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Archives for March 2004

Visiting

31 March, 2004
Posted in: Family, Princess

Tuesday, March 23

Mr. Waffle drove us to glamourous Charleroi and we hopped on the Ryanair plane. While I am no fan of Ryanair, they are cheap and, to be fair, very nice if you are travelling with babies (big plus).  We flew to Shannon because, alas, there are no direct flights of any kind from Bxls to Cork. Although the Princess was very good on the plane, she did require lots of entertaining. After an hour and a half’s flying, I was running out of entertainment options. Have decided not to visit my sister in Chicago after all (9 hour flight from Bxls). The loving parents were there to collect us. Princess was in outstanding form having been waved at by lots of random strangers on the plane or “toy picker uppers” as she thinks of them.  Packed brilliantly – one, yes one, bag only, so managed to fit everything in the boot of the parental car. Then spent half an hour trying to strap the Princess into the car seat my mother had borrowed with my father intoning dolefully from the front of the car “we won’t be able to get out you know, our ticket will have expired”.  We got out.

Wednesday, March 24

My father found me feeding breakfast to the Princess.  He waved at her, she waved back at him.  They were delighted with each other.  My father said “they’re almost human, aren’t they?”  Quite.

My cousin called round. Her baby was due in May last year, a month after mine but was actually born in January, at 24 weeks. And she, the baby, is absolutely fine.  Isn’t that amazing and fantastic?  Apparently she is walking and, technically, she is younger than our crawler. My father was astounded to hear that her grandfather actually looks after her. On his own. He is now terrified that this might set a precedent…

Thursday, March 25

Went to Kinsale with my mother and the Princess.  Weather was beautiful and Kinsale v. picturesque.  Princess was, however, unenthused about Kinsale and its glories and spent the time on the walk to Scilly squirming unhappily in her pushchair. She was somewhat revived by a cup of tea outside the Spaniard (our girl is fond of cold tea) but screamed blue murder when put back into the pushchair. A day of less than complete success. Became convinced that she was coming down with something. Parents felt not. They were right, mercifully.

Friday, March 26

Have I mentioned that my aunt lives next door? Well, she does and she loves the Princess. The feeling is mutual. Princess was displayed to all of aunt’s friends and dutifully admired. Felt aunt was pushing it when she called over the builder working on her house saying “Wally, I’m sure that you’d love to see this beautiful baby.” It has to be said that Wally was only medium enthused “Sure all babies are beautiful.” “But this one is particularly beautiful” she said. He seemed unconvinced. She was most disappointed, I hope that she’ll still pay him for his work on the bathroom tiles.

Saturday, March 27

Saw in the Examiner property supplement, the house which Locotes was laughing at on his website is for sale for 160,000 euro. Good grief.  Watched rugby match because mother made me (she either taught or knows the mothers of half the squad). Because my mother got so excited every time we scored a try, the Princess would clap her little hands also. Mother was entranced.

Mr. Waffle called. Our Irish friend in the Netherlands has given birth. Clearly the relaxed Dutch attitude to childbirth has affected her. She gave birth in the morning and was on in the afternoon for a chat. Those Dutch people.

After dinner, abandoning my poor mother to babysit, I skipped off to see my friend for whom I bridesmaided.  Had most entertaining time looking at wedding pics.  When I came home, my mother was sitting in the dark talking to the Princess who was refusing to go back to sleep.  Most trying.

Sunday, March 28

Went to mass with the parents.  Father arrived first and mother, Princess and I were somewhat later as we had to retrace our steps to find doggy who had been carelessly chucked out of the pushchair.  Father was ensconced three rows from the front with no one in front of him.  We slunk in beside him, 10 minutes late. Gospel was about the woman taken in adultery. The sermon was about forgiveness for adultery. The priest addressed his remarks exclusively to me. I was strongly tempted to hold up a placard saying “It’s ok, I have a husband in Brussels”.

