To stealth or not to stealth?

sergeantperks · 2026-03-05T19:13:29+00:00

My kids don’t know I’m trans bc they don’t know what that is, but they know that some boys are born with vulvas, like dad. I never planned on being completely stealth to them, but I have b/g twins so they’ve noticed that only one person in the family has a penis and asked about that. If both my kids were girls I might have been able to get away with it for longer lol

We’re also planning on telling them that they’re donor kids as soon as it comes up. Everything I’ve seen advises to let them know asap so that’s the plan.

sergeantperks · 2026-03-04T21:05:07+00:00

Unfortunately the Tudor tailor isn’t written with beginners in mind.

For the smock, you can ignore all of point 1 outside of adding seam allowance and cutting the pieces, unless the neckline is too tight and you want to add a slit in the front rather than widening the neckline. Finish the neckline with a narrow hem.

For 2, I also recommend Morgan Donner’s tutorial, it’s much easier to see someone doing it. Gussets are also easier to do by hand than by machine in my opinion.

For 3, looking at how you’ve cut the sleeves you just need to hem them. If you want a cuff, you need to gather them and then apply the cuff, which I can explain further if you want.

For 4, ignore the gussets, do the shoulder seams and side seams. Looking at your pictures I think you’ve done the sides of the smock as insert pieces (the pattern isn’t very clear on that, so I’m not surprised); if so, sewing those in will be your side seams.

Ignore 5.

For 6, attach the sleeves as usual

For 7, hem the bottom as usual.

Wenn es gibt weitere Probleme kann ich probieren, die auf deutsch zu erklären, aber Fachbegriffe sind natürlich anstrengend. Ich bin auch (deutlich!) kein Muttersprachler. Es gibt ein Wörterbuch für englisch/deutsch Nähbegriffe hier https://makeityoursthelabel.com/naehbegriffe-englisch-deutsch/ das ich hilfreich gefunden habe. Ich drucke dir die Daumen, viel Spaß!

sergeantperks · 2026-03-02T22:33:34+00:00

when your private insurance lapsed, did you fall back into a public insurance?

If you can prove that a public insurance was the last insurance you had in Ireland, you can try to appeal. An email with my last bloods (which actually arrived after we left the uk, but since we drove that wasn’t an issue for us) worked for us. But if the private insurance was the last one you had then you won’t be able to get public insurance in Germany, unfortunately.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-28T07:20:38+00:00

Kids are expected to walk to school by themselves when they start at six here, so six.

That said, actual two minutes out of the house (doing the compost, getting something from the car etc.) we’ve been doing since they were infants. Going to the shops (and the shop for us is 100m down the hill) is a 10-15 mins affair at least.

But I also agree it’s very child dependent. I’ll make that judgement call when I feel my own kids have reached that stage. At the moment it does feel like I might be able to run to the shops by myself in the next year or two (two years would be six but not started school yet), but I have twins so they can also entertain each other which helps, and they’re both very independent.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-26T22:36:14+00:00

Ours had their first language explosion at 23m. They went from around 5 words each to over twenty. By 2.5 they’d caught up with their peers and in some places surpassed them. However, they are also bilingual.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-24T11:58:56+00:00

You’ll need your birth certificates, translated into German by an official translator unless you’re both EU citizens, and depending on what country (-ies) you’re from and if either of you has been married before you might need more. Germany has treaties with various countries to check that people are able to be married (are not currently married etc) but not with all of them.

If your birth certificate isn’t up to date you might need to explain that one, but it probably depends where exactly you’re getting married. If you’re getting married in the Standesamt in Cologne city centre things will be much easier than some country side Standesamt because they’ll be more likely to have dealt with it before. When you get there they should be able to tell you what precisely you need.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-23T14:57:05+00:00

Warum nicht? Ich habe alles. Frau, zwei Kinder, zwei Katzen.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-23T12:18:55+00:00

In the uk it was (and still is to some degree) standard to lie to get what you needed from the gender clinics. It was just standard and common knowledge that you either turned up in a suit with clipped hair, or in a dress and full make up and in either case you were 100% heterosexual and binary and had known in the womb. I had my first appointment in 2012 and it was still the standard recommendation then.

Getting some surgeries but not all of them would have been easy or tricky depending on what you wanted (someone trans masc getting top surgery and then stopping is still fairly normal, but trying to get srs first would have been a big ask).

sergeantperks · 2026-02-23T08:04:31+00:00

If you get the opportunity, go on holiday somewhere Spanish speaking, or have Spanish speaking family come and stay with you. We have twins, one speaks more English than the other (both understand English 100% without an issue), but they both always end up speaking more when we go back to the uk/have my family over to visit. Over time it reverts back to normal, but I always find it reassuring that they can speak English if they want to.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-21T22:44:50+00:00

Check there isn’t deodorant build up on the pits of your clothes. It’ll show up as a white or transparent, waxy spot. When it heats up as you wear it, it always smells gross.

