Moving along

On Friday the nice lady from the Speech School who is going to coordinate the acquiring and so on of services to Douwe came over to talk to us. She seems very nice.

Paul did most of the talking and periodic translating, as otherwise I come off entirely insane. It is difficult to explain how we got where we are today to people who are used to things going a certain way if, well, they did not go that way at all. It has taken me some time to work this out.

Here's the certain way: Child goes to school. Teachers or doctor notice something a bit odd. Teachers or doctor mention this to parents. School-associated specialist is called in. Some testing perhaps, conducted by the school. Meeting with parents at which recommendations are made. School fills out paperwork with some input from parents. Recommendation is made for in-place special ed support or referral to a school for specific special needs. Decision is made, yes/no. If yes, parents are given informational interview regarding options, teachers and specialists meet and decide on services to be provided.

Here's our way: Parent goes to school to tell school about child's issues. Teacher dismisses concerns. Several weeks later, teacher notes that indeed there is something odd. School associated specialists are called in. Some testing conducted by the school. Meeting with parents at which recommendations are made denying speech services and recommending special needs school. Parents entirely reject recommendation and instead seek private speech therapy. Many meetings between parents and school (and evidently at school about parents and occasionally even about child). Parents decide to change schools. Parents locate special needs school in the area they think their child has a problem. Parents fill out paperwork and arrange testing. Schools fill out paperwork at request of parents. Decision is made. Informational interview is scheduled.

This nice lady called up Douwe's teacher (who by rights should be the one coordinating the application for special needs support) who said something to the effect that, "Well, I'm not sure he needs any. We could use some advice in dealing with him in certain areas, but he seems to be doing just fine. What are we supposed to do again?"

So then she called us and came over. And I said something to the effect that "Well, his fine motor skills are good, but he has real issues with fine motor planning and also visual motor integration. One of the great ironies of being Douwe is that he has a strongly auditory learning style but he also has a language disorder. So he falls back on kinetic learning. His visual memory is good but not terrifying; his auditory memory is terrifyingly good. His phonics are pretty iffy when tested, because he has a bad way of crossing up his languages. But his reading skills are good. He does rely a great deal on nonverbal information so if he cannot see your face and upper body you have usually lost his attention. But I have no real idea what services he needs in the classroom as I have never had to try to teach him anything in a room with twenty some odd other kids in it. I do think he needs to be taught to read by a person who reads Dutch better than I do, because I am teaching him to read in English right now and it does help".

Poor lady. Luckily for her I didn't get to say that all at once as there were translation issues.

She did say that she feared that if I taught him to read English he might at some time confuse the grammar of the two languages; so maybe I ought to stop. Uh huh. You now, everyone fears that at every step of the way but it never actually happens. Well, anyway, if he does, then I'll stop. *Whoops*, then it'll be too late and somebody will just have to teach him to read dutch so he doesn't confuse them any more.

And the big recommendation of the day was to sign him up for some kind of activity. Like a club or something. Because....? I never got that, maybe there was a because I missed. Because it will give him new people to talk to?

However, this lady will not actually be providing the services as I understand it; her job is organizational and so on. She helps get the Plan of Action written as I understand it. Next she meets with the teachers and principal of Douwe's school. Then we all meet together and write up the Plan of Action. Then we'll see what happens where the rubber meets the road.

But I have this feeling I am going to be written up in yet another file as a pain in the ass mother. Maybe not. We'll see about that, too.

Plant Talk

I got my nose out of my seed catalog long enough to order, so that's good. Before I did, I went back to the local shop just to be sure the prices were in line and the selection was as bad as I remembered. Bleah. It was worse.

I did buy some spinach and greens thingies to put in my cold frame. My cold frame, for those of you who do not know, is actually Ernest's former enormous fish tank with dirt in it. It's good for growing things with shallow roots which do not have to live very long, like lettuces and so on.

I was going to entirely ignore Dearly Beloved's stated preference for cutting flowers in the garden except that, well, they had California poppies and I just couldn't resist. ANd black eyed susans which I love.

My rooftop garden overlooks the patio below and there is a drop of about, oh, twelve or fifteen feet. I am considering trying a blackberry hedge there, like my grandfather had coming over his fence, but I don't know if it will work with the blackberries in a container. I sort of like the idea for other than sentimental reasons, to wit: covering the drop with thorny vines will surely keep the Wild Boys away from it. Would a climbing rose be as happy going down as going up?

While I was hunting around on the web I found the most interesting thing. There is a website on which people who collect seed and grow from seed trade seed. It appears that if you have seed you just put up a listing of what you have; and if you need it you put up a listing asking for it. I may give it a whirl and see how it works out.

Since anybody who does that is likely to be a serious gardener I may also ask of anybody ever heard of dwarf cherries; I can't find any evidence that they exist in Holland and I would surely like to have a couple.

Bragging

I will have you know that I was invited to go for coffee at the home of one of the mothers of one of the kids at Douwe's school today.

My God, social contact with a human, I hardly know what to say.

No, she isn't Dutch*. She's at a guess from India or thereabouts. Her English has that musical British quality which I associate with India anyway.

But unquestionably human. We have chatted a bit about this-es and thats on the playground at pickup time. We both come from large Catholic families so I suppose we can talk about that for the first two years.

*I think the Dutch aren't allowed to invite you home until you have lived here about a hundred years, seems I read that rule someplace. Well, except during Carnival, then they invite you home a lot but that's different and I am too old for that.

Temper, temper

After another weekend involving some frustration over our similarities*, I shared with my spouse that unless he wants to pencil in the very first knock down drag out no hold barred bring out the big guns quarrel of our marriage I recommended in the strongest possible terms that we get on the stick about installing a wireless network.

He looked thoughtful for a moment and said he would do it tomorrow.

I pointed out that if he did it tomorrow then neither of us could work while he was installing things and debugging things and cursing Bill Gates' name and descendants and otherwise swearing in the seven languages in which he can swear.

He looked more thoughtful and said he would do it this week.

Quite possibly the only person on earth who respects the extremities to which their spouse might go in a fit of real temper more than I do, is Dearly Beloved.

