, which means (if my life thus far is any evidence) that I will soon be doing it a lot. Here's how it went: Douwe has started swimming lessons. Daan is on a wait list, for a new class of Absolute Beginners.
During swimming lessons the parents all go and sit in this glass front viewing area above the pool. (Of course it's an indoor pool, they don't have outdoor pools around here as far as I can make out). So there I was sitting like that and I struck up a conversation with one of the other moms. She is muslim (I had assumed as she was wearing a head scarf) and we got into cultural differences regarding religion with your spouse. Like me, she and her spouse are of the same faith but from different countries. She was born here in Holland I gather and her husband elsewhere.
You know me, always keeping the conversation on a safe subject, strictly small talk, you know.
Somewhere in there we got into the Immigrant Experience and the learning of languages. She is now studying English I gather but having trouble with the conversational part. Then she just up and asked me if I would teach her. So I told her I did not have the first teaching credential (credentials being a very big thing around here) but that I knew several people in the english club who did. Nope, she said, she already had teachers with credentials; she wanted somebody she was not afraid to talk to.
Well, I said, I promise to tell you a hum'rous anecdote about my own verbal screw ups in Dutch for every one you make in English and then we'll be even. I'll have some left over, never fear.
Hell, I had one this week. The kids' school had a "studiedag" listed on the calendar. This means "Study day" and I thought no more than "oh, good, about time they got some studying done". Really, if I thought about it at all, (which I did not) I would have thought that they were getting ready for the various regular tests the different classes do. Douwe's class has one coming up in the next couple of months.
I should have thought of it when I woke them up and Daan said "We don't have school today, I want to sleep". But Daan has some variant of that every single day. His nose itches, he's sick, his shoes are wet (liked that one), whatever, he never wants to get up. Gets it from his dad no doubt. Slugabed.
So off we went to school and as it happens it was pouring buckets that morning. Um, "studiedag" translates as "teacher workday". So off we went back home. Duh.
In any event. Tomorrow I will be across town setting up a course of lessons in English conversation. And if I can figure out what to charge her, that would be good too. She certainly is planning to pay me but she probably has a better idea than I have what it costs. Oh, well, I guess I'll call the english club ladies and ask them.
What Daan did today
Today, Daan broke his bicycle. Well, he went over a bump and the chain slipped its gears. So I wound up flipping it upside down and strapping it to the baby seat on my bike (Have I recently mentioned how much I really love bungee cords?) to get it home. I had planned to walk the bike home with Daan on my seat, but then Douwe decided he would just go home. On his bike. He knows the way after all. So he was off.
(Oh, for an extra bungee cord to tie the self-willed little monster up. But I digress).
So Daan sat on my seat and clung to me like a little monkey and I stood on the pedals and we raced after Douwe. Daan thought this great fun. So did Douwe, actually, though he was really scared when we got home, he knows better than to take off like that.
So. As Douwe and I were haveing a Serious Talk in the one room, Papa was fixing the bike in the other room. It appears a new bike needs to have its chain tightened from time to time, who knew? And when he fixed it, he took the training wheels off.
I pointed out that the child has just figured out how to cross the street with training wheels. Papa said, "Oh, ten minutes and he'll be fine".
So off they went. And here's how they came back:
And here is Daan's story about how it all happened.
(Oh, for an extra bungee cord to tie the self-willed little monster up. But I digress).
So Daan sat on my seat and clung to me like a little monkey and I stood on the pedals and we raced after Douwe. Daan thought this great fun. So did Douwe, actually, though he was really scared when we got home, he knows better than to take off like that.
So. As Douwe and I were haveing a Serious Talk in the one room, Papa was fixing the bike in the other room. It appears a new bike needs to have its chain tightened from time to time, who knew? And when he fixed it, he took the training wheels off.
I pointed out that the child has just figured out how to cross the street with training wheels. Papa said, "Oh, ten minutes and he'll be fine".
So off they went. And here's how they came back:
And here is Daan's story about how it all happened.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Coolness quotient
I was just looking at ebay for a new Mach 5 for Douwe. I can't get him the Expanding Mach 5, but I can get him a toy.
So which has a higher coolness quotient, a cast metal Mach 5, about a foot long or so (1:18 size if you have small boys) or a plastic one the same size that is a radio controlled car? If you are turning 7, that is.
Decisions, decisions.
So which has a higher coolness quotient, a cast metal Mach 5, about a foot long or so (1:18 size if you have small boys) or a plastic one the same size that is a radio controlled car? If you are turning 7, that is.
Decisions, decisions.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
What? More zoo?
Today Nel decided we should go to the Dutch equivalent of Lion Country Safari. Is there still a Lion Country Safari?
That is, it's a wildlife preserve where the animals wander abround and you drive through in your car. Except that there is also the option of going through by boat, bus, or on foot also. The "on foot" part takes a different route, and there the animals are behind fences, never fear.
It was also fun, and Eldest has now decided that this is where he wants to go for his birthday. He held out for Chuck E. Cheese for a long time, until we finally impressed on him that flying overseas with a few of his closest friends was Not An Option. So: Lion Country Safari. Er, Beekse Bergen, I mean.
We may actually do it, as he only wants to invite three kids for his birthday.
With the rhinos.
Whaddaya mean, he looks just the same?
Monday, September 11, 2006
How do I love thee
Well. Because Christmas is a Monday this year, I have been looking at flights and all the options suck. Except one. We can fly non-stop both ways, it doesn't leave at an indecently early hour, availability is good, and it's cheap too.
With one small drawback.
It means we would be flying on Christmas Day.
I suppose I could make a tradition of it. Fly with silly Santa hats or something. Can you bake cookies at angels thirty?
We would be arriving early afternoon probably, around 2. Hey, I know, you guys could all come down to the airport en masse to pick us up and wear Santa hats, too.
This would require some logistical operations; I would certainly have to sent my Christmas presents ahead at a minimum.
Urg.
With one small drawback.
It means we would be flying on Christmas Day.
I suppose I could make a tradition of it. Fly with silly Santa hats or something. Can you bake cookies at angels thirty?
We would be arriving early afternoon probably, around 2. Hey, I know, you guys could all come down to the airport en masse to pick us up and wear Santa hats, too.
This would require some logistical operations; I would certainly have to sent my Christmas presents ahead at a minimum.
Urg.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Photos, we got photos
So we went to the Antwerp Zoo on Saturday. It's a nice zoo. It is also right in the middle, I mean the very center, of Antwerp. So it has not entirely made the shift to the "new style" zoo, where the animals are sort of roaming about in little habitat-ettes. Being surrounded on all sides by, basically, Antwerp, they probably haven't got the room.
They still have the big cats in basically what I think of as bear pits (You remember, those spaces down lower than ground level so you stand and look down at the animals) and surrounded by moats. The medium sized cats are in cages, just like they used to have at the old Atlanta Zoo. It was actually sort of jarring, I had forgotten what a regular zoo used to be like to tell you the truth.
However, I have got pictures. Which is all you lot care about.
The fellas hanging out with the penguins.
This is Douwe with his new friend. He hung out with this turtle for a really long time. Actually, the reptile house was amoung the larger hits. That and the nocturnal house, which is entirely dark inside for the animals that are, well, nocturnal. He really liked the bats. ick.
Obligatory tourist shot. By the time I took this picture, Douwe had figured out that we were getting ready to leave and was trying to run away to go back into the zoo. So he's not in the shot.
They still have the big cats in basically what I think of as bear pits (You remember, those spaces down lower than ground level so you stand and look down at the animals) and surrounded by moats. The medium sized cats are in cages, just like they used to have at the old Atlanta Zoo. It was actually sort of jarring, I had forgotten what a regular zoo used to be like to tell you the truth.
However, I have got pictures. Which is all you lot care about.
The fellas hanging out with the penguins.
This is Douwe with his new friend. He hung out with this turtle for a really long time. Actually, the reptile house was amoung the larger hits. That and the nocturnal house, which is entirely dark inside for the animals that are, well, nocturnal. He really liked the bats. ick.
Obligatory tourist shot. By the time I took this picture, Douwe had figured out that we were getting ready to leave and was trying to run away to go back into the zoo. So he's not in the shot.
Here's why
So today we were discussing the impending change to Papa John's Race Car. Those of you who do not know, Papa John's Race Car is about to change from red-on-black to blue-on-white. I need to prepare my children for this eventuality. I also need to buy Papa John some lovely slipcovers for those white seats so they will have a chance of staying white through our next trip.
Or maybe I should make some instead and let the kids decorate them with fabric markers. Out of sailcloth by preference.
So Eldest said: "Why does Papa John want the race car blue?"
And Youngest said, without missing a beat: "To match his house".
Or maybe I should make some instead and let the kids decorate them with fabric markers. Out of sailcloth by preference.
So Eldest said: "Why does Papa John want the race car blue?"
And Youngest said, without missing a beat: "To match his house".
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
spending money
My children each got 10 euro about a month ago as a present from their great uncle and aunt. They put them in their wallets and left them there, as any amount of money over about a euro is really more than they know what to do with. But they think it's cool, in the way people think foreign money is cool.
Today, Eldest decided that we were going into town to go to the toy store because he wanted to buy the Expanding Mach 5. * I told him I had no money for toys so he said, I do. I have 10 euro and that's a lot. Well, it is a lot. And it's his money. Youngest was immediately on board of course so off we went to the toy store.
Eh, they needed new shoes anyway. Do little boys always need new shoes?
At the toy store we spent a lot of time discussing what could be bought for 10 euro and what could not (Like, say, the X-Box) and how much change you would get back and so on. It was actually pretty good fun, if hectic.
But then, well, Eldest spotted the Plug In Steering Wheel. It's one of those thingies you plug into the television and has various racing video games in it. ** So he brought it to me with shining eyes full of hope. Damn, I thought, I was going to get him that for his birthday.
But it's like 35 euro, so my birthday gift is safe. Then I flipped it over and realized that it was on sale for 20 euro. So I told Eldest that it was 20 euro so it was too expensive and put it back. Then I headed over to the cool toy cars display talking about the great stuff they had there to buffer his disappointment.
I was alone. One dark head, one light head, were conferring with great intensity over the Steering Wheel.
I went back prepared to pry them away from it. And they announced to me that ten and ten was twenty. I am, as you all know, a little slow on the uptake. So I agreed to this basic math fact and went on talking about toy cars. Whereupon Eldest said, "I have ten and he has ten. That's not too expensive then?".
Right. Once I recovered from this proposal I took Youngest aside to assure myself that he actually was in for this and had not had his arm twisted. + And off we went to buy the Steering Wheel.
We actually had a funny moment in line, as Eldest had a 10 euro bill and Youngest had two fives. So when the two fives came out, Eldest looked at them doubtfully and then started to go put the box back, because they didn't have enough money. So he is up to 10 + 10 is 20, but not quite up to 5+5+10 is 20. Daan knew nothing about it except that he had been told that these two pieces of paper were 10 euro, so he didn't sweat it a bit.
So now, what am I supposed to get him for his birthday?
*The Expanding Mach 5 is a race car which is regular Matchbox sized and then at the push of a button expands to real life size so you can sit in it and drive away. Eldest has now accepted that the fact that he can imagine that car does not mean that it exists. However, he says he is going to make one.
** It also has Space Invaders. Who remembers Space Invaders? Well, they don't call it Space Invaders but it is anyway. Youngest is now totally hooked, he wants to do nothing but play Space Invaders.
+I have an elder sib and I was an elder sib so I know all about this phenomenon.
Today, Eldest decided that we were going into town to go to the toy store because he wanted to buy the Expanding Mach 5. * I told him I had no money for toys so he said, I do. I have 10 euro and that's a lot. Well, it is a lot. And it's his money. Youngest was immediately on board of course so off we went to the toy store.
Eh, they needed new shoes anyway. Do little boys always need new shoes?
At the toy store we spent a lot of time discussing what could be bought for 10 euro and what could not (Like, say, the X-Box) and how much change you would get back and so on. It was actually pretty good fun, if hectic.
But then, well, Eldest spotted the Plug In Steering Wheel. It's one of those thingies you plug into the television and has various racing video games in it. ** So he brought it to me with shining eyes full of hope. Damn, I thought, I was going to get him that for his birthday.
But it's like 35 euro, so my birthday gift is safe. Then I flipped it over and realized that it was on sale for 20 euro. So I told Eldest that it was 20 euro so it was too expensive and put it back. Then I headed over to the cool toy cars display talking about the great stuff they had there to buffer his disappointment.
I was alone. One dark head, one light head, were conferring with great intensity over the Steering Wheel.
I went back prepared to pry them away from it. And they announced to me that ten and ten was twenty. I am, as you all know, a little slow on the uptake. So I agreed to this basic math fact and went on talking about toy cars. Whereupon Eldest said, "I have ten and he has ten. That's not too expensive then?".
