belgianwaffle

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.

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.

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.

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?

The ecowarrior and the ecoterrorist go shopping


Posted in: Mr. Waffle

Him: Where’s the Tesco “bag for life”?

Me: I threw it out.

Him (Gasps):  But it was a “bag for life”.

Me: But it had a hole.

Him: But they’ll replace it free of charge.

Me: Yes, in Tesco in Dublin.

I leave you to work out who imported this bag into Belgium.

Unanswerable


Posted in: Princess

Her: What noise does a butterfly make?

Me: A butterfly doesn’t make any noise, sweetheart.

Her: A butterfly is like a giraffe.

And in a completely unrelated matter, I always suspected that when BroLo began blogging, the best bit would be his description of communal life. I think that this post proves that I was right. You may like to wish the good Brother a happy birthday as I note from my birthday calendar that he will be a year older as of Friday week and, let’s face it, your card isn’t going to reach him in time.