Getting Away With It

Some would say that I'm overly strict with kidlet, making him put his own dirty dishes in the sink and expecting him to help out with the housekeeping when and where he can.  I don't let him eat much sugar--I consider myself fortunate that he loves having fruit and does not object overly much to vegetables.  I make him pick up his blocks when he makes a mess of them (I do help gather them together).  He's well-behaved in public, accepting "No, we're not getting that" with nary more than a shrug.  

So it might come as a surprise when I say that I let him sleep in our bed.  I didn't, early on.  I did co-sleep/bedshare with him--just me and him--when he was very small, but once he "graduated" to waking up only once a night I moved back to our bed and he slept in his room.  And since then, he's had his own bed in one form or another.  Which he usually stays in. 

But sometimes, about 2-3 times a week, he'll wake up in the middle of the night, come to our bedroom, and crawl under the covers with us.  And I'll let him stay.  Firstly, experience has taught me that if I do send him back to his room, he won't sleep and he'll come in just about every hour, waking us up in the process.  And that, to me, is far worse than having a kidlet smooshed between us, with his foot in my ribs and taking over my pillow.  We've slept with our cats for five years--we're used to being dislplaced.  You can get used to sleeping in a funny position.  You never get used to being awakened 4-5 times a night.  

Secondly:  it's not as if he refuses to sleep in his own bed.  He loves the bedtime ritual, and is actually quite amenable to going to bed.  But he's also at that age where he's starting to become independent, pulling his pants on and off for the potty all by himself, voicing requests and having them respected (or not), being allowed to run around the Garage for Fun all by himself.  I am told that so much independence can be a little scary for a kidlet.  If he needs a night of cuddles to make sure that we still love him, I'd be cruel to turn him away.  

And thirdly, well, it's just ridiculously cute to wake up together, to see him snuggled up between the pillows and sleepily open his eyes, and then realize that Mommy's awake, too.  And that means that he's allowed to get up.  And the ensuing bouncing on the bed that waking up invariably entails.  

In short, there's nothing to be gained by making him sleep in his own bed.  He's always been a good sleepr and quite good at falling asleep on his own, and it's not like he's pathologically attached to us, either.  He just needs a little extra cuddle every now and again.  What kid doesn't?  

Flow: Going With It

Confession time:  I love paper products.  Moleskine notebooks, nice pens (rollerballs and fountain pens), that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, aside from being on a rather tight budget, I can't usually justify buying another notebook just to let it sit and gather dust.  I mean, I love trees, too.  I do 90% of my writing on a device with a keyboard these days--the other 10% is reserved for making lists and keeping track of expenses--so it's not as if I actually use a full notebook.  And even if I did need all that paper, well, I've already got several notepads that are sufficiently empty that I can just use.

But the desire for good, quality paper products continues to haunt me every time I pass the Moleskine rack at the Dekker van de Vegt.  I love the way Moleskine products feel, how nicely they fit in my purse.  It's like an itch that simply can't be reached.

But lately (just to overextend the simile) I've gotten a backscratcher:  The Flow:  Book for Paper Lovers book, a huge, fat book full of cards and crafty paper and paper dolls and stickers and DIY envelopes and flags and did I mention stickers?  It's got wrapping paper and paper bags and posters and banners, thank-you notes and gift tags (one problem solved for next year) and postcards.

It wasn't cheap, but that's partly why I always ask for boekenbon, gift certificates that can be used almost every bookstore when people start pestering me for wish lists for my birthday and Christmas (well, that and I never know what to ask for).  And strangely, it has been immensely gratifying to have the book with me.  Rediscovering the thrill of paper dolls is the last of it.  Having cards to send to friends for different occasions is a huge bonus for me, at least--that's a major reason why we don't send out birthday cards, actually (I know, bad Dutchie):  the first is that I rarely remember to, the second is that I never remember to buy cards.

I started this year in a dangerously optimistic mood.  Who knows, maybe we'll finally get into a sort of groove this year, maybe I'll finally learn to go with the flow.

