Married to be divorced...

...just to get our newborn registered!  That's exactly what we almost had to do.

As you might have read in some earlier blogs, my beautiful wife gave birth to an almost as beautiful daughter five weeks ago. When that happens you need to get the child registered.  That's fairly standard across the World. It will allow you to apply for a passport - obviously and it also helps if you want to get child benefit.

I still think it is silly to give kids below the age of four their own passport.  In all honesty, a baby's face changes a lot in the first 12 months alone. So, the child/baby could get arrested or could be denied entry.  Even my face as an adult changes from time to time. That's mainly because I'm getting a little more roundfaced as I'm getting older.  Sometimes my face changes as well when I attempt to grow facial hair, although I still cannot grow a full beard.  My late dad always made fun of this, and he probably still does.

One morning, after having dropped off the two eldest kids at their schools, the rest of the von Trap family journeyed into the local council office to get our newest member registered.  My wife was, as always, well prepared and had all the usual certificates copied and folded neatly in an envelope.  That should make the process quicker - we thought.  We handed the envelope to the civil servant sitting behind the greasy class partition and she "quickly" started the process.  Just as we were waiting for the document to be stamped and processed, the civil servant said that our wedding certificate was no longer valid. WTF!  I calmly explained to the numbskull that we had used the same certificate to register our two other kids, where to she said "well, that was before January 1 2007, right?" Church certificates are no longer valid, we were told. And, this comes from a country that has been manipulated and run by the Catholic church for centuries!  The only option, she said, was to get a civil marriage certificate or the wedding certificate legalised by the government/country we were married in.  That just made it so much easier ... NOT!

When we came home, I contacted my embassy, only to discover that this rule had indeed been agreed by most European countries to prevent fraud and human trafficking.

I then contacted the foreign affairs office in Denmark and discovered that I had to get our wedding certificate renewed, as they only accept certificates that are less than 4 months old.  FFS, this just got worse.

At this point, we seriously considered getting married in city hall, in Ireland, in our swim wear, (I in my speedos and my wife in her bikini) just to get this famous certificate.  Just one minor problem...we had to get divorced to get married.  And, in order to get a new certificate, I had to go to a Danish church, IN Denmark.

For personal reasons, I had to go to Denmark, so I brought the famous wedding certificate with me in order to get it upgraded.  My path would cross another civil servant again - damn it - this time disguised as a "friendly" clerk in the church office.  She turned out to be just as helpful as a kitchen sifter emptying a bucket full of water.

She could not find our certificate on the computer, despite it being the church where we got married. She then said my wife would have to come to Denmark too to get registered as a resident.  Interesting!  Do they suggest that we leave our newborn alone in Dublin? Remember, you can't travel without a passport, and to get a passport you need a birth certificate... Alright,  I've always tried to be diplomatic and understanding, but in this case I had to tell the lady a few truths about the IT systems they were using and her inability to provide alternative solutions.  These were truths the church haven't heard since the dark ages (the language of mordor), letting my dark side shine through.  Obviously, it didn't help at all and I was no further in my quest to get our daughter registered.

My dear mum heard my heartfelt story and stepped in to help her son.  Within 40 minutes, she had secured me a new wedding certificate and processed the payment to get the document legalised.  Now we just had to get the certificate legalised by the Danish Foreign Office, and pay to have this done of course ... I even had to pay for the postage stamp to send the certificate back to me!

Within 7 working days, the "new" certificate arrived.  It looked exactly like the one I sent them, with the only difference that it now had a small A5 sized stamp on the back.  Hopefully the Irish civil servants accept this one.  Something tells me that they will be looking for something else, e.g. video footage of the wedding, letter from priest, blessing for local parish priest - anything to delay the process further.

We can only keep our fingers crossed, hoping everything is in order, so we can get our daughter registered and get her a passport.  We are relying on civil servants.. Lord have mercy on us.

... and they didn't accept the new marriage certificate!
The legalized and stamped certificate arrived as promised. We travelled far distances across town to get our daughter registered.  Yes, back to the house of evil civil servants and their medieval processes.

My wife joined the queue and were soon face-to-face with a glazed looking male.  He starred at the newly stamped certificate, with the Danish seal on it, and passed it back ."No good!".  "It doesn't state it's a CIVIL Marriage certificate." he said. My diplomatic wife attempted for a long time to remind the civil supervisor muppet that we had done EXACTLY what they asked us to do. She also suggested that he should contact the Danish embassy since they were not accepting the Danish Foreign Affairs office stamp.  We should have known that he wasn't going to be of any help, so I contacted the Danish embassy instead, hoping they would be able to assist.

