SylkeWeb – Sylke’s mutterings to herself on an island not so far away

Let me start my new Homemade category with our most recent adventure, the Flotilla!

In the summer holidays my sister came over with her family and brought over a German book about craft projects that can be used with wind and water (Wie der Wind geschwind…), for example parachute jumpers, sponge crocodiles for the bathtub, planes, and of course several types of floating objects including boats. While I didn't make anything from the book as such, it inspired me enough to go through our 'box of boxes' (a bigger cardboard box that contains all sorts of metal containers, plastic jars, smaller cardboard boxes that seem useful for crafts) and see if we had enough stuff to build some riverworthy boats. We had tried before with simple folding boats from a sheet of paper but those soak up the water way to quickly and just sink after a while. This time I wanted something that actually stayed afloat!

I found a number of old waterproof and airtight containers that would work well as a base for larger cardboard boats. To make them last even longer I got out my box of sticky tapes and we covered the outside of our boats with those to make them more waterproof. My sister cut up an old milk bottle to get some interesting shapes which were also used. To avoid arguments I gave the two boys involved roughly the same elements to build their boats from and my sister and I did some "free form boat sculpting".

We took the finished boats to our local stream/canal in the park and with the help of a rather large stick (half a branch of a tree) that we found on the way there, we were able to retrieve the boats from bushes at the side of the canal that tried to hold on to them (evil bushes!).

Of course the boys had made some bets at whose boat would be fastest. Both of them thought my sister's boat would be sinking first – but hey, not only did it not sink, it was also leaving the other boats way behind.

At some point my sister's boat got sucked under a very low foot bridge and we thought we had seen the last of it but it came out unscathed on the other side. Phew!

In the end we decided to let some of the boats go on their own adventure but Yannick was very upset by that idea: those poor boats all on their own, and they are so beautiful!!! OK, only one was allowed freedom, the others had to be taken home.

I wonder where it got to?

(See the complete Flotilla photo set on Flickr.)

How suitable that my last post here was called Procrastination. That one was posted one and a half years ago. Shame on me!

Right, on with it: I thought it would be nice to present all of our homemade craft/projects/stuff here to have a record of it. A lot of my friends will have seen these already on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, or Pinterest but I don't care, this is my blog, this is where they should have been presented first.

Here we have a list of what I'm preparing to post about (could be more, could be less), simply to remind myself:

• Bento tea attempts
• Flotilla (boats from cans and cardboard)
• House renovation project
• Yoshi keyring
• Cars playset made from cardboard boxes
• German cake attempts
• Octonauts Kwazii costume
• Quince jelly
• Transformer costumes
• Octonauts birthday cake
• Chestnut animals

What a lovely word. For my German friends, this is Aufschieberitis.

I'm currently suffering of a bad bout of this. Now that Yannick spends so much time in school (three full days and two half days) I should really be starting to look for a job. Instead I'm concentrating on other things that are on my to-do list. They need to be done too but are possibly slightly less important (things like fixing the halogen lights in the kitchen, oiling squeaky door locks, etc.) At least I called the doctor for an appointment this morning on something that should have been looked at already six months ago, to get that out of the way.

OK, last night, in order to at least pretend I'm doing something, I looked at two job sites. As not to be expected any other way, there was nothing there that would fit as the jobs advertised were all full-time. Several months ago I spoke to a friend who is managing a recruitment agency and she said that all they job ads they get in are full-time. Lovely.

This won't be easy any way because ideally I don't wont to work more than 15 hours a week, and those at times suitable for me to do the school runs. Those 15 hours would cover three full school days nicely and I would still have time to get on with household things that I frankly can't see Frank get his hands onto. And really why should he? He has got a good job, is earning good money and spending time with his child admirably after work, I can't fault him. Alternatively I could try to get a household help but then that costs money that I would have to earn, and I still couldn't do much more than 25 hours a week unless I put Yannick in an after school club. Then our son would hardly see his parents during the week. That is simply not worth it.

It doesn't help that I still don't know where I fit into the job market at the moment. With only 15 hours a week I can't be a supervisor like I used to be. I could possibly do any kind of office job where you need MS Office skills (they used to call me the Queen of Excel in my old job), I think I'm good with numbers but I have never got any official qualification in that area (I have a Diploma in Information Technology Royal Society of Arts Level II but that's from 1994). The kind or work I like would be centred around web pages, possibly multilingual web pages, like in my old job. That one was almost ideal. Sigh. I did look at a leaflet with adult education course, none of them seemed to fit.