Forced by my evil mother to stay up until 12.30 watching the golf. I hate to say this, but it was kind of exciting.   Between 12.30 when I went to bed and 7.30 when I got up, the Princess woke up 7 times to check that I hadn’t abandoned her with a babysitter again.

Monday, March 29

Further cousin called. Inspected the Princess and found her beautiful. Mildly depressed me by saying that it took her two years to find a job. But secretly a bit cheered. Maybe am not utterly without hope after all.  She is now gainfully employed.

Went out with friend the bride again. We had a lovely dinner in town and reminisced about school. Mostly about how hideous it was. And I said “Who would have thought that nearly 20 years out of school you would be a consultant heart surgeon and I wouldn’t have a clue what I want to do?”  This got a laugh out of her because at school she never, ever did her homework and I was always very virtuous.  She comes from an interesting family. Her mother’s siblings are notoriously brilliant and sporty and so are their children. One of her cousins won the Pulitzer Prize. You would think that at the family reunions saying “My 34 year old daughter is a consultant heart surgeon” would trump any other offerings, but I think that “My daughter just won the Pulitzer Prize” may be a winner here. I put this to my friend, but she said, no, mostly they just say “My God, it’s just a nightmare, why do you think she dresses like that…”  Mothers can be hard to please.

Came home to find the Princess sitting up in the kitchen chatting animatedly to my mother. She gave me a dirty look on my return.

Sister texted us from Chicago to say that she has finally got the keys of her new apartment, having waited six months for the sale to close.

Tuesday, March 30

Began our trip back at 9.15.  Father tense as he wanted to leave at 8.30 (for margin). Passed the journey trying to initiate my mother in the mysteries of predictive text. Eventually sent a message to my sister in Chicago saying “Great news love ma and la”. Got to Shannon at 11.10.  Checked in baggage. Weighed 17.7 kilos as against 12 on the outward trip. Mostly because of the range of presents received by myself and the Princess from our generous family.  Hounded by Ryanair into departure lounge, tense that we would miss plane (unnecessary tension).  Realised in X-ray queue that I had no money and when I left machine in Charleroi was broken.  Would it be fixed? If not how would I pay for the bus in Charleroi?  Borrowed 50 quid from my saintly mother. I’d say, in some ways, she must have been relieved to see the back of us. Ryanair stewardess spectacularly nice, did safety demonstration where Princess could see her and smiled at her throughout. Princess watched in rapt attention.  I’d say this was a bit of a novelty for the stewardess as well. Journey home uneventful but horribly long. Collapsed into flat at 5.15.

Comments
belgianwaffle

on 01 April 2004 at 09:49

Um, “events” is pushing it, but thanks for your comments. Can I say how impressed I am that MC is walking and also that no I can’t get video to work and worse, it is obscuring text in a way that seems only to happen to me. Deep sigh.

Locotes

on 03 April 2004 at 22:09

Now that was a grand tale – glad you had a good time back in the People’s Republic – but how could you not?!160,000?? Ouch. No wonder daring to have a house with 7 or so rooms can cost a cool million. You guys could be onto something joining the ol’ property game…
Ah, it’s a shame I was actually working on Monday night, or else I could have joined you guys for dinner. A damn shame. Next time for sure. 😉 So where did ye head for? I can imagine a consultant heart surgeon would probably have fancied more than a quarterpounder from Lennox’s…though personally I have no idea why.

ps – poor Wally. He was onto a loser there from the start…

This bag is not a toy

20 March, 2004
Posted in: Princess

This is emblazoned on the bottom of plastic bags in Ireland.  I used to think, what a moronic thing to write on a plastic bag. What kind of idiot is going to give his/her child a plastic bag to play with? This was before our beloved daughter was born. She loves plastic bags and she can spot them at 50 paces. Since she has started to crawl, this has become a real pain. What’s that she’s going for? Oh God, it’s the spare packet of wipes enclosed in plastic, or the spare nappies enclosed in plastic, or the plastic bag lining the bin, or the plastic wrapping on the candles, or sellotape, or the plastic bag I put down for 2 SECONDS, FOR GOD’S SAKE on the floor in the hall. You get the picture here. In fact she loves all kinds of things that are not toys. While plastic gets the number one spot, the following are also much loved:

