Kids' stuff

A. and I went to the only doctor here with the material to make echoes. It was as beautiful as ever: for the first time we saw and heard the baby’s tiny little heart beating!

Nevertheless the pregnancy hormones are wreaking havoc on A.’s wellbeing right now. She’s feeling sick, more emotional, more impatient with our staff (I have managed so far to escape her wrath), very annoyed with M. incessant troublemaking when it comes to doing his homework, and longing to go to Holland soon and see family and friends. We hope (and I expect) that she will feel better once the first three months have passed (one more month to go).

My idea to make M.'s homework a little more attractive seems to have worked brilliantly for ... exactly one day. He quickly found out that doing his school home work took less time than doing creative writing on 'interesting' topics. So, while we still don't like the idea of young children spending so much time on homework, we're now getting tougher with him. He'll be grounded for as long as he hasn't done his homework, and that seems to sort of, uhm, well, work, I guess. It must be amusing to watch this struggle from afar, it's trial and error really. He's smart enough, but had no qualms telling his teacher, rather frequently it seems, that 'he hates work', thus boosting our family's reputation even further...