Quiet after the party

Here is a very quick end of the week note. All the guests are gone. Evelina's American grandmother made it back to the Panhandle, and her Belgian grandparents are on their way to Hasselt after a grueling trip it sounds. After 3 hours in the check-in line in Austin they were told that no planes could fly in (or out) of Chicago because of the severe winter storm. So they left the next day (yesterday) only to be flown to Paris instead of Brussels because the firemen were on strike and no planes could fly in or out of Brussels airport. So they then boarded a rikkity bus after about 4 hours of mass confusion and were driven from Paris to Brussels! I just called them again since the image of them packed in an ad-hoc bus kinda frightened me. They are in their car, on the way to the house. Finally.

In any case, the house here is quiet now and very messy. Parties and family visits are wonderful but tiring, and keeping up the house was not a priority. All the more evident now that everyone is gone. The decorations from the birthday party are still up. And no, the weather was not nice. Not at all. In fact it was probably a record-bad Easter weekend. I must have sacrificed the wrong items to the weather gods. Anyone any clue whether the Texas weather gods are opposed to vegetarian sacrifices? But we had the pary regardless and Evelina was surely a trooper. The house had never (in her conscious life-time) been so full of people she did not know very well and she partied like a pro. Her grandmother brought a rocking-horse that was made by her father (so Evelina's great-grandfather) for her when she was a little child, and Evelina loved it! She truly enjoyed when everyone sang just for her and ate her chocolate cake to the last crumb. In fact, we have all had to sing for her several times over as she indicated she wanted to hear it again by exclaiming an extended ha-sound and swaying as if singing. So finally after a few days, Robert forbade any more Happy Birthday to You singing until next year.




There is quite some more news, but I will save that for the next post. I just wanted to get this one up and thank everyone for the birthday wishes and attentions. So here are some more pictures of the past weeks with family gathered to celebrate that big event! Until the next post, greetings from Texas with love.

Pics of Evelina's party at her daycare. Notice all the yummies on the table. Her Moeke and Baba made Belgian sugarwaffles and pannekoeken (crepes) with Nutella. And at the end, a great shot of all the grandparents together--a rare occasion.

April 5, a big day

04.05.06. That was this day last year. It was the day Evelina was born. She had her first birthday today. Of all the birthdays in a child's life, this first one is no doubt the most significant for the parents. Evelina had no clue of course that today was her birthday. Although she probably realized something was different when both Robert and I showed up at her day care in the early afternoon and stayed there for the little party we had for her. We brought home-baked Belgian sugar waffles and Belgian crepes with Nutella and sugar. She was both excited and confused. What were we doing there? And then she got to home to spend the rest of the afternoon with her grandparents Moeke and Baba. But for me it was a day of commemoration, reflection, amazement, and pride. Robert and I did well I think, this first year as parents. Of course I thought of this day last year, although this day itself (Evelina was born at 8:27 a.m.) was not one of my best as I was suffering through my allergic reaction to the painkillers they had given me. But I very vividly remember holding her bundled little self for the first time, and softly kissing her little forehead. A most beautiful little face. And now she is a loving little person with a strong will and a most happy constitution. She walks and babbles. Sometimes she seems not even a baby anymore. Here is a picture of a series of portraits we just had done to celebrate her birthday and to give as presents for Robert's birthday. Well, we think she is the cutest baby ever. Keep checking for more pictures of her upcomming birthday-bash. I pray to the weather-gods for a sunny day for a very sunny child. Rain is predicted, but in Texas April ought to be sunny, darnit.

Books, birthdays, steps, and plans.

Great news. Robert received his published books! A whole box of them arrived from Italy and they look great. They feel great as well. They are light and printed on nice smooth paper in a format that is portable and easily readable. What a birthday present, no? He turned 38 on the 27th, so the timing was wonderful. Here is the jacket. The photograph of Robert on the back was taken by me on our wonderful balcony of the apartment in Castiglion Fiorentino in Tuscany.












He is quite pleased with it. We don't really know yet how it will be sold, or where. For those of you reading this in Italy, check if Feltrinelli has it, especially the Bologna store. The book was published by the University of Bologna press. Pretty impressinve, no, to have one's book published by the press of the oldest university in Europe! (1088 for those of you who wonder.)

The other wonderful news is that Evelina is walking! Here is she is in a field of bluebonnets. Of course this picture only shows that she can stand, which she has been doing for a while now. Those first steps came several weeks ago as well, but jusst this week she actually for the first time resolutely marched away from me towards her toys and she is able to turn around without first hitting the floor with her diapered behind. She can stand up from a sitting position without pulling herself up as well. Yes, a whole new world it is all of a sudden. I suppose she was determined to be walking at her birthday party!













I finally received plans of the house! I have been promising these for a while now. I don't know what it is about plans, but I really like them. I do think I should have gone to architecture school all these years ago when I was trying to decide on what to do after highschool. But that was (oh my!) 1988 and I choose graphic design (yes, entirely unrelated to computers then!) for some reason I have now long forgotten. But I digress. Forgive me reader, as it is nearly midnight and I have been up since Evelina got really hungry this morning at 6:30 a.m. So, the plans. Here they are.







So these are obviously the plans of the exterior and a section. If the section is confusing to you it is because the house is confusing. The house actually has four floors with two "in-between floors." This works as follows: from the first floor (i.e. above the ground floor) you ascend the stairs towards the second floor and halfway there, there is a small room that sits exactly inbetween those two floors. This happens again on your way up from the second floor to the third floor. I don't know exactly what these rooms originally were used for. In our house one of them is empty, and the other has been converted into a bathroom. They are too small to be bedrooms in our case. In my friend Inge's house in Antwerp these in-between floors are actual bedroom-size rooms. We don't really know yet what we will use the little space for that is empty right now. It would make a pretty decent size closet if nothing else.



And these then are the four floors. I have fiddled with the plans a little, i.e. erased some walls on the ground floor and moved some other walls so as to create one large open space and a little more outside-area, and sent this to the architect to give him an idea of what we have in mind. For the third floor (our bedroom I turned the three doors into one and added a little bit of the hallway to the room to make this more convenient. It will be just us up there so we don't really need three entrances. Here is this:





The architect is now going to put together a design concept of his own, based on what he knows about us and then ta-da everyone will live happily ever after in a wonderful house. Yeah, right! Then the negotiation starts, and the payments. Ouch! I will keep everyone informed.

So, this was a meaty post in terms of visuals. But I cannot resist and end with one more photograph. One of my recent favorites of Evelina and her amazing "papa." Seeing these two together just makes everything else vanish into unimportance.





Warm spring greetings, from Texas with love, vanessa