Anne Sophie is 1 year old!

Time flies and last week our dearest Anne Sophie turned 1 year old! Celebrations lasted 4 days and started on Thursday September 18, her actual birth date. Dad took the afternoon off and went for a long walk with Anne Sophie to the De Horsten estate. In the evening, about the time of the actual birth (19:35), the three of us went to the pond in Leidschenhage for a small birthday picnic by the fountain.


The next day, Anne Sophie was receiving a company of our good Russian-speaking friends. We had a great time together. But when dad went to put the tired baby-girl to bed, he accidentally himself fell asleep, which did not prevent the guests from enjoying the rest of the party :)

The following day we got a visit from Katja, Ronny and their 10-month old son Zhenya, as well as their two nieces. The kids were having a great time, especially they enjoyed playing football, or rather headball, with a balloon. The game went like this: the fathers would hold the babies in their hands and would let them pass the balloon to each other by hitting it with their heads. This gave rise to lots of excitement and laughter.

On Sunday morning, dad and Anne Sophie again went to De Horsten for about 3 hours. They found some very fine mushrooms, of which mom made a very delicious soup! In the afternoon, we got another birthday visit, this time from Ira and her 6-month-old son Lucca. We ended up singing Russian songs from our youth, letting the children play and enjoy each other's company.

On a different note, in the past few weeks we've been walking and biking a lot. Anne Sophie really enjoys both, and seems very busy watching things as we are passing by and trying to make sense of them. She is now actively trying walking, by holding on to different objects in the room, mostly the couches. But she is still afraid to take that first step with nothing to hold on to.

Dad, that is me, has been reading several books on child development. But mom says: just go and play with your kid, for by the time you finish those books, she'll be a grown-up :) Well, dad's way of doing things is that he first reads how to do something and then does it. The problem is that this reading may indeed last forever and result in nothing practical :) The books are really good and I'll talk about them in a different post!

Keeping fit and Alpe d'Huez

One of the important aspects of our lives is our health and physical condition. Many people almost totally neglect their health by consuming unhealthy foods and indulging in unhealthy habits like drinking, smoking, watching too much TV, etc. Others seem to go into another extreme and are often (almost) obsessed with low-calorie foods, exercise, body shape, beauty products, etc. It is not always easy to find your own middle way of keeping a healthy body, without sliding away into one of those extremes.



After having tried the gym and jogging, I concluded that those are not for me. To be frank, I found both to be extremely boring and uninspiring. At a certain point I realized that what I need are some functional health activities which I can weave into my daily life and which I can use to support my other goals and priorities. I’ve chosen 2 activities that I enjoy very much: biking and walking. I’ll talk about walking in a separate post, but now let’s talk about biking.

Instead of driving, I bike some 10 km to work and back. I do this 4 to 5 times a week resulting in 80 to 100 km of quite strenuous biking per week. I reason that by biking to work I not only contribute to my personal health and enjoyment but also help reduce air pollution and traffic jams. Although in the beginning I had to force myself to get on the bike early in the morning each day, now it feels absolutely natural. Biking early in the morning through beautiful tree-lined alleys of Leidschendam and then a few kilometers along the Vliet (channel) is a most enjoyable experience. But being ambitious as I am, I try to bike as hard as I can. I now cover the distance from home to work in 20 to 23 minutes depending on the wind. Even on the pretty cold autumn mornings, I am sweating a lot as I arrive at work, but for me this is a small inconvenience compared to all the joys of bicycling.

A couple of times a week I also go for a bike ride with my now 1-year-old daughter Anne Sophie, and my wife Luda also sometimes joins us. Anne Sophie enjoys biking in her front seat (attached to my bicycle) immensely! She watches all the objects with intense interest: the trees, the cows, horses and sheep, the road lights, the passing vehicles, and even the stars! I often sing to her as we bike, and she is starting to "sing" along! This is a great way of spending time with your child!

To grow in any area of our life, we need challenges. So is it with biking as well. Fortunately, every year my employer, Delta-N, organizes a biking challenge in the French Alps. This year, at the end of August, we went to bike up Alpe d’Huez, one of the most famous climbs from Tour de France. While for some of my colleagues this was the second or even third time to climb Alpe d’Huez, this was my first time.

