January

A month of waiting. I passed 37 weeks on January 10, meaning the baby could come out when she was ready and be considered full term. But, she’s apparently still not ready, so I’ve spent the month half-waiting, half-filling my time with taking care of Liam and nesting, wondering every day if this was the day she would come. It’s also been cold, much colder than normal, and we’ve had snow on the ground for much of the month, meaning not much time outside. But we’ve managed to keep busy, using the last month of our Museum cards to advantage and finishing off the house at long last to a point where I’m happy with it. I’ve also laid in enough food that if needed we could probably survive on for months, and prepared a list of simple recipes and put a few things in the freezer. The baby’s clothes are all washed and sorted and just waiting for her to get here. Heck, the little bed in the Moses basket is already made up. Plus Liam started peuterspeelzaal (literally toddler play room) one morning and one afternoon a week, which he loves and which gives me at least a few hours on my own. And I’ve been going to lots of Mums and Tots and doing what I can to get Liam (and me) out. So, photos from the month.

Well, Liam hasn’t always been good. There’s a lot of wrongness in this photo:

Mostly that he found the hot chocolate and dumped it all over everything, including my handsfree thingie. And that he’s getting very good with the step stool.

Starting the Museum visits, on the 8th, Ivo took a day off work and his dad came up and we all went to the Railway Museum. I have to admit, all the boys really, really liked it and I, well, I thought it was OK (pictures with a date stamp taken by Leo).

This amused me. Sorta. In an eye-rolling kinda way. Roughly translated, “There’s work in the Railway stores. There it’s responsible and interesting work… MENS WORK. A friendly and welcoming work environment and above average pay and benefits.” Of course, wouldn’t want women to have those things, would we?

Our little family.

Doesn’t he look sweet, our little nerd boy?

Loved sitting in this train – we didn’t even have to put money in it for him to love it!

Well, at least until he tried to sit on the back, where there wasn’t really a seat, and fell backwards and hit his head on the concrete as I tried to grab him in slow motion and only managed to get a foot, which at least minimized the hit. He was still pretty upset, but the nice people brought him an ice pack and he was OK. At least years of playing rugby have told me what to look for after a hit to the head. He was fine, not even too big of a bump, mostly just shocked.

But that was actually after our visit to this part of the museum, kinda cool – a recreation of an English village where they built the first train for the Netherlands, as well as a reproduction of that train, with a recorded soundtrack of the English engineer brought over to take the first trip from Haarlem to Amsterdam.

It’s a nice museum and worth going back too, especially with kids.

Then back to hanging out – the cats do it well, as you can see, they still like their shelf.

And here I am on the 11th, big and getting bigger.

And, we finally got the right curtains (after one more wrong set) and got the living area together. New and improved, with the toys moved to the other corner.

Compare to a picture of the same area taken in November.

And the kitchen area with its blind and a new light fixture (yes, we have to fix the wallpaper, but last time we did that, Liam took it right back off. He might be old enough now not to do that again, but why take chances?)

And actually, I realized I haven’t posted pics of what our place looks like, so here you go. Here’s a stich of the living/dining area.

The toilet (with the infamous shelf) – it’s downstairs on it’s own.

And the stairs. These are not steep at all by Dutch standards. Oh, and we finally put up coat racks too!

And our bedroom. The bed isn’t normally so high, but we’ve put the bed risers under it. They’re necessary around the time of the birth so that the midwife and kraamzorg don’t injure their backs while caring for you, in order to minimize worker’s compensation claims. Bed has to be at least 70 cm high.

Our bathroom.

Liam’s room, with his new bed. The changing table will soon move to our room for the baby. It’s already full of the baby’s clothes.

And the study/guest room (see nice cozy bed – hint to any possible visitors!).

I took all these photos because we’re planning to sublet our apartment for four months this summer and travel around Europe with the kids. Ivo’s got the time off work already and it looks like we have found good subletters, funnily enough people relocating here from Vancouver! Other than that, we haven’t really developed the plan much further, but we are looking forward to it – it’ll be nice for both of us to spend time with the kids and with each other and lots of time outside. Liam’s a good age for seeing and exploring and the baby won’t be mobile yet, so also a good age to travel.

