Sinterklaas vs Santa Claus - cross-culturalism in our household

So Christmas is becoming a topic of discussion in this house.  Quite understandably as there is two five year olds here SO of course they are getting excited... but this is also where it gets kind of interesting.  My heritage is Dutch (and I was born there) so for me it's also about Sint.

Now when we moved here in the early 1980s we had to pretty much assimilate into Australian culture.  Mind you we did also move into an area where there weren't that many Dutch people around.  So suddenly Sint became Christmas (we did have Christmas or Kerstmas in Holland but Sint is the big one) and Santa started bringing us our presents.  Now my brother and I are pretty cluey - I was 8 and he was 10 when we moved here so we kind of figured that Santa wasn't the real deal.  Mum and Dad did try to convince that we now lived too far away for Sinterklaas to deliver our presents and that Santa would deliver them instead.

Let me pause for a second...

Now logically...
Sinterklaas lives somewhere in most likely the Netherlands Antilles and Santa Claus lives in the North Pole.  It's much of a muchness as to who can deliver presents to a couple of Dutch kids in Brisbane, Australia.

So we basically did figure that Santa wasn't real.  We humoured Mum and Dad though until Dad gave up the pretence of Santa (which was pretty much the Christmas after Mum left).  I know it's silly but there is still a little part of me that does believe in Sinterklaas.  As a rational adult I know he's not real but the kid in me still believes in him.

Now for the background for the Sinterklaas vs Santa Claus discussion in this house.  Facebook is wonderful.  So it has allowed me to actually reconnect with some of my cousins in Holland (because we're from the south of the Netherlands we actually refer to is as Holland - because well we're from Holland).  Last year De Ruijter released a coffee chocolate hail and I asked one of my cousins if she would mind sending me some.  My cousin did as well as... (she blew me away to be honest!) a whole bunch of Sint goodies.  One of the things she sent which has been very much appreciated in this house is a Sinterklaas picture book - Louise and Olivia have already been asking me to read it to them.  Which has given me the opportunity to discuss my childhood and Sinterklaas with them.  We're raising cross-cultural kids!  It's funny I had both of them ask me when we were going to get some more Strooigoed (small biscuits with marshmallows).

So because I have been going back over the Sinterklaas thing with them - the topic of Santa Claus came up.  As in why does Sinterklaas only deliver presents to Europe?  Why can't he deliver them here?  Why does Santa have to deliver presents to the rest of the world?  Now these are obviously questions that I don't have answers too but it is kind of fun exploring their wonder behind it all.

I had to stop yesterday though when Louise told me that she didn't believe in Santa.  I was like YIKES! I am not ready for this!!! But I didn't have to worry - she believes in Sinterklaas.  I actually suspect it's an underhanded way to trying to get two lots of presents.  She was amazed when she found that my birthday is the same day as Sint.  YOU GOT TWO LOTS OF PRESENTS!?!?!  So that may actually have something to do with it.

Trying to explain surrogate birth to nearly 4 year olds...

Is actually quite difficult...

We ended up having a conversation with the girls last night which turned into the first conversation about them being born through a surrogate.  I wasn't quite sure when we could expect to have this discussion.  I wasn't prepared for it and I have no idea of how well we covered it.

Louise and Olivia get they have two daddies and they are different from other families.  I really hate describing our family as different and have avoided saying that around the girls.  We have been able to highlight diversity in different family structures so they do know we are not that far from the norm.  They do understand that they don't have a "mummy" so then trying to explain that they came out of a surrogate's tummy was met with disbelief.  We do have the photos (see!).

I'm not sure if the larger confusion comes from the concept of birth in general, the lack of a mother, or trying to understand surrogacy.  "Babies don't come from tummies!" "She didn't eat us!"  It was an amusing conversation in some regards.

I guess the major thing is that we have crossed the bridge and introduced the concept that they were born via a surrogate. 

A sobriety update

Life's funny.  I will honestly admit I do miss drinking.  I suspected that I would and I was warned that I would.  I am however drinking my body weight in tea and lemonade - I can expect this to happen for a little while longer apparently.  I learnt something that basically there is two parts to this - one is the physical act of holding something in your hand and "drinking", the other particularly with the lemonade is to fulfill the sugar addiction.  Considering alcohol is basically empty calories and sugar - your body ends up craving the sugar.  I'm not sure if switching to lemonade is the best idea though - it's still empty calories.  Although I did have a friend suggest yesterday that I switch to soda water with a splash of cordial so that seems like a pretty good idea if you ask me.  And why the tea?  Our Nespresso machine is broken - there's a capsule stuck in it and I still haven't been able to work out how to get the damn thing out although to be honest I think if drank as much coffee as I do tea, I would be seriously bouncing off the walls.

So yes anyway - I'm not drinking, I'm thinking clearer (which is no great surprise), although I have managed to find out again that even sober I am a ditz.  So maybe that's natural... I'm naturally a ditz.

