Bike race

Well, it is May 1st. Monty is turning four today. I will give an extended update on his birthday some other time (since it is only 9.15, his birthday has barely started).

Before i go on with the story about the bike race i would like to share a little something in the category: "One of these things is not like the other."
We were at the market last week with Bill and Carol and there some little food stands - what would be a hot dog vendor in America. And it is selling the following: (now you see which one just doesn't belong)
a) hot dogs
b) hamburgers
c) escargot (which is French for snails)
Need i say more?

About the bike race
Boy did we have the time of our life! There was a bike race right through our street. As a matter of fact, the start and finish were in our street. It was on sunday afternoon and after we got home from church (it was gorgeous weather) we just opened the windows and let the boys look at the bicyclists and follow cars pull up. We are right on the street, so we had a good view.






And then the waiting game began. The racers were going six loops of which the first one was the largest. There was about an hour after the start before the racers came by for the first time. So meanwhile, the boys decided to test the quality of the "race track". Our road is normally very busy, so we don't let them ride their bikes on there, but this they it was all blocked off, so they had a blast. For good measure they went over the finish line too.
And then finally, the bike racers came by again. 6 times.



Stoney had so much fun, he has been asking multiple times since Sunday if there is going to be another bike race in our street soon.

Let it be known...

Let it be known to all kindred, tongues and people that Monty pooped IN the toilet last night....

Just an update...

Just thought i give a quick fill in on the Big Problems Of Our Life...

1. Immigration problem in Belgium. Resolved for the moment. After I wrote a somewhat frantic email to my boss at work I had the year contract within 24 hours. Didn't become effective till April 1st, but it was good enough for the immigration office here in the big cosmopolitan town we live in. That is, they extended my temporary residency for another month, so they have a month to pull a blue card out of a drawer, type my name on it and put an official looking stamp on it. That blue card should make me good in Belgium for another five years, and with me, the boys and Leland
2. Monty's Constipation problem. Feel free to skip if you could care less about these details. Well, the laxatives work. Usually it takes a day or two, then he produces a couple of brick like poops (in size and consistency) and then we get a lot of Very Sticky, Extremely Messy Poops for several days. After which we stop giving him the laxative, after which he gets constipated again and so perpetum mobile. Right now we are in the Very Sticky, Extremely Messy phase.
   
3. No puking on the part of the kids this week. It's almost funny. Often when i get to work my co workers ask: How are you? and the second question is: no puking kids today? Week 14 has been a good one on the puking front. Now we'll see what week 15 brings.
4. Sticking with the health issues though: Stoney seems extremely tired lately. Kind of strange for a child who just had two weeks of easter vacation. And the problem is that when he gets tired, he get EXTREMELY whiny and starts talking like a baby. "Me have... me want..." And this is not a language barriere problem from him learning Dutch. He is perfectly capable of saying "Monty won't cooperate", in both languages when he is not tired. Being a mom (that is I assume that all mom's are like this) i immediately start worrying that he has some terrible and life threatening disease when he starts being tired all the time like he is now. But i also remember that he has had spells like this before, when he just was really tired for a couple of weeks and he has always resurfaced healthy as a horse a month later. Maybe he just has low iron.
5. Still on the health front: Leland has been hit by some nasty cold virus. He first thought that he had bronchitis, but the doctor said it wasn't. His lungs are hurting an awful lot when he coughs and he has been running a fever on and off for the past week. Not very well timed since he had baby-sitting duty all week long. Strangest symptom to him is that he has no apatite. That has never happened before, he laments, except when i had kidney stones. Hopefully he will recover soon and hopefully none of the rest of us will get it.
6. We have been driving a borrowed car for about 6 months now and it has been great, but it has been dying on us lately. Sometimes it wills start and sometimes it won't. It's not the battery, it is the starter. It makes it very unreliable. And since it is a borrowed car, we can't really go to the owner and ask him to fix it, since he never drives it wants to get rid of it in the first place. But are hesitant to spend money fixing it since it is not our car, and we would rather get a car of our own. We'll have to see. To tie this point to point 1: when we went the city hall to take care of my immigration mess the car wouldn't start again after we left the city hall. And this is in the middle of nowhere, mind you. We pushed it down the parking lot a couple of times hoping that would start it, which it didn't. All this was not beneficial to Leland's lung situation which was mentioned in point 5. Luckily some guys working on a building near by came to our rescue and help push it some more and it finally started.
   

On a completely separate note and not in the 'problems category' but rather in the 'Small Joys in Life' category: we have some hyacinths in our living room that smell just splendidly!