BTW, we did ask the question if we could re-marry to get this process completed, whereto the civil drone said we would be breaking the law! We would have to get divorced first to remarry. However, we could also be charged for tax fraud since we have been registered as married for years which means we have been taxed as a married couple... But, he wasn't following the legal EU directive himself!

So, I persuaded the assistant ambassador to write a letter to the Uber-clone, stating that our wedding certificate in fact was a legal civil document.  We just received that letter and now we just have to see if that letter is good enough as well.  All these obstacles just to get our daughter registered!

My wife went to the registration office, again, walked up to the hatch and spoke to the same "helpful" civil servant again.  She showed him the legal wedding certificate (again), the birth confirmation form from the hospital (again) and the newly acquired letter from the embassy.  Drumroll please.

Believe it or not, we finally managed to get her registered.  3rd time lucky as they say.  Now, off to the passport office. Let's hope they are not on strike!

There and back again, by misses hobbit

Stay-Work-At-Home-Laundry-Cook-Driver-Dad...

There's no denying it, I’m a loving and caring husband, and you should know it from reading all my previous blogs.  This notion of men not helping out in the house is nothing more than a myth - at least in our household.  My hands are so well cared for ever since I started to use the Fairy dish-wash soap (the one with built-in moisturizer that pampers your hands and leaves your dishes feeling squeaky clean).  Basically, I'm an all-in-one wonder dad - if you ask me of course.

- click here for more information

Being an at-home-working-dad has given me an insight into the daily tasks required to keep the household going, on top of the traditional duties such as cleaning and cooking and more importantly ALL the kids’ daily rituals and after school activities.  I have no idea how my wife manages or has the energy to go from activity to activity. She has done so for several years now.  On top of that, she's breastfeeding every 2-3 hours, with the exception of when I wake up early (4-5am) to feed the baby.

Despite having two kids already, it’s still not easy to adapt to having a new addition in the family.  So to show my support, I took a few days off work, and worked from home a few days too, to look after the other two hobbits as much as possible.  Mind you, this in itself is a full-time job, because the missus is often stuck in a breastfeeding trance, so most of the day-to-day duties fall upon me too - I know, you feel sorry for me.  I've started to sing "go down Moses...let my people go" and "jump down pick 'o bale of cotton", which my wife doesn't find amusing. I just find it natural to sing these songs.  A man can only take so many strokes of the whip (unless he's into that stuff).

So, for the past 4 weeks, my involvement in the daily routines increased from bringing our daughter to school, to also bringing our son to school.  His school is a 30 minute drive from our house, on the motorway, so it is a fair distance. He goes there 3 times a week and 3 hours per day.  It is too far to go back, so I spent the time in the lovely Malahide village - home of the notorious yummy mummy gang, who have their headquarters in the local Starbucks.  I was sitting there one Wednesday trying to work while our son was in school, when the place was suddenly invaded by buggies, screaming kids and lactating women. Women and kids were all wearing the latest gear, and most of it could pay for our car.

To make the situation more complex and perhaps disturbing was that staff in Starbucks knew them all and started to prepare the various variations of coffee; skinny slim decaf columbian, hot coco made with soy milk and rye scones.  What ever happened to a normal cup of Joe?

My work laptop was being squirted with juice, crumbs, coffee, breast milk and baby pooh.  Not sure I could handle much more of this.  But, just as quickly as they had emerged from their gold plated SUV's, just as quickly did they vanish.

Later in the week, while dropping off our son at school, my daughter and I were waiting in the car for a few minutes, letting the traffic in the cul de sac calm down.  Suddenly, one of these bling-bling SUVs pulled up and parked in the middle of the street. Out jumped a yummy mummy dressed to kill in DKNY, Armani and D&G sun glasses.  She was dropping off her son to school that he was not in the slightest interested in going. He grabbed the nearest pole to resist entering the school. The mother started pulling his legs causing him into a vertical position.  She then attempted to trick him and picked him up to hug him,  while one of the teachers took the kid from behind trying to lift him into school.  As she gently pulled the kid away from the mother, he desperately clung on to his mum's DKNY shirt. All of a sudden the mum's shirt ripped open and revealed her right boob!  The mother "calmly" buttoned her shirt, fixed her sunglasses and pretended as if nothing had happened.  I quickly rolled up the window trying to suppress my laughter, but then my daughter and I looked at each other and we both burst out in hysterical laughter.