In a way, this last weekend was a good test of how much Liam has matured, which should make travel easier. We went to two museums – the National Museum from Musical Clock to Street Organ in Utrecht and the Maritime Museum in Rotterdam. To get to the Utrecht museum, Liam walked to the train and in it (he loves this actually – Ivo’s been known to just go ride to Centraal with him, just because he loves it and Ivo has a rail pass from work) and then Ivo carried him in the back carrier to the museum. You see the museum through a kid-friendly tour, and Liam (mostly) sat with all the other kids and listened to the guide, even joining in when she had them all line up to go into the dance hall. Though sometimes he got a better view on Ivo’s shoulders.

Then we put him back in the carrier to do a bit of shopping and go home. The main lesson there was that Ivo needs to build up his endurance – Liam is sturdy.

In Rotterdam, we took the buggy, and folded it up on the train. Again, he (mostly) sat nicely with us and looked out the window – I got him looking for different animals (a bit mean really, since with the snow, there were only sheep outside). He fell asleep in the buggy on the way to the museum – and missed this, though of course, he wouldn’t see the issue with it:

And then, in the museum, well, there we mostly just let him play in the really cool play area. There were boats to sit in, and a great slide and a ball room where the balls go in different shoots and come cascading down and lots of other fun activities.

Ivo had a revelation as we sat there and relaxed while Liam played. All those years he’d thought his mother was bored while she took them swimming and sat in the cafe reading as they’d played. Now he understands.

And then we had (over-priced and only reasonably good) Korean food and Liam was actually decent in the restaurant, unlike when we were in Vancouver in the summer. This bodes well for travel.

And then this past week, back to waiting and doing our normal routine. Of course, switching Liam to a bed has had consequences, and we’re not thrilled with them. He can get out now, so if he’s wound up it can be hard to get him to stay in his room for a nap. And the worse part, he now wakes up very early and tries to come and visit us in our room. We’ve changed the door handle so he can’t get in, but we hear him out on the landing, starting at sometimes 5 or 6 am, not happy. In the crib he slept until 7 or 8 and then would lie in his crib happily burbling and trying out word combinations for an hour or so. I’ve gotten a couple ideas for things to tell him it’s not time to come out of bed yet (a clock with a sleeping Thomas the Train who wakes up at a certain time or a light on a timer), and we’re going to have to implement one of those, both for his and our sakes. Or, a baby gate across his door and more toys in his room. Something. Especially when the baby comes. Anyway, here he is on Monday afternoon after his nap – I heard him from downstairs saying “shirt on, sokken (socks) on” and came up to find him with an extra shirt around his neck, trying to put on a pair of Ivo’s socks from the dried laundry.

Also this past week, I had to do some creative writing to continue the myth that Liam cared that he got to take this bear home for the week from the peuterspeelzaal.

Apparently he takes turns going home with the kids, and then each parent writes a little story of what the bear did all week with the kid. Now, Liam really isn’t into stuffed animals, and was basically indifferent to the bear, so mostly the bear sat by the microwave all week. Of course, I guess I was a bad mother and didn’t change it into it’s pjs with Liam and brush its teeth and stuff like I was apparently supposed to, but meh, I guess I didn’t care that much either. Nevertheless, I took these pictures, printed one out and pasted it in the book and wrote that Liam had really liked having the bear there and had told it all about his busy week and then told about Liam’s busy week, walking with Opa (who very kindly came up to babysit while I had a job interview), going to the museums and playing with his international friends on Monday and Tuesday. It certainly looks like that doesn’t it?

And now, the waiting continues. Unless the waiting gets too long, the next post will probably have a baby in it. I am getting scared of course that this one will also decide to not come out on her own and will also be induced, but I’ve got just over a week before we start talking about that. If you want to be updated automatically, click on subscribe at the top and you’ll get notified by email for new posts.