belgianwaffle

Princess

Persona non grata


Posted in: Princess

The Princess is doing a lot of drawing and writing at the moment. Mostly, she just writes Mama backwards and other random letters (a lot of ls and os). She has drawn a number of pictures of the family and continues to produce abstract works at impressive speed. All of these efforts are “for your office, Mama”. I can barely close my briefcase and my handbag due to the number of folded artworks nestling inside. I tend to cull some of the offerings and select only the very best to adorn my office walls. It was for that reason that I came home the other day to find a furious Princess holding out a number of second tier works of art in indignation. “Mama, somebody put these in the bin!” she said. “Was it you?” she asked furiously. Oh dear. How was I to know that she would go searching in the bin for proof of my iniquity?

Oh God


Posted in: Boys, Princess

Daniel is still sick. Michael isn’t better at all and has started vomiting and clinging again. We had to collect the Princess early from school because she was vomiting. And it’s perishing outside and snowing.

O frabjous day


Posted in: Family, Princess, Work

Today is my birthday.

To celebrate, I took yesterday off work. On Thursday my lovely, lovely colleagues surprised me with cake, flowers and chocolates. This is as a direct result of my insistence on constantly reminding the people around me of the date of my birthday. How can people be expected to remember, if you don’t remind them? And, if you’ve forgotten, it’s never too late to send a card.

Mind you, this conversation was was not entirely what I hoped for:

Me: It’s my birthday, happy birthday to me. Gosh I’m so old now. Who would have thought youthful little me would ever reach this great age. Goodness gracious me, go on, go on guess how old I am.

Foolish work colleague: 40?

Indignant me: 38!

And, after a particularly busy period, things are going swimmingly at work in general at the moment.

The Princess greeted me with this the other day:

The excitement. However, since she is left handed and firmly believes that the world should be ordered to suit her, this is what I got on my birthday card:

Lovely all the same.

As it is my birthday, I reserve the right to put in here whatever random things take my fancy. This, as you will be fully aware, is not the kind of operation we usually run here at waffle blogs incorporated. Please see below, Cinderella of the ancien régime:

The Princess is very taken with “Barbie of Swan Lake” these days. What can I say; it was recommended to us by friends. We will cut them in future. It stars Frasier as the baddy and Janice from “Friends” as his daughter. You would think that at least one of these people had enough money to be saved from the indignity of doing voiceovers in “Barbie of Swan Lake”. So taken is the Princess with this that Mr. Waffle has bought her the music by Mr. Tchaikovsky. She is unclear as to why Mr. Tchaikovsky is so derivative and composes music identical to that made famous by Barbie but she likes his stuff. You may see her dancing/flapping to the music here.
In conclusion, you might like to know, 38 is a lot of candles and this isn’t the half of it:

Recent culinary disasters or this is all very dull stuff but why should I suffer alone?


Posted in: Belgium, Family, Michael, Princess

A while ago, I had some cold cauliflower which I decided to use up by turning into cauliflower cheese. I was undaunted by two significant facts which in retrospect should have daunted me: Mr. Waffle and the Princess do not like cauliflower cheese and I had never made it before. I turned to Mr. Conran for help (one of the many cookery books Mr. Waffle brought to our marriage). The quantities were for a head of cauliflower and it all seemed surprisingly complex. This is where I made my first mistake. I decided I couldn’t be dividing everything by four so I cooked the rest of the cauliflower. Then, Mr. Conran’s recipe had tricky bits in it like “make a mornay sauce” but add extra butter. So with a greasy thumb, I flicked between the cauliflower cheese and the mornay sauce recipe. And then it transpired that the mornay sauce recipe was a variant of another recipe on a different page; you know the kind of thing “as x sauce but with ingredient a instead of b and five times more c”. So I created a lifetime’s supply of cheese sauce using recipes from three different pages of the book. It tasted quite nice too but that didn’t encourage the Princess or Mr. Waffle to indulge and a head of cauliflower cheese lies waiting in small packets in the freezer to be fed to my sons over the rest of their lives until they leave home when they will be taking the remainder with them to university.

Regular readers will, I am sure, recall that I bought wild boar in the supermarket months ago. Last week, I decided to cook it. I used Mr. Waffle’s “La cuisine pour tous” which is a terse French cookbook originally published in 1932. It assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of the reader. None of your sissy modern day explanations for Ms. Mathiot although she does give excellent instructions on how to manage the hired help and how to lay a family dinner table. The recipe for the marinade gave quantities for some of the ingredients in dl. I was not sure how much a dl was and neither was Mr. Waffle and none of our cookbooks gave instructions on this point and we were too lazy to turn on the computer (foolish, foolish people). We decided how much a dl was (by looking into our hearts and comparing the results) and using the handy calpol measuring spoon we carefully spooned in what we believed to be the correct quantity of vinegar. The beast was marinaded and on Friday night served up to my misfortunate family. Actually, the boar itself wasn’t too bad. A bit gamey but not tough. Regrettably the sauce didn’t taste of cloves or peppers or sherry or red wine (3/4 of a litre) or anything really, other than vinegar. I am reassessing our guess on dl quantities. Mr. Waffle and I gamely (ha, ha) ate some but the Princess, very sensibly, refused to have any truck with it. However, later in the evening on our way to the cinema, Mr. Waffle turned to me and said “I’m not quite sure how to put this but, do you think we could stop for a toasted sandwich?”. Who was I to quibble. And to round off the evening, the film was quite, quite dreadful. May I recommend that you avoid Code 46? Having seen Samantha Morton in this, Minority Report and Morvern Callar, I have decided that I have suffered enough and I am going to foreswear any film in which she features in future. Happy Feet, anyone?

