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April 27, 2004
Jacob has a tooth!!!!!!!!
...almost.
Posted by Faith at 09:17 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 26, 2004
Spring, spring, spring, spring, spring!
Jacob's weekend was made with the news that his Australian grandma is coming over again! Just what we all need, more spoiling!
Uncle John has left giving Ron and I two weeks of feeling the pain of preparing our own meals and drinks before Grandma arrives to take over! We're still looking for the fine-print on our foreheads that says "Please feed us, and a drink would be nice too while you're at it!". Obviously everyone else can see it!
More limp-wristed sunlight and blissful spring weather on the weekend so we took Jacob off to the park so he could play on the grass. It was only after we got there that it ocurred to me that its the first time he has actually lain on grass. Seven months old and he's never lain on grass! It seems really sad but I guess it must be pretty normal for a Northern European baby born at the beginning of autumn. The ground is just too cold and wet!
He wasn't too sure in the end about the whole grass-experience, not as easy to slide around on as the wooden floor at home, although the daisies tasted nice, but was quite fascinated by the endless procession of dogs scurrying around.
Today its going to be 20 degrees so I've sent him off to day care in the "Diamond Geezer" t-shirt he got from his uncle.
Posted by Faith at 11:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2004
Uitje
Yesterday we all packed in work early and went off to Vinkeveen to inflict our combined cooking skills on each other. Luckily the weather was with us, (OK, cold but dry and sunny) and a gezellig feest was had by all. Two companies have merged, various people are leaving and new ones are joining so it was a good chance to get to know each other all over again! The photos are here.
Posted by Faith at 03:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 20, 2004
Klaar!
Finally I've finished something! This little number will be a present for someone, I'm not sure who to inflict it on, there are two contenders in mind so I'll have to think about it! I fell in love with the wool and then had to think of something to do with it. It lent itself to a long skinny scarf and after trying various patterns I settled for the K2 P2 rib. I used the last three balls in Amsterdam and haven't been able to buy any online or I might have tried something a bit more ambitious.
Or maybe not. At €6 per ball its not a cheap scarf! (3 balls). As it is its boasting a bald patch from being re-knitted so often!
I've also started on a beanie for John which was going along just nicely until I drank some wine. Its never recovered so we'll have to see how that turns out!
Posted by Faith at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2004
That sinking feeling
We went of to do something bureaucratic and resonably-straightforward this morning. Oh, we knew it was going to take months but it is in itself a reasonably straightforward process. or so we thought. Because it turns out that sometimes, but only sometimes, there is a difference between being married to a Dutchman and just living with one.
There's no difference if he wants to sponsor you to live in the Netherlands, there's no difference if you want a visa to live and work here, there's no difference if you have a baby here, there's no difference if he wants to recognise the child as his, etc etc. But now there is a difference.
So we left the stadsregister to go to the stadsdeel kantoor, where after an hour long interview we discovered we also have to go to the alien police (shudder..!!!) after which forms will fly around between all these parties (and more), losing their attachments willy-nilly on the way, requiring duplicate letters, duplicate visits, triplicate lives, untold numbers of phone-calls and endless photo-copying.
It all happenned so quickly and easily, on an innocent-looking sunny spring morning, you left the house a free-woman and before you know it you're back on that slippery downward spiral of bureacracy that we thought we'd finally escaped from a couple of years ago!
Stay tuned for Kafka-in-Holland, the sequel.
Posted by Faith at 01:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 14, 2004
Wide open spaces......
Its official! We're moving house!
Despite having the sweetest little flat in the universe the emphasis is on the word little. At 45m2 (and that includes the attic room) its always been cosy, but now with Jacob threatening various stages of impending mobility its just becoming downright impractical. Almost by accident last week we saw something nearly twice as big, 75m2, in the same area and wonder of wonders, with a bath!
I think the statistical chance of finding a flat in de Pijp that has a bath, at any price, must be less then 2%.
Anyway, its not nearly so sweet and we lose our two balconies, but it's in the same area, for the same price and with twice the space.
List of luxuries the new flat will bring with it:
-there is enough space in the hall to leave the pusher downstairs instead of dragging it up 4 flights of stairs.
-a real bathroom with a real bath
-a kitchen, with a full-sized fridge for Jacob's growing collection of jars-of-pureed-things
-a bedroom that that can accomodate a bed where Ron's feet won't hang over the edge
-we can use our laptops and eat at the table
-Jacob can learn to crawl without running into the next wall
The flat is also in a really good location, right near the Sarphatiepark, very close to the Albert Cuyp (but the stallholders stop short of our end of the street with storing their market stalls), and dangerously close to Pepinnos, the best ice-cream in Amsterdam. Still, I'm going to miss our little plein, Jan and the boys, Gambrinus and De Tapperij!
Posted by Faith at 01:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 13, 2004
Lazy Monday
A spring afternoon, the local cafe has unpacked its terrace tables, the trees have leaves on them........the whole street starts to look different!
Posted by Faith at 11:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 12, 2004
Easter
Easter has been a bit of a mixed bag. Jacob and Ron were suffering from some bug they picked up from Opa so we spent a restless two nights and days with a whingey bab who felt like crapy. Add to that bads weather and the energy levels have been a bit low! On the other hand, Uncle Johnny was here to provide a source of endless fascination, and once Jacob was feeling better things picked up quite a lot. Makes you appreciate how much of a difference his mood can make!