Mr. Waffle’s alarm clock

Handbag sized vaseline

Keys (a classic, I suppose)

Videos

Nail file

Match boxes or any box which rattles when you shake it (vitamins are a big success)

Mr. Waffle’s boots

The handles on the bottom drawer of the wardrobe

Wrapping paper

Books (for eating)

All this reminds me of a story my father tells with much bitterness. When I was little he brought me home skittles from Spain. This was a long time ago and public transport was not what it is now and clearly (to hear him talk) he had to pack them on a mule and lead them across the Pyrenees.  Anyway when he got them home, I was entranced with the wrapping and never played with the skittles. I do vaguely remember the skittles lying sadly in the corner while I played with the excellent large box that they came in. I seem to recall that it played the role of toy TV set for many happy years.

In any event, the only toy our Princess really loves is Doggy and he’s not really a toy, more an essential device for the preservation of parental sanity. My sister rang me from Cork this morning (you will recall that she was importing Doggies from America for me) and told me that her luggage got lost in London. I immediately asked whether she had brought the Doggies as hand luggage, she said, with some asperity, that she had not. Alas.

Comments
[anonymous]

on 24 March 2004 at 22:56

When I was about 4 or 5 my parents splashed out at christmas and got me a big pedal car, which was bright red and looked great, and it came in this HUUUUGE box that looked great by the tree.
I spent all of christmas day playing happily by myself, I had a great time. Then finally on Boxing Day they threw the box away and I had to play with the car instead.

belgianwaffle

on 31 March 2004 at 10:40

Hmm. Interesting stuff. Thanks both. Think in future will save cash to buy shoes for me and give her boxes instead. She has spent the morning happily playing with blank video cassettes.

A Dad is Fab

19 March, 2004
Posted in: Mr. Waffle

Today is Mr. Waffle’s birthday.  I got him a present from the Princess (yes, this is the kind of person I have become..).  A book entitled, as above, “A dad is fab”.  It’s got cartoon drawings of a father and daughter team.  Mr Waffle sat on the bed and read it to her, it went like this:

Un papa, c’est sportif (picture of Da and little boy playing with a ball, little girl watching)

Un papa, c’est courageux (Da wading into river to get ball, little boy and girl watching)

Un papa, ça sait tout faire (Da fixing bike with little boy, little girl watching them sadly over the wall)

Un papa, ça te donne de bonnes choses à manger (Da giving little boy chips – this is a Belgian publication – little girl watching them sadly while eating apple)

Un papa, ça te porte quand tu es fatigué (Da carrying asleep little boy, little girl watching them sadly)

Un papa, ça fait des petits frères et des petits soeurs (family of four being regarded sadly by little girl – at this stage some serious eyebrow raising from Mr. Waffle)

And then it finishes off with the little girl saying “And my Daddy, he left, and that’s a pity, because I am a wonderful little girl”

Outstanding, I have acquired for him a sad little book about a dead or possibly divorced father as a birthday present from his daughter. What an excellent start to his birthday.

Comments
belgianwaffle

on 19 March 2004 at 20:34

Hmm. Not sure I would call it genius as such, but ta for the sweetie.

Mr Waffle

on 20 March 2004 at 09:06

It’s true the ending of the book was a bit surprising, and we might skip that bit when we read it to the Princess. But it was a lovely thought to get a book which said nice things about fathers, and I’m really touched.

