Noah continues to have trouble with his hands and fine motor skills are a future goal. So it great to see him reaching out for his colouring pencils, although he mostly likes to drop them on the floor, he does sometimes with encouragement like to make a mark on the paper :)
It's not all work ... there are some relaxing times too. Noah loves relaxing back on papa whilst they are watching TV, (Noah's mini TV screen is just out of shot).
The week before Christmas they came and installed a stair lift. It's really saved me some energy and muscle ache but I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say that it was so upsetting when it was installed. We'd planned room for a chair lift, if it was necessary, but we didn't really come to terms with the fact that it would be needed. Still, it's here now and Noah doesn't seem to mind it a bit, in fact he's a bit like a king on his throne. :)
As if the chair lift wasn't exciting enough, some gifts appeared under the tree. "Are all these prezzies for me?" ..... wait and see!
I just loved the fact that we got a lovely white Christmas. The house looked very festive and welcoming. I love our new home.
Christmas Day
We'd decided to have a relaxing Christmas day. Just some nice easy food and good friends to share it with. Noah wasn't feeling too well leading up to Christmas. He had a horrible cold and just before our guests arrived Noah had vomited and was having a little sleep on the sofa to recover.
He soon felt better once his posse arrived and he got a lovely hug from Gijs.Ties and Gijs quickly found the Santa hats.
Ties thought Santa was cool!
Not one but two men in the kitchen preparing us our dinner, that's not bad at all!
Dinner was so delicious we ate it before we took some photos, but the dessert was so spectacular that it was obvious a photo was required. (I know, it was supposed to be nice and easy but you know Thijs!!!) You're looking at an orange souffle .. yes, served in an orange ...then chocolate mousse, white chocolate coffee ice cream, egg liquor with some whipped cream with a chocolate smudge cake (there's smudgy warm chocolate in the middle!). Yes, chocolate coma ... err I mean chocolate heaven was achieved ;)
Boxing Day
For the second day of Christmas the family was hopefully going to arrive from Doetinchem. I say hopefully because it had been snowing and we weren't sure how bad the roads were. Luckily the Dutch are a lot more organised about these things than in the UK, and the journey to us was uneventful. Since there was going to be a few more of us, I really wanted to go for the UK traditional turkey dinner. Our local butcher was sourcing a free range Norfolk Black turkeys bred by a Dutch farmer so I couldn't resist.
Who wants Turkey ... me! me! me! :)
Here are the "lads" sitting with their starters. Maarten had baked bread 'soup bowls' for the parsnip soup and it was yummy.
The main course was served with all the trimmings, so pigs in blankets (sausage wrapped in bacon) and cranberry stuffing. There was of course the traditional brussel sprouts, roast potatoes and gravy but I didn't think you'd want to see a photo of that!
Everyone joined in pulling the Christmas crackers, reading lame jokes and of course wearing the silly hats :)
I'm not really that into turkey but even I was surprised how lovely it all tasted. It was a great compliment that people went back for seconds and even the brussel sprouts were eaten. Glad I wasn't in the car back to Doetinchem though! :)
The traditional dinner was rounded off with the traditional mince pies and Christmas cake. Not forgetting the traditional Dutch coffee with drinks!
It was a wonderful way to celebrate Christmas. It felt like old times again, cooking and a full table, great fun indeed :)))
The New Year
Our fairy godmother arrived on new years eve. 2011 crept in quietly for us but Lol was kept awake with the fireworks till around 4am!! We didn't really get up to much as we were all a bit festive seasoned out! We did catch a lovely exhibition of Dutch masters in the Maurits house museum and we took in the new arrivals at the Blijdorp zoo.
Happy birthday fairy godmother!
Again too much enjoying and not enough photo taking so here was my blurry effort at the end of a fabulous meal and ever so slightly tipsy, but we did enjoy ourselves a lot!Magic always happens with the arrival of the fairy godmother. This time it was Noah deciding he now wants to eat ... but only crunchy things. Luckily Lol arrived with a mountain of crunchy kiddie food and so we began to feed the animal.
crunchy food
This then lead to the animal wanting to feed himself ... erm ok?!
As ever, Noah does everything in his own time. No matter how much we worry or hope or fear, everything happens at it's own pace. So this is where I realise that it's time to stop waiting for the next operation, the next milestone, the next .... well, the next anything really. I want to be happy with where I am now. Realising this and achieving this are two very different things but that's what I'm going to focus on this year ... being happy in the now.
Happy 2011 all. xxx
