Vicks Vapor Rub

Last night I was miserable with a horrible cold and a very very sore throat. I was feeling completely sorry for my self and I just wanted to revert back to childhood when my mother used to rub Vick’s vapor rub all over my chest and I would curl up under the covers and sleep all day.

Just then I remembered! Hey, my dad forgot his Vick’s, which he ALWAYS has on his bedside table, when he visited last March. Yippee. I rubbed it all over my neck and chest, put on a high neck shirt, curled up in the covers and fell asleep with a smell that brought back so many memories.

I slept like a child. Thanks Dad!

A Child's Choice

Yesterday, Kai crawled over to a basket full of toys and picked out a stuffed Mickey Mouse. He sat and played with it for almost an hour. Natan’s chosen one since he was 2 has been a Winnie the Pooh. Bought for him by Isobel when we stopped at a Disney shop in Rome. Don’t ask why, out of everything to visit in Rome, we went into a Disney shop!

Anyway, I love Baby Pooh, but what is up with my children choosing Disney characters over all the cool design toys they have? What is it about Disney characters that make them so attractive? To me they are completely and utterly over designed and unnatural.

Out of all of the parents I know we have the fewest loud, bright, hard, plastic and cartooned toys. Also, we do not have a television. So, it isn’t that my children are indoctrinated into wanting profit oriented character toys. They have just chosen these out of all the other less mass-produced and marketed ones. At this moment I wish Kai could carry on an intellectual conversation and tell me why he picked Mickey from the basket. Then I would know the secret to design for children.

As for Mickey though I am sad to say he has already been lost. After watching Kai play so wonderfully with him. I decided to take him on our walk to pick up Natan and between the school and home he was tossed overboard. I didn’t notice until it was to late to go back. Honestly, I didn’t ditch Mickey on purpose because he comes from Disney. Lord knows NO mother in her right mind would loose a chosen one on purpose.

Natan & Baby Pooh • July 2004

The Belgian Beach

[Natan: 4y • 2m• 29d]
[Kai: 8m • 25d]

Natan's Quote of the Day

"You can only go to the sea by train a car doesn't go well."

I should have posted this two weeks ago (Oct 16th) after our trip to the sea, but I just downloaded the pictures today. I wanted to show a picture and mention how really lovely the Belgian coast is, especially at this time of year. Of course it is not a beach as most believe a beach to be, sunny, hot and blue, but we really enjoy it. At this time of year it has all these wonderful muted colors everything with a bit of grey and the air is amazingly fresh. You can walk for hours along the beach and for children it is a never-ending exploration. Digging, hunting for crabs, seashells and other strange creatures, chasing waves, building castles, making islands, etc. Natan is in perfect form at the sea. He comes alive with ideas and questions and can be free to explore and just play without any programs or structure. I remember as a child spending every possible moment outside making up games and adventures that had NO direction from adults. Although, this is not often possible in a large city it is perfectly possible at the sea!

I guess I am raving a bit, but I am amazed at the amount of people I meet in Brussels who NEVER, well maybe once, have made it to the coast. Which is a whopping 1hr45mins away. If they could just leave behind their stereotypical idea of what a beach day should be like they would have a brilliant adventure!

Caution: Very long blog ahead.

So, it has been a very long eventful week and I have just now gotten a chance to sit down. Most people hate Monday’s, but I LOVE them! It is the only chance I get to sit alone in the quiet with my cup of coffee and think about what I will do this week.

Last week Monday I spent the entire day, Tuesday as well, trying to learn HTML. In order to make a website for Pieter, so that the fame that is seeking him can finally come! My conclusion by Tuesday evening was that I have very little brain cells that can wrap themselves around computer code. It is very difficult to go from designer to programmer, for me anyway, but I will not give up.

Wednesday Kai was home and we enjoyed our time together. It seems like a long time since he has started at the crèche. He has had a rough time of it and went almost every day for three weeks now. This has been a hard time for both of us. It made me so miserable to see him miserable and since I am not REALLY working it was hard for me to keep him in there, but now it is going very good. He is back to three days and enjoys going and I feel better about going back to work.

He has also started to crawl and roll around into all positions, so although this has made my life more stressful it seems to have given him more confidence. Although to much confidence can be a bad thing as he went head first over his crib Saturday night scaring Pieter and I to death. Making us spend the next two hours watching him and getting up every 10 min through the night to look at him.

