The letter

Douwe's tooth came out today. He could not however put it under his pillow because he promptly swallowed it. So I told him he could draw a picture of it for the tooth fairy.

He drew a row of teeth with one gap in it. Then he wrote "Tontte" under that, which was probably an effort at "tand", the dutch word for tooth. The he realized he had written the words upside down and started laughing. He said "She will think they are all gone," apparently referring to the tooth fairy. So he started over, drew the teeth again, thought a minute and wrote "totth".

He then announced he was going to read his letter. He held it at arm's length, and said "This is something new! First it was loose. Then it fell out. Douwe".

Then he put it under his pillow.

He is ever so pleased with himself. Especially since the tooth next to the one that just fell out is also loose.

Douwe was very difficult this evening

very emotional, sort of weepy and pissed off at the same time. So he went early to bed, voluntarily as he agreed that he needed to be alone for a bit. He took a nice bath adn got into his jammies and crawled in bed with a book.

Then confessed (while looking fixedly at his book) that there was something bothering him. And he didn't know if he was happy or scared.

It appears Douwe has his first loose tooth.

He decided he was both. But upon hearing about the tooth fairy he decided it was on balance a good thing.

Kung Hei Fat Choi

Happy Chinese New Year. Today is the first day of Chinese New Year, which starts with the second new moon after winter solstice; the last day is about 2 weeks from now, with the full moon. From now on, the days are supposed to get longer and longer, which would be nice.

This is the year of the dog. Celebrate the new year, have your chinese horoscope done, Here.

A girl's best friend

I mean really a girl's best friend. Or her mother or husband or whatever. Even her pet.

There is a company, here, which will take the earthly remains of your loved ones (human or otherwise) and turn them into a diamond.

Well, if you choose your burial site wisely, I suppose you could also have it done for free. But it would take about a billion gazillion years or so. And heaven only knows who would end up with your earthly remains then.

However, you can arrange to have it done by the wonders of modern technology in just about 24 weeks.

If you want to save on costs however (at two thousand bucks for the smallest one, diamonds are pricey) you can also evidently buy jewelry items which are hollow to hold the ashes of your loved ones. You can even get a rosary if you like.

Sometimes I wonder if Google is really a good thing. However, it does certainly lead one to look at things one otherwise never would have thought about. When I encountered this site, I then went to look up some Victorian memorial jewelry, which was mostly made from the hair of the departed. Here in Holland, though, it was apparently more common to make a picture out of hair and hang it on the wall.

I have no objection to any of this, and it is not my intention to mock. Well, except for one thing, I must say that there is reference on this website to the jewelry as a conversation piece. My own feeling is that it might be more a conversation stopper than starter. I mean, what does a relative stranger say when you explain that your earrings are really your deceased spouse?

Or your nose ring, which is what I suggested to my spouse he had in store. He made a reciprocal suggestion about where I should wear a diamond made from his earthly remains. Which suggestion should almost certainly not be repeated in mixed company.

Nel said that given a choice she would still rather become a flower, but said we were welcome to do anything we liked with her mortal coil as she would have no further use for it then.

I am personally still holding out for becoming a nice bell pepper or a tomato, now that the Holy See says we can be cremated, too. Maybe a thyme plant, nobody can kill one after all.

However, I shall have to remarry to pull it off, as I think my spouse's famously vivid imagination is not up to actually harvesting food fertilized with my ashes. Or outlive him, as if my kids remain the bloodthirsty little beasts they are now, they will happily toss me into a nice bolognese sauce.

Time, time, time, see what's become of me, indeed.

A word of advice

Just a word, apropos of nothing.

If it is cold where you are, that is to say, hovering right around freezing with a wind from the northeast* and your nevertheless take your children to the park to fly kites** because you are after all the proud owner of the finest silk long underwear known to man+ and furthermore you have a Really Good Coat ++ and so on.

If all of this is true, may I offer you this advice. However much you really like them, do not wear your red canvas high tops just on a whim.

It's not that it's a frivolous whim. It's that it's a really stupid whim.

Ask me how I know.

*quick, what's northeast of Holland? Right. Really Very Cold Places.

** despite the fact that the wind is not steady enough to fly a kite, but you figure that means they will have to run all over the field to keep the kites up and that's good in terms of wearing them out.

