I got home to find that my lettuces are about the size of my thumb and I have a whole row of cornflowers and carnations and furthermore I have a pumpkin seedling poking its little head up.
I was so happy I considered sending out a birth announcement. Boy am I ready for Spring to be here.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Didja miss me?
Sorry about being so coy about the whole thing. Despite being tucked away here in my boring little corner of the Internet I just cannot bring myself to announce to the entire world that we are going on vacation for a week.
Here's where we went.
Centerparcs is sort of, well, like camping near a rec center only you get a house. It was a nice house. The food, I have to tell you, is terrible. I am not demanding on a family vacation, I require only food sufficient to maintain life. Um, I think people must cook in those little houses a lot because the food in the restaurants was really very bad.
According to Douwe, the best part was the swimming. We can now forget all that stuff about him being afraid of water and so on, um, he's way over it. A week ago I thought I had better get him into swimming lessons because otherwise he was going to be nervous of water the rest of his life; now I have to teach him to swim post haste because otherwise he is going to scare me out of a decade of my life. He has figured out how to dog paddle and to swim underwater and a sort of half backstroke (he kicks well; his arms he mostly flails about) and that's good enough for him, he was cannonballing into the water off the walls and riding the white water rapids waterslide and going snorkeling and god knows what all.
He has firmly announced today that the idea of a swim diploma* is stupid and that I am going to teach him to swim freestyle and breast stroke. Tomorrow.
Daan dislikes swimming generally, though he enjoys getting in the wading end of the pool. I have viciously prevented everyone from "coaxing" (please read, tossing) Daan into the water as some of you may recall that this is (in my opinion) the reason Douwe has been afraid of water for so long and I have no plans to have to nurse a second set of phobias back to health. Daan is far more determined than his brother ever dreamed of being and I cannot even imagine how I would get him back into the water after the coaxing Douwe got. So Daan got to play in the wading pool and eat hamburgers. According to Daan the best part was (are you ready?).....
Bowling. Daan loves bowling. I really hope the pictures I took on the disposable camera came out because Daan really, really loves bowling. I know the ball is three times as big as his head; he doesn't care. He gets behind it on his knees, lines the ball up carefully with the little marks on the lane and pushes as hard as he can. Daan brought down the house every time we went bowling, everybody was cheering him on.
*Around here everybody gets a swim diploma. Everybody. You have to have a swim diploma. This apparently means you go to swim lessons and pass some tests which mean you can swim. If you can already swim, I hear, you still have to take some kind of swim test at school at around 8 and if you pass they issue you a belated swim diploma. An honorary swim diploma? I dunno, it's like a passport or something I think. Paul's is filed with his childhood well visits and immunization record; evidently it's that big a deal. But I can't figure out why you can't just, you know, learn to swim.
Here's where we went.
Centerparcs is sort of, well, like camping near a rec center only you get a house. It was a nice house. The food, I have to tell you, is terrible. I am not demanding on a family vacation, I require only food sufficient to maintain life. Um, I think people must cook in those little houses a lot because the food in the restaurants was really very bad.
According to Douwe, the best part was the swimming. We can now forget all that stuff about him being afraid of water and so on, um, he's way over it. A week ago I thought I had better get him into swimming lessons because otherwise he was going to be nervous of water the rest of his life; now I have to teach him to swim post haste because otherwise he is going to scare me out of a decade of my life. He has figured out how to dog paddle and to swim underwater and a sort of half backstroke (he kicks well; his arms he mostly flails about) and that's good enough for him, he was cannonballing into the water off the walls and riding the white water rapids waterslide and going snorkeling and god knows what all.
He has firmly announced today that the idea of a swim diploma* is stupid and that I am going to teach him to swim freestyle and breast stroke. Tomorrow.
Daan dislikes swimming generally, though he enjoys getting in the wading end of the pool. I have viciously prevented everyone from "coaxing" (please read, tossing) Daan into the water as some of you may recall that this is (in my opinion) the reason Douwe has been afraid of water for so long and I have no plans to have to nurse a second set of phobias back to health. Daan is far more determined than his brother ever dreamed of being and I cannot even imagine how I would get him back into the water after the coaxing Douwe got. So Daan got to play in the wading pool and eat hamburgers. According to Daan the best part was (are you ready?).....
