2012-08-31 22:50:00
For the past few nights, Dana has been a hanful. What started with a night full of screaming and fighting on Saturday has slowly mellowed down again. Sadly, both of us lost a lot of sleep over the week and we're both feeling the result :|
Since wednesday night, Dana's been going to bed semi-normally. There's the usual teeth-toilet-story-toilet, which is now followed by only one attempt to sneak out of her room again. After that she goes to sleep normally, thank $DEITY. Unfortunately she still wakes up a few times at night, usually once around midnight, once around three and then around five again. Again thankfully we can now return her back to bed within ten to fifteen minutes.
So while it's not all back to normal (we'd wish!), it appears to be getting there.
Funnily enough, our neighbor tells us that Dana's friend Levi is having almost the same issues! I guess it really could be tied to them being anxious about going to school.
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-31 22:45:00
Thanks to the combined efforts of my dear Marli and our awesome buddy Kaijuu my study in the attic now has a nifty hifi setup. You may recall that Marli brought home a record player, an amp and boxes full of records. Well, recently Kaijuu set me up with two of his old Technics speakers which, despite being huge and looking worse for wear, still provide excellent sound. So thanks to them, tonight's volunteer work is accompanied by Back, Dvorak and a selection of operetta. Sadly, both the record player and the amp are showing their age: on some records the audio sounds rather fuzzy and the needle picks up plenty of pops and ticks. Hopefully that's something we can work on the next few months.
I'm hard at work this Friday night, working on the new Renshinjuku website! I'm putting the final touches to the set of plugins and am translating all content to dutch as well. I was very happy to learn about qTranslate, a Wordpress plugin which makes multi-lingual websites a snap! Couldn't have done it without qTranslate!
Once I'm done, there's admin-work to be done: write a manual for our dojo officials, provide documentation and then hopefully we can quickly migrate the site to production.
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-28 09:32:00
Well, tonight wasn't much better. She might've fallen asleep pretty quickly at 2030, but that was just about all that was good about tonight.
I went to sleep around 2215, but was woken at 2345 by a whimpering Dana who had positioned herself on the loo again, like before. It took many returns to her bed and until 0115 until she was asleep. The same thing happened around 0245 and I got to bed around 0330 again. And then again at 0600-0700. Frack! :(
So, like my colleague Marcel who also had a child-ridden night, I'm working from home powered by a liter of Finnish coffee.
kilala.nl tags: life, meh, baby,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-27 21:01:00
Tonight started out just like last night and the night before: Dana was refusing to go to bed and complaining that she wanted to stay on the toilet.
She didn't want to go into her bath at first, but I managed to get her in by distracting her. Sing a song, play a little, do silly things, but that only worked for a little while. We brushed her teeth, but then she quickly went back to the old deal: she really wouldn't budge from the toilet, cramped up and looking anxous.
And then it hit me: anxiety.
Marli's mother had already suggested that maybe Dana was feeling scared about going to school. Marli herself confirmed that Dana had been asking about school every single day. You'd think that I, as someone who regularly has anxiety attacks, would recognize one in another but there we go: Dana was very clearly highly stressed and running her thoughts in circles. And the hysterics from the two nights before definitely fell into the "fight" category of fight/flight!
After some calming and soothing words I managed to coerce her back into bed, where she kept on repeating that she wanted to go to the bathroom. She also kept thrashing her legs. I got her to do our regular breathing exercises ("How do we calm down? That's right!" *breathe innn* *breathe ououout*). And while we were doing that I tried to break her thought patterns, by thinking of fun stuff. So we started whispering about grandma's dog Flip, who's a fun dog. About playing with him, about him chasing a ball, about the garden with chickens, how Flip likes grandpa's boat. And how Flip has a bed in the corner of the room and how he'll try to mooch food. And so on. That worked remarkably fast, because soon she started twitching her eyes and drifting off to sleep.
So... Turns out that I was horribly mistaken :) My daughter wasn't being a manipulative hellion, but was instead scared subconciously and needed help. I reckon tomorrow night might be another repeat, but at least now we know how to deal with it.
kilala.nl tags: anxiety, baby,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-27 07:13:00
EDIT: A follow-up was posted. An epiphany.
