Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Lukie’s long-awaited first day at peuterspeelzaal (pre-school) was yesterday. We’ve all been very excited for this day to come, so it was with great anticipation that we biked over there for his first day.

Two redheads in a bike

He has, of course, been there many times before. Daily as a baby to drop off and pick up his big sister, and here and there during the last school year when Eloïse went back op visite. On recent visits it’s been hard to get him out of there at 2:00 when all the parents leave.

Ian and I both stayed for the whole first day to watch the proceedings. Eloïse got to play at two of her friends’ houses while we were there. He was a bit shy to start, but not terribly so. But after his second day he still hasn’t spent more than a few minutes in the large sandbox, which was his sister’s favorite place to hang out. I was sure that he was going to go straight for the water table that comes out once the parents leave, but while he has looked at it with great interest he has yet to spend more than a couple of minutes at it. One problem is that he’s been wearing sandals and he really doesn’t like to get sand in his shoes. There’s a rule that shoes have to stay on at school so we’ve got to remember to put him in closed shoes tomorrow to see if that remedies the problem.

Right when he was starting to talk, it was very very cold here and there was ice everywhere. We were frequently warning him about not slipping on it. Then we went to Egypt were I guess we were warning him about slipping on the sand (on dunes, for example). He took to calling sand “ice” from that point on. So now he says that he has ice in his shoes. Sometimes he gets it right, but more often than not sand is ice.

Instead of the sand and water table that Eloïse gravitated towards, Lucas has taken an interest in the cars, trucks and airplanes. Here’s a movie: Lukie plays with a truck. Lest you think he’s a real man’s man, note his dress-up clothing selection in subsequent photos. He’s taken a sudden strong interest in “blue-tiful” dresses and skirts. As I type now he lies asleep in bed with one of his sister’s outgrown pink skirts on. Boys will be boys.

I think the reading of the book was perhaps a highlight of the first day for Lucas and today he was quick to invite himself back up to the couch area where Wanda sits to read the book. On a normal day being chosen to sit next to Wanda for the book is a big honor that the children must be chosen for; I guess she’s just made an exception for him these last days since he’s just beginning. This particular book involves a lot of yelling of “STOP!” and “TOOT-TOOT!” and he parroted that every time Wanda read those lines.

Lukie, Isha and Sophia sit with Wanda as she reads the book of the day

At the end of the school day yesterday the bikes and scooters were out and Lukie tried a tricycle. To my great surprise, he was able to pedal it! It only took him a few minutes to get good enough to actually go around the room unassisted. Here’s a movie: Lukie’s first day on a tricycle. I remember that it was well into Eloïse’s time at peuterspeelzaal that she acquired this skill.

Today I left for an hour, ostensibly to buy popsicles as a treat for him being so brave to stay on his own. He wasn’t at all keen on the idea of me going and tried to come with me, but when he realized that he could wave bye-bye to me, something that he has been talking about frequently, he came around to the idea. I’m told that he never cried and had a great time while I was gone. When I got back, I came upon the group just getting ready to paint. He saw me after a couple of minutes and immediately burst into tears. Clearly the stress of being left on his own for the first time with people that he doesn’t know well took all that he had. He’s hardly been left at all with people that he does know well, after all.

After a good cry and few minutes of snuggles he was ready to join back in with the painting and the rest of the activities of the day.

Ethan, Amelie, Lukie and Boyd get artistic

Tomorrow Ian will take him to school, as I have an appointment. I suspect that Ian’s departure will be easier for him. We’ll see if I’m right. Hopefully he won’t melt into a big ball of wailing baby as soon as I pick him up. Even if he does, I feel very confident that within a few days he will be an old pro; he does, after all, have the best peuterjuf in the Netherlands!

We arrived back in Inverness after our day around Loch Ness in time to go down into town to browse around briefly before dinner. Eloïse dragged Ian into an everything’s-a-pound shop to investigate all the treasures inside while I took Lukie with me to look for a shop selling wellies. When I met back up with them Eloïse was quite angry because Papa wouldn’t buy her a “princess diarrhea.” I asked what princess diarrhea was and found out that it was, as I had suspected, a little book with princesses on the cover and a lock. We explained that it’s called a diary, not diarrhea. She has all the syllables right now, but still persists in using the wrong emphasis, calling it a princess di-a-REE.

Ian didn’t buy it for her because it’s a horrible bit of junky tat and didn’t let her buy it for herself because he didn’t know what her current pocket money situation was. Luckily for her, she hadn’t yet spent last week’s pound so the next day it became her third pocket money purchase.

