Hello there!
Can you believe we're more than halfway through February? I think it's been a month (again) since I last updated my blog. Well, wonder no longer my friends. Here's the update...
Growing like a beautiful flower, Sjaantje is changing daily. She is maturing physically, mentally, emotionally and quite importantly on the humor front. It's obvious that Sjaantje has been blessed with my heighth genes and is pushing that envelope to the extreme. She is only about 2 inches shorter than me and, as normally happens when one grows taller, her feet are growing. Unfortunately for her however, her shoe size lingers between a 4.5 (the largest kid's size = not much variety and tending to favor Disney patterns) and a 5 (the smallest women's size = heavy on the 3" heels and a bit too mature for her).
This morning Sjaantje was taking a personality quiz on the computer and was stumped by one question: Do you prefer art or reading? She couldn't decide which to choose. This, my friends, is a landmark. Sjaantje has always been extremely artistically inclined but not much of a reader. Two weeks ago, she began to actually enjoy reading. (She spent one entire afternoon on the sofa reading a book! Maybe only because she was grounded from life in general for repeatedly playing "TORNADO!" inside the guest house but nevertheless, she fell in love with reading.)
Sjaantje has perfected a new phrase which comes from a young African-American female character on her Facebook chat options. For example, if I say "Hey! I made some chocolate chip cookies for your snack!", Sjaantje replies (while moving her head side to side like an entranced cobra) "Oh no you di' unt." Or "Sjaantje, you need to put up the clothes that I just folded" gets me "Oh no you di' unt." Henk says, "I bought some ice cream, all for me" and, well you can guess: Oh no you di' unt.
Sjaantje had to get yet another shot; this one a follow up for the Hepatitis A series. She has matured so much in the ways of needles that I/we think Sjaantje is finally ready to get either a tatoo or have her ears pierced. We're going for the latter. So thinking along these lines, I went to the local "Beauty Shop" to inquire. "Yep. We do it." was the response I was waiting for. But then it was followed by "We ain't got any earrings for her age. Just these." The owner of the shop then showed me the ball point pin dot sized earrings that they normally use for infants. "No, I think those are way too small. What about normal sized studs?" That question gave the earring artist pause for thought but eventually she said, "I gotta order 'em. Call me tomorrow to see if I gottem." That was yesterday; today I called and was told, "Nope. Ain't got 'em. You could do me a favor though and drive to San Marcos and pick some up for me." I'm re-thinking the whole process at this point.
Going back to Sjaantje's reading and coupling that with Valentine's Day, she decided to make some peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses on top as gifts for her classmates. Luckily, we have a cookbook that lists that particular recipe as well as many others - one of the others being a recipe for a certain Jello salad. With Sjaantje's budding sense of humor as she paged through the cookbook, she paused, read the title and said completely deadpan, "Broken Glass Jello Mold. Ummm. That sounds delicious!" As I was thoroughly cracking up, she asked, "Do you think we should use blue or red glass?"
Henk's (and mine via marriage) brother-in-law was remarried last week. (You may remember that Henk's sister passed away in 2008.) Anyway, Dave married his lovely lady-friend, Carmen. Although we arrived late because unbeknownst to us the highway was closed, once it finally began the wedding was a cozy and sweet ceremony. Held at a restaurant in Austin, Sjaantje joined her cousins Grant and Seth as well as Carmen's grand-daughters in the ceremony. It was as we were sitting down to dinner that I overheard Sjaantje talking with Carmen's grand-daughters..."What languages do you speak?" the girls asked. Sjaantje, not realizing they were from Panama, replied "French, German, Dutch, English of course and Spanish." A big oops on that one as one grand-daughter broke into Spanish just as Sjaantje pretended to have to answer her phone.
In case you were wondering, YES, we had a bit of snow when that big storm hit in January. About one inch, give or take! Wow! Not only did Sjaantje have a day off from school, we also had electrical issues as the state of Texas did a "roll around" with the power. Trying to conserve energy in the face of immenent power outages meant that every few hours the electricity in a certain area was shut off. No warning, no nothing. It was quite fun making a cold breakfast at 6:20 am by flashlight.
Meanwhile, Henko went to Dallas. Keep in mind he claims to abhor American football yet he made it a point to be in Dallas when the Super Bowl was being played. Not only that, he wore his green Italian leather shoes (Green Bay Packers) and carried a large chunk of cheese in his carry-on bag (Green Bay Packers). He was conveniently unreachable on his mobile phone all day Sunday. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
I think the woman who recently cut my hair was a butcher in a previous life. I don't want to talk about it.
Hey! Good news! I received a personalized invitation to join the Little League baseball team in town! That should be fun, except I'll have to change my age from 42 to 12. Just erase a little on the left side of the 4...
I will have more news soon. Very soon....(intrigued?)
xo
W