+they are called SilkJohns. Get some now. Can't beat 'em. Seriously.

++ bought for you as a gift from your spouse when you went to Tahoe, almost exactly one month before everything went to shit with his job and you still had That Kind of Money. Good instincts, dear.

School update

Douwe has officially qualified for special ed funding. Well, it's sort of confusing, because he didn't qualify for his language disorder. His language issues are no longer bad enough to be classified as special ed. However, he then got in the back door, catch all exception. Which is, that his performance at school is not commensurate with his ability as measured by the various tests he has now taken, and the language disorder clearly plays into that.

They then tossed in a note which says that it is not clear that this gap would not be bridged by some simple accomodations at the individual classroom level (double negatives really suck, by the way and especially if you are having trouble reasing the sentence anyway) but that it would be in the opinion of the muckety mucks in charge "irresponsible" to wait and see in this case.

I thought that was a strange word to choose somehow which is why it's in quotes. I'm not sure why I think that.

What this means in practice is that we can either enroll him in the speech school or that his current school will get extra money every year (about 4K euros per year, for the nosy amoung us, *grin*) to pay for whatever extra help he may need along the way. How that exactly works is unclear to me; though I am sure I will be finding out soon.

The grant is good for three years. So the interminable testing is now over, at leat for three years, and all that's left is that he has to go back to the neurologist every year for followup. Since his neurologist is the only really helpful person I have met so far, I am not unhappy about this.

We will be keeping him at the Montessori school; it would require a very serious inducement to persuade me to subject the poor child to another school change. I am very much enjoying his current unfrightened, unanxious self and have no desire to provoke the return of that scared little kid I had on my hands for so long.

I have no idea really what plans the school has for this money, but I have no doubt they will come up with something. I would, in their place. I am also pleased because I have been concerned about the possibility that he might be kept back in Kindy because of the language problem and I think this development decreases that possibility.

Bet you didn't know

Today is the feast day of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr. She is one of the seven women in the canon of the mass, a list which bears a suspicious resemblance to a certain pagan assembly of women. Well, you tell me: Agnes (purity), Cecelia (music), Felicity (happiness), Perpetua (steadfastness), Agatha (goodness), Lucia (light), Anastasia (resurrection). Sound like any other group you know of?

On the Eve of Saint Agnes, the story goes, girls can find out their future by plucking pins, repeating an Our Father, and then dreaming of their destiny. For more specific questions, wrapped fruitcake is put under her pillow tonight to cause her to dream of her future husband. In Germany anyway. In England, she is to go to bed without eating and also without looking behind her back in which case she will dream of her future husband; but English girls, always practical, are informed that they will know which man it is by the fact that in this dream she will eat with him. The other guys hanging around in the dream are just for show. German girls, it appears, only dream of one.

You guys think I am kidding, but I have this stuff on the best authority. Google "The Eve of St. Agnes" by John Keats, you'll see. It's in verse 6, for those of you who cannot plow through Keats.
Mary J, are you listening? Got any fruitcake?

Other than your eldest sister I mean.

Also, do remember in future that english girls are far more likely to be fun at a party than german ones.

Speaking of whom, (of whom was I speaking?) does this rendition of the blessed mother with St. Agnes (she's on the right, the one with the sheep) resemble my youngest sister or not?

I mean the blessed mother looks like Mary J, not Agnes. Agnes looks insipid, she always looks insipid. I never could figure out why, I think it must have taken quite a little butt kicker to volunteer for martyrdom at the age of 13. It isn't as though she had no chance to back out, they tried to kill her off three times before she actually died on the third try.

And they sent her off to a brothrel first, though her virginity is said to have been, um, preserved by God. Not the way you think. Because despite, er, dedicated effort, nobody could manage, as 'twere. Seriously, that's the story I got. Sort of the reverse of an Iron Maiden I suppose.

It must be noted that her original feast was on January 28, her birthday. This was changed during Vatican II to the date of her martyrdom. She was then one week short of 14. How we know any of this is a mystery to me also, as she died in the 2 or 300's AD.

Whaddaya mean, they made it up?

