Kid not Included

Here are the flowers my mother sent to my mother in law today. It was a good day for it, as Nel was feeling rather low and her response to getting them was as enthusiastic as she has been all day.

A body would think that somebody had gone out and gottten all Nel's favorite flowers and put them in a pot which will look just smashing in her bedroom when she gets home. Well done, mom.

Those two flowers are only leaning due to the interference of the, um, background character, they were standing up straight when they were delivered.

Well finally

Is Mercury retrograde? The phones are all screwy, I can only call to the US sometimes (and sometimes not), the outgoing message mysteriously disappeared from our telephone, and Blogger is acting funny these past couple of days. People tell me they have left comments which are not appearing and somtimes I just get a big white screen when I go to write a new entry.

'Kay, just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you.

Spring has arrived in Holland, my carnations and forget me nots and nasturtiums look great, one of my pumpkins is growing like mad already, the watermelon seeds have not poked above ground yet and I think the tomatoes drowned in there as they have not yet sprouted. Time to reseed I think. We ate all the lettuce so I think I will try them in the cold frame. It is not freezing at night but it is chilly after the sun leaves.

I don't even mind picking up the kids on the bike as the weather is nice again. So I guess I have a couple of months to get my driver's license before it turns cold again, hee hee.

I apologize to you all for being so scattered and so brief, I am quite literally running from wake up to coo-ee right now and while this is no doubt healthy it isn't doing anything for my ability to string together an intelligible sentence. We are now down to going to the hospital once a day and Paul goes back again in the evening by himself because the kids were not getting to bed until 10 and this does nothing (good) for their tempers.

I give up

The universe is conspiring to prevent my communicating with anyone.

To my brother, I wish a happy birthday and all great things.

And I have not been ignoring the music you sent me, really I haven't. Though it probably seems that way; it arrived shortly before we got hit by the tidal wave. I still think it's a good idea. But I am as you might have noticed sort of preoccupied at the moment.

I have actually been calling for several hours and have been unable to get a connection. Either all of you en masse changed your phone numbers and didn't tell me (which could happen I suppose but we are not, as a family, really gifted in the keeping of secrets) or something is screwy with this phone line.

So I will try again tomorrow and wish you a happy birthday one day late.

Orange

Nel has been wearing the nightgown chosen for her by her grandson. It is orange. It is really very orange, not a subtle color at all. She wore it for a walk down the hall yesterday. The name of the royal house of Holland is also Orange, and so the wearing of the color has led to many puns about the reigning queen of ward 25 -- the sheer volume of visitors Queen Nel gets has also not gone unnoticed at the hospital.

This morning she is once more chirping like a bird. The nose tube is still in though we are hoping it can come out again today and to that end a very close eye is being kept on the ins and outs of her drinking and feeding tube and so on. I do not imagine there has been this much attention paid to Nel's personal bodly functions since she was a very small child. Late this afternoon we are expecting to hear the results from the biopsy of the tumor, which was done after it was removed, and to receive what advice there may be from that. Otherwise, all appears to be well in Room 253.

More Expertise

Yesterday we had a meeting at the school to discuss the education plan for Douwe. We were there, Douwe's teacher was there, the, um, I guess we would call it a resource teacher was there and the coordinator from the speech school was there.

For most of the meeting unhappily I was not there. Douwe decided that the meeting was far too long and he furthermore objected strongly to everyone sitting around talking about him when he was not there and besides he was tired and wanted to go home. All of which added up to him being such a little pill that I would up leaving Paul to handle it and went outside with him and Daan.

Which was just as well since nothing really concrete came out of the meeting as far as I could tell. It lasted two hours, at least half of which evidently consisted of Paul and the coordinator from the speech school expressing their, um, differing opinions about whether it was a good idea to teach Douwe to read in English. So I am pleased that I was not there. Though I have no idea what I would have been able to say beyond pointing out that it is now too late, he can already read English.

I think this is fair to say. I mean, he isn't reading epic poetry or anything. He can read "Ten Apples Up on Top" and "The Berenstain Bears Go Up and Down" and so on with only a little help. The help he requires is to call his attention to the actual word he has to sound out, as he has a tendency to start making up the story when he hits a word or two he does not immediately know. So you do have to now and again put your finger under the difficult word and ask him what that word is. Then he sounds it out mostly, or guesses at it, depending on the mood he is in.

