ANNA - SPRING 2006

I am learning to speak English and Dutch at the same time and I also freely mix the two languages. Everybody knows what I want anyway, and if not, there is always the possibility to raise your voice. My brothers and sister find me spoilt, they say, I can have everything I want. I disagree, I can only have almost everything I want, which is still not always enough.
I have moved to Elodie's room with my bed, which is very cozy, especially as I climb in with her in the middle of night and push her out. When she wakes up, I send her to the kitchen to get fresh milk. Elodie puts up with this behavior, because she hates to sleep alone.

I love swimming. To the left you see me with a bathing suit, which once belonged to Elodie, and a swimming hat, which still belongs to Vincent. I swim with my little floatable orange wings, and prefer to be in the pool of the Dutch Club all day, until everybody else gets really bored and drags me away. Once I tried to swim without the wings, but that was no big success, so I will wait for swimming lessons, before doing that again.
Every Friday and Saturday the same question sounds:
"Are we going to Cutch Club?"
I like alliteration, as you can see. On the 30th of April, we went to the Dutch Club to celebrate the Queen's Birthday, all fun and games. My father managed to buy me a suitable orange dress in one of the stalls at the side of the road, for the enormous price of 30 Taka (25 dollar cent). It was a little too small, but still became my favorite, and I wanted to wear it many times afterwards, until my mother suddenly made it disappear. It had become impossible to undress me out of it, as my arms got stuck. Contrary to the size of the dress, the crown that was made by the party committee for the picture, was far too large for me, and my father had to hold it above my head, as if I were the young female version of The Saint.

Lately, it has been party time in my life. First, of course, there was my own third birthday. Loads of presents for me, a car, a noisy guitar, puzzles. And a cake of course! As I am getting older and wiser, I can already tell you that I am three years old, and stick three fingers in the air. And I also know that my mother is ten years old (at least, she says).
Around the same time, many of my friends celebrated birthdays, second and third. Or, as you can see beneath, "2 year and 3 months", my friend Timo has a party. Never mind, as long as there is a reason to celebrate. Now I like birthday parties more than anything else; if my parents propose to go to the Dutch Club, I scream:
"No Cutch Club! I want to go to birthday party!!