A Long Weekend in Amsterdam

So, as I mentioned in my last post, our big kid started school. That meant a lot of changes for us, but one big one was that we could no longer travel whenever we wanted and instead had to stick to the school schedule. In fact, if we took him on vacation when school was in session, we could be fined. Schools are year-round here, so they go almost all the way through the summer and have long breaks between each term, and then a week off halfway through each term. Juggling childcare for all these breaks is hard, but that's a different issue. So - once he was through his first half term, it was time for a week off and well-earned vacation! It was now the end of October and super rainy. As usual, we waited a bit too late to decide, and the only affordable option was to do a few days in Amsterdam. It wasn't exactly our first choice - but it turned out to be a fantastic getaway.

Day 0: Travel Day

We would've loved to take the train - which is only 4 hours to get from London to Amsterdam, but it was like 10x the cost of the plane. So we caught a cheap plane (less than 30 minutes), and navigated to our Airbnb. Having learned this lesson before, they stayed in and unpacked while I went out in search of a grocery store for dinner. By the time I had come back, they had cleaned the house out of snacks and beers and were all passed out. 

travel pros - ready to fly!

Day 1: Pancakes, Walking Tour, Museums

First stop was to get pancakes! I wouldn't say the Netherlands are known for great cuisine exactly, but we knew a few tasty tidbits we needed to try- and massive pancakes cooked with apples and bacon inside, covered with Stroop- which is like super condensed, extra sweet maple syrup, seemed like a good way to start the rainy day. 

coffee with a little stroopwaffle cookie

that is the tub of stroop on the table

this is a pancake.

Then we walked into the old part of the city - past the old square and royal palace and into Begijnhof - which is this super cool hidden courtyard that was sort of a hidden convent of sorts. Lots of breaks to pop into cheese stores and get snacks along the way.

 

Royal Palace

I am truly shocked that we didn't return with one of these massive cheese wheels. These boys love their cheese.

the Begijnhof - a truly charming oasis in the middle of the city

Next,  we hopped the streetcar to the museum district. We knew we could only pick one - so we opted for the Van Gogh Museum. The other big museum that would've been cool to see is the Rijksmuseum, which is just across the way from the Van Gogh, making a very cool museumy-parky-area to stroll around. I had the baby in the carrier on me for all this time, and we decided to put the big kid in a stroller in the museum. That made it easy for us to split up, kind of look at the art, and keep moving. Our big kid was not impressed, so being able to just push him along helped. We did discover that scavenger hunts in art museums kind of make it more interesting for him - but mostly we just have to move along quickly. 

onwards to the museum district

museums! (and non cooperative 4 year olds).

this was his favorite Van Gogh.  Not sure why exactly, but he was into it.

this face is a combination of: 

1) This place is so beautiful and, 

2)We're almost back to the hotel and I can't wait to take this baby off!!!

Last stop was dinner - we went to an amazing little restaurant known for its traditional Dutch food, which basically is a lot like English or German food - super heavy stuff to keep you warm and sober you up after too much beer. Lots of mashed potatoes and sausages - but after a long, cold rainy day, it really was pretty perfect. 

walking home along the canals at night

Day 2: Markets, Pie & Boats

So we started Day 2 by heading to the market, the Nieuwmarkt. Again, it was a rainy day, so there weren't a lot of people there and the vendors were mostly covering up their goods. But, the big treat was to have a fresh stroopwaffle. So, stroop- as I said is thick syrup, and they put it between two thin waffles for a little cookie. We'd had a bunch already - but a fresh one turned out to be unbelievable.

trying the fresh stroopwaffle

 

we're soon full of sugar!!!

Then, as if we hadn't already had enough sugar- we went in search of the best apple pie, as suggested by our hotel lady. It was a nice stroll along the canals until we found it- and yah, she was right, it was amazing.  

yes, babies like pie. Who knew?

helping me by holding the umbrella. 

 

After another long morning of walking around town, the big guy was getting pretty red out - so it was a perfect time to hop on a boat tour. I'm a big fan of boat tours no matter what - it's just nice to see a city from a different perspective - but in particular when you have little people that need a rest. So, we had an hour or so driving around the canals, which was just lovely and a welcome break from the walking. 

baby fell asleep just before getting on the boat! Awesome!

chilling on the boat

charming city

The boat put us out right near the Anne Frank House, which is listed as one the top sights you must see in Amsterdam. We both wanted to see it, but definitely didn't want to take the kids - and didn't want to lose a lot of time by having one of us go and then switch - so we came to the conclusion that we'd see it the next time we were here.  But still, we both felt bad and kind of regretted the choice. Instead, we wandered around a bit, and headed back to the hotel for a nap break. 

it is just so scenic here. 