Why is it that the same moments that bring us such joy can also bring such dread?

Thursday Natan went in to the hospital at 8:00am to have his adenoids taken out. By 9:00 he appeared to have drunken way to much vodka. I have to say that having such a preview of your son in a drunken stopper is very disturbing when he is only four. He was very cute though and got big puppy dog eyes and looked up at me with the biggest grin ever. The operation went perfectly and we sat and sat and sat in the hospital until 6:00pm for the doctor to pop her head in a say you can leave now! Of course, we could of left 3 hours ago as well!

Friday Natan and I stayed home all day watching movies in our pj’s and taking way to much advantage of mama’s generosity, but other than a bit of exhaustion it seems to have greatly improved his breathing and the only side effect is his voice is a bit different.

Saturday I got a horrible cold and was out of commission until Sunday evening! It is always something isn’t it? I guess you just have to make the most of the days, which are pretty much uneventful, if you ever get them again after having children. I am still waiting!

Spidey powers revealed!

Do you know how spider man changes from ordinary to Spiderman with special sticky powers? He turns his pants on backwards! It is that simple. Natan explained it all to me yesterday in great detail after I mentioned he had his pants on backwards. It seems that any of us could do the same and have Spidey powers. Try it!

Natan's Quote of the Day

Nurse says "U kunt daar alstublieft wachten Mevrouw."
(Could you wait there please, Mrs. or Ma'am)
Natan giggles and quietly says “Did you hear her she called you a Mevrouw?” more giggles. “You're not a Mevrouw you’re a mama!”
I say “Yes, I am a mama, but also a Mevrouw.”
Natan still giggling says “No! Mevrouw do not have children.”

If we would just listen.

Cecile's Quote of the Day

"Look the sun is still crying!.”

[Natan's best friend from school is Max and Cecile is his little sister (age 2). She said that to her mother on a very foggy morning.]

I wish I listened more, I wish I wasn’t always so busy with things I find important, but mostly I wish I had the heart, truthfulness, innocence and energy of a child.

Every once in a while I stop what I am doing and just listen to Natan, because what he is saying is so brilliant I just want to quickly find a recorder and save it for eternity. If only I could find a way to learn from him how to loose all my inhabitations and just be free to play and say whatever I want whenever I want.

I started this blog to observe children. I have done that a bit, but also I have gone on about things which are of adult importance. I need to get back to the inspiration for this blog!

The space between

In an earlier post I mentioned the distance from our front door to Oma and Opa's back door. Well, now I will explain this distance. See the above photo? That is it! The distance I mean. We live in the former horse stables behind Pieter's parents house. We share a garden (yard), main entrance, mailbox, their basement (a bit of wine. Shhh!) and spur of the moment dinners when one or the other has to little or to much food.

This is a very special relationship that has been more than four years in the making. Of crouse there has been many awkward moments and many people are amazed by this arrangement, but I have to say for all of us especially Natan and Kai it is brilliant. For Natan it is probably most perfect as he can decide at any moment to go to Oma’s (if she is home) and he can go alone, which makes him feel very grown up. For me it makes days easier because I can have some much-needed alone time and not feel to guilty. For Oma it is wonderful as well because she is always ready to play.

It is also nice for Pieter and I as his father is a doctor and mother a dentist, so we can ask loads of questions and get free advice. They get design and home improvement help from us. (as you can see in the design of the garden that we finished this summer) So, I think we are all settling in quite nicely with each other.

I remember when I was growing up spending a little bit of everyday up on my Grandparent’s farm, which was walking distance from our house, with many of my cousins. I always wished this for my children, but I guess I never dreamed it might happen in Brussels, Belgium.

Finding myself-part 1

In Brussels there is a two-year waiting list for day care (crèche). When I found out I was pregnant in May of 2004 I decided that I wanted to go back to work sooner than the two years I had waited with Natan. So I signed Kai up for September 2005 and set my sites for working then.

Well, Kai has been in crèche for one month and he is finally liking it. I almost (maybe still might) had a job starting Oct. 1st, but yesterday the second meeting, for the job I don’t yet have, was cancelled. Amazingly this time I was completely o.k. with it! Because the day before I had finally shed most of my motherly doubts and feelings that I should be home with my children and found my creative self. I have had two of the most inspiring days!