In any event, the conversation between Paul and the coordinator ended in Paul saying that we had no plans to stop him from either reading or speaking in English since half his family is American, and that was sort of the end of that. I have gone round and round this circle myself both in the states and here, so I am pleased to have missed it. Though as I say I am not sure I would have gone round and round again; I have worked out after many times around this maypole that the best response is to politely but firmly state that if one language is to be given up it will surely be Dutch -- since English is the only language every single member of this family can fluently speak -- and that they can surely agree with me that this would not be a good idea. People find it hard to argue with that.

No, of course we have no plans to quit speaking Dutch, are you mad? But it does put an end to a really fruitless conversation which serves mainly to reveal just how deep xenophobia does go. And yeah, I know I am a jerk, this is not news, lol.

In any event it was also a fruitless conversation because the school's position has always been that since the child is truly bilingual, the most sensible response to the occasional english word is to ask him if he knows the Dutch word for that, and to tell it to him if he does not and congratulate him if he does. Which is pretty much what we do at home. The school's only concern was whether we expected them to teach him in english and that was never a question -- I mean, it is a Dutch school in Holland, one rather expects the teaching to go on in English.

On of the interesting things about the process is that the problems the coordinator had written down to address are in large part entirely gone and irrelevant now because things are changing rather quickly. So she was all ready to talk about way to get Douwe to rhyme words and the teachers were like, "oh, no, he can rhyme all over the place, no need for that" and then going on with other things.

In any event, after all of that, the school is going to make a plan, rather like an IEP with goals and recommended strategies for dealing with them and so on and give it to us on Thursday. Then we will add and subtract whatever we think and give it back to them, it will be finalized and that will be that. But the actual plan is coming from the school itself, which is at this point quite helpful. If we get a bad teacher/student/parent combination in future this could become a problem, but there is no need to create such a problem now. At this moment, Douwe's teacher and I are entirely on the same page so it works out rather well.

There is some concern about next year, as learning becomes more structured and formal in group 3 (just as it does in the states with first grade) and no one is really sure what effect that will have on Douwe. I personally expect that it will make things much easier with him, he likes formal schooling and is good at it. However, there is no knowing for certain until we get there.

Would you believe

The second surgery is over, Nel is now in the recovery room. When they opened her up they found...nothing. No leak, nothing. She is healing nicely and the tube is not leaking. So they left it there and closed her back up.

It is now believed that a blockage in the feeding tube or something similar caused the feeding solution to appear where it should not have been.

On the one hand I am certain that it is a good thing that they did not wait and see, but instead moved to prevent an infection at the first opportunity. An infection in the abdominal cavity would be a complete disaster at this point.

And I am sure I will also think that, in about, oh, two hours or so. Just now, I confess, I think, "My God, all that for nothing? For nothing? What do you mean it was nothing? What the hell are you playing at over there?"

But even this is an improvement, what I thought five minutes ago probably is not suitable for broadcast to a mixed audience. *ahem*.

First setback

Until yesterday, Nel was being fed mostly through a feeding tube which went directly into her intestine. Yesterday evening, it was discovered that some of the food from that tube was coming out of the wound from the operation itself. This means that something has begun leaking somewhere, possibly from the tube itself. It may have happened during all the moving around yesterday or it could have happened earlier. What is certain is that the food from that tube should not be loose in her abdominal cavity.

So today, right now in fact, the doctors are going to open up the wound in her stomach and remove the feeding tube and wash out her abdominal cavity. At this time they are not planning to put a new feeding tube back in. Because she has been able to eat and digest food on her own, the feeding tube is not necessary any more.

In practical terms, the doctor has said that this will put her back about 4 days of healing time -- because the original incision has to be opened up again and will therefore have to heal again from the beginning.

This operation should itself take about an hour or so, and allowing time for anaesthesia and recovery, she should be out of her room for about two and a half hours. She will be coming back to her own room and they do not expect her to need to return to Intensive Care. So we expect her back around 1:30 or 2:00 our time this afternoon.

Nel is rather frightened by this development, as everything has been going so well. She felt very well this morning, so hearing this news was even more of an unpleasant surprise.

As we have developments we will certainly set them here. While anything is of course possible, I gather that the doctors do not expect any major setbacks or difficulties as a result of this second operation other than that the original wound will have to heal over again.