Disney Land Paris

Well, we had our first family visit to a Disney park. We had hoped that the end of March would bring some warmer weather, but alas... We didn't get a white Christmas, but we did have a white Easter. None of the snow stuck though, but i must admit that Leland and the boys had a snowball fight in the attic (scooping the snow of the roof, with the added bonus of it being warmer in attic then outside).
Anyway, make a long story short, we didn't have any snow while we in Disney itself, but it was very cold at times. Specially for Monty, who in all excitement forgot all his potty training skills and kept peeing in his pants. Cold wet pants on a cold day... not good.
But we did have fun. Peter Pan's flight was the boys favorite, we actually did it twice. They also liked the Lightning McQueen ride and the train that rides through the park. Least favorite part was the standing in line... Well, no surprises there. They also were not to excited about the star wars ride that we went on. It's one of those simulator things that bounces and rattles and stuff. Monty was actually very scared. When the simulator made it appear as if we were sucked into the 'death star' he started screaming: "I don't want to go in there, I don't want to go in there!" Poor thing.
Of course one of the other memorable moments was Stoney vomiting in the Pizza Hut. One minute he was fine and the next... BARF!
YUCK...
The boys are already asking when we will go back again. We went for three days and could have easily spend another, but by day three they were just exhausted, so it is a good thing we didn't.

Immigration and stuff...

Okay, so here is the situation:
(The complete one for those of you who don't get the family emails)

Immigration problem #1
Anne checks with American Embassy in Belgium about the status of her Green card. Rumor has that even though the Green card doesn't expire for another 7 years, it will become invalid when out of the country for longer then a year. Embassy confirms this and says she needs to file for a "reentry permit" that will give her the right to come and go to the US even when out of the country for more then a year. After about twenty emails back and forth with the Embassy, they confirm that she has to go to the INS office in Washington DC in person to file this form. Anne bites the bullet, buys a plane ticket and goes to the INS office in DC.
Thursday: She shows up at the INS office and it turns out: first Thursday of every month, the office is closed. It doesn't say this anywhere on their website, but oh well, there is always Friday as a back -up.
Friday: Anne gets to the office, speaks with an immigration officer and is told: "No, you can't file that form here, we have never ever taken those forms. They have always needed to be send to Nebraska, pretty much from the beginning of time, since the days of the Pilgrims.... Reentry permit, file it in Nebraska. Oh and by the way the price went up from $305 to $385 just yesterday. But have a nice day ma'm."
(Anne considers toilet papering the American Embassy in Brussels)

Immigration problem # 2
Leland has a visa for Belgium till July. No problem there. Anne is a EU citizen and should have no problem living in Belgium, but for some reason the local immigration office is behind in times. Or maybe they are just overzealous, since we live in a small town with probably 3 foreign families. Anyway, Anne was granted temporary residency in Belgium for six months, on the condition she would find a job.
No problem, been working full-time since October. But the immigration office wants to see a year contract not just weekly overviews from the temp. agency. The company Anne works for told her she would get a year contract starting the end of January, then it became mid February and then finally they found out that headquarters had put a hiring stop for the first quarter. So please wait till April.
Then, mid March Anne receives a letter from the local immigration people saying that they NEED to see a contract by March 23 otherwise she will be asked to leave the country.
Excuse me?
Panic attack.
Anne talks to her boss at work and the HR person will write a letter saying that she will defintely get a contract by April 1st, just hold off for a couple of weeks and please don't kick her out of the country.


Meanwhile....
Monty is not having a good couple of weeks. In week 11 (when Anne came back from her *succesfull* visit to the States, he got the flu, or some kind of virus. Vomiting all night long, (We ran out of sheets for his bed at 3 am, took him in our bed and then he puked some more there...) fevers and a rash. Luckily that passed but he was also constipated (again). After he didn't do nr. 2 for ten days we asked the doctor for advice and she gave him a laxative. This started to work in week 12. Four poopie pants in 6 hours time, I tell you...
Same week 12, Tuesday: Monty was riding on the back of Leland's bike in the little child seat, but somehow got his foot stuck in the wheel. Several cuts, scrapes and bruises and a whole lot of screaming later, he finally let Leland put a bandage on it. (Leland called Anne at work, so she could talk to Monty and calm him down, but he was screaming so loud half the office could hear him)
Still in week twelve, Thursday: Anne picks up Monty and Stoney at the after school care. When walking to the bakfiets, both boys decide to climb on the play equipment. "Watch out," Anne says, "It is wet and slippery because it rained." Naturally, Stoney climbs up and slides down aa pole and it fine. Monty works his way up the steep ramp, realizes that the slide is wet and is to scared to go back of or get of any other way. Anne climbs up the steep ramp to get him off. "Just hold on to mommy," she says optimistically. He puts his arms around her schoulders, she hold him with one arm, hold the railing with the other, moves one foot and.... There lay mommoy and Monty on the ramp, on top of each other. Monty did some loud screaming again and Anne temporarily lost hearing in one of her ears.

