Monday, September 19, 2011

News and Pictures

Hi everyone,

A current update, about what is going on right now. Fresh news for a change :-).

School:
Noah will go to school in about a week and a half. Despite some administrative hic-ups the daycare centre at the 'tyltyl' school has finaly decided on when Noah is welcome and also informed us of the dates with plenty of time for us to make arrangements for nurses etc. etc. ... Right, I'll try to turn the sarcasm a bit down, and continue with the rest of this post.
We have started arraging for a nurse to go with Noah each day as we have not heared anything from the school about them providing nursing care, or training the school nurse. This will cut into our night shifts of course, but that is a small price to pay when we know that there is someone with Noah that can be trusted with his care. For now Noah will only go to school two days a week, we are still busy trying to arrange nurses for all the days.  Since one of his school days coincides with his creche day, the creche is working on moving Noah to a different day which involves training up staff for them as well. Changes are never easy! ;)

Development:
Noah keeps developing his big motoric skills, he is starting to stand up, we turned around one day to find Noah standing looking out the window! :




And walk while holding our hands, or a handrail:



Crawling goes better as well.



All  this new found movement is not without danger though.....

 
Noah managed to crawl off our bed and bump into the heating. Luckily it wasn't as bad as it looks, but still was quite a shock for mummy - must be his 'opa's' influence, we think. Fingers are still all there though! ;)

 He seems to be making more contact and is getting better at realizing that he can do things he wants to do.This does lead to more (fake) crying if he doesn't get what he wants as well, which can be quite funny. He can pull the most pityfull faces, but without a tear in sight.





Visitors:
Louises father will come to visit, so we are looking forward to that. I'll take some holiday while he is over here, so hopefully we can do some gardening together and get all the paths and some building work finished. It will all depend on the weather, and since it is a hoilday we'll take it easy anyway! Anyone volunteering to come over while he is here, please call, and you can entertain grandpa J.B. for an evening!
Before that Tom and Judith will come over for a night out. We are planning to go out for dinner, looking forward to that as well!

And the rest of us:
We are doing all right, we did a few nice things this last months. We went over to Eindhoven to cook for my aunt Annet, she asked me to show her some tricks. Was a very nice day out, and we saw Noah's cousin Max again as well.



We were also asked to bake some cakes for dessert for the neighbourhood BBQ. We completely forgot that we promised to do so last year, so it came as a bit of a surprise when two days in advance we were asked to bake cakes for the 55 people that were going to be there.  So oven(s) on, and a quick check what different size cakes we could make:







With having to take Noah to school for three days a week and the bad timing of the handicapped taxi system, we have been looking for a car for Louise. It arrived a few weeks ago and here is Louise enjoying her new car!



 Hopefully she will soon be able to enjoy her three days of relative rest a week. We are both very tired though, and a bit stressed. The stress is mostly because of the difficulty of getting Noah started at his new school, which was a lot of work for us. We haven't been able to do much around the house, but we did manage to bake two xmas cakes, so Louise is already getting excited about putting the ligths up (including outside lights...). The garden is only just recovering from the summer lights that we can put outside for some added 'sfeer'...



And the last picture for today is from a surprise vistor. He (or she?) has not been able to rid the garden of slugs and snails, but I know there is plenty to eat for the little hedgehog anyway.



See you here again soon,

Thijs

Friday, September 2, 2011

An evening at the zoo

Hi everyone,

As promised, here are the pictures from the zoo. First let me tell you a bit about this night, it is a night where sick and handicapped children are the special guests at the zoo. Tickets are by invitation only, and we were lucky to be given one by the hospital. The kids are allowed to help feed the animals as much as possible and get treats for themselves as well (free ice cream in this zoo). There are only a few visitors/tickets allowed to make sure all the strollers and wheelchairs have enough room to manouvre. A real special occassion, starting of in dutch tradition with rain!



So first stop: the inside oceanium, to watch the sharks and rays swimming overhead.



And look what wanders past here, a jumbo shrimp! Lucky for him we don't live in australia, he'd gone on the BBQ straight away.


Still inside to the tropical birds, these two are fighting over who gets the tasty treats that were handed out (depending on your species, most of it didn't look that good to me).


And here is the best picture we were able to get from a roadrunner. They are very fast!



Luckily the weather cleared up, and we wandered around outside, picked up some elephants poo (supposedly great for roses), and visited the monkey island.



Even the hyena's got an extra meal, probably to make sure they wouldn't try to eat one of the visiting kids. The hyena puppy looked a bit like lilo, but with a nasty temper!


The last set of pictures are from a Siberian sea eagle, where we were almost the only visitor at feeding time. Very impressive animals, and a unique opportunity to see them from this close. 




Do check out the video, just to get a better idea of the size of these birds.



For more information about the dream night at the zoo, you can check: www.dreamnightatthezoo.nl/ 
This organization works globally so there may be an event near you as well!

Enjoy,

Thijs & Louise










Thursday, September 1, 2011

Pictures!


Hi Everyone,

As you may remember, the last picture post showed you how wonderfull Trier was. Nothing like a bit of inspiration for home cooking, so I created a summer vegetable risotto & some lamb chops to go with the wine we brought home with us.

For dessert some strawberries:



But back to work! As you may remember we had some nice weather a long time ago....... We took advantage of it to do some gardening work. I planted some flowers on one side, and a few courgettes on the other side.

The courgettes are doing great, we are still eating courgettes now!


A few weeks after we finished the neighbours proposed to put in a new fence, so the flower bed suffered a bit. You can see me working very hard to put it up here (I had a very bad cold with anti-biotics and everything)

Right, quickly moving on in time, we had some nice days in june/july when Noah enjoyed his bath.

 There is more water out of the bath then in it, with mister Splash in full swing.



A few weeks later again: Noah's birthday. Tom, Judith, Ties and Gijs came to visit and we enjoyed a nice meal in the garden:




Diner was courgette pasta (of course, courgette in everything these days)


We don't have any pictures from Noah's birthday party, but we did get this fabulous cake from Hanneke, one of our Nurses. Thank you again!




Last but not least, a random pictures. Just to show how much laundry one little kid can produce. Luckily mu mother helps us out with folding and ironing.





And lastly Noah in his old walker. He has a new one now, but we still liked this video:



Hope you enjoyed it, we have.
Things to look forward to: We went to a special night at the Rotterdam Zoo for Special Kids with acces all area's. We even got a nice pile of elephant dung (be glad that elephants don't fly) to take home!
So more updates coming to your computer/tablet/iphone screen soon,

Thijs