So I expect he will do it. This is a good thing because if I actually expressed the annoyance I have felt for the last several days we might see an earthquake in Alaska.

Oh, really? Whoops.

*to wit: when we have work to do we both expect to sit down and do it without stopping and furthermore expect that somebody else, that is, the other one, entertain the children and shove food at them every two hours. The problems of this obsessive style of operating are obvious if you both want to work and you have only one computer.

Nota Bene

As some of you know, I bowed to extreme pressure and allowed my spouse and mother in law to start in on Douwe about his eating habits. After some initial *ahem* boundary setting (read, the child declared war and burned the ground and salted the ground after he burned it, then decided it wasn't worth the trouble and went along) this has worked out fine. I still think it was stupid, but it wasn't so stupid as to be harmful and god knows I do my share of stupid parent tricks.

So guess who got in on the "I don't eat" act? C'mon, guess.

Got it in one. And if Douwe is stubborn, Daan is implacable. Daan, when he sets his mind to it, makes Dowue look easygoing (though he is less dramatic about it. And does it far less often). Some of you may recall that Daan never took a bottle in his life. Never. Not ever. Douwe screamed and hollered and carried on and threw fits and then when it became clear that there was no other option he went along. Daan? Well, may I just say that my mother, battle hardened veteran of six children and four grandchildren, only ever called anybody once about a baby who wouldn't settle down. And that grandbaby was Daan.

So here's how little Daan has solved his problem: every single night for about a week, Daan has had either his father or his grandmother and sometimes both feeding him the bulk of his dinner.

I did not feed that child his dinner when he was an infant. As soon as he could get his food to his mouth he fed himself. He liked it. So I spread a sheet to protect the floor and let him have at it.

So now he's 4. And he is eating right out of their hands. And they like it. Or at least they don't seem to mind.

I have sat in secret admiration while he managed this little feat, I must say. I hope he hasn't noticed, though. I might be next you know.

School update

Well, so I went to Douwe's school and told them he had qualified for special ed. They said "Great! Now what do we do?"

Um.

I had rather hoped that they would tell me. Or at least make some suggestions.

What I did not say was ,"Well how the fuck am I supposed to know? I still haven't figured out what the names of all the agencies I am regularly corresponding with actually mean."

So of course I got on the phone and I made my spouse get on the phone (because at least one of the people I called is difficult for me to understand on the telephone) and then we told everybody what to do.

I have no idea whether what we told them to do is what we are supposed to do or not. I expect if it is not, someone will let us know.

So the next thing is, the speech school will assign us somebody to coordinate getting the services Douwe needs to Douwe. We will then all have a nice little meeting to write it all down with targets and goals and so on and then the coordinator will find the people who will come.

If this sounds a lot like an IEP meeting this is either the merest coincidence or it's because it's what I am familiar with and everybody was looking at me so it's what I came up with. It is my sincerest hope, however, that the coordinator has some suggestions about what services might be useful. Otherwise I'm going to have to make it up and try to resemble someone who has some idea what she is talking about.

However, I must point out that everyone who comes in contact with my child has commented that his speech has advanced quite markedly again in the past three weeks or so. If you would like to go back and look you will find that almost exactly three weeks ago Douwe started to read and this started him off wanting to write things down. I do not think this is a coincidence; I read a lot about this possibility and it is why I discarded my tendency to let things happen instead of pushing them.

So I expect that number one on my list will be somebody to teach him to read and write in Dutch. I really think I should not, I won't unless I just have to.

Okay, so it's February

So what am I doing looking at a seed catalog? Well, I figured (as I do every year actually) that I would start some plants from seed this year. I already have some bell peppers and some kind of squash, which I have by virtue of having kept them when I was cooking. I could probably get tomatoes this way too except that I almost never use fresh tomatoes and I doubt the canned ones would sprout.

But this is a non-approved way of acquiring seeds. So I went to the local, er, farming store I suppose and looked at what they had. Which was not much. Nobody in Holland is seeding right now which ought to give me a clue.

Of course it did not, don't be silly.

So I asked a firend, which is what you do when you have no idea what to do. And she sent me the link to a seed place.

Oh. My. God.

There are 47 pages of just vegetables. I haven't even got to the fruits yet and the flowers will probably take until May when I can seed directly in the ground. I expected the 47 billion varieties of string bean, as the Dutch are mad for beans. I didnot expect to encounter vegetables I never heard of before. The first thing on the list is called an Aardaker, lathyrus tuberosus, which is apparently a root vegetable of which I have never ever heard a word. So I looked it up. There is some debate about whether it is a vegetable or an herb but no argument that it is used to flavor whiskey. An Alsempeer translates as a bitter melon and comes from south america. They say it tastes like hell but has near magical blood sugar lowering qualities. And further more -- they have six different varieties to choose from.

I promise not to go out of the "A"s, though, this is a very large catalog. Clearly I have friends with very discriminating tastes. Hey, I was getting my seeds from the vegetables at the local grocery store, my head is spinning.

They have about seventy kinds of pumpkin, and incude the butternut squash as a variety of pumpkin oddly enough. Only a few of the kinds of pumpkin they list are intended to be eaten, though, and less than five appear to be pie pumpkins so the selection there should be simple.

On the other hand, I may not get to watermelon in time to plant watermelon.

Hey, dad, get that look off your face, it's a big roof. Well, no, I don't actually know anyone who ever tried watermelon in a container but a girl's gotta have an ambition. Watermelon and pumpkin vines on the same roof seems ambitious to me.

Anyway, I'd love to write more but I have to go read my seed catalog. I may never stop reading it long enough to actually order anything.

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.

The kite

Daan's first tree

Making Auumn boxes with Oma

Fire Department Open House

Daan took one long and careful look at this thing and declined to try it, so he's not in the picture.

The Birthday boy

The Birthday Party

Big Softy

Somebody around here has been grousing and fussing and has most strenuously stated that I am not to be getting all extravagant with the toy buying and spil my children rotten.

And somebody also drove sixty miles in rush hour traffic to buy a certain pair of boys a collection of Yu Gi Oh cards, which they are presently insane for.

