NovemberNovember started with a weekend in Brussels to visit my (Tim) mother. Daniel also officially started as a Beaver-scout and got to put a ceremonial handprint on the clubhouse wall.
Matthijs has started play-therapy and the shrink will meet us next month to talk about him and what her approach will be. Matthijs says that his main problem is that he is “too strong”. When she said that that sounded more like an advantage than a problem he explained that it got him into trouble, because when he played “it” (also known as “tag”) he ended up pushing other children over when he only meant to tap them. That is his version of “impulsive and somewhat uncontrolled”.
The school had asked their own psychologist to give an opinion on Matthijs’ behavior. As we were fairly sure that the school had not taken action on the structure and way-of-working things in her previous report we were hoping for some support. However she did no further classroom observations but just talked to the teachers and concluded from that that he may have a behavioral disturbance and be cognitively overstretched. The test he had already done was dismissed as only having shown “accelerated development”. We are girding our loins for a long campaign…watch this space.
Marjolein took Daniel to the hospital in Leiderdorp where Daniel’s new ear-specialist works. They took tubes and tubes of blood though a relatively chunky needle, but Marjolein had armed herself with a ginormous lolly and waved it hypnotically under his nose while they were puncturing him. That did not quite work and he crept whimpering into her arms but, brave as always, still held his arm out for the nurse.
The 11th of November is Saint Maarten’s day, which is traditionally celebrated by the kiddo’s waddling round the houses with lanterns, singing Sint Maarten songs and getting truckloads of sweets. Falco had learnt the traditional songs with the other toddlers at playschool, but in typical Falco-fashion sang his own version with intentionally wrong words. Mr Daniel “Rigidity” Noyce could not bear this and made many attempts (to Falco’s great amusement) to correct him. The furious recriminations were only finally silenced because they were both busy filling their faces with sweets…
The next weekend Marjolein cashed in her birthday present and went to a science-fiction convention in London, specifically because it was about her absolute favourite series “Firefly” and the follow-on film “Serenity” by the luminous and fragrant Joss Wheadon. This involved her spending three days in close company with other uber-geeks she knew only from usenet: the Internet can bring you to some strange places… She had a whale of a time and met all the stars of the series. She spent several weeks before and after laying down defensive statements about how she never normally did geeky things like this. I of course showed her no mercy at all.
That weekend Saint Nicholas arrived in the Netherlands. The saint is traditionally accompanied by his squire Black Peter; formerly he was a fearsome character who whipped naughty children and bundled really wicked ones into the Saint’s sack, never to be seen again. These days “Pieten” are more Politically Correct, less black and much more like Santa’s little helper. Thus the weeks after the Saint’s arrival were seeded with lots of fun activities, animated by “Pieten”. The toads were allowed to put their shoes by the woodstove twice a week and sing for the Saint. Naturally the Saint is much more inclined to put something nice in or (in this inflationary age) on your shoe if you have sung him a few (in our case very approximate and off-key) songs. Falco of course, to Daniel’s extreme displeasure, often sang Saint Maarten songs instead.
The end of the month was my birthday and many people turned up to see if I was still alive/irritating/crumbling slowly. It does give us the opportunity to at least tell people that we feel guilty about neglecting them (much as they neglect us) until our children inevitably decide they would rather be elsewhere.
Busy times. We are also totally revamping the top story, having insulation put in the roof, the cruddy end wall stripped and painted and everything finished off nicely with plasterboard. Rather complex at the two oldest sleep up there and have to pick their way through the rubble to find their beds but the result will be worth it.
Since we were already snowed under and living like displaced persons we decided to up our stress-level a notch by also totally revamping our office, largely motivated by the fact I could not breathe deeply while sitting behind my PC and Marjolein suffering from insufficient desk space on which to pile stuff. Despite my private conviction that sufficient desk space for Marjolein’s stacks is rather like sufficient road-space for cars (i.e. it creates more of the problem it purports to solve) we chucked the old desks, turned everything 90 degrees and ended up considerably more comfortable. Marjolein celebrated by accidentally trashing most of her recent photographs: hence few pictures this month. We do have some films, which we intend to review avidly when the beasts are huge, lumbering pimple-factories: weren’t they little darlings back then, sniff..
One of the films is the beasts doing theatre at school: though we do get frustrated with them, the school does do that kind of thing very well and consistently. Falco naturally wants to go to school too. When he and I were dropping the others off on Friday he demanded (once again) to stay too. When I said that he was still to little he took a deep breath, made himself a big as possible (rather a constipated look, but a great effort) and said “Now I am big Papa!” Exit stout party, pursued by a toddler…
Gymnastiek
.wmv / 7.8 Mb
Sint Maarten
.wmv / 3.6 Mb
Schooltheater
.wmv / 7.3 Mb