Bowling. Daan loves bowling. I really hope the pictures I took on the disposable camera came out because Daan really, really loves bowling. I know the ball is three times as big as his head; he doesn't care. He gets behind it on his knees, lines the ball up carefully with the little marks on the lane and pushes as hard as he can. Daan brought down the house every time we went bowling, everybody was cheering him on.
*Around here everybody gets a swim diploma. Everybody. You have to have a swim diploma. This apparently means you go to swim lessons and pass some tests which mean you can swim. If you can already swim, I hear, you still have to take some kind of swim test at school at around 8 and if you pass they issue you a belated swim diploma. An honorary swim diploma? I dunno, it's like a passport or something I think. Paul's is filed with his childhood well visits and immunization record; evidently it's that big a deal. But I can't figure out why you can't just, you know, learn to swim.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Regularly scheduled programming
may be interrupted in the next few days. All is well, but I may be offline for a week or so.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
And by the way
My boys, who do not care at all about what they wear ever, have suddenly decided that they cannot leave the house without - are you ready?
Colored gel in their hair making it stick straight up.
Daan favors blue to match his eyes, in a stripe right down the middle of his head so it looks like a blue mohawk.
Douwe currently favors green, only in the very front so you can see his widow's peak. But he asked me to go buy orange today, because it will show up better and he looks good in orange. He does look good in orange, but I wasn't really thinking of his hair.
Oom Ernest took us to the woods near his house today and he, well. He said as much good as he could manage with a straight face about the fact that his nephews were proudly sporting blue-and-green mixed spikes on top of their heads.
I was very impressed, actually. Way to be supportive, Oom Ernest. Nicely done. You know, the rest of you, "really colorful" can also sound very much like a compliment if you inflect it right.
I wonder how their teachers keep a straight face: they inform me that their teachers really love the spikes.
Colored gel in their hair making it stick straight up.
Daan favors blue to match his eyes, in a stripe right down the middle of his head so it looks like a blue mohawk.
Douwe currently favors green, only in the very front so you can see his widow's peak. But he asked me to go buy orange today, because it will show up better and he looks good in orange. He does look good in orange, but I wasn't really thinking of his hair.
Oom Ernest took us to the woods near his house today and he, well. He said as much good as he could manage with a straight face about the fact that his nephews were proudly sporting blue-and-green mixed spikes on top of their heads.
I was very impressed, actually. Way to be supportive, Oom Ernest. Nicely done. You know, the rest of you, "really colorful" can also sound very much like a compliment if you inflect it right.
I wonder how their teachers keep a straight face: they inform me that their teachers really love the spikes.
Some more free advice
If, on the first really pleasant day of the year, you decide to drop everything and take your kids for a walk in the woods with Oma, and then you decide to go to the restaurant/playground nearby afterwards for a lovely cup of coffee and therefore you are late getting home so you call your spouse and ask him to start dinner.....
Should you do all that and then get home to find that the spouse did not in fact start dinner exactly but instead turned the heat on under the potatoes (which you, efficient thing that you are, peeled already and had waiting) and then trotted off to play another round of Go.....
If that happened so that you came home at 6:30 with two starving kids and one starving Oma to find that the water had boiled over all over the stove while a particularly intense Go exchange was going on and therefore you and starving Oma went immediately to work warming up leftovers for the kids (because they couldn't wait another second) and mashing potatoes and frying meat and making salad and so on......
If you were doing that while the kids were whining and moaning and Oma was grumbling about aforementioned spouse and you were muttering threats and imprecations under your breath also about aforementioned spouse and meat was frying....
If you were doing that with a wand hand mixer thingie with the blade underneath and you lifted out the mixer thingie to clean out the mashed potatoes with cheese with your left hand while turning around over your right shoulder to tell your child it would be ready in two seconds because he had gone right past whine into cry and you evidently left your right finger on the "on" button while doing so......
You might just cut the hell out of your left index finger and also crack your fingernail right down the middle and bleed all over everything.
