belgianwaffle

Archives for May 2006

I bet you wish you were me.


Posted in: Princess, Twins

Last night at about 3 in the morning I was sitting up in bed with both boys.  Michael smiled up at me (he’s a cheerful little boy), vomitted all over me and fell back asleep.  I put him down and turned my attention to Daniel who was grumpy and very warm.  He reacted enthusiastically to this attention and vomitted all over me also.  So, we got up, changed the boys, stripped the bed, rinsed the duvet and pillows and dabbed ineffectually at the mattress, remade the bed, fed Daniel some Calpol and persuaded them to go back to sleep.  Poor Daniel passed a very miserable night and, in consequence, so did we.

This morning, the Princess inspected her sick little brother and announced “I’m sick too”.  “Hmm” I thought.  She took a bucket to bed for her nap in the afternoon “in case I get sick”.  And she did.  To prove me wrong she spent the remainder of the afternoon throwing up into a bucket while watching and rewatching Cinderella on the television.  They have all gone to bed now and the house is festooned with drying bed linen and duvets and it smells of vomit and disinfectant.  It’s delightful here.

Could it get better?  Oh yes, did I mention that Michael is getting his first tooth?

Progress report


Posted in: Princess

Since our trip to the Hague, Mr. Dutch Mama (who is a tall Dutch man) has become the benchmark for big things in our house, which explains this conversation.

Her: I did a big, big, big wee.
Me: OK.
Her (frowning): Probably not as big as Mr. Dutch Mama’s wee though.

Just to let you know, that I got to partake of this moment this morning because I was heaving over the toilet while she was weeing in her potty.  And while I’m being revolting, yesterday, the Princess told me that bugs look like water biscuits and I had to tell her that no, these were just water biscuits that had spent the briefest moment in her stomach and come back up into the bucket.   Anyhow, you will be delighted to hear that she has a) entirely recovered and b) gone for her nap which gives me the opportunity to lie moaning on my bed with a bucket clutched in my limp grasp.  Once I’ve finished blogging, of course.

Unhappy Cultural Differences arose


Posted in: Mr. Waffle

Mr. Waffle met a smorgasbord of international colleagues for coffee the other day.

Male Spanish colleague: So I have this Finnish woman working for me and she said to me “My co-worker Giovanni is sexually harassing me”. I asked what he was doing and she replied “Every morning he says ‘ciao bella’ to me; and he also says my legs look nice when I’m wearing a skirt”.

Female Italian colleague: But that’s appalling, he was just being a normal Italian man.

Mr. Waffle: So what did you do?

Male Spanish colleague: Well, I talked to Giovanni and told him to stop complimenting her on her legs and then I asked her to stop wearing such short skirts.

Female English colleague: That’s right, blame the victim.

Male French colleague: But that’s appalling.

Female English colleague smiles warmly at him.

Male French colleague: Seeing women in short skirts is one of the great joys of Summer.

Mr. Waffle had a break from all that today though and he brought the Princess in to show her round my office and we lunched together and then he took her off and then when I came home, I played with the kiddies while he put the finishing touches to dinner.  I have tasted 1950s fatherhood and I like it.

Linguistic Diversity


Posted in: Princess

Me:  I saw you playing with Fernanda; was it a bit hard since she only speaks Spanish?

Her:  I speak Spanish.

Me: I see.

Her:  But we spoke Polish.  Fernanda and me speak Polish.

Me: Really?

Her: Yes, I speak a lot of languages.  I speak French and English and Irish and Spanish and Polish and German and Greek and Dutch and Flemish and Italian and Tagalog and Flatten.

Me: Flatten?

Her: Yes, Flatten.

Me: Latin?

Her: Yes, Flatten.

 

Later

Princess is frantically waving her hands in the air.

Me: What’s wrong sweetheart?

Her: There’s a fly and I’m afraid it’s going to pique the bejaysus out of me.

That’s English and French and Irish all in the same sentence.

 

Later Still.

Princess holds out to me a freebie book of Dutch fairytales we have been given in the chemist with our prescription (the chemist guessed our linguistic group and missed): Read it to me while I do a poo. [I love this job].

Me: But I hardly speak any Dutch, sweetheart.

Her: Read it to me in English.

Me: But it’s in Dutch.

Her: But Daddy read it in French.

Me: But Daddy is able to translate fairy tales from Dutch to French on the hoof but I am not because I don’t really speak any Dutch.

Pause.

Her: I speak Dutch.

Me: OK, but you can’t read.

Her: You read it to me in Dutch.

Me: Er was eens een weduwe die twee docters had…

Her: Keep going.

Me: Are you enjoying this?

Her: Yes, I speak Dutch.

She gets her stubborn streak from her father.

Random Numbers


Posted in: Reading etc.

“I recollect nothing that passed this day, except Johnson’s quickness, who, when Dr. Beattie observed, as something remarkable which had happened to him, that he had chanced to see both No. 1, and No. 1000, of the hackney-coaches, the first and the last; ‘Why, Sir, (said Johnson,) there is an equal chance for one’s seeing those two numbers as any other two.’”  From Boswell’s Life of Johnson

Not a particularly relevant quote but I’ve been waiting to use it for a long time.  Humour me. Yesterday I had the 50,000th visitor to my blog since, just over two years ago,  Locotes very decently explained to me how to install the site meter thingy.  If memory serves me, he entitled his mail “Advice for a raving egomaniac”.

No smirking please, 50,000 may not be a lot of visitors for some of you lot but I am delighted with myself.  It confirms my growing suspicion that not absolutely everyone reading my blog has been forced to do so by me.  I have a wide circle of acquaintance and many relations but I think 50,000, even allowing for repeat visits (and, obviously, my constant checking for comments), covers more than those.  Of course, there are all the people who are looking for waffles who end up here.  Sorry about that people.  I imagine that the person from Tokyo looking for baby Dior probably didn’t stay long either.  A lot of people looking for information on “suicidal bunnies” seem to be directed here. If you’re here for suicidal bunnies, I appreciate your difficulty, I couldn’t find anything on Amazon either. I suggest you may wish to email Hodder and complain.  Or you could stay here.  It’s delightful, 50,000 visitors can’t be wrong.

While we’re looking at user stats, can I say what a kick I get out of the world map that the site meter people give you and I see little dots all over the globe reading my blog (or looking for waffle recipes, as appropriate)?  I love the fact that someone from Anchorage used to regularly read this blog.  Please come back lurker from Anchorage, and don’t be unnerved that I know you are there, this is all my visit counter tells me; I cannot track you down and send you scary things in the post

So thank you gentle readers, for reading, it is great to know you are out there. And thank you kind commenters for commenting, it is lovely to get comments.  Any of the rest of you like to delurk?  I’d like that and, as you know, I presume, it’s all about me, me, me the raving egomaniac.

“Words are the Daughters of Earth…Things are the Sons of Heaven”


Posted in: Princess

Snap

Me: Stop pulling that elastic or it will snap and hurt you.

Her: Like a puppy that hasn’t been trained?

Me: Same word, different context.

 

Ball

Her: Daddy bought a ball?

Me: Yes, in the supermarket.

Her: A ball??

Me: Yes.

Her: Where, where is the ball?

Me: It’s in the hall.

Her: A ball for dancing?  A swirl of colour and a swell of music?

Me: Oh no, sorry sweetheart, a ball for bouncing and throwing.

Her: Ah, same word, different context.

And re the title, yes, we’re having a Samuel Johnson week, is there a problem with that?