Right. Once I recovered from this proposal I took Youngest aside to assure myself that he actually was in for this and had not had his arm twisted. + And off we went to buy the Steering Wheel.
We actually had a funny moment in line, as Eldest had a 10 euro bill and Youngest had two fives. So when the two fives came out, Eldest looked at them doubtfully and then started to go put the box back, because they didn't have enough money. So he is up to 10 + 10 is 20, but not quite up to 5+5+10 is 20. Daan knew nothing about it except that he had been told that these two pieces of paper were 10 euro, so he didn't sweat it a bit.
So now, what am I supposed to get him for his birthday?
*The Expanding Mach 5 is a race car which is regular Matchbox sized and then at the push of a button expands to real life size so you can sit in it and drive away. Eldest has now accepted that the fact that he can imagine that car does not mean that it exists. However, he says he is going to make one.
** It also has Space Invaders. Who remembers Space Invaders? Well, they don't call it Space Invaders but it is anyway. Youngest is now totally hooked, he wants to do nothing but play Space Invaders.
+I have an elder sib and I was an elder sib so I know all about this phenomenon.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Moonlight serenade
As I mentioned, the kids have both got colds. This means they are sleeping lightly and it also means a certain increase in the amount of sleeptalking going on. They both talk in their sleep now and again. I hear that I do, too. Also an increase in the amount of waking up and crying, at least from Daan.
So last night at midnight, as I was lying in bed I heard a sound. Since I have been out of bed three or four times a night for two nights running, I listened to see: would this be a little fuss-and-go-back-to-sleep sound? Or a full blown panic fit? Waking in the middle of the night unable to breathe is after all not very much fun. Nothing for blowing out those sinuses like a full on primal scream after all.
Instead, I heard a little boy soprano drifting through the darkness:
Little bunny Foo-foo, hopping through the forest, scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head....
So last night at midnight, as I was lying in bed I heard a sound. Since I have been out of bed three or four times a night for two nights running, I listened to see: would this be a little fuss-and-go-back-to-sleep sound? Or a full blown panic fit? Waking in the middle of the night unable to breathe is after all not very much fun. Nothing for blowing out those sinuses like a full on primal scream after all.
Instead, I heard a little boy soprano drifting through the darkness:
Little bunny Foo-foo, hopping through the forest, scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head....
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Jesus comes across a group of people about to stone a woman to death for adultery and stops them, saying: Let whoever among you is without sin, cast the first stone.
There is silence, and people start dropping their stones and drifting away. Suddenly a rock comes flying out from somewhere behind Jesus and hits the woman on the head. After this, the crowd gleefully picks up their rocks again and go back to stoning the woman.
Jesus whirls around angrily, and shouts: "Ma! How many times do I have to ask you to quit following me around!"
There is silence, and people start dropping their stones and drifting away. Suddenly a rock comes flying out from somewhere behind Jesus and hits the woman on the head. After this, the crowd gleefully picks up their rocks again and go back to stoning the woman.
Jesus whirls around angrily, and shouts: "Ma! How many times do I have to ask you to quit following me around!"
Spoke too soon
I take it all back, Beasties are not in school. They are home with some kind of Evil Crud. I thought the onset of upper respiratory disease exactly 7 to 10 days after the start of school ended after Kindy? Guess not.
They are not dreadfully ill, but they both keep popping fevers in the afternoon to evening which prevents their going to school the next day. If I could send them to school just for the morning they would both probably do fine. Of course they would infect their classmates, but hey. Somebody's already infecting their classmates it seems to me.
Both sets of teachers (the teachers called to see how they were doing) advised me not to send them back too soon as there are apparently two different illnesses going around their classes -- a respiratory and a stomach flu thingie. Daan's teacher said it seemed to her a bad idea to send him back with a minor cough just to have to keep him out next week with the stomach flu.
Yesterday they both sat on the sofa and moaned most of the day. Today they at least got up now and again, so they are a bit better.
They are not dreadfully ill, but they both keep popping fevers in the afternoon to evening which prevents their going to school the next day. If I could send them to school just for the morning they would both probably do fine. Of course they would infect their classmates, but hey. Somebody's already infecting their classmates it seems to me.
Both sets of teachers (the teachers called to see how they were doing) advised me not to send them back too soon as there are apparently two different illnesses going around their classes -- a respiratory and a stomach flu thingie. Daan's teacher said it seemed to her a bad idea to send him back with a minor cough just to have to keep him out next week with the stomach flu.
Yesterday they both sat on the sofa and moaned most of the day. Today they at least got up now and again, so they are a bit better.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Back to school
Beasties are back in school and having a lovely time. I kept waiting and waiting for Douwe's teacher to call me in about some thing or another and she never did. Finally last week she asked if I wanted to make an appointment to talk about how the school day goes now that he is in the equivalent of first grade.
Uh huh, I thought. Here it comes.
So off I went all ready to give her some pointers in dealing with Mr. Difficult.
Turns out she just wanted to, um, tell me how the school day goes. She has had no issues, wanted no pointers. The only unusual thing she has noticed about Douwe is that he tosses in an occasional word in English now and again -- the funniest was when he was looking at his little reading workbook at the word "mier" which means "ant". He looked at the word and said "ant". She asked him again and he said (in Dutch) "you know, it's a bug, lives in the ground, digs holes, has a queen". (then in english) "you know, an ant". She said, "what is it in dutch?" He said (in dutch) "it's in the book, here, muh-ee-rr, that's what I said".
Uh huh.
Daan's teacher got a call from a woman in Israel who wanted to know about the school and how her kids would do given that they speak primarily english. The teacher was asking me what I thought and the other teacher said "you should have just put Daan on the line, he speaks better english than either of us, and he can translate, too,".
Which should be comforting to you all, he can at least speak english when he is in Holland. *ahem*.
Uh huh, I thought. Here it comes.
So off I went all ready to give her some pointers in dealing with Mr. Difficult.
Turns out she just wanted to, um, tell me how the school day goes. She has had no issues, wanted no pointers. The only unusual thing she has noticed about Douwe is that he tosses in an occasional word in English now and again -- the funniest was when he was looking at his little reading workbook at the word "mier" which means "ant". He looked at the word and said "ant". She asked him again and he said (in Dutch) "you know, it's a bug, lives in the ground, digs holes, has a queen". (then in english) "you know, an ant". She said, "what is it in dutch?" He said (in dutch) "it's in the book, here, muh-ee-rr, that's what I said".
Uh huh.
Daan's teacher got a call from a woman in Israel who wanted to know about the school and how her kids would do given that they speak primarily english. The teacher was asking me what I thought and the other teacher said "you should have just put Daan on the line, he speaks better english than either of us, and he can translate, too,".
Which should be comforting to you all, he can at least speak english when he is in Holland. *ahem*.
Remember that bug bite?
I was bitten by a bug when visiting in Georgia this summer. The bite got bigger and horrible and green and very icky so I went to the doctor. He gave me some antibiotics and it all but went away. Just a little rosy mark which I paid no attention to, since as you all know I am so pale I am blue and those kinds of things can leave marks on me for months.
Last week it started getting darker. Then it started getting bigger. Now the stupid thing is about 4 inches in diameter and red. So I went to the doctor again.
He of course knows nothing about bug bites. This is Holland, even the bugs are civilized and do not bite. Well, he does know about ticks and Lyme disease but I was able to assure him that it was unlikely that I was bitten by a tick. In the end he concluded that, since it went away and then came back that it was likely a secondary infection (also given my long history of secondary infections that are worse than the original illness) and is tossing a fairly powerful broad spectrum antibiotic at it. If it does not go away entirely he has promised to send me to a specialist in tropical diseases or some such thing.
So now I am on doxycycline, which he assures me should knock out a staph infection (which is what I think it is) or any other garden variety (sorry) bacterial thingie. And I should stay out of the sun, because this antibiotic makes your skin sun sensitive.
Arg. Oh, well, at least he comes by once a week or so to check up on Nel and has said he will look at it again then.
Last week it started getting darker. Then it started getting bigger. Now the stupid thing is about 4 inches in diameter and red. So I went to the doctor again.
He of course knows nothing about bug bites. This is Holland, even the bugs are civilized and do not bite. Well, he does know about ticks and Lyme disease but I was able to assure him that it was unlikely that I was bitten by a tick. In the end he concluded that, since it went away and then came back that it was likely a secondary infection (also given my long history of secondary infections that are worse than the original illness) and is tossing a fairly powerful broad spectrum antibiotic at it. If it does not go away entirely he has promised to send me to a specialist in tropical diseases or some such thing.
So now I am on doxycycline, which he assures me should knock out a staph infection (which is what I think it is) or any other garden variety (sorry) bacterial thingie. And I should stay out of the sun, because this antibiotic makes your skin sun sensitive.
Arg. Oh, well, at least he comes by once a week or so to check up on Nel and has said he will look at it again then.
I am so screwed
This article explains why I shall never be rich. It appears that tall people earn more because they are, in fact, smarter.
Because we all know that being smart = making money. Well, doesn't it?
Well, I suppose this could explain why the gender gap still exists in terms of pay. Men are both taller and therefore smarter.
In any event it is good to see this kind of hard nosed relevant analysis still going on in the halls of academe. Oh, and the authors of the paper? Are both 5'8", well above the average for American women. Just thought I'd mention it.
Because we all know that being smart = making money. Well, doesn't it?
Well, I suppose this could explain why the gender gap still exists in terms of pay. Men are both taller and therefore smarter.
In any event it is good to see this kind of hard nosed relevant analysis still going on in the halls of academe. Oh, and the authors of the paper? Are both 5'8", well above the average for American women. Just thought I'd mention it.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Short Updates
Altogether, not really worth a whole discussion but worth noting anyway:
Douwe has stopped speech therapy until the start of school next year. Last December or so, his speech therapist had a car accident and turned most of her clients over to a new one she hired in for the purpose. She was a brand new one -- she got her official license a couple weeks after we had started with her -- but it seemed to be going well and I liked her. Then a few weeks ago she called to say that the former ST, her boss, was coming back.
We were already in the process of discussing with the school the option of having Douwe's ST done at school, which would require a new person since this one I gather doesn't do school calls. And in light of that it made zero sense to me to start back with the old ST -- which is sort of like having a teacher come back after an extended absence, you have to get used to each other again -- since there are, when you add them up, only a couple weeks left before summer vacation, during which he wouldn't be getting ST anyway as we will be in another country. Especially since his ST now is only a half hour a week.
And then the coordinator at the speech school said they worked with a different one in town pretty often. So I spoke to her on the phone and I quite like her ideas and Douwe will start with her again in the fall. In the mean time the coordinator from the speech school came out to the house to give us some guidance on things we can do with Douwe at home, and some computer games and so on. Mostly it amounts to "get him to tell stories" which is not difficult.
I will say that I am pleased that the new ST has some experience with bilingual kids; the coordinator is still most leery of the idea that speech activities in either language cross over to be useful in the other one. But they do, whether it makes sense or not.
I have been invited to join a gospel choir of all things. Well, no, to be precise, I have been instructed to be dressed and ready to be picked up on Monday for rehearsal and my protests have been firmly ignored. Ok, you are right, I didn't really have any protests. I'll sing for anybody who asks me, I don't mind. But I am informed that the fact that I cannot read music other than to sight read a melody line is immaterial and that they sing mostly in English, it being gospel and all.
It's more a soul gospel choir than a blues gospel choir (which is as most of you know my own preference). I am more about Mahalia Jackson than Aretha. But hey, maybe I'll teach them a couple of obscure spirituals while I am at it. But I expect it will be fun and it's closer to a social life than I have now.
Now I am going to bed as I have to make my own carrot cake for my birthday. Yes, I am making a carrot cake; they don't have it here and I would like one so that's that.
My kids went out with their father and bought me birthday presents today and I spent most of the day stopping them from telling me what they bought. They are just dying to tell me.
Douwe has stopped speech therapy until the start of school next year. Last December or so, his speech therapist had a car accident and turned most of her clients over to a new one she hired in for the purpose. She was a brand new one -- she got her official license a couple weeks after we had started with her -- but it seemed to be going well and I liked her. Then a few weeks ago she called to say that the former ST, her boss, was coming back.
We were already in the process of discussing with the school the option of having Douwe's ST done at school, which would require a new person since this one I gather doesn't do school calls. And in light of that it made zero sense to me to start back with the old ST -- which is sort of like having a teacher come back after an extended absence, you have to get used to each other again -- since there are, when you add them up, only a couple weeks left before summer vacation, during which he wouldn't be getting ST anyway as we will be in another country. Especially since his ST now is only a half hour a week.
And then the coordinator at the speech school said they worked with a different one in town pretty often. So I spoke to her on the phone and I quite like her ideas and Douwe will start with her again in the fall. In the mean time the coordinator from the speech school came out to the house to give us some guidance on things we can do with Douwe at home, and some computer games and so on. Mostly it amounts to "get him to tell stories" which is not difficult.