But I'm not naming names, oh no.

Big Softy.

And in other news

Daan now demands to go to school every day. He cannot go to school every day, nursery here is two days a week. This week I took him with me to Douwe's school where he will go in January. His future teacher tried to get him to come into the class for a bit.

He said: "No, I am three. I am too small to go to school. I will come in January. In January I will be four".

And that was that.

I would like to know what to get him for St. Nicholas and Christmas. He has asked for a motorcycle, and that's all he wants.

Well, other than whatever any other child has in his or her hand, that is.

This just in

Well, the report is in. Douwe's test result is of an average 6 year old. The report says that he blew the top off of the tests of abstract reasoning, concrete reasoning, and pattern recognition. I mean, he tested at the level of an 8 year old, which is as high as the test goes the way it was administered.

He tested as badly on spatial insight (that's what they call it) as he did well on the other parts -- he tested at a 4 year old level there. So the average of these is 6 years old, and he is therefore an average 6 year old. The gap in scores is noted but is, according to this report, "not significant". (huh?)

In the mean time, we have had his report from his school -- they don't do letter grades, they do this very long report thingie. He is there showing at about a 5 year old level, but they have most strenuously noted that his improvement has been very rapid in the couple of months he has been there. They have....are you ready? Sitting down? They have no behavioral problems with him of any kind. They note that there were some problems in the beginning but that as he has come to trust them the problems have melted away.

Melted away.

I'm so happy I could just wiggle.

The only big problem they now have is that they think he can do more difficult work than he is actually doing (and I am sure of it; he is apparently ignoring all reading/writing related work at school while feverishly demanding to do more and more of it at home. I think he wants to surprise somebody).

The funniest part of his school report is that they have these check box thingies, describing various kinds of behavior and skills. You know, like "takes initiative" and "follows directions" and "runs with scissors". Whatever. Then there are these boxes for "Always" "Sometimes" and "Never".

Every box without exception is checked "sometimes".

Just trying everything out, my kid.

Testing, Testing....

As the final lap in the apparently interminable process of applying for special ed help for Douwe, he had to have a psychological screening. I have been being the Mommy From Hell about this for some months now. The child, I pointed out, has seen more specialists than you can shake a stick at, a veritable alphabet soup of persons with letters-after-the name has been consulted. Not a single one has ever even considered a psych screening worth the trouble.

This, I was firmly given to understand, makes no difference. Must Be Ruled Out. Well, okay, I gave up, threw in the towel, folded. Red tape has, after all, been raised to a fine art in this particular aspect of life, so I conceded. He was referred to an Audiological Center for testing, as they have some experience with administering such tests to children with speech and language disorders. Okay. Yesterday, off he went with his father to be tested.

Where they explained to Paul that they were not going to give him the psych test. He was to have an intelligence test instead.

Excuse me?

Well, you see, it is a non-verbal intelligence test, so it's all okay.

Come again? This rules out psychological factors exactly how?

Paul did not ask any of these questions as he is not, in fact, the Parent From Hell. He is a most agreeable parent, he figured it would do no harm even though he thinks testing IQ in children this age provides no meaningful information.

*shrug*. So they spent three hours checking to see if Douwe can't talk because he isn't bright enough to learn to talk. Or something.

The report has not come in of course. But apparently we may rest assured that Douwe is a person of at least ordinary intelligence and this is not the reason he talks funny. I know you were all very worried about this possibility.

I am waiting on the report, but there is one rather odd note. Apparently Douwe did rather well on the tests of abstract and concrete reasoning. He also did well on the part where he was to complete puzzles. And he apparently bombed most dramatically on the two sections which test spatial awareness. Paul did not know why this puzzled the nice lady who administered the test so much, but I do. There are advantages to having done special ed for a living, one of which is that you learn a lot about testing of various kinds. (There is also a downside, which is that you can become rather cynical about testing).

She was puzzled because this is impossible. A child who did this badly on those two sections of the test simply cannot have done so well on the puzzles section. I am curious to see, when the report comes in, whether the interpretation part tries to address this impossibility.

In any event, Douwe enjoyed the testing and there were for once absolutely no behavior issues muddying the water. He was completely exhausted when he came home and for the rest of the day. All he had to say further was that he would rather go to school today instead of going back there if that was all right.

Hey, mom, he put it on

Now, of course, I can't get him to take it off.

While I was on the phone

With my mother yesterday, Douwe came in to interrupt me several times. Daan did not. So after I hung up I went to investigate his absence. I found him in the bathroom washing his hands. And the counter and the floor and everything else. With three kinds of soap and a very guilty look.

Further examination revealed a red something or other on his fingers which would not come off with soap. And on his face.

Forensic evidence suggested that Daan has acquired the fine motor skills needed to open a bottle of fingernail polish. I asked him if he had it in his mouth and he said, "No, I drank the water. It was icky,". His teeth and tongue were clean but his breath was sort of, I don't know, flowery.

So I went to clean by the bed (which was a lovely shade of Red Coat Red) and found the empty bottle of top coat. Most of which was on the floor, but I believe in forensic evidence. And by this time Daan was admitting to having kidnapped the Lindburgh Baby and denying that he had feet in his efforts to give us the answer we wanted to hear.

Did you know that there is no Poison Control number in Holland? Well, actually there is but it isn't available to the public. So I called the hospital where the man said he had to be brought in so they could look and see if he had actually swallowed the stuff since I was not sure either way. Mostly, he said, children do not actually swallow fingernail polish as it tastes icky. (Uh-huh, that's what Daan said, mister).

I asked what they were planning to look at exactly and got no answer. I mean, you cannot exactly see fingernail polish on an x ray can you? And I suppose acetone would show up on a blood test eventually but by then it might be, er, too late, it seems to me.

So off went Daan to the hospital for scientific testing where they decided they couldn't tell either. And they diagnosed him with being the cutest thing ever, he was apparently flirting with everyine in sight and being generally full of piss and vinegar. Happily, the top coat has not got acetone or any other horribles in it (which the doctor found out by calling poison control, grrr). So they said that even if he had swallowed the whole bottle he ought to be all right, gave him a balloon and sent him home.

