Alex's First Haircut

Mum and Dad had decided that Alex was looking a bit scruffy around the edges so could do with a Christmas haircut. We went to a hairdresser called "kids only" and they were great. They certainly knew all the tricks for entertaining and distracting during the cut.

Before

After

ICTY Christmas Party

Our last Christmas Party of the year was hosted by the ICTY. It was much smaller than the ICC one, and there was a clown (not a scary clown) who did a great job of entertaining even the smaller kids. The catering was typically Dutch (fries and chicken nuggets) but hey - it was Christmas so we let Alex enjoy himself.

Father Christmas arrived again with more presents (this time in a UN mail bag) and while Alex was happy to pick up his gift while Dad was holding him, he didn't want to sit on his lap again. It was a little better than the week before though.

Oliebollen - This one's for Carl!

After getting to eat Poffertjes at the ICC Christmas party, we decided that Alex needed to try another Dutch delicacy .... oliebollen. He seemed to love it!

ICC Christmas Party

We had a great time at the ICC Christmas Party. There was a magician, colouring, popcorn, poffertjes (made by Stefan's wife - yummy!) and of course the big man who even had a present for Alex.

Unfortunately Alex did not want to sit with Father Christmas, so we had to get a picture of him sitting nearby.

Sint and Snow

When we booked the "clubhuis" for Alex's birthday, we got membership to the community group for a year. We recently got an email inviting us to a party to celebrate the arrival of Sinterklaas and the re-opening of the clubhuis after its summer refurbishment.

For anyone who doesn't know - here's what Wiki says about Sint.

The Sinterklaas feast celebrates the birthday of Saint Nicholas (280-342), patron saint of children. Saint Nicholas was a bishop of Myra in present-day Turkey.

Sinterklaas has a long white cape, wears a white bishop's dress and white mitre (bishop's hat), and holds a crosier, a long black coloured staff with a fancy curled top. He carries a big book that tells whether each individual child has been good or naughty in the past year.

He traditionally rides a white horse. In the Netherlands this horse goes by the name "Amerigo," while in Belgium the horse is either nameless or is called "Slecht weer vandaag," literally "bad weather today." The origin of this unusual name is the children's TV show Dag Sinterklaas' by Bart Peeters. In Flanders, up to the mid-20th century, Sinterklaas was depicted using a black mule, rather then a horse. This image is preserved in the Nero comic books, where, oddly enough, the mule insists on being referred to as the "horse" of Sinterklaas.

"Zwarte Piet," Sinterklaas' helping hand Black Pete, has his origin in the bishop's legendary past. Three small Moorish boys were sentenced to death for a crime they did not commit. The bishop intervened and they were saved. To show their gratitude, the boys stayed with Sinterklaas to help him, tumbling and jumping on rooftops on Sinterklaas night to deliver presents. Their black skin may refer either to their Moorish background, or to the job of chimneysweep, an option is corroborated by their clothes, reminiscent of an Italian chimneysweep's costume and Pete's rooftop occupation.

Sinterklaas and his Black Petes usually carry a bag, which contains candy for nice children and a "roe," a bunch of willow branches used to spank naughty children — in actuality a chimneysweep's broom. Some of the older Sinterklaas songs make mention of naughty children being put in the bag and being taken back to Spain. The Zwarte Pieten toss candy around, a tradition supposedly originating in Sint Nicolaas' story of saving three young girls from prostitution by tossing golden coins through their window at night to pay their father's debts.

We had a great time watching the kids decorating, colouring in and then signing "sint carols" - we have a lot to learn. When Sint arrived with his Piet's, there was great excitement amongst most of the kids. Alex however was most interested in eating the "pepernoten" ... kind of like baby gingernut biscuits for the kiwis out there!

Alex was also lucky enough to receive his own gift .... a magna doodle ... which he is having great fun with ... and something I never would have thought to buy him yet. After the party we had a swing in the snow (the first of hte year) before heading home.

At last!

We finally got around to trying out the "Macpac Possum" that Virginia kindly carried from NZ for us when she came to visit way back in June!

Alex was very relaxed and seemed to enjoy the view. We just walked down to the supermarket and back so it wasn't a long trip, but he almost fell asleep on the way home. It must be comfy.

My Boy!

