06.32.
Luck­ily we wake up this morn­ing and note a good devel­op­ment: Eleonore’s fever down to a mere 37.2! She still coughs, she still has a throat so sore, that it actu­ally makes her cry in her sleep, poor thing. But still. Good sign! I was not that sur­prised, as she was sweat­ing pro­fusely a cou­ple of times dur­ing the night (of course I had been wak­ing up at every unex­pected sound she made, as the aware­ness that swine flu can cause sud­den breath­ing prob­lems has taken total hold of my unconscious).

07h30. Morn­ing rou­tine over. Includ­ing feed­ing Eleonore a cock­tail of Tam­i­flu, parac­eta­mol, vit­a­mines and cough drink. I feel slightly more awake after three — yes, no less — strong cof­fees with foamed milk.

07h40. We snug­gle up on the couch and watch the daily must-see show in the Nether­lands at this time of year (well — at least if you’re either 5 years of age or younger, or the par­ent of such a child): the Sin­terk­laasjour­naal.  The daily adven­tures, every year the same of course, of St Nicholas, that arrives to the Nether­lands from Spain on a real steamer around 17 Novem­ber with an army of cheer­ing and slightly stu­pid helpers, Zwarte Pieten, is greeted by the crowds in har­bours all over the Nether­lands. Lit­er­ally. Then Sint and his Pieten keep the kids in the coun­try in an iron grip until 5 Decem­ber, when it is time for presents. And every day in the mean­time, you’d bet­ter be pre­pared. Every evening, the shoe will be set at the fire­place, and sugar lumps and car­rots need to be placed in it, for Sint’s horse, Amerigo.…and in the morn­ing it bet­ter be filled with mini-gingercookies (‘peper­noten’) and a suited small gift. Or the sprout will be veeeery unhappy.  I know, because once, I for­got. Never hav­ing grown up with this tra­di­tion, how­ever, I for­gave myself (and could luck­ily blame the Sint…!)

07h30. Laundy Nr 1 in the wash­ing machine. 30 degrees. Of course. It works!

07h45. Com­puter on! Scan­ning through the emails that have arrived since 23h30, when I switched it off last night. Check out my Twit­ter mes­sages. I have two replies on one of my blog posts — in Russ­ian! Cool. I Google trans­late and reply. Find an inter­est­ing blog post by A Mod­ern Mother on [expat/bilingual] kids and their accents. Makes me smile. Fire off a quick com­ment — this com­mu­nity I’d be proud to become part of. 

9h05. Oups. Realise I have got­ten caught in emails, blogs and the rest and left the TV on a bit longer than planned. Eleonore does not seem to mind (sur­prise). I decide her fever is low enough that she can han­dle a real shower (last few days, the wash­ing has been some­what more lim­ited) includ­ing hair wash. She dis­agrees. I win. In the end she is clean. But must admit she screams louder.

09h25. Laun­dry Nr 1 in  dryer. Laun­dry Nr 2 in wash­ing machine.

9h30. Call the accoun­tant to make an appoint­ment for next week. We need to dis­cuss the monthly report­ing to the share­hold­ers, the new tax break that Dutch com­pa­nies will have as of 2010 on income gen­er­ated from patents (yes!!! we could qual­ify for a 5% cor­po­rate tax rate! incred­i­ble!), the reclaim of VAT paid in Ger­many dur­ing our par­tic­i­pa­tion in Kind&Jugend in Sep­tem­ber and some other bits and pieces.

9h45. Yes. Find a con­fir­ma­tion in my email of the arrange­ment of a major ship­ment out of Thai­land, that I’ve been try­ing to make hap­pen dur­ing the last week. 

10h30.  Eleonore takes the lead. She decides to turn the liv­ing room into a beauty salon. We curl her veeery straight and (to be bru­tally hon­est) rather thin hair. And she sur­prises me by being able to paint her nails — all by her­self, with total con­cen­tra­tion and no spillage. And in two colors!

10h55. Nose bleed alert! She gets them often, espe­cially when she is sick. Not very nice. But at least we know how to deal with it. After 15 min of care­ful nose pinch­ing, we’re both con­fi­dent it must be over — which it is.

11h12 A.M. My busi­ness part­ner Vik­tor is on the phone. I share with him some ideas I have after hav­ing read Crush It last night. Now, this one gives so much inspi­ra­tion that it will require a whole new blog post! Which I can’t write today — so keep check­ing in if you’re inter­ested to know my twist on this (because I do assume you have also read it?) ;-) 

11h13  Eleonore starts mak­ing presents for Amigo, Sin­ter Klaas’ horse. I cheer her on from the side­lines while talk­ing to Vik­tor. After I have hung up I help her wrap car­rots and sugar lumps in home-made gift paper and place them in the shoe by the stove — by the way, this year; she has cho­sen to use a 2 inch hot pink stiletto heal strap san­dal of mine. Hm. Last year, it was a rub­ber boot. Guess she is grow­ing up!

