Trip to the Rotterdam Bibliotheek

September 17, 2004

The Rotterdam central library is a few minutes from the apartment and I decided to take them there. The building has six floors and the children’s area is on the second. After we had finished we had to get down using the lift, they were pretty taken with them. Benjamin didn’t want to get in the buggy and neither did Oliver. So we made it to the ground floor and got out, except for Benjamin he stayed in and wouldn’t come out. There was such a challenging look on his face, I was counting 1, 2, 3 but he just refused. The next thing the doors closed and Benjamin disappeared into the world of lifts. I put Oliver in the buggy and was pushing and pushing the button for the lift to come back, only the other one came back instead. I pushed six on that one and closed the doors. I waited for what seemed like ages for the lift to come back, eventually it did but no Benjamin and the man that came out hadn’t seen him. I was near tears by this stage.

I thought there was little point me getting in the lift and searching the floors so went to the information desk. The security guard made a call and soon a librarian came out of the lift with a smiling Benjamin – what an adventure. But he was saying ‘mummy, mummy’ and doing the mummy sign. I was too relieved to be mad at him. He was just being curious Benjamin. It just taught me to be more aware of his need to explore and have freedom, he could have chosen worse places to do this I guess.

Oliver on the other hand is much more cautious and less likely to want to explore new or unfamiliar places. He prefers to watch Benjamin and see how it all works. A classic example of this was when we were preparing to leave NZ. Stuart and I had been sorting and throwing out clothes while the boys slept. When they got up there were clothes all over our bed and floor, in the door way and hall. Benjamin comes racing down the hall and without giving it much thought, just walks over the clothes and into the room. Oliver came down and stood at the door and peeked his head in, he wouldn’t walk over the clothes. There have been so many instances of this. We took them to a bal-loric indoor play area when Beryl and David visited shortly after we arrived in Holland. There was jeep that rocked when you put your coins in, they both wanted to climb in, we put some money in and it started rocking quite hard. I hadn’t prepared them for it, after the initial shock, Benjamin just laughed but Oliver was really upset and wanted to come out and wouldn’t get back in.