Our holidays. An almost wordless Wednesday

On our holidays we went to the Croatian Coast

Photo Credit: Oranges and Lemons

Most of the time we stayed near the sea, but we did also go to Dubrovnik to get some ice cream and a bit of culture.

Photo Credit: Lawrence OP

We spent a lot of time swimming in the crystal clear sea, the odd inland lake on the occasional island and many many pools.

Photo Credit: CC Chapman

Adam discovered what a jacuzzi was. This is the actual jacuzzi that he found. I'm sure that aged 4 the word 'jacuzzi' hadn't entered my vocabulary. Anyway it was fairly difficult to get him out. He is a man who likes a bit of luxury in his life. He is so born into the wrong family!

Photo Credit: Admiral Hotel, Slano

The Grandparents came too and spent plenty of time with their grandsons, talking, reading, swimming, playing and having a ball. Us parents made the most of it by catching up on a bit of reading and idling.

Photo Credit Somma1977


Luckily for us, being September, it was out of season. Got to love a bit of out of season holiday. The weather was cooler (meaning perfect temperatures for us Brits). It means that even in Dubrovnik it isn't so expensive and there aren't nearly as many people so there are much less of this:


Photo Credit: Marcel Oosterwijk


At the end of the day parents and grandparents indulged in a bit of this whilst watching the sun go down. At least, most of us did. My cocktail was delicately sipped with one hand whilst holding my youngest on the loo whilst he did his daily poo. Turns out you can't off load all parental duties onto the grandparents!

Photo Credit: KAZ2.0


A holiday to demonstrate what holidays should be all about.

Moonlighting

I'm not here today. Sadly I've not skipped off on holiday again but it is almost as exciting. I've been asked to be the Guest Blogger of the Day on the rather marvellous Angels and Urchins site, a chance I simply couldn't let pass by. So, for your daily dosage of Bosnian tales, do head over there and have a read of Plum vodka with that?

Back tomorrow, or thereabouts.

Back to real life.... sigh

On holiday:

The Croatian Coast: according to local legend its islands are 'teardrops from God' and it contains 'the jewel of the Adriatic' (the stunningly beautiful city of Dubrovnik).

The weather: sunny, warm, light breeze, not too hot but warm enough in the evening to sit outside for dinner.

Activities: swimming, skimming stones, looking into fishing boats, watching very glamorous yachts swan around, sitting in the jacuzzi, sipping cocktails, strolling the streets of Dubrovnik and the paths of the nearby islands, playing with Grandparents.

Ice-cream: amazing.

Place to stay: Out of this world. Merits a post all of its own.


Back home:

Tuzla: 'an industrial town without the industry' (my father-in-law).

Fridge: empty

House: trashed and full of suitcases that need to be unpacked, washed and put away

Weather: Really quite chilly!

Lakes: Shut

Ice-cream: not being sold any more.

Activities: A list of chores as long as my arm.


How do we feel about being back home? Mneh.

Dear So and So, Bosnian Version: Part IV

The Brits household is off on holiday this week, sunning itself on the Croatian coastline. At least that is the plan. The forecast is for rain and a bit of a cold snap making it a rather less attractive proposition than England.

Sadly this means that we will miss Bajram, the Bosnian version of Eid which marks the end of Ramadan. The whole town is a flutter of talk about which parties shall be attended, and who will be where. I've been to some of these Bajram parties (in a pre-children era) and they are terrific. Everyone joins in, Muslim or not and there is an awful lot of dancing and beer and food and all things good.

Anyway, until you get your real-life postcard which given the ongoing British postal strike means probably never, here are some of the virtual versions, sent from Bosnia.



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Dear fellow expats in Tuzla currently on holiday in the States (you know who you are),


When are you coming back? We miss you! I'm not sure we have forgiven you yet for abandoning us all summer. And can you bring peanut butter with you?

Hugs and kisses to you both,

Fraught Mummy

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Dear Random Imam,

After the Bosnian Delights and the perfume, I must also thank you for the vast quantities of plums that you have taken to leaving by our front door. Would you be very offended if I was to make them into Plum Vodka?

Yours, hic, oops, silly giggle,

FM

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Dear Boys,

Which bit of 'Don't Do That' do you not understand?

Your ever loving but getting increasingly disciplinarian as it is becoming more obvious that noone in this household listens to a word I say mother xx

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Dear Bosnian Pedestrians,

Given that you are the bottom of the pile when it comes to priority of road users, how is it that you feel so confident in crossing the road without looking to see if there are any vehicles coming?

Seriously wondering how any of you are still alive,

FM

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Dear Dave,

I do appreciate you looking after the boys when I am out and about. Really I do. But, given that you take control of them at about 5.30 which isn't that long before they go to bed and during that time they are having supper, a bath and watching a bit of TV, how is it possible that the house gets so totally and utterly trashed?

