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Mary Poppins, the musical
Opening night: March 27th, 2010
Seen: June 17th, 2010, Circustheater, Scheveningen

It took me some time to write this review. This show was one I had been looking forward to for a looong time. We managed to get tickets on sale, great seats, gorgeous weather, so when we left home we were in a good mood. Until we reached the theater and found out that Noortje Herlaar, who was our favorite in (and winner of) the TV search for Mary Poppins, wasn’t playing that night. Bummer! Alternate Mary was Sophie Veldhuizen, who came second in forementioned search, great voice and a very very sweet person – but I wanted to see Noortje *stamps foot* :p

To give you an idea, here’s Noortje and the cast of Mary Poppins, performing at the Dutch ‘Musical Awards Gala 2010’, where Noortje won the ‘Best Newcomer’ Award for her parts in Urinetown and Mary Poppins.
Hats off to the kids, they are awesome! I wish I had such confidence at their age!!

Well, we couldn’t change a thing about Noortje not performing, so we got to our seats and hoped for the best. Unfortunately I felt a headache coming up, which got worse and worse. I was nauseous and the whole show I was afraid that the contents of my stomach would end up on the lady in front of me. Not the ideal situation to really enjoy a show. (It turned out I had some bug and was really sick for three days, followed by Sabine, Rink and last Manon, but we had no idea about all that misery at the time we saw the show).

The girls had so much fun and what I did see was a very enthusiastic cast, gorgeous colorful costumes, beautiful set and awesome staging of the story I only knew from the movie. The stage version differs at some points, but I guess it’s following the book and not the movie.

My hero that night – as Noortje wasn’t there – was William Spaaij who plays Bert. He was the star of the show, without a doubt. He reminded me of Dick van Dyke a lot. Sophie (as Mary) was good. In fact her character stayed ‘good’ through the whole show. That’s probably the difference with Noortje, who can give Mary a mélange of characteristics. She is playful yet serious, sweet yet strict, all the things I admired so much in Julie Andrews. Sophie was a sweet Mary from beginning to end. I can’t judge too strict, as this was one of Sophie’s try outs, her official ‘opening night’ wasn’t until August 19th. So let’s blame it on the lack of experience playing the part. Her voice was beautiful and that’s quite important too 🙂

My favorite song is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (in ‘Dutch’ Supercalifragi-listicexpialidasties, as there are no Dutch words rhyming with ocious :p), especially the choreography where they’re signing the letters is something that makes my jaw drop, every time I see it. It must have been hard to learn all the different movements (we tried at home and failed miserably, lol).
The video can’t be embedded, so you have to watch it at YouTube.

Bert gets his chance to shine in the song ‘Step in Time’. Unfortunately there is no video of the Dutch production, but many thanks to Disney on Broadway for sharing the video of the Broadway production!.

William Spaaij said in an interview that initially he was fine when he did the stunt for the first time, but 30 min later he had to run for the toilet as his stomach suddenly went on strike :p
He’s been doing the ‘ceiling tapping’ for several months now and his body got used to it, but he learned not to eat too much before the show 🙂

All in all, a great show, which can only get better if I get a chance to see Noortje as Mary! I’ll let you know as soon as it happens… watch this space!

To conclude this post.. what would a theatre visit be without meeting some of the stars *grin* We waited at the stagedoor (it was Cccoooold) and both William and Sophie jumped in when we asked for a picture. I can’t believe how sweet those people are. Probably exhausted after the show, but still willing to have a talk and pose for pics with their fans. Thank you guys, you rock!

Another awesome Google doodle!

At July 23rd, Muffin gave birth to 4 kittens. We were privileged to witness the occasion from start to finish – which was a first. In the past Pruffy always surprised us with her nests, it either happened overnight, or we discovered the newborns in the shed, a few hours after they were born and already cleaned up.
As I happen to know from experience – lol – giving birth is quite a task, and to see Muffin suffer was heartbreaking. But she did a great job and we’re very proud of her.
It started at 7.30 PM and the last one came out at 8.30 PM. Here’s a pic of the kittens just a few minutes after the last one was born.

The other pics can be found in my online photoalbum

The kittens were born in a box in our livingroom and Muffin seemed happy to be there, but suddenly after a week she got really nervous, panicked and started picking up the little ones. She even brought one upstairs and put her away in one of the closets, as far away to the back as possible.
I picked up the little one and brought it downstairs again, but Muffin was determined and started moving him again.
I quickly did a search on the internet and found out that mother-cats do this, because they feel the kittens aren’t safe and they try to find a more secluded spot.
So I picked up the box, put it in the shed where Muffin followed me, and quickly closed the door.
When I went back to check on her, she was peacefully lying down and feeding the kittens *phew*
We didn’t allow visitors for a week and that did the trick. She’s happy with her place in the shed and stays with the kittens all the time, taking a break once or twice a day to walk around the block.

A Dutch custom is to hand out ‘Beschuit met Muisjes’ or ‘Rusk with little mice’ to celebrate the birth of a new baby.
The ‘mice’ are anise seeds covered in a pink (for a girl) or blue (for a boy) sugar coating.
As we didn’t know the gender of the kittens, we just mixed two boxes together. They taste the same, but it definitely looks more festive this way!