Other man duties during my stint off included bringing our daughter to horseback riding, theatre school and gym - all on different days and far from home of course.  It takes almost two hours each event, so I spend time working on my blog or playing with my iPhone.  Funnily enough, I'm most of the time the only husband/man at these events, much to the amazement of the yummy mummies. I can see them stare at me with utter disbelief because I don't "participate" with supporting comments and other gestures to my daughter.  I just let her do her stuff at her own pace and she really loves it.  She's sooooo proud every time and talks for hours about what she did that day.

It's not easy being a "single parent", looking after two maniac hobbits with millions of activities to do.  The car is being seriously tested in regards to mileage and my cleaning skills have improved immensely (BTW, My wife doesn't consider cleaning a woman's job). By the time I get to sit down with my cup of Joe in the sofa, it's almost 20.30. That's when my wife looks at me with begging puppy eyes wondering if I could give her some neck massage.

In bed by 21.30 and up at 04.00.  Blimey, yesterday morning I folded the clothes and prepared pancakes well before 07.30 - I actually had to re-heat the pancakes as the rest of the family didn't come downstairs until 09.00  By then I was already changing to go outside to mow the lawn.

Who cares about expensive gyms, when you can be on the go for 12 hours daily.

Cats n' Dogs

It was the time of the year again, where our daughter was going to celebrate her birthday.  This time she would turn six and us parents wept quietly before we went to bed.  Our little baby was getting older, again, and so were we.  At least I don't have gray hairs - yet.

She had decided the theme and she was also determined to invite the entire class - again.  All kids were delighted to be invited again to my daughter's birthday party.  They clearly remembered last year's smashing success, and were dying to party hard again.  27 Kids under the age of six were invited.  Deep inside, I wished that only 3 could come.  I still haven't recovered mentally from last year's party. My ear drums are still bleeding when watching plane take off and land.  The old metal band Man-O-War would be proud of the noise levels we reached last time.

Theme: Cats & Dogs (wonder if it would be anything like the movie)
Time & Location: Our house, after school Friday (please note, this event has already happened, so no need to show up next Friday)

My wife loves to bake birthday cakes, and this would be no exception.  And this time she was determined to give "Ace of Cakes" a real run for their money.  She started to plan the cakes two weeks before the actual event, by researching cake dough, icing techniques and designs. The final design and result can be seen here.  I have to admit, they look fantastic. And no, we don't take orders ... yet.

The big day finally arrived, and our daughter was so excited.  While she was in school, we decorated the house and prepared the food; chicken nuggets, fries, sausages, fish fingers and juice - the usual urban combat meal.

As the time drew closer, we (parents) got nervous too. I probably peed 16 times before the kids arrived.  It was as if I was sitting an exam.  Our daughter was dressed as a cat. My wife made the catsuit and the face paint.

Mayhem started bang on time, with the first cats and dogs arriving to the house.  Within minutes, the noise level in our suburban neighborhood had gone up 5 Db.  22 kids arrived (out of 27) so it was an excellent turnout.  The majority were dressed like either cats or dogs, except one weirdo kid who came dressed as a knight!

It wasn't long until all the neighbor kids were staring weird at our house because of all the screams.  Some even knocked on the door asking if they could participate and others attempted to bring their pets to the party. They totally misunderstood the theme.

One parent attempted to offload all his kids, not only classmates, but siblings too. One father even tried to get his 7 week old baby to crash the party, but I had to draw the line somewhere.  We were not stocking baby milk and we were not too keen on holding a baby while minding 22 lunatic pretend animals.  So, he left crying.  Another parent, whose child has all kinds of allergies, pretended that he did not have allergies anymore. He said he could have everything he wasn't allowed to have.  Imagine if the kid ended up a glucose overdose attack?  Paramedics would think we were mental patients, living in a house full of kids pretending to be animals.

As the party progressed, my wife had organized the usual party games; piñata, musical statues, face paint, bubble disco and of course the birthday song.  But, nobody anticipated or expected the last party game - least of all me.  My lovely wife had planned a "fantastic" game she made up called dog catcher.  This game doesn't need any introduction and should not be attempted without supervision by trained parents (like us)!  As soon as my wife said "GO", the signal for the "dogs" and "cats" to run, 20 kids sprinted around in the house hoping not to be caught by the dog catchers that were catching the dogs with tiny fish nets and putting them into tents.  The noise level and screams went though the roof. My wife just stood there giggling and cheering. She was having a blast. Our real dogs started to whine because some kids' high pitch screams went straight through their nerve system.   My ears started to pop uncontrollably and my heart beat faster.  I felt like screaming too, but I think most kids would have cried if I did.  This game went on for about 15 minutes. By then glasses and eardrums had cracked within a 1 mile radius.