General update

I think I am going to just stop mentioning my extended absences. You know I am a slacker, I know I am a slacker, what's the point?

In the time of my absence, I have had strep throat (thank you, Daan my darling, but I could have gone all year without that little gift) which turned into my annual (apparently) sinus infection. I knew you are supposed to be surprised by how much you turn out to be turning into you own mother, but that particular wrinkle I admit I had not expected. I expected to hear myself say "Don't make me come over there", for example. I did not expect to move a couple thousand miles away only to discover that I was horribly allergic to something in my new locale. I am, after all, not allergic to anything. Er, was not allergic...

I don't know what it is; I suspect I may be allergic to dry air since the damn thing kicks in as soon as the heat goes on.

Nel has been having back pain for some time, which she tried to bull her way through for about a week but which finally won out, so she is sort of out of the game just now. It is bad enough that she spent an entire day indoors, which is I believe a first in my experience of living with Nel.

Paul bought a new computer game, which accounts for part of my absence recently, those of you whose spouses are occasionally seized with the need to sit for hours and hours before a computer screen killing digital monsters of various kinds need no further explanation.

And we have had Douwe's birthday of course. Pictures to follow. Some kind person gave him two Yu-Gi-Oh videos, so he is now running around with his two Yu Gi Oh cards (which come in the videos) playing pretend Duel Mosters with a pretend opponent. Sometimes with Daan, who defiantly slaps down any squarish object to mount his apparently blistering counterattacks.

Jozet, tell the truth now

This really was written by your spouse, wasn't it?

Thought so.

Seriously, scroll down and read the whole thing, the Q&A is just hysterical.

The Blitz

The Blitz is warming up over here. You may not have noted it, but it is true that the entire Dutch branch of this family was born in the fall or winter. The Blitz, then, starts with Douwe's birthday in October. We move on to St. Nicholas in November, then Paul's birthday, then Christmas, then Daan's and Nel's birthday* and then Ernests's birthday.

So my children will forever associate gift related holidays with being cold? I dunno. But the former days of having Douwe's birthday party out of doors are, I think, gone forever unless we move again. >shudder<.

This year we are planning a party for Douwe's birthday elsewhere, at a local play place. We have the same problem as last year, to wit: it's a new school and he has not really had time to sort out which kids are which. So he just wants to invite the whole class. Less extravagant heads have prevailed, and we are not inviting the whole class. I think in the end we will probably have about eight or nine kids (but I have invitations for fifteen, lol). The other problem is that his birthday falls during the fall vacation, and I have no idea how many people will be out of town for that.

He wants a Superman costume, which I apparently am going to have to make, as Superman is not really hot here and I cannot find one to buy. He also wants a Batman costume, (and Daan of course immediately declared that he wants Robin) but I think they will have to wait until St. Nicholas (well, there is an upside to all these holidays coming together as well). I expect Batman and Robin will also be going to Carnaval, so I had better remember to make them long sleeved, lol.

In any event, I suppose I am going to have to dust off my costuming and prop skills, warm up the sewing machine, and go to work. That's the nice thing about skills, I suppose, they are ultimately rarely wasted. Anyone with any clever ideas about how to make the "s" on superman's shirt moveable, let me know, that's Douwe's latest idea. He wants a costume where the "s" can come off and be stuck on other t shirts as superpowers may be required in a context not allowing for the whole costume.

God, what a mommy I have become. Next thing you know I will be trying to make cookies with a big red "S" in the middle.


*Well, Nel has no birthday any more, having given it as a gift to Daan when he was born on the same day. Or at least that's her story. The odd part is, Nel's youngest son was also born on his paternal grandmother's birthday. Seems to be a family problem.

Daan would like you to know

He can do anything Douwe can.  Or he thinks he can.

The Best Zoo

The pictures are from the Best zoo. Now, whether it's really the best zoo, I could not say, but it is in Best (which is the name of a town for those not up to punning before your first cup of coffee) and so I suppose they are entitled to the name.

It must be said that the playground at the Best Zoo was its most attractive feature for the children, they were in the zoo part of the park probably an hour but in the playground about three hours. So the pictures are all of the playground, as I figure you have probably seen a camel and a leopard and so on.

Douwe's First Tree

I am firmly instructed to publish this picture forthwith.  And to inform you that this is Douwe in the first tree he ever climbed by himself, with no help of any kind.  Other than Daan cheering him on, that is. 

The Queen's House

Been to the Hague to visit the...

No, you are right, "Been to London" works better.  But I haven't, you know.

Daan took one look at this coach and started squealing about the Queen's pirates.  Had no idea he had been studying Ditch history.  What they don't teach in preschool nowadays.

On the train

Prinsjesdag

On the third Tuesday in September, the Queen gives her State of the Union Address, outlining state policy for the coming year. In Georgia, the most frightening forty days of the year ( the length of a legisslative session) is celebrated by the citizenry locking up their daughters for the duration. In Holland, they go out to wave at the Queen as she rides by in her golden coach to make the speech.

Yes, it's a golden coach, I saw it. I took its picture. There is also a glass coach, but I am unsure whether I saw that.* There were however quite a lot of horses, some of them attached to coaches of various types. Eight of them were attached to the golden coach: I am given to understand that that's how you can tell the Queen is in there. ** If she is not there, it is drawn by six horses. +

We travelled on the train and the tram and the bus, and that was sufficient fun for the boys -- for all of them, we could have turned right back around and gone home and that would have been a Great Day. In fact, we spent probably twice as long in the train and the tram and the bus as we did at the actual event, even counting working our way through the crowd.

Dutch Crowd Behavior is, well, a subject all in itself. Dealing with a Dutch crowd usually involves rather more elbow than I am personally comfortable with. It's just bizzare, how did the residents of the most crowded country in Europe get to be incapable of standing in a line? (Dutch queing goes like this: you stand in line. A dutch guy sort of sidles up in your vicinity and stands sort of roughly next to you. Another one wanders around and works his way in almost but not quite in front. Pretty soon they are all sort of clustered in a gang.)