Of course I do know what I DON'T want:

- a call centre job, never ever again!
- a job that takes more than 30 minutes of getting there.
- anything that involves travelling.

I guess I need to start and update my CV. And possibly get myself to go to the Job Centre to find out if there is anything they can help me with. But first I'll have lunch! *grin*

Apparently we were quite lucky to fly out to Germany on Thursday 16 December, as after that there was more snow here in the South of England and a lot of flights couldn't go as planned.

In Germany the first thing we saw from the plane was snow! Lots of it. And guess what, it didn't shift for the whole two weeks that we spent there. I've never seen that much snow at home ever since I moved away from Germany in 1992. Yes, we saw some snow over the last winters too but not that much. However, Frank who hardly visits Germany in the summers says it's hard for him to remember his home town Berlin without snow by now, for him it seems to have become something close to a polar town.

As not to be expected otherwise, my mum was wishing the entire time that the snow would simply disappear as it bothers her when driving. But to be honest, I loved it – even digging out my sister's car was kind of fun! Of course the snow didn't look too great around the roads, it always gets slightly dirty there, but since it wasn't thawing at all, the snow never became that really slushy mess that I'm far too familiar with from my German winters.

The first day in Germany was spent buying warm clothes for Yannick. We were really lucky getting the very last pair of snow boots in the local shoe shop (somebody had returned them earlier as they were too big). We also found some reasonably priced thermal underwear, a huge anorak, and padded snow trousers. Yannick threw himself into the snow in these clothes many times and usually stayed very dry and warm. At times he tried conquering snow mountains bigger than himself, sinking in quite a bit. Very funny. Before Christmas Frank and Yannick went off to visit Oma Karin in Berlin and I had three days and most importantly nights to myself. Bliss. The two of them were quite lucky with the trains despite the weather, always getting to where there wanted to get with not a lot more than about 60 minutes delay.

At Christmas eve, Yannick finally got the present that he had been waiting for patiently for the last two months, another Optimus Prime, but this time with trailer! To find it, he started unpacking the biggest presents first, almost discarding the first two when they weren't what he was looking for, and then stopping altogether with unpacking when he found what he had been searching. I think he only got back to the other ones a couple of hours later.

We had planned to go home Thursday 30 December. Yes. Planned. We made it as far as to the gate at the airport. There was no plane. It was supposed to land but all of a sudden things changed and we were told that it had been diverted to Düsseldorf as there was too much fog in Hanover. We were told to get our luggage and then go and rebook. We had to wait for quite a while for the luggage and while doing so there were these announcements about an exhibition at the airport that made people roll their eyes: 'enjoy the magic of the airport… ' Yeah. Right. Anyway, we had the option to fly out later on the same day – but only to Birmingham. That would have meant a subsequent bus trip back to Southampton airport and then a taxi ride home to Winchester. Frank suggested the he goes and we stay behind to take the next available Southampton flight which was early on 1 January. My mum was flabbergasted when I called her with our news but of course came to pick us up again. Frank arrived home at 1:30 am. As the trip for Yannick and myself was kind of early I tried to sleep through an hour of excruciatingly loud German New Year firework noises, Yannick never even woke up. We flew out as planned on the Saturday. All went well.

Funny thing was that while queuing the second time round at the airport in Hanover, I started chatting to a young Romanian woman in front of us. When we arrived at the gate we had worked out that we only live five minutes from each other in Winchester – the world is small. We gave her a lift home.

This year absolutely flew by. How are the upcoming years going to be? If this goes on like this, I'll blink and Yannick is grown up. I need to keep that thought in my mind when we are going through our next argument – in hindsight those things will just be a blip.

Yesterday morning I lost it.

The day before Yannick had been mentioning that his ears felt funny after being outside on the bicycle. I take him to school on the bicycle as it only takes about five to ten minutes that way, whereas walking takes about twenty, time we don't have when we also have to do at least five minutes of play before leaving. He is usually only wearing his bicycle helmet but I was already thinking it is getting too cold for his head like that. During the evening he was still saying he had a pain in his ear every now and then, so I knew we had to do something the next day on the bicycle to keep his ears warm – and also told him so.

(That evening I ordered a couple of headbands for him, they should arrive soon.)