It does put an end to your kids' whining when you bleed all over everything, though. So it has an upside. It also makes it much harder to type. And when the shock wears off, it hurts like hell.
Happily I had the presence of mind to clean it out before the shock wore off or that would have hurt a lot too. Cheese mashed potatoes should not be in an open wound it seems to me.
Anyway, that's my advice for the day.
Should you do all that and then get home to find that the spouse did not in fact start dinner exactly but instead turned the heat on under the potatoes (which you, efficient thing that you are, peeled already and had waiting) and then trotted off to play another round of Go.....
If that happened so that you came home at 6:30 with two starving kids and one starving Oma to find that the water had boiled over all over the stove while a particularly intense Go exchange was going on and therefore you and starving Oma went immediately to work warming up leftovers for the kids (because they couldn't wait another second) and mashing potatoes and frying meat and making salad and so on......
If you were doing that while the kids were whining and moaning and Oma was grumbling about aforementioned spouse and you were muttering threats and imprecations under your breath also about aforementioned spouse and meat was frying....
If you were doing that with a wand hand mixer thingie with the blade underneath and you lifted out the mixer thingie to clean out the mashed potatoes with cheese with your left hand while turning around over your right shoulder to tell your child it would be ready in two seconds because he had gone right past whine into cry and you evidently left your right finger on the "on" button while doing so......
You might just cut the hell out of your left index finger and also crack your fingernail right down the middle and bleed all over everything.
It does put an end to your kids' whining when you bleed all over everything, though. So it has an upside. It also makes it much harder to type. And when the shock wears off, it hurts like hell.
Happily I had the presence of mind to clean it out before the shock wore off or that would have hurt a lot too. Cheese mashed potatoes should not be in an open wound it seems to me.
Anyway, that's my advice for the day.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Whoops
Sorry, I posted the pictures of the circus in the wrong order and now I can't figure out how to fix it. Go down to "Guess what we did tonight?" and work your way up.
Sorry, my bad.
Sorry, my bad.
But when it was time to play circus
after we got home, this is what they wanted to play:
Yes, no tigers, no camels, no acrobats and no fire eaters. My kids wanted to play circus cat all night. Go figure.
What Douwe did
during the intermission. Daan wanted Absolutely Nothing to Do With That Thing. He retreated behind me and stayed there.
Winter Olympics
Okay, I guess I have recovered from the Winter Olympics.
The kids' school had a Winter Olympic Games at a local skating rink. The whole school had a field trip at the same time.
We will now have a short pause while all the parents who read this blog go off to fetch an Excedrin and a cold pack at the idea of an entire grammar school having a field trip at the same time in the same place.
Somehow in the sweep of events I found myself volunteering to go along as a chaperone. I got a little book all printed up about the Olympic Games. The children are broken up into groups of 6 and will be wearing colored name tags with their group number on them, each group has 2 parents to keep track of the kids and the groups will cycle through the games, fifteen minutes per game with periodic breaks for food and potty breaks and so on. An entirely different group of parents is equipped with plastic bags and extra clothing and is assigned to do nothing but take little kids to the bathroom and change them if they don't make it as necessary. Another group of parents is assigned to man the tunnel which goes from the figure skating rink (where the little kids go) to the larger racing rink where the big kids go.
I was assigned to run the "slalom" game on the ice (game number 5, byt the way, lol). This means you set up eight little cones and the kids skate between them, you know, like in a bike rodeo but then on skates.
I was dumbstruck at the amazing organization of this Plan. It was a work of art.
Well. Except. These kids are between 4 and 6 years old. The canals have not frozen solid enough to skate on in the past 2 years, so they have never been on ice unless it was at a skating rink. So. First was the acqusition of rental skates for everybody who didn't have any. This task was assigned to the group parents, the rest of us were suppsoed to be drinking coffee. But the call for "all hands on deck" went out and we all went trooping over to locate and put on ice skates (Tommy, Stein, stop playing swordfights with the skate blades, those are sharp. Siep, put your coat back on. Nanneke, darling, I love your ice skates with the little princesses on them but it isn't necessary to kick Hanneke to show them to me. /& repeat)
Then half the kids went on the ice and half the kids went to play organized games off the ice (three hours on ice is a long time when you are 4 to 6). The kids off the ice decided the games were boring and wandered over to the ice to watch. The kids on the ice mostly couldn't ice skate so the idea of slaloming was a non-starter. It's hard to slalom on your butt).