Why is it so difficult to comprehend that, if you all rush in a body into a train car which just opened, you will wind up pushing the people trying to get off, back on? I think it's the last bastion of their barbarian genes manifesting themselves. It's the only conclusion I can draw. In all other ways the Dutch are mild and rational in manner and even in temperament. In crowds, they just seem to sort of lose their equilibrium and just want to form a pack and go hunting.

After the parade whisked by, we went over to the palace and had a nice cup of coffee. No, just kidding. But both boys declared that this was their intention, after we told them that the building we were going to was the Queen's house. However, they were mollified by a bit of fancy marching in ranks by the palace guard.

I know that I am old now. Because I stood there looking at the palace guard (no fancy ass swords or silly hats here, they carry very businesslike machine guns) and could not stop thinking that at least four of them were far too young to be handling those weapons under any circumstances. They looked hardly old enough to shave to me.

* The glass coach is called that because the carving on the coach is covered in glass. The coach is not, alas, made of glass. The golden coach is also not made of gold I am afraid, though it is gilded wood.

** Well, you can tell she is in there by the hat. Queen Beatrix wears, I have to say, the weirdest hats I have ever seen. She puts the Amen Corner of the local AME Zion to shame, and that's saying something. However, a significant hat correlation is noted by me this year: The ladies attending the big speech in Parliament have taken to also wearing weird hats due to the Queen's known weird hat proclivities. This year, a significant number of them were not wearing hats like the Queen's (which tend to be sort of cakelike and flattish) but were wearing big, floppy ass hats, like Princess Maxima, the daughter in law, wears. Were I a journalist, I would have written a long article speculating that this development signals a switch in loyalties to the next generation as it were. But I am not so I keep all such opinions to myself.

+For a person who has never before actually seen the Royal Progress in the Golden Coach, Nel knows quite a lot about it.

Golden

I have not had anything to say for several days about my offspring. This is because there is nothing to say. They go to school, they come home.

Well, this morning one of them appeared ready to go to school in pajama pants, blue galoshes, a superman t-shirt and a cape. He was persuaded to doff all but the t-shirt as I have had more than enough discussions with school officials about what we should do about my child's extreme weirdness having to do with costuming himself and appearing at school claiming to be various fictional characters.

I mentioned this (not the conversations; the costume) to his teacher today after school. She assumed I talked him out of it because it was too hot for long pants and galoshes and said she hoped he would wear it to school when it cooled off as it would be fun to have superman in the classroom.

I think if we ever move, we will have to commute back to this school, they are so weird they think my kid is normal, lol.

Have I mentioned how much I really like having nothing to say?

It also appears that Daan may be going to the Montessori sooner than expected. They have changed the law dealing with nursery and they are all going to be preschools now, that is, they will be part of the school administration. You are thus supposed to send your child to the preschool associated with the school you will send them to. So he should go to the Montessori preschool.

I decided not to do this, because the new law goes into effect on October 1, and he starts school in January. So he would be changing schools and teachers and little kids in October and then again in January, which made no sense to me. However, we have had a call from the Montessori school suggesting that this may be required -- by the law, not by them. (Unless I just lie and say I have not decided where to send him, which did not apparently occur to anyone as a possibility. I love honest people, not being one).

However, they appear to be simply making a "group 0" which would be added to the present group 1/2 -- same teachers, same classroom. If this is how it works, I don't think it makes any difference whether he starts in October or in January.

Next week there is a meeting we are to go to which will allegedly explain all this and the plan they have to handle it. But I cannot help noting that they have a plan, whereas the folks at nursery he is now going to keep telling me they have no idea how this will work as a practical matter.

I do have a strong preference for people who have a plan, even while I cynically doubt the ability of plans to really pan out. And I always have the option of keeping him home for three months, though I don't think he would like it.

But I also am fully aware that if you are three, a mediocre nursery where you love your teachers and have a good time is better than a great nursery where you don't know anybody. At least for two months (December doesn't really count, vacation and all).

Well, that was easy

I am, in fact, the laziest potty-trainer who ever bore children. I quite understand my deficiency in this area. And training Daan has loomed like a >something really terrible< for some time now. Because along with my general lack of ability or commitment in this regard, you must add the factor that the naked baby technique (the only one that really worked for me last go-round) was not an option. It is, after all, not my sofa he would be peeing on in the event of accident.

However, I decided last week to just grit my teeth and start. He is three and a half, it is well past time. As usual, I did nothing but talk about it a bit.

On Thursday, Daan tried using the toilet at school I hear. He didn't mention it at home.

On Friday, he declared that he would use the potty but wanted to keep the pullups on.

On Saturday, he asked for cloth pants.

It is now Monday. He has had exactly zero accidents.

My heavens, what an accomodating child I have got.

What is the difference between a coyote and a louse?

One howls on the prairie.

Douwe's school requests* that we buy a thing called a luizenzak. This translates directly as a louse bag, and I figured I was mistranslating as nobody would buy a bag to put lice in. Turns out I was translating correctly; it is a sort of drape you hang over the jackets on their little hook to prevent the lice from jumping from one jacket to another while they are hanging on the little row of hooks. Hats are however hung on a different hook entirely and not under the louse bag.**

Huh?

This sort of smacks of wild tales of Victorians putting skirts on piano legs. I think little boys spend most of their day licking one another, at least that is the conclusion I have reached by virtue of the sheer number of runny noses which appear around here abut 4 to 7 days after the start of a new school year. So I cannot really see the utility of a louse bag.

However, Douwe has, as of yesterday, given up Pluk and the hat. He declared yesterday that he is a Super Hero and insists upon wearing his t shirt with the Superman logo on it. Since he went hunting mushrooms with Oma this afternoon after school, he is not wearing the thing tomorrow as it has to be washed.

Well, I cannot really complain can I? If they can convince him that he is super as opposed to homeless, then I guess I can cough up the couple euros for a completely useless (it seems to me) louse bag.

Maybe he can use it for a cape.

They also read the Dutch version of "The Rainbow Fish", a book of which I heartily disapprove. Though it is enormously popular.