The other bit I find quite surprising is that I'm actually getting quite tired.  I told my psychiatrist and he was quite surprised - I'm more used to falling out on the couch.  Dozing off on the couch is a bit of a new experience.

One experience from the weekend was amazing though.  I invited my brother along to see Man of Steel at IMAX.  And when he was leaving yesterday he actually hugged me and told me he was proud of me for doing the right thing by Larry, Louise and Olivia.  My brother and I very, very rarely hug.  The last time he hugged me was at our commitment ceremony in 2008 - so that was kind of a big deal.

So there you go a bit of a nothing blog post ;)

Yesterday was Dad's Birthday

My father passed away last year.  I think there's a blog post about it somewhere.  Anyway I realised yesterday that I actually miss my Dad - it seems weird considering at times my relationship with him wasn't the best (nowhere near as bad as the relationship with my mother though!).  So I thought I'd get a little bit introspective and do a post about my Dad...


I have regrets - I have always tried to live my life with no regrets but I do have a few regrets in terms of my relationship with Dad.  I should have tried harder - I really should.  I think for most of my adult life I only ever spoke to Dad on father's day, his birthday and Christmas.  The rest of the year I pretty much ignored him.  Dad was a good man, he was, but he had a very large drinking problem which is partly what caused the estrangement between us.  That and in some screwed up way I always thought I was never as good as my brother in his eyes.  All I ever really wanted Dad to say was that he was proud of me - which a friend of his told us that at his funeral that Dad was incredibly proud of both us and would constantly talk about how well we were doing and so on (I suspect this applied more to my brother as Dad didn't have that many details of what I was up to...).


My relationship with Dad really did go sour because of his drinking.  The man was a heavy alcoholic from the age of 16 and I suspect that I have my own issues with alcohol due to that.  I don't know but I'm not going to blame him for it.  My father meant no harm ever.  He was a good soul but I think he was lost.  He tried to do the best by everyone around him and that's what once in a while went pear-shaped.  He was used and abused basically - people took advantage of his good nature and it was really sad to see it happen time and time again.  Old dogs, new tricks...


The bad:
- getting phone-calls from whichever bar Dad was at to come pick him up.
- getting into a fight with him at the bar I worked at because I was cutting him off.
- Dad not remembering who I was after he had a rather nasty fall and ended up in Hospital.  He was stuck a couple of years in the past, Edwin and I went to visit him and he absolutely no idea of who was (I had lost a considerable amount of weight by this point).  That was heart-breaking for me (and I did hold it against him).
- ringing Dad for fathers day or his birthday after a massive weekend and blacking out due to lack of sleep and he was still on the other end of the phone talking like nothing had happened (this I am actually ashamed of!).
- Some of the general things of living with an alcoholic... I won't go into details but they tend not to be pleasant.


The good:
- One of the fondest memories I have of Dad is bringing me a cup of coffee every morning when I woke up (I started drinking coffee at 14).
- I came out to Dad when I was 19.  I was so worked up and stressed over it.  Dad looked at me and quite simply said "as long as you are happy" - I was stunned and a bit surprised that it was that simple.  
- Dad buying me my first car and encouraging my interest in it.  I still don't know my way around the engine of a car but I can make a car look pretty ;)
- Dad's generosity - he was quite simply the most generous and genuine man I think I've ever met.
- Dad actively encouraged my interests - including cooking.  He hated me being in the kitchen though as the kitchen normally turned into a massive mess! But he was generally kind enough to clean up after me.
- Dad allowing me to hold my High School Formal after-party at home.  Almost 100 drunken teenagers!  The man deserved a medal for that one!  And we only had the police come past once.


The regrets:
- Not seeing Dad before he died.  I moved down to Melbourne in 2003 and I didn't go back to Brisbane until Dad's funeral last year.
- That Dad didn't get to meet the girls.  I tried explaining to Dad that Larry and I were starting a family (or attempting to at that stage).  And it's the only time Dad ever hung up on me with a very curt "I have to go."
- Dad not being there at our Wedding (but there was a very good reason for that too!).  If Dad would have been a bit more healthy mentally then it wouldn't have been a problem - but I'm not sure if Dad could have handled the concept of his youngest son getting married to another man.


My father in a lot of ways was a very admirable man and I do have a lot of respect for him.  He was born in 1940 during the War and in a lot of ways he was your typical European male.  Didn't show much affection to his kids (he loved us deeply though - I think Edwin and I both knew that).  I don't think he was ever expecting that he would be raising two children by himself.  Virtually unheard of in the 1980s.  But I think he did ok.  I'm not a complete screw-up... I've done ok for myself.  I've got a good education, stayed out of prison, I have a stable relationship and I have two amazing children.  I wouldn't be the person I am without my father.  I may not have always liked him but I do love him.  I have a much deeper respect for him now that I am a parent myself - I understand more of where he was coming from and the sacrifices he made.  


