Sylvia's Journal

Opa Axel is baby proofing our kitchen. We have one gate (the cheap one) that requires something akin to a PT exercise – leg lifts – if one wants to go to its other side. The gate on the other side of the kitchen has a door which, with some practice, opens easily. It requires a spanner to put in place, a tool easy to loose so we put it in the messy drawer above the gate.

Baby Faro has discovered there is good stuff in the kitchen drawers and would soon have discovered the liquor cabinet if it wasn’t for Axel’s swift response. All morning Opa screwed in plastic devices that have made our life in the kitchen so much more complicated. We can no longer open a cabinet with one hand – it needs two free hands, one to depress a plastic lip and the other to quickly pull the door open. I am not quite used to it yet and somewhat in denial that we have to live with this handicap for years to come.

Faro has discovered clapping his hands, though there is no sound yet, just the motion. He puts them together in a hit-or-miss sort of way whenever one of us starts singing a Dutch children’s song that has a hand clapping suggestion.

He has also discovered pointing, reminding me of Saturday Night Fever. He responds to pa-pa (or daddy) by pointing vaguely in Jim’s direction. He also knows the word plant, both in Dutch and English (like the difference between ant and aunt), and points enthusiastically to the Jade tree as well as other greens nearby. But when you ask where is ma-ma is he comes up short so we have to work on that.

The franticness of last week is over. I arrived back in Boston on Thursday night, returned to Cambridge on Friday where a past CNN reporter and communications director for a congressman coached three of us in public speaking, with or without powerpoint. It was both humbling and eye opening for someone who’s travelled all the way to Japan to do something similar there. Humbling mostly because I learned what I didn’t know I didn’t know. That’s why we promote life-long learning. It had been a good week.

This weekend was our annual Easter or Greek Easter or Pseudo Greek Easter celebration. We pick a random weekend between Easter and Greek Easter and pray for good weather even though we know it is a crapshoot. So we tell people there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. Our friends know this.

Some 45 people came together, circles of friends which, if not already overlapping, do so by the end of the day. The girls helped out putting together the bunny baskets together. Not baskets really but bags with candy – some leftover Easter candy, some Haloween candy and some generic stuff. The babies got Cheerios.

Then one elderly and one younger bunny hid the loot – with Bunny’s ankle problems the hiding is no longer so sophisticated (as in trees) which some people over a certain age took as an insult (“What? You don’t think we can climb trees anymore?”), while others just noted how times have passed.

Joe had flown in from Sterling Towers West (Alpine, CA) to Sterling Towers East (Lobster Cove), and lend a hand with pulling summer furniture out of storage and setting up the bar – an important support for the traditional Lobster Cove drink (Bloody Mary). Fire places were being stoked inside and out to keep us warm. The fierce wind and dropping temperature mandated this.