For those of you who have missed this phenomenon, it is about a lovely fish with a lot of shiny scales. The other fish in the neighborhood envy and covet his scales. They then conduct a panhandling campaign to get Rainbow Fish to give up his scales -- to them, of course. Eventually, the other fish form up into a gang to force him to give up his scales. Thus follows a little public shunning culminating in the social ostracization of Rainbow Fish. Ultimately, under pressure from the octopus who strings together a couple of cliches about how you have to give up what you have to be truly happy+, Rainbow Fish succumbs and gives up all of his wealth, er, individual uniqueness, er, scales, one to each of the others. So now they all look like crap, but they do have a bit of formerly shiny dead scale to carry around, and at least the competition has been decimated. So everyone is now truly happy.

Let's see, there's a lesson for you: you have to give people things for them to like you. Here's another: You have to change yourself to be just like everybody else for other people to like you.

Okay, this is probably not the way it is described in the official review from the publisher.

Anyway, that these things are mostly true in real life does not mean I think it's a really good way to start with kindergarteners. I'll stick with "The Grumpy Ladybug", thanks, at least in that one the other bugs threaten to kick the offending society member's butt.

However, I suppose I shall refrain from explaining the moral bankruptcy of a children's classic to my kid's teacher in the first week. They already think I am a little touched. I cannot imagine why.

Besides, he made a little collage of a fish with one shiny scale and it is hanging on the wall with all the other collages made by all the other kids. So I guess I will refrain from explaining its moral bankruptcy to him, too.

*please read, would require you to buy if it were legal but it is not so instead relies upon the time-tested methods of social control and peer pressure.

** I know this becasue the child has been going to school as Pluk -- remember Pluk? Pluk is the fictional little boy Douwe has, er, had taken into his heart as his new avatar. Pluk wears a red baseball cap which I am sure everyone in Atlanta remembers, um, fondly as he refused to take it off for the pictures. He takes it off for school, though, and hangs it on the un-louse bagged peg.

+ I am aware that Jesus said something like this, too. But I think he said you were supposed to give up your possessions, not your physical attributes. It doesn't say "If thine eye offend the other fish, pluck it out," after all.

Tweedle Deedle Dumpling

My son Daan/Mopped the floor with his trousers on/One shoe off and one shoe on/Tweedle Deedle Dumpling my son Daan.

I did however change his socks before he went to school this afternoon smelling of floor cleaner, lol.

Ugh

I just remembered why I don't like school time and it has to do with my alarm clock going off at an obscenely early hour every day. Which is why I have not been especially profound recently.

Also why I got into the habit of frumpiness, it takes precious seconds to check if your clothes match and your socks have no holes in them, seconds which I could more profitably spend blissfully snoring.

What am I doing living somewhere I have to wear socks in August, anyway?

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?

I went to the eye doctor today. It appears that my vision has, for the first time in my life that I can recall, improved.

Or that my contacts have been too strong for about a year, hard to tell.

I went because I was having trouble seeing small print near my eyes. To be specific, I couldn't read the card in Trivial Pursuit without holding it at arm's length. I thought it was time to be nearsighted and farsighted at the same time which meant reading glasses or bifocals. Many eye doctors have promised that this is in my future. *

After much testing and being sent from one person to another, it appears that my prescription of -7.5 was too strong. I wear a -6.75 apparently.

The doc (whom I ended up with after apparently puzzling several opticians and their automated instruments) He asked me if it was usually in the evening, and I agreed that it was always in the evening. He says that's because my poor little eyes have been working very hard all day to focus and in the evening they are just slap worn out. Or some such a thing. I can indeed read tiny print close up, he gave me a card to be sure.

He gave me a pair of the new ones to try for a couple of weeks to see how they work in different light and so on and sent me on my way.

If I live long enough do you think I'll get to 20/20?

*Of course many eye doctors have also promised that I would be entirely blind in short order, so what the hell do they know?

Help

I found myself in a perfume store today unable to decide between Cool Water and Echo.

Help, I think I'm going down for the third time. Somebody call Gloria Steinem on the emergency phone.

I want you all to know that I think all of this is purely opressive and intended to distract women en masse from important matters by causing them to think that it matters whether they buy Cool Water or Echo.

Or that by doing so they are making some kind of statement about their person- hood.

Or that by doing so they will be magically altered from thir real boring selves to some kind of delicious and exotic creature.

Fuck that, I am already a delicious and exotic creature and do not require the house of Davidoff to be it.

So whadda ya think, Cool Water or Echo?

Splash. Splash.

Happy Dance

I still habitually think of Douwe as starting kindie, even though they don't have kindie here. They have group one and two, which are the rough equivalent of prek and k in the same classroom.

Play school is optional and is generally 2 half days a week from about age 2 until your 4th birthday, whereupon they have a big party and pack you off to group one, whenever your birthday might be. It seems to me it must be a very abrupt transition, from 2 half days a week to 5 full days. However, I am told that this is handled by the fact that children are not required to go to school until they are 5. So in that in between year, parents can send them as often or as seldom as they like.

I was all set to send Daan to the play school associated with the Montessori, as he is already registered to start there in January when he turns 4. Then it occcurred to me (duh) that this meant a new school and new teachers and new kids for September to December, then another new school in January, which seems to me rather a lot of school change. So now I have 2 kids in 2 school in opposite directions in a car free kind of culture. So we bought one of those carts that hangs on the back of the bike, which the kids think is the coolest thing ever. I suppose I will get good legs out of it and become a truly Hot Mama for the first time in my life. But don't hold your breath.

Daan was overjoyed to go back to school, though he walked around with the eyes-as-big-as saucers thing for about five minutes, until his teacher noticed this and got out the toy cars and the racetrack carpet. The it was "so long mom, I'm busy, see you later". This is why he loves her, she knows just what to do and does it sort of unobtrusively. It is also one of the reasons I kept him there for the duration.

Daan is rather sad that Rowan and Max are not there, they turned 4 over the summer and went on to group one. He has asked me to invite Rowan in particular over to play. If I can find his mother, I suppose I will, I like Rowan, too. Rowan is a real boy, a bouncer, so this will require either an outdoor venue or putting up all the breakable objects.