I will say that I am pleased that the new ST has some experience with bilingual kids; the coordinator is still most leery of the idea that speech activities in either language cross over to be useful in the other one. But they do, whether it makes sense or not.
I have been invited to join a gospel choir of all things. Well, no, to be precise, I have been instructed to be dressed and ready to be picked up on Monday for rehearsal and my protests have been firmly ignored. Ok, you are right, I didn't really have any protests. I'll sing for anybody who asks me, I don't mind. But I am informed that the fact that I cannot read music other than to sight read a melody line is immaterial and that they sing mostly in English, it being gospel and all.
It's more a soul gospel choir than a blues gospel choir (which is as most of you know my own preference). I am more about Mahalia Jackson than Aretha. But hey, maybe I'll teach them a couple of obscure spirituals while I am at it. But I expect it will be fun and it's closer to a social life than I have now.
Now I am going to bed as I have to make my own carrot cake for my birthday. Yes, I am making a carrot cake; they don't have it here and I would like one so that's that.
My kids went out with their father and bought me birthday presents today and I spent most of the day stopping them from telling me what they bought. They are just dying to tell me.
They made it
Everybody finished the four day. I think I should have gotten the clue that this was a much bigger event than I had realized when I went to the grocery store on Day 4 and they had special bouquets just for people who finished it. But you know what? Dutch guys, or at least the ones around here, buy flowers before they buy food, it's like a national mania.* So I didn't think much about it.
Well, on the fourth day, the last bit is not a walk. It's a parade through town complete with cheering throngs**. Then you go to the Big Park and collect your medal.
I gave the kids their medals but was firmly instructed that these are to be kept because when they get older there is some jockeying for position regarding who has the most Four Day Medals, and who started youngest and then they will want to have all of them. Who knew? So they are now safely in the cardboard box which is currently serving me as a jewelry box since the other one was destroyed in the move.
The flowers, which Oma came out to deliver+, are now in the kitchen window. Everyone walks in and immediately says "Oh, who did the Four Day?". I have no idea how they can tell, they look to me like just flowers.
After we were done we all went back to the house along with the people we had walked with and snarfed down the first watermelon of the year, several pots of coffee and tea, and all the baked goods in the house.
* Well, okay, it was once rather famously a national mania. But you know that was a couple centuries ago. If I ever work out a way to work the madness for flowers into my General Theory of Dutch Culture (which is, in short, that geography really is history and the reality of the Looming Sea can affect all kinds of things) I shall write it all up and have social historians peeling my grapes for ever.
** waving flowers of course. And the occasional air horn.
Well, on the fourth day, the last bit is not a walk. It's a parade through town complete with cheering throngs**. Then you go to the Big Park and collect your medal.
I gave the kids their medals but was firmly instructed that these are to be kept because when they get older there is some jockeying for position regarding who has the most Four Day Medals, and who started youngest and then they will want to have all of them. Who knew? So they are now safely in the cardboard box which is currently serving me as a jewelry box since the other one was destroyed in the move.
The flowers, which Oma came out to deliver+, are now in the kitchen window. Everyone walks in and immediately says "Oh, who did the Four Day?". I have no idea how they can tell, they look to me like just flowers.
After we were done we all went back to the house along with the people we had walked with and snarfed down the first watermelon of the year, several pots of coffee and tea, and all the baked goods in the house.
* Well, okay, it was once rather famously a national mania. But you know that was a couple centuries ago. If I ever work out a way to work the madness for flowers into my General Theory of Dutch Culture (which is, in short, that geography really is history and the reality of the Looming Sea can affect all kinds of things) I shall write it all up and have social historians peeling my grapes for ever.
** waving flowers of course. And the occasional air horn.
+ It appears that anyone who walked in the Four Day is not allowed to buy flowers for anyone who did, it is bad luck or something. Or possibly Nel just wanted to do it. Well, I think it's bad luck to cross a grandmother, don't you?
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Four days
Today is the first day of the "four day", which is (to me) a completely incomprehensible event in which, for four days running, little kids walk either 3, 5, or 10 kilometers. At the end of it they get a medal.
Douwe says it has something to do with soldiers. I gather that it is in some way related to an event called The Four Day which takes place every July in another town called Nijmegen. That one did evidently start as a primarily military exercise, in 1909. How it got here (well on foot obviously) and why it is now in May (because July is hot?) and why it is here and now a children's event are not terribly clear.
That I do not understand it does not in any way prevent me from doing it.
Yes, in fact Daan managed to walk 3 kilometers (that's just under 2 miles) this evening. And he says he is doing it all four days, he wants his medal. No one has apparently told him that you get the medal just for giving it a shot at his age.
Around a mile and a half we started dropping behind -- a competitive little cuss is Daan, he hates that -- so I heard him talking to himself. He was saying, "You have to keep going. That's how you win. You just keep going". That was shortly before this picture was made, as you see we are nearly the last ones in to finish. But we did finish, which was the point.
We have been reading a version of the tortoise and the hare recently, apparently it made an impression.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Nel is home
She came home yesterday. She is officially off the special diet and certified cancer free, lol. She weighs exactly as much as I do, which is not good. She has actually been told to control her diabetes with more insulin if necessary but to get her weight back on as soon as is humanly possible. The feeding tube has been left in, and if she doesn't gain weight well she will have to be fed through that in addition to regular eating to get enough calories in her.
So I am instructed to fatten her up like a turkey in October. She is making a manful effort at it, I must say, it's like having a teenaged boy in the house. I don't know if it's that she just didn't like the food at the hospital -- and who would, bleah -- or that she really does not want to have to use that tube again, she did not like it then and isn't crazy about it now.
A practical nurse comes by the house once a day to change the dressing on her incision and make sure all is well with that and the drain.
So I am instructed to fatten her up like a turkey in October. She is making a manful effort at it, I must say, it's like having a teenaged boy in the house. I don't know if it's that she just didn't like the food at the hospital -- and who would, bleah -- or that she really does not want to have to use that tube again, she did not like it then and isn't crazy about it now.
A practical nurse comes by the house once a day to change the dressing on her incision and make sure all is well with that and the drain.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Okay, Dad
What did you tell my kid?
Douwe has decided that he wants to build and drive a soap box racer and win a trophy. I told him that would be really fun but that you have to be impossibly old, like nine or ten.
He said, "Oh, Papa John will help me. And Daan can be the weight. You need weight in the back".
Daan cheerfully agreed if he could have a helmet, too.
Ahem. Are you guys sending secret emails of which I know nothing?
Douwe has decided that he wants to build and drive a soap box racer and win a trophy. I told him that would be really fun but that you have to be impossibly old, like nine or ten.
He said, "Oh, Papa John will help me. And Daan can be the weight. You need weight in the back".
Daan cheerfully agreed if he could have a helmet, too.
Ahem. Are you guys sending secret emails of which I know nothing?
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Carrying on
It is now a month since Nel was diagnosed; and I would guess about 3 weeks or so since the actual surgery. Though I suppose I should count from the day of the second surgery, since that one seems to have had a much greater effect on her healing than the first one -- even though all they did was, well, open her up and close her up again.
She is still in hospital, healing albeit slowly. She is plagued with assorted complications, all of which are minor in themselves but their continuance means that she will not be sent home until they are cleared up. It appears her blood sugar is not yet stable; her body is still draining too much lymphatic fluid from the wound; she has a sort of continuing low grade fever and she is anemic.
We have been visiting in the evening this week, mainly because the kids were out of school the whole week and so the morning and afternoon has been taken up with, well, keeping them busy. It's been a fun week, we planted not one, not two, but three sets of flowers -- mine upstairs, (which is ongoing as you know), Nel's downstairs, and we biked over and did Spring cleanup at Opa's grave. Yesterday we went to that playground/restaurant where we had Douwe's birthday last year -- they had a moon walk shaped like a mushroom this time, so the boys spent the entire time slamming each other into the walls. Well, that's what they do at home too but at least this time the walls were padded. And they played at a friend's house on Tuesday for the afternoon -- he is in Douwe's class but is friendly enough with Daan that Daan went to his house by himself a little whicle ago because Douwe was not in the mood. He is almost exactly between them in age, and their sharing him has worked out nicely so far.
Douwe has become intensely interested in earning pocket money. I won't pay him for regular cleaning up, this seems to me to go nowhere good. So he came up with the idea of putting the bicycle cart behind his bike and hauling groceries and so on. I considered charging him rent for the cart, but decided that the lesson about the cost of doing business could wait for later. He has twice hauled my groceries home behind his bike this week. Oh, and Daan also. That is, Daan wanted to ride his bike but I was not prepared to supervise him and Douwe on the first day with the cart -- it makes cornering a little tricky. So I told him he had to sit behind me in the kid seat. He did not like this idea so Douwe proposed that Daan ride in the cart. I figured he would change his tune after a trip or so, but no. They think it's great fun so Douwe is also hauling Daan all over town behind his bike.
Daan also insists on working for money, because Douwe is, he hasn't really got a clue and is still in the "more coins = more money" phase. But he very seriously carried the basket through the grocery store and put things in it when I told him to. Okay, he also added one or two small things, *ahem*. He refused to play "catch me" with Douwe in the store this week because "Douwe, can't you see I am working?".
I was going to get them savings banks for their new wages, but they tell me everybody keeps their money in a wallet. So I guess I had better find some kids' wallets.
Today we went sailing for the first time this year, the weather was lovely. We left at the crack of noon -- kidding, we left before that -- to get back in time for visiting. The kids wanted to bring Oma a battered-and-fried fish called a lekkerbekkie, of which she is inordinately fond but were convinced that the doctors woudl nto like it. (She is now on a special diet which involves restricting fats almost entirely, so I think fried fish is right out).
Anyway, here they are today:
The hat, for the curious, is because he is a famous race car driver. Obviously.
She is still in hospital, healing albeit slowly. She is plagued with assorted complications, all of which are minor in themselves but their continuance means that she will not be sent home until they are cleared up. It appears her blood sugar is not yet stable; her body is still draining too much lymphatic fluid from the wound; she has a sort of continuing low grade fever and she is anemic.
We have been visiting in the evening this week, mainly because the kids were out of school the whole week and so the morning and afternoon has been taken up with, well, keeping them busy. It's been a fun week, we planted not one, not two, but three sets of flowers -- mine upstairs, (which is ongoing as you know), Nel's downstairs, and we biked over and did Spring cleanup at Opa's grave. Yesterday we went to that playground/restaurant where we had Douwe's birthday last year -- they had a moon walk shaped like a mushroom this time, so the boys spent the entire time slamming each other into the walls. Well, that's what they do at home too but at least this time the walls were padded. And they played at a friend's house on Tuesday for the afternoon -- he is in Douwe's class but is friendly enough with Daan that Daan went to his house by himself a little whicle ago because Douwe was not in the mood. He is almost exactly between them in age, and their sharing him has worked out nicely so far.
Douwe has become intensely interested in earning pocket money. I won't pay him for regular cleaning up, this seems to me to go nowhere good. So he came up with the idea of putting the bicycle cart behind his bike and hauling groceries and so on. I considered charging him rent for the cart, but decided that the lesson about the cost of doing business could wait for later. He has twice hauled my groceries home behind his bike this week. Oh, and Daan also. That is, Daan wanted to ride his bike but I was not prepared to supervise him and Douwe on the first day with the cart -- it makes cornering a little tricky. So I told him he had to sit behind me in the kid seat. He did not like this idea so Douwe proposed that Daan ride in the cart. I figured he would change his tune after a trip or so, but no. They think it's great fun so Douwe is also hauling Daan all over town behind his bike.
Daan also insists on working for money, because Douwe is, he hasn't really got a clue and is still in the "more coins = more money" phase. But he very seriously carried the basket through the grocery store and put things in it when I told him to. Okay, he also added one or two small things, *ahem*. He refused to play "catch me" with Douwe in the store this week because "Douwe, can't you see I am working?".
I was going to get them savings banks for their new wages, but they tell me everybody keeps their money in a wallet. So I guess I had better find some kids' wallets.
Today we went sailing for the first time this year, the weather was lovely. We left at the crack of noon -- kidding, we left before that -- to get back in time for visiting. The kids wanted to bring Oma a battered-and-fried fish called a lekkerbekkie, of which she is inordinately fond but were convinced that the doctors woudl nto like it. (She is now on a special diet which involves restricting fats almost entirely, so I think fried fish is right out).
Anyway, here they are today:
The hat, for the curious, is because he is a famous race car driver. Obviously.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Kid not Included
Here are the flowers my mother sent to my mother in law today. It was a good day for it, as Nel was feeling rather low and her response to getting them was as enthusiastic as she has been all day.
A body would think that somebody had gone out and gottten all Nel's favorite flowers and put them in a pot which will look just smashing in her bedroom when she gets home. Well done, mom.