Paul is at the hospital and I have to go pick up the boys from school, then I expect we will go to the hospital this afternoon when she comes out of surgery.

Dad, I hope to send you an email for Thaxine tonight; it's been a bit of a buzz around here since this was discovered yesterday evening.

Second Easter Day

Today is second Easter Day. Didn't know there were two, did you? Silly you, you were thinking there was only, you know, the one. How many times can one person come out of a tomb, anyway?

In Holland I will have you know he can do it twice. Did anybody tell the pope about this? Eh, his holiness is German after all, maybe they have easter for a week.

There may be a very good reason for a second easter day, but I dont know what it is and it always strikes me as odd when I look at my calendar and there it is -- second easter, holiday.

Nel had her own rising today, she got out of bed for the first time. She was not allowed to walk, just sit up in a chair, but that was something. She still has tubes going onto her nose, which are a contant source of annoyance, but some part of the zillion tubes and so on have been removed which is nice, it lets her move around more.

Because it's a holiday, she had many visitors today so we didn't stay all that long today. She is cheery, if still easily tired. She has already begun devising ways to get around the obviously far too restrictive rules of the hospital (which were not intended to apply to her anyway obviously) so evidently the surgeon did not remove the "Stubborn" bone from her body.

My kids are still eager to go see her, they holler hooray and run for the door when it is suggested. Though Daan most carefully asks to be sure she is in her own room and not in ICU any more. He found ICU a bit creepy and was a Very Very Subdued Daan when she was there.

Daan is convinced that the nose tubes hurt and doesn't believe anybody who says otherwise. Douwe still thinks they are sort of cool, or at least interesting.

We also went to the garden center today to get flowers to put in the garden downstairs, with any luck it'll be in bloom in two weeks when Oma comes home.

Painting

The easter bunny also left some easter placemats to paint, and bring to Oma.  We are going to the hospital this afternoon and, since Nel is out of ICU today and in her room, Nel and I have arranged with the easter bunny to hide some eggs there as well..

The Jello eggs

I made gelatin eggs and the kids colored them with a brush and paint as is most common here.  They apparently did not realize the eggs were not regular eggs, so when they peeled thim this morning they were covered in shock and awe to find red eggs and decided immediately that the Easter Bunny magically changed their eggs to candy. (Jello is not popular here, I am not sure they have ever seen jello to remember it).

So at this moment they firmly believe in the easter bunny.

The Palm Frond eggs

Moving on to the kitchen

We discovered the flocked bunnies  (which I intended as a sort of centerpiece but were evidently also really for playing with).

The decorated eggs you can see here are often put up on a sort of stick which, if you squint your eyes a little does sort of look like a palm frond.  The sticks go up on Palm Sunday, they are decorated later.  It took me a while to figure that one out, I though they were doing easter trees and I thought it was sort of weird.  Turns out they are easter palms.

The haul

First they discovered their easter baskets -- they only want chocolate chickens, not chocolate bunnies for some reason.  Douwe even wrote a letter to the easter bunny to make sure he brought a chicken and not a bunny.  They also got Batman pajamas.  It is good to have a fictional character bring the cool jammies, as this way all the jammies don't have to be cool if you get my drift.  (Mommies who  have to pay for the cool jammies got my drift immediately, the rest of you, don't worry about it).

 

I also use this subterfuge with slippers, but this year they just got new slippers. 

The easter bunny

Last weekend we went to an easter egg hunt with friends and affterwards has a visit from the easter bunny.

As good as it gets

The news on Nel is as good as it gets. None of the possible tricky bits happened -- it had not spread at all, it was one tumor in one place. It was not located near anything she couldn't live without. They did not have to take out her whole pancreas, they were able to leave her the top part which is evidently where insulin is produced. So they think her diabetes will not be made worse because of the surgery.

They took out her gall bladder, a bit of her stomach, a bit of the duodenum, and then stitched it all back together. She did not have any of the complications which might have happened either from surgery or anaesthesia.

Paul and Ernest spent much of the afternoon at the hospital, mostly waiting for Nel to wake up as I gather. But they did get to talk to her, and the surgeon, and her internist and so on.

The kids and I went into town on the bikes and went to the park and colored easter eggs and then hid them (just a warm up, you know) and made dinner and played with trains. So I haven't seen Nel. I expect we will see her tomorrow.

