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!

Laughter Girl

Anne Sophie 4 to 5 months

Today Anne Sophie is turning 5 months old. Looking back I must say each of these 153 days spent with her has been a feast! Every day, as I am waking up, I think about her, say a little prayer for her, and wait for her to wake up in order to look into her smiling grey eyes, to give her a kiss and to hold her in my arms. Every day, coming home from work, I find myself smiling in anticipation to see her and be with her again. (Now as I read the above few lines, I realize that this sounds very much like being in love. Well, that's what it is: father's love for his baby daughter!)

Happy Parents

But am I really earnest about all this feast-thing? An opinion that I often hear (especially from those without children) is that being a parent is about hard work, sleepless nights, constant noise, no time for yourself, etc., with only occasional rewards. Well, this might hold true for some families. But my experience has so far been a very different one. It is true that these days I spent almost all of my free time with my baby. However, it's not becuase I have to, but because I want to :) Whatever I do, like changing diapers, bathing, baby-swimming, singing to put her to sleep, going for walks with her, playing or just watching her is highly enjoyable and makes me happy. I don't experience this as hard work, but rather as meaningful entertainment.

And what can be more gratifying than your child's happy smile? That's what Anne Sophie been doing for the last few weeks. She smiles at almost everyone who smiles at her. And now she is starting to laugh out loud!

Growing up with Anne Sophie

Anne Sophie first 6 weeks

Papa (me) has been very busy lately with his work and his little daughter, that's why he hasn't posted anything for a few weeks. But despite lack of time, I'd like to write briefly about our progress and show some pictures of Anne Sophie!

What can I say? Anne Sophie is a sweet, good hearted little girl. She needs and gets a lot of love and care from mama, papa and grandma. But I can also say that she takes care of them too. You might ask: How is that possible?

Well, she does that by sleeping well through the night, thereby giving mama and papa the much needed rest. She would usually wake up once or twice a night to drink some milk and would then fall asleep again. Even when she wakes up when she is not hungry, she would usually stay relatively quiet. She likes the fact that she can sleep very close to her parents and hear and feel their presence. But what can be a better bed than papa or mama themselves?

She also likes taking long walks together with papa in a special sling. Sometimes during these walks they find mushrooms, and sometimes very big ones!

She often enjoys talking in her own baby language. Sometimes I think that she thinks to herself: "These adults are not developed enough to understand what I am saying. But never mind, they'll learn to understand as they grow up."

A few days ago

Anne Sophie went to a reunion with the kids that she met while still in her mother's womb (the mothers were then following a pregnancy yoga class). It was a lot of fun to see them all with her own eyes! Can you figure out which one is our Annushka on this photo?

Let's pray that she "may be trained, grow and develop, and appear in the utmost beauty."

Thinking about Germany

A very dear German friend of mine (whom I met when studying in Oslo, Norway, and who is now an Assistant Professor in Chinese and Japanese studies at the Barnard College, Columbia University in New York City) remarked to me in a recent letter that she never felt any resentment from my side towards Germany and the German people, given the terrible fates of my family during the Nazi occupation.

This made me really think and reflect on this very sensitive question. What do I really feel about this?

No, I don't feel any resentment towards Germany or the Germans. And how could I? About the time of the rise of Nazism, the German culture produced the two most influential authors in my life: Herman Hesse and Erich Fromm. And how about Meister Eckhart, Bach and Goethe? The great legacy of these people, who reached the heights of the human spirit, will live for centuries to come, while the Nazis will only be remembered for their heinous crimes. The Germany that I know is a fine country, with picturesque countryside, beautiful nature and fairy tale-like medieval towns. The German people that I know are open, kind, hospitable, intelligent, engaged individuals. Off course, there is immense pain and grief and unbelief at the thought of all the dear innocent relatives of mine being cold bloodedly murdered just because they were Jews. And often I cannot help crying over the fate of my little uncles who had to die such a violent death at such an early age. And their loving memory should live and should be passed on to younger generations for as long as possible, but not the feelings of hate or resentment or vengeance.

There is also something else. I myself come from a country that committed horrible atrocities against its own people and people of other nations. Millions upon millions of innocent people have been killed, tortured, starved to death, sent to labour camps. The country of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov produced Stalin and KGB. And while Germany managed to become a flourishing democracy with respect for human rights and for human beings, most countries of the former Soviet Union have remained in the steel grip of the old elite, whereby an individual life is nothing compared to the so-called state interests. Russia is essentially ruled by the once so hated KGB, whose former and present agents and their friends now held all key positions and keep lying and committing unspeakable crimes. So actually I feel much more ashamed of my own country than resentful towards the country that has taken responsibility for and unequivocally condemned the Nazi regime.