School Camp and Free Olympic Games

Monday through Wednesday this week Anne Sophie went to her first school camp! And I went with her! We were both quite excited. She was excited about the camp, because she had no idea what it was. Anne Sophie at her age of 4 is the youngest child at her school, so I was excited about how she would cope for 3 days away from home and from mama. I was also looking forward to getting to better know other children, parents and facilitators from our school De Vrije Ruimte (a democratic school for natural learning).

The camp took place at a wonderful location in the woods outside Eindhoven. We were lucky to get a room for the two of us with a bunk bed, and Anne Sophie immediately claimed the upper bed, which she would climb up and down multiple times.

The camp theme was the Olympic Games, and the kids called it De Vrije Spelen (The Free Games) and designed a logo for the camp that combined the school logo with the Olympic Games logo. So you can imagine that we had 3 days of games and sports, interspersed with creative activities, a disco, a film, meals, camp fires, guitar playing and plenty of leisure time. The location had everything one needs for a sports weekend: footbal fields, basketball, volleyball and tennis courts, a big children's playground, and a huge open air climbing facility!

The sports instructors team (Karin, Willem, Bram & Tamara, all physical training students) did a great job facilitating the sports activities. They brought the whole inventory of ball, rackets, bats, sticks, ropes, and even a slack line! We played football, basketball, tennis, badminton, table tennis, cricket, hockey. There was also athletics (long and high jumping and running), and newspaper-running and sack-racing, and much more. Kids higher than 1.30m did the open air climbing parkours in the trees in the rain. There was so much to choose from, and there was so much freedom to do what you wanted or not do anything special! Anne Sophie was enjoying the camp so much during these 3 days that she hardly ever remembered her mama :)

Anne Sophie kept practicing her jumping and even got a gold medal in the age group of 4-5 years old :) Watch here the video:

It was fun watching how the kids played and interacted with each other. I really felt that education through freedom works. Everybody seemed so at ease and relaxed and accepted and accepting of other people. Everybody could be completely themselves!

I was also impressed by Anne Sophie, by how she interacted with other, often much older children, how she trusted her friends and would do things I wouldn't even imagine she could because of that trust, how brave she is talking to different people and even talking publicly in a large group setting. I am very happy we sent her to this very special, small and unconventional school!

Life is beautiful!

Last week was again full of life! Apart from work, which I enjoy very much these days, I did a lot of interesting stuff:

Monday: 1 hour of spinning lesson and 45 minutes of strength exercies

Tuesday: DevNight at Delta-N about Windows Azure cloud application platform

Wednesday: My Russian friends Konstantin and Sergey came over. We had a great sushi meal, and then talked a lot about programming, so that they left at midnight! It was a very enjoyable eveing!

Thursday: The book club at our local library. We talked about "Het Diner" by Herman Koch. A masterly written novel with a great plot, but, in my opinion, still lacking the depth of the Russian classics. The club was led by journalist Dolf Dukker, who did it very well. His theory why this book becase a best seller, contrary to other Koch's book is that it combines the 4 essential elements of human nature: food, territory, procreation and one other that I forgot. We had a great discussion, and the time flew! The next book is "Two Caravans" in June.

Friday:  Went with Anne Sophie to the Ridvan celebratioin in The Hague. Anne Sophie mad herself at home and played with many different people. But she was dead tired when we got home.

Saturday: First a great workout, then shopping, and then I spent the whole evening playing with the kids on the playground opposite our house. And there they were: my Belarusian-Ukrainian-Jewish daughter, a Moroccan girl, a Hindustan girl, 3 Dutch kids and another boy (I'm not ever sure of his origins), all playing together having fun, oblivious of any ethnic or age differences. We played tag and charades and even danced (they asked me to bring some music, so I brought a portable radio receiver). I often take part in their games, because my daughter is still too small to play unattended. But it also creates a fine feeling of community as I'm getting to better know the people in the neighbourhood (both kids and adults).

Sunday: Cleaned and washed the car, then a spinning workout. Then off to Amsterdam to meet an old Oslo University friend from Lithuania, Sarunas, who was visiting Amsterdam for a weekend. We talked a lot (as did Anne Sophie) and enjoyed a nice lunch at the Vondel park, after which I took them to the airport. Then we went to Lena's birthday in Leiden, ate some good food, talked and played some games with our Russian-speaking friends.

And now a brief summary of my sporting stats:
- 3 home-to-work commutes
- 6 hours of fitness

Anne Sophie Turned 4 Years Old!

Last Sunday, 18 September 2011, at 19:35 our precious daughter Anne Sophie turned 4 years old!

How can I express my feelings for my daughter? She is truly our best friend, the love of our life, our faithful companion in our travels and our everyday life events.

Anne Sophie

with grandma's Ukrainean cat

She may appear shy to those she meets for the first time. But that usually only lasts a few minutes. She is cheerful, playful, funny, smart, enthusiastic, she loves to play and laugh and run around! Her life force and love of life shine through her entire being.

in daddy's shirt on the beach!