Finally, the end emerged like God send.  Parents started to collect their kids and we slowly started to clean up the mess left by the animal invasion.  For all the food on the floor, we simply let in the dogs and then that was done.

The "funny" thing is that we cleaned the entire house in advance, but why?  It is not like the kids would judge how clean our crib was.  Anyway, within 7 minutes, the house looked like if someone had pulled the pin in a grenade - juice, food and party decoration all over - hovering in mid air due to the speed the kids ran in circles around the house.

When the last kid was collected, and our kids were in bed, we quietly sat in the sofa enjoying the sound of silence.  I finished a bottle of wine within 15 minutes and fell asleep.  Never again, but that's what we said last year.

The main thing was that our daughter had a fantastic day, and she loved it.  And, all her classmates still talk about her fantastic party 3 months on.

We had to have another party the following day, for the family only, which obviously was going to be a lot more relaxed.  Our daughter wanted gumbo, and she was going to help cooking it. She is after all six years old you know.

Arctic Conditions...

The winters in Ireland are normally wet, like the rest of the year, and windy.  So when it gets a little bit cold, and I mean less than zero, the country is preparing for the next ice age.  It's hilarious to see your neighbors pouring boiling water on their car windows, instead of just scrapping it off.  I wonder when they'll realise that boiling water is NOT good for the rubber around the window or the car paint.

One Wednesday in January 2010, snow and hail fell furiosuly for a couple of hours and as a result ALL roads were covered with a few inches of thick ice.  In all fairness, that would paralyze most traffic in any part of the World, for a few hours - but no more than that.

Irish drivers are at best bad drivers, rushing all the time, ignoring basic traffic rules and doing the usual hazardous routines while driving, such as:
- IUsing mobile phone when driving (international trend nowadays)
- Putting on make-up (which I'm finding difficult when driving the scooter and wearing a helmet)
- No right turn signs = turn right allowed (not actually sure if indicators come as standard in irish cars?)
- Red light means accelerate faster
- Bicycles and motorcycles are merely obstacles that has to be overcome

All in all, it is a bit like the famous PC game Carmageddon.  Throw in a bit of hazardous driving condition, and the game is on.

When snow does hit Ireland, it is like arctic conditions.  Plumbing in houses freeze, water reservoirs run out of water and the city councils haven't ordered sand or salt since 1981 when they were hit with the big freeze like most of Northern Europe.  As a result, the roads are not gritted, leaving the ice to get tougher and more slippery.
- I was horrified to discover why the reservoirs where empty.  Residents had been advised to keep their taps running, to prevent the pipes from freezing up!!!!

As I'm from Denmark, where you do get snow, I have some experience in driving in these conditions (by no means an expert), but driving a scooter on 3 inches of ice is NOT recommended.  It basically took me 2 hours to get home that afternoon.  And, I now know what trench feet are.  My feet were frozen solid for a few hours, but other than that I made it home.

The airport was closed for 24 hours, and even then, the amount of flights leaving was reduced drastically.  Not even sure the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has defrost for the planes, hence they are stuck at the terminals.  Most airports in the Northern hemisphere have defrosting machines, so the planes can leave.

The most "amusing" thing is that Ireland only seem to have a handful of gritting machines and snow plows, so the secondary roads were left alone.  For those people who knows Dublin, that means that the only main road cleared was the M50.

The day after the "heavy" snowfall, I decided to take the car to work.  I barely made it out of the estate, before I the so-called SUV was sliding all over the road.  We should probably have changed the tires 2 years ago, so there was no grip.  At the first traffic light, I was basically stuck - wheels spinning, but going nowhere.  Just as I was getting a grip, a giant 18-wheeler truck came sliding by (in front), almost jackknifed, and that's when I decided to go back home.

A bit of snow and the fecking country was paralyzed.  It was pretty annoying having to call work that morning, telling them I couldn't get out of the estate.  To make things worse, in order to get into work Friday, I had to treck for almost 3 kilometres, across th frozen tundra, stranded cars and white landscapes.

I almost peed my pants laughing, when I saw the news headlines "Arctic Conditions in Ireland".  Have these people not heard of countries where snow is a regular occurence and where winters are pitch black, only lit up by the white snow.  Some parts of Russia have -50 degrees, but the roads are still cleared.

I'm just waiting for when we get a real winter and all pipes in house freezeor burst, then they'll realise that they have built and insulated hourses wrong.  Who in their right mind would recommend having water pipes on the outside of the houses?