Sometimes I get on my bike and Colin and I wander around the city. On these wanderings, I find cool places like this picturesque country-style home .
I also found a lovely park, which I recently took Andrew to this weekend.
Right next to the children's farm is this little gym area so that the parents can work out while their kids play in the park. Novel idea!
Colin grabbed his diapers and carried them in his mouth and I thought it was too cute! I have a post that I update with little things like this and it's about Cute Things Colin Says Or Does.
When you take a child into a bakery or butchery, they offer a piece of sausage or bread to your child. It is a common practice and I think it is to entice the child to want to come back and then the mother will too. Colin loves sausage.
When you have a newborn you have to either have a car to get around or you take public transportation everywhere. The other option is to put a Maxi-Cosi (what seems like THE only car seat manufactured in Europe ) into a bakfiets (the box bikes that your older kids sit in) but that is not for the everyday Dutch mom. Most women won't touch a bike until their baby can sit up well. I found this lady who installed some kind of device to hold her baby's car seat on the front of the bike. Problem solved.
Our raw kefir bottle has the creepiest picture of these faceless alien forms sucking from the bull's teets. I don't know why and it scares me. Too many questions. Can a bull even have teets?
We went on a date to a carnival and just kinda walked around. Everything had American celebrities on it and a lot of stuff in weird English. I loved that this was the place to hang out if you were a teenager. I got a picture of these groups of teens and most were smoking.
Colin ends up in our bed in the mornings and this is the only way he can fall asleep, sideways across my body, on his stomach, with his head falling off the side of my body. It cracks me up and I wonder if it has to do with the fact that for the first two months of his life, he slept in my arms and across my body.
Sometimes during the day we send selfies to papa at work.
The grocery store has these mini carts so that your child can be involved in the grocery shopping and feel independent. I LOVE IT! So adorable.
This is Carolina. Her mother and grandmother are in our ward. She is almost 3 months older than Colin and she is gorgeous, caramel skinned, and blue eyes. Her mother is Brazilian and her father is Surinamese. Her grandmother, Anna, is my friend and loves practicing her English with me. She is recovering from breast cancer and I enjoy listening to her and talking about baby stuff and we love comparing our languages. She is so sweet and so is Carolina. Unfortunately Luma, Carolina's mom, is hard to get together with because she works.
Anna has a huge bunny and you can't even see his eyes because he is so fluffy!
Colin gets into everything while I'm not looking and also when I am looking.
Andrew is living the dream and growing his hair out so that he can rock a sexy man bun (mun). It's only been a year since he cut it short (thanks BYU) so we are happy that his hair grows quickly.
Debbie is in Britain again and had a layover in Amsterdam. We met up in the airport where she brought us a carry on full of some of our stuff and presents. We loved seeing family even if it was for a couple of hours.
I thought that putting your child in church nursery was only for when they turn 18 months but apparently that is to keep it from being too big. When your child is 1 of two consistent children under 3 who go to church, they take your child for you. Andrew stole into nursery and took a picture of Colin playing in a toy house.
The church has a flourishing and diverse garden in the back. The Dutch are huge on gardening and so I am excited to learn from them so that I can start my own when I feel the time is right. I want to show Colin where real food comes from.
I enjoy teaching the Old Testament to the English speaking members of the ward. I once told Andrew that this exact calling would be my least favorite and lo and behold I got it. I actually needed to learn the Old Testament better and I surely am not teaching the class too much new stuff or giving amazing insight but rather guiding a discussion.
Everyone at Andrew's work knows that Andrew is Mormon and they are nice about it. I say that because many Dutch people believe that if you believe in God and religion then you are absolutely crazy and that religion was a thing of olden times.
An intern named Ziqi from China, studying in Milan, grew up Christian and has come to church with us and met with the missionaries a couple of times but he must now return to Milan and then Germany. We will be keeping in touch and are excited about his enthusiasm for Mormonism.
As you can see, he is the biggest Chinese person we have ever met. He is much taller than Andrew.
Lastly, I read this book, "Bringing up Bebe" which gives an American perspective on French parenting. There are some great gems in there and I am totally following them.
It has helped to get some more French child-rearing vocabulary under my belt. As you can see from this picture below, I have a lot of parenting to do and I want to be prepared and have some idea of what I will do before things are happening and I am in the heat of the moment.
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