Beach

We were at the beach. My brother had come over with his two boys, DP, Suzy and me plus our parents.
Everyone was doing their own thing, and Suzy was writing her name in the sand. DP wrote his and mine next to hers, then Suzy ran over to get me and show me.
Then I suddenly remembered, and wrote Knut's name in the sand too. DP remarked that is was a long time ago, he thought 8 years. But Knut would have been the same age as the oldest nephew, who is 10...
We had a little moment, a hug. Was nice to remember Knut together.

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Other days

Some days are better than others...thankfully every day is a new day.
Suzy is about to do her first swimming exam. She is capable enough, just hoping she will concentrate at the right moments and listen to what she needs to do. (And not splash around as an overexcited puppy)
It will be in a different swimming pool in a different part of town. My parents are excited, DP wants to be there. My Aunt and Uncle have been taking her to swimming lessons the whole school year so they will be there. I'm thinking it is a bit much, but on the other hand I don't think Suzy will be more relaxed if I'm not there. So six adult for one six year old girl...

Last week we went to a gymnastics training (they were looking for new talent, Suzy is on the waiting list for regular training). I'm looking for a place where she can do her cartwheels, handstands and bridges without breaking her back or our house. Sadly the organisation had trouble with their emails/enrollments so they were expecting 4 girls and 20 showed up... Suzy had a good enough time on a real balance beam and seeing some of the tricks. She didn't seem to mind having to wait a fair bit, as most of the time at least someone was moving.
Only after I had organised all this, DP suddenly said, "hey, I think I did gymnastics as a kid" And all this time I had been wondering about our donor and the unknown DNA!!!

Some days

Some days are better than others....
The school year is almost over. Suzy is one of the oldest and biggest children in her class, she has outgrown it.
End of August after the summer holidays she will go to the 'middle' part of her Montessori school, she will be in a class with children ages 6-7-8.
For now she is just not challenged in learning, and she is acting out. DP gets angry with her restless behaviour, (red in the face angry) but it only makes her more rebellious.
Last night I had taken all the time and patience in the world to get Suzy ready for bed. Bath time, brushing teeth, recounting the day. Reading a children's book together (yay she is starting to read now). Laying in the big bed together, singing the lullabies.
Somehow Suzy managed to get frustrated at having to sleep (or not being able to fall asleep I'm not sure) She was fiddling with my shirt. I turned away. She slapped me on my ear. I tried to not react, I really didn't want things to escalate. She hit me again, and again, harder and hurting me so I felt I had to react. Moved her to her own little bed in our room and then she used all her cuss words on me, calling me a c*$% mommy. Looking at me expectantly, reminding me that the only other time she used that word I had put her out on the balcony. No my dear, you are staying in your bed. I have tried everything in my power to help you sleep, but I have ran out of options. Now I am only policing you stay put.
 Now it is the day after, my anger has faded and I can feel my sadness. Sad she is lashing out. Sad that I feel like failing, not even sure failing at what. Sad that I do not believe her anymore when she says she will not do it again. Sad she doesn't even know why she hit me in the first place. Scared maybe even that one day I might lose my cool and will hit her back. What kind of adult would that make me, the one that says 'but she started it'...
The sadness and tension woke me up at 5 am so I'm tired on top of it. Maybe I shouldn't have written this while still in the middle of feeling it. But I am allowing the sadness to be there.

Tomorrow is another day.
Tomorrow I will stop by my cousin and his wife. They had a miscarriage recently so I want to drop of a little something. I know nothing of the miscarriage, but just want to let them know I know, and that I care. Allowing the sadness to be there.

Just one moment

It must have been somewhere this summer. Suzy is 5 years old. She knows her DE story, and loves it when I tell it to her, especially intrigued by the part where I am crying because I can't have a baby. And she knows I am happy because she is here now.

Her world is growing, and I cannot always predict how.

She was up in her room, she stood up and looked at me:

 "Mom, you are not my real mother"

I took a deep breath, a thousand thoughts going through my head.

"You are my stepmother and I am Cinderella"

OOOooooohhhh, okay, of course my darling.... better start sweeping that floor then (and back in the box you thousand thoughts)

2018

2018 is almost over.

You know how you keep composing blogpost in your head? But never quite get around to write and hit publish?

I would love to write a summary of the year. But I've only got 1 hour.