We ate dinner at our hotel tonight. We were seated at one wall of the restaurant and the door was on the opposite wall. Outside the door was a small lounge area with a toy box full of ancient electronic toys and the like. Our kids enjoyed the toy box greatly and we enjoyed having them be somewhere else. They came back to the table with regularity to tell us something or have a sip of their drinks but they mostly stayed out of our hair.

Getting back and forth to our table did involve quite a bit of running across the restaurant and I was slightly concerned that they were going to annoy the other diners or knock a waiter over (there was at least one close call), but the restaurant was loud enough to mask the sound that they made and the floor was carpeted so they didn’t make that much noise. It seemed better to keep the noise that they do make (and there is a lot of it since Eloïse is the loudest talker on the planet) outside of the restaurant and simply subject the others to their occasional passes through the room.

It was with the awareness that our kids are probably often an annoyance to other diners that Ian greeted the approach of a fellow diner with trepidation as he returned from the toilet. He thought that he was probably going to ask him to keep his kids from running past their table. However, he actually asked him what our secret was and went on to explain that their table of four couples in their 60s or 70s wanted to know what we knew that that didn’t when it came to raising children. They thought that our kids were playing noticeably nicely together and were very well behaved. Ian replied that it’s all in the eye of the beholder and that we often think the same of other people’s kids. The man went on to say that they are a credit to us.

Ian returned to our table and told me this tale. It brightened my day. After a month of constant vigilance regarding the many ways that they might be mucking up someone else’s meal or tour or experience of some historic site or other it sure was nice to hear something so positive.

Eloïse has once again easily found a use for her weekly pound. This time she chose between a polished stone, a stuffed dog keychain and some hair accessories.

She chose the doggie which was meant to cost two pounds, necessitating a loan from the piggybank, but when she got to the till the man said it was only one pound. She therefore got another item at half-price, making her mother very proud.

Late yesterday afternoon as we were looking for a dinner restaurant, Eloïse stopped in her tracks and pulled me back to show me something in a shop. I would personally describe this place as a one-stop shop for budding hookers, but to Eloïse it was a store full of beautiful clothes and accessories.

She had her eye on the headband rack and one particular bejewelled monstrosity. She begged me to buy it but there was just no way that I was going to and I told her that she could feel free to buy it with her piggybank money. We were in a hurry to find our dinner so I dragged her whining out of the shop and repeatedly explained to her that she could buy it herself. Once she finally understood that we would give her the money and then she would just take it out of her piggybank to pay us back when we got home she calmed down. I guess at first she just thought that I was being a real bitch who was restricting her to an impossible option, since her piggybank is hundreds of miles away.

The hairband cost 2 pounds and we tried to explain that that was a small but not insignificant portion of her own personal fortune of about 30 Euros, all of which (and the piggybank to hold it) has come to her by way of the very generous Opa Tony. She has yet to spend a penny of her own money but we have talked on numerous occasions of starting to give her an allowance. It just has never panned out because there’s not that much that she wants that is both cheap enough for her to afford and something that we’re not prepared to buy for her.

We encouraged her to shop around and make a good choice and got her on board with that plan. From the moment she woke up this morning she talked of little other than our shopping plans today. At breakfast she received her first instalment of pocket money, which will theoretically be provided at the rate of 1 Euro per week. Her sucker of a father gave her 2 pounds, though, as back pay for last week because “he’s been intending to start giving her pocket money for a while” and in pounds because we’re in Scotland.

By the mid-afternoon we finally made our way to the shopping street and found both an Accessorize and a claire’s. Upon reflection it occurred to me that the hairbands at the slut shop were probably all adult-sized and therefore unsuitable so we didn’t go back there.

It became clear to me long ago that Eloïse has gotten her fashion sense from someone other than me. She clearly has also come by a love of shopping from some unknown source. I suppose that could be down to Papa, but he likes to shop for quite different things than she does. The Accessorize had a huge little girl section and she was like a pig in shit looking at all the hair stuff, junk jewellery, blingy shoes and whatnot. I was pleased when I was able to encourage her to focus on the 1/2 off rack. claire’s also had lots of little girl stuff, but it was more character-based and junky. We had a narrow miss with a horribly cheesy tiara for 3 pounds 50, but thankfully we encouraged her that it was impractical and that Lukie was likely to break it.

In the end we went back to Accessorize and got a rather tasteful headband with a shimmery butterfly for 2 pounds 50 from the 1/2 off rack. (She used the 2 pounds from this morning and will owe us 50 Eurocents from her piggybank when we get home — no currency conversion happening here.) Given how shy she is we were very surprised when she went up to the counter herself and handled the transaction on her own. Her adherence to socially-accepted norms while doing this was less than perfect, but it was good enough and we proud. The headband is “blueish-green,” Eloïse’s new favorite color.  Pink is so last week.