So the last stop was dinner. Indonesia was previously a dutch colony, so the Netherlands has a huge Indonesian food scene now. There's something called a rijsttafel, or "rice table' where you are given a central plate of rice and the like 20 other dishes. And we just had to check it out. Thankfully, I think at least one or two of those dishes were compatible with our picky eaters, and we were happy to wolf down the rest. Other than the fact that this was a huge amount of food, it was a nice break from all the traditional heavy dutch food we'd been having. 

always playing cards while we wait

crazy excited about this!!

Day 3: Travel

And that was it. Time to check out and get moving again. We hopped the train back to the airport and onwards back home. 

baby food on the train

Conclusions:

- In general, this was a really great trip. It felt pretty easy, nothing was hugely stressful. Maybe we're just getting better at the whole traveling with kids thing, or Amsterdam is just kind of the perfect size. But everything went really well. 

- Thankfully we did not ever need a car on this trip, so we didn't have either the car seat or booster. We did make the mistake of bringing a pack and play with us, only to discover that the Airbnb did have one (always ask even if they don't list it!).  So we had to haul it around going to and from the airport - thankfully we've learned to put the baby on me and the pack and play in the stroller - so no one actually has to carry it much. 

- The first grocery stop was super useful not only to get us through that first night's dinner, but to put something healthy in everyone's stomach for breakfast. All this stroop is total crack - so making sure there was a good layer of yogurt and fruit in their bellies first helped keep them from going completely nuts. 

- We had the stroller with us as well as the baby carrier which allowed us to swap around and let the big kid have a rest every now and then. Because it's pretty collapsible, we could take it into museums and onto boats - but it was also durable enough to handle cobblestones, so perfect!

- It would definitely have been nice to spend more time there. At least another day would've been great. This was actually the most expensive hotel we had ever had to pay for - this is not a cheap place - so we were a bit limited by that. Maybe getting to explore some of the other places in the Netherlands would've been nice- and obviously coming at a nicer time of year would've been easier. But mostly, we were absolutely charmed by the city and would really love to go back. 

Figuring Out the English School System

So let's jump back a few years, if you don't mind. Before we moved, our son attended the daycare attached to my work, which we enrolled him in without much thought. When we arrived in London, he was now 2.5 years old, and we had only a month to find a place to live. We were frantically searching across the numerous neighborhoods in London- balancing commuting times with amenities, and not really thinking about schools at all. We quickly settled on our neighborhood because it's near a huge park and not too far from downtown, and then quickly just picked the daycare (nursery school) that was close by and had space available. Which is to say, not a lot of thought went into any of the schooling choices we had made by that point. 

We were still in the fuzzy zone of having just arrived and getting settled, when I got pregnant again and was focused on that. Slowly, I became aware that we were supposed to be doing something about schools. In England, kids start school at age 4 in something called "Reception", which looks a lot like US Kindergarten, even though it's a year earlier. In fact, at our kiddo's third birthday, all the parents were abuzz about schools - who had the best test results, which ones they were checking out, and who had hired tutors for the upcoming entrance exams. I assumed they were talking about older siblings or something - and I guess blissfully ignored the hints. We were already behind.   

The State School System

First thing's first: public schools are called "state schools" here. While every child is guaranteed a spot in a state school, there are no school zones like we have in the US. Instead, you apply for whichever schools you want, and will be accepted according to their priority rank system. For example, first priority might go to kids in foster care, 2nd to siblings of kids already enrolled, and 3rd to kids of staff, and then 4th would go to the general public.  So, if the average class has 30 kids, maybe 1 is allocated to a kid in foster care, then 3 to siblings, and 1 to the kid of a staff- the remaining 25 spots are available to the general public. If way more than 25 kids applied for those spots, then they allocate them based on the distance from the school to the kid's house. Therefore, for really desirable schools, there are lots of kids applying for the available spots, and they are allocated only a really short distance from the school, known as the catchment area. In the best schools, the catchment area is literally only a block or two radius around the school, while the crummy schools have massive catchment areas maybe 1 mile radius. I first became aware of this problem when one our friends from nursery school mentioned they were moving so that they'd be closer to the school they wanted- and had literally measured the distance from the school to their door, and knew it was just a few hundred feet away. This still didn't ensure they would get in - so houses right next door to desirable schools are super expensive. 