And finally, in other news, the royal grandparents are in situ for the week, minding the Princess for mid-term. They are not yet exhausted from their labours but we aim to send them back to Dublin shrivelled husks. Mind you, the Princess refused to go out with them this morning because she wanted to stay home admiring herself in her Snow White carnival outfit. They took Michael out instead (Daniel was napping) and he nearly expired from happiness at having two grown-ups all to himself. She did let them take her out this afternoon though. I am sorry, obviously, that I didn’t mention to her grandparents that she has got into the habit of putting on as many underpants as she can at a time. Not as sorry though as her grandmother who had to take her to the toilet in the local cafe and help her out of 14 pairs of underpants.


Fanning the flames of ancient hatreds etc.


Posted in: Princess, Siblings

There is a ditty that is familiar to me from my youth, the chorus of which goes as follows:

Some say the Devil is dead
Devil is dead
Devil is dead
Some say the Devil is dead
And buried in Killarney.
More say he rose again
More say he rose again
More say he rose again
And joined the British Army.

I have refrained from teaching this song to my daughter as I have a charming colleague whose father is in the British army and he sounds delightful too and, anyway, doesn’t everyone love the British army now?

It was therefore with some surprise that I heard the Princess intoning as we went around the supermarket last weekend:

Some say the Devil is dead
Devil is dead
Devil is dead
Some say the Devil is dead
And buried in Clarissa.
I say he rose again
I say he rose again
I say he rose again
And joined the British Army.

“Where did you hear that song”, I asked. “Aunty Helen taught it to me on the telephone” she replied proudly.

To summarise


Posted in: Belgium, Boys, Daniel, Michael, Princess

Daniel has been vomitting on and off all week.  On our worst night we got to change his bedclothes three times.  We went into town yesterday (we are your worst nightmare, a double buggy, two parents and a three year old and, yeah, we probably could have gone in during the week) and took ourselves to the Metropole to revive our flagging spirits – I recommend it, it has the cleanest toilets in Brussels.  So, as we sat in splendour here it was inevitable, really, that Daniel would throw up all over the rug.  With admirable calm, we stripped him down to his nappy (which he then insisted on removing but it was hastily restored) reclad him, apologised to the waiter and took ourselves and our kit to the adjoining table.  On the good news front for Daniel, he has started to walk, though, understandably, not very steadily or very fast.  This is unfortunate for him.  Michael has gathered that there is praise to be had for walking so he either out runs Daniel into waiting parental arms or, as Daniel is balancing delicately having just stood up with great effort, Michael barges past him and knocks him over.  It is not easy being a twin.

Daniel and the Princess are cautious children.  I know that this is unusual and I am grateful.  Michael is not cautious, I suppose that this is normal.  It is scaring the bejaysus out of me.  Yesterday I found him trying to surf on the coffee table.  Earlier in the day I heard a tap tap noise and I sent the Princess to investigate “it’s just Michael standing on the chair and rocking back and forth”.  When I sit him on the counter in the kitchen, he is dangling off it by his fingertips in moments.  His sister has sat on that countertop for over three years and when she wants to get down, she still asks me to lift her.   I let him sit at the computer keyboard. He used this opportunity to climb up on the desk and on to the bookshelves.  I’m a shadow of my former self.  On Friday he went to the creche on his own because Daniel was vomitting.  Mr. Waffle stayed home with Daniel and I took Michael in.  He was a bit clingy at first but was lured away from me by a pink buggy and when I went he had barely a backward glance for me as he wheeled his treasure round the premises.  When I collected him he had spent 7 hours in the creche, the longest period he and Daniel have ever spent apart.  I asked how it had gone.  Absolutely fine except when he woke up from his nap and looked around for Daniel.  I have to say, Michael was pleased to see me, but then he always is, in the gratifying manner of young children.  He ran around the room picking up little things for me and handing them over saying solemly “ank u” a noise I believe to be thank you.  Daniel, safely at home with his father, didn’t seem to have noticed Michael’s absence at all.  Perhaps he was doing some work on his walking.

They’re both starting to talk more.  I encourage them to kiss each other and when they do we all clap hands and say “Bravo”.  The other day, I was distracted and Daniel kissed Michael and I failed to react.  “BWABO!” said Daniel indignantly clapping his hands.  He can still say “that” and “the bath”.  They can both say “Hi” as well as “Mama”, “Papa” and “bye”.  It’s maybe not enough to get by in a foreign country but they’re getting there.

An old friend of mine came to visit at the weekend.  He came with a friend of his whom I know slightly.  His friend asked whether I was working with 3 small children.  “Yes” I said proudly. “So am I” added Mr. Waffle indignantly.  I think we have a mountain to climb on this feminism thing.  My friend is gay and so is his friend though they are not partners.  I don’t know why but the Princess was inspired to investigate the whole issue of gay marriage during their visit.

Her: Mummy, can men get married?

Me: Yes.

Her: To each other?

Me: Yes, certainly in Belgium.

Her: Are T and N married.

Me: Um, no, I don’t think so.

T and N: NO!

T (kindly): And if we were, you would certainly have made the cut for the wedding.

The Princess would like to be a flower girl.

She also wants to know who made God.  Any tips?

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