In many people, the image of a child sleeping on a toilet bowl will elicit a chuckle, maybe a "Daww!". But for me it will remind me of those nights in 2012 when my perfectly reasonable and sweet daughter turned into a shrieking hellion.
Saturday night, I put Dana to bed with her usual routine. Go to the toilet, brush teeth, read a story, one quick more toilet stop and then off to dreamland! Or so it usually goes. But saturday night, Dana wouldn't lie down for two seconds before crying out and whining that she needed to potty. Mmm, okay? Odd. So we went through that spiel no less than four times, with every time turning out that there's really nothing coming out and that, no she doesn't need to pee. But every time she lay down, she cried and jumped up again.
So we turned to denial: no, you can't go to the toilet anymore, it's bed time now! Screaming ensued. Fist pounding, stomping her feet. And she persisted that she did need to go potty. Marli held her in her arms trying to calm her down. Wow, it was like she was torturing Dana because she screamed, she kicked, she begged and pleaded. Yelled that she was in pain, that mommy should let her go, why wouldn't she let her go?! Et cetera.
My thoughts quickly turned to a UTI, but she had no fever and she also said she didn't have any pain at all. Also, during the day she'd been fine. But we took her to the doctor's anyway: wrap her up in her bathrobe, put her in the car (she was suspiciously quiet), get her examined. The doctor confirms: she does not appear to have a UTI or anything, she's fine! No pain, no tension, nothing. On the way home Dana falls asleep in the car without a peep.
But when it's time to get her from the car and put her into bed again: BOOM! Crying! Yelling. The only way to quiet her down, was to put her in bed and stay with her.
That should've been my first clue. When I got up again, she cried and yelled. By 2330 I was worn out and fed up and told her to scoot: I'd be with her when she fell asleep. That got her to sleep finally.
Last night was confirmation that I'd fallen for it yesterday: right after the usual routine, she says: "Look daddy, I scooted! Will you sleep in my bed again?". Yep, this is nothing but attention seeking and trying out boundaries! So I told her no. Queue the screaming.
Same thing as last night, her constantly claiming that she needed to go to the bathroom and me telling her no and that she'd already been twice. After that, I did nothing but put her back into bed and close the door again. That went on for fifteen times, over about twenty minutes. In that timespan she escalated through whining and wimpering ("I want to go to the doctor again."), to crying, to screaming, to kicking and pounding the door. And of course she also tried escalating from pee, to poop and finally to puking. "Daddy! I'm sick I need to puke! Listen!" and yes, she proceeded to puke. Motherf*@#%! And that's when Marli took over.
She didn't get much further, sadly. And Dana proceeded to dry heave herself into two more rounds of puking. Which is when we broke and gave in. "Fine, go to the toilet all night. Here's toilet paper. We'll be downstairs. Goodnight." An hour later I come upstairs to find her sleeping on the toilet, doubled over as in the sketch (of course I'm not posting the real photo).
And would you believe it?! When I pick her up to put her to bed, the same g%$#@@damn thing starts all over again! She'd been on the loo for an hour and still had the audacity to cry "I need to go to the toilet daddy!". Told her, "nope, now it's my turn" and just sat there for half an hour.
And she actually went to bed by herself. WTF?
It goes without saying that I'm dreading tonight. This shit is straight from Super Nanny.
kilala.nl tags: baby, meh, life,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-24 11:07:00
The video above was not shot during the meet&play, but made earlier. I filmed it together with Martijn, to help out on the Shadow Era forums.
A few weeks ago I started trading Shadow Era cards with folks from the Netherlands and Belgium. One of'm, RaveBaldrick, is from Utrecht which is close enough to me for me to consider hopping over there. We soon caught onto the idea of organizing a little meet&play for other dutch shadowerites, so I set things in motion :)
A topic was started on the forums. People were sent invitations. I contacted my old haunting grounds Subcultures and we got a pledge for one of their gaming tables. Things looked good! Unfortunately iClipse came up to the Netherlands a week early, so we had to miss him :(
In the end it was just the four of us: Baldrick, Martijn, Marli (who may start learning the game) and myself. When we got to Subcultures last night, we were a bit surprised to find that both tables were taken by Warmachine players. The guy at the desk was also unaware that we would be visiting and couldn't help us. So, we quickly marched down the street to De Joker, which is another shop I used to frequent. It is a bit eerie how little that shop has changed! Both the interior and the dungeon (the basement game room) looked exactly the same, though everything felt a lot smaller. Ha! I fondly remember playing over there with Menno (Magic:tG) and Willem/Rene (LotR).