Private Schools

I don't have a lot to say about private schools because they were never even an option for us. Both my husband and I attended public schools as kids, so we just assumed that would be our kids' options too- at least for the first few years. We have slews of private schools around us - they tend to be small and all over the place. Most of the parents from our nursery school were sending their kids to private schools, so I wanted to at least look into it. It turns out, you have to get your kid on the waiting list with a hefty deposit ridiculously early- like when they're born- so we didn't even have a chance. With some tuitions around $30k per year, it just didn't seem realistic anyway. I will say it's really common here to go "State through 8" - switching to private schools before high school years. 

School Visits & Ofsted Results

So- knowing that you don't have a guaranteed school that you are zoned to attend, means that absolutely everyone has to apply for a spot at a school, choosing between hundreds of schools to select their choices. To do this- there are two tools to get to know the different schools and figure out which ones are good. First, Ofsted is the government body that regulates schools. They use test results and other factors to rate the schools as being "Outstanding", "Good", or "Needs Improvement". There are very few "Outstandings" and the "Needs Improvements" are often forced to shutdown- so almost all schools are "Good". Turns out they also only update the ratings every 10 years or so- so not super helpful. 

So the next option is to visit the school for one of the public viewing days. Some of our fellow parents were visiting 15-20 schools - including ones they knew they didn't have a chance to get into because they were so far out of the catchment area. I ended up attending 2 visits - one at the school directly across the street from us, and one at an "outstanding" school we didn't have a chance to get into, just for comparison. At this point I was 9 months pregnant, so definitely loved the extended walking tours up and down all the stairs and around to every single classroom. "Oh look it's a desk. That's great." What sealed the deal for me was that there was a natural playground on the school grounds with chicken, and our tour guide, who was maybe 8 years old, walked right up and picked one up, told us her name, and held her while he showed us around the forest area. When he put her down, she just continued on her way. Any school with relaxed chickens just seems pretty cool to me. So, we were decided- we would apply for the state school located literally across the street from us, where we were pretty confident we'd be able to get in. 

Application Process

So just after the 2nd kid was born, we needed to get our application in. This turned out to be pretty difficult- as we needed a huge number of documents, like our lease, utility bills, letter from our nursery school, copy of our visas, and more - but at such a small data size that I was afraid nothing would be legible. And if any documents were missing or illegible, we would just be rejected from the system, with no schooling options. So I got all the documents, filled in our priorities, and then we just waited on pins and needles for months to hear if we'd gotten in. Thankfully, by April, we finally heard back and had gotten into our first choice. Also thankfully, one other boy from his nursery school had also gotten into our new school, so he would have a buddy. 

Starting School

After one site visit to show him the room and meet his teacher, it was time for the first day of school.  I think I hadn't really registered that this would be a big change - it seemed like he was already attending nursery school for full days in which they did a lot of learning in between playing - and school would be more of the same. In fact, his classroom was an entirely separate building on the campus of the bigger school with their own playground - it seemed a lot like more nursery school. But I was totally wrong - this was a huge change. 

first day

first day of school- sizing things up with his buddy

Firstly, the class size was much bigger so there was a lot less time for the teacher to spend one-on-one with him or me, for that matter. Instead of 12 kids with 2 teachers, we were now 60 kids with 3 teachers. So at the old nursery, his teacher would sit with him over lunch to encourage him to eat all his vegetables. On the first day of the new school, our teacher called me over and said "he takes too long to eat, you need to fix that". Clearly no hand holding or extended parent-teacher discussions about how to work together to address an issue. 

Secondly, a lot of kids were way behind. English schools do not expect children to come in knowing anything at all - other than maybe their names - and the expectation is that everything will be taught. But our nursery school had been downright draconian- forcing him to copy words over and over and even sending him home with homework (at 3 years old), so we was way ahead. Because there are just so many kids - the ability to customize the curriculum is pretty limited. We understood that he was in the top reading groups and math groups, but other than that - had no idea what he was working on and whether or not he was being challenged. 