Your ever grateful, but curious wife x

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Dear Bakers, all bakers, any bakers,

Please don't stop making Lepina just because it is the end of Ramadan. I know that you can get it out of season, but it just isn't the same without those yummy black bits on the top. I don't think I can wait for next year to get my lepina fix!

Yours, scoffing any lepina I can find in preparation for the great lepina fast about to begin,
FM x

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Dear Boys,

Which part of 'you will hurt yourself' do you not understand?

Your exasperated mother who is running out of plasters and sympathy for preventable ouch moments. xxxx

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Dear Outside Dog,

We are ok for you to make a camp for yourself on our porch as you are, for a stray dog, remarkably well behaved (and now fully deticked and delurgyed). We are happy to keep on giving you food. But if you keep going into our bins and dumping the contents all over the garden we may have to rethink the above.

Don't say you weren't warned,

FM

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Dear favourite bakers,

Please reopen soon. You are the only ones that I can rely on to bake zeljanica pita (spinach pie with a sort of feta like cheese in) which is my absolute favourite of all time ever.

Pretty please?

FM

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Dear Bosnian Car Importers and Banks,

How difficult can it be? Seriously.

Starting to get quite wound up at how long (and how expensive) a relatively simple and straightforward transaction can be made into a paper marathon, with no end in sight.

Yours, still driving our English registered car round Tuzla,

FM

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Dear Boys,

Which part of 'Stop Climbing Onto The Windowsill, Opening The Window And Throwing Your Toys Out!' do you not understand?

Just understand this: It is your fault if your toys break or get lost,

Mummy x

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Dear Next Door Neighbour,

The boys are 2 and 4. They will make a lot of noise when they are in the garden. They tend to this during the afternoon, usually around 4pm. This is a whole lot better than your turbo folk music blasting out late at night. So quit complaining and shut your window if you don't want to hear them.

Yours, with a you got a problem with that? attitude,

FM

PS - your white suit and shoes they you so love? Not a good look.

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Dear Bosnian teenage boys,

Scooting around with your helmet draped over your handlebars doesn't look cool. We know that your mother made you take your helmet. Why don't you just wear it? You never know, it might actually save your life.

Yours,

FM

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Dear Boys,

You are never to buy yourself a scooter. Or motorbike. And you are ALWAYS to wear your helmets, especially when I make you take them with you.

It's because I love you,

Hugging and kissing you and holding you tight, and never ever letting you buy a motorbike (although you will pay about as much attention to that statement as you do to all my other instructions - sigh).

Mummy

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Dear Blogger,

What is this thing with the formatting? If I want lots of spaces between my lines, I'll put them there myself.

Fed up with having to reformat my posts for no good reason,

FM
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As ever, I could go on. And on and on. But, that is enough for now. There are bags to be packed, packed lunches to be made and armbands to be found. Have a great week.

If you fancy a writing a Dear So and So post of your own, make sure to head over to Kat's at 3 Bedroom Bungalow and sign up so other fans of the genre can read you too.

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PS - for those that haven't already spotted it, the latest Best of British Mummy Bloggers carnival is up: Head on over to New Mummy to read 42 posts covering the full range of parenting moments.

What country are we in again?

Caught out once again by the semantics of this country. I was out and about near the east of the Bosnia, very close to the border with Serbia. This part of the country is a part of the Republika Srpska, the Serb half of Bosnia, usually known as the RS. It is very beautiful; forested hills, green valleys and the stately Drina River. This time of year there are cornfields and fishermen. The temperature is cooling to very pleasurable levels, it is really pretty Garden of Eden perfect like.

I'd been having a coffee with some very nice people, who had been more than welcoming and had offered me vast quantities of food and drink leading to us all having a very convivial time. They asked me where my children were, and I had said, in Bosnian, that the boys were at nursery. They asked me how the boys were coping with the language and I had replied that I thought they understood everything and that now they were actually starting to speak Bosnian.

There was a silence and then one of the men looked straight at me and in that sort of voice that says do not even think of contradicting me said that they weren't learning to speak Bosnian, they were learning to speak Serbian.

I forget sometimes about the realities of this country. If I had been to the south or the west of Bosnia, the men would have looked at me and told me that my children were learning to speak Croatian. The fact that these 'different' languages are as different as American and Australian are to English is neither here nor there. Nor was the fact that I struggle to speak any of them well, so to have to worry about who I am talking to and to remember to say Bosnian, Serbian or Croatian is way beyond me. It was important to them that I knew and that I understood that the language we were speaking was not Bosnian.

It is not restricted to the language. If you are in the RS when Bosnia are playing football you would never know it. Noone is watching. Their football team, the team they want to go to the World Cup, is Serbia and they are passionate about that. In the Croat areas of the country, they support Croatia (must remember not to say 5-1 at inappropriate times, the Croats are devastated, their media is imploding with grief in a way that I thought only the English could really do).