She is resilient as she can walk long distances without complaining and she usually doesn't cry or complain when she falls or bumps against something or hurts something. Yet she is a sensitive child and can burst into tears when she sees other children cry. She almost never cries in order to manipulate, so if she does cry, I know that she needs immediate help and attention.

She is daring, yet cautious. She can climb all kinds of rocks and stairs and frames, but she is extremely careful at where she sets her feet and she would immediately ask for help when she realizes she's in trouble.





Anne Sophie likes playing all kinds of imaginative role plays with her toys. It's so much fun watching how she plays the different roles by changing the tone of her voice. At one point she plays a little child and at another point she is a mother or a father or her play group teacher. An interesting thing is that she doesn't play with dolls, but with her toy animals. And yes, in those plays we can hear so many things we tell her played out on her toys, which is a great learning experience for us!

Yes, she is our great teacher. When I sometimes get cross with Luda, Anne Sophie would tell me in a calm, almost mentoring voice: "Папочка, не надо сердиться на мамочку" ("Daddy, don't get angry at mummy.") She can also tell other children what they may or may not do.

She is enthusiastic and curious about the world. I like it when she asks "What is this? Why is that? What did they say?" She likes counting and reading letters and doing puzzles.

All in all, she's an enjoyable, lovable, "easy" child! But of course there are some things that need our attention:

• She likes to go to bed late, I mean really late. She usually gets into bed at about 10 p.m., but then she still wants to play a bit, she wants us to read a book, etc., so it's not unusual that she falls asleep at around 11 p.m., which is of course very late, especially as she is starting school in a couple of weeks. I'm afraid she'll be a late riser, just like her mum :)
• She likes to watch her cartoons either on DVD or on the PC, which is fine, but sometimes she spends too much time doing that. At least she doesn't watch television, in fact none of us do as we gave up our cable TV several years ago.
• She can be very stubborn about what she wants or doens't want to do or eat.
• She doesn't like to clean up and put away her toys (who does?), so our living room often looks like a mess. On the other hand, she gets really enthusiastic when all three of us do the cleaning up together! Just the other day we were giving our kitchen a serious clean-up, and Anne Sophie joined in with all her passion!

On Sunday we had a great birthday party for her with many guests, presents, games, lots of food, and a puppet show that I did together with a friend! It was a really simple story about an elephant that went missing from the zoo, but the kids really loved the show, and I am thinking of using it more often for both entertainment and educational purposes!

In just over a week, Anne Sophie is starting to go to school. It's no ordinary school, but a democratic school based on the principle of natural learning. We are all very excited, and I'll keep you informed about the developments!

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!

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."

Anne Sophie and Religious Experience

In his brilliant work Psychoanalysis and Religion, Erich Fromm describes humanistic religious experience (versus authoritarian one) as "the experience of oneness with the All, based on one’s relatedness to the world as it is grasped with thought and with love." This is an experience of "love for others as well as for oneself and of solidarity of all living beings."

Seeing my baby being born, holding it and caring for it has been a truly religious experience for me. It has evoked in me a deep sense of love, wonderment, tenderness, caring, giving, and not only towards my little girl, but towards the whole world around me. Suddenly, strangers are no longer strangers, and I smile at every person I come across.

This has probably been the most powerful experience of this kind in my life. Other examples include watching my wife as she is sleeping or embroidering or doing something else unaware of my watching her; or wondering at the majestic beauty of nature in the mountains, at the sea or in the countryside; or reading the writings or a book and being struck by the truth conveyed in them; or being with a group of people and suddenly feeling an intense sense of oneness with them.

A dear friend of ours, Suzanne Gerstner, related a similar experience when I shared this with her. She remembered watching her then newly born son Erick (now a bright, kind-hearted young man) and wondering if anything less than a perfect divine being, God, could produce such a perfect little human being.

At this very moment, I am lying in bed with my precious baby half asleep on my chest. I could watch her like this for hours, sensing her breath and all her small movements against my body. My heart is overwhelmed with bliss and almost universal love. I wish and hope I can take this sense of unconditional love into my daily life, showing a little more kindness and appreciation towards everyone I meet!

Anne Sophie - birth and first week

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles
song from The Fiddler on the Roof

Miracles happen every day. Sometimes we have to wait long for them to happen, sometimes years. Our little miracle happened after more than six years of patient waiting and trying, after a number of miscarriages, after an ectopic pregnancy (внематочная беременность), after many medical examinations. Finally, we conceived a child in a completely natural way, and out of seeming nothingness, out of two miniscule cells, out of love of two individuals, a little precious human being came to life!