The long weekend in the Alps was fantastic: wonderful, sunny weather, majestic mountains, fine accommodation, great food. On Saturday morning we put on our gear to concur the climb of 14 km with an average gradient of 8% and 21 excruciating hairpin bends. It took me 2 hours 12 minutes to get there. It was hard, very hard indeed. The sweat was flooding and irritating my eyes, and I had to stop twice to get some rest. Yet the feeling of achievement on the top was overwhelming!

The descent down to the village was fantastic, with high speeds and magnificent views! After some energy drinks and energy-full food, some of us went to play in the small open-air swimming pool, and then on to a trampoline, ping pong, and some deep philosophical conversations.

This was a great, unforgettable experience of physical exertion, overcoming and achievement! I’d recommend it to anyone!

Crawling, brushing teeth, travelling

Things have been pretty hectic this summer, and daddy found no time to write up any decent story on behalf of Anne Sophie. We've been busy redecorating our apartment (now it is finally finished!), and dad was away for 3 weeks in Indian Himalayas, and there was something to do every evening (walking or biking with Anne Sophie, bathing her, etc.) and every weekend (visiting places). And even though we have given up our TV subscription and haven't watched any TV (and no olympics!), time is still a rare commodity.


Well, enough excuses, for today our Anne Sophie has turned 11 months old. She has learned and experienced many new things:

• She started to crawl. Her way of crawling is pretty peculiar, as she tries to crawl with both hands and both legs at the same time. But it works out quite well! And she can crawl very fast if she really wants to get something. On the other hand, she'd rather not crawl if she doesn't have to :).

  

• She achieved mastery in controlling her baby walker. She can stop and turn exactly where she wants, and she can step over thresholds, by lifting the walker a bit, to go from one room to another. But the use of baby walkers is actually discouraged, so we use it very sparingly.


• Anne Sophie also actively tries walking. While she still needs support, she vigorously makes steps in the direction she wants.


• One of her favorite activities is brushing her (steel only two) teeth with a baby brush. I guess she likes massaging her gums, where her other teeth should be coming out very soon.
  

  

• "Reading" books is another favorite activity. This is also one of the easiest ways to calm her down - just give her a book! She grabs a book, often upside down :), turns pages, points with her finger at pictures and letters and even pretends that she is reading by saying things in her own language. I try to read her a story or two every evening before she goes to bed.

   

• Anne Sophie already has words for certain things, like "ku" or "quo" for a cow, horse, goat, deer or anything that looks like that; "mama" is usually a call for something that she badly wants like to eat or to get up; "baba" is for grandma; "tata" is for photos; she often says "papa" but I am not sure if she really means me :). She also says words that resemble Russian words for a bird, thanks, etc.


• She also started to travel around a bit. Last weekend we went to Brugge en Brussels to show grandma some fine places in Belgium. The main attraction that weekend was a huge flower carpet, made of fresh flowers on the main square in Brussels. Anne Sophie withstood the trip very well and seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, especially the children's playground and the swing in the park just across from the Royal Palace in Brussels. There were children of all kinds of backgrounds and languages playing together, and Anne Sophie was staring at them all the time with great interest!

   

That's it for now. Watch out for our new installments. And yes, I am still planning to pup up some video's on this blog!

Did you say "mama"?

Another month has passed by. Anne Sophie has been celebrating her 8 month (245 days) birthday today! It has been a wonderful day. Let me describe it to you in detail.


Anne Sophie woke up at about 6 o'clock in the morning, about the same time as papa. To let mama have some rest, we sneaked out of the bedroom and went to play in the living room. After waking up Anne Sophie is generally very good humored and she can play by herself for an hour or so. Papa used this opportunity to check the news and read a little. At about 7 o'clock, we went into the kitchen to do the dishes from the last night's 19 Day's Feast. Papa would do and dry the dishes, while Anne Sophie would watch him closely and wonder what he is doing. Then we went back to the living room to play and listen to a Russian-speaking radio station (by the way, Radio Svoboda is a very high quality radio station).

Because mama was still sweetly sleeping in her bed, we decided to go for a run together. The sun was shining, the birds were singing in the brisk Sunday morning air, and there were no people or cars to be seen. Papa was jogging and pushing a lightweight stroller, in which Anne Sophie was sitting and looking around. We jogged for about 45 minutes with two small breaks for Anne Sophie to watch the rabbits in park Schakenbosch. On the way back she fell asleep and slept until we got home, despite the occasional bumps in the road.