Life with a Chromebook

A few months ago, the laptop I was using died.  It just refused to see any network connections at all, and insisted on being connected through broadband, which we don't have.  But I didn't panic.  I had a netbook, and while I knew it was slow and pokey it was at least enough to get stuff done, right?  Except it wasn't.  Maybe a 1.3 GHz processor is fast enough for most things, but for some reason every single page took at least one minute to load (even Facebook), and as for typing...You know how sometimes you type something on a website and the words show up a minute later?  Yeah.  Except all the time.  And it would freeze every 10 minutes.  And tell me so only 2 minutes after I noticed it had frozen.

One of the best things about social media, I've decided, is being able to solicit opinions about stuff.  Most of my friends recommended that I purchase a Chromebook rather than an all-out laptop, and thus far, I must confess I am rather impressed.  I mean, I already spend most of my time online using Google products--Chrome, Drive, I even have a G+ account, Gmail, etc--and the only thing I was using Office for was to write stuff for clients, and occasionally update my spreadsheets of expenses for my accountant.  

Even so, I had a hard time believing that a Chromebook, with all of its shortcomings, could possibly be sufficient for me. Maybe it's just because I grew up in a day and age when more was always better--more storage, more RAM, more power, and the latest OS--but it felt like a dare to order the pretty blue thing (yes, I got the blue one, just because I could).  It helped that I had a tax deadline--in order to have the VAT count towards my 2014 expenses, I needed to order it before 1 January--so on the very last day of 2014, I just sat down and clicked "order", without thinking about the pros and cons any more.  

Getting Chrome to work at first was a little sticky:  when you get your Chromebook, you are asked to enter in your Gmail account and your password, and then it sort of processes and thinks....and in my case, it processed and thought for a long time until finally, thinking that it couldn't possibly take this long, I shut it down and started it back up.  I suppose that's the nice thing about Chrome--even if you do botch up the setup process, Chrome is such a light program that there simply isn't very much to botch up, and after entering my password again everything just worked.  I was delighted to find that all of my work on Google Drive was already there, that my bookmarks were still there, that all of the passwords I'd had saved were already there.  Basically, it just transposed my entire Internet history from the dinky netbook to the Chromebook.  

By and large it's been a wonderful experience with the Chromebook; at least some of it also has to do with the Bluetooth headphones that I bought along with it.  Being able to talk on Skype without having to hold the phone is certainly a plus; being able to listen to podcasts or whatever while I'm away from the laptop is positively delightful.  No, it may not be able to run 90% of all the programs that are out there, but then again, I don't use 90% of the programs that are out there.  It does what I need it to do, and that's enough.  

The main downside, as I see it, is the very limited hard drive space.  I know, I know--Drive offers 10 GB for free, and that'll be sufficient for most of my documents--but I also want to have all of my pictures at my fingertips.  I am debating whether to get an external hard drive, but that would kind of defeat the point of having a wireless system.

Dangerously Optimistic

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas/holiday season.  It was a bit hectic around here, because Karel was working on Christmas so we had to reschedule the holiday.  Procrastination bit me in the ass, to put it mildly--I may have been in a slight funk these past couple weeks.  

But now, with the impending start of a new year, I have decided that parenting the kidlet and taking care of business are no longer mutually exclusive.  Kidlet is a good kidlet.  There are no more excuses.   Time to take the bull by its horns, start taking photographs again, writing more blog posts, re-doing another (much smaller) blog (the one about food) and just starting to care again, in general.  

I don't know if I can do it.  But I have cooked venison this year, and did an epic round of baking, while managing to keep the apartment in some semblance of order and kidlet more-or-less happy. Maybe it's that I've finally managed to shake myself of the lethargy of these past few weeks.  But for whatever reason, 2015 is going to be a good year.  

Oh, so those are poffertjes

If learning the rules of the bike lane is beginner-level expat, and being able to discern which part of the country someone is from by their accent is advanced-level expat, then poffertjes probably fall somewhere in the middle.   Not eating them--anybody who doesn't have a gluten allergy, a milk allergy, an egg allergy, and is capable of willfully ignoring everything you ever learned about butter can eat them.  But making them yourself--that takes a little skill.  Knowing where to find everything you need to make them is something a newbie could do, but the effort expended might not be worthwhile.  But if you've been around the block a few times it shouldn't bee too difficult.  Ignoring everything you ever learned about butter--you're on your own.  

