The Girls Are Back In Town
My girls are back home after three weeks in the US. It's good to have them home.
Their return trip was a bit of a nightmare. They nearly ended up stranded in Washington, after missing their connecting flight to Amsterdam through no fault of their own. United Airlines really is a shitty company.
They were then supposed to fly via Frankfurt, but for some reason that will now never become apparent, they weren't allowed to board that flight.
Eventually, after pleading with another member of staff, Sarah was able to secure two seats on a flight to London Heathrow. That's the flight they eventually took, followed by a British Midland flight to Amsterdam. The diversion caused them to arrive in the middle of the afternoon instead of the early morning, so they were absolutely frazzled.
To top it all, one of their bags had been mislaid, so Sarah had to file a lost luggage form before she could leave the airport. When I called the company the next afternoon, I was told that the bag had been located at Heathrow and would be arriving that afternoon. I made an appointment to have it delivered to the house that evening and, thankfully, it managed to make that leg of its journey as scheduled. All's well that ends well.
It was wonderful, but also strange to see Eloïse again. Even though she'd only been away for three weeks, she appeared to have grown and looked slightly older. Any concern I might have had that she would have forgotten about Papa was soon allayed. She bounded up to me and showered me in hugs and kisses.
Back home, in the days that followed, it became extremely apparent just how much her linguistic ability had improved while she had been away. She can now form quite complex sentences, and her vocabulary must have doubled since I put her on the plane. I'm amazed by some of the words and constructions she now uses.
Unfortunately, the gap between her English and her Dutch is now greater than ever, primarily because she hears so much of the former and Sarah's Dutch still isn't good enough that we can converse in the language. That inevitably means that Eloïse 's primary exposure is to English, a situation that will become less pronounced when she starts attending peuterschool in November.
Speaking of which, she's already nagging us that she wants to go to peuterschool. You see, in an attempt to familiarise her with the idea that she'll soon be going to nursery school, we've started telling her how nice it is there, what she can expect to do, etc. Unfortunately, this cunning ploy has backfired somewhat, as she has immediately taken to the idea. She's rather put out that we wouldn't take her there today, in spite of the fact that she's not yet old enough to attend and it's closed anyway because of the summer holidays.
Oh well; we'll just have to hope that her level of interest continues.
Yesterday, we went walking in Nationaal Park Zuid-Kennemerland over by Bloemendaal. It was nice to get out into nature and wander over the dunes, although the scenery was duller than I remember it. It's a large park, so perhaps we just needed to enter elsewhere and see other parts of it. We finished with dinner in Laren, the other side of Amsterdam in Het Gooi.
Whilst in the bath with Eloïse this evening, we discovered a tick burrowed into her shoulder, so I called the on-call doctor's line, explained our findings and was told to bring her in. So, we all drove over to the Rivierenbuurt, where Eloïse had her unwelcome guest removed with a pair of tweezers. She was as good as gold for the doctor and didn't flinch as he examined and pinched at her.
Now we have to keep an eye on things to make sure that no symptoms of Lyme disease develop. Happily, most ticks don't carry the disease and we caught this one quite quickly, so we're not too concerned.