September

We finished off the school holidays this month, spending a few days in Brussels visiting my (Tim) family. It was beautiful weather so we booted the boys outside and they rushed around soaking each other with the garden hose.

We also headed north to Drenthe, where one of Marjolein’s cousins was getting married. There was a big garden party with lots of food and drink and our little guys were dressed up to the nines, which they all adore because it always generates some extra attention and compliments: none of them are averse to strutting their stuff and getting fawned over. Daniel did complain that everybody got to help serve except him, but that was soon solved, so everyone had a good time.

It’s a long way to Drenthe and there was no room in the house, but there was a campsite just down the road and Marjolein’s brother in law kindly gave us his old tent. As we had never, ever put up a tent before we needed his and Marjolein’s sister’s help to get it set up. I was struck by just how much tent came out of quite a small bag: there were two “bedrooms” and a central corridor between them, so we could bed down the boys and have a little privacy. It was fun sleeping in a field and it did start me thinking: it is a very cheap kind of holiday. You just need to be a bit lucky with the weather. Marjolein is prepared to give it another go, but wants a better mattress next time.

The day after the bunfight we breakfasted with the family, helped tidy up and then went off to the local theme park. Drouwenerzand has a bunch of rides and all the food is free after you have paid your entrance fee. That consisted chips, burgers and ice-cream but it has to be said that some members of the family were quite keen on that and did their level best to push the catering into loss. It was fun, but you would not want to spend more than half a day there.
The last weekend we celebrated Falco’s and Matthijs’ birthdays with the family. Falco also handed out treats at playschool: as you can see we were very creative with wine gums and rice paper. The bugs were a hit, though not everybody likes rice paper apparently.

Falco loved going back to playschool: playing with his best (girl)friend Brechtje, doing jigsaw puzzles en singing songs. He is very into magical incantations at home. He says “Abracadabra ‘thijs” and then speaks in a deeper voice and pretends to be Matthijs. He also regularly turns his brothers into frogs, pigs or lions and they often cooperate by hopping, croaking, roaring or grunting as the case may be. He has also defined the fundamental particle of pigness. In Dutch a pig is a “Varken”. The regular plural in Dutch adds “en” to a word: “hoed” one hat, “hoeden” several hats. Falco has de-pluralized the pig to create the “Vark”, which we have decided is an elementary particle and probably combines with other Varks of varying charm, strangeness and probably odour to create a Pigon.

Falco’s only problem with the serial celebrations was accepting that not all the presents were for him. Daniel had some difficulty too, but so many people provided small consolations for the other brother that he also got quite a lot of loot. He immediately started elaborating grand plans for his own birthday, next year.

Marjolein gave herself a present too. To celebrate losing 25 kg, she went and got a colour analysis. It was very instructive and she came back with a fold-out chart and lots of “Amazing but True” colour anecdotes. Apparently she is not an Autumn so she can ditch the warm earth-tints. Apparently Marjolein is a “cool winter” (as apposed to the warm, sunny winter no doubt) and thus better served by hard petrol blues and magenta. That would account for the fact that she always looks good in formal business clothes (navy, black and charcoal are good) and sports kit (red, white etc.).

She related that you start the process by looking in a mirror while they holding swatches of cloth next to your face, starting with the colours you usually buy. Though those look ok, as they swap in other colours it rapidly becomes apparent that some colours, ones that you would not normally wear, actually work better than the ones that you are used to. This is something you cannot normally do in a shop, because they do not have the shirt you want in every possible colour Marjolein says that there is a subtle shift in how happy, healthy, competent etc. you look, depending on whether the colours you wear suit your skin and eyes or not. Given that she is now a size smaller and therefore needs new clothes, this has provided her with an excellent excuse to go shopping…

We celebrated Matthijs’ birthday at Chimpie Champ, the indoor playground. He had such a good time last year that he wanted to go back. We had no problem with that: it makes life easy for the parents. Our only stipulation was that he had to invite at least two girls: having seven hyper boys bouncing around was too fearful to contemplate. Matthijs had no problem with that as he gets on well with girls and actually invited four girls and three boys. They all turned up with loot and it was almost all dinosaur stuff, so that was a hit.

School is going less well for Matthijs. We joined an organisation for intelligent children called Pharos in the hope of finding him some peers. Marjolein’s sister has a smart child too and noticed an improvement in his behaviour when he got to meet and play with some children who were in the same bandwidth. The introductory barbeque was fun enough that we signed Matthijs up for their weekend camp next month.

Matthijs is also now too old be a Beaver Scout and has become a Cub. That means an all-boys group and more tree-climbing, mud-rolling type stuff: should be more his style. Daniel tried out with the Beavers and had a find time. If he decides to stay with it he will be ceremonially initiated in November.

Marjolein also signed Matthijs up for a Sport Pass, which allows you to try out six different sports for a token fee. He can stop swimming (it is not really his passion) once he has his B-Certificate so that would leave room for something new, so we decided to try for something other than the ubiquitous footy and judo.

That made this a busy month, because he clocked up three things above and beyond the usual swimming, scouting and gym, so Marjolein spend several millennia driving him to stuff. I had a (very intense and exhausting, REALLY) course for a week, so her efforts were nothing short of heroic.

First tryout was “clipdance”: Matthijs loves dancing and he was a year too young for breakdance. Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, it turned out to be 100% girls doing it. There was one other boy, but he bottled out when he saw how many girls there were. Matthijs however, kudos to the man, decided he liked it and joined in with a will, totally unfazed, up to and including the headscarves finale in lesson four.

Tae-kwon-do was also on the list. Marjolein hoped that it would provide him with discipline and concentration a la Karate Kid, but it generated far too many high-kicks and stuff in the household, despite the admirably forthright and capable teaching of the lady in charge.

Third sport was chess. That went well but coincided unhandily with Marjolein’s basketball, causing much complex logistics. He can play decent chess when he wants to, but remaining concentrated and not twitching about is an effort: he needs a version where you have to move large heavy pieces yourself and probably fire cannons. All things considered we are still looking for the ideal sport for Matthijs…