March 02, 2009
Didn't get the job, and now sick...
category: Happenings
Hi folks! Just wanted to post that I didn't get the job; they said they went with someone with more experience. Oh well, on to more, right?
Also the neighbor had pinkeye and then the other neighbor did and now I do too but unlike theirs mine has turned into some sort of raging syndrome, and given me ear infections on both sides, swollen glands in my neck, fever, and a throat so sore (also with white patches) that even swallowing water is difficult. Not to worry, I see the doctor in five hours! I will post the results here. Suffice it to say, though, that I feel quite unwell.
Posted by Katrina at 08:53 AM
February 25, 2009
Walter's all better!
category: Walter
Walter is finally over this flu or whatever it's been. I have also heard from lots of other mothers, and at least half his class spent the vacation we just had with the same symptoms-- high fever every evening and runny nose, tired all the time, not eating. But now he has all his energy back and today he started eating again and has some color in his face. Today he had a huge bowl of mashed banana enhanced multi-grain porridge, followed that up with a couple of cookies, had two large rice cakes for his school snacks, and then went to play at his friend Sten's house, where he had a sausage sandwich, a ham sandwich, a chocolate sandwich (it's a Dutch thing), a banana, a muffin, and a slice of spice cake, and now he wants to know when dinner will be ready. Good boy!
Posted by Katrina at 05:34 PM
February 20, 2009
Saskia is Five!!!!!
category: Pets
It is Saskia's birthday! She is 5. Walter gave her a bone filled with meat, and he wanted to paint and assemble a crown for her but I convinced him that dogs don't like to wear crowns, so he made a harness decoration for her instead.
Posted by Katrina at 09:23 PM
Poor little guy
category: Walter
Walter hasn't been feeling well. I thought it was just flu (we have an epidemic here right now) but it was hitting him harder than usual for flu (but not anything like that terrible Mystery Virus he had in summer!). Yesterday and today he had a facial rash, so I called the doctor. It turns out there is a new strain of 5th disease (human parvo virus) doing the rounds right now. It's one of the usual childhood diseases we all get, nothing to worry about. The doctor said Walter's symptoms are consistent with cases he's been seeing all week. He'll be fine in a few days. Tonight he was much more himself than the last few days and his fever was down. In this picture, he has fallen asleep in Danny's chair in the living room a while after lunch.
Posted by Katrina at 08:08 PM
Pretty sky, and a view of a path where we walk the dog every day
category: In Haarlem
Posted by Katrina at 08:06 PM
Babysitting swap
category: Walter
Every Monday, Walter is picked up from school by our good friend and neighbor Mariska, mother of Kraiwin, and she watches him until evening. This is in preparation for me getting a job, when I will need somewhere for him to go after school. On Tuesdays, I pick Kraiwin up and bring him home with us. Kraiwin is also 4. He and Walter are in different classrooms but go to the same school. They've known each other since I started Walter at a playgroup when he was 1 1/2. Here are the boys in our living room.
I suppose I should mention that the toy orange cat in the background is Apple Muffin. Walter has had her for about a year. She is wearing a crown because it is her birthday, says Walter. Every day is her birthday. She is always 5.
Posted by Katrina at 07:58 PM
February 16, 2009
JOB INTERVIEW!!!!!
category: Happenings
Everybody cross your fingers for me! I have a job interview day after tomorrow. It's for the Public Ministry, a part of the Ministry of Justice, which handles the processing of crimes. I would be responsible for making sure dossiers and so on were complete based on police reports. It'd require some daycare juggling and so on but it sure would be a good job! Just for fun I will include my letter of motivation (all employers require one):
Geachte Dhr XXXXXX,
Door middel van deze brief geef ik van mijn belangstelling blijk om als administratieve medewerkster bij het Rijk te werken.
Ik heb 2 jaar ervaring als een sociale dienstverlener en maatschappelijke werkster opgedaan. Ik ben net afgestudeerd en ben nu in bezit van een MBO Sociale Dienstverlening (niveau 3). Van Maart 2007 tot 20 January 2009 liep ik stage bij Het InformatieSteunpunt in de 1e Lijn GGZ. Daar was ik verantwoordelijk voor het samenstelling en redactie van de wekelijkse knipselkrant, administratieve werkzaamheden o.a. archiveren en onderzoek, intake gesprekken, cliëntenbegeleiding, en het ondersteunen van cliënten van verschillende culturen en achtergronden. Dit ging vaker over cliënten met maatschappelijke en/of psychosociale problemen of beperkingen.
Werken bij het Rijk of een gemeente spreekt mij aan. Ik zou graag in die omgeving mijn loopbaan verder vorm geven.