So yesterday morning we were all dressed up, only hats and helmets were missing. I showed him a fleecy hat that I thought would fit under the helmet. I knew it would be a VERY tight fit, his head is nearly at adult size at 53 cm (adult's seem to start at 56 cm) and there isn't much space left under the helmet for anything but the head.

Well, he didn't like the hat.

I showed him some other stuff: the hat that he used to wear last winter under the helmet (didn't cover his ears properly any more), my fleecy headband (just not right because it was mine), his big winter hat from Berlin that nicely covers the ears (too big for helmet).

Nothing was approved of and it was getting late. At that point I opened the door and shouted at him, go outside, feel what it's like and then tell me what you want.

I also threw in the fact that he couldn't go to the birthday party that he is invited to this Friday if he had earache.

He stumbled out, angry with me for shouting but still realised just how cold it was and desperately wanting to go to the party he asked for his big Berlin hat.

OK. I put him on the bicycle with that, and without helmet. I thought we could go now.

But alas, he wasn't happy. He wanted the helmet as it was not safe without. Crying.

I was angry and getting even more stressed – but of course that's what we have been telling him all these years. Only on this day I would have happily traded safety for warm ears for once! There is nothing worse than an ear infection.

Tried to pull myself together, got the helmet and tried to put it on top of the big hat. He looked like a mushroom but surprise, surprise we were able to close it! Phew. Everybody happier and off we went to school.

—–

I guess I'll have to investigate children's bicycle helmet sizes next and see if I can find one that will fit nicely with a big fleecy hat underneath.

And here we have a Devastator built by Yannick in school:

With Yannick spending more time in school I've been trying to make sure that I don't forget my own needs in terms of healthy eating – without cooking every single day. The solution is to make a big pot of soup on Yannick's first long day of school every week and then to enjoy this every day when I'm on my own at lunch. I usually have a bowl of soup and a pitta bread filled with various things.

I am used to a warm meal at lunchtime and I need it as we usually have a simple German 'Abendbrot' (rye bread with cold meats and/or cheese) in the evening. At this time Frank also gets some soup. Yannick has his hot dinners at school, so he doesn't need one at home.

Both Frank and I are greatly enjoying the soups. Here is my newest addition: Spicy Carrot Soup.

After a long time I've added a new recipe. This one is a favourite with Frank and a lot of my friends, it's Potato Soup! The nice thing about this soup is that you can either make it with meat or by leaving out/replacing a few items, it will be completely vegan and just as yummy. Enjoy!

Is it scooting or scootering as I hear some people say? (I was pretty sure it's scooting and my spell check just underlined scootering, so it seems confirmed!)

Anyway, we had a pretty poorly winter and Yannick wasn't very fit. It was mostly little things like colds but we also got chicken pox in February which knocked him quite a bit. He asked me many times to pick him up with the bicycle from pre-school – which is only a five minute walk! After chicken pox things turned around!

Finally Yannick has found his legs (and some more confidence) again! I don't know what happened but between age two and a half and age four he lost a lot of his zest for movement and became really lazy, wanted to be carted around in his push-chair (buggy) most of the time. However, all of a sudden he doesn't seem to need his 'home from home' (that three-wheeled contraption, the push-chair/buggy) any more. I didn't use that thing much at all over the last year, it was mainly there for Yannick's and daddy's trips on the weekend. If I went anywhere where prolonged walking might be required, I would take the bicycle with him on the back as it just made the journeys so much faster. At some point Yannick didn't want to go back in the bicycle seat and just walked home, it was a miracle! For the last month or two he started to walk/run so much more, back and forth into Winchester town centre (at least an hour each round trip), up St Catherine's hill (two hour trip), anywhere we want to go. It's brilliant. If there is a down moment (I'm bored, I'm tired) all I need to do is distract, show him something, and he's on his way again. He's not even asking about his push-chair to be taken along (apart from one time with dad where we quickly convinced him that wouldn't be a good idea). Now I just need to get my act together and sell that thing on ebay.

After realising that he could walk for more than five minutes, Yannick also started to show more of an interest in other ways of moving about again. His scooter has finally been used for more than just 10 metres, he's been into town on it! We also took it along to the zoo on Monday and he had loads of fun scooting about with his friend Callum.

I think this whole new walking thing must be related to the fact that Yannick's legs grew about two sizes over the six to nine months. He always used to wear trousers one size smaller than his tops (which were right for his age group), now they have caught up. Obviously longer legs means you get about faster which makes everything so much easier!