Interesting

We have just run into a translation problem of a new kind. It is this: there appears to be no exact cognate in Dutch of the word embarassed when the embarassing thing is not also shameful. All the translations the three of us could come up with involved shame, awareness of (morally speaking) fault.

We were talking about Douwe's little adventure yesterday and I tried to say that in speaking of leaving the school to go home, he was not ashamed of having left; he still thinks he was right on. But he is embarassed that he made his little friend's mother so frightened; he had not expected that and was, well, embarassed.

And I couldn't say it. Neither could anyone else for that matter. Closest we could get was things involving the concept of "regret".

First heartbreak

Daan has learned many new things this week. Today he learned something he really did not like. It was this: while Douwe's friends may like him, they don't always want him to come over to their houses to play, too.

This was hard to learn.

And the mother of Douwe's little friend learned something, too. If you leave Douwe and his little friend on the playground alone because you have a meeting inside the school and you figure it'll only be a minute anyway, you have to tell Douwe very explicitly that if he needs anything he is to come and get you first.

If you do not, and he doesn't know where you are, he may decide that he had better walk home.

Luckily the little friend went and got his mother instead of accompanying him, so he didn't get far.

All in all a most educational day.

Hurrah

Set out the flags, the tsunami of toys which my children have received at regular intervals since October has finally been tamed. You can see the floor in their room and everything.

Both my kids are pretty good about picking up, but not if the room isn't organized in a way that makes sense to them. Which is not the same as "makes sense to me" so sometimes I have to think about things a bit. The duplo Thomas train goes, I am told, with the lego and duplo blocks and not with the trains. The playmobil airplanes on the other hand, go with the helicopter and the cars and trains, not with the playmobil. All the swords, shields, and and so on go with the toy castle and the toy dragons and not with the dress up stuff. But the paper marionettes go in the library which otherwise contains nothing but books and an easel.

I am compliant because, well, it means they will actually put their stuff away. About which to date I have had nothing to complain about really. Well, other than that they resolutely refuse to put their clothes in any form of hamper*. I think they are as yet too young to pull the "in the hamper or not washed" thing; they would both happily go to school in dirty clothes. Since I am more invested than they are, picking up their clothes falls to me.

And taming the tsunami only took about 2 days, lol. Now to start on the piles of paper we have accumulated somehow.

* Of course, I have heard it said that there are adult men who also suffer from a sad disability, to wit, inability to perceive the existence of a clothes hamper for dirty clothes. I would not of course know any personally but I have heard that somewhere it seems to me.

Um, Excuse me?

I had my front teeth fixed yester day. This pleased me a great deal, I haven't smiled in a picture in about a year and a half because one of my teeth was broken off.

We had a number of translation difficulties, which happens every time I try something new. New undertakings, new vocabulary. This can be managed. It's when the cultural gap yawns that you find out what you didn't know.

He sat down and said, "You don't want mwah mwah wah, do you?*

So I asked him what that was. He scratched his head a bit and turned around and came out with a needle. Mwah mwah wah turns out to be Novocain.

So then I sat up straight, which alarmed the nice dentist very much. Dentists prefer their patients prone where they can strap them down when necessary, it seems to me. This was really a new revelation. People have fillings done in their front teeth without Novocain? A lot?

Listen, I am a battle hardened veteran of dental work, and I am an ideal patient. I have been known to go to sleep in the chair. I have a gold tooth which is a work of art+ because I am such a good little dental patient that I was once asked to be somebody's final exam.** I have a very high threshold of pain so they can make little mistakes all they like with no more than an inquiring look from me. Despite the horrowshow dentist of my youth who held my mouth open with a scissorlike thingie ++ which really hurt, I have no dental hangups of any kind. +*

But I do not consider Novocain to be optional. I have no plans to allow anybody to go into my mouth with a Black & Decker without some kind of painkiller. Why would anybody? I mean, other than a couple of creative kinks descibed in the DSM IV, I cannot imagine why anybody would court pain. Does it get you out of a couple days in Purgatory or what?

So I asked the nice dentist if a lot of people had fillings without Novocain. Oh, yes, he said, most people. So I shared with him that I was not like most people, indeed, I was very, very special, and thus required anaesthesia prior to dental work. He was very surprised. But agreeable.