We were very well received and after an initial chat made our way down into the dungeon. While Marli had her late dinner, Baldrick and I started trading. After a bit of back and forth, we got it down to:
There was a bit of back-and-forth about the value of foil cards, both perceived and real, but in the end we settled for the exchange above. Four foils (1E2R1U) for 1E2R2U plus kibble (the commons). We both agreed that we were happy and so we quickly turned our thoughts to the game :)
Both Martijn and myself played a game against Baldrick's Boris deck (which was immediately benefiting from the cards he traded with me). My Elad deck was quickly killed (my draw was too slow, despite a Tome of Knowledge) with a 15HP strike! Wow! Martijn played my Moonstalker deck, which took quite a bit longer, but also fell in the end.
A very nice evening :)
kilala.nl tags: gaming, geeky,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-24 07:40:00
Well, as is to be expected I still get anxiety attacks :)
During our holiday to Austria I had two small ones: one on the morning of our departure which I mostly slept through, and one at the top of the Maiskogel mountain. For the prior it was obviously triggered by doubts about our ten hour drive. The latter was probably triggered by my over-emphasizing of my vertigo. The way up was hell, the way down was really no trouble at all.
Now, yesterday was a different story! I'd been planning the Shadow Era meet&play for a few weeks now and was very much looking forward to it! I know and love the city Utrecht, I was looking forward to going back to Subcultures, I was going together with Martijn and was going to have fun with new people! But still I had a panic attack.
My body was still aching from Tuesday's training with Jeroen. I think I really overdid it and busted muscles in my shoulders and arms. Even typing still hurts today :| I was also very tired throughout the day and fell asleep on the train. Back home I was dizzy, disoriented and more achy, so Marli sent me to bed. But right before that I noticed that I would not be able to drive our car to Utrecht at all. Marli quickly stepped in arranging that she could take us and that Dana would stay over with her aunt.
Uhoh! That got the ball rolling! Here's some of the stuff that raced through me:
... and so on. Thought upon thought upon though. Honestly, Marli is the one who pulled me through it and ensured that I didn't call it all off. She decided that we were in fact going and she set it all in motion. Once in the car I was getting worse, but breathing exercises helped. By the time we were in Utrecht I was feeling mostly fine, a bit agitated but no fight/flight instinct anymore.
Obviously the evening turned out to be great and we had a lot of fun :) By the end of the night I was knackered though. My original exhaustion was topped by running on adrenaline for at least two hours and by my confusion/panic. Sleep wasn't great either, so I worked from home today.
Marli's the one who got me through this :) I'm hopeful that this success will aid me in future bouts with anxiety.
kilala.nl tags: anxiety,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-22 11:21:00
On Monday, Marli proceeded with day 1 of the Ease into 5k third week. That one was a bit of a jump from week 2, but she made it just fine! Huzzah! I'm proud of her! :)
The progression into week 4 can be a bit hard, so she expects at least one repeat of the whole week 4. But she's going to keep pushing and work through it. Whatta goil!
kilala.nl tags: running, sports, awesome,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-22 11:14:00
As I wrote last week I've been lazy. So to get back into the game I'm teaming up with my sempai Jeroen and Martijn.
Last night, Jeroen visited for an hour of kendo and muscle training (followed by some geekery). Aside from the basic stretching and suburi, he taught me some things about pushups, in order to improve the muscles in my shoulders and arms. The basic regimen to start me off is X reps of 5x normal, 5x wide, 5x narrow, which ought to get me started. Many thanks for that! Now all I need to do is follow through and actually DO this stuff.