What I wanted to say is about donor eggs. Well, about anonymous donation really.
It has been in the papers the last few months. People from all kinds of backgrounds. People who are professors at universities, in very diverse fields. People who speak 'for the children' wanting to protect their ' best interests'.
I read closely and I worry. Adoption gets dragged into it. Illegal adoption. Human rights. The right to know your genetic heritage, the right to have a family relationship with your genetic family. (huh?)
While some reasoning is not based on logic (Have these people not heard of divorce? rape? disaster? child abuse?) it is mostly the tone that worries me.
It has been our way to tell Suzy she is made from an egg from an unknown lady. She knows. She does  not understand, but she knows.There may be a day that the realisation hits her, but it will not be a discovery. If you know what I mean.
I may have to add to the story that not everyone agrees it was a good idea. i may have to add she may find it a problem.

The adoptee in the news today knew she was from an adoption where the paperwork was wonky. It only bothered her when she was pregnant herself, and unable to answer questions like 'does high blood pressure run in your family'.
one little sentence got under my skin: she was wondering if her adopted sister was really her biological sister "because their bond was not very warm".
(Turned out she was swapped as a baby, and the family she found in Sri Lanka was her sisters', not hers. )

Not sure why it bothers me. I guess there is so much to say about love, family and genetics.

The other day at work a colleague showed me a picture of his little baby, just 4 months now. He said people tell him she looks like him, but he doesn't see it. I tried, didn't see it either. I showed him a selfie of Suzy and me, he said she looks like me. I decided to not say anything.
Another time, I did tell him about Suzy starting out as twins, because he has a twin sister himself. But yea, the DE thing is Suzy's story to share.

Anyway, if anyone reading this who is trying to decide about anonymous DNA, I do feel like I have 'taken' something from Suzy, a story a cannot tell her. My love might make her a happy person, but the knowledge about her dna I cannot give her, it is something, maybe like a scar, something lacking in her life forever.
Acknowledging this is the best I can do.

I think rating it among other things that can happen does not make it better or worse. My mother had breast cancer, so supposedly I have a higher chance of it too. Her donor family would have been screened to not have scary genetic stuff happening, but I don't know what exactly.
(But hey, how many people out there decide not to use their own DNA because of what runs in their family? See, this gets me nowhere)

Anyway, lots of love happening here and only a tiny little worry that may not become relevant for the next 20 years or so.

More Milestones

15th December 2017 it happened.
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.

 Then on to New Zealand where we pick up a campervan and tour around for 4 weeks. winter here, summer there. Yay! Looking forward to meet Mali for real, who I once invented to be Suzy's ' internet auntie'

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.

Cousins tending the fire

Was a lot of fun to organise (rental chairs, crockery, cutlery, tables) shopping was a bit much, cooking was totally worth it!. made sure all dishes could be cooked and frozen in advance. Defrosting day before, in the oven on the big day.
And it came in very handy we had a big bag of baby toys ;-)

Wishing you all things good, fun and healthy for 2018

Copper Anniversary

DP and me are not married. And the day after tomorrow we are not married (but together) for twelve and a half years exactly, and we decided to throw a big party.
On a boat.
this one:

The weather is very autumny but the ship has a warm and cozy interior:

I will wear my mothers wedding dress (yes I am a slightly insane.) She will wear her mother's evening gown (waste not, want not?) DP bought a giant pirates hat and a frilly shirt.
I am equally terrified we are overdoing it or not doing enough. (Should we not arrange thank you gifts for our guests? Is the boat not too big/do we have enough guests? Flowers instead of balloons? Late evening french fries? Good bye chocolates?)
So happy my parents will be there, grateful they are happy and healthy. And a bit fearful: DP's father was there for his brother's wedding last year, and died within three months. Yes he was older and much less strong and healthy than my parents. But still.
We are reaching this age where more and more friends are losing a parent.(DElia, Twangy) (or two, poor HB and J)

I made the faux pas of pressing Lily to come, but she confessed that being recently divorced she couldn't face a party full of wedding dresses. Ouch. Here I was thinking myself such a considerate person, having learned from my infertility journey and all that.

J is doing pictures, Suzy can be a flower girl again. HB is party planner/ master of ceremony without a ceremony.
And I am wearing my new party shoes while I write this, in hopes the remain both new looking and are broken into.

Four-and-a-half in August

Summer Holiday was great.
Suzy picked up on riding a bike quite suddenly, so lovely to see her go.
We were in Switzerland visiting my brother and his two boys (6&8) for a week, doing lots of mountain walks. My brother thought it safer if we put good boots on the kids, and my mother was so kind to buy pink Meindl mountain boots for Suzy.