Next week I get my molars filled (I wanted to start in the front because it has been driving me nuts for over a year) and I have already made clear that I fully expect Novocain for them, too. The dentist just shook his head. Agreeably.

Delicate hothouse flower, that's me. It's an American thing, no doubt. Oh, Beautiful, for Novocain, for pain free dental work.....

*mwah mwah wah is what words sound like when you don't know what they mean. Think back to the teacher's voice in Peanuts.

+ Every time I get a new dentist they admire my gold tooth. Sometimes it brings tears to their eyes, such a poem of dental work it is. But nobody can see it but a dentist so its value is somewhat limited. I wonder is, after I die, somebody will dig up my remains (of which it will be a part) and decide that it was in fact a religious artifact and conclude that I was thus a goddess. Probably, huh?

** when dentists get their board certifications, they need to find somebody to lie there and be worked on. It takes forever because at every step some Dental Examiner has to come over and Examine the work, make mysterious notations on a clipboard and then go to one of the other sweating candidates. I told my own candidate lawyer jokes to cheer him up.

++ and thus ruined my chances of ever enjoying "Edward Scissorhands"

+* Well, I did bite him pretty hard and was he mad. I did increase my vocabulary there, too, though not in the same way as yesterday. Dental work is so educational.

Well, today Douwe read his first book

Okay, it was Dick and Jane. To be precise it was "Up Spot up, Go spot go, run spot run, come spot come, silly silly spot" Or something like that.

But he actually read it as opposed to reciting it, so that's something. I guess the whole "look and say" thing was the way to go with him at least for now.

Hey, it worked for my parents, right?

Mr. Wonderful the smaller

had a great day at school. Mr. Wonderful the larger had a difficult morning. It isn't his fault, he has never actually done the "beginning of school" thing. First thing this morning, Thing Two walked proudly out the door with Thing One, swinging his lunch box merrily, to go to school.

Twenty minutes later I got a phone call. It was papa. "He's crying, what do I do?". Daan was wailing up a storm in the background.

This of course violates the First Law of Parenting*. But it was too late to mention that now. I told him to find a teacher. It was my hope that he would get her attention whereupon she would take over Daan and tell Paul to go home, promising to call if he did not calm down. My own experience is that teachers want parents out of there ASAP in this situation. The only alternative really is to commit yourself to staying until the child is not afraid any more, half measures do not work in this situation. And having a parent in the classroom is disruptive.

Ultimately the teacher came over and took over and sent papa home, a bit shaken but none the worse for wear. Then she apparently went and got Douwe, who was in the next room, who calmed Daan down a treat. Or at least, no one called.

So now I guess Dearly Beloved has had his parental hazing.

When we picked them up this afternoon, several mothers came over to me to tell me that Daan calmed right down as soon as Paul was gone (which I know not to be true, he calmed down as soon as he saw his brother). So apparently it was quite a scene. Also that Daan is the cutest little thing they ever saw, which I already knew. I was fairly nonchalant I think from their perspective, but then, my biggest concern was that Daan would withdraw. When he is screaming his guts out that is actually a good sign, it means he thinks he can change the situation to suit him. Then you only have to show him how. When he withdraws, you can pretty much resign yourself to a very long haul of a different kind.

The teacher simply said that he did fine and that it was lovely to see my kids together. She asked him if he would come back tomorrow and he promised he would. This was genius on her part as he has been talking all evening about how she wants him to come back.

Daan said school was great and announced to all and sundry that the teacher was his teacher, his very own.

*Which is of course, Never Let 'Em See You Sweat.

This is a little Dutch boy

In a, um, big Dutch birthday hat.  This is what a Dutch birthday crown looks like. It is made by the teacher and then the birthday boy sits in a little wooden throne painted in many colors in circle time and beats on a birthday drum while the other children sing about sixty gazillion songs about how marvelous he is and how great it is to be 4 and going to Big School.. 

Oh, and that's the other Batman lunchbox which had to be in the picture too.  Looks like he's ready to go.

Daan Rides a Bike

Today Daan rode his bike into town for the first time. This was partly to make up for the fact that I wouldn't let him ride it to school today* and partly because we had to do the start school shopping today and Lufthansa lost my stroller+. He starts big school tomorrow as he is now 4. ** 4 is the Big Birthday around here because at 4 you are Big and go to Big School.