Als medewerkster bij jullie kan ik mijn administratieve vaardigheden gebruiken bij het ondersteuning van de in-het-vacature-geschreven project. De veelzijdigheid van die project spreekt mij aan en bovendien geeft mij de mogelijkheid mensen te kunnen helpen en het maatschappelijke samenleving te ondersteunen. Ik sta zeer open naar alle culturen, en ik ben flexibel en ook geduldig.
Graag zou ik in een persoonlijk gesprek met u de mogelijkheden voor samenwerking bespreken. Mocht u daar op korte termijn geen behoefte aan hebben, dan verzoek ik u mijn brief te bewaren voor een eventuele toekomstige gelegenheid.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Katrina Cooper
Posted by Katrina at 05:20 PM
February 15, 2009
Walter's photography
category: Walter's photography
I think that for a kid his age these are really exceptional. He has a good eye for detail. These were taken with the blue camera he's holding in the bakfiets further up the blog. Mom (Oma Rue) sent it to him Christmas before this last one.
This is a photo of a painting the neighbor did.
And a self-portrait:
Posted by Katrina at 09:00 PM
More news
category: Happenings
In further news, in short, well, let's see...
Walter was terribly ill in the summer. He is 100% now! He had a mystery virus that looked a lot like mononucleosis. He was exhausted and white as a sheet and weak and often depressed and had intermittent high fevers. We went to the doctor about once a week, had a test for mono, the works. Several doctors agree it was certaingly "one of those mono-like viruses" and followed a normal and predictable course. He was acutely sick for 6 weeks but it was months before he stopped having the occasional relapse period. I have been told this is completely normal. As I said, he is fine now.
7 or 8 months ago I bent over to put soap in the dishwasher and couldn't stand up again. MANY doctor visits later, many medication trials later, and one orthopedist and set of x-rays later I have learned that I have two flattened discs and there is no recommended treatment. So it goes, eh?
After 2 1/2 greulling years, I HAVE MY DEGREE!!!!!!! I am now a social worker, albeit inname only because I am looking for work.
I think that's about it but I will post more as I think of things...
Posted by Katrina at 08:55 PM
A couple of views of our recent weather
category:
You know how to tell if ice is safe to walk on? After asking hundreds of people who grew up surrounded yearly by wild ice, the definitive answer is: wait until someone else is already walking out there. I have never once encountered The First Person on the Ice. Some adults were skating where Walter and Saskia are standing earlier that day so I knew they could go out there. Well, in the top picture anyway. In the other picture, that canal is so small it was frozen all the way to the ground (about 45 cm. down) and that was clearly visible.
Posted by Katrina at 08:09 PM
At the TV studio
category: Happenings
Walter's casting agent finally coughed him up some work!
With the costumer
Checking out some props
A few weeks ago we went for Walter's TV recording. We took the bakfiets (cargo trike) to the train station, with Walter covered for the weather (it was -7 C that day, so that meant down jacket, hat under and hat over his bike helmet, his scarf, my Nepali thick unprocessed silk scarf, gloves, sitting on the sheepskin that usually lives on my computer chair, covered with my Nepalese yak wool sweater, wrapped in a polar fleece blanket, with an additional thick wool blanket over his legs and feet-- that's what he's dressed like on the way to and from school right now too), took a train to Amsterdam, and then took a metro to a station near the studio. The agent had not made it clear we could be picked up, and the map provided was poor, so we walked around for about 20 minutes before I called the contact person and she said she would send a car, which drove past us as we finally located the studio anyway.
We were ushered into a cafeteria and asked to wait. Walter entertained himself with some plastic chains and such, and I fed him snacks and juice and milk I had brought. Then the contact person turned up with the contract (very simple, we relinquish the right to claim intellectual property rights and they can use the footage for a year blah blah blah). She explained that the idea was that many people would record a sentence or a word and would then be all spliced together into a poem, which will be used by the major TV network that commissioned it to promote the network's stations. We waited around some more, then Walter said he had to pee, and Danny went with him. After some time I wondered what had happened to them.
I went out into the loading hall, where the doors all led to, and the contact person (Shaheen) was there. She went through an elaborate pantomime to indicate that they were filming someone in an adjacent room and could hear and be irate about any slightest sound but that Danny and Walter were through this other door. I crept down the stairs and through there, where I found Walter and Danny. Walter was enthusiastically trying on a variety of shirts with the costume lady while Danny looked on.
