More Sinterklaas and Xmas

Hi All,

A quick picture update as promised last month. These are still really old ones, but we uploaded them to the blog already, so I thought I might as well post them. Anyway there we go:

As Sinterklaas is bigger than Christmas (for kids at least) some more pictures from our favourite Saint. Noah made sure he arrived in the Netherlands and now he got to greet the Sint at his school:
Noah was festively dressed as a Zwarte Piet:

edit - pictures removed at schools request


Noah went up to give his personal greeting to Sinter Klaas.


edit - pictures removed at schools request

And getting a present in class:


And more presents from The Man himself:

There is also the usual walking around:


We went for a weekend away around the same time, visiting some christmas markets in Germany. Just the one picture, but the whole town looked very festive:


Didn't buy much there, but we found this strangely attractive bird sculpture. Notice our swinging Xmas dog next to it!


And the tree in full glory.


Last but not least:



Enjoy,

Thijs

Why is it taking so long....?

It's been such a long time since we've posted but it couldn't be helped.  The end of the year is always a trying time as we have to re-submit for Noah's care budget.  Plus winter months are difficult when Noah is so susceptible to respiratory infections.
This year was complicated by Thijs having surgery that had complications (he's finally feeling better now).   Noah going to school where the intricate rules we came across caused problems with Noah's budget and took 2.5 months to resolve!!! (Thank you Thuis Beademing, in particular Trudy for helping us with that).  With the current economic crisis, Thijs work is also making cost savings that impact the family.  All in all we've been pretty down in the dumps.

All clouds have a silver lining is a popular saying.  The sun is shining and life goes on.  Even though Noah has been very ill, with cold after cold after virus after ... well, you get the picture!! Even through all that, he is developing really well.  He's playing more, he's making much more eye contact and he's still a happy kid who makes us proud.  Previously he's been at a standstill when ill but now he continues to surprise us. That's a great and wonderful difference.

Thijs and I have been to visit friends and family.  Celebrating Yarah's 1st birthday (wow! how the year has flown by!), and Bart's 40th was great.  I don't get to see a large group of people very often so I was quite nervous, which was really silly because it was fantastic catching up with our old gang.

Talking of "old gangs", I love Facebook.  Especially the photos of friends you've lost touch with, which is certainly the case with my RAF buddies.  Everyone scatters to the 4 winds and moving around it's hard to keep in touch, so Facebook is great.  A nice guy I knew was retiring after 38 years in the RAF.  He posted some pictures from his dinning out dinner, (a retirement party for you civilians! ;) ), and it struck me how all my old bosses are now ......well, old!  My work mates and friends are ... well, errrm, advanced in age.  When did this happen??!!!  I'm now a middle aged person and my friends are also middle aged, some of them have teenage kids!!!   Is this a mid-life crisis I'm having??!!

So I haven't posted any pictures because I'm in the middle of a mid-life crisis.  I'm waiting to book an ab-sailing / diving / para-gliding adventure whenever Groupon has a 'can't resist' offer.   If I survive, I'll do my best to get some lovely pictures of the family Drosten adventures posted soon!

Still smiling,

The Drostens.

Sinterklaas!

Lots of pictures today, we realise that there haven't been any for a while. 

So first some old ones from when Louise's father was visiting. We had a great time, and the weather was perfect. It was the very late summer we had in the Netherlands at the end of September, after it rained most of July and August. Great weather for some gardening, almost too warm. Not complaining, mind you.

We leveled out all the paths around the side of the house, So now we can get around without getting our feet wet, and more importantly, Noah can get around as well.

Here he is, enjoying some time with grampy. For some unknown reason he is sitting on top of the dog. Don't ask....

 Granpy took some new clothes with him for Noah, including this monster bath robe. Pretty impressive!

 And after all that relaying of the path we all had a well deserved nap.



Then we quickly jump forward in time, to a week and a half ago, when Sinterklaas arrived in Rotterdam. Aunt Anneke came over, to help Louise to get him on the boat, she arrived the day before.

 Here she is feeding Noah.

 This is the boat, just docking now to let Noah (okay, and some other kids) on.

 Here they are, Noah and Mama with the traditional 'Black Pete' hats on.

There is tradional candy at sinterklaas, of which there was plenty of on the boat. Noah is usually not that good in eating by himself, but these seemed to go down quite well:

 Hmmm, what are these things?
 

 I'll give one a try....

Not bad at all...

 I'll just take another one, I think.

 SUGAR, NEED MORE SUGAR!!

 

Luckily he calmed down again (as he dropped most on the floor, he didn't eat all that much). 

Except for the boat with Sinterklaas, there were also a lot more boats to take all the gifts that Sinterklaas brings:

 

And here is Sinterklaas himself:

Sinterklaas came over to meet everyone, but we didn't get a good picture of that in all the excitement.

This is where Sinterklaas gets of the boat into Rotterdam. The crowd was enormous!

 

 Sinterklaas leaves the boat here, but Noah and the other kids had to stay on and get of at another point, as it was just too busy. Well, after all the excitement, there is only one thing left to do: A nap.

 And nice view of the Rotterdam skyline for the adults.

Hope you enjoyed it,

Thijs

Hospital Update

Hi everyone,

We are at the hospital right now, nothing wrong with Noah, just for a check up. The doctor has just had a look at Noah's throat, to see if everything has healed well from last years operation and to check the stability and size of his airway. We are waiting to hear from him, and for Noah to be okayed to go home again as well.

Well the doctor has just been to see us, so the results are in!

Mixed news, as usual. His airway has healed well which is good news.

The not good news is that one of the cartilage rings keeping his airway open has squeezed in on itself.  It was a ring  which was directly below the blockage so it may be part of the CHAOS effect i.e. that it's the natural inclination of the ring to be closed - which is a theory of course.  

This means that Noah's airway is normal above and below where the surgery was performed but exactly below the surgery area the airway is now shaped like on sort of opened figure of 8. (or a minoan figure of 8 shield for the classicist among us) The airway is not big enough to breathe through properly, so he is still dependant on his canule.

We expected to hear that there was a bit of a problem with his airway, allthough this particular news was a surprise. The good side of it is, that they may be able to do something about it. 
What we're all nervous about is that it involves doing the same operate on the cartilage ring  - so a reconstruction.  The whole period with the stent was a very intense period and the three weekly operations were a big drain on Noah. But getting rid of his canule would be great, and sooner rather then later. We'll discuss everyhting with the doctors, and have a good think about everything - weighing the pros and cons.

Mixed news but at least somewhat positive. 

pictures soon again!

Louise & Thijs

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

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