Daan has an unfortunate habit of freezing up when he is frightened or surprised. This may work for your survival out on the veldt somewhere when the nearest predator is a large python, but it really sucks when the nearest predator is a Mercedes Benz. As I feared this morning, when he spots a car while he is crossing the street, he brakes abruptly and freezes, sort of hunches over, and curls up his legs. In short, he gets as close as you can to the fetal position without actually getting off the bike. So I dragged his bike with him on it across the street twice. Though the drivers of the oncoming traffic were apparently familiar with this phenomenon as they mostly were laughing when they passed.

However, a few rousing rounds of "KEEP PEDALING" at strategic moments (just before his brain freezes up, once the feet are off the pedals it is too late) solved the problem on the return trip. He sang a little song which goes "on my bike, on my bike, on my bike, my bike, my bike" the whole way home. He got many indulgent smiles ++ and a new pair of shoes and an ice cream, so Daan was perfectly satisfied with the journey.

* Because the thought of him making the two crossings at rush hour was a little more than I could take, even if I was right there -- I would also be on my bike and therefore further away than the car which hit him.

** Boy, is he 4. A steady stream of guests yesterday plus a birthday party at nursery today guaranteed that he is really, really 4. This practice actually works -- it is seared into his mind that he is, in fact 4. He even ate his dinner tonight in bites of 4 -- 4 beans, 4 bits of potato, and so on, because he is so 4 he cannot stand it.

+ Don't get me started, two strollers in six months lost on a transfer. I must be doing something wrong. Next time I am putting the damn thing in the overhead bin.

++ the Dutch love to see the torch passed on to the next generation of cyclists, or maybe it was that his hat is too big and makes him look like a mushroom.

Daan blowing out, er not blowing out

the candles.  He hid behind me until somebody else blew them out.  Then he insisted they did it wrong and he had to do it.

Cheese

Daan's reaction to eating the cake

Somewhat less problem there.

The Train

The Bike

Funny, funny Spot

D'you know, the humor of the Dick and Jane books is exactly at Douwe's level. He thinks that it is the funniest thing ever when Spot shakes off his coat on Dick and Jane or sneaks Dick's hot dog off the stick when his back is turned. And when Puff falls into the wading pond, well, he just explodes in giggles.

Funny, funny Spot. Silly, silly Puff.

Two days of complaining is enough

So I am not mentioning that we were all wide awake from 2 am to about 5 am. We woke up starving. Tonight I made southern fried chicken and french fries for dinner, which guaran-damn-tee'ed that my kids would get enough protein to stay asleep tonight. If that doesn't work, I'm bringing out the big guns and feeding them turkey tomorrow.

Now the house is scrubbed, the cellar is bulging with things to eat and drink, the flags which say "I'm 4!" are hung, the pin which says "I'm 4!" is made (because the party shop where we buy them is doing inventory, and you are not officially one year older around here until you have a pin that says you are), the birthday cake is made and Spongebob is sitting on top of it with that shit eating grin, (the cake was not baked, you can't bake if you haven't got a real oven, so it's a cheesecake-y thing), the presents are wrapped, the balloons are strung.

No, we haven't got any flags which say "I'm 63!". Nel has no birthday anymore, remember? She gave hers to Daan. She will remain 59 in perpetuity.

The new bike which Oma hunted the whole of Holland for is sitting in the middle of the floor festooned with balloons. (Oma had to hunt the whole of Holland because Daan is small. Very small. So small that the bikes in his size are mostly toys and not "real bikes" at all. Wonder of wonders, she found a real bike that small. Photos tomorrow.)

The train which Grandmary sent is wrapped in the most god awful shiny gold foil paper you have ever gone blind looking at. Which will please Daan endlessly, a real magpie that kid of mine.

And I am going to bed. For a week. Except that I have to wake up in time to take the pictures.

Jet lag sucks part 2

Paul woke us all up at noon, which was pretty easy because...er, better back up. We all woke up at 2 am starving to death. So we trooped downstairs and had something to eat. Luckily we didn't wake anyone because both the night owls in this house (who are not jet lagged) were just going to bed.