It's worth noting, though, that unless you're a connoisseur of poffertjes, you probably ought to just stick with getting them from the kramen whenever there's a kermis, or else pony up the cash to sit down at a restaurant that specializes in discs of batter fried in butter.  Poffertjes are tasty, but healthy they ain't:  flour, butter, powdered sugar, stroop if that's your thing--everything anybody ever taught you about healthy eating, gone wrong.  Even if you can make them at home, it's probably better for your coronaries if you don't.  

Most of the time, they're sold as little pancakes--adorable little things that soak up the melted butter that they're served with (melted butter and powdered sugar are the traditional toppings) so that you have no visual reference for how much fat is going down your gullet.  But unlike pancakes, traditionally they are leavened by yeast, although if you get a mix from the supermarket it will have chemical leaveners (baking soda and/or baking powder).  You make up a batter following any one of the recipes available (this one is my personal fave); typically the proportion is approximately 1:2 flour:water, BUT that's by weight, and if you're using yeast there's a bit more flour.  Also, the flour is a mixture of buckwheat and reguar wheat flour; I've heard that you can get buckwheat flour at the Albert Heijn, but the only place I've been able to find it is at The Windmill, which sells specialty products for home bakers, so YMMV. 

Now, the website with the recipe uses a cast iron poffertjes pan, which is something we recently acquired as a birthday present.  Cast iron isn't too difficult to work with, actually, once you get some rules down:  season it well, NEVER wash it with dish detergent (I've heard that properly seasoned cast iron can be washed with detergent, and my own cast iron skillet managed to make it through an accident swipe with a soapy sponge unscathed, but seasoning cast iron is sufficiently pain-in-the-ass-ish that I wouldn't risk it unless I had to), don't let it soak, and perhaps most important of all:  use plenty of fat.  In other words, in between every batch of butter-soaked-buckwheat-pancake-y goodness, you need to re-coat your pan with butter.  Doing so will ensure that the puffed side of the poffer is mottled golden-brown, a la the professionals, and that the crust is the right combination  of crispy and tender.  If your cast iron is seasoned well, forgetting the butter isn't the end of the world--the poffertjes will stick a little more, but the biggest difference will be that the outside becomes downright crunchy, which is not ieal.  

Mastering the art of flipping the damn things, though, takes practice.  I am in awe of the people who do this professionally, flipping row after row of these dang things with just a quick flick of their wrist.  There is--as only the Dutch can do--such a thing as a fork specifically used for flipping poffertjes.  Ours is a wooden one--a simple little Y-shaped piece of wood, ever so slightly curved on one side--so that it won't damage Teflon.  Theoretically, it is possible to flip them so that they make a ball--i.e., that the batter thtat used to be on top bellies into the dimple while the cooked side is firm enough to hold its shape while you're cooking the bottom.  I haven't gotten that good at this, yet, but when my husband and Kidlet are both whining for the next batch, aesthetics can be put on hold.  . 

There is a difference between homemade and elsehow-procured poffertjes.  The homemade ones have slightly more bite to them, and (at least when I made them) aren't as salty.  Plus you can fry them to that perfect, rich golden-brown color--you don't have to settle for "done" because you've got sixty more orders.  Worth the hassle?  Absolutely--if someone else is making them.  

The Inheritance

A few weekends ago the weather was gorgeous.  As in, "take everything you ever heard about Dutch weather and shove it"--blue skies, with a temperature that could best be described as "invigorating".  I.e., it was time to wandelen.

Only this time, I was bringing Kidlet.  Not a big deal--we go out literally every morning, sometimes by bike, sometimes on foot, for at least two hours. Sometimes we go to town, sometimes we go to the country, and sometimes we stay in the neighborhood.  I must confess that it's not entirely because I like going places with Kidlet--a good part of it is because, if he's outside our apartment, he's not making a mess inside.  

So it was splendid.  We went out on the Ooijpolder and dodged cow turds and stinging nettles, and somehow ended up on the bank of the Waal, where we stayed for a while and watched the barges motoring up and down the river.  They kicked up enough of a wake that waves broke on the shore, and Kidlet, almost magically, knew how to play wave-tag.

