Why i'm on the next plane to America

After my prenatal appointment and a bit of quick shopping with Conor, I pick Declan up from school.
We're on the metro- Conor doing his Flirty Face at the lady behind us and Carmen doing her ABCs- when Declan says, "Maman, how do you do sex?"
"How do you do it?"
The man behind us starts laughing so I quickly switch to Spanish.
"Yeah, maman. Oceane told me today that her parents do sex."
"Yes, and daddy and I do too. It's something that adults do when they love each other."
"With a penis?"
"Yes, with a penis. When you're an adult. Not when you're a child."
"And Uncle Benedict?"
"I don't know, Dec."
"And Auntie Annabelle?"
"I don't know, Dec."
"Why don't you know?"
"I haven't asked them lately, that's why."
"Maman, when Uncle Benedict comes for dinner, can I ask him why he and Auntie Annabelle don't know
if they're having sex?"
"Sure. But Mommy's going to leave the country first okay?"

My son, the party animal

Life in Belgium is going. I'm on 3 hours sleep a night, waking up to Mr. I'm Three Months Old
Now I can Party at 3 am. We've learned to put on Radiohead, threaten to play That James Blunt
Song and let him sleep until 7. Almost can't believe that he is almost 3 1/2 months old. Already, he is
responding to everything- music, his big brother and sister, his grandparents. He adores going and seeing
our friends here in Belgium especially Lucille and Bernard whose daughter Noemie will be my
future daughter in law by the looks of it. We narrowly escaped a serious incident when Mr. Gummy put
raisins up his nose (and Noemies). All small objects are banned from the floor and accessible baby-surfaces.

Conor and I are spending afternoons together just the two of us with Declan at elementary school and Carmen at the local
garderie. For the last week, we have been spending the time wiring ourselves in red tape and teaching each other bad phone habits. I have taken to curling up with Conor besides the television, mindlessly listening to Anpanman in Japanese and hearing the sounds of the dishes not cleaning themselves. There's a part of me that wants this pregnancy to be over, to see the twins and begin the baby thing all over.

Carmen's teacher tells us she especially likes the Spanish children, but that we have to work
on her verbal communication in French and Dutch. Dutch? Michael went to pick her up and explained that
we are not interested in Dutch right now. He explained four languages is more than enough for our family
and we don't want our daughters head to spontaneously implode. The teacher suggested a French playgroup
which we will start Tuesday morning.

We move house on the 1st June and are looking forward to our large family-sized apartment, all ours. Michael
and I have spent our evenings discussing various orgasmic topics such as paint colour, position of canopies
and what household items will be accidentally dropped by the movers.

This will be my last blog until we're settled into the new house sometime in mid June.

For now, chao.

My son, the linguist

Michael brought Declan home from school yesterday afternoon.
Declan came bouncing into the kitchen and said "Maman, papa taught me a new word. It's perceive."
"That's a great word. Did daddy show you how to use it?"
"I perceive... we perceivons..."
"No," I said, "We perceive. Nous percevons. percibimos."
You know what maman, my son said, I am really starting to hate this whole language thing.

Do you see what I see?

So you're walking down the street and you see two people, and you think: that's nice.

Or you're lying at your first prenatal appointment in Brussels and the doctor whom you just spoken with about your choice of international school for your son turns to you and says 'I see two sacs.'

Michael and I had spent this morning while I ironed his shirt and prepared his sandwiches discussing how words can be life changing. I love you, I'm pregnant, there's been an accident. And, spoken on a slightly grey Brussels morning at barely 9am, I see two babies in there.

I had assured Michael I would be fine going to the baby doctor by myself. 'I've done it three times already,' I said to Michael, 'Il serve rien to take the morning off work to see me pee into a cup." But after the doctor showed me thetwo very distinctive young people hiding in my uterus, all I wanted was Michael there so I could squeeze his hand and and listen to his inappropriate jokes about gynecology exams.

I met Michael to tell him we were expecting twins directly after my appointment. I had spent the trip to his office thinking of clever ways to tell disclose that our life is going to become that little bit more crazy.
I ended up in his arms mumbling something about 'dos ninos.' After minutes of incomprehensible Spanish, I just resorted to saying 'two' and 'babies' over again in a mixture of languages.
'Well,' Michael said after a few minutes, 'Guess we'd better start teaching them to sing now.'

Fifteen minutes later, when steaming coffees have been brought into the room and Conor settled down into mid morning feed, Michael and I figured out who was responsible for bringing twins into our lives.
I assured Michael that although our family might be repopulating faster than Africa, we had no history of multiples.
At that point, Michael began to look very guilty. He kept his head down and after a minute of silence said, 'Guess we won't be speaking to my father for a bit, hein?'

My husband, the diplomat

My mother left yesterday and Michael's parents left to explore the wonder that is Luxembourg. For the first time in what has seemed like years, our family had the entire apartment to ourselves. Michael and I decided to celebrate by watching more Johnny Depp films, 'Deliverance' and a couple of Francois Ozon films, after which I declared to Michael I felt extremely sane. This was only hours after Gilles had left his wife at the birth of their son and I had refused to let go of my husband until he assured me that he not only would not leave during the birth of our last baby, but that would never cheat, lie or wear a shirt tucked into his pants.
After the movies, I did Conor's 3am feeding and we lay watching the late news.
"What's happening?" I asked Michael, as Conor took great pleasure out of biting me.
"I don't know, something in other countries."
"What other countries?"
"I don't know. European ones."
"You mean the countries you work with? You know, in your job as a diplomat for foreign relations?"