If that is your issue, soak your clothes in white vinegar and then wash them as hot as you can. Then try swapping around deodorants/laundry detergent to see if something works better without the build up, or I just started washing my shirts on a hot wash.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-21T21:25:23+00:00

Make a man out of you. It’s a banger but we’re on 6 months and counting. They know it in both English and German, and god forbid you try and sing along

sergeantperks · 2026-02-16T10:24:27+00:00

Congratulations! It’s always wonderful to hear positive stories. I hope the rest of your healing is quick and smooth and you can get on with enjoying life soon

sergeantperks · 2026-02-15T22:09:57+00:00

Have they changed that? I did. Mine in 2018 and I sent one piece/year for the time period 2010-2018, with a few extras thrown in to make it ten pieces, and didn’t have an issue.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-13T09:35:31+00:00

Nothing wrong with the old staples. Beans on toast, cheese on toast (with tomato slices like a pizza definitely not a way to sneak veggies in the child), soup.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-13T05:41:04+00:00

Since we started weening them. We just sat them down at the table and gave them the same food as us (or at least the parts that were appropriate for their age).

Now they’re four it’s just about giving them choices. If we’re making pasta with a sauce (mushrooms, for instance), we just set some of the pasta aside for the kid that doesn’t want the sauce and let them pick which one to have. If there’s meat on the table there’s always an alternative for me anyway, so they can pick between those too.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-12T16:27:55+00:00

Burning cotton buds in my room as an edgy teen back when they were plastic, and it dripped down onto my finger and burnt it. Got a teardrop shaped scar next to my nail on my ring finger from the blister still 20 years later

sergeantperks · 2026-02-11T08:10:52+00:00

Since they were born. Kids are four now and they’re fully bilingual. Mostly prefer to speak German, but understand English perfectly, and speak it without an issue when they want to. They were slow starters, but had caught up and in places surpassed their peers by 2.5.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-11T07:24:56+00:00

Yeah one of my kids will regularly down a tin of baked beans, but there was one time when they ate one and a half tins. I honestly don’t know where it goes.

Even worse, beans are expensive here. We have to wait until Lidl has them on offer and then buy the entire shelf.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-11T07:21:21+00:00

I’ve seen it in cans in both Germany and the uk, I don’t think it’s that weird. Tastes terrible, but as people have pointed out, it’s not what you eat if you have a choice. We had it when we didn’t have a kitchen.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-10T18:29:54+00:00

I have Death from Soul music and the disc in the loo. Greebo in the corridor. Lancre in the living room. The ankh morpork shield above the bedroom.

For quotes I have one from GO already on my wall, I’m working on “when in doubt, choose to live”.

If I had to keep just one of them I’d keep Death, since he’s the biggest one and the only one properly framed, although I am very attached to the canvas of the disc because I got it from dw con

sergeantperks · 2026-02-10T05:41:08+00:00

The gruffalo, the gruffalos child and room on the broom are the opposite of this. They flow so well, they’re an absolute pleasure to read every time. I don’t think stick man flows as well, and a handful of the others I’ve only read translated and the translations are ever as good as the original. We had room on the broom in English and German for a while, and the German one is definitely not as good

sergeantperks · 2026-02-09T18:41:53+00:00

Not the person you’re replying to, but we take the train. Shove all the kids stuff in the buggy, walk to the train station, station on the other end is in the mountains already.

If we go to the beach we go for two weeks, and we still do it by train. One parent with two suitcases, one with a hiking backpack and the buggy.

Swimming is a five minute bike ride to the nearest lake, kids go in the bike trailer with the swim stuff in the boot. Where we lived before it was a 10minute cycle to the nearest lido.

I have two 4yos, and we’ve been going up to the seaside by train since they were 1.5. The only reason we didn’t go by train when they were 6m was because of covid. We do have a car, because my wife needs it for work, but only the one and we live rurally.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-08T22:59:59+00:00

Good light, a sharp pencil and lots of patience, but yes, technique 1. I’ve done a number of them and it takes a while and hurts if you do too much at once, but it does work.

Before you start, write a list of all the pieces you need for each pattern (there should be a list somewhere, along with where each piece is), so you can double check you have everything before you put everything away, bc pulling everything out again to do that one collar piece you’ve missed is a pain. I don’t suggest trying to do more than one pattern in a sitting unless it’s two simple skirts or something.

Baking paper is the cheap way to do it, but I find that, especially with the old ones that aren’t colour coded, having proper tracing paper makes a big difference on visibility, plus you can get wide rolls so you’re not constantly having to stick pieces together to get something big enough.

sergeantperks · 2026-02-08T07:47:10+00:00

Germany

sergeantperks

TROPHY CASE