On the home-cooking front there has been considerable progress, we've worked out just what the proportion of chicken-to-vegetable should be in a puree for it to be palatable. Jacob has tried and liked, sweet potatos, greek yoghurt and avocado and has continued to eat his way through huge amounts of home-cooked carrots, potatos, chicken, apples, apricots and pears. So, we are feeling quite accomplished! Next weekend I think we'll experimenting with fish!
Posted by Faith at 08:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 09, 2004
Happy Birthday
Today is Aunty Alix's birthday, so I'm eating brown beans to celebrate;
Happy Birthday!
Aunty Alix
Posted by Faith at 01:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 07, 2004
Bad!
Posted by Faith at 05:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 06, 2004
Redeemed!
The world turns on its axis again! A phone call to Oma has just confirmed that Jacob ate an entire pot of my homemade carrot and potato puree. Even better I was rewarded with two loud screeches and a giggle on the phone! Dus, there is nothing I can't achieve with the rest of the afternoon, difficult clients, too much work, too few resources, ridiculous time-frames, its all do-able!
And tonight, Uncle Johnny arrives from Australia! Dus, het zal zeker weer gezellig zijn aan de Dusartstraat vanavond!
Posted by Faith at 01:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Catching up
Its been tricky to find time for knitting lately. I have been working on Jacob's blue jacket now and then, I've finished the back and almost one of the front pieces. The problem was my increasing was going very strange and I ended up knitting the first twenty rows about 17 times!! But I am quite pleased with my little pocket!
I also visited the Afstap, one of the few wool shops in Amsterdam and bought some nice wool that inspired me to start lots of little projects none of which were designed for this weight of wool, nor my needles, nor the combination of wools, so I'm a bit stuck there. I did however, get lots of lovely bamboo needles which made me realise how horrid the ones I was using were!
The new knitty is out with another gorgeous design for a little girl. I wish they had something just as delicious for a boy!
Posted by Faith at 01:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 05, 2004
Mama drinks because you don't eat the food she spent the weekend preparing..........
Posted by Faith at 11:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 04, 2004
Dada!
Jacob has been saying "dada" for three days now. But no one cares. Ron is called "papa" here and dada doesn't mean anything to anyone and despite our plan that he be bilingual, doesn't count since no one feels 'named' by it! So he'll have to settle for being an early-Surrealist or something.
He is also now crawling backwards, sucking on his big-toe and would sell his mother to be allowed to go on standing-up all day!
Posted by Faith at 06:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Feeding Jacob
With a quite weekend lined up it seemd a good chance to get on top of the feeding-the-baby-thing. After a brief outing Thursday night when I went to the Spin Awards dinner dance as we at work had received two nominations for prizes, it was time to get down to some serious mashing. (Unfortunately we didn't win any awards which was disapointing. I resisted the urge to stay out all night and party, mainly because some idiot, (me!) had arranged for Jacob's visit to the consultatiebureau to be at 9.00am the next morning.)
Jacob was duly measured and weighed and poked and prodded and impressed the doctor with all his statistics, not to mention his ability to suddenly produce enormous amounts of poo at the words, "Je mag zin luier af nu" (You can take his nappy off now) Of course this was the first time ever I have left the house without a month's supply of bum-wipes. Now to see if home-cooking could produce the same results! My previous burst of culinary-maternalism was expressed in an obsession with chiquita bananas that unfortunately left Jacob constipated for several days. I figured at least things couldn't get much worse for him.
After a visit to the potato man at the Albert Cuyp and expert advise on the best potatoes for a baby, the purchase of a nice soup chicken and various other veggies and having invested in a Braun Thingy I spent this weekend practising with mixed success. I boiled up a chook and made some stock and thanks to a suggestion from Annabel Karmel decided to puree the chicken with some of the stock and also use the stock to puree some vegetables. I was a bit surprised that she suggested using the stock as I thought it would be too strong a flavour for a baby but did it anyway. My stock was very strong indeed, I suspect my chook was actually a goose or something. The end result was Jacob ate a few mouthfuls of my chicken, steamed carrots and potatoes in chicken stock purre before deciding it was all a bit too much. In the end even the vegetables by themselves were too much. (They tasted very strong even to me!) and I had to resort to disguisng them in spoonfuls of purreed carrots from some-large-Dutch-multinational. Now I'm cooking up the rest of the vegetables and purreeing them with his milk formula which I think will be much more acceptable. Except of course its now Sunday afternoon and he isn't at home for the next four days for his solid meals and i have enough mash to feed ten babies. I'm going to have to get into the habit of doing this on Fridays after going to the market.
In between mashing things we've also been making dashes upstairs to the disaster that is the spare room in the attic. Via, Osaka, the Isle of Man, Belfast and Dublin, Uncle Johhny is slowly wending his way Amsterdamwards and we'll be seeing him on Tuesday which is very exciting. I haven't seen John for a couple of years and Jacob never!
Meanwhile spring has continued to spring and now besides buds on the trees, daffs and blossom you can also hear birds singing in the mornings and that strange chemically smell wafting over from the farms that is the smell-of-spring in Holland.
Posted by Faith at 03:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack