Thursday, February 22, 2007

Some Summae, Eh?

After a couple of weeks of intense hours of work-work-work, I have a small window in which to blog, catch up on emails and maybe even hang out an hour or two without feeling my watch burning a hole in my wrist, and so! here we go: a little bit about a couple of big birthdays, a word or two about impromptu gatherings, a few befores and their accompanying afters and other things great & small, bright & beautiful...

9 February was Pépé's 70th birthday, believe it or not! The family gathered at a lovely restaurant in a village nearby and spent the day (well, we celebrated on the 11th, actually) eating fine foods, drinking fine wines and toasting the birthday boy to another 70 to come. A lovely time was had by all and sundry, and even the babes dug (into) the delicacies with an apetite I doubt I've ever seen. Here're a couple of my favourite photos:

And 19 February was our wunnerful friend Neil's 40th birthday. A big, surprise gathering of friends was held at the Mensa that night, and once again, there was a fantastic time had by all - and not least by the man of the hour himself! Good friends, good fixins, good times... ahhhhhh!

A couple of impromptu gatherings were good food for the soul this past month. Here's a look at one that had a Before and an After. For the Before picture, everybody was supposed to look Very Serious. Or something like that:

Here are two sneaky boys. We'd told them that they could each take two cars to the park, but they cried out, "NO! LOTS OF! CARS!" and proceded to tuck a good percentage of their collection into their shirts - a trick that, once learnt, is never forgotten. Though of course, they don't get very far with it. Can't hurt to try, though, can it?

The boys were happy to have more Mommy Time yesterday afternoon. We celebrated with a mini-packet of gummy bears apiece and a long walk around the neighbourhood:

The walk culminated in a spirited exchange with a trio of quay-side fishers (funnily enough, they were drinking Fischer beers all the while), who gave each of the boys a Euro to do with what they pleased (which is to say, what their mommy pleases. And what would please their mommy would be to start a bank account for each of them, using this Euro and the three Euros apeice that a lovely woman - a stranger to us, too! - recently pressed into each of their hands when they met her in a bookstore. Gotta start somewhere; why not with a bit of Happy Money, eh?).

At any rate, when we got home, the boys were beat. Tomi didn't even last until the table was set. Leo managed, but it was touch-and-go. Dinosaur gazing helped:

Sleep is closing my eyes for me even as I type, but before it succeeds, here're a last couple of images for good measure:

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Oo-de-lally! Oo-le-dally!

A couple of my favourite moments of the day:
Starting with Dally's return home from work. I was beginning dinner preparations (which had been stalled by the boys' antics as we came home from the grocery store - mostly more running in circles and leaping over puddles) and the boys were playing Dinosaurs Eat Everything and Install Themselves in the Interactive House. When they saw Dally, Tomi said, "Saloo-oo-oo-oo!" ("He-e-e-ey!") and Leo thrust a dinosaur in Dally's direction, asking, "Toi veux jouer avec celui-là ?" ("You want play with this one?") I grabbed the camera, and... And later, Jean-Philippe grabbed said camera himself, after I'd caught Tomi ogling the ukulele and suggested a lesson. He eagerly settled right into my lap, and with the water for their bath splashing in the background, he strummed along contentedly... and he was GOOD!

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Eats, Reads & Jumps

We all LOVE Leftovers Tuna Sauce & spaghetti! (& the boys are now well-practiced noodle-spinners...)

& we had a really good day, yesterday, starting with this frantic, funny running and jumping over puddles after school. It was so hilarious that people were shaking with laughter as they walked by and tourists were snapping photos of them - and thanking us! ho! ho!

As for said reads:

It was difficult to get into CENTURY IN SCARLET, because the translation is so tiresome. The translation of The Dukays was quite lovely, and made a wonderful read, but this one... Of course, it would be better to read it in its Hungarian original. But given my present ebb of energy and comparative flow of things to do in any given day, I'm thinking this'll have to be put off for a... long time.

A recent RE-read was Jane Austen's SENSE & SENSIBILITY. I had read all of her works in one fell swoop about fifteen years ago, and had been meaning to re-read a couple of them ever since. Enter: the Arte Book Swap. (Thanks, Chengy!) Funnily enough, in the last month or so, several people have mentioned to me (without my prompting the subject, I swear!) that they're reading Jane Austen at the moment. A little cosmic breeze...

A GRIEF OBSERVED was a painful read, partly because it brought my own to the fore, and partly because it underscored several other, simlar thoughts & feelings, including the fact that there is more grief to come. Lewis' other (than the grief itself) and life-consuming point, though, is lost on me. I see no proof of God's existence in the face of such tragedy. The point is so feebly put forth towards the end of the book, that it is almost embarassing to read the assertion in Chad Walsh's Afterword that Lewis, whose mind was "trained ... to smell nonsense and fallacies and to destroy them by a merciless dialectic process," could believe that "Theism... stood up well under logical scrutiny."

I started re-reading The Screwtape Letters after A Grief, and found myself feeling (similarly) a bit embarrased by his style (which, at age 14, had seemed so brilliant), and even a bit frustrated by his simplicity and some of his (or rather, Screwtape's) assertions. I'm hoping that my Narnia re-reads won't be thus marred...!

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Serious Thoughts, Serious Times

First of all, some very sad news for a lot of folks our family knows and loves: Amber's father passed away a little over a week ago. Amber is a great gal and one of my sister Ellen's two oldest, best friends. She is also a fellow blogger, and so I can direct you to her own words about her dad, Jim Muller. I'm so sorry, Amber.