Within ten minutes the Plan was in shambles. So everybody regrouped, the Game parents were assigned to cruise around and teach kids to stand up on ice skates. Meanwhile Douwe and Daan got up a good game of bumper cars with the other kids who could already skate or who had double bladed skates with the little cage thingies they have to help starting skaters.
It went on like that. It was fun. Chaotic but fun.
The kids' school had a Winter Olympic Games at a local skating rink. The whole school had a field trip at the same time.
We will now have a short pause while all the parents who read this blog go off to fetch an Excedrin and a cold pack at the idea of an entire grammar school having a field trip at the same time in the same place.
Somehow in the sweep of events I found myself volunteering to go along as a chaperone. I got a little book all printed up about the Olympic Games. The children are broken up into groups of 6 and will be wearing colored name tags with their group number on them, each group has 2 parents to keep track of the kids and the groups will cycle through the games, fifteen minutes per game with periodic breaks for food and potty breaks and so on. An entirely different group of parents is equipped with plastic bags and extra clothing and is assigned to do nothing but take little kids to the bathroom and change them if they don't make it as necessary. Another group of parents is assigned to man the tunnel which goes from the figure skating rink (where the little kids go) to the larger racing rink where the big kids go.
I was assigned to run the "slalom" game on the ice (game number 5, byt the way, lol). This means you set up eight little cones and the kids skate between them, you know, like in a bike rodeo but then on skates.
I was dumbstruck at the amazing organization of this Plan. It was a work of art.
Well. Except. These kids are between 4 and 6 years old. The canals have not frozen solid enough to skate on in the past 2 years, so they have never been on ice unless it was at a skating rink. So. First was the acqusition of rental skates for everybody who didn't have any. This task was assigned to the group parents, the rest of us were suppsoed to be drinking coffee. But the call for "all hands on deck" went out and we all went trooping over to locate and put on ice skates (Tommy, Stein, stop playing swordfights with the skate blades, those are sharp. Siep, put your coat back on. Nanneke, darling, I love your ice skates with the little princesses on them but it isn't necessary to kick Hanneke to show them to me. /& repeat)
Then half the kids went on the ice and half the kids went to play organized games off the ice (three hours on ice is a long time when you are 4 to 6). The kids off the ice decided the games were boring and wandered over to the ice to watch. The kids on the ice mostly couldn't ice skate so the idea of slaloming was a non-starter. It's hard to slalom on your butt).
Within ten minutes the Plan was in shambles. So everybody regrouped, the Game parents were assigned to cruise around and teach kids to stand up on ice skates. Meanwhile Douwe and Daan got up a good game of bumper cars with the other kids who could already skate or who had double bladed skates with the little cage thingies they have to help starting skaters.
It went on like that. It was fun. Chaotic but fun.
It's nice to know we all agree
That I have the cutest kids ever.
This picture is now gracing the web page of the City where we live, under the section of pictures about Carnaval.
Or it was a second ago, it's a slideshow so now it's somebody else.
I downloaded it because if you don't read Dutch you will never find the section of pictures about Carnaval; who desigend that web page anyway? Entirely insensitve to the needs of overseas relatives I say.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
The Olympic Games
The kids' school did a kid Winter Olympics today at the local skating rink. Okay, really it was a school wide field trip to the skating rink. I got roped into being one of the chaperones becasue I can skate and I have an extra pair of skates in a child's size. They are mine, though, around here I have the foot size of an average eleven year old. Land of the Giants, *sigh*.
It was fun. I am exhausted. I'll tell you about it tomorrow, but I wanted the grandparents to see the pictures.
It was fun. I am exhausted. I'll tell you about it tomorrow, but I wanted the grandparents to see the pictures.
Showing off
Douwe walked arounf for probably ten minutes with his skates in his hands, demonstrating that he had his very own skates, and was not required to wear the rental skates.
I asked him why. He said "Hey, I'm a tough guy".
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