Fruit Salad ... Yummy Yummy

Alex decided that he'd had enough dinner and wanted fruit instead. Mum was too slow and before she knew it he was eating a banana, apple and kiwifruit .... all at the same time!

All of a sudden ... he gets it!

In the last two or three weeks, Alex has really started to amaze us with his comprehension and understanding. Here are some examples.

"Alex ... is it time for your bath?" - Alex walks to the door that leads out to the stairs to go up to the bathroom.

"Shall we get some yoghurt out of the fridge for breakfast?" .. Alex walks to the cupboard in the hall, waits for me to open the door (he's too short) then opens the fridge, gets out the yoghurt, closes the doors and brings the yoghurt to the kitchen. He then waits while I add it to his weetbix, then carries his bowl to the table and waits to be lifted into his chair. If we "load" his spoons, he eats his breakfast himself.

We've been teaching Alex some signs, one of which is patting our bottom when saying "shall we get a clean nappy". The other morning when I was in the shower, he got out of bed and tapped his bottom until Duncan got up and changed him.

Every time we leave the room, he says "bye bye" and waves to whoever is left behind. He also waves goodbye to me (and sometimes I get a kiss too) when he goes off on his bike to daycare and I walk to the tram.

For such a little boy, he suddenly seems so grown up!

My two boys .....

Duncan was trying to take pics of Alex, but he just wanted to get the camera. In the end they took a self portrait ... I can definitely see a similarity between them now.

Birthday Presents from Nana

Alex got a belated present from Nana last weekend. Here he is modelling his jersey ... it's perfect for the cold weather that has arrived in the last few weeks.

Alex also got lots of lovely Hairy Maclary books and a Hairy Maclary DVD and a lovely book from Wendy, Warren, Emma and Hannah. What fun and how spoilt is he?

Two weeks of the sickies does not make for a happy Mum and Dad

It also makes life a lot more stressful and hectic. Hence the lack of updates here!

Alex had had the usual daycare snotty nose and cough that seems to constantly hang around, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary.

The 24th of October, was a work holiday for Duncan ... luckily, because Alex was not happy on the Thursday night and didn't seem his usual self on the Friday morning. Duncan decided to keep Alex at home with him. It wasn't too bad, but the weekend got progressively worse. Alex developed a temperature and all he seemed to want was cuddles. Sunday night he screamed inconsolably for a good hour before he fell asleep exhausted. Duncan was relegated to the spare bed and Alex got to sleep with Mum. Needless to say, none of us really slept.

Monday morning the fever had gone but we decided that a trip to the Dr was necessary. Mum stayed home and we were lucky to get an early appointment and saw an intern / arts assistant who listened to the history and decided to check his throat and ears for infections. She thought they looked ok but got the Dr to come and double check ... the verdict? "they're a little bit red but not infected". We were given a prescription for nose drops and recommended panadol. The day went ok, Alex seemed a lot happier and slept better that night, so Tuesday, even though he wasn't quite "normal" we decided he could cope with daycare.

The day seemed to go ok and Alex went to bed happily ... until 10.30pm when he woke and screamed for another two hours. It seemed obvious that he was in pain so we resolved to take him to the Dr again. We called as soon as they opened and got an appointment for 8.50am. Duncan took him this time, and was told that "his ears are no worse than they were on Monday, but seeing as he's been unwell for so long, I'll give you antibiotics". This was somewhat of a relief because the Dutch are notorious for wanting to avoid drugs as much as possible. Duncan and I are all for limiting use of antibiotics, but when your baby is suffering, you just want them better.

Alex seemed happier and the Dr said there was no reason he couldn't go to daycare so off the two of them went ... but as has happened in the past, they were turned away at the door. We still really don't know why.

Anyway ... Alex got better and better and we thought that we were over whatever it was, becuase he was almost sleeping through the night again.

Then ... last Wednesday, after Duncan got Alex out of the bath he noticed that while he seemed warm, he was shivering. Sure enough, he had a fever again so slept with Mum while Dad went to the spare room. He woke up a lot and tossed and turned, but at least he didn't seem to be in any pain this time. Duncan stayed home on Thursday and spent a lot of time cuddling Alex and giving him panadol. His fever peaked during the afternoon and although he was pretty tired and cuddly when Mum got home, he managed to eat some dinner and played for a while before bed. The fever stayed away all night and he got up and had a normal breakfast so went back to daycare on Friday. Saturday was ok ... he would have been perfect if he had only napped properly.