Those two flowers are only leaning due to the interference of the, um, background character, they were standing up straight when they were delivered.
Well finally
Is Mercury retrograde? The phones are all screwy, I can only call to the US sometimes (and sometimes not), the outgoing message mysteriously disappeared from our telephone, and Blogger is acting funny these past couple of days. People tell me they have left comments which are not appearing and somtimes I just get a big white screen when I go to write a new entry.
'Kay, just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you.
Spring has arrived in Holland, my carnations and forget me nots and nasturtiums look great, one of my pumpkins is growing like mad already, the watermelon seeds have not poked above ground yet and I think the tomatoes drowned in there as they have not yet sprouted. Time to reseed I think. We ate all the lettuce so I think I will try them in the cold frame. It is not freezing at night but it is chilly after the sun leaves.
I don't even mind picking up the kids on the bike as the weather is nice again. So I guess I have a couple of months to get my driver's license before it turns cold again, hee hee.
I apologize to you all for being so scattered and so brief, I am quite literally running from wake up to coo-ee right now and while this is no doubt healthy it isn't doing anything for my ability to string together an intelligible sentence. We are now down to going to the hospital once a day and Paul goes back again in the evening by himself because the kids were not getting to bed until 10 and this does nothing (good) for their tempers.
'Kay, just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you.
Spring has arrived in Holland, my carnations and forget me nots and nasturtiums look great, one of my pumpkins is growing like mad already, the watermelon seeds have not poked above ground yet and I think the tomatoes drowned in there as they have not yet sprouted. Time to reseed I think. We ate all the lettuce so I think I will try them in the cold frame. It is not freezing at night but it is chilly after the sun leaves.
I don't even mind picking up the kids on the bike as the weather is nice again. So I guess I have a couple of months to get my driver's license before it turns cold again, hee hee.
I apologize to you all for being so scattered and so brief, I am quite literally running from wake up to coo-ee right now and while this is no doubt healthy it isn't doing anything for my ability to string together an intelligible sentence. We are now down to going to the hospital once a day and Paul goes back again in the evening by himself because the kids were not getting to bed until 10 and this does nothing (good) for their tempers.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
I give up
The universe is conspiring to prevent my communicating with anyone.
To my brother, I wish a happy birthday and all great things.
And I have not been ignoring the music you sent me, really I haven't. Though it probably seems that way; it arrived shortly before we got hit by the tidal wave. I still think it's a good idea. But I am as you might have noticed sort of preoccupied at the moment.
I have actually been calling for several hours and have been unable to get a connection. Either all of you en masse changed your phone numbers and didn't tell me (which could happen I suppose but we are not, as a family, really gifted in the keeping of secrets) or something is screwy with this phone line.
So I will try again tomorrow and wish you a happy birthday one day late.
To my brother, I wish a happy birthday and all great things.
And I have not been ignoring the music you sent me, really I haven't. Though it probably seems that way; it arrived shortly before we got hit by the tidal wave. I still think it's a good idea. But I am as you might have noticed sort of preoccupied at the moment.
I have actually been calling for several hours and have been unable to get a connection. Either all of you en masse changed your phone numbers and didn't tell me (which could happen I suppose but we are not, as a family, really gifted in the keeping of secrets) or something is screwy with this phone line.
So I will try again tomorrow and wish you a happy birthday one day late.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Orange
Nel has been wearing the nightgown chosen for her by her grandson. It is orange. It is really very orange, not a subtle color at all. She wore it for a walk down the hall yesterday. The name of the royal house of Holland is also Orange, and so the wearing of the color has led to many puns about the reigning queen of ward 25 -- the sheer volume of visitors Queen Nel gets has also not gone unnoticed at the hospital.
This morning she is once more chirping like a bird. The nose tube is still in though we are hoping it can come out again today and to that end a very close eye is being kept on the ins and outs of her drinking and feeding tube and so on. I do not imagine there has been this much attention paid to Nel's personal bodly functions since she was a very small child. Late this afternoon we are expecting to hear the results from the biopsy of the tumor, which was done after it was removed, and to receive what advice there may be from that. Otherwise, all appears to be well in Room 253.
This morning she is once more chirping like a bird. The nose tube is still in though we are hoping it can come out again today and to that end a very close eye is being kept on the ins and outs of her drinking and feeding tube and so on. I do not imagine there has been this much attention paid to Nel's personal bodly functions since she was a very small child. Late this afternoon we are expecting to hear the results from the biopsy of the tumor, which was done after it was removed, and to receive what advice there may be from that. Otherwise, all appears to be well in Room 253.
More Expertise
Yesterday we had a meeting at the school to discuss the education plan for Douwe. We were there, Douwe's teacher was there, the, um, I guess we would call it a resource teacher was there and the coordinator from the speech school was there.
For most of the meeting unhappily I was not there. Douwe decided that the meeting was far too long and he furthermore objected strongly to everyone sitting around talking about him when he was not there and besides he was tired and wanted to go home. All of which added up to him being such a little pill that I would up leaving Paul to handle it and went outside with him and Daan.
Which was just as well since nothing really concrete came out of the meeting as far as I could tell. It lasted two hours, at least half of which evidently consisted of Paul and the coordinator from the speech school expressing their, um, differing opinions about whether it was a good idea to teach Douwe to read in English. So I am pleased that I was not there. Though I have no idea what I would have been able to say beyond pointing out that it is now too late, he can already read English.
I think this is fair to say. I mean, he isn't reading epic poetry or anything. He can read "Ten Apples Up on Top" and "The Berenstain Bears Go Up and Down" and so on with only a little help. The help he requires is to call his attention to the actual word he has to sound out, as he has a tendency to start making up the story when he hits a word or two he does not immediately know. So you do have to now and again put your finger under the difficult word and ask him what that word is. Then he sounds it out mostly, or guesses at it, depending on the mood he is in.
In any event, the conversation between Paul and the coordinator ended in Paul saying that we had no plans to stop him from either reading or speaking in English since half his family is American, and that was sort of the end of that. I have gone round and round this circle myself both in the states and here, so I am pleased to have missed it. Though as I say I am not sure I would have gone round and round again; I have worked out after many times around this maypole that the best response is to politely but firmly state that if one language is to be given up it will surely be Dutch -- since English is the only language every single member of this family can fluently speak -- and that they can surely agree with me that this would not be a good idea. People find it hard to argue with that.
No, of course we have no plans to quit speaking Dutch, are you mad? But it does put an end to a really fruitless conversation which serves mainly to reveal just how deep xenophobia does go. And yeah, I know I am a jerk, this is not news, lol.
In any event it was also a fruitless conversation because the school's position has always been that since the child is truly bilingual, the most sensible response to the occasional english word is to ask him if he knows the Dutch word for that, and to tell it to him if he does not and congratulate him if he does. Which is pretty much what we do at home. The school's only concern was whether we expected them to teach him in english and that was never a question -- I mean, it is a Dutch school in Holland, one rather expects the teaching to go on in English.
On of the interesting things about the process is that the problems the coordinator had written down to address are in large part entirely gone and irrelevant now because things are changing rather quickly. So she was all ready to talk about way to get Douwe to rhyme words and the teachers were like, "oh, no, he can rhyme all over the place, no need for that" and then going on with other things.
In any event, after all of that, the school is going to make a plan, rather like an IEP with goals and recommended strategies for dealing with them and so on and give it to us on Thursday. Then we will add and subtract whatever we think and give it back to them, it will be finalized and that will be that. But the actual plan is coming from the school itself, which is at this point quite helpful. If we get a bad teacher/student/parent combination in future this could become a problem, but there is no need to create such a problem now. At this moment, Douwe's teacher and I are entirely on the same page so it works out rather well.
There is some concern about next year, as learning becomes more structured and formal in group 3 (just as it does in the states with first grade) and no one is really sure what effect that will have on Douwe. I personally expect that it will make things much easier with him, he likes formal schooling and is good at it. However, there is no knowing for certain until we get there.
For most of the meeting unhappily I was not there. Douwe decided that the meeting was far too long and he furthermore objected strongly to everyone sitting around talking about him when he was not there and besides he was tired and wanted to go home. All of which added up to him being such a little pill that I would up leaving Paul to handle it and went outside with him and Daan.
Which was just as well since nothing really concrete came out of the meeting as far as I could tell. It lasted two hours, at least half of which evidently consisted of Paul and the coordinator from the speech school expressing their, um, differing opinions about whether it was a good idea to teach Douwe to read in English. So I am pleased that I was not there. Though I have no idea what I would have been able to say beyond pointing out that it is now too late, he can already read English.
I think this is fair to say. I mean, he isn't reading epic poetry or anything. He can read "Ten Apples Up on Top" and "The Berenstain Bears Go Up and Down" and so on with only a little help. The help he requires is to call his attention to the actual word he has to sound out, as he has a tendency to start making up the story when he hits a word or two he does not immediately know. So you do have to now and again put your finger under the difficult word and ask him what that word is. Then he sounds it out mostly, or guesses at it, depending on the mood he is in.
In any event, the conversation between Paul and the coordinator ended in Paul saying that we had no plans to stop him from either reading or speaking in English since half his family is American, and that was sort of the end of that. I have gone round and round this circle myself both in the states and here, so I am pleased to have missed it. Though as I say I am not sure I would have gone round and round again; I have worked out after many times around this maypole that the best response is to politely but firmly state that if one language is to be given up it will surely be Dutch -- since English is the only language every single member of this family can fluently speak -- and that they can surely agree with me that this would not be a good idea. People find it hard to argue with that.
No, of course we have no plans to quit speaking Dutch, are you mad? But it does put an end to a really fruitless conversation which serves mainly to reveal just how deep xenophobia does go. And yeah, I know I am a jerk, this is not news, lol.
In any event it was also a fruitless conversation because the school's position has always been that since the child is truly bilingual, the most sensible response to the occasional english word is to ask him if he knows the Dutch word for that, and to tell it to him if he does not and congratulate him if he does. Which is pretty much what we do at home. The school's only concern was whether we expected them to teach him in english and that was never a question -- I mean, it is a Dutch school in Holland, one rather expects the teaching to go on in English.
On of the interesting things about the process is that the problems the coordinator had written down to address are in large part entirely gone and irrelevant now because things are changing rather quickly. So she was all ready to talk about way to get Douwe to rhyme words and the teachers were like, "oh, no, he can rhyme all over the place, no need for that" and then going on with other things.
In any event, after all of that, the school is going to make a plan, rather like an IEP with goals and recommended strategies for dealing with them and so on and give it to us on Thursday. Then we will add and subtract whatever we think and give it back to them, it will be finalized and that will be that. But the actual plan is coming from the school itself, which is at this point quite helpful. If we get a bad teacher/student/parent combination in future this could become a problem, but there is no need to create such a problem now. At this moment, Douwe's teacher and I are entirely on the same page so it works out rather well.
There is some concern about next year, as learning becomes more structured and formal in group 3 (just as it does in the states with first grade) and no one is really sure what effect that will have on Douwe. I personally expect that it will make things much easier with him, he likes formal schooling and is good at it. However, there is no knowing for certain until we get there.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Would you believe
The second surgery is over, Nel is now in the recovery room. When they opened her up they found...nothing. No leak, nothing. She is healing nicely and the tube is not leaking. So they left it there and closed her back up.
It is now believed that a blockage in the feeding tube or something similar caused the feeding solution to appear where it should not have been.
On the one hand I am certain that it is a good thing that they did not wait and see, but instead moved to prevent an infection at the first opportunity. An infection in the abdominal cavity would be a complete disaster at this point.
And I am sure I will also think that, in about, oh, two hours or so. Just now, I confess, I think, "My God, all that for nothing? For nothing? What do you mean it was nothing? What the hell are you playing at over there?"
But even this is an improvement, what I thought five minutes ago probably is not suitable for broadcast to a mixed audience. *ahem*.
It is now believed that a blockage in the feeding tube or something similar caused the feeding solution to appear where it should not have been.
On the one hand I am certain that it is a good thing that they did not wait and see, but instead moved to prevent an infection at the first opportunity. An infection in the abdominal cavity would be a complete disaster at this point.
And I am sure I will also think that, in about, oh, two hours or so. Just now, I confess, I think, "My God, all that for nothing? For nothing? What do you mean it was nothing? What the hell are you playing at over there?"
But even this is an improvement, what I thought five minutes ago probably is not suitable for broadcast to a mixed audience. *ahem*.
First setback
Until yesterday, Nel was being fed mostly through a feeding tube which went directly into her intestine. Yesterday evening, it was discovered that some of the food from that tube was coming out of the wound from the operation itself. This means that something has begun leaking somewhere, possibly from the tube itself. It may have happened during all the moving around yesterday or it could have happened earlier. What is certain is that the food from that tube should not be loose in her abdominal cavity.