On another serious note, I heard from close family members that they saw my cousin Jack's National Guard unit listed as going on extended duty in Iraq. I worry about him every day - and also about everybody else in that country, of course, whatever their nationality, their creed or culture. But I don't know the rest of them like I know Jack; I didn't grow up with them; my boys don't wear the monster t-shirts anybody else (who is in Iraq) got them a year and a half ago... And every time I think of Jack, I think of his family, of course. Only, up until yesterday I could imagine that they were getting more and more excited for his return in a month's time. And now it looks like it'll be more like five more months. Ugh.

Also, some more recommended reading.

And a comment about a kind of person who I rarely have much to do with, but who sometimes find their way into just about everybody's lives: The other day, I ran into an aquaintence of ours. The conversation went fine until we were parting ways, and she looked at the boys and said in a surprisingly nasty way, "I wouldn't trade places with you!" I almost laughed. It was such a calculated, horrible little line. And she'd said it so that the boys could hear it! I might have found it slightly less twisted, were it the first time that it'd happened. But once before, and in similar circumstances, she'd said something even more pointed, and right over the boys' heads. It's hard to describe these situations (partly because you'd have to describe alot more about your dealings with the person in question, and that's not actually the point, here), but it made me pause. After all, being rude BACK is no use, and let's be honest: it's not even worth one's time or effort. Then again, being kind to the person doesn't feel like it is, either; especially when you've done that before, and it's done little or no good. So what do you do? I wish I'd thought of my grand old friend Greg's response to an extremely rude waiter in Lausanne, Switzerland: he just looked at the guy and burst out laughing. And it worked! As it was, I said I wouldn't trade places with anybody, myself, as I feel extremely lucky to be the mother of (these two) twins - implying of course that she had nothing to worry about, that trading places wouldn't be asked of her. There is another element to this story, though, and that is that you are (well, I am) left with a kind of sadness in your heart for the other person. How sad and angry must you be to resort to such needling?

Oops! The boys have awoken from their nap and are in need of hugs and noodles. More and happier thoughts tomorrow, perhaps...

Thursday, February 01, 2007

THERE HE IS!

We four went to see Hector in the flesh later in the evening (please see first of day's two posts, below). And what a beautiful baby we found - as well as utterly thrilled, magnificently content parents! He's sleeping well, eating well about every 3-4 hours, crying only a wee bit when he's getting a change... In other words, things couldn't have begun better.

I was holding Hector while the boys took off their coats, shoes and socks and even (eventually) their shirts (?!). When they were done, Tomi began prancing around, happily looking up at the little bundle. Suddenly there was a desperate tug at my sweater, and Leo's cry: "MY WANT LOOK AT BAY-BEE TOO-OO!" When Hector was brought down to their level for inspection, they were in awe, "caressing" him with their hands at a distance of a milimetre or two from his hair and his cheek...

Running, skipping, jumping, happy-bubbling back through the botanic gardens and towards the tram later that evening, Tomi took one of those spectacular twisting-almost-saving-himself-but-not-quite falls, during which you can't help imagining yourself as Plastic(wo)man, stretching that just-slightly-too-far distance to catch the child mid-fall. Alas, we lack super powers. Tomi got a big, fat upper lip from the fall, but! he also got a ride all the way home in his dally's arms, and lots of extra Super Love. So in the end, he didn't mind as much as he might have. Still, though, it was quite a sad spectacle.

Where's the Baby?!*

This morning, the boys woke up with great difficulty. But before they'd even had time to call out, "MILK?!" (in that voice that makes you wonder how they could think, morning after morning, that you were going to forget?) Leo sat up straight and asked, "We see baby? School closed? We see baby?" and then, "Baby! Out! Laurence! Stomach! We see baby?"

See, yesterday we'd gone on a long winter walk in the afternoon (actually, we didn't get so very far - it just took a long time to get as far as we did, thanks to all of the sticks that needed picking up and waving and tossing into the river; and to the tens of school boys out on the art museum's square with their skateboards; and to the covered bridge that needed to be mounted... that kind of thing). When we got to the top of the covered bridge, the gulls all flew frantically away, but they stuck close to their perch, tooling around in the sky, swooping low over the terrace... Suddenly, Tomi pointed and cried out, "BIG GUW! LOOK!" It took me a few seconds to realise what he was talking about: the big gull was actually a big stork, gliding between us and the next bridge. It was astoundingly beautiful. In the weird three-year-old-twins-with-their-mom conversation that followed, I happened to bring up the legend of the stork bringing babies, & told them that they'd be seeing the baby the stork had brought the very next day, when we went to see Laurence & Guillaume. Afterwards, Tomi kept looking around, then looking at me in a concerned kind of way and asking, "Baby? Where?"

It's not so very often that the boys've shown a real understanding of concepts of time, so that was kind of a big deal. But it was an even bigger deal to hear an understanding of the concept of the baby's arrival. I'm still a bit shocked, to be honest.

A note to all who are interested in children's early years, and perhaps especially to those who are in the midst of them with multiples:
In the last couple of weeks, the boys have been making leaps and bounds out of toddler-hood and into little-boy-hood. It's been astounding and great fun to watch and to participate in - though it's also brought with it the trials and tribulations that this age is notorious for... x 2 (or more. People like to joke about twins being everything x 2, but to be honest - & whether it's the good stuff or the not-so-good stuff - it's more like x 3-5). We have SO much fun with them, and they are both SO unbelievably sweet and kind and delightful. But the three-dom of this two-some may nevertheless have me buying stock in Neurofen.

* This little baby game features in the film Ice Age. And we've seen this film several million times since it was procured...