Like the Family Von Trapp, only Mexican

Our dream house turned out to be above a crack den, but it's in a street lined with trees, an
excellent garderie 3 houses down the street, a variety of restaurants below us and easy access
to the trams. We figure if our children become crack addicts, it'll be thanks to watching
too many Johnny Depp dvds and not the nice, quiet people living below us.
If we get through the bureaucracy, finding copies of every marriage certificate, bank statement,
passport, national document and doctors certificate Michael and I have ever accumulated, we
should be moved in to our house within 3 weeks. "More than enough time for you to have a
stress-free pregnancy," Michael said, as we stood in Centraal station and watched our
five year old son hop on the metro by himself, without help or hesitation.

When we'd come back to the apartment and let our 2 1/2 year old in the pots drawer to
"cook us dinner", we received a phone call from my sister, Sarita, who had enthusiastically
taken on the children during our sejour in Los Angeles.
"Guess what Ashley," Sarita said, the sounds of President Bush dancing to the Macarena
in the background, "Joshua and I are expecting."
"Guests?" I asked, my mind busily picking up that fact that Michael's workmates were stopping by.
"A baby. In December, like you."

In my family, things happen in groups. When I found out about this pregnancy, I immediately
wondered which one of my brothers or sisters were expecting their next child at the same
time. The answer came with my brother Javier Jose. The answer usually comes with him.
Javier and his wife Marisa have six children and seem to be trying to solely repopulate
Mexico. While Michael and I have adamantly agreed this pregnancy is our last, we think
Javier and Marisa are just warming up. Michael and I imagine turning on the television
set and seeing the latest Von Trapp Family, live from Mexico!
We've agreed to only watch the local channels from now on.

If the saga didn't get scarier, it was that my brother Lucien had rung three nights previously.
He had rung to see how the move was going, and quietly slip into the conversation that
his wife Sara may be pregnant. He whispered the words, as if that would make them less
real. Lucien is the brother the most removed from our family spirit. Before having his 8
month old daughter Lauren, Lucien and Sara moved to Minnesota, got married, found
a good church, and solidly repented for the life they had led in Los Angeles including
associating with the freer members of our family. Everything about their life was planned,
from Lauren's text-book birth, to her developmental milestones, to Sara's Plan to Get
Lauren into a Good School. Now, it seems, Sara and Lucien have taken the daring road into two children.
"Oh, you'll be in hell for two," I said to Lucien, "Did you know that theres a higher chance
of juvenile deliquancy amongst families with two children?"
I could almost feel Lucien's hand against his pounding heart.
"Especially in Minnesota."
There was a long pause.
"You're going to hell, Ashley," my brother said.

stupid crazy guy on my phone

My brother phoned from Turkey.
"Hi, it's Turkey here. Can I speak with Belgium?"
Unfortunately for him, it was neither country who replied, but Michael's cousin Arnaud who had helped us set up house.
"Ashley, there's a crazy guy on your phone."
When I heard Carl's voice, I said "Oh, Arnaud, ca va. Carl's got New Fathers Syndrome."

Being that I am the member of the family who is in the closest timezone to my brother, I have fielded the Stressed Parent phone calls concerning Carl's 10 day old daughter Biyanka.
"That kid," Carl said, at 3am when I was watching a late night movie dubbed in Dutch, "Is just one crying, pooping, screaming monster. But doesn't she just make your heart skip a beat?"

We have been in Belgium for almost a week. With the force of my mom, Michael's parents, his cousin Arnaud and his wife and one of Michael's new co-workers, we managed to set up the house in less than 8 hours leaving the children and I to crash on a futon in a half-dressed state of disarray, but nevertheless on a bed, in a room with curtains, toys and clothes put in drawers. By the time we woke up, my mother had rushed into Emergency Mode and stocked the fridge, steralized the carpets, and hired men to set up a large television, stereo and computer.
During the week, we managed to put a family styled spin to the usual tourist trips around our new city, including the Emergency Time Trial to Nearest Hospital, Avoidance of Major Toy Stores and various important trips, including a new obgyn, a new pediatrician, and of course new schools. We think we've found the winner for Declan and he will start on Monday morning at his ecole primaire a school we chose for its international, multicultural characteristics.

When you move to a new country, you go completely into survival mode- the basic tasks of unpacking, sorting out and orientating naturally happen with such sanity that afterwards the body falls into a tired sort of shock. Yesterday morning, the children and I greeted our long lost Father and Husband back from Spain where he'd brought over the planes weight in Spanish food, books and toys. When I saw Michael, all the pregnant hormones i'd been harboring ran out and leapt all over my husband along with a stream of various sentences in various bits of languages muy t'aime honey. After we'd safely arrived back at the house, sugared the children up and handed them to their grandparents, Michael and I went for a walk around our new neighborhood where we kissed under streetlamps like dirty teenagers, spoke Spanish and found a Hotdog stand. We went to bed early, our romantic night cut short by the appearance of all 3 children in our bed.

6:30 in the morning and I am up feeding the baby, making breakfast and preparing to attend to my jet-lagged husband and early rising children. We are going to do some house shopping, hit some of Brussels tourist spots and buy Declan's uniform as well as taking a quick peak at the house we are thinking of buying.

I was thinking this morning of what it felt like to wake up with my family- Michael's hand on our new baby, his arm around our newborn son, our two eldest children kicking at the end of bed. Family is a beautiful thing. I am looking forward to being in the same place with my family where we can make friends, settle our children and start our new life.