Lukie’s first days at Wanda’s

Posted on Wednesday, 25th August, 2010 by sarahmck

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!

Posted in Children, Life | 3 Comments

Brendan Perry at Utrecht Domkerk, 13th August 2010

Posted on Thursday, 19th August, 2010 by ianmacd

This was my seventh gig of Brendan’s Ark tour this year and the first to take place in my home country! How nice to be only 45 km removed from the venue for a change.

The weather couldn’t have been better. Utrecht was basking in gorgeous sunshine when my friend and I arrived. It was a perfect summer’s day.

After a prearranged dinner with kindred spirits from Brendan’s on-line forum, we all headed over to the Domkerk to await the opening of the church doors.

The Domkerk is a truly beautiful building, still very much in active use as a place of worship. Its atmopsheric interior formed the perfect setting for Brendan’s pensive music.

Tonight saw a different kind of flock gather in the pews, however. Brendan was headlining the first day of the Summer Darkness festival, something the organisers had wanted to have him do since the festival’s inception.

With a capacity of 650 people, the venue was sold out. It was nice to see so many people turn out to see Brendan, and a far cry from some of the 100 person gigs earlier in the year.

The crowd were a sea of black; hardly surprising, given the nature of the festival. Some people must have spent the entire day in front of the mirror, preparing to be seen at their most vivid.

With this audience as resplendent as the church in which they had congregated, the scene was set. There was a sense of great expectation in the air, the atmosphere electric and laden with childlike excitement. This gathering were surely no less faithful than the flock that assemble here on a Sunday morning. We, too, were here to be edified, fulfilled and give praise.

Initially, we had all politely filed along the pews, but once we were neatly seated, one of the organisers announced that we were free to desert the pews and stand in front of the stage. Well, he didn’t need to repeat himself. We quickly scuttled to the front and I took up position just a couple of metres back from the front of the stage.

The pews would have been less than ideal, because they were situated at 90 degrees to the stage, so a crick in one’s neck would have been the likely result of spending the entire evening with one’s head craned to the far left.

My new position also concerned me, however, because it placed me at some distance from the PA, which was way off to the side, next to the pews.

Unfortunately, there was no way to position myself in front of the PA without being so close as to risk worse sound than I was likely to get from this new position, not to mention that that vantage point would have been significantly worse for viewing the gig, which, let’s face it, is what it’s actually all about.

So, with the PA behind me and off to the side, I decided to simply hope for the best, sound-wise.

After a short introduction by the festival organiser, Brendan took to the stage. The first detail of note was that Rachel Haden had been replaced on bass by Rory O’Brien.

The sound was crisp and clear throughout the frequency range, even from my vantage point. The people still seated in the pews, however, were initially shocked and awed by the high volume. As the drum intro to The Arcane kicked in, people could be seen clutching at their ears. When this was observed by the sound engineer, he mercifully adjusted the volume for them.

Since the last time I had seen Brendan, Tim Buckley’s Song To The Siren had been added to the set. Gone were You Never Loved This City and Voyage Of Bran.

Song To The Siren was a particularly mesmerising rendition and I could quite happily have listened to it continue for another five minutes.

You could have heard a pin drop after the applause following each song died down. Every bleep from a mobile phone and every click of a camera’s shutter swelled to an obtrusive level. The audience were remarkably reverential and appreciative, united in their appreciation of this man’s music.

As usual, it seemed to end upon beginning, but an immense, palpable sense of satisfaction pervaded the air afterwards. Brendan had quite literally thrilled us all.

This was, perhaps, the best of the seven gigs I’ve seen him play this year. The combination of venue and audience anticipation was unparalleled, I think, and the fact we were allowed to stand created a much greater sense of intimacy than had been present at, for example, the Union Chapel, which is otherwise also an atmospheric venue.

There are some excellent photos of the gig on the Summer Darkness site.

My recording of the gig is up on DIME.

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Princess Diarrhea

Posted on Sunday, 15th August, 2010 by sarahmck

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.

Posted in Children, Life, Travel | 1 Comment

Chores

Posted on Friday, 13th August, 2010 by ianmacd

We’re back in Amsterdam after a good night’s sleep on the ferry. What a blissful way to travel. It really is so much better than flying.

The day has, of course, been marked by errands and chores: a haircut for Luke and me, a run to the post-office to pick up packages that couldn’t be delivered in our absence, fetching new coffee beans, sorting through the mountain of post that all but stopped us gaining entry to the house, and an evening ride to the supermarket to stock up on food provisions. It’s good to be back on the bike.

Speaking of Lukie’s haircut, he looks so different now. It’s aged him a bit, but in a nice way. He looks gorgeous.

Tomorrow morning, we have to clean and prepare for a friend of mine who will be staying for a couple of days.

For those who are interested, here’s the map of our full route from Amsterdam to Scotland and back.

The map only shows the places where we spent the night, plus a couple of the ferry ports (necessary to make the map plot the correct route). All in all, we notched up a healthy 3455 km. With two children and the Scottish weather, our car is a lot filthier on the inside than the outside and could do with a good clean.

It’s always good to be back. It didn’t used to be, but since we’ve had this house and made it feel like a home, rather than just a place to crash, it’s always felt good to come back to it (and made it hard to even go away sometimes, too).

As ever, I’m looking forward to my own bed tonight.

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Back To The Boat

Posted on Thursday, 12th August, 2010 by ianmacd

It was a 06:45 alarm that woke us today, followed by a six and a half hour journey from Inverness to North Shields, with two stops to take on fuel: one for the car in the morning in Pitlochry and another for its passengers in the early afternoon, just outside Grantshouse.

We managed the whole 460+ km without a single puking incident from Lucas. If I tell you that we’ve had days on this trip that he puked in the first 8 km, you have some idea of how windy the roads are on the Scottish islands.

For me, it was a nice drive with plenty of variation: some two-way road, some dual-carriageway and an all too brief stretch of motorway. The two-way stretch yielded the usual frustration of slow drivers who refuse to pull over, but we made good time, were able to stop and eat lunch and still arrive just 35 minutes after check-in for our ferry had commenced.

After a short wait, we drove on board, parked and made our way to our cabin for the night. And what a welcome sight it was.

After dumping our stuff, it was straight down to the play area to reward the little blighters for having been so patient in the car. Neither of them slept at all during the journey, which was very surprising.

Ship time is CEST, not BST, and there was a kids’ event scheduled for 19:00, so we made a restaurant reservation and ate dinner at 18:00, which our stomachs thought was only 17:00, so we weren’t particularly hungry.

Eloïse went to play in the kids’ group at 19:00, followed by Lucas as soon as we had finished eating. Eloïse happily joined in with the treasure hunt, going up and down the length of the boat with the girl running the event and the other kids, apparently not giving a moment’s thought to where her parents might be. That girl’s come a long way in coming out of her shell.

After some colouring and being given some sculpted balloons, it was bed time.

I left Sarah in a darkened cabin to put Lucas to sleep and went downstairs to enjoy the corny cabaret entertainment. You have to admire people who have chosen a career in show business and are currently on the rung of the ladder that is show girl or musical performer on the Newcastle to IJmuiden ferry.

If I sound denigrating, it’s unintentional. I really have the utmost respect for people who don’t consider a gig like that beneath them. Everyone has to start somewhere and one of these people might make it big one day — no, really! — but here they are, giving it their all for a captive ferry boat audience. Respect!

After taking part in the pop quiz, which I did pretty well on, but didn’t win, I gave up on the nightlife and went back to the cabin, where I’m typing this for upload in the morning.

I’m knackered. Time to sleep.

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