Gourmet Weekend

For my 30th anniversary, my wife treated me to a gourmet weekend in Burg-Reuland, a small community in the province of Liège, Belgium. As a special bonus, she also invited our close relatives (brothers and sisters, parents, and children) to join us. My father-in-law had some prior engagements, so he couldn't join us. We also decided it would be best for our son to relax in a familiar environment with not too many people (what with all the hospital-adventures he's been through in the last few months), so my mother-in-law volunteered to stay home with him (for which we were, of course, immensely grateful!)

We arrived at the hotel on Friday afternoon, and stayed until Sunday afternoon. All meals were included and most were four courses, except for the meal on Saturday evening, which was a six-course dinner. Other than eating, we relaxed on the terrace overlooking the fishpond, went for a stroll through the village and surrounding country, or played boardgames. We all had a terrific weekend, despite one of the playing cards from my Shadows over Camelot boardgame getting caught in the wind and sinking in the fishpond. Which reminds me, I still have to order a new one.

Now, this wouldn't have been a blogpost, if I didn't have any musings on the topic. In fact, I have two.

First of all, it occurred to me how much happier our daughter was, with her brother not around. Not that she doesn't like him, though - she always enjoys watching her brother play and they both get along very well - but he always takes the center of attention, leaving her to mostly entertain herself. This time, though, she got passed from one person to the other, was fed bottles by nearly everyone present, was constantly played with, talked to, and cuddled. I've never seen her smile so much. She's an amazingly sweet girl, and I don't even enjoy half of it, so I've decided to pay her a lot more attention and spend a lot more time with her from now on.

Secondly - and this one wasn't a musing as much as it was a hammer on the head - I've come to realize, since I live in Dendermonde with my wife and children, how much I miss my parents, brother, and sister. The little time we spent together this last weekend reminded me so hard of our childhoods, the fun my brother, my sister, and I had together, and the conversations we held with our parents at the table, that our parting and saying goodbyes hit me like a train; I've been overly emotional ever since we got back, and I admit to breaking up in tears on more than one occasion by now. Much of it might be because of the exhaustion of the past half year, but some of it roots in these family ties for certain. So, I would also like to spend more time with them.

This might turn out to be a problem, though. I also decided to spend more time with our son, because he needs the care and attention now more than ever; I need more time for myself to blow some steam every now and then; and I don't want to spend any less time with my wife, because she deserves a lot of love and attention too (because if it weren't for her...)

I think it's about high time for some changes.

Week of Bad Luck

I think I just had my unluckiest week of the year.

• On monday, while driving from work to the train station, I got hit by a car. Well, perhaps 'tagged' is a better word; while driving along a bicycle path (with right of way), a car from a crossing street didn't see me and tried to advance slowly onto the intersection, when his bumper hit my left shin. I lost about a square centimeter of skin.
• On tuesday morning, after a night of severe freezing, I slid with my bike on the road and hit the ground. I still feel my ribs and hip when put force on that muscle.
• That evening, when returning from work, I noticed that one of my brand new bicycle lamps didn't work anymore. Apparently, I managed to leave it burning inside my pocket for an entire day, effectively draining the batteries in one go.
• While trying to remove that same bicycle lamp from my bike when I arrived at the train station, it was stuck in its placeholder. While trying to force it out, it suddenly sprang out, making two small cuts on the inside of my wrist from scraping it across the sharp borders of that light holder.
• On wednesday, I learned that our daughter was allergic to milk. It's the reason why she's been crying of belly-pains all the time. My wife had to stop the breastfeeding, and we had to buy special milk powder for our baby girl.
• On thursday, our son had a really bad day, throwing his books and toys towards his sister whenever she ate. He ended up 5 times in his box that day, as punishment.
• On friday, the monitor of our computer broke down.

In hindsight, none of these incidents actually got me down, though. I took them all with a good laugh, except of course the allergies of my daughter.

