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.