While Walter then tried on every pair of glasses, watch, necklace, and accessory in the place and then proceeded to load up some extra accessories boxes with his personal favorites, the lady took the extra outfits I had been told to bring and some of hers to the director. The director chose one of theirs, a very cute and super-comfortable thick grey velour pyjama suit with Spiderman's mask on the front, and we convinced Walter to put it on. Later, he was very attached to it and the costume lady let him keep it. Very handy, as all of his PJ's are a bit too small and this one is big enough to do him for some time. He is sleeping it it as I write.
Then we were ushered to make-up, where the lady just sort of fluffed his hair around a bit and put a bit of holding gel in. Then it was back to the cafeteria. So far Walter had succeeded in utterly charming everyone he'd interacted with.
After a long time, during which we had to play endless rounds of Look, the Toy Pinguin is Trying to Get Your Milk in order to keep him chipper, it was Walter's turn. He stood on some steps right in front of the (real film!) camera and the producer stood by him just out of shot. They got him relaxed by playing some peek-a-boo, then started coaching him. He had to stand still at one point for a long shot, and that is NOT his forte. But it succeeeded in the end. Then what we had feared happened: he got REALLY shy when asked to speak. But with me behind the cameraman giving him encouraging looks, he finally started repeating what they were telling him to say: "Ik ben verlegen" (I am shy), "Ik ben stoer" (I am a tough guy), "Ik ben boos" (I am angry) and "Ik ben vrolijk" (I am happy). Twice he burned out a bit and they had him get down and come over to me and Danny, where we told him what a great job he was doing and pepped him up, and then each time he went back of his own accord. Everyone was extremely kind and patient.
That was that part, then, and the director crouched down and shook his hand and told him thank you and told us that actually even compared to kids his age who've done it before he had been Just Great. Then he was promised candy (by the producer) and we headed for the sound recording area. After some of said candy (this extremely Dutch salmiac stuff called drop that I can't stand but he and all Dutch kids love), he went in (with me) and they had him say the same things again but this time loud and clear. This time I could coach him out loud and say things like "Excellent!" because of course for the sound stuff they can just cut that out. After some coaching and futzing around we got some good recordings.
We got a ride back to the station, took the subway back to Amsterdam center, a train back to our local station, and the bakfiets home, just in time for dinner at the usual time, then his story and bed like always.
The job will pay 200 Euros on the face of it, but if they use more than 3 seconds of Walter they are required to send 300 Euros more. The vast bulk of it all goes to Walter's savings account, of course, but one small part will be for the race track: we got him a race track for Christmas, which turned out to be Highly Inferior and then the dog ate it anyway, so now we will use 30 Euros of his earnings to get him the spiffy HotWheels one we WANTED to get him in the first place but couldn't afford.
So that was Walter's first experience with the acting life. He says that much of it was fun, some of it "not so much", and that it was a long day, and that he definitely wants to do it again. That's my boy! He also says he was somewhat disappointed he didn't get to pretend to be someone else who was eating and singing, so it's clear he has an idea about what acting is all really about. As first jobs go this was a tough one, what with him being the focus of all attention up there right at the camera with nothing distracting like props or "businesss" to attend to. So I think he will do very well at this and I'm glad he wants to keep doing it. Fingers crossed the agent coughs something else up sometime! The director did say, "Until next time!" to him, so maybe he'll want him next time he needs a little boy for something.
Posted by Katrina at 08:00 PM
His first ever real, official school photo!
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 07:59 PM
He's getting pretty good!
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 07:58 PM
Ghost leaf
category: In Haarlem
I've been seeing these a lot this winter. First the leaf falls to the ground, then there is an overnight frost, then the sun comes up and melts all the frost except that under the leaf, and then the wind blows the leaf away, leaving this kind of frost imprint.
Posted by Katrina at 07:56 PM
What most mornings look like these days...
category: In Haarlem
Posted by Katrina at 07:54 PM
Shadows of trees in the dog-running field at the end of the road
category: In Haarlem
Posted by Katrina at 07:53 PM
A frustrating - and potentially dangerous - situation for the local dogs.
category: In Haarlem
Posted by Katrina at 07:52 PM
Walter's first picture OF something... and it's ME!
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 07:50 PM
Exploring the world in minute detail...
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 07:49 PM
Christmas presents!
category: Happenings
Posted by Katrina at 07:47 PM
Walter made this tableau: it is houses around a fountain.
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 07:42 PM
Decorating the tree
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 07:41 PM
The new bakfiets!
category: Happenings
It has since been painted white, and when I have the time i will paint it with traditional Alaskan designs.
Posted by Katrina at 07:39 PM
Opening a present from Sinterklaas on 5 December
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 07:37 PM
Saskia and Django
category: Pets
Saskia plays with her best friend ever, Django, who has sadly moved away.