ANd speaking of holding your breath, Douwe cleared the first day hurdle without clipping the fence. According to his teacher he pretty much did what all the other kids did, anyway, and she didn't have any problems. She has no idea she just witnessed a miracle.

However, here's the big news (which is very small news indeed, so I count on your indulgence of my momminess, lol). Douwe has been for an entire year highly resistant to drawing and writing. He made about 10 drawings the entire year last school year, despite much (really very much. quite a lot really) effort on the part of his teachers. He made tiny little marks on the paper and then tore them up.

This made no sense to me, as I have literally boxes of his drawings from school in the Ststes prior to the age of 4, and he has been able to write his name for nearly 2 years now. But there you are.

So yesterday his teacher said to me, "I thought you said he didn't like to draw?" and showed me the drawing he made. At drawing time, with the other kids apparently. Okay, it was not a Picasso; Sort of a Mondrian really, with red crossed lines on white paper. But then he came home and just before dinner got out the paints himself and sat down at the kitchen table and painted a picture of Oma. With a head and ears and hair and socks and shoes and the whole shebang. Then he made a picture of himself with "Douwe" written underneath. While I stood around and pretended this was a completely ordinary thing for him to do.

The picture of himself has a great big smile, which takes up two thirds of the paper and goes right off his face. So I'd say it is going well thus far.

Ancient Chinese Secret

As some of you know, my anxiety levels are peaking about back to school, as another year like last one with Douwe and I am going to pack it in and home school the child and then go to jail probably because homeschooling is very far beyond not approved of here.

While of course pretending not to be at all concerned about the subject in order to slide under the finely tuned Mommy Radar possessed by my children.

So because I am an eminently sensible and stable person I of course consulted the I Ching on the matter and here is what it said:

The problems are from within. You need a change of attitude regarding those around you. Avoid suffering through altruistic behavior. To cultivate yourself, you must contemplate from a broader prospective. Narrow and superficial views do not generate a person of public responsibility.

Okay, which one of you has tampered with my yarrow sticks for crying out loud?

Did I miss something or is this a very fancy and suitably enigmatic way of saying, "get over yourself"?

Back to School

It must be time to go back to school, because kermis is in town. I would say the carnival, because that's what it is, but then since we also have Carnaval just before Lent, I wouldn't want to confuse anybody. But anyway, this is the summer travelling carnival which is in many ways the same all over the western world. Tilt-a-whirls and knock down the cans and cotton candy and throw the ball through the hoop and merry go rounds and a fun house and so on. It began Friday at 7 pm and goes on until Wednesday.

It is always, I am told, the weekend before and the first week of school in this town. That's how you know it is time to go to school in these parts, kermis is in town. There are worse ways, I imagine. I have it on good authority that people save money the entire year for kermis, sort of like a Christmas Club account. Which would be sensible, as you find that a lot of money goes out in "6 rides for 3 euros" repeated for every ride you pass. Oh, well, Kerstmis, whoops, sorry, Kermis comes but once a year.

Kermis is set up right through the center of town, not on its outskirts which is the setup I am more familiar with in the States. If you need a loaf of bread after 2 pm, your shopping trip is enhanced by the music of the carousel and the squeals of little children trying to grab the bouncing ball. The ball is suspended over a moving ride on a pulley which is bounced around by the carnival workers -- if you grab the ball and hold it you win another ride for free. The Dutch version of the brass ring, I think. The workers are very good at preventing the same child getting it more than once.

The hip tweens and early teens spend all their time in the fun house -- in fact, you can buy a card which gets you unlimited entree for 5 hours at a time and most of them have one. The bad boys and girls, the ones in the denimn jackets and multiple piercings who tell their parents they are going "out" (oh, how I longed to do that as a teen; no chance I am afraid, I think my mother would have pulled me back into the house by my long and silky hair had I tried it) spend all their time working out their adolescent angst on the bumper cars. Luckily for my own offspring, who have not yet attained that age or attitude, there is a seperate bumper cars ride for little kids.

There is no Tunnel of Love, unless you count the benches outside the bumper cars, lol. There are indeed very few sedate rides of any kind; this kermis runs heavily to the "stuff that spins around and goes upside down very fast while making lots of noise" kind of ride. Many rides have a musical sound track, and the people who work the rides can slow them down or speed them up and often do so in synchronization with the music, which is a new experience for me.

A week ago at a fair in a nearby town, my elder child had to work up the courage to go on an attraction where you jump on a trampoline with bungee cords attached to a belt at your waist which enables you to jump very high and turn flips and so on. By the end of today there were no further misty eyed mommy moments watching him work up his courage I am afraid. He is now all in and gung ho for all things which go very fast in circles and bounce a lot -- the approximate turning point is in the photo above, actually.

By the end of that ride, Nel was terrified, Paul was terrified (becasue it turns out Douwe is barely over the weight limit for the ride and so kept sort of tending upward with the centrifugal force, a fact I am very glad I did not know while watching the ride), and Douwe was game for the next "spin me around until I nearly barf" ride. I shall have to save my tristesse for Daan, who wants to go on the barf rides but is not nearly heavy enough to keep him in the seat. He did, however, enjoy the haunted house ride which sent Douwe bolting for the exit -- which Daan pointed out repeatedly.

My, that sibling thing starts early, does it not?

They went in the Hall of Mirrors with their father yesterday, which is a sort of mirror maze with one way glass so that onlookers can stand outside and watch you be hopelessly lost. This is good, becasue Nel took them in today, and well, Nel's sense of direction is indeed better than my lost-in-a-paper-bag one, but not by much. So they went in in this order: Nel, Daan, Douwe. They came out in this order: Douwe, Daan, Nel.

And I even made the ultimate sacrifice and went on one of the make-you-barf rides with Douwe. Which is how I knew they coordinate with the music. I got to be spun around and raised up and down and otherwise moved around at high rates of speed in three dimensions to the sound of dance music today and all I have to say is this: he enjoyed it very much, but I should have held off on eating until afterwards.