My form and breathing in kendo are improving again, back towards their old state, but it requires constant reminding. I need to actively think of every step, to ensure I'm doing it right. After going for 100 hayasuburi (which Martijn achieved last week) my blistered left hand blistered some more and drew blood. Jeroen sempai made it to 130/140, while I caved around 70 :| That was down to my technique, because I started really shoving and yanking my shinai after 50, when my arms got tired. Form, form, form!
Three more weeks until class starts again in Almere (or two until Amstelveen). Need to get cracking!
kilala.nl tags: sports, kendo,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2012-08-18 20:55:00
She had no idea I was watching and it just brought a tear to my eyes :')
Dana was actually reading that comic book. Looking at all the pictures, then turning over the page just like she'd seen me do: close the pages, then use her thumb to grab the next page and open the book again. When I snapped that photo, she'd already been reading like that for ten minutes.
<3
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2012-08-18 20:53:00
Last year's summer yumminess is back! /o/
Today I froze a batch of sweet and strong coffee into cubes, enough for about four servings. Put them in a blender, with some milk and Bailey's and you're golden!
Stuff is tasty! :9
kilala.nl tags: cooking, coffee,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-18 20:08:00
Last thursday, I picked up my shinai for the first time since our last class in early July. I suck. A month and a half without sports has messed up my form, my condition and my perseverence. It was weird feeling a hurdle to start again and I didn't like it because kendo is something I want to do!
Practicing suburi with Martijn, I noticed that I've lost everything I've learned in the past few months: I was holding my breath, I was blocking my neck and shoulders and I was pulling/pushing with my right hand.
I felt so frustrated and disappointed with myself. Because they only reason this happened is because I let it. So the only thing to do is to pick everything up again and get back to training! And instead of training with anger in my mind, I will use mokuso and relaxation practices (from my anxiety training) to get rid of it first.
I will pick up the Couch to 5k program again. Last tuesday my sempai Jeroen (middle in the picture above) went for a run with me, which I really appreciated! At seventeen he's über-sporty and I enjoy training with him as he's gently supportive :) This morning I went for another run, using week 3 from Easy into 5k (instead of week 2 which I did on tuesday). Tuesday I was knackered, but this morning went fine.
Time to get going!!! /o/
kilala.nl tags: kendo, sports, meh, running,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2012-08-05 15:35:00
Hooray for the Internet and moderately cheap postage inside the EU! Now that many of the Shadow Era players have received their cards, people have started deck building and trading. This is made very easy by having the SE forums, eBay and international mail :)
Before our holiday I built three decks from four starter boxes: human warrior, human mage and shadow wulven. When we arrived home, I was very happy to see that my booster box (24X15 cards) had also come in. As expected, I now have a card pool of (4*(60+15))+(24*15) = 660 cards. I caught one lucky break though: Alliance Game Distributors (who handle the packing and shipping of the pre-orders) made a mistake with my orders and sent me one too many sets of Bonus+Premium foil cards. I've opened one of these three boxes to add to the pool, for an additional (20+45+55)=120 cards. Well, minus 2 for Corrupted Angel, which isn't legal for tournament play.
After spending an hour or two opening the boosters and dismantling my decks, I spent more time sorting all the cards and making an inventory. In the end, I had at least one of every single card in the game, mostly thanks to the Bonus+Premium pack. Luckily I won't need every single card to make a few fun decks.
To gain some oomph! for my mage deck, I've set up a trade with current WC iClipse who lives in Belgium: two rares for two rares. He wanted Wizent's Staff (which I won't use as I don't play a priest deck yet) and a Tainted Oracle. The latter is a great card and I use it in the digital game often, but since I only have one copy myself it's much less useful. So in return I'm getting a Ley Line Nexus and a Priest of the Light, both of which are flexible and powerful cards.
I'm also trying to set up a trade with RaveBaldric, from Utrecht, for some rogue-class commons and for another rare card. Let's see how that turns out. Tomorrow I'll send out iClipse's cards, packed in foils, sandwiched in cardboard, in a bubblewrap envelop. Never safe enough, eh?