Then the boys piled in bed with us and demanded a reprise of Hop on Pop before they would go to sleep. Then they bugged each other for about an hour (I'm bigger. No, I'm bigger. Wah, mom, tell Daan I'm bigger. No, I am bigger) before we all finally went to sleep (If I hear one more word out of the two of you I am going to show you who's biggest.) Then Paul woke us up at noon.

And the two of us who are hard wakers bitched and moaned and carried on and tried to go back to sleep on the couch. The one of us who is not demanded that I unpack his toys, most notably the sword and shield.

Then I did three loads of laundry, separated the sword fighters, cleaned the bathroom upstairs, separated the jousters, cleaned the bedroom, separated the Dark Magicians, cleaned the kitchen, sent Batman and Robin to different rooms to play in, swept the floors, confiscated the scissors from the makers of the Millenium Puzzles, came up with something for dinner, cleaned up the paste from the completion of the Millenium Puzzles, made dinner....my Cinderella complex is kicking in and the fairy freakin godmother is late. My primary complaint is the above mentioned laundry. Now, listen, I did my laundry from the trip, on the trip. Other than 3 sets of jammies I brought home clean laundry. So what laundry was I doing?

The laundry I left, of course, plus laundry since about Tuesday. It appears that Dearly Beloved did his laundry while we were gone and it never apparently crossed his mind to do the laundry that was already dirty. More on that later.

Dearly Beloved did buy me a really thoughtful gift while I was gone, it was a refill for my day runner. This is not the height of romance perhaps, but I do use it every single day, I use it quite a lot. So it was nice. Since I do use it every day quite a lot, I had already bought one. I did not want to tell him that because we Do Not Ever discourage a spouse from buying a thoughtful gift. I figured I would just exchange it and everybody would be happy.

Dearly Beloved did volunteer to do the shopping for food and also for Daan's and Nel's birthdays on Sunday. This got him out of the house while I was doing the aforementioned. All I had to do was make the list and tell him exactly what to get. Which I did except for the little toys to put in the party bags for Daan's party at school on Monday. I put right on the list, "16 toys for party bags".

This is a non-specific item, you see. When I say "exactly what to get" I mean I have to write down exactly what to get.

So he came home and said that he looked everywhere and there weren't any.

Really, not a single toy in all of Holland. None, zip zilch, zero.

So then after dinner I went with Nel into town and we bought the toys. Also the party bags. And we noted that they have Yu-gi-oh tennis shoes now. Something makes me think I am about to be a couple twenty five euros poorer as soon as my elder child sees them -- or Oma tells him where they are.

While I was shopping I went to exchange the day runner thingie. They refused to exchange it without a receipt. So I was going to have to throw it away, becasue Paul never, ever has the receipt, not ever. Unless you mug him when he gets home and wrest it from his hands or save it from the bag when he throws the bag away, forget the receipt thingie, it's a piece of paper and Dearly Beloved has a bad relationship with pieces of paper.

So when we got home, I had to go directly upstairs to say goodnight to Douwe, who had sworn a blood oath that he would stay awake until I came home to say goodnight. While I was doing that, Nel (who is a much more hopeful person than I am) went to Paul and asked him for the receipt. He said he did not have it. Closer questioning (Nel is also more persistent than I am)revealed that he did, miracle of miracles, have it. It was forgotten in his shirt pocket, which he had not washed while I was gone.

Good thing I never finished the laundry today.

Nel took it from him immediately. His father apparently had the same relationship with pieces of paper: my mother in law and I are equally dedicated to Never leaving Bits of Paper in the hands of any bearer of the Y chromosome, due to hard experience. ("Tax return? What would you want that for, we know how much we made. I threw it away. Did we need it?" That sort of thing).

And my sister called, which was lovely. Even if I was brain dead and could not think of a thing to say.

So that was my day, how was yours?

Jiggety jig, redux

Well, we are home. We are alive. Beyond that, I can only say I am getting too old for this.

I feel like somebody worked me over with a stick. I keep thinking "Never again".

Which is as you will recall what I said after Douwe was delivered, so that's what my personal vow is worth, lol.

The kids are yelling for me to come down and eat the yummy chinese food they just went and got. Have I mentioned that I hate the chinese available in Holland?

Ugh. Just ugh. I am so too old for this.