New home

We finally made it...

In the past couple of months we've managed to buy a house, move into it and -- most importantly -- get rid of the landlords whom we rented the old apartment from. And the things I could tell about the landlords are unbelievable, but I will just summarize it into this: they are a bunch of selfish, snotty, manipulating, money-grubbing, antisocial gangsters and I'm EXTREMELY relieved that they're now out of our lives. I think that says enough.

As for the house, it comes of course with all the responsibilities and tasks that a house brings with it, but it's really remarkable how I've managed to get rid of loads of stress, regardless of the leaking kitchen roof, the moist outer wall, the cellar staircase that practically falls apart, and the monthly down payments eating through our budget. Having a house of our own (and getting out of that evil infested apartment) has turned my life completely around -- for the best. We still have lots of boxes to unpack, two weeks of laundry to catch up with, and two extra cats to take care of, but I sleep a lot better than before and I can now find the peace and time to practice my hobbies again. I actually signed up for a drawing course!

For the first time in four years, I feel like I'm getting on top of my life again. And it was about time too.

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.

Game on!

I have the best wife a gamemaster could wish for.

Due to serious time constraints, what with a family and a demanding job, I've been deprived of my games for the last half year or so. Last week, though, I read an article about playing solo campaigns, and it suddenly dawned on me. If I could get my wife, who had played in my group sessions before, to agree to a solo adventure, we might just squeeze in sessions during evenings between dinner and bedtime.

And she agreed. We decided that D&D Pathfinder would be the best system since she was somewhat familiar with 3.5, and the Pathfinder rules don't change much. During the last couple of days, she rolled up a character she wanted to play, while I decided which adventure to run. She chose to play something completely unlike her: a male dwarven barbarian; I decided to run the first Pathfinder adventure path, Rise of the Runelords, slightly modified to work for a single player, and with the Pathfinder Beta rules.

I'm very anxious to see how this will turn out; it will certainly have a couple of positive effects. I will be able to spend time on at least one hobby again; I can improve on my GM and narrative skills; she can improve on her rules knowledge; and I finally get to see hands-on how the Pathfinder adventures play.

Baby, you're the best!

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.

The baby is getting ready

Last night we got to drive to the hospital again. This time, though, as opposed to the previous trip, it was a lot more relaxed.

My wife started to have minor contractions around noon, which would slightly intensify towards the evening. By the time I got home from work, they would come in 5 minute intervals, which is a sure sign to get ready to leave for the hospital.

When we were there, she was attached to the monitor to quantify the contractions. The nurses told us they weren't strong enough, though (in their words: it needed to hurt more), so they were considered Braxton Hicks contractions (aka 'false labor' or 'practice contractions'). We were allowed to go home again.

It does mean we won't have to wait much longer for the actual birth.

Oh, and the nurses reassured me about not making it to the hospital in time: if my wife is about to deliver while we're still on our way, all I need to do is pull over, call an ambulance, and just 'catch the baby'. Very comforting...

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.

Riding my first ambulance

Last Sunday evening, my wife and I had our own little 'special adventure'.

At about 1:45 at night, she woke me up groaning from serious pains. I thought she was going into labor (over 2 months early), but according to her it weren't really contractions. Furthermore, her whole body started to cramp up, she was getting sick, and she felt like she was going to pass out.

I immediately called an ambulance to take us to the hospital. At around 3, we arrived at there, and she was immediately attached to a monitor, which recorded her contractions (by then, they actually were).

By the time the questions and monitoring and paperwork were done, we were finally allowed to try and sleep a little. However, with the pains my wife still occasionally felt (although much less severe), and me being given a sofa to sleep in, we didn't get much of it.

In the morning, there were some more questions and monitoring, while we were waiting for the doctor to come in and decide whether or not we were allowed to go home, or stay for a couple of days. At about noon, we got the word that we could go, so I phoned my wife's mother to ask her to come pick us up. More waiting.

She took us to her place, cooked us some food, let us sleep on the couch and in the evening dropped us off again at our place.

Looking back at it, it was kind of a surreal experience: woken up in the middle of the night, to ride an ambulance (with siren, running through red lights) to the hospital, where we had to wait and wait and wait, to finally be sent home again. In the end, everything was back as it was before (except for extreme tiredness, and some extra hospital bills to expect).

We're both hoping never to have to go through all this again, even though it all turned out okay in the end. Except, of course, for giving birth itself, which we agreed with our new baby would not happen before Octobre. It was sealed with a kick.

Schwarzwald

Last friday, my wife and I returned from our week of holiday (actually, our honeymoon) in Schwarzwald, Germany. Our son stayed a week with his grandparents, so my wife and I could really relax and enjoy.

We stayed for 5 days and 4 nights in a quiet little hotel in Muggenbrunn, making small trips to surrounding sites like the Feldberg, Belchen (from the top of which we could see the Alps), the Todtnau waterfall, etc... Even in Muggenbrunn itself, there was ample opportunity to make small walking trips into nature. Really sweet.

The food in the hotel was absolutely incredible. In genuine German hospitality style, you get an oversized plate stuffed with delicious meat, flavored vegetables, and baked potatoes or home-made 'Spätzle'. Whenever you're halfway through your plate, though, they come fill it again for you; we never once were hungry in that entire week.

There's much more to tell, but I'm not going to bother too much. Instead, I'll show off (*ahem*) some of the drawings I made while we were there.

Bonded

So, the wedding was last saturday, and I have to say it was everything it should have been. Except for the weather, maybe (there was no sun, but that didn't bother us in the least), the entire day was as perfect as it could be. Everything appeared to be meticulously planned and executed, even though we just let ourselves go with the flow and just had a great time.

The civil wedding in the morning was quite okay. It took half an hour for the official to say his thing, have us sign the papers, and congratulate us.

During noon, we went to my wife's parents' house to relax and have lunch. It was really comfortable and enjoyable, having everyone close to us be there.

The service in the church was good (no hassle with rings not wanting to slide over fingers, or witnesses not showing up, or anything). Our son stole the show, though, running around and playing in front of the altar and doing his cute little dance whenever the fanfare played their music. I think the people attending the service payed more attention to him than to what the priest was saying.

Then we went on to the reception, the evening dinner and the dance party, all at the same place. The food was excellent, the staff was courteous, fast, friendly, and clean, the place was very cozy, and the DJ did his job very well (at any time during the dancing party, there were more people on the dance floor than sitting at their tables, which you don't see all that often at weddings).

What I liked most was seeing everyone at the evening feast honestly enjoying themselves. That really gave me a kick.

Too bad you can have this day only once in your life (at least, that's the point).