In the mean time I'm thinking of changing my decks. I'll be building three, maybe even four: human mage, human rogue, shadow warrior, shadow wulven. That'll be fun :)
kilala.nl tags: gaming, geeky,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-03 22:13:00
Day 14 was quiet: we stayed home, cleaned, packed our suit cases and generally made sure we were ready for the ride home. We returned to Kids Land for some playing and we did some shopping at Neumair.
Today, day 15, we were originally supposed to do the first leg of our journey home. We woke at 0530 and drove out of Kaprun by 0645. By 0900 we were out of Austria and back in Germany, my first shift was done. Marli drove for 1.5 hours, then I did another two. By then we decided to cancel our hotel reservation for the night and to push through to Almere. Tough choice, as it would extend the total driving time from six to eleven hours.
The drive went well. We took our shifts, we had plenty of breaks (ever 1.5-2 hours), we felt good and Dana was pretty well behaved! Things only turned sour when we got into the last part of our trip: west Germany, above Köln. I gotta say, I hate traffic around Oberhause. Nothing but Stau and the final turnoff towards the dutch border passes over a single lane. WTF?
We made it home by 2030. Our house was still standing, there was a bunch of mail and a friendly reception by our neighbors :)
It's good to be home.
kilala.nl tags: travel, austria,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2012-08-02 16:28:00
When shopping at Neumair we quickly stopped by the toy department for some extra water colours for Dana. While browsing, I ran into something that I couldn't not buy: Hasbro's Kre-O Optimus Prime.
Kre-O is one of the many "me too!" brands, meant to compete with Lego, marketed by Hasbro (though created by Oxford). Of course there are more competitors and each brand has its own licensed products to draw customers:
We grabbed the Optimus Prime set, which off the shelf looks like good value for money: €10,99 for a 90 piece set. Not bad at all, compared to Lego. The parts are all the same size as Lego bricks, as they are compatible and interchangeable. However, they do look and feel 'cheaper' than their Lego counterparts: the molding is less sharp, there are clear leftovers from the casting process and the colours just seem less 'convincing' for lack of a better word. Oddly, the plastic also seems to pick up finger prints a bit more.
The mold for Prime's head is pretty well done, detailed and certainly looks the part! It's made from softer plastic which does also show leftovers from the casting process. The ball joints, often used in models and action figures, are solid and tight; I'm impressed! They are made from the same plastic as the rest of the model, but the balls are covered in a layer of the soft plastic also used for OP's head. I do have to wonder how long this layer will last, before the joints go soft and limp.
Building the lower frame of the truck mode I noticed that the parts don't fit together perfectly. The frame came out concave instead of straight. Other parts also show crannies, most noticably the front window. The process of building felt less than optimal, but that is probably because they tried to come up with a design where they could use as many parts as possible (thus not leaving any parts that can be lost). For example, the truck mode uses 87 of the 90 bricks provided.
To sum it up: the eleven euros were well spent. It's a fun enough model to build, the robot mode is pretty attractive and the quality of the plastic certainly is not "crap". Other sets on the shelf that I liked are Bumblebee and Mirage, the latter also comes with an SD Mirage minifig. There are bigger sets as well, like bigger bots from the Prime and Energon storylines (which I don't care for) and a cool Constructicons/Devastator kit.
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-01 20:01:00
Not much to say: we returned to the Strandbad in Zell am See today for a day in the sun.
The weather was great and I still love this place: nice location, nice layout, two pools as well as swimming in the lake, good service and great food. What's there not to like? We even get free entrance, thanks to the Zell-Kaprun Card.
kilala.nl tags: travel, austria,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2012-08-01 18:17:00
Would you believe that the one thing I'm enthusiastic about taking home from our trip is canned food? (;^_^)
In Austria the brand Inzersdorfer is big in supermarkets. Like HAK, Maggi, Knor and Heinz in the Netherlands, Inzersdorfer can be found in many of the aisles. And I've got to say, their stuff is good! We've had their spaghetti sauce, their chili, their gulash and their chilibeans. All of it: richly filled with meat and vegetables and of good flavour. Definitely stuffing some of their products in the trunk :)
kilala.nl tags: travel, austria,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
