My tulips are brave in the wind. It nearly forces them to touch the ground when it blows at its hardest. They look quite fragile, as if a small puff of wind could blow the leaves right off. How do they hang on so tightly?
I want to be brave in the wind, too.
I want to hold onto my leaves and my colors. Would that look like courage and a smile, like kindness and joy?
I want to keep that while bending down low, while the wind comes right at me and pushes me down. And then to bounce back up again.
I tend to think my life should be that of a tulip in a grassy little flower garden on a sunny day in June all of the time.
When it isn’t, I tend to think it is dreadful, and my life is dreadful, and I am dreadful, and everything will always be dreadful. Like something is wrong, big time, with my life and myself.
Silly me. Am I so easily fooled? Tricked into discontentment? It would seem that I am.
There is rain and there is sunshine, there are dark skies and blue skies, there […]
Starting the night early with a cup of tea and a book is always a good idea. Especially when you are sick. Yesterday I did just that, with the cutest book! It was short enough to read in 45 minutes so that I could still go to sleep early enough, which is a smart thing when you are sick.
I do love finishing the book before I go to sleep. It makes it so much easier to go to sleep 😉
I loved the style of this book. It was reminiscent of some of my favorite childrens classics, such as ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and ‘Grandma’s Attic Series‘. It has a vintage, classic feel, without being too old-fashioned, or out-dated.
The drawings are cute, I especially love the black and white ones inside: simple but oh-so-sweet. They leave room for imagination, which is ideal, I think. It gives you something to start with, for example a whimsically drawn pickle jar, and your imagination finishes furnishing the rest of the room. At least mine does.
The story is true, and that, I always love. It’s not a magnificent from rags to riches ?(which is good in it’s own time). […]
The little dimpled hands are ever so cute, clinging to me.
The big blue eyes he can charm anyone with are just too perfect. Pools of blue laughter, love and drama. His first steps, his headlong falling in my arms because he knows I will catch him and he is too lazy to learn how to walk. The little baby sounds, trying to copy ?my words. A giggle from deep down in the baby tummy bubbles up and seeps out through features in the expressive little face and the delighted mouth that isn’t scared to get really loud. Delightful, is what it is. What he is. Just like the flowers he tries to grab.
I don’t blame him. Their bright colors are pretty and alluring.
It’s also exhausting. One second on the floor and he wails for Mama, loud and heartbroken because his little brain can’t wrap itself around the fact that Mama still loves him, even though she does not pick him up. One second out of my sight and his world crashes. His head tilts back and a loud screech splits the air. Or he lets his little body fall face first on the floor, […]
Two little men-to-be, running in the sun. One of them is fast and agile, the other one can’t seem to follow his own legs.A third little guy sits on the stone pavement, eating some mud and giggling delightful baby sounds to his brothers.I sit on the doorstep, enjoying this first day of warm, barefoot weather sunshine.?I gaze up at the tree that almost succeeds in dwarfing this huge house we may live in for now. All at once my head snaps up, and I run to the tree. Pulling one of the lower branches down, my fear is confirmed.?After months of waiting for it to bloom all pink and fluffy like a Queen in the garden, I discover I’ve missed it. Did it happen while we were gone for the weekend, two weeks ago? One week ago? We were only gone for a weekend, twice. Surely it can’t be over that fast??This is the second year I waited in vain. Last year, too, I anticipated the day the Queen would put on her pink fairy dress and dance tall, slow and elegantly over the garden. I thought I ?saw the pink blossoms peek out from under the […]
The Superdaddy turned 35 yesterday and his 4-year-old son didn’t get that his daddy wouldn’t get a party. He himself has been quite enamoured with the idea of a themed birthday party since his cousin had a Paw Patrol party back in December.
His blank stares woke our pity and softened our hearts. We stopped our extensive and elaborate explanations and let papa choose a theme. At mama’s silent encouragement, he chose a Superhero party because all the guys around here have a superhero costume. Mike actually got one from my extended family the day before his birthday because Van Calsters are awesome like that.
The superdaddy went up to his office to work and me and the little batman and superman went to work.
There were superhero buntings and superhero balloons and then there was a spiderman-ish cake.
It was the perfect excuse to pull out my wedding dress that I had recently rescued from the garage, and then superdaddyman rescued me from being supermanless.
He played superherofootball with his boys and wore a cape and made me fall in love?again because it was his birthday but it revolved around his […]
Yesterday morning I brought the two boys to school and it was such a normal day. Caleb stayed home with papa. I came back home to find him on papa’s lap, and for probably the first time in his little life, he preferred to stay with papa. With a very self aware smile, he looked at me, pretending to be a little shy. And then his face went back to the baby Einstein movie he was watching on papa’s phone. Total bliss radiated from his face.
As we sat there adoring our youngest, we were interrupted. A friend called on papa’s phone, to ask us if we had heard about Zaventem. We had not. A few seconds later we were scrolling through the newswebsites, looking for the very latest bit of news.
Yes, we now knew.
1 casualty. 4?casualties. 6. Up it went, along with another explosion. And so as far as we know right now, the count is up to?34. A lot of others wounded.
After reading the news, I went with my sister to wash her car and buy fresh milk. It was a nice day. Sunny. Summery. Trees with blossoms and birds that sing and life goes […]
Here it is. After a very long silence, my first thoughts of 2016. Not that I am just now thinking them. I am just now sharing them, that’s all 😉
New Year. Full of expectations. A new page. It comes just in time, after Christmas.?Christmas. We look forward to it for so long and it seldom fulfills our expectations. Or maybe we don’t even look forward to it anymore because after all, we are cynical Belgians, and we have to keep up our reputation.?So Christmas didn’t fulfill my expectation, although I knew that beforehand – because I wanted the Christmas of my childhood. The one with traditions and people who are not here anymore, or don’t live in the same house. I wanted the time of magic and fun times.I knew beforehand that I am not a child anymore, that I have children of my own now and that family gatherings?with small children are not all that.I knew that the Christmas parties of then are not now, that they have changed.
Still, it must have been there, deep down. Because there was an emptiness, a missing. Logic and understanding didn’t prevent it.
I couldn’t quite forgive the people […]
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