So today, right now in fact, the doctors are going to open up the wound in her stomach and remove the feeding tube and wash out her abdominal cavity. At this time they are not planning to put a new feeding tube back in. Because she has been able to eat and digest food on her own, the feeding tube is not necessary any more.
In practical terms, the doctor has said that this will put her back about 4 days of healing time -- because the original incision has to be opened up again and will therefore have to heal again from the beginning.
This operation should itself take about an hour or so, and allowing time for anaesthesia and recovery, she should be out of her room for about two and a half hours. She will be coming back to her own room and they do not expect her to need to return to Intensive Care. So we expect her back around 1:30 or 2:00 our time this afternoon.
Nel is rather frightened by this development, as everything has been going so well. She felt very well this morning, so hearing this news was even more of an unpleasant surprise.
As we have developments we will certainly set them here. While anything is of course possible, I gather that the doctors do not expect any major setbacks or difficulties as a result of this second operation other than that the original wound will have to heal over again.
Paul is at the hospital and I have to go pick up the boys from school, then I expect we will go to the hospital this afternoon when she comes out of surgery.
Dad, I hope to send you an email for Thaxine tonight; it's been a bit of a buzz around here since this was discovered yesterday evening.
So today, right now in fact, the doctors are going to open up the wound in her stomach and remove the feeding tube and wash out her abdominal cavity. At this time they are not planning to put a new feeding tube back in. Because she has been able to eat and digest food on her own, the feeding tube is not necessary any more.
In practical terms, the doctor has said that this will put her back about 4 days of healing time -- because the original incision has to be opened up again and will therefore have to heal again from the beginning.
This operation should itself take about an hour or so, and allowing time for anaesthesia and recovery, she should be out of her room for about two and a half hours. She will be coming back to her own room and they do not expect her to need to return to Intensive Care. So we expect her back around 1:30 or 2:00 our time this afternoon.
Nel is rather frightened by this development, as everything has been going so well. She felt very well this morning, so hearing this news was even more of an unpleasant surprise.
As we have developments we will certainly set them here. While anything is of course possible, I gather that the doctors do not expect any major setbacks or difficulties as a result of this second operation other than that the original wound will have to heal over again.
Paul is at the hospital and I have to go pick up the boys from school, then I expect we will go to the hospital this afternoon when she comes out of surgery.
Dad, I hope to send you an email for Thaxine tonight; it's been a bit of a buzz around here since this was discovered yesterday evening.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Second Easter Day
Today is second Easter Day. Didn't know there were two, did you? Silly you, you were thinking there was only, you know, the one. How many times can one person come out of a tomb, anyway?
In Holland I will have you know he can do it twice. Did anybody tell the pope about this? Eh, his holiness is German after all, maybe they have easter for a week.
There may be a very good reason for a second easter day, but I dont know what it is and it always strikes me as odd when I look at my calendar and there it is -- second easter, holiday.
Nel had her own rising today, she got out of bed for the first time. She was not allowed to walk, just sit up in a chair, but that was something. She still has tubes going onto her nose, which are a contant source of annoyance, but some part of the zillion tubes and so on have been removed which is nice, it lets her move around more.
Because it's a holiday, she had many visitors today so we didn't stay all that long today. She is cheery, if still easily tired. She has already begun devising ways to get around the obviously far too restrictive rules of the hospital (which were not intended to apply to her anyway obviously) so evidently the surgeon did not remove the "Stubborn" bone from her body.
My kids are still eager to go see her, they holler hooray and run for the door when it is suggested. Though Daan most carefully asks to be sure she is in her own room and not in ICU any more. He found ICU a bit creepy and was a Very Very Subdued Daan when she was there.
Daan is convinced that the nose tubes hurt and doesn't believe anybody who says otherwise. Douwe still thinks they are sort of cool, or at least interesting.
We also went to the garden center today to get flowers to put in the garden downstairs, with any luck it'll be in bloom in two weeks when Oma comes home.
In Holland I will have you know he can do it twice. Did anybody tell the pope about this? Eh, his holiness is German after all, maybe they have easter for a week.
There may be a very good reason for a second easter day, but I dont know what it is and it always strikes me as odd when I look at my calendar and there it is -- second easter, holiday.
Nel had her own rising today, she got out of bed for the first time. She was not allowed to walk, just sit up in a chair, but that was something. She still has tubes going onto her nose, which are a contant source of annoyance, but some part of the zillion tubes and so on have been removed which is nice, it lets her move around more.
Because it's a holiday, she had many visitors today so we didn't stay all that long today. She is cheery, if still easily tired. She has already begun devising ways to get around the obviously far too restrictive rules of the hospital (which were not intended to apply to her anyway obviously) so evidently the surgeon did not remove the "Stubborn" bone from her body.
My kids are still eager to go see her, they holler hooray and run for the door when it is suggested. Though Daan most carefully asks to be sure she is in her own room and not in ICU any more. He found ICU a bit creepy and was a Very Very Subdued Daan when she was there.
Daan is convinced that the nose tubes hurt and doesn't believe anybody who says otherwise. Douwe still thinks they are sort of cool, or at least interesting.
We also went to the garden center today to get flowers to put in the garden downstairs, with any luck it'll be in bloom in two weeks when Oma comes home.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Painting
The easter bunny also left some easter placemats to paint, and bring to Oma. We are going to the hospital this afternoon and, since Nel is out of ICU today and in her room, Nel and I have arranged with the easter bunny to hide some eggs there as well..
The Jello eggs
I made gelatin eggs and the kids colored them with a brush and paint as is most common here. They apparently did not realize the eggs were not regular eggs, so when they peeled thim this morning they were covered in shock and awe to find red eggs and decided immediately that the Easter Bunny magically changed their eggs to candy. (Jello is not popular here, I am not sure they have ever seen jello to remember it).
So at this moment they firmly believe in the easter bunny.
Moving on to the kitchen
We discovered the flocked bunnies (which I intended as a sort of centerpiece but were evidently also really for playing with).
The decorated eggs you can see here are often put up on a sort of stick which, if you squint your eyes a little does sort of look like a palm frond. The sticks go up on Palm Sunday, they are decorated later. It took me a while to figure that one out, I though they were doing easter trees and I thought it was sort of weird. Turns out they are easter palms.
The haul
First they discovered their easter baskets -- they only want chocolate chickens, not chocolate bunnies for some reason. Douwe even wrote a letter to the easter bunny to make sure he brought a chicken and not a bunny. They also got Batman pajamas. It is good to have a fictional character bring the cool jammies, as this way all the jammies don't have to be cool if you get my drift. (Mommies who have to pay for the cool jammies got my drift immediately, the rest of you, don't worry about it).
I also use this subterfuge with slippers, but this year they just got new slippers. 
The easter bunny
Last weekend we went to an easter egg hunt with friends and affterwards has a visit from the easter bunny.
Friday, April 14, 2006
As good as it gets
The news on Nel is as good as it gets. None of the possible tricky bits happened -- it had not spread at all, it was one tumor in one place. It was not located near anything she couldn't live without. They did not have to take out her whole pancreas, they were able to leave her the top part which is evidently where insulin is produced. So they think her diabetes will not be made worse because of the surgery.
They took out her gall bladder, a bit of her stomach, a bit of the duodenum, and then stitched it all back together. She did not have any of the complications which might have happened either from surgery or anaesthesia.
Paul and Ernest spent much of the afternoon at the hospital, mostly waiting for Nel to wake up as I gather. But they did get to talk to her, and the surgeon, and her internist and so on.
The kids and I went into town on the bikes and went to the park and colored easter eggs and then hid them (just a warm up, you know) and made dinner and played with trains. So I haven't seen Nel. I expect we will see her tomorrow.
The thought of Thing Two loose in an ICU unit makes me faint. I have declared that if he has to go into ICU, he is going in arms and his feet are not touching the ground, not even once. He is faster than a striking snake and he does not ask "Mom, what's this thing?" before he tries to dismatle it. I mean, maybe it's just my adrenaline talking -- I assume they have back ups and so on. But I just keep imagining some bad movie scene in which my four year old plays the starring role -- grieving family, heart wrenching decisions to be made regarding life support, preschooler, um, resolving the problem without further consultation. Sound of flatline and echoing "code blue"s in the background while winsome blond child looks at the end of a power cable he has just pulled out of the wall.
You guys know him. Don't even try to tell me it couldn't happen.
They took out her gall bladder, a bit of her stomach, a bit of the duodenum, and then stitched it all back together. She did not have any of the complications which might have happened either from surgery or anaesthesia.
Paul and Ernest spent much of the afternoon at the hospital, mostly waiting for Nel to wake up as I gather. But they did get to talk to her, and the surgeon, and her internist and so on.
The kids and I went into town on the bikes and went to the park and colored easter eggs and then hid them (just a warm up, you know) and made dinner and played with trains. So I haven't seen Nel. I expect we will see her tomorrow.
The thought of Thing Two loose in an ICU unit makes me faint. I have declared that if he has to go into ICU, he is going in arms and his feet are not touching the ground, not even once. He is faster than a striking snake and he does not ask "Mom, what's this thing?" before he tries to dismatle it. I mean, maybe it's just my adrenaline talking -- I assume they have back ups and so on. But I just keep imagining some bad movie scene in which my four year old plays the starring role -- grieving family, heart wrenching decisions to be made regarding life support, preschooler, um, resolving the problem without further consultation. Sound of flatline and echoing "code blue"s in the background while winsome blond child looks at the end of a power cable he has just pulled out of the wall.
You guys know him. Don't even try to tell me it couldn't happen.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Fixed it
I wondered why no one was speaking to me. It won't do that thing any more, I fixed it.
Thanks, Dad, for the heads up.
If you have no idea what I am talking about you should comment more.
Though now it's too late, *snort*.
Thanks, Dad, for the heads up.
If you have no idea what I am talking about you should comment more.
Though now it's too late, *snort*.
The baby doc
We all went along for the follow up to the pediatrician, because there has been a lot of activity around hospitals for the last 10 days or so and wanted to avoid any fear on that score. It was a very short appointment. All of Thing Two's tests are within normal limits -- his bone age is 4 years old, his >impronounceable Dutch word for a chemical in the blood which indicates the level of growth hormone<>
He grew half a centimeter in the mean time.
The only test not within normal limits was that there was a trace of protein in his urine test which according to the doctor was so small that it was of zero interest.
So he sort of shrugged, said we had a very healthy small child, and suggested we come back in a year to see if anything had changed.
He grew half a centimeter in the mean time.
The only test not within normal limits was that there was a trace of protein in his urine test which according to the doctor was so small that it was of zero interest.
So he sort of shrugged, said we had a very healthy small child, and suggested we come back in a year to see if anything had changed.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Ramblings
We now for pretty obvious reasons have a book on The Human Body. The kind with see through pages with the organs of the various systems all picked out in Technicolor. It is bidding fair to compete with Pooh for Favorite Bedtime Reading.
In particular, Thing Two is wild about The Human Body. Today I got to outline for him exactly how the brain and nervous sytem work. Try that in language suitable for a four year old. When I put him to bed I asked him how many kisses he wanted (I ask him that every night). He said "I am thinking in my brain now. I think in my brain maybe ten". And pointed to his cheek.
I said, "Your brain is in here" and pointed to the top of his head. He said "Yes, but ten is too many to fit in there so you have to kiss me here".
Thing One on the other hand is extremely interested in blood. No, I know you knew that, but I mean, blood still in veins and the heart and so on. How it all gets pumped around, up and down and over and under and through. He is very disappointed that you can see his brother's veins nearly everywhere and mine, too but his you can really only see on his hands and feet. Those hundred generations of Portuguese fishermen again, he is darker complected even though it's the tail of winter.
Okay it doesn't take much to be darker than me and Thing Two.
Thing One is in general angry -- with Nel for being sick, with me for not making her better, and well, just in general. He has no idea why he is angry or what he is angry at to tell you the truth. He is just angry. We painted the jello eggs today and he painted his in furious swirls of black, red, and dark green. He has pulled back into his fantasy world a bit and it is once more dificult to get his attention tracked off of it and onto ordinary and mundane matters. I did not consciously realize that he had stopped doing that actually, until he began doing it again.
Thing Two is clingy and at random moments throws both arms around my neck and insists that I must stay with him, that I can never go away.
In particular, Thing Two is wild about The Human Body. Today I got to outline for him exactly how the brain and nervous sytem work. Try that in language suitable for a four year old. When I put him to bed I asked him how many kisses he wanted (I ask him that every night). He said "I am thinking in my brain now. I think in my brain maybe ten". And pointed to his cheek.
I said, "Your brain is in here" and pointed to the top of his head. He said "Yes, but ten is too many to fit in there so you have to kiss me here".
Thing One on the other hand is extremely interested in blood. No, I know you knew that, but I mean, blood still in veins and the heart and so on. How it all gets pumped around, up and down and over and under and through. He is very disappointed that you can see his brother's veins nearly everywhere and mine, too but his you can really only see on his hands and feet. Those hundred generations of Portuguese fishermen again, he is darker complected even though it's the tail of winter.
