4,5,6,9,8,9,10

City of Hindeloopen

Skinny bridge near marina of Hindeloopen

Sheep, mostly invisible. Idem for sails on horizon.  Not quite sunset.

returned our little red boat in the middle.

Sailing was wonderful. We were especially lucky with the weather and wind and our timing. We even had a two hour stretch without wind and too much sun so the perfect opportunity to go for a swim. (I took forever to adjust to the water temp, but swam a complete lap around the boat. yes without getting my hair wet.) With that bit of cooling the rest of the afternoon was a lovely warm gentle sail.
Also talking through manouvres beforehand removed all the stress: when something didn't go as planned we both knew that was an unforeseen circumstance and we did the best we could.

My parents had a great time with Suzy and Suzy probably had a great time ordering my parents around, it was all too exciting to take naps.
(On Monday only mild backlash, Suzy kept trying to hit and scratch me (out of the blue), wanting me to reaffirm both my affection and my boundaries. )
DP was so happy he asked when we were going again, or if we shouldn't go for a week with Suzy. Lovely, good idea,but  let's try her on a boat for a day first.

At home I'm in the process of tackling all kinds of different projects. Smaller ones, like finally moving my house insurance. Medium ones, like oiling the wooden floor of the living room.  Finding new plumber for rental property.
Have to break big projects into small pieces. Tax. Putting away my clothes. Admin. Suzy's clothes.
And thinking about getting proper (but illegal) balcony doors instead of climbing through a window to our roof terrace.

I started reading the donor egg baby book to Suzy. She is small enough to not understand at all. But old enough to know I'm reading her a book that has something to do with her, a baby in a belly and a mama and a papa who are very sad in the middle of the book and very happy at the end.
It makes me quite happy to read it to her, it doesn't put me back in a state of despair like I feared before. It is so much easier if you are reading the story to the happy 'outcome' sitting beside you.
I also think that I immersed myself (just) enough in the idea that we would not end up with a baby but that is an whole other post.

As to the mysterious title, that is how Suzy was counting till this week. Dutch 7= zeven apparently too much like 9 = negen. I'm eternally in doubt wether or not to document Suzy's milestones here, so mostly write about them when the next one makes it obsolete.
She taught herself to sing Twinkle twinkle little star in English from youtube (tablets are easy for toddlers) and today I discovered in the playground that also native 3 year old English toddlers sing kwinkle kwinkle lille stah.
Ah, about undocumented milestones, her brothers' names sound like Paxton (Pax) and Damian. Suzy started out with saying Pats and a bit later Dami.  This now morphs into "like a damian in the sky" in the song, I even caught it on camera. Images not suitable for internet, sadly, with nearly naked toddler and such. Maybe I could just rip the sound? Except the screeching toddler might be more than you would want to hear.

This nap of Suzy is turning into a siesta. DP smiled and said 'must be her southern temperament'. Made me smile, to realise how much her DE origin is now a normal part of daily life.

Sailing

For weeks and weeks our holiday plans were so vague, so fluid and uninspired.
And then suddenly one Saturday evening everything came together.
The big family holiday with Suzy and the boys is going to be rental car (rented) and camping in tent (bought new)
The small family holiday is this weekend, just the two of us. Yes, DP and me. On a boat in Frisia. My parents were asking for Suzy to spend the weekend with them for a while now, the boys aren't interested in sailing. BambiEyes was suggesting I should do something with DP alone. and suddenly I had the brainwave to combine it, and it seemed so obvious that it is hard to remember why we didn't think of it before..

BambiEyes mentioned that our conversations have grown from 'how do I manage to stay in this relationship with DP' to 'how do we make a good relationship better and stronger'.
In a previous relationship I read the famous self help book  Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and I hated it. I was so disappointed that even the Preface said that normal, good relationships have their seasons, their good and bad times! O well, good bye innocence, goodbye happy ever after, goodbye twenties and thirties. I think (hope) I'm finally grown up enough to understand what it means that relationships take work. That taking it for granted isn't it. That having a disagreement or a fight is ok, just keep communicating.
It is to be expected that two people on a small boat will make errors, sailing or otherwise. That is OK too. Doing something we love, with the one we love, it doesn't really matter what goes wrong.

I'm surprised that my right arm is STILL hurting with the stress from work. I had naively thought it would be OK the day I walked out of the office. Ha says my arm, took nine months to build up? guess how long it will take to let go!
I'll try to be gentle with the sailing and the arm. And each other.