It is hard to express how proud I felt seeing Suzy jump and run and climb and walk on real boots. I was sixteen before I had my first real pair of Meindl boots.
It is also weird to see little cousin being the same height as Suzy. He is miles ahead, can read write and do math (even better than his older brother). He is also a champion manipulator, refuses to walk and my brother carries him. But I told Suzy to use her own legs, would only carry her as a token of affection or attention than any real meters. And my oh my, the girl can hike!
After one of the hikes the boys were scheduled for a horse riding lesson. Again, the youngest went on strike, but Suzy took his place without missing a beat. She was thrilled to be on a horse for the first time. Now she tells me she wants ' horse lessons' .
We knew she could walk well on flat land, we did the 'Four Evening Walk' in June, four consecutive evenings of walking 5 kilometers in the early evening. She might have been one of the youngest walkers among a thousand of schoolkids. (oh yes, she goes to school now.)
We also spend ten days on a French campground with swimming pool and kid-disco at 7pm.
She knows the moves to Shakira's Waka Waka now. :)
She can do hopscotch, but only on her left leg for single leg.  (although she can finally skip-hop on alternating legs. And what do you call those 2 person hand clap games? we can do straight and cross, but one hand up and other hand down confuses her mightily.
I find it easy to express my love to her, and do so every day. She knows from my intonation that I am going to say it (cause I always start with a bit drawn out Suzyyyyy?) Sometimes she even asks me to tell her. I still sing the same seven bedtime songs before she goes to sleep, I must have done it about two thousand times now.
On the story of the eggs, I told her she also has her own eggs in her tummy. A bit later she told me she was going to poop them out....
I know it is high school biology, so pre-K might be a tad early, but we have some work ahead of us. ;-)
Summer is over now, let the autumn begin.

She is Four now

She is four and so full of energy.
So bursting full of it that I did actually buy a trampoline for her and put it in the room next to living/kitchen. We also had a kid trampoline party in a trampoline place.
She can almost write her name (and I am so proud of the creativity with which she makes mistakes with letters)
She can almost ride a bike, but fear of falling is stopping her.
She cannot colour within  the lines, but she can dress herself, even pick her own clothes and shoes.
She knows our normal routes through the city and tells me if I am going the 'wrong way'
She can say the days of the weeks but time is still such a difficult concept. ( in the evening she will ask me if she goes to school today." No, tomorrow " I answer. So today after we wake up?
um, yeah, by that time tomorrow has become today.)
She needs glasses if we are to believe her eye test. We will take her to the eye doctor to have it checked.
I went to 4 supermarkets to make sure I would have a Frozen themed chocolate cake for her birthday party. I did ask if DP wanted to give Suzy a birthday gift. He said no. I love buying gifts for her. And I made myself realise that everyone expresses love in their own way. Buying gifts is not the only way.
But every so often I am pleased for knowing Suzy well enough for getting a good gift that she loves.

I do regularly tell her the story of the doctor receiving an egg of a nice lady, adding a seed from DP to make an embryo to put in my tummy. and that grew into baby Suzy who then came out of my tummy.
She knows the story and likes to hear it, but it doesn't mean much yet to her. only when I get to the baby in tummy stage she kind of understands. And she likes to hear how sad i was when there was no baby. I guess she understands crying, and babies. the rest, o well, part of the story.

Time flies, fun or not

Let's start with the non fun part where I left off.

DP's father was getting into kidney failure (showed from blood tests) on a Wednesday so we knew the end was near. Friday morning the phone rang and we were all travelling to FIL. DP was by car, he was in time, just like his mother, brother and SIL. I got the call later, and had to go by train and i was an hour late. It was sad, we were all sad and all together. A few days of activity to make arrangements. People insisted on Suzy being there as she was FILs favourite. It is not easy taking a 3 year old to a funeral. It was hard to be a mother, a partner, a stepmother, an aunt and a daughter all at once. So sometimes I let go and was just me. sad for me and FIL. I liked him, even if I never knew him in good health. I did let Suzy roll over the floor for a bit when she couldn't / wouldn't sit still anymore. Then I found myself holding youngest stepson (because DP was holding his mother) and realised I never hold them. It is OK both ways I suppose.
After the funeral - lunch on the 22nd of december we took MIL home with us for Christmas. On second Christmas day we had a big lunch with BIL and family and they took MIL home again.

Just in time to free up the guest room for my brother coming over with his boys for the last few days of the year. Such fun. We even arranged for a private boat tour to pick us up from home and do a round of the Light Festival. They also were excited to visit the new jaguar enclosure in the Zoo and spent so many hours there I had to take Suzy home earlier. They left on the 30th while I was with C8 in a small party to pick out her wedding dress for september.
31st HB came over to celebrate another year coming to an end. (third party in guest room. He even brought his own bedlinnen to help save us from mount laundry)

December 2016 was full of highs and lows, packed so full we didn't know what hit us.