Illness and breaking and entering

18 March, 2004
Posted in: Princess

Sometimes I feel like one or other of us is always ill.  Having just recovered from last week’s illness (which she transmitted to myself and Mr. Waffle), the poor Princess has come down with some new bug.  She is at this moment lying in a darkened room snuffling and sucking her thumb.  She was awake all night roaring.  I really don’t know what’s wrong with her.  She has a mild temperature this morning but is otherwise reasonably sunny. This parenting lark is more difficult than I was led to believe.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, 20 degrees and sunny.  I went for a walk in the park with F and her two children. She left me with them very briefly while she went back to her house to get something and I had a brief insight as to what it might be like to have 3 children aged 3, 11 months and 7 weeks.  Let me summarise for you: terrifying.

And in other news.  I may not have mentioned, but we are landlords.  Before we left Ireland we spent all our money on a deposit for a small house.  It is now let out to tenants.  When D was over, she told me that she heard one of our tenants on the the Marian Finucane show.  We were nervous, did she complain to the nation that we are bad landlords?  Apparently not, but she did complain that there was no burglar alarm in the house and her laptop got nicked.  The manner in which the burglar gained entry has caused us some concern.  The burglary was carried out between 10 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon and the burglar got in by breaking down the front door with a pickaxe.  Does this say to you that our house is in a nice part of town where people look our for their neighbours?  Ok, we knew that it was a bit of a rough area when we bought the house (I mean otherwise, how could we possibly have afforded it?), but still…I think we were told that it was an up and coming area.  Anyway, replacing the door cost 800 euro which is quite extraordinary.  However, in fairness, the cheque from the insurance company came in the door yesterday to our extreme delight.  I was just working out how we might spend it when Mr. Waffle pointed out that we should probably use the money to fund a burglar alarm.  Deep sigh.

Comments
belgianwaffle

on 18 March 2004 at 19:14

Herself staged an amazing recovery this pm. Most pleased. Is this too good to last?

More birthday

15 March, 2004
Posted in: Mr. Waffle, Princess

I like to publicise my birthday. Otherwise, how can you expect anyone to remember it? Nevertheless, I was surprised by the record number of people who remembered my birthday last Wednesday. It was non-stop emails and cards. Even our babysitter brought me flowers. I was most pleased. In this pantheon of virtue, I would like to give special mention to my brother who replied to my birthday reminder email as follows:

“Of course I knew today was your birthday, it’s deeply embedded in my subconscious, it’s a survival instinct, sort of like the way you instinctively know not to jump off the top of a building.”

Thursday and Friday, however, were grim. The Princess came down with a rotten cold and was very miserable. She likes those around her to share her feelings so it was pretty miserable all round. At night she couldn’t sleep because of her cough. Our little baby sounded like she had a 40 a day habit. She spectacularly threw up both Calpol and Nurofen (which, as the drier has died again, has incidentally created a mound of wet bedclothes). Since I was trapped indoors with a sick baby, Mr. Waffle went to the chemist to get baby remedies. He came home clutching two packets of suppositories. The Princess felt that this was the final indignity and screamed accordingly. However, they did the job, her temperature came down and her cough eased. A bizarre, and not entirely unwelcome, side effect is that her dirty nappies smell of eucalyptus.

Saturday morning and the Princess was largely better. Mr. Waffle kindly? inded her all morning while I slept the sleep of the just, having had a sick baby in my arms for about 48 hours on the trot. At lunch time, we had the following conversation:

Me: Would you like to take off this afternoon and do something on your own?

Him: Um, no. Do you like surprises?

Me (warily): Good surprises or bad surprises?

Him: How would you like to go shopping for the afternoon with your friend D?

The doorbell rang and there she was having flown over for the weekend for my birthday. How cool was that? She came clutching gifts for me and the Princess. She got the most beautiful little dress for the Princess, have spent half an hour looking at it open-mouthed this morning. My scarf is very nice too, I hasten to add, but the dress is phenomenal.