Okay it doesn't take much to be darker than me and Thing Two.
Thing One is in general angry -- with Nel for being sick, with me for not making her better, and well, just in general. He has no idea why he is angry or what he is angry at to tell you the truth. He is just angry. We painted the jello eggs today and he painted his in furious swirls of black, red, and dark green. He has pulled back into his fantasy world a bit and it is once more dificult to get his attention tracked off of it and onto ordinary and mundane matters. I did not consciously realize that he had stopped doing that actually, until he began doing it again.
Thing Two is clingy and at random moments throws both arms around my neck and insists that I must stay with him, that I can never go away.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Nimrod
I am a nimrod.
I really am.
I have been tearing this house apart looking for my recipe for pao doce because easter is coming and besides I have to fatten Our Nel Up and she has been given a blank check from her internist regarding her blood sugar.
She can eat anything she wants if she will just gain weight.
I couldn't find it anywhere. You know where I found it? You know where it was?
In the archives on this very blog.
*doh*
I really am.
I have been tearing this house apart looking for my recipe for pao doce because easter is coming and besides I have to fatten Our Nel Up and she has been given a blank check from her internist regarding her blood sugar.
She can eat anything she wants if she will just gain weight.
I couldn't find it anywhere. You know where I found it? You know where it was?
In the archives on this very blog.
*doh*
Jello eggs
I made jello eggs today. I also made jelly eggs yesterday. You know what? What Dutch guys call jelly is a dessert, red, made with a day-glo powder by heating and then cooling.
But it is not, despite many assurances that it must be, it is most resoundingly not Jello.
It is in fact jelly. No translation necessary, it is a dessert made with pectin and so on.
It's all soggy and soft and does not make a good egg.
So I made them today with sheet gelatin, plain old glass-looking sheets of gelatin, and fruit juice.
Now, that's a good egg. They are as hard as knox blox. I had so hoped to make them green, because Daan would simply die if I fed him green eggs and ham for breakfast. His little eyes would be bigger than the eggs if I served him a green egg. Alas, no green.
They are red. Eh, it's easter, red eggs, I can go with that.
I expect we will color them tomorrow.
But it is not, despite many assurances that it must be, it is most resoundingly not Jello.
It is in fact jelly. No translation necessary, it is a dessert made with pectin and so on.
It's all soggy and soft and does not make a good egg.
So I made them today with sheet gelatin, plain old glass-looking sheets of gelatin, and fruit juice.
Now, that's a good egg. They are as hard as knox blox. I had so hoped to make them green, because Daan would simply die if I fed him green eggs and ham for breakfast. His little eyes would be bigger than the eggs if I served him a green egg. Alas, no green.
They are red. Eh, it's easter, red eggs, I can go with that.
I expect we will color them tomorrow.
Thank you
And to all of you who are lighting candles and beating drums and warming up the prayer circles and, I dunno, dancing naked under the full moon, we are an equal opportunity crew around here.
To each and every one of you who has thought of Nel kindly during this time:
Thank you. She is simply thrilled at the thought of all those candles over the entire world going up for her. Such a bonfire of thoughts and good wishes for Our Nel, it is overwhelming and joyful.
The surgery will be on Friday starting at about 10 am ish our time (so 4 in the morning EST if you guys have gone over to DST by now). It should go on for 4 to 8 hours, they won't give a better estimate than that. But as you might imagine we are rather hoping for longer rather than shorter. A short operation will mean that they were unable to get all the cancer and in that case they will out in a sort of shunt to get the bile into her digestive system and out of her bloodstream and then close her back up. So we want a really, really long one.
We are so Catholic. Both of us. We both immediately said something like this --So at three o'clock they should just about be putting you back together, what a good sign.*
Then we laughed our butts off. You really can take the girl out of the church but you can't.....
*For the not-Catholics out there: three o'clock is the traditional moment when Christ dies on the cross. A moment of silence and reflection is traditionally observed. It is the momnent when, according to an old hymn, sunset first begins to turn to sunrise -- the movement of time and focus from the privation and reflection of Lent to the joy and celebration of Easter begins.
To each and every one of you who has thought of Nel kindly during this time:
Thank you. She is simply thrilled at the thought of all those candles over the entire world going up for her. Such a bonfire of thoughts and good wishes for Our Nel, it is overwhelming and joyful.
The surgery will be on Friday starting at about 10 am ish our time (so 4 in the morning EST if you guys have gone over to DST by now). It should go on for 4 to 8 hours, they won't give a better estimate than that. But as you might imagine we are rather hoping for longer rather than shorter. A short operation will mean that they were unable to get all the cancer and in that case they will out in a sort of shunt to get the bile into her digestive system and out of her bloodstream and then close her back up. So we want a really, really long one.
We are so Catholic. Both of us. We both immediately said something like this --So at three o'clock they should just about be putting you back together, what a good sign.*
Then we laughed our butts off. You really can take the girl out of the church but you can't.....
*For the not-Catholics out there: three o'clock is the traditional moment when Christ dies on the cross. A moment of silence and reflection is traditionally observed. It is the momnent when, according to an old hymn, sunset first begins to turn to sunrise -- the movement of time and focus from the privation and reflection of Lent to the joy and celebration of Easter begins.
Update
We have been to the hospital every day this week -- the dietician because Nel has lost 10 kilos -- 22 pounds -- in the last few months and I have been given firm instructions to fatten her up like a foie gras goose for Friday, the anaesthesia guy, the surgery team, the post op doc, and so on. Tomorrow is the only day this week we are not going to the hospital this week.
So of course tomorrow is Daan's follow up with the pediatrician. Whose office is in the hospital.
I think we should just set up a camp bed and save commuting time.
So I have not written much. I actually came upstairs to write here several times today but people are coming to visit. This is a good thing and most welcome.
It's funny, everybody reacts to this news in a different way. We have had some folks downright insisting that Nel must be feeling badly, but she really is not. She has no symptoms now other than a terrible itch -- the itch is from the bile salts from her gall bladder being deposited in her skin because her gall bladder is partially blocked. After many frustrating phone calls I left Nel upstairs at the x ray, and walked into the surgeon's office. I then begged and pleaded and carried on at some length. It appears that the resistance we were meeting was simply that, because this process has gone so fast, her status had not yet been entered into the computer. So the office staff there did some actual sneaker-on-the ground footwork, with which I was much impressed. And they came up with something. I have no idea what it was, but Nel got to sleep a whole night for the first time in far too long so whatever it is we are glad to have it.
As I understand it, this is the problem with pancreatic cancer -- that you have no real symptoms until it's too late and it has spread through your whole body. Happily (?) well, yes, it's an odd kind of happiness but still, happily, Nel's gall bladder closed at some point which made her yellow. Otherwise she probably also would have found out after it was too late.
It has since opened again, at least partially, because she is much less yellow -- heck, she is no yellower than my mother and my sister, she looks rather as though she had bought a cheap ass tanning lotion -- and the rest of her symptoms have also disappeared. So it is a very good thig she went to the doctor when she did, because otherwise she would almost certainly have concluded that whatever-that-was, had healed itself.
In any event, it has been quite an eye opener in a lot of unexpected ways.
Nel is typically Nel, ever and always. Her primary worry point has been the boys -- both hers and mine. Otherwise, well, you know how people say death is a part of life? Here's a secret -- most of them don't actually believe that when it isn't a line on a greeting card but death is actually sitting in the room with you. I believe it, and I am not at all sure that I would continue to believe it in that case. But my mother in law actually does.
I did spend some time today shopping for nightgowns, as Our Nel plans to be attractively clad for the two weeks she has to stay in hospital. I offered her a nice bed jacket with fourteen layers of lace and ruffles and she said, well, there are things one really shouldn't put out in print. So she didn't want a bed jacket with ruffles and lace and so on.
I even helpfully pointed out that smocking adds, you know, layers to your front if strategically placed. She responded with something even more unprintable. Some people, you know, you just can't help them.
So instead I got her a shocking pink Warhol print nightgown and a green one with a mandala and a lucky elephant and an orange one which was part of an in joke which wasn't even funny -- though if repeated often enough it might become funny, you know how in jokes are.
So of course tomorrow is Daan's follow up with the pediatrician. Whose office is in the hospital.
I think we should just set up a camp bed and save commuting time.
So I have not written much. I actually came upstairs to write here several times today but people are coming to visit. This is a good thing and most welcome.
It's funny, everybody reacts to this news in a different way. We have had some folks downright insisting that Nel must be feeling badly, but she really is not. She has no symptoms now other than a terrible itch -- the itch is from the bile salts from her gall bladder being deposited in her skin because her gall bladder is partially blocked. After many frustrating phone calls I left Nel upstairs at the x ray, and walked into the surgeon's office. I then begged and pleaded and carried on at some length. It appears that the resistance we were meeting was simply that, because this process has gone so fast, her status had not yet been entered into the computer. So the office staff there did some actual sneaker-on-the ground footwork, with which I was much impressed. And they came up with something. I have no idea what it was, but Nel got to sleep a whole night for the first time in far too long so whatever it is we are glad to have it.
As I understand it, this is the problem with pancreatic cancer -- that you have no real symptoms until it's too late and it has spread through your whole body. Happily (?) well, yes, it's an odd kind of happiness but still, happily, Nel's gall bladder closed at some point which made her yellow. Otherwise she probably also would have found out after it was too late.
It has since opened again, at least partially, because she is much less yellow -- heck, she is no yellower than my mother and my sister, she looks rather as though she had bought a cheap ass tanning lotion -- and the rest of her symptoms have also disappeared. So it is a very good thig she went to the doctor when she did, because otherwise she would almost certainly have concluded that whatever-that-was, had healed itself.
In any event, it has been quite an eye opener in a lot of unexpected ways.
Nel is typically Nel, ever and always. Her primary worry point has been the boys -- both hers and mine. Otherwise, well, you know how people say death is a part of life? Here's a secret -- most of them don't actually believe that when it isn't a line on a greeting card but death is actually sitting in the room with you. I believe it, and I am not at all sure that I would continue to believe it in that case. But my mother in law actually does.
I did spend some time today shopping for nightgowns, as Our Nel plans to be attractively clad for the two weeks she has to stay in hospital. I offered her a nice bed jacket with fourteen layers of lace and ruffles and she said, well, there are things one really shouldn't put out in print. So she didn't want a bed jacket with ruffles and lace and so on.
I even helpfully pointed out that smocking adds, you know, layers to your front if strategically placed. She responded with something even more unprintable. Some people, you know, you just can't help them.
So instead I got her a shocking pink Warhol print nightgown and a green one with a mandala and a lucky elephant and an orange one which was part of an in joke which wasn't even funny -- though if repeated often enough it might become funny, you know how in jokes are.
Friday, April 07, 2006
A candle
For the past couple of weeks, Nel has not been feeling especially well. She did not, of course, tell anybody very much about it until about two weeks ago when she went to the doctor. He gave her some medicine and told her to call him in two weeks if it didn't get better.
Then when we were on vacation she started to turn yellow. So she went back to the doctor, who ordered some tests. Then there were some more tests.
It appears Nel has pancreatic cancer. She will be operated on next Friday. The good news is, that while it has spread it does not appear to have spread very far. The bad news is, part of it is in a bad place and they may not be able to remove it. They cannot tell whether it can be removed until they actually open her up and have a look.
I will no doubt write quite a lot more about this before we are done (and certainly before Friday) but in the mean time I have a request.
My mother in law firmly believes in lighting candles for people. Anyone reading this blog who feels so inclined, would you please light a candle for my mother in law.
And a personal note to my dad: Dad, I never, ever thought I would say this. I am not sure I would ask it for myself. But for Nel, I certainly would.
Would you call Maxine and get the prayer circle cranked up?
All other prayer circles are also welcome. But Maxine's prayer circle, well. Maxine's prayer circle is a blog entry all by itself. What can I tell you, some people just have it going on.
I'll start.
Lord Jesus, Divine Physician and Healer of the sick, we turn to you in this time of illness. O dearest comforter of the troubled, alleviate our worry and sorrow with your gentle love, and grant us the grace and strength to accept this burden. Dear God, we place in your hands the body of Nel van der Linden, whom we love.
Hold her in your hand, O Lord, We place Nel under your care and humbly ask that if it be your will, you restore her to health again. Grant us also, Father, the grace to acknowledge your will and know that whatever you do, you do for the love of us.
To your care, Blessed Mother, we commend the surgeons and physiscians and nurses and caregivers of Nel van der Linden; Turn your eyes with gentle mercy upon them. Guide their hands, calm their hearts and touch them with Your strength and certainty and joy in the power of life and knowledge of the sorrow of death as they too minister to Nel, whom we love.
Be near and watch, O Lord, with all those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest your weary ones. Bless your dying ones. Soothe your suffering ones. Pity your afflicted ones. Shield your joyous ones. And for all your love's sake.
