The last week has been rough, there’s no two ways about it.
The day after we received the bad news about the baby, we had Eloïse’s school birthday party to contend with. In fact, Sarah had had to come home and bake muffins right after being told about the baby. What choice do you have? You may have a dead embryo inside you, but you also have two healthy children who understand very little of what’s going on, why Mama and Papa are sad, short-tempered and shouting more than usual. Life goes on, as the banal saying goes.
Happily, Eloïse’s big day at school was a great success. Not only did the children enjoy the cakes, but Sarah had had the idea of giving each child a small plant as a present, as an alternative to some worthless trinket that they’d throw in the cupboard as soon as they got home. I received many compliments in the days afterwards and told everyone that the idea had been all Sarah’s.
On Friday, it was Pinksterfeest at school, which is Pentecost to you lot. I hadn’t notice a message on the school blackboard that all of the children should come dressed in white that day. Guess what Eloïse had picked out for herself that day… a red flamenco dress with black polka dots, complete with matching shoes. All of the other girls — and boys — were dressed in virginal white, with our girl sticking out like a sore thumb in her scarlet woman garb. Bad Papa, bad, bad. The girl herself didn’t mind, though.
Saturday saw Eloïse return to the Little Gym after an absence of some eighteen months or more. She’d always said she’d go back when she was five, and now she felt grown up enough to do the classes on her own, with Papa proudly watching from behind the glass panels. That’s two trips to the Little Gym I now have to make every Saturday, but it’s great to see her joining in and enjoying the place again. She’s so confident now, a different girl from one who had struggled with the transition from parent-and-child classes to independent child classes.
In a further display of her burgeoning confidence, she asked me to take the stabilisers off her bike this afternoon. I obliged and we spent a happy afternoon, Eloïse biking up and down the Sophialaan on two wheels, with me scurrying after her in case she fell. After a while, she was getting so cocky that I called a halt to the proceedings, because I knew that that’s when she would be the most likely to come a cropper.
Lucas, too, has been demanding a proper bike, rather than the crappy old tricycle that he’s always had to make do with. The boy is turning into a complete maniac, climbing and jumping off anything that he can clamber up onto. He seems to get a bloody nose or a fat lip on a daily basis now. He knows no restraint and carries out whichever harebrained whim enters his head.
In the wake of the news given to us a week ago, it’s been a week of counting one’s blessings, which has mostly meant feeling copiously grateful for the two lovely children we already have in our midst. I love them so much and can’t imagine life without them. They’re have such strong, diverse personalities and they make me feel so proud.
The dead embryo of our intended third child isn’t budging and still has pride of place in Sarah’s uterus. A recent visit to the acupuncturist hasn’t set the process of miscarriage in motion. All we can do is wait and hope that the current situation doesn’t drag on much longer.
Eloïse said this evening that she wanted to kiss Sarah’s belly and wished the baby weren’t dead. It sounds tragic, but it was apparently quite funny. She referred to us having an Eloïse baby, a Lukie baby and a “trashed baby”. I fell about laughing when Sarah told me of Eloïse’s indelicate turn of phrase. You have to love children’s brutal disregard for euphemism and sentiment.
I wish the trashed baby would hurry up and vacate the premises.