It is only the Bosniaks (also known as the Bosnian Muslims) who really identify with Bosnia. They speak Bosnian, they support Bosnia, they understand themselves to be Bosnian. They will do whatever it takes to keep the country together and at the more extreme end of the scale this involves trampling all over the sensitivities of the Serbs and Croats in the country.

The Americans say that they speak English. Chucking the Brits out of their country didn't lead them to insist that their language is American. It really doesn't matter what they call their language, noone is going to get upset about it. But, when the conflict here is so recent it becomes obvious that this tiny thing, a foreigner mistaking the name of the language they are trying to speak, is unbelievably important.

Suddenly I feel that 14 years after the conflict ended, Bosnia still has a long way to go before it can really function as a normal country.

A different approach for fussy eaters?

Following on from last weeks post and the comments on fussy eaters (you have to love them or you would end up flinging their rejected macaroni cheese across the room), I've been doing some thinking.

Adam is, indeed, a very fussy eater. When we were in the process of moving to Bosnia I worried about this a lot. Not only would he only eat a very limited range of food, we were moving somewhere where most of that range of food was unavailable. What, I thought, am I going to do without fish fingers, sausages or baked beans? That boy is going to fade away, and there's not much of him at the best of times.

Of course, as it turned out we found other things he would eat and he actually is eating a wider range of foods here than he ever would in the UK. I took a disciplined approach of 'if you eat it, great, if you don't, well fine, but you're not getting anything different for supper' which combined with an absolutely no snacks at all during the afternoon seemed to work. He's better now than he was and I think he will continue to improve.

But in Bosnia I noticed something. They don't seem to have very many fussy eaters here. Almost every child I have come across has eaten a full range of fruit and veg with enthusiasm. They also eat chocolate and sweets with enthusiasm, but (and this is the key here) I've also seen the kids say 'no thanks' to offers of chocolate.

Now, my two, with limited access to chocolate and such delicious banned substances, have never, ever, been known to say no to chocolate. In fact, Adam has on one occasion managed to get his little hands on so much of the stuff that he made himself sick. He gorges on it, absolutely gorges and has no ability to stop eating it.

This has got me thinking. Is it possible that we've got our approach to food all wrong? By banning or limiting some foods do they become all the more enticing and desirable? If we were to allow the kids more access to chocolate and the bad stuff, would they work out for themselves how much was enough? Would giving them this responsibility lead to a more responsible attitude towards food?

I'm not sure I'm prepared to try out this theory. Adam would eat nothing but cake and chocolate for weeks and I would fret fret fret. But, the Bosnian kids here all eat their fruit and veg and all tuck into their food with gusto. I've not seen any really fussy eaters, and given how much the nursery staff fret about Adam's lack of lunch consumption, I don't think they are used to it either. You don't tend to see fat Bosnian kids either, they live active lives running around burning off that calorie intake.

I am however interested to know whether anyone is bucking the 'ban the goodies push the veggies' trend out there and has tried giving their child a more free rein on having whatever they want to eat? Did it actually lead to a child with a healthy attitude towards food, who was able to say no to chocolate if they didn't really fancy it, and who tried out other healthier food? Or is the reason there aren't too many fussy Bosnian children because they are simply not given the opportunity to be difficult over food? Comments welcome!

Passing on the link love

It's awards time again. Get out those hankies, prepare those acceptance speeches. Here we go....

First of all, the incredible Zombie Chicken Award from the lovely Kathryn at Life In Italy.

I love this award. It has instructions that go something like this:

"The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken – excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of zombie chickens just to be able to read their inspiring words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the zombie chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all."

How can I not pass on the silliness? The lucky 5 to whom this prestigious award is bestowed are (cue dramatic music): Dulwich Divorcee, London City Mum, Not SuperMum, Notes Inside My Head and Really Rachel. All worthy winners. May they embrace the silliness.

Alrighty now. Time for an advert break - my delightful husband has just put supper onto the table. I shall be back later for the best actor and best actress, so don't switch over now...

(a rather good chicken curry later - he can cook my husband)

Welcome back. Next up we have the Awesum award from Teacher Mommy over at Diapers and Dragons

This fine award goes to a few blogs that are new to me and no doubt well known by everyone else. So Hot Cross Mum (the British Mummy Blogger of the week this week), Sleep is for the Weak, Insomniac Mummy and Very Bored Housewife - it is all yours.

A second round of adverts before the final award. What can I say? They are showing Cocktail on TV. It is brilliant (whatever anyone may say) and it has taken me back to my teenage years. Coughlin's Laws. Being Spooked. A fine fine film. Seriously.

Last, but by no means least: The Great Read Award from A Very Bored Housewife herself:

I think I might be supposed to do something for this one, but I haven't got the organisational capacity to work out what so I am just going to pass it on to some deserving blogs which are all great reads: Baby Rambles, Muddy No Sugar, Big Beluga Baby and Babies Who Brunch.

As they say in Hollywood: That's All Folks!