Then all three of us prayed together and had breakfast. After that papa had to go to a hardware store (which was luckily open on Sunday) to buy some stuff to finish the plumbing job that he had embarked on the day before but had not finished. After a couple of hours our new sink cabinet in the bathroom was finally installed and working! Anne Sophie would occasionaly come up with mama to see what dad was doing.

After lunch the three of us biked to the nearby town of Voorburg, where mama went to a flea market, while papa and daughter biked to a children farm (kinderboerderij) near the town center on the Vliet. There were all kinds of animals there: deer, sheep, goats, rabbits, Guinea pigs, roosters, chickens, and even peacocks. But our Anne Sophie was actually more interested in all the children running around and feeding the animals.

On the way back home, she fell asleep in her bike seat, and papa had to use his finger to cushion her head, to prevent it from bumping agains the handle bar. In fact, she enjoys biking very much!

After dinner we phoned aunt Lena and grandma Lora. Then Anne Sophie had an extra long bath, in which she played with all kinds of rubber toys. After the bath, papa gave her a massage, then mama breastfed her and put her to bed.


Papa played and sang some songs to her, red a story from a fairy-tale book and then finally both of them fell asleep :)


All in all, it has been a wonderful day!

Statistics:
- Height: unknown
- Weight: 8 kg

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that now Anne Sophie often says "mamma", when she wants attention or some food. Shall we say that this was her first word?

First tooth and Swimming under water

Today our Anne Sophie is turning 7 months old! The months of her still very short life fly past very quickly, and we enjoy the many beautiful days and experiences that they bring to us:


Anne Sophie continues to grow as a joyful, smiling, curious, lovely little girl. In the past month, we have witnessed the following developments:

• She can now sit very well.
  
• She is getting her first little tooth, which is just barely showing at the moment, but is clearly touchable and can bite.
  
• Anne Sophie has been swimming under water with her dad, of which we also have some pictures.
  
• She talks quite a lot and sometimes she appears to sing.
  
• She smiles and laughs a lot!
  
• She likes to grab something and then use it on something else to see what the effects are of the interaction of two objects, in other words, she is heavily involved in her "scientific" experiments. :)
  
• She has been meeting children of about her age, but she does not seem to react to them the way she does towards adults (perhaps, they are just less interesting, because they barely move and almost never talk :)).
  
• She now reacts differently to different adults: to some she smiles, to others she cries.
  

I conclude with some statistics:

• Height: 65.5 cm
  
• Weight: 7.55 kg
  

Watch out for some video's in our next blog!

Meeting Jonathan

Apart from her weekly 30-minutes baby swimming class, Anne Sophie almost never meets her peers. This Easter weekend was very special, because all the way from Finland came Jonathan, a son of our good friends Helena & Jim Law, grandson of Roberta and Jim Law Sr. Jonathan is just 2.5 weeks older than Anne Sophie. Last Saturday the two kids had plenty of opportunity to play together as you can see on the photographs.


It was good to exchange experiences and ideas with Helena and Jim. We learned from Helena how to make a new kind of sling, which feels a lot more fun for Anne Sophie, now that she can sit and loves to watch what's going on around her. Jim reads to Jonathan in English from Dr. Seuss. We also read nursery rhymes to Anne Sophie, but Dr. Seuss sounds a lot more fun :) Helena also taught us some exercises from mother & child gynmastics class that she follows back in Finland. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any such classes hier in Holland. But I'll ask around!

Planting Trees

Today our little daughter has turned 6 months old, an important milestone in our life! People who see her only occasionally remark on how fast she is changing. But to me the change is so gradual that I don't really seem to notice it. Only the photos and videos of the past few months reveal the actual pace of change. So I keep posting the new photos for all of you to see:

6 months

For those interested in statistics, Anne Sophie is now 7.1 kilo and 64 cm. She can roll over from her back to her tummy and can sit pretty well. She likes to play with her toys (and her toes :) ), but she still requires and enjoys the company of others. For as far as possible she takes part in all our activities, including going to visit friends and presiding at the table during the meals.

A few days ago, with the help of local municipality, we planted 4 alder trees (elzen, ольха) near to our home. We did this to celebrate Anne Sophie's birth, and we hope she will enjoy watching them grow as we enjoy watching her grow and develop!