Then when we were on vacation she started to turn yellow. So she went back to the doctor, who ordered some tests. Then there were some more tests.
It appears Nel has pancreatic cancer. She will be operated on next Friday. The good news is, that while it has spread it does not appear to have spread very far. The bad news is, part of it is in a bad place and they may not be able to remove it. They cannot tell whether it can be removed until they actually open her up and have a look.
I will no doubt write quite a lot more about this before we are done (and certainly before Friday) but in the mean time I have a request.
My mother in law firmly believes in lighting candles for people. Anyone reading this blog who feels so inclined, would you please light a candle for my mother in law.
And a personal note to my dad: Dad, I never, ever thought I would say this. I am not sure I would ask it for myself. But for Nel, I certainly would.
Would you call Maxine and get the prayer circle cranked up?
All other prayer circles are also welcome. But Maxine's prayer circle, well. Maxine's prayer circle is a blog entry all by itself. What can I tell you, some people just have it going on.
I'll start.
Lord Jesus, Divine Physician and Healer of the sick, we turn to you in this time of illness. O dearest comforter of the troubled, alleviate our worry and sorrow with your gentle love, and grant us the grace and strength to accept this burden. Dear God, we place in your hands the body of Nel van der Linden, whom we love.
Hold her in your hand, O Lord, We place Nel under your care and humbly ask that if it be your will, you restore her to health again. Grant us also, Father, the grace to acknowledge your will and know that whatever you do, you do for the love of us.
To your care, Blessed Mother, we commend the surgeons and physiscians and nurses and caregivers of Nel van der Linden; Turn your eyes with gentle mercy upon them. Guide their hands, calm their hearts and touch them with Your strength and certainty and joy in the power of life and knowledge of the sorrow of death as they too minister to Nel, whom we love.
Be near and watch, O Lord, with all those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest your weary ones. Bless your dying ones. Soothe your suffering ones. Pity your afflicted ones. Shield your joyous ones. And for all your love's sake.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
A puzzle
At the Montessori school, the children stay at school through lunch. The way this works is that during lunchtime a certain number of parents have to be there to watch the kids while the teachers take a break. So every family is obliged to volunteer to show up at lunchtime a certain number of days per year (this year it is 6).
There are also a group of parents who volunteer to show up on regular days and supervise the other parents -- every Monday, say. It appears that next year there will not be enough of these.
I have not volunteered, because it involves a certain number of meetings and so on, and the reality is that a large group of people all speaking Dutch at the same time is difficult for me to follow, a fact I find embarassing. So I avoid all activities involving meetings, which means almost all activities here in the Lowlands, land of discussion and consensus.*
However, I was talking to one of the supervising moms today and she mentioned that there would not be enough people next year. I said if I didn't have to go to the meetings I shouldn't mind it really.
She asked me if I had ever been assigned to the Older Kids. In a Significant Tone. I said no, the woman who "has" Mondays always leaves me with the little kids (the under-8 or 9 year olds, say third graders) because I don't speak the language properly.
She said I should go watch the Older Kids before I volunteered. In the same Significant Tone.
I have heard this tone before in relation to the Older Kids -- evidently no one wants to watch the Older Kids. I am the subject of some jealousy because I never have to watch the Older Kids. I have no clue what the issue is, I am an innocent in this matter. What on earth can they be doing that invokes the Significant Tone?
In general I rather like kids. Usually, I have to admit, I like them better than I like their parents. This has been true for a long time, long before I actually had kids.
I asked her. She said rather vaguely, "Oh, you know, they can be a little mouthy".
Well, Dutch kids are in general quite mouthy from my perspective -- not really offensively so, at least not so far. But then, Dutch parents are mouthier than are American ones (also not offensively so, at least not in general) so I haven't been all that surprised. When directness is a cultural value, you gotta figure at some point or another somebody is likely to say something that rubs you the wrong way. I mostly just tell them it rubs me the wrong way and leave it at that. I have heard a lot about this from various of the English Club, but it hasn't been a huge issue for me. Possibly I just enjoy rudene-- er, directness. Possibly I relish the chance to be rude back (it's a Catholic thing I am sure).
But now I am curious. (George was curious, too, it got him popped into a bag and carried off to the Zoo as you will recall). So I guess on my next stint as a volunteer I shall request to watch the Older Kids and find out what all the fuss is about. I wonder, do they count coup or post heads on a pike? What?
* I admire this actually even though I complain about it a lot and find it difficult to get used to. Nobody ever decides anything; we all have to agree about it or at least be hammered into accepting it as the best of a number of bad options.
There are also a group of parents who volunteer to show up on regular days and supervise the other parents -- every Monday, say. It appears that next year there will not be enough of these.
I have not volunteered, because it involves a certain number of meetings and so on, and the reality is that a large group of people all speaking Dutch at the same time is difficult for me to follow, a fact I find embarassing. So I avoid all activities involving meetings, which means almost all activities here in the Lowlands, land of discussion and consensus.*
However, I was talking to one of the supervising moms today and she mentioned that there would not be enough people next year. I said if I didn't have to go to the meetings I shouldn't mind it really.
She asked me if I had ever been assigned to the Older Kids. In a Significant Tone. I said no, the woman who "has" Mondays always leaves me with the little kids (the under-8 or 9 year olds, say third graders) because I don't speak the language properly.
She said I should go watch the Older Kids before I volunteered. In the same Significant Tone.
I have heard this tone before in relation to the Older Kids -- evidently no one wants to watch the Older Kids. I am the subject of some jealousy because I never have to watch the Older Kids. I have no clue what the issue is, I am an innocent in this matter. What on earth can they be doing that invokes the Significant Tone?
In general I rather like kids. Usually, I have to admit, I like them better than I like their parents. This has been true for a long time, long before I actually had kids.
I asked her. She said rather vaguely, "Oh, you know, they can be a little mouthy".
Well, Dutch kids are in general quite mouthy from my perspective -- not really offensively so, at least not so far. But then, Dutch parents are mouthier than are American ones (also not offensively so, at least not in general) so I haven't been all that surprised. When directness is a cultural value, you gotta figure at some point or another somebody is likely to say something that rubs you the wrong way. I mostly just tell them it rubs me the wrong way and leave it at that. I have heard a lot about this from various of the English Club, but it hasn't been a huge issue for me. Possibly I just enjoy rudene-- er, directness. Possibly I relish the chance to be rude back (it's a Catholic thing I am sure).
But now I am curious. (George was curious, too, it got him popped into a bag and carried off to the Zoo as you will recall). So I guess on my next stint as a volunteer I shall request to watch the Older Kids and find out what all the fuss is about. I wonder, do they count coup or post heads on a pike? What?
* I admire this actually even though I complain about it a lot and find it difficult to get used to. Nobody ever decides anything; we all have to agree about it or at least be hammered into accepting it as the best of a number of bad options.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Also while we were gone
I got home to find that my lettuces are about the size of my thumb and I have a whole row of cornflowers and carnations and furthermore I have a pumpkin seedling poking its little head up.
I was so happy I considered sending out a birth announcement. Boy am I ready for Spring to be here.
I was so happy I considered sending out a birth announcement. Boy am I ready for Spring to be here.
Didja miss me?
Sorry about being so coy about the whole thing. Despite being tucked away here in my boring little corner of the Internet I just cannot bring myself to announce to the entire world that we are going on vacation for a week.
Here's where we went.
Centerparcs is sort of, well, like camping near a rec center only you get a house. It was a nice house. The food, I have to tell you, is terrible. I am not demanding on a family vacation, I require only food sufficient to maintain life. Um, I think people must cook in those little houses a lot because the food in the restaurants was really very bad.
According to Douwe, the best part was the swimming. We can now forget all that stuff about him being afraid of water and so on, um, he's way over it. A week ago I thought I had better get him into swimming lessons because otherwise he was going to be nervous of water the rest of his life; now I have to teach him to swim post haste because otherwise he is going to scare me out of a decade of my life. He has figured out how to dog paddle and to swim underwater and a sort of half backstroke (he kicks well; his arms he mostly flails about) and that's good enough for him, he was cannonballing into the water off the walls and riding the white water rapids waterslide and going snorkeling and god knows what all.
He has firmly announced today that the idea of a swim diploma* is stupid and that I am going to teach him to swim freestyle and breast stroke. Tomorrow.
Daan dislikes swimming generally, though he enjoys getting in the wading end of the pool. I have viciously prevented everyone from "coaxing" (please read, tossing) Daan into the water as some of you may recall that this is (in my opinion) the reason Douwe has been afraid of water for so long and I have no plans to have to nurse a second set of phobias back to health. Daan is far more determined than his brother ever dreamed of being and I cannot even imagine how I would get him back into the water after the coaxing Douwe got. So Daan got to play in the wading pool and eat hamburgers. According to Daan the best part was (are you ready?).....
Bowling. Daan loves bowling. I really hope the pictures I took on the disposable camera came out because Daan really, really loves bowling. I know the ball is three times as big as his head; he doesn't care. He gets behind it on his knees, lines the ball up carefully with the little marks on the lane and pushes as hard as he can. Daan brought down the house every time we went bowling, everybody was cheering him on.
*Around here everybody gets a swim diploma. Everybody. You have to have a swim diploma. This apparently means you go to swim lessons and pass some tests which mean you can swim. If you can already swim, I hear, you still have to take some kind of swim test at school at around 8 and if you pass they issue you a belated swim diploma. An honorary swim diploma? I dunno, it's like a passport or something I think. Paul's is filed with his childhood well visits and immunization record; evidently it's that big a deal. But I can't figure out why you can't just, you know, learn to swim.
Here's where we went.
Centerparcs is sort of, well, like camping near a rec center only you get a house. It was a nice house. The food, I have to tell you, is terrible. I am not demanding on a family vacation, I require only food sufficient to maintain life. Um, I think people must cook in those little houses a lot because the food in the restaurants was really very bad.
According to Douwe, the best part was the swimming. We can now forget all that stuff about him being afraid of water and so on, um, he's way over it. A week ago I thought I had better get him into swimming lessons because otherwise he was going to be nervous of water the rest of his life; now I have to teach him to swim post haste because otherwise he is going to scare me out of a decade of my life. He has figured out how to dog paddle and to swim underwater and a sort of half backstroke (he kicks well; his arms he mostly flails about) and that's good enough for him, he was cannonballing into the water off the walls and riding the white water rapids waterslide and going snorkeling and god knows what all.
He has firmly announced today that the idea of a swim diploma* is stupid and that I am going to teach him to swim freestyle and breast stroke. Tomorrow.
Daan dislikes swimming generally, though he enjoys getting in the wading end of the pool. I have viciously prevented everyone from "coaxing" (please read, tossing) Daan into the water as some of you may recall that this is (in my opinion) the reason Douwe has been afraid of water for so long and I have no plans to have to nurse a second set of phobias back to health. Daan is far more determined than his brother ever dreamed of being and I cannot even imagine how I would get him back into the water after the coaxing Douwe got. So Daan got to play in the wading pool and eat hamburgers. According to Daan the best part was (are you ready?).....
Bowling. Daan loves bowling. I really hope the pictures I took on the disposable camera came out because Daan really, really loves bowling. I know the ball is three times as big as his head; he doesn't care. He gets behind it on his knees, lines the ball up carefully with the little marks on the lane and pushes as hard as he can. Daan brought down the house every time we went bowling, everybody was cheering him on.
*Around here everybody gets a swim diploma. Everybody. You have to have a swim diploma. This apparently means you go to swim lessons and pass some tests which mean you can swim. If you can already swim, I hear, you still have to take some kind of swim test at school at around 8 and if you pass they issue you a belated swim diploma. An honorary swim diploma? I dunno, it's like a passport or something I think. Paul's is filed with his childhood well visits and immunization record; evidently it's that big a deal. But I can't figure out why you can't just, you know, learn to swim.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Regularly scheduled programming
may be interrupted in the next few days. All is well, but I may be offline for a week or so.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
And by the way
My boys, who do not care at all about what they wear ever, have suddenly decided that they cannot leave the house without - are you ready?
Colored gel in their hair making it stick straight up.
Daan favors blue to match his eyes, in a stripe right down the middle of his head so it looks like a blue mohawk.
Douwe currently favors green, only in the very front so you can see his widow's peak. But he asked me to go buy orange today, because it will show up better and he looks good in orange. He does look good in orange, but I wasn't really thinking of his hair.
Oom Ernest took us to the woods near his house today and he, well. He said as much good as he could manage with a straight face about the fact that his nephews were proudly sporting blue-and-green mixed spikes on top of their heads.
I was very impressed, actually. Way to be supportive, Oom Ernest. Nicely done. You know, the rest of you, "really colorful" can also sound very much like a compliment if you inflect it right.
I wonder how their teachers keep a straight face: they inform me that their teachers really love the spikes.