Anne Sophie Levin was born on Tuesday, September 18, 2007, at the Westeinde Ziekenhuis (hospital) in The Hague, Netherlands. The contractions began early in the morning, and at 4 a.m. we took a 20-minutes ride to the hospital. The labour continued until 6 p.m. under close supervision from an experienced, well trained team of doctors and nurses. My wife Luda worked very hard, enduring often unbearable pain and fatigue. However, the uterus would not open fast enough. The doctors decided that letting the labour go on like this could put the baby at risk and opted for caesarean section. The operation was not easy, because the baby already went quite deep into the birth channel, and was additionally complicated by the presence of a few uterine fibroids. Yet the surgical team under the leadership of Dr. C.A. Yedema did a great job, and at 19:33 our little girl was born!

I was at Luda’s side during the operation and was the first of the two of us to see our little daughter. Luda could see her just very briefly, because the operation had to go on. After the birth, there was a lot of hustle and running around and photographing in the room, and I was given a chance to cut a piece of the umbilical cord and all that. But among all this hustle, the most amazing thing was the little pinky red being squirming in front of me.

I cannot describe my feelings as I was watching my own little baby for the first time. It was a combination of love, wonder and tenderness mixed with anxiety and exhaustion. The girl was so small and precious, she seemed so helpless and fragile … I could not keep tears from flowing. And yet she was amazingly awake and active, looking and kicking around. She wouldn’t cry much, but would rather frown and wriggle when she did not like something.

After she was examined, weighed (3.14 kg, 51 cm) and dressed, I held her in my arms for about an hour and a half until her mother was finally brought back into the labour room. With lights deemed, in complete silence and with classical music in the background, I could not take my eyes off my baby girl, who lay quietly in my arms.

Luda and Anne Sophie stayed in the hospital for 4 days. The doctors and the personnel of the maternity division took very good care of them, for which I am very grateful. Fathers are not allowed to stay in the hospital overnight, so I would come over every day. I’d talk with them, read to them, play the guitar and sing to them.

But what is better than home? We’ve been at home for 3 days now. There is a lot to learn for all three of us: breastfeeding, diaper changing, bathing, etc. Luckily, the Dutch health care system helps you a lot by providing the so-called kraamzorg, whereby a trained nurse comes over every day for a period of 5-7 days to care for the mother and the child, doing all kinds of chores and educating the parents about different aspects of child care.

Now a few words about the name. Anne Sophie is named after all four of her great-grandmothers (may they rest in peace): Hannah (Dasha) Levin-Pukhovich, Sofia Barshay-Disman, Hanna Verbnaya and Hanna Suslenko. The name Anne is derived from the biblical Hebrew name Hannah or Channah meaning grace, charm or mercy. Sophie is a Greek name meaning wisdom. So we pray for our Anne Sophie to grow up as a graceful, charming, kindhearted, compassionate and wise human being.

Now about the date: 18-9-2007 was a special day in The Netherlands. It was the third Tuesday of September, and hence a prinsjesdag, the day on which the Queen, cheered by the crowds of her loyal subjects, rides in her golden carriage from the Noordeinde palace to the Binnenhof in The Hague to open the parliamentary season with a speech outlining the government policies for the coming year. Well, all of this was happening just a couple of hundred meters away from the Westeinde hospital, where Luda was labouring. There is a wonderful view over the city from the 12th floor of the maternity division, but we couldn’t actually see anything going on, because of the narrow streets lined with stately houses.

Those of you who like number 9 will be amuzed to notice that the day, month and year of Anne Sophie’s birth are all multiples of 9. Number 9 is the highest single-digit number (at least in base ten :)) and symbolizes completeness in the Baha’i Faith. Number 18 is special in Judaism, for this is the numeric value of the Hebrew word life (chai).

As a pleasant surprise, as if a reward for her hard work and patience, the day after the birth, Luda received a letter from the Dutch Naturalization Service saying that the Queen approved her application for Dutch citizenship! Congratulations!

Well, this was the story of the birth of Anne Sophie Levin. Through this blog, I’ll keep you up to date on how she is getting on. If you pray, please pray for her health, growth and development!

Click on the image below to see some pictures of Anne Sophie!

Anne Sophie Levin - first week

Here you can find out more about the history and genealogy of the family Levin.

New generation

Well, while our dear older generation is slowly passing away into a next world, the young generation is vigorously pressing forward into this one. This year alone were born:

Name	Born	Place	Happy parents
Pinchas Stern	Mar 17, 2007	Jerusalem, Israel	Dina Tunik & Andy Stern
Alexander Jacob Chterental	Mar 27, 2007	Boston, MA, USA	Eugenia Perelman & Igor Chterental
Lilach Tunik	May 8, 2007	Jerusalem, Israel	Elena & Evgeny Tunik
Peri Sylvia Teten	Aug 30, 2007	New York, NY, USA	Luba Kozlova & David Teten
Anne Sophie Levin	Sep 18, 2007	The Hague, Netherlands	Luda Verbnaya & Leonid Levin

All in all, starting from my great-grandfather Simche Levin (1873 - 1941), the youngest (4th) generation of his descendants now counts 15 (16 as of 9/18/07) children, from a couple of days to 23 years old! And I hear there is someone else on the way :)

Here you can find out more about the history and genealogy of the family Levin.