The thought of Thing Two loose in an ICU unit makes me faint. I have declared that if he has to go into ICU, he is going in arms and his feet are not touching the ground, not even once. He is faster than a striking snake and he does not ask "Mom, what's this thing?" before he tries to dismatle it. I mean, maybe it's just my adrenaline talking -- I assume they have back ups and so on. But I just keep imagining some bad movie scene in which my four year old plays the starring role -- grieving family, heart wrenching decisions to be made regarding life support, preschooler, um, resolving the problem without further consultation. Sound of flatline and echoing "code blue"s in the background while winsome blond child looks at the end of a power cable he has just pulled out of the wall.

You guys know him. Don't even try to tell me it couldn't happen.

Fixed it

I wondered why no one was speaking to me. It won't do that thing any more, I fixed it.

Thanks, Dad, for the heads up.

If you have no idea what I am talking about you should comment more.

Though now it's too late, *snort*.

The baby doc

We all went along for the follow up to the pediatrician, because there has been a lot of activity around hospitals for the last 10 days or so and wanted to avoid any fear on that score. It was a very short appointment. All of Thing Two's tests are within normal limits -- his bone age is 4 years old, his >impronounceable Dutch word for a chemical in the blood which indicates the level of growth hormone<>

He grew half a centimeter in the mean time.

The only test not within normal limits was that there was a trace of protein in his urine test which according to the doctor was so small that it was of zero interest.

So he sort of shrugged, said we had a very healthy small child, and suggested we come back in a year to see if anything had changed.

Ramblings

We now for pretty obvious reasons have a book on The Human Body. The kind with see through pages with the organs of the various systems all picked out in Technicolor. It is bidding fair to compete with Pooh for Favorite Bedtime Reading.

In particular, Thing Two is wild about The Human Body. Today I got to outline for him exactly how the brain and nervous sytem work. Try that in language suitable for a four year old. When I put him to bed I asked him how many kisses he wanted (I ask him that every night). He said "I am thinking in my brain now. I think in my brain maybe ten". And pointed to his cheek.

I said, "Your brain is in here" and pointed to the top of his head. He said "Yes, but ten is too many to fit in there so you have to kiss me here".

Thing One on the other hand is extremely interested in blood. No, I know you knew that, but I mean, blood still in veins and the heart and so on. How it all gets pumped around, up and down and over and under and through. He is very disappointed that you can see his brother's veins nearly everywhere and mine, too but his you can really only see on his hands and feet. Those hundred generations of Portuguese fishermen again, he is darker complected even though it's the tail of winter.

Okay it doesn't take much to be darker than me and Thing Two.

Thing One is in general angry -- with Nel for being sick, with me for not making her better, and well, just in general. He has no idea why he is angry or what he is angry at to tell you the truth. He is just angry. We painted the jello eggs today and he painted his in furious swirls of black, red, and dark green. He has pulled back into his fantasy world a bit and it is once more dificult to get his attention tracked off of it and onto ordinary and mundane matters. I did not consciously realize that he had stopped doing that actually, until he began doing it again.

Thing Two is clingy and at random moments throws both arms around my neck and insists that I must stay with him, that I can never go away.

Nimrod

I am a nimrod.

I really am.

I have been tearing this house apart looking for my recipe for pao doce because easter is coming and besides I have to fatten Our Nel Up and she has been given a blank check from her internist regarding her blood sugar.

She can eat anything she wants if she will just gain weight.

I couldn't find it anywhere. You know where I found it? You know where it was?

In the archives on this very blog.

*doh*

Jello eggs

I made jello eggs today. I also made jelly eggs yesterday. You know what? What Dutch guys call jelly is a dessert, red, made with a day-glo powder by heating and then cooling.

But it is not, despite many assurances that it must be, it is most resoundingly not Jello.

It is in fact jelly. No translation necessary, it is a dessert made with pectin and so on.

It's all soggy and soft and does not make a good egg.

So I made them today with sheet gelatin, plain old glass-looking sheets of gelatin, and fruit juice.

Now, that's a good egg. They are as hard as knox blox. I had so hoped to make them green, because Daan would simply die if I fed him green eggs and ham for breakfast. His little eyes would be bigger than the eggs if I served him a green egg. Alas, no green.

They are red. Eh, it's easter, red eggs, I can go with that.

I expect we will color them tomorrow.