Resembling a female person

I have bought shoes. I have bought pants, which pants have flared bottoms and this beady shit all over the right lower leg from knee to ankle. Which makes them very difficult to sit in, as I always sit with my right leg curled up under me. * So I can't do that in them and have to sit like an adult person. And a shirt with a hood (in Dutch it is a capuchon, which is much more hip, don't you think?) and even a denimn jacket which is very closely fitted and has lapels out to there and very long french cuffs and really cries out to be worn over a really fluffy skirt, maybe even a petticoat if I can find one. I replaced my makeup, all of which was older than my eldest child. I even painted my freaking nails, and not a french manicure but a frosted dark rose color. And I took Nel with me shopping, which means none of it cost that much (Nel has a terrible allergy to paying retail and will go to almost any lengths to avoid it).

It's all hip, and it's mostly colorful. Not through any fault of mine but because I now wear a girls' size in clothing and they do not apparently make girls' clothes in frumpy. At least not where Nel shops. Alas.

I suppose, after about six years, it is high time I began to resemble a female person in some way. I may even actually wear the shirt my sister gave me, though it has a neckline with goes right down to my navel and not, let's face it, very much else. And I have no, er, line to put in it. Which brought Nel to the subject of my undergarments which are a scandal I am given to understand except for one dark blue set (thank you, sister #3 ) and one purple set (thank you, sister # 1).

To prevent my sisters' bursting out with tell-all stories of my unrelieved frumpiness, may I just say that I was never a clothes horse, okay? I miss uniforms, to tell you the truth, at least all I had to worry about was whether they were clean. I enjoyed the uniform aspect of being a lawyer. (The good news is, tailored in in this fall, so I get to wear all my suit jackets again, lol). However, even I must admit that beginning with the cycle of preganant, nursing, pregnant, nursing, chasing Very Dirty Boys I have exceeded even myself in frumpiness.

I am unrelievedly lazy in matters of appearance. No matter what I do, I shall never hold a tiny candle to the roaring bonfires that are my lovely sisters, so I have thus far settled for Cleans Up Nicely. ** Well, I do clean up nicely. I am presentable, I rarely actually embarrass anyone. But you know, I mostly Just Don't Care.

However, I just want to say to my Very Fashionable Sisters (and you know who you are) that I have for the past six days actually worn at least one completely pointless accessory item every single day (apart from my wedding ring, I mean). Sometimes even more than one. I even tied a bloody scarf around my neck which irritated me no end but did look very nice, so I did not impatiently yank it off and stick it in my pocket after 20 minutes as usual, lol. And I have worn at least some form of entirely purposeless artificial pigmentation on my face every single day as well. ***

So there. I shall next go out and buy a pair of purple suede boots with fringe on them and revive the Stevie Nicks look. Oh, maybe not, I am really too short to pull off all that hangly dangly stuff. And also too impatient.

* Because I am too short for a regular size chair and my feet do not reach the ground in them, which problem was not improved by moving to the Land of the Giants, that's why.

**I trust you ladies will remember this comment come Christmas.

*** And to my worry wart father I would like to add that this was in addition to the sunscreen, which I really do actually wear due to our shared genetic legacy of a certain absence of natural pigmentation, lol

The camera

I am pleased to report that the camera was found and was not at the bottom of the harbor despite certain dire predictions. It was found still ensconced in its waterproof and childproof bag (which was in another incarnation the insulated bag they gave me at the hospital to carry expressed breast milk around in, it makes an ideal camera bag) in, as The Much Beloved said, "the last, the very last place I looked,".

Well, duh. That's where everything is.

Pech

"Pech" is an excellent Dutch word, it has a satisfying sound when you say it. It means, oh, something like "bad luck". Not deadful, looming bad luck but really annoying bad luck. Like the blade on the boat breaking plus the repair guy being on vacation, which together mean we do not get to have the vacation we wanted to have. At least not when we wanted to have it. Or like this: you go out on the bike to get bread. Because it is only two minutes away you carry an open, canvas bag to put the bread in. Just as you step out of the store, the heavens open and it begins to pour buckets. * That sort of thing.

Or perhaps you have left your camera on the boat when you are going to the Breda balloon fiesta and thus will just have to remember what it looked like. And your darling husband went to get it but it is not, he assures you, there and is lost forever and probably Daan threw it off the side right after the flag. Which you find hard to believe, he wasn't gone long enough to have looked in the whole boat and you could have stuck it nearly anywhere to keep it safe.

Hopefully you, er, I did not stick it anywhere really clever or the kids'll be graduating high school before I find the stupid thing again.

*ahem*

The festival was fun, even though owing to rain there was not a balloon in sight. Well, there was one lying on its side on the ground which was for people to go into and look around. Lucky for us we were amoung the first in, as we were thereafter chased out and the attraction was closed -- too much wind making it hard to keep the thing in place.

But it was fun, sort of a very small town carnival thingie, with moon walks and ball pits and really crappy food. Dutch snack food when it is not fried involves Coca cola served warm and hot dogs served cold -- I always want to yell "Why do you think they call them HOT dogs, you moron?" but I have not yet done so. Ugly American and all. Trying not to let down the Side.

And furthermore they serve hot dogs (when bread is incuded at all, some places you are treated to a room temperature hot dog wrapped in a napkin and otherwise naked) on french bread rolls, which is really a violation of the laws of nature.

In any event, without going into it, it has been a week which has caused me to wonder whether Mercury is not going retrograde -- when traditionally messages go astray, things get lost, and the poltergeists are generally on the rampage. In other woods, Pech. Just Pech.

If it does not get better I am going to have to resort to drawing a picture of the black cloud plaguing me on a piece of paper and mailing it to a fictitious address. Well, or a real one, if any of you really piss me off this week, lol.

*This actually happened, on the same day we had to come home from vacation (which is why there was no bread in the house). I actually started laughing, as the whole day was beginning to resemble a bad movie.

The Breda Balloon Fiesta

The Breda Balloon Fiesta is this weekend. We will probably go, since we will not be sailing. Somehow this event has made me realize: I have been here for a whole year.

This makes no sense, I have been here for fourteen months. But we went to the Breda Balloon Festival last year. And now here it is again. I have no idea whay this seems so significant all at once. But there you are; the Breda Balloon Festival as a marker of time.