That evening the three of us went out for dinner. Only it wasn’t the three of us, it was loads of people that Mr. Waffle had arranged to have there as a birthday surprise. I had a wonderful time and made a spectacular present haul. Excellent.

My evening was, however,?overshadowed by the knowledge that I have NOTHING planned for his birthday on Friday.? I am now paralysed by fear. A friend suggested that I should give him a moral victory. I passed this on to him in jest. He is distressingly taken with it. Yes, how about we do more recycling (he is very “save the planet”) or buy the Princess another sling? The Princess hates sling things but Mr. Waffle fancies himself as modern parent with a baby in a sling…every time we pass another father with a baby in a sling, he sighs in a pointed way (a difficult sigh to master). For reasons that have never been entirely clear to me, he is convinced that I have put her off the sling.? This is most unfair, I am just against making her cry when it’s not strictly necessary (yes, sometimes it is, see paragraph on suppositories above). I am rapidly arriving at the conclusion that I am not a good enough wife to give him something he actually wants. Probably a book and a CD then.

Birthday

10 March, 2004
Posted in: Mr. Waffle

Today is my birthday. So far my haul has included presents from my loving spouse and my sister. Not bad. Am most pleased. My mother rang earlier this morning to assure me that the parental present will be in Cork when I go back at the end of the month. And I suppose, in all fairness, I can’t expect anything from my brother until he gets something from me (his birthday was February 5 and still he has received nothing from his loving sister).

Last year, my birthday was on a Monday and I was eight months pregnant and we didn’t really do much. I was mildly bitter about that and I was anxious, for his own sake, that Mr. Waffle wouldn’t let something similar happen this year. I wondered whether he would like me to approach our babysitter. No. Now our babysitter is Polish and her French is not great so communication with her can be difficult, particularly over the phone. I am a champion communicator (or a non-stop talker, if you like) so we get along fine with a combination of sign language (ok, this is challenging over the phone) and guess work. But I knew that Mr. Waffle, who is the strong silent type, would not be in a position to book her alone. I will not conceal from you that I was concerned that another evening in was looming. This morning, however, he revealed that he had asked a Polish colleague in the office to call her. I was pleased. Firstly, because we are going out to my favourite restaurant in Brussels and secondly, because it is not his thing to approach colleagues and ask them to phone his babysitter. He is reserved, whereas I was once graphically, but not unfairly, described by a colleague as the kind of person who will tell her life story to the person beside her at the bus stop.

I see that Fluid Pudding feels that her husband’s birthday may not have gone as well as she might have hoped. While, I trust that Mr. Waffle’s birthday will not feature the general awfulness that bedevilled Snickerdoodle’s, the fact that he has given me an excellent present and arranged a fab evening out does put me on my mettle. Alas, his birthday is Friday week, so it’s not like he’ll have forgotten the efforts he made for mine by the time it rolls round. Furthermore, he is IMPOSSIBLE to buy presents for. We had the following conversation last night:

Me: What would you like for your birthday?

Him: Well, you know I read this article in the Observer the other week, I meant to keep it for you actually..

Me: Fantastic, don’t worry about it, I can find it online, I’ll get it, what does it say?

Him (sheepishly): Well, it’s just this guy saying that really at his age, he doesn’t need presents and anything he wants, he can buy himself. In fact has already bought himself. You really don’t have to buy me anything..

Blah.

Thierrry

on 10 March 2004 at 22:33

Happy Birthday then !!!
(^_^)

Locotes

on 12 March 2004 at 13:06

Ah jaysus, apologies for missing your day. Well Happy Birthday to you. Hope you had a good one. 🙂
Ok, so even though you already got some presents from himself, I think it should only be fair that you follow his lead and get your own gift. Anything you really need right now?
(my own gift….err….it’s in the post!)

belgianwaffle

on 16 March 2004 at 15:25

Thank you one and all for kind birthday wishes. Particular gratitude to Locotes for not one but two sweeties…good present suggestion also.
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