Nursery School

At the same time our big kid was starting primary school, we decided it was time for our little guy to start nursery school. He had been home with me for 9 months, and I needed a break. We found a great nursery school that was nearby (not the super strict one our older kid had attended), and I loved it. The only problem was that they only had availability 3 days a week - so 2 days a week he was still home with me and the other 3 he was at school full time. He refused to nap there - so those three days he would come home absolutely exhausted and just yell at us through dinner until we put him to bed. On the days he was home with me, inevitably his afternoon nap would fall just at the time I needed to leave to pick up our eldest - so I'd have to wake him up and bring a sobbing baby to school with me- and then get yelled at until bed time. Not surprisingly, the combination of lack of sleep and being exposed to new kids meant he was just sick every other week. If he spiked a fever over 100, he then had to stay home for the next 2 days.  So he was constantly home with me, and whenever her wasn't - I was afraid of getting the call to come pick him up. I remember one day I was going for a walk in the park and then had a panic attack because I thought I'd left the baby at home alone- I ran home frantically before I realized it was a daycare day and he was fine. 

Failing to Adjust

Both of the boys settled into their new schools pretty quickly and were happy to be there. I, on the other hand, had a ridiculously hard time. He was usually in a uniform, but there seemed to be a million different reasons to not wear the uniform. Every Friday he needed PE clothes. There were a lot of dress up days for school fundraising- wear mismatched socks for bullying, or "funny sports" clothes for cancer somehow?. Then there were the class dress up days, like a pirate for the class theme, the Christmas play- often things we would find out the night before. Ever the environmentalist - I hated the idea of buying cheap polyester clothes from China to be worn once and then thrown out - so I would try to make his costumes out of things we had around the house - but that was pretty tricky when he had so few nonuniform clothes to work with.  Eventually I learned to just tape things onto his pajamas.

pirate costume

Christmas play costume

dress up like a book costume (sticking paper onto things with tape). 

Just knowing what was happening was tough enough. Some announcements came from school emails, others from texts, or flyers handed out in person. Often things that were scheduled would be rescheduled multiple times - so you never knew what was actually going on. The stress of making sure he had whatever he needed for school each morning was intense - plus the fact that he actually had to be there at a certain time and would be marked as late if not- meant that the effort to get them both fed, dressed, and out of the house each morning was overwhelming. Note: Spouso helpfully pointed out that some of these things were stupid, and I should just skip them. But, to skip them, I would argue, I needed to be organized enough to know which things I wanted to do and which I wanted to skip and when each was happening - and I was not organized enough to do that.

This got even worse in the winter when he was able to start after school clubs 3 days a week. So those three days I had to remember to pick him up an hour later. Meanwhile, we were also signed up for ballet one day a week, so I had to pick him up on time, and get them both to class and changed on time.  Add to this the stress of having to juggle the baby being home with me a few days each week, and I was frazzled. One day I had managed to get all of us to ballet, with the clothes and the snacks, with all our coats and jackets - and I was feeling pretty good. Slowly, I realized I'd left my keys and the door had locked behind me, so I had no other option than to very embarrassedly call my husband at work and ask him to come home and let us in the house. I felt so awful. This all seemed like it should be easy- everyone else was doing it- but I just couldn't figure it out. In my defense, the baby still wasn't sleeping through the night, so I was trying to juggle this all with 9 months of built-up exhaustion.  

Winning Lola Bear for a good job in ballet class

 (the closest picture I have to his ballet class)

Parents Run this School

So I joined our parent teacher association and was shocked to realize how much work is done by the parents. Our school, like most apparently, is financially underwater and can barely pay staff salaries, so everything else - from school improvements to safety equipment and field trips has to be covered by the PTA fundraising. I volunteered to host the first social event - Bingo- without having ever actually played the game. We were completely on our own - having no idea how to pull off the event because everyone in the previous PTA had quit - (not a good sign). But managed to pull it together and raised like $800! 

The more time I spent at the school the more I noticed things in disrepair and realized there were no school resources to do anything. It became clear that I could do any project I wanted to make the school better, as long as I was willing to do it and pay for it myself. So I started working in the gardens just outside his classroom - weeding while I waited to pick him up each day. 

the overgrown planters I took over

working in the gardens with me

And with that - I was started to get a bit more organized, and things were getting a bit easier. That takes us to about March of this year when nothing particularly of note happened. Cut to the next blog...