Being a mother for me is amazing, wonderful, inspiring and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, BUT I also need to keep my self. No one really talks of this slow eroding of self that happens from the moment you get pregnant. You are just so consumed with the idea of caring and educating a young person, that you very slowly loose pieces of yourself. Some women seem to handle this with amazing grace and slip into motherhood and staying at home with ease, or so it seams. For me, I have a never-ending battle in my head between wanting to spend time with Kai & Natan and wanting to sketch and create something. The sketching find time for and sometimes ideas just pour out, but the creating bit never gets the attention it deserves.

Finally, after a month of having some free time, I am finished running errands, picking up the clutter, spending much needed time in cafes I have neglected (well, this one will still take some of my time), window shopping and other time consuming things. Now I feel very light, extremely motivated and I am going to attack the ideas in my sketchbook with a vengeance. My goal is that in 6 weeks I am going to show it all off in a small exhibition/sale at my house. Yes, I am over ambitious this has always been my fault, but I am determined that even if it is just one mobile and a few friends I will have something!

Two inspiring things in two days.

There are two inspiring things that I have come across in the last two days that I want to share. One is a book of questions by Kobi Yamada called “Ever Wonder, ask questions and live into the answers”. I found it at a second had store for .50 cents along with some really great children’s books, which were also incredibly inspiring. I bought it to leave open on my desk so each day I pass by I see a question and keep my self thinking and doing, but now I have decided it is to inspiring to leave alone on my desk. So I have created Just thinking if… Check it out in the side bar each week and please feel free to share any answers or new questions you might have.

The second thing I read about on my friend Emily's Blog. She has found the most incredibly cool blog ever called Three Beautiful Things. Where she writes down each day three beautiful things which happened to her that day. This blog is just brilliant! So, here are my three beautiful things from todday and I hope this momentum will last and I will see some of you in November for my opening!

(1) The smile on Kai’s face as I waved goodbye to him and shut the door to his crèche this morning.
(2) Missing my tram stop on the way back from the crèche only to realize as I walked home from the next stop that I was going to pass a really good baker. So I stopped in for a warm Chocolate Koek (like a croissant (not an American one, but a true French one) with little bits of chocolate wrapped inside.
(3) A smile from an old French speaking Belgian man as he passed me on the street eating my Chocalate Koek with great joy and crumbs all over my scarf. He said, Bon? (Good?) This is so beautiful, because you almost never get a smile from a person on the streets of Brussels, let a lone a comment as well.

Our Inspiring Weekend

[Natan: 4y • 2m• 6d]
[Kai: 8m • 2d]

Natan's Quote of the Day

"Can you dress me like an artist?"
Natan's thought is that artist have costumes like spiderman and batman

Well, we had a fabulous weekend and managed to get ourselves out of the house more than once if you can imagine. Kai was a bit sick, but he didn't notice a thing and slept most of the time we were out, but Natan was wide awake and full of questions and ideas.

We started on Saturday morning by going, just at opening time, to a new exhibition at the Royal Museum of Fine Art on the work of Panamarenko. He is a Belgian artist that makes very crazy machines. Mainly, flying machines that don’t actually fly! We spent over an hour there and Natan was both in awe and irritated at times because some machines where made wrong and couldn’t possibly fly. Although, I told him time and time again that these were works of art and none could fly he wasn’t really listening to me, but this is a truely amazing exhibition and if you are in or around Brussels before the end of January you should check it out.

After the exhibition we came home and first thing Natan went for was his cardboard Buzz Lightyear wings we made together over a year ago. He found a rope we had used for Kai’s swinging chair and asked Pieter to hang it back up in the studio. Curious as to his plan we just sat back and watched. He then began to tear apart the sofa placing each cushion precisely under or around the rope. Then he put on his wings and jumped onto the highest pile of cushions. Being the only worrywart in the family I mentioned the dangers of the brick floor behind him. Then Pieter being the OTHER responsible adult didn’t stop Natan’s adventures, but went and got his bicycle helmet “There no more worries!” he proclaimed. I didn't want to be the one to spoil all the fun, so I just sat back and watched. This game went on all weekend and we had to drag Natan out on Sunday afternoon for a picnic in the park, but once back he tore our sofa apart again.

This is Natan’s life with two quick thinking creative parents who still feel like children themselves. Sometimes I think we should settle down a bit, but then again, how boring would that be?