But otherwise, live is just dandy. Just Peachy!

To end things, i am going to post the two class pictures of the boys here, which were taken back in the fall, but i don't have any new pictures yet. Noy sure if you can see it on these pictures, but Stoney is touching himself in inappropiate places and Monty is screaming at the photographer.
That's our children!
(but of course we love them like crazy)

Just a quick update.
After the 10 days of bitter cold in December, we really haven't had much of a winter. True, we are enduring frequent storms and some steady rains, but we have also had some really nice weather.

Below some pictures of a day at the park with the boys two weeks ago. There is this great park about half an hour away that has just a huge playground. There is also a petting zoo and water bikes and an outdoor pool, but the water bikes and pool have not been open yet - obviously.



It's funny how different these tow boys are. Stoney is a big climber and will always seek the highest point anywhere and then climb it (as you can see in the pictures). Monty is - literally - more down to earth. I am not sure if he has fear of heights or if playing in dirt is just much more attractive to him. He prefers to play in a little wooden house (but not climb on it's roof as Stoney would do) or pretend he is playing "store" or things like that. He enjoys slides, but is not the real tall ones and he can't get to excited about swings. Whereas again, for Stoney it can't go fast enough or high enough. Leland says he'll probably want to climb Everest one day.
Their differences were also very obvious when my parents took them to the Zoo in Antwerp.
(Leland and I went to Brugge for a weekend. My parents watched the boys and we got to have a date for the two of us.) Stoney just runs from one animal area to the next. Always so eager and curious to find out what is more, what is next; while Monty just stands there in awe of every animal. He spend ten minutes looking at the back of a hippo (because it was the only part visible above the water) convinced that it would surface at some point. He had to go back to the turtle cage with Opa because he had to show Opa there were turtles in the left corner of the cage too! He is so funny that way. He is really showing more and more personality now that he is almost four. (Unfortunately, he is also showing quite a lot of temper tantrums)

Something about Brugge: Brugge is this really pretty old town close the the Belgium coast. It was very important in the 14th century, because of the trade and cloth making. I was kind of cold the Saturday we were there, so we went into some museums. There is a nice museum of Flemish primitive painters there - I had been to Brugge before but never gone in that museum yet. We also went on a boat ride. Brugge claims to be the Venice of the north, which i think is a little presumptious, but it does have a lot of water. But hey, Amsterdam or Leiden have a lot more water then Brugge. Anyway. We took a couple of pictures, not a ton, because the post cards are usually nicer, but these turned out okay.

Pirates and Parties

Well, it's been a while. It's because Leland has been hugging the computer. With reason, he had exams and spend a lot of time studying and researching.
This is about how his exams went:





Just kidding. Most went really well. One went rather badly, but if the teacher is grading on a curve, he'll probably pass, cause everyone did bad on that one.

This past week the boys celebrated Carnaval at school. Carnaval is a catholic holiday, that preceeds the week before Lent. It's kind of culturaly depended how it is celebrated. For instance, Mardi Grass is really the New Orleans version of Carnaval. Here it is mostly a celebration for kids to dress up. The boys choose to be pirates, and they looked adorable. Stoney was captain Snotty Nose and Monty captain Goldy Locks








Yesterday We had Stoney's birthday party. Of course his actual birthday was on December 22nd but that is such a busy time period that we decided to do it a month or so later. We held it at the "quick" which is a French version of McDonald's. The kids had a lot of fun. They did face paint and had fries, cake and played a lot.





Other developments... We have finally done it: cut Monty's hair. It hurts me to no longer see the golden curls on his head, but it was just getting out of control. Mostly because he wouldn't let us comb his hair, it was one big rat's nest all the time. So i cut it, and though it is uneven (he wouldn't hold his head still and screamed bloody murder) it's alright. I didn't cut it super short (other then the bangs, because, well... he jerked and that was the end of the bangs.) It is still is a little long in the back. Leland says that it looks puffy in the back and he still looks like a girl... Maybe, but i just don't want to cut his hair that short. Wish i had puffy hair like that... Anyway, below a picture with his new hair cut.