Bilingual

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Bilingual!It is a faith that cannot be avoided. Our little one well be raised in both Dutch and Spanish. Luckily it seems that raising a child bilingually can have positive results. For us it was easy to reach this decision.

  • My Spanish, be it fluent is still far from perfect. Even though a Spaniard will be able to understand me without problems my speech is full of mistakes. It would be horrible if the little one copies my personal adaptation of the Spanish language.
  • Half of our family (grandpa, grandma, uncle, aunt, niece and nephew) are Dutch (and Australian) and the little one needs to communicate with this family in Dutch.

The division of responsibilities is simple. I will speak my mother tongue Dutch and Ana will speak Spanish, but only when we are addressing our child. I will remain talking in Spanish when talking to Ana. I am curious if this bilingual education of our child will also have an effect on the mother. Hopefully she will put in some extra effort to at least understand the topic when I am speaking in Dutch.

Of course English is also a very important language, but to not confuse the little one we’ll keep this language for later. I have a wealth of English books and movies so I don’t foresee any problems here.

I never paused to think about it, but using various languages offers additional advantages. I can talk to my son in Dutch without his mother understanding. I can even talk to his mother in English without the child understanding. Clearly knowledge is power.

Countdown, only 2 weeks left!

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Two!Time is passing by very fast. Ana is still in Madrid, taking things slow, avoiding stress and trying to relax although the heat in Madrid makes it difficult at times to be comfortable.

Her pregnancy is proceeding very well. The only thing that is a bit strange is that the doctor mentioned that Pek looks like a small baby. He should weigh more that his current weight. To correct this little underweight Ana had to loose weight and at the same time eat more. Sound a bit strange to me, but that must be because I lack a medical background.

I am still very distant and that is a pity. I wonder if Ana’s belly has grown even more. Two more weeks and than it will happen.

Posted in Pek

Diary of a little menace

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Diary of a little menace!We received a very nice book, the ‘dagboek van een ettertje‘ (diary of a little menace), in which a little menace keeps a record of his daily ordeals in his first year of life.

The book is easy to read and it explains what you can expect as a new parent. I loved the part where the father went out with his friends for the first time after the birth. The little menace noticed as a result the milk had turned a little sour.

Word search

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Woordzoeker!A few times a year the royal Dutch mint (Koninklijke Nederlandse Munt, knm) releases a special coin to commemorate some historical event.

I often suspect that these coins are mainly meant to add some money to the treasury, but as a collector of Dutch coins you just cannot lat a new coin pass.

Soon a new coin will be released, but this time there is also a possibility to win it! Participation is easy, you just need to solve this old fashion word search puzzle. The result you need to send the the KNM and then hope you will win.

Moral of this story: De herdenkingsmunt vertelt ons een belangrijke historie. (The commemorative coin tell us an important history)

Even more easy money?

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Easy Money!In the recent past I was approached and asked if I would consider placing a link with an add on my website. At first I declined the offer but when they made me a better offer and explained the terms I got interested. Now, somewhere on my website there is a little line of text containing a little add and a link to the advertisers website. To find the add you will need to search a lot on my site.

I figured I had gotten lucky and the money I received I transferred to the account of little Pek, thus cleaning my conscience. That was it, I thought.

The next offer followed surprisingly fast. Another company also wanted to place an add on my website and politely asked my what were my tariffs for the various options. They were interested in these possibilities:

  • Text link from the index page
  • Text link on every page of my website
  • A sponsored post

The problem is that after my previous experience I did some research and found out that in Holland it is more or less illegal to advertise any gambling related thing. Of course living in Spain probably make these rules not apply to me.

The article from the law for games of chance:

Article 1
Subject to this Act it is prohibited::

a.
give opportunity to win prizes or premiums, if the winning takes place by chance determining which participants win and with participants generally having no influence, unless authorized under this Act;
b.
give opportunity, promotion or have such documents intended for publication or distribution to stock for participation to items referred to under a;

Just stimulating gambling is illegal, and placing a simple link maybe falls under this scope.

I’ll just see what happens.

Countdown, only 3 more weeks!

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Three!I have started the countdown. This is Ana’s last month being pregnant and it is going to be the first month in our lives as parents. Still only 21 more days. If everything goes to plan I will leave in a little less then three weeks to Madrid to join with Ana just one day before giving birth. The next day we plan to go to the hospital together.

Ana is already in Madrid, taking it easy and trying to relax. I could not join her because I want to save my holidays (I don’t have so many) for when Pek is born.

What I am doing in Las Palmas, without my wife? Well, she left me a big list with chores, but still I find time to read, go our running, watch some movies, listen to music and relax a little. Might as well enjoy myself now, because my life is about to change.

My Dutch tax return has been finalized. This week I planned to figure out how to validate my Dutch diploma for use here in Spain. Still I need to make an album with the photos of our wedding and I want to make a little album with photos of Pek because by now we have gathered a huge number of echo-photos. Enough to make an album.

Finally, if I can find the time, I would like to finalize the project for the red cross and maybe publish our own ‘project‘.

Posted in Pek

Easier dreaming

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More dreams!I’m not sure why, but I think my sleeping pattern has changed because of some change I expect in my life in my near future. The result is that I dream much more and have a much easier time in remembering my dreams. Of course it helps that I have an old-fashioned notebook and a pen lying right next to my bed on my nightstand.

My dreams are pretty strange. These are a few of them.

  • A dream about a soft inflatable toy bear.
  • A dream where I’m a swimming champion. I need to swim a match against an evil rival. I win the match.
  • A strange dream where I’m living with two spines. A dig part of one of my spines I remove with brute force. The rest is removed in an operation. None of this even bothered me.

Visit by the Ammers

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Visit Rogier, Barbara and Lucas 2011
Some nice chatting, swimming, remembering, playing villain and police, got semi lost, ate apple syrup, pissed against a Canarian tree and much more highlights. We enjoyed it a lot! See you in October.

The social network

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The social network!It keeps amazing me. The enormous power the social networks have in Spain. Earlier this year I had already experienced that the social network can take more than a year of your next scheduled doctors appointment.

The social network also seems to have very direct financial benefits. Like the price of medicines, a very important product for the public health. Instead of paying the normal price for our medicines we no just pay 66% for all products you can get in the pharmacy. Where I used to pay around 21 euros for a pot of multivitamins I now pay just 14 euro.

For us this is a nice discount and we would be fools not to make use of it. Still, it is annoying that the price of health in Spain for someone without connections or for a tourist is a lot higher.

Pek’s last echo

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Once again we were offered a look into our future. In one month Pek will be born and he will stop being called Pek, because at that time he deserves his new final name.

Ana will leave for Madrid next week where in a month, the 24th of August, the birth of Pek will take place. He will be born during a vasectomy in the Alcala hospital. The same city as where we got married.

Pek is kicking quite a lot every now and then. Also he gets very happy and excited after Ana has something to eat. This time we had a test where they made a graph of Pek’s movements and his heartbeat. Everything started out really relaxed, but when Ana was given a lollypop the action started.

Pek - Statistics!
The top line in the graph are the heartbeat or the movement of Pek. The vertical stripes are an indication of movement. Ana had a little button which she needed to press when she noted movement. Every press on the button resulted in a little vertical stripe. The bottom line is movement by Ana. This bottom line indicated that Ana had two mini contractions during the test.

The little one weighs 2046 grams and it is a small baby, but that was to be expected with such a small mother.

Posted in Pek