Colored gel in their hair making it stick straight up.
Daan favors blue to match his eyes, in a stripe right down the middle of his head so it looks like a blue mohawk.
Douwe currently favors green, only in the very front so you can see his widow's peak. But he asked me to go buy orange today, because it will show up better and he looks good in orange. He does look good in orange, but I wasn't really thinking of his hair.
Oom Ernest took us to the woods near his house today and he, well. He said as much good as he could manage with a straight face about the fact that his nephews were proudly sporting blue-and-green mixed spikes on top of their heads.
I was very impressed, actually. Way to be supportive, Oom Ernest. Nicely done. You know, the rest of you, "really colorful" can also sound very much like a compliment if you inflect it right.
I wonder how their teachers keep a straight face: they inform me that their teachers really love the spikes.
Some more free advice
If, on the first really pleasant day of the year, you decide to drop everything and take your kids for a walk in the woods with Oma, and then you decide to go to the restaurant/playground nearby afterwards for a lovely cup of coffee and therefore you are late getting home so you call your spouse and ask him to start dinner.....
Should you do all that and then get home to find that the spouse did not in fact start dinner exactly but instead turned the heat on under the potatoes (which you, efficient thing that you are, peeled already and had waiting) and then trotted off to play another round of Go.....
If that happened so that you came home at 6:30 with two starving kids and one starving Oma to find that the water had boiled over all over the stove while a particularly intense Go exchange was going on and therefore you and starving Oma went immediately to work warming up leftovers for the kids (because they couldn't wait another second) and mashing potatoes and frying meat and making salad and so on......
If you were doing that while the kids were whining and moaning and Oma was grumbling about aforementioned spouse and you were muttering threats and imprecations under your breath also about aforementioned spouse and meat was frying....
If you were doing that with a wand hand mixer thingie with the blade underneath and you lifted out the mixer thingie to clean out the mashed potatoes with cheese with your left hand while turning around over your right shoulder to tell your child it would be ready in two seconds because he had gone right past whine into cry and you evidently left your right finger on the "on" button while doing so......
You might just cut the hell out of your left index finger and also crack your fingernail right down the middle and bleed all over everything.
It does put an end to your kids' whining when you bleed all over everything, though. So it has an upside. It also makes it much harder to type. And when the shock wears off, it hurts like hell.
Happily I had the presence of mind to clean it out before the shock wore off or that would have hurt a lot too. Cheese mashed potatoes should not be in an open wound it seems to me.
Anyway, that's my advice for the day.
Should you do all that and then get home to find that the spouse did not in fact start dinner exactly but instead turned the heat on under the potatoes (which you, efficient thing that you are, peeled already and had waiting) and then trotted off to play another round of Go.....
If that happened so that you came home at 6:30 with two starving kids and one starving Oma to find that the water had boiled over all over the stove while a particularly intense Go exchange was going on and therefore you and starving Oma went immediately to work warming up leftovers for the kids (because they couldn't wait another second) and mashing potatoes and frying meat and making salad and so on......
If you were doing that while the kids were whining and moaning and Oma was grumbling about aforementioned spouse and you were muttering threats and imprecations under your breath also about aforementioned spouse and meat was frying....
If you were doing that with a wand hand mixer thingie with the blade underneath and you lifted out the mixer thingie to clean out the mashed potatoes with cheese with your left hand while turning around over your right shoulder to tell your child it would be ready in two seconds because he had gone right past whine into cry and you evidently left your right finger on the "on" button while doing so......
You might just cut the hell out of your left index finger and also crack your fingernail right down the middle and bleed all over everything.
It does put an end to your kids' whining when you bleed all over everything, though. So it has an upside. It also makes it much harder to type. And when the shock wears off, it hurts like hell.
Happily I had the presence of mind to clean it out before the shock wore off or that would have hurt a lot too. Cheese mashed potatoes should not be in an open wound it seems to me.
Anyway, that's my advice for the day.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Whoops
Sorry, I posted the pictures of the circus in the wrong order and now I can't figure out how to fix it. Go down to "Guess what we did tonight?" and work your way up.
Sorry, my bad.
Sorry, my bad.
But when it was time to play circus
after we got home, this is what they wanted to play:
Yes, no tigers, no camels, no acrobats and no fire eaters. My kids wanted to play circus cat all night. Go figure.
What Douwe did
during the intermission. Daan wanted Absolutely Nothing to Do With That Thing. He retreated behind me and stayed there.
Winter Olympics
Okay, I guess I have recovered from the Winter Olympics.
The kids' school had a Winter Olympic Games at a local skating rink. The whole school had a field trip at the same time.
We will now have a short pause while all the parents who read this blog go off to fetch an Excedrin and a cold pack at the idea of an entire grammar school having a field trip at the same time in the same place.
Somehow in the sweep of events I found myself volunteering to go along as a chaperone. I got a little book all printed up about the Olympic Games. The children are broken up into groups of 6 and will be wearing colored name tags with their group number on them, each group has 2 parents to keep track of the kids and the groups will cycle through the games, fifteen minutes per game with periodic breaks for food and potty breaks and so on. An entirely different group of parents is equipped with plastic bags and extra clothing and is assigned to do nothing but take little kids to the bathroom and change them if they don't make it as necessary. Another group of parents is assigned to man the tunnel which goes from the figure skating rink (where the little kids go) to the larger racing rink where the big kids go.
I was assigned to run the "slalom" game on the ice (game number 5, byt the way, lol). This means you set up eight little cones and the kids skate between them, you know, like in a bike rodeo but then on skates.
I was dumbstruck at the amazing organization of this Plan. It was a work of art.
Well. Except. These kids are between 4 and 6 years old. The canals have not frozen solid enough to skate on in the past 2 years, so they have never been on ice unless it was at a skating rink. So. First was the acqusition of rental skates for everybody who didn't have any. This task was assigned to the group parents, the rest of us were suppsoed to be drinking coffee. But the call for "all hands on deck" went out and we all went trooping over to locate and put on ice skates (Tommy, Stein, stop playing swordfights with the skate blades, those are sharp. Siep, put your coat back on. Nanneke, darling, I love your ice skates with the little princesses on them but it isn't necessary to kick Hanneke to show them to me. /& repeat)
Then half the kids went on the ice and half the kids went to play organized games off the ice (three hours on ice is a long time when you are 4 to 6). The kids off the ice decided the games were boring and wandered over to the ice to watch. The kids on the ice mostly couldn't ice skate so the idea of slaloming was a non-starter. It's hard to slalom on your butt).
Within ten minutes the Plan was in shambles. So everybody regrouped, the Game parents were assigned to cruise around and teach kids to stand up on ice skates. Meanwhile Douwe and Daan got up a good game of bumper cars with the other kids who could already skate or who had double bladed skates with the little cage thingies they have to help starting skaters.
It went on like that. It was fun. Chaotic but fun.
The kids' school had a Winter Olympic Games at a local skating rink. The whole school had a field trip at the same time.
We will now have a short pause while all the parents who read this blog go off to fetch an Excedrin and a cold pack at the idea of an entire grammar school having a field trip at the same time in the same place.
Somehow in the sweep of events I found myself volunteering to go along as a chaperone. I got a little book all printed up about the Olympic Games. The children are broken up into groups of 6 and will be wearing colored name tags with their group number on them, each group has 2 parents to keep track of the kids and the groups will cycle through the games, fifteen minutes per game with periodic breaks for food and potty breaks and so on. An entirely different group of parents is equipped with plastic bags and extra clothing and is assigned to do nothing but take little kids to the bathroom and change them if they don't make it as necessary. Another group of parents is assigned to man the tunnel which goes from the figure skating rink (where the little kids go) to the larger racing rink where the big kids go.
I was assigned to run the "slalom" game on the ice (game number 5, byt the way, lol). This means you set up eight little cones and the kids skate between them, you know, like in a bike rodeo but then on skates.
I was dumbstruck at the amazing organization of this Plan. It was a work of art.
Well. Except. These kids are between 4 and 6 years old. The canals have not frozen solid enough to skate on in the past 2 years, so they have never been on ice unless it was at a skating rink. So. First was the acqusition of rental skates for everybody who didn't have any. This task was assigned to the group parents, the rest of us were suppsoed to be drinking coffee. But the call for "all hands on deck" went out and we all went trooping over to locate and put on ice skates (Tommy, Stein, stop playing swordfights with the skate blades, those are sharp. Siep, put your coat back on. Nanneke, darling, I love your ice skates with the little princesses on them but it isn't necessary to kick Hanneke to show them to me. /& repeat)
Then half the kids went on the ice and half the kids went to play organized games off the ice (three hours on ice is a long time when you are 4 to 6). The kids off the ice decided the games were boring and wandered over to the ice to watch. The kids on the ice mostly couldn't ice skate so the idea of slaloming was a non-starter. It's hard to slalom on your butt).
Within ten minutes the Plan was in shambles. So everybody regrouped, the Game parents were assigned to cruise around and teach kids to stand up on ice skates. Meanwhile Douwe and Daan got up a good game of bumper cars with the other kids who could already skate or who had double bladed skates with the little cage thingies they have to help starting skaters.
It went on like that. It was fun. Chaotic but fun.
It's nice to know we all agree
That I have the cutest kids ever.
This picture is now gracing the web page of the City where we live, under the section of pictures about Carnaval.
Or it was a second ago, it's a slideshow so now it's somebody else.
I downloaded it because if you don't read Dutch you will never find the section of pictures about Carnaval; who desigend that web page anyway? Entirely insensitve to the needs of overseas relatives I say.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
The Olympic Games
The kids' school did a kid Winter Olympics today at the local skating rink. Okay, really it was a school wide field trip to the skating rink. I got roped into being one of the chaperones becasue I can skate and I have an extra pair of skates in a child's size. They are mine, though, around here I have the foot size of an average eleven year old. Land of the Giants, *sigh*.
It was fun. I am exhausted. I'll tell you about it tomorrow, but I wanted the grandparents to see the pictures.
It was fun. I am exhausted. I'll tell you about it tomorrow, but I wanted the grandparents to see the pictures.
Showing off
Douwe walked arounf for probably ten minutes with his skates in his hands, demonstrating that he had his very own skates, and was not required to wear the rental skates.
I asked him why. He said "Hey, I'm a tough guy".
Friday, March 10, 2006
I used to wonder sometimes what God thought
about this or that. But now that I've talked to Him, well I have a whole new perspective.
Click here to speak with the Big Guy yourself.
Seems I remember Him though when His name was Eliza.
Click here to speak with the Big Guy yourself.
Seems I remember Him though when His name was Eliza.
Well let me tell you
What the little demons got up to today. New things every day indeed.
Today I went upstairs to put my little angels in bath. To discover that while nicely playing upstairs they decided it would be really fun to....are you ready?.....
Write and draw all over the bedroom.
They drew on the sheets of the bed the racing numbers and stripes and the steering wheel and even the headlights of a race car. They drew the red-yellow-green starting light thingie on the wall. They drew the guard rail (with a part broken out, evidently by an ex-opponent) on the other wall. On the door they wrote a list of the cars in the race and their numbers.
Daan was evidently assigned to draw the spectators, so there was a series of big smiley faces too, next to the guard rail.
They were in so much trouble. You have no idea.
Actually they were very casual about it and said, "oh, we'll clean it up" and ran for the washcloths. Then it didn't come off. And it didn't come off. And it didn't come off. Daan was still casual at this point but Douwe was in a panic because he was beginning to understand just how much trouble he really was in if this stuff didn't come off.
Well, it was a lot of trouble he was in. However, the Magic Sponge came to the rescue again adn there is no permanent harm done. However, I think it will be a long time before anybody writes on the wall again.
And I think we will be putting Harold and the Purple Crayon away for a little bit: I recognize those spectators.
Today I went upstairs to put my little angels in bath. To discover that while nicely playing upstairs they decided it would be really fun to....are you ready?.....
Write and draw all over the bedroom.
They drew on the sheets of the bed the racing numbers and stripes and the steering wheel and even the headlights of a race car. They drew the red-yellow-green starting light thingie on the wall. They drew the guard rail (with a part broken out, evidently by an ex-opponent) on the other wall. On the door they wrote a list of the cars in the race and their numbers.
Daan was evidently assigned to draw the spectators, so there was a series of big smiley faces too, next to the guard rail.
They were in so much trouble. You have no idea.
Actually they were very casual about it and said, "oh, we'll clean it up" and ran for the washcloths. Then it didn't come off. And it didn't come off. And it didn't come off. Daan was still casual at this point but Douwe was in a panic because he was beginning to understand just how much trouble he really was in if this stuff didn't come off.
Well, it was a lot of trouble he was in. However, the Magic Sponge came to the rescue again adn there is no permanent harm done. However, I think it will be a long time before anybody writes on the wall again.
And I think we will be putting Harold and the Purple Crayon away for a little bit: I recognize those spectators.
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