We could see it coming for some days: Suzy had a bottom tooth that was wobbling more every day. Not even 5 years old. It happened at school, the teacher put the tooth on a piece of paper with sticky tape and wrote the date and her name on. (I will spare you the visual)
Another milestone on the way from baby to child. No more baby (No Suzy, you cannot try if I still have milk! Keep off!) No more wobbly toddler (rides a bike and a kick scooter (?) with 2 wheels)
She can write her name correctly now (it started out with mirrored letters or backwards)
Dutch Santa is on the 5th of December, with friends and gift and traditional sweets. I found it not the right time to introduce yet another gift giving fairy tale for a tooth. Still quite ambivalent from the whole Santa thing as Dutch society is transforming away from some racist characters. This means the narrative changes too. My adult brain is happy but my childhood memories feel distorted or something. Also struggling to give her some magic while leaving a back door in the story and not telling blatant lies.
At the same time amazed that she made a drawing telling me "Here is Santa, and that is his mother Lola". (why did it never occur to me Santa would have had a mother??)
On the first anniversary of FIL's passing on December 16th, MIL spent the weekend with us. On that day we decided to just have cheese and crackers and other snacks instead of dinner to remind us how much he loved that. Such a modest and polite man, it was amazing how much cheese he could balance on a cracker ;-). DP nor his mother would admit to many emotions but everyone was glad we could spend the time together and reminisce.
DP won some kind of reorganisation jackpot at work. He will lose his job April 1st, but due to rules and arrangements he doesn't have to work since December 1st . Also dutch law allows children under 5 to be taken out of school outside of official vacations. His boys are 14 and 18 now, and can make do without him for a bit. This combination of circumstances opened up a once in a long time opportunity to travel far far away with the three of us.
We are leaving next week! First stop is Bangkok for 4 nights.
oh, never got around to share with you about new babies down the family ranks. Probably because the emotional impact is so different when not in the middle of my own infertility struggle. C4 had another boy (November 2016 already), C8 had a boy (February 2017) and C5 and his wife had a girl (May 2017) with a ton of dark curly hair. They named her after the late mother of C5 and C6, and chose the exact name I had chosen had C6 donated her eggs. It also would have been the name for Suzy's twin if she had lived. And I did say the last bit out loud. Suzy doesn't understand completely, so when we talk about it it is confusing conversation (no that baby is not in my tummy anymore)
It does make the bond with C5 and his wife more special, and also makes it feel really good to give the tons of baby stuff I kept to them. I always made sure I paid with my own money, always refused to sell it, resisted DP's pressure to clean up.
C8 is a keen recycler too, she always sends pictures if her boy is wearing something 'new' from us. Just that in the way of clothes it will soon stop completely as Suzy was always in a lot of dresses when she could walk.
With all these babies the family had become too big for the annual christmas-3 dinner my mother was hosting since 2004. Since the whole family was keen to continue the tradition I volunteered to host this time. 1 aunt & uncle had already booked a trip away, as well as my brother. That meant there were "only" 27 people at the tables.
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| Cousins tending the fire |
And it came in very handy we had a big bag of baby toys ;-)
Wishing you all things good, fun and healthy for 2018