A Week in Istria, Croatia

So- when we first started talking about a trip to Croatia, we were both very excited. There were a bunch of cool places to see - like the amazing waterfall park and Dubrovnik- that I was super excited about. Spouso was really excited about the idea of staying put, enjoying the beaches, and eating their food- which is an interesting mix of Italian influences plus truffles. Pretty quickly we realized we had problem: we were picturing two completely different trips. As the deadline ticked down and we still hadn't booked anything, we finally came to an agreement. The first part of the trip we would hop around to a different site every other day, and then for the second part of the trip, we would park in the same place and enjoy some relaxing. So after our hops from Ljubljana, to Lake Bled, and down to Plitvice National Park, it was time for the second phase of the trip: parking in a big house with a pool near the beach in Rovinj (ro-veen-ya), with a few short day trips in the area. Sadly, this meant that we could not get down to Dubrovnik, which is just way at the southern tip of the country. Hopefully, we will be able another time.

heading to the west from the National Park to Rovinj 

(Note: Dubrovnik wayyyy down at the bottom)

Around the House

So our house was great- we shared it with two other families who had older kids that were basically awake at completely different hours than us- so we always had the pool to ourselves. We had some lovely lazy days of swimming or walking down to the beach in between the baby's naps. We also started trying more card games with our bigger kiddo- so there was a lot of War and Go Fish when it was too hot to be outside. 

Rovinj

So- we picked the location of our house to be near Rovinj,  because it is right on the coast and had a nice little beach nearby. It's also fairly centrally located on the peninsula of Istria, so it would make for some easy day trips. Our house was just outside of the the old city, so we had to take a quick boat ride into town. The town itself is super charming- it's just on the tip of a peninsula, basically surrounded on all sides by water with super hilly streets. On lazy days when we didn't leave the house, we took the boat into town for dinner.

Groznjan

After a good lazy day or two, it was time to hop back in the car for our first day trip. We wanted to go to Motovun, but everyone we'd met told us to go to nearby Groznjan, so we decided to stop there first. It's a tiny medieval hilltop town that has become an artist enclave, so we wanted to check it out. It was raining, but still very charming. Lots of twisty, tiny streets, and general loveliness. 

Day Trips from Rovinj: Groznjan, Motovun & Piran

cheeky baby

Motovun

After Groznjan, we hopped back in the car for a quick drive so the little guy could have a quick afternoon nap. We stopped at a vineyard for a quick wine tasting, and then headed on to Motovun.  This is another medieval hilltop town, particularly known for its food. In general, the whole region of Istria is known for its food because it was previously part of Italy, and also a place where truffles grow, and Motovun is kind of the center of it. We did a quick walk around the town walls but mostly we were there to eat! Dinner did not disappoint- the truffles were sprinkled on everything (even the kids' food) abundantly. (Fun fact, the restaurant we picked is the same one that Anthony Bourdain visited when he traveled to Croatia). 

wine tasting stop!

climbing up to the town

view of one hilltop town from another

                                                                            soo many truffles

Piran

Our last day trip was to Piran, just across the border into Slovenia. On the way, we stopped by a crab shack on the water that turned out to be pretty awesome. (Also somewhere Anthony Bourdain stopped, not sure how we managed that). Then, we headed north. I read that Piran was known as "Little Venice", so of course I pictured canals and general loveliness. It turns out that they call it that because it has the same architectural style as Venice, so we were a bit disappointed when we got there and found zero canals. It was blazingly hot, so we basically had a drink and some ice cream and got back out of there asap. 

baby on vacation

kids love oysters!

Welcome to Little Venice!

Aperitif time

                                                            ice cream for everyone

time to go

Thoughts on this trip:

I think this model worked really well for us. Every other day was lazy: we stayed at the house, swam and relaxed and made sure the baby had two good naps. We generally went into town for an easy dinner or just cooked at home and kept things really easy. But then the other days we were a bit more adventurous and got to see a few things in the area. We definitely worked around the nap schedule- he was having 2 naps a day at this point, so on our travel days we generally left after his morning nap, had a first stop, and then let him sleep in the car on the way to the second stop. 

Because we stayed put for a week, we were able to stock up on groceries, so it was easy to whip up breakfasts, lunches, and impromptu dinners as needed. On days when the boys were clearly just too tired to mess with a restaurant, it was nice to be able to fix something quickly. But generally the food was pretty amazing, so whenever we did get to a restaurant, it was well worth it. By the end, we were all sick of truffles, which is not something I've ever experienced before. 

And with that - it was time to go home and start school.