It's also funny a flickr contact of mine a couple of months ago posted a self-portrait of himself in the mirror and asked who do you see when you look in the mirror.  I see my father... as I have gotten older I look more and more like my Dad.  Not completely obviously as there were two people involved in making me.  But the resemblance is there.  Once upon a time I used to think I took more after my mother in terms of my looks but that was based purely on memory.  I can now see how people think I look like Dad...


I do love him and I do miss him.  And I do only hope that I can be as a good a person as he was.

the trip home and sundry India...

India is a weird place. Not in a bad way. I found it very warm, friendly and spiritual but we were also very much in a middle-class enclave which does come with a fair degree of security and comfort. There was a couple of funny moments. There's a couple of gift shops in the lobby of the Ramada Powaii (like most hotels worldwide) and because we have to vacate the room once a day for the cleaners to come through and do their thing we'd hang out in the lobby or the games room (they had a Wii... lesson learnt I'm crap at games!). So one of the things I found a bit weird. Babies in India are generally not taken out in public until they are 40 days old (from my understanding) and here we are with twins that are 2-3 weeks old. So we're talking to the folks in the gift shops - and they asked how old the girls were and we told them - the looks on their faces were a bit shocked! But I think being foreigners you're forgiven slight irregularities to custom...

So... the shenanigans of the trip home!
I would like to say this was easy. I would like to say something for once in India was easy. It wasn't. Far from it. So it's the 22nd of October - we get notification that the girls emergency passports and citizenship certificates are ready (you're now little Aussies - very little Aussies!). So we start the process of getting the Indian exit visas. Now of course the office to get your exit visas is located somewhere in Mumbai that if we didn't have a good driver (a few other couples had used him previously) who knew where he was going - we would have had no hope! It was in the back of Mumbai somewhere with no street signs. So anyway we find it - get our ticket/appointment etc... start the process, pay for the visas and asked to return a couple of hours later for the exit visas.

I'll backtrack for a second as this is where the real fun is. So we received your passports and citizenship certificates via courier to the hotel that morning. Something was missing though. Namely your fathers passport... as far as we could tell his passport had been sent somewhere else in Mumbai. Cue the appropriate panic from me as all of a sudden I could imagine me flying home solo with the two of you while your father was stranded in Mumbai trying to find his passport that was somewhere between Mumbai and Delhi... as per usual I needed have worried as it was delivered to our hotel later that day.

So we had a couple of hours to kill while we waited for your exit visas to be processed. So we went off the Taj Hotel in Mumbai for lunch. It was a very nice lunch - including the appropriate me ducking into the men's room to do nappy changes. It was a bit sad to see there were still parts of the Taj Hotel that had been boarded up from the terrorist bombings (that made me a bit nervous about actually being in Mumbai).

So we got your exit visas and were pretty much all set to go - barring any other disasters... delayed flights etc. But again not something we needed to have worried about. Our flight from Mumbai to Singapore left on time. No major hassles or glitches. The stewardesses on Kingfisher were all wonderful and very curious about the two of you! They were more than happy to help us - which is always a nice touch. As per usual you were both an absolute joy on the plane - but hey you were three weeks old... you didn't do much beyond sleep, eat and do what babies do!

So we change planes at Singapore. Went from Kingfisher to Singapore Airlines. We requested the bassinets but missed out on them and then we ended up with Aisle seats and you guys would have to flown home in our laps... I'm not sure if that would have worked for anyone. But the customer service manager was lovely. She had 5 babies on the flight and asked people to move so she could free up some seats so that your Dad and I could sit together and have a seat between us for the two of you. As we had your little carry cots - we used that on the seat between us for the two of you and it worked perfectly. Again you were both absolutely brilliant on the way to Melbourne.

A funny aside. We were going through security in Singapore to get on the plane. And the security guard saw that I was carrying one of you. "Oh a baby..." - she grabbed the cocoon and off she went. She sees your Dad come up with the other cocoon "and another baby..." and grabbed the cocoon and off she went again. I thought it was a rather cute moment. Then all the female security guards were clustered around the cocoons ohhing and ahhing (you had that effect on people).

So we get back to Melbourne International after the 9 hour flight from Singapore. Get through customs (took longer than we would have liked). Then we had the joy of trying to work out how to get you guys into your baby seats in the car. We'd never done it before. So um... yeah... we got there in the end.

And now one of my first parenting mistakes. We were living in Trentham so probably just over an hour from the airport. And I thought I had enough time to get you guys home before you were due your next feed. I was wrong... So we had to pull over at a service station and get some water to make up your formula. You were both howling by this point. All they had was cold water... ice cold water. It was a struggle for everyone. You guys were hungry and you were trying to feed but you ended up in pain because the water was that cold! It was a mistake and a lesson.

So we got home and you guys had your first night in your cots. Your father and I were exhausted... it had been a very long three weeks.