11h20 Laun­dry No 2 in dryer. Laun­dry No 3 in wash­ing machine. Hor­rey — last one for today!

11h30 Oh no. Thai part­ner calls to say that the local ship­ping agent has not been in touch as sched­uled. Gotta work the phone. Man­age to make sure ship­per has num­ber of con­tact per­son at the pickup address and vice versa. 

11h55 OK. Time for lunch. No small task as Eleonore basi­cally refuses to eat because of her throat pain. After try­ing every trick in the book, I do man­age to get her to eat a half a sandwich.

12h30. I decide for myself that Eleonore will not be eter­nally dam­aged from watch­ing another video. Espe­cially since we set­tle on a Swedish, veeeery edu­ca­tional one. That is at least mak­ing my con­scious a lit­tle lighter ;-) I snug­gle up next to her with com­puter on my lap.

13h06. Last laun­dry goes into the dryer.

13h08. Eleonore’s fever down to 36.7! Happy!!

13h10.  We start an ecclec­tic ver­sion of  our Winne de Pooh mem­ory board game, accord­ing to Eleonore Bru­tal Rules. I have no idea what the logic is, but hey, we spread out over the entire liv­ing room floor, I lose in the end (of course) but we both have fun!

13h38.  The mail arrives. I recieve some impor­tant doc­u­men­ta­tion about the progress of our trade mark reg­is­tra­tion in Japan — it is through! Mum­my­Mug is ready to roll and con­quer Tokyo! I also sit down to do some bank­ing errands. I love inter­net bank­ing. I pay my salary taxes, some pend­ing invoices and shift money between some com­pany accounts.  All done in less than 10 mins.

13h50. Eleonore comes up with a brill idea: let’s make a home video! Well — what the heck. Why not! I start charg­ing the bat­tery for the cam­era, is it has been in a drawer for a while. I start to feel that my lit­tle girl is really see­ing the end of the flu, she has her energy back.

13h53.  While the bat­tery charges, I return a call to a man­ager at ABN Amro Infor­mal Invest­ment Ser­vices in Ams­ter­dam. He’s asked me to speak at an event next week for start­ing entre­pre­neurs at Delft Uni­ver­sity. Of course most hon­ored to be invited — my sec­ond speak­ing engagement! 

14h15 Empty the dish­washer and clean up in the kitchen. I hear Eleonore talk­ing to her­self as she is invent­ing her own games in her room. Seems she is turn­ing the doll house into a sta­ble. I really enjoy hear­ing her a bit ener­getic and happy again.

14h42Viktor calls to debrief on progress in dis­cus­sions with a poten­tial major dis­trib­u­tor. Good news ! We are slowly but surely sync-ing, which is a really awe­some per­spec­tive. Me happy ;-) 

15h15. Eleonore runs out of steam very sud­denly, and wants PANCAKES — NOW! Luck­ily there is still a pack of pan­cake meal in the cup­board, because shop­ping is not pos­si­ble today. No leav­ing the house with this flu.

15h30. We engage with heart and soul — as always — in the pan­cake adven­ture. Home video idea long for­got­ten. Eleonore also decides to make a side dish: a home­made soup of water, salt, pep­per and some other spices she gets her hands on. Really fun — until it spills ocer her hand and stings her badly, she had a lit­tle wound on the fin­ger. Oh dear. We eat pan­cakes on the couch while the tears stream down her cheeks.

15h55. Time for another video. Don’t feel guilty this time, it is about all that she can man­age. She clearly needs a cud­dle, so I snug­gle up next to her on the couch with the com­puter on my lap/ I watch Snowwhite with one eye (to be able to grab her hand when it gest scary) and start typ­ing away.

17h00. Oh dear. it takes 30 mins to con­vince her to take that last dose of Tam­i­flu. Glad this is over!

18h00. Din­ner

18h30. Early night for the lit­tle one. She surely needs the sleep.

So. That was my day. Seam­less or schit­zofrenic — what do you think??  Admit­tedly not the most stan­dard one for me, as Eleonore is not sick every day (luck­ily!). And I do work out of an office (often). And I have only one kid to take care of — I know there are many out there who jug­gle it with many more!

Any­one who finds this being too sim­i­lar to their daily rou­tine though: can rec­om­mend read­ing the excel­lent blog on hire­my­par­ents! Today: 6 Work Life bal­ance tips for chron­i­cally over­whelmed par­ents. Whole site really worth a visit!

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