We still don't really know what the causes of either episodes were, but fingers crossed that's the end of the sickies for a while! We've got quite used to our sleep and are not used to having to deal with a sad baby.

Finally ... to really add insult to injury ... Duncan has been fighting a cold for the last week or so. It never rains but it pours!

On the "Big Boy" Swing

Alex and Duncan have been taking advantage of the last of the summer evenings and stopping off at the park on the way home from daycare. Duncan had told me how Alex could go on the "big swing" but I didn't believe him. Last weekend we went and Alex showed me how clever he is.

Coffee anyone?

Alex loves helping us make coffee. He knows exactly what to do.

Brother or Sister?

We had a great Ultrasound yesterday and found out the sex of our new baby.

I assume that Dad wants another surprise, so I won't reveal the details here.... just in case he looks. Send me an email if you want to know.

The video below is from the DVD we got of the ultrasound. The tech was trying to get a picture of the hand and face together but it just wasn't happening.

14 Month check-up

This morning Alex had his 14 month check-up. He now weighs 10.6kg and is 77cm tall. It's pretty much the Dutch average ... not bad seeing as he's not Dutch!

There was no other big news or interesting facts to report .... we go back in 4 months.

Eating Pasta

Yummy! I'm trying to be more organised and cook our dinner as soon as I get home so that Alex can eat at the same time as us (and the same food). He loved this pasta and ... because it stayed on the fork he did a great job eating it too.

Party Central!

We know far too many children born in August and September. This is what our weekends have been like for the last couple of months.

3rd August - Olivia's 3rd Birthday Party
9th August - Alex's Party
23rd August - Rebecca's 3rd Birthday Party
31st August - Tim's 1st Birthday Party
6th September - Sanne's 1st Birthday Party
13th September - Owen's 1st Birthday Party
21st September - Patrick's 1st Birthday Party
27th September - Thomas' 2nd Birthday Party ... unfortunately we couldn't attend this one in New Zealand.

Talk about full on

More Birthday Presents

This one came from our friend Hunter in America.

Alex knows all about opening presents now. We have to be careful when we go to parties, that he doesn't try to open the gifts we're giving first!

Visit to the Park

It was a lovely autumnal afternoon so we decided a trip to the park was in order. Alex had a great time.

Swinging

Sharing toys ... we've since brought him his own bucket for the next trip!



and look at my daredevil on the slide

My Dad went to Kosovo and all I got was this stupid T-Shirt ...

Which doesn't even fit!

Silly Games with Dad

Alex would like to make an announcement


Baby Dunning Too is due 14th February 2009.

So behind!

There are all sorts of things that I was going to post about but never got around to. Here are some photos of our holiday in Malta in May!!

I was lucky enough to go to a conference, so we took a couple of days leave before hand to have a family holiday. The idea was to go to a little island called Comino (with only one hotel) so that Duncan could do lots of diving. Of course it didn't turn out happening that way ... we went to the island but the weather gods conspired against us. Fortunately Duncan managed one dive, so all was not lost. He was cursing though because the diving was cancelled because of poor visibility. When he did get his dive in it was still "bad". Only about 12 metres! He told the divemaster about diving in The Netherlands and holding his compass to his mask in order to read it. 12 meters!

Goodbye rainy Holland


Hello Sunny Malta! Our boat to and from Comino.


The "resort"


The "Blue lagoon" which the island is famous for. It looks stunning in the postcards ... ok in real life.


and from the water


Island architecture



See Daddy did get in the water!



and Alex had his first swim too.


It's cold!


Alex also showed us that he knew what to do with an apple!



After our "relaxing" time on Comino we headed to the Hilton on the main island. The venue of the conference. It was the most relaxing time ever. Our room was great, the food was excellent and even the conference was ok. Duncan and Alex spent most of their days hanging out by the pool ... every break I would come and feed Alex. It was a tough time for Duncan sitting in the sun and drinking beer. All that pool lazing and the fact that we ate in the hotel every night (the Thai restaurant was the best) resulted in the largest "food and drink" bill we've ever had. It was worth it though.

My pool boys

The water was just a couple of degrees warmer than on Comino.


and on the way to the plane at the airport. Alex had to hold on just like his Dad.