The seeds have a little ‘tail’ and once covered look like little mice, hence the name 🙂

Three of them have new owners already.
The grey tabby and the light red go to a new home together. The new owners named them Samba and Iboe (we think they are males, if they turn out to be females they have other names at hand :D).
The black one is here to stay – lol. I always said: nope they’re all going, but the kids were begging and begging, so I gave in (it’s so easy to win me over when it comes to kittens :D). No definite name for him yet, but Boots is high on the list.
We found new owners for the other red one too, but they came back on their decision, so… if anyone wants a cute red kitten – probably male – let me know!

They’re growing like crazy and I can’t wait for them to start walking properly!

Many people are sharing pics of their pets. Good enough reason for me to create Pet WordArt! There’s a chance I’ll create another collection as there are more ideas floating in my head 🙂

Contains:
– One Crazy Cat
– One Crazy Dog
– What a Cutie!
– An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language
– Faithful Companion
– Goofing Around
– happiness is a warm puppy
– 2x a house is not a home without a pet (one with and one without paws, the 2nd one can be used for any kind of pet :D)
– it’s very hard to be polite if you’re a cat

If you create something with it, please send me a 500×500 sample and I will show it off here at my blog 🙂

Download Pet WordArt 886.3 Kb

Long story, but I have to write it down. I hope it’ll help getting it off my chest.

Last Sunday, while watching the WC Final, Sabine was fiddling with a needle between her braces. When something shocking happened in the game, she took a sharp breath, thus inhaling the needle, which got stuck in her throat.

I went in total panic mode, but after choking a few times, Sabine slowly got her breath back and whispered: calm down!

Yeah, right.

I put her in the car at about 10.30 PM and we rushed off to a nearby hospital (still a 30 min drive, which seemed endless). At the ER they took x-rays, which clearly showed the needle stuck between her gullet and trachea. The ENT specialist was on call, but had to come from Amsterdam and all the time Sabine couldn’t swallow and had to spit her saliva in a mug. Maybe she could have swallowed it, but that hurt her too much.

The ENT specialist arrived and after studying the x-rays and taking a look into Sabine’s throat he concluded that this could only be solved by surgery. Something he would have done gladly, but the hospital didn’t have a children’s IC at night (it was 1 AM by that time), and because she would have to be under general anaesthesia, the risk was too big.

He called a nearby hospital and arranged an appointment at the ER with their ENT specialist.

Sabine went there by ambulance, I got in the car and managed to reach the hospital. Not after driving in a totally wrong direction, ending up on the ambulance gate, where no public cars are allowed. TG the guard understood the stress I was in and guided me to the hospital’s parking garage. Rink joined us shortly after that. He had to work that night and had to find someone to take his place so he could be with us.

At this ER they took more x-rays to see if the needle had moved. They were afraid that it would go down her trachea and then puncture her lung or move down her gullet and enter her stomach – both cases would’ve asked for some serious surgery. The needle had moved a bit, but was still in the ‘safe’ zone.

The ENT specialist put a flexible tube with a light through one of Sabine’s nostrils, to see if she could locate the needle. The tube irritated Sabine’s nose and she had to sneeze! This is the only time she cried during the whole situation. She was such a brave girl. She told me afterwards: I said it didn’t hurt, because I didn’t want to worry you. But it actually hurt a lot (bless her).

Finally they decided to schedule surgery at 7 AM (at that point it was 3 AM, which meant another 4 hours waiting). She was brought to a private room at the children’s ward, where a sweeter-than-sweet nurse took her under her wings and promised us to take good care of her. We went home at 4.30 AM to take a shower and try to sleep a bit. At 5.30 I dozed off on the couch, woke up several times and finally called the hospital around 7.30 AM.

The nurse told us that Sabine was brought to the operation room indeed, only to find that someone made a mistake with the schedule, and they brought Sabine back to the ward again. As the surgery now was planned for 9.30 AM, we rushed to be with Sabine. She was a bit feverish and in a lot of pain, but couldn’t wait to get the darn thing out.

The surgery itself took about 45 min. Sabine later told us that she thought it took a long time to put her to sleep – not sure if that’s true but at least it felt like that to her.

They put two flexible tubes in her throat, one with a light and the other with some sort of grabber/magnet and a ‘vacuum cleaner’ which sucked the needle out of her flesh and onto the magnet. Then they manoeuvred the needle up through her throat and out of her mouth.

After an hour she was brought to the recovery room and half an hour later she was back at the ward. A bit drowsy but feeling so much better now the needle was out and no longer causing pain.

All went well that day and once she ate and drank something and went to the toilet she was allowed to go home, at 2.30 PM.

That was two days ago and she is doing fine. Stiff, all her muscles hurt, but that’s because of the stress. Her throat still hurts when she swallows, but that’s because of the tubes they brought in and the irritation caused by the needle.

Everything is behind us, but I can’t even bear to think about what might have happened. Nothing did happen and she’s doing fine. I have to look forward and not look back, but that’s hard.

There haven’t been many occasions where I felt such panic as I did Sunday night. I really thought she would die.

Apparently Sabine thought the same. She mentions the incident several times a day, out of the blue. Which indicates that she’s coping with it in her own way. She talks about it when she feels like it and thinks about it during the rest of the day.

Yesterday, when she went to bed, she gave me a huge hug and a kiss and said: “Mommy, I never realized how much I love you. Not until I thought I was dying and would never see you again. Thank you for taking care of me and sitting next to my bed when I needed you most”.

I’m over-emotional ever since it happened and cried a lot. I’m not putting up a brave face, but let my tears run when they come up – and that’s often. Determined to deal with it and not put it away before I feel I can handle it.