I'm not naive enough to believe that the Ooijpolder will remain unspoiled and wild forever.  Even if the uitwater is maintained as a floodplain, well, floodplains flood.  There was a time a few years ago where the part we were walkng on this past weekend was under at least 1 meter of water.  And if what they say about global warming is true, then kidlet won't have that many more trips to that country ahead of him. I can hope that it will remain this lovely for another few lifetimes, and I do.  But more than  having the land, I want Kidlet to have that sense of adventure, the excitement of turning the corner and not knowing what you're going to find.

At his age, of course, everything is an adventure.  Going to the supermarket?  Why, we might wander down the soup aisle this time!  But I don't want it to get squashed in the rigamarole of daily life.  When he starts going to peuterspeelzaal (pre-preschool) he's going to be told to sit here, stand there, play now, etc--and it won't get any better as he gets older.  And that's the flip side of living here--you don't get kudos for bucking the norm.

So this weekend, when Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten arrive in Nijmegen, I'll let him go (I've got work--though to be completely honest I'm not a Piet fan, either).  When the letter from the consultatiebureau arrives, I'll make an appointment as it tells me to, and he will get his shots, as he's supposed to.  But in the meantime, you can bet that I'll be taking him deep into the heart of every forest we've got, letting him pick up sticks and handle leaves and throw rocks off of bridges and pet horses.  Thinking for yourself, creating your own adventure--that's something few people know how to do these days.  That's something I want him to have when he's grown.  

Initiation

Despite my living in the Netherlands for as long as I have, and despite the fact that I do, in fact, know how to ride a bike, until last week it's been over two years since I was last on one.  My little ball-and-chain kidlet goes just about everywhere with me, so if I wanted to go somewhere on a bike I would have to, by necessity, take him with me.  And, well, given my history of interesting falls--one of which landed me in the huisartspost (less-emergent-emergency room) and got me four stitches--that was not going to happen on our clunker, where parts of the frame have rusted clean through and the brakes let out a terrifying screech every time you so much as slow down.

So I shelled out some pretty euros for this pretty sturdy bike (the red version).  It is, I believe, a touring bike--but I didn't really know that when I bought it off of Marktplaats (of course).  It was a nice Gazelle bike, in good working order, so I made a bid (€175, if you must know) and luckily it was accepted before someone else made a higher one.  No, used bikes are not necessarily cheap bikes.  And having ridden my share of clunkers in the past, I've learned that when it comes to a good stable ride with functional derailleurs and working brakes, you  tend to get what you pay for.  And since I wanted a bike with a good smooth ride and working brakes, well, I had to shell out.

I also managed to obtain a kidlet seat--one that sits on the back of the bike--for not too much more, and after a bit of tinkering, I managed to attach the kidlet seat to the bike.  Even so, like I said, given my history of interesting falls, my heart was in my throat when I took him out on the bike for the first time, for the entire 10 minutes it took me to get to the Jan Kooij 2Wielers (keep in mind it's only a five-minute ride) so that I could purchase a helmet for him.  It was a floor model--I personally would have preferred something more classic, but the price difference trumped my sense of aesthetics.   And besides, at his age, well, I can't say it doesn't look ridicuolously cute on him.  With that, and a second bike lock--I am not the only discerning fietser in the country, and it's pretty much a given that, if your bike isn't secured with at least two locks, it's going to get stolen--I was all set. With kidlet properly protected against head trauma, it's still a fairly terrifying experience taking him on the bike, but it's not so bad that I've ever said, "Fuck this," and opted for the bus. Because honestly, being chained to a bus schedule sucks and even though the bike and everything else cost me a small fortune, this week alone has made having them worthwhile.

Kidlet, being half Dutch, took to the bike seat like a duck to water.  He was a little worried at first, but once I started riding the bike he seemed to enjoy himself immensely.  For his initiation ride--after I bought him the helmet--we visited friends in Aldenhof.  On our way back, he fell asleep--in the driving rain, despite the potholes and all of the drempels that clog up the smaller side streets.  A more Dutch initiation into bikes simply isn't possible.