There were some good moments too, by the way. The new milk for our daughter has its effect; she has no more pains, is gaining in weight, and seems a lot happier now. We've also bought a new, 20-inch flatscreen for the computer yesterday, and on wednesday, we finally restarted our D&D campaign at work, after almost three months of downtime. So it wasn't all that bad.

A new life

Yesterday around noon-ish, our daughter Cato was born. She's a healthy daughter, weighing in at 3.730 kg, and measuring 52 cm.

We have a blog going at http://cato-vanherle.blogspot.com. I apologize to all non-Dutch speakers: it's in Dutch. If you would like to know what's going on, drop me a line (either here or on Cato's blog) and I'll give a quick English transcript.

Stressful times, part 2

As said in the previous post, work is getting stressing. Unfortunately, at home it isn't getting any easier. My wife is currently in her 33rd week of pregnancy and that means she might go into labor any time now.

If her water breaks when I'm at work, it's a 45 minute ride back home, and then another half hour from there to the hospital. Considering that Frederik, our first child, took just about 2 hours to get born, and people say the second one will come even faster, you can imagine what a close call that will be.

If, on the other hand, it happens at night, we need to call and wake up her parents (who are the closest living relatives) to come over to our house and watch over Frederik while we race to the hospital, still half asleep.

I've run both scenarios (and a couple of others) through my mind a million times by now, but I'm still not ready for it. Furthermore, I have to remember other little stuff as well, such as bringing the camera along, or we might miss some very precious photos.

As if that's not enough, since a few days ago Frederik suddenly has come to realize that something's up. Somehow, he understands a baby is coming (he is amazingly intelligent, apparently -- other infants his age won't understand the severity of the situation until the baby is actually born and brought home), and has started to openly revolt his mother. He can't really speak yet, so he outs his frustration (having to miss his mother's caring hugs and playtime) in other ways, by hitting and biting and getting into angry fits, immediately followed by crying and screaming.
We've never heard him say 'No' as much as we do now, simply out of stubbornness. Four months ahead of time, he's already in his "terrible two's", as they call it.

Mastery

A friend's blog pointed me towards the book Mastery, by George Leonard, explaining the process we go through whenever we learn a new skill.

I've only just begun reading it, but it's already an interesting read, more so because I currently have some situations where it applies: I'm a 'fresh' parent (a year and a half parenting doesn't exactly make you an expert), I recently took up drawing, and I play go.
Other examples are easily thought of (improving Dungeon Master skills, learning to relax in any possible situation, trying to be forgiving to everyone, writing cleaner software, ...), but these three are the most apparent.

And from these examples, go is, if you ask me, the most perfect example in which to apply the Mastery theory. Go is a game which you will never in your life completely master (none of the 9-dan players claim they do; or at least, they shouldn't or otherwise they wouldn't even be dan-players), and the process of learning to master it, i.e. improving yourself, is way more satisfying than actually winning games.

And the funny thing is, reading this book actually makes me even more excited to continue learning to draw. I'd like to claim that I started this new hobby with the correct mindset, knowing that I will not achieve perfection in a small amount of time, but instead needing to find the proper tutors and tutorials, filtering them and deciding which ones are the next logical steps to take, and practicing, practicing, and practicing even more. This book actually endorses that decision, and gives a real confidence-boost.

So, to anyone who reads this blog, and is caught up in the modern downward spiral of consumerism and instant gratification: read the book and change your life for the better!

Holiday

It's the first time in his life that our son will stay with his grandparents for an entire week. It's also the first time in 16 months that we can take a breather from all the nursing and cleaning.

On the one hand, I'm glad to be able to do whatever I want for a change, without constantly having to interrupt because of nap-time, diaper-changes, bottle-feeding, and reading books; but on the other hand, I sometimes wonder if it was such a good idea to send him away for the week, both for him (he was a little sick) and for his grandparents (they loved to take care of him, but I don't think they realize anymore how much work it is to take care of a toddler).

At the moment, I feel good, relaxed, and free. So perhaps it was a good idea after all.