Posted by Katrina at 06:23 PM
New hobby!
category: Walter
Walter has become quite the photographer with the camera Oma Rue sent him. A bit later I will post some of his best pictures. Here he is in the old bakfiets, which finally Could Go No Further. Thank you again Opa Matt for getting us a replacement!
Posted by Katrina at 06:21 PM
The tiger suit
category: Walter
Here's our boy at a Halloween party he just really didn't enjoy (too loud, chaotic, and undisciplined for him), but he liked his costume! I made it out of a stuffed tiger we found on a moving-out pile down the street.
Posted by Katrina at 06:19 PM
The birthday pinata!
category: Walter
I made this for the birthday party. Unfortunately the party pictures were all blurry. Sigh. But a good time was had by all!
Posted by Katrina at 06:17 PM
He's just our little ray of sunshine!
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 06:16 PM
First day of Real School!!!!!
category: Walter
Here he is about to go in.
Here he is in his classroom for the first time.
And here he is being brought out with the rest of his class while the parents wait out front at the end of the day.
Posted by Katrina at 06:13 PM
Opening a birthday present
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 06:12 PM
Last day at daycare!
category: Walter
Kids start regular public school the day after their fourth birthday here. So here is Walter at the daycare on his birthday having a goodbye party. They also gave him a book (which he is leafing through in the second picture) of all his best artwork from the 2 years he attended daycare there.
Posted by Katrina at 06:10 PM
Walter shows off his painting job on a chair we found.
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 06:09 PM
I had previously not dared to swing him this high....
category: Walter
Posted by Katrina at 06:07 PM
One of the three feral macaws pays a visit to a tree just off the deck.
category: Happenings
Posted by Katrina at 06:06 PM
Summer trip
category: Happenings
Walter and I were able to go to Berkeley again this past summer, to stay with my aunt and see family but most importantly to spend time with Sam (my grandfather, for any new visitors to this blog).
Here is a very tired boy: he didn't sleep a wink on the plane. In this photo we have been in California for a couple of hours. Walter is holding his lynx, Bobby.
Here is Walter by a T-Rex skull on the Berkeley campus.
Here he is feeding the squirrels again.
We loaded up my MP3 player with episodes of Diego to keep Walter busy on the plane and, it turned out, also at other times.
Walter dubiously surveys his first blackberry (straight off the vine!).
On our trip to see Oma Rue in Santa Cruz, Walter poses by a grey whale skeleton at the Seymore Marine Discovery Center.
Having fun touching sea slugs with Oma Rue at the Discovery Center.
Walter feel asleep on the way to the Indian Restaurant that capped off our Santa Cruz trip.
Watching Gate Daddy Sam play the harmonica. Be sure to check out Sam's instructional harmonica videos on YouTube!
A feeding success for both parties!
Hanging out with "Uncle" Henry
Visiting Uncle Eli for lunch in San Francisco
At the San Francisco Exploratorium (and outside it)
Walter has fallen asleep shortly before Eli and his fiancee Karen arrive for dinner.
They have arrived! He has awoken!
Hanging out with Gate Daddy Sam
Walter's been at the blackberries again...
"Playing" Tante Leanne's piano
Hanging out with Opa Matt
Playing piano with Tante Leanne
Three generations-- but not in a row! Sam is of course Matt's father, and Matt is my father, and I am Walter's mother. This photo has skipped a generation: I am not in the picture-- but I did take it.
Sam, looking good!
And here is our return transport. Here we are at the San Francisco Airport. Shortly before this picture, we tried to sit at a restaurant at the airport and there were no empty tables. We went to sit at the bar but were politely kicked off because Walter is not 21. So we asked a very nice, fascinatingly dressed woman if we could share her table. Yes we could. Walter continually handed her menus and pots of mustard. She was Most Kind about it all, and smiled at him continually. A week later I watched NCIS for the first time and discovered she was the actress who plays Abbey. What fun!
Posted by Katrina at 05:28 PM
SCSI
category: Pets
The first piece of news is sadly bad news. We had to have our dear SCSI put to sleep. She had a very fast-growing fibrosarcoma. She never suffered, luckily. We miss her.
Posted by Katrina at 04:41 PM
SOOOOOO far behind!
category: Happenings
You will have noticed that this site has not been updated in an Inexusably Long Time. So here's the plan: I will now be filling you in on all the news, and getting you up to date with any number of pictures, and then will start treating this like a normal blog with far more frequent postings of a bit of news and a picture or two! So bear with me, here comes the filler!
Posted by Katrina at 03:38 PM