sunday snippets...

note: this post is actually from sunday, while the previous one only says it's from sunday (it's actually from saturday) - i had to edit my saturday post because i horrendously misspelled a fresian word - oh well, at least i'm trying! on to sunday:

the aunt we are currently staying with can do amazing things with a sewing machine, so last night i brought out my single memento from denmark - this pack of fabric pieces:



it's not particularly danish, but i thought it would be a special reminder of our trip to denmark for me to make something for missy out of this pack. husband translated some sewing advice, which was hugely helpful to me, and hugely mind-blowing for him. i might make a start while we're still here, but otherwise, this will be my next fun project when we get home.

we've just gotten back from visiting one of husband's uncles at his farm - what a beautiful spot!



missy got to meet his stunning black horses - who had her clawing omke's shirt whenever they neighed - and was so worn out from all the fresh air and excitement that she fell asleep as soon as we got home, in this position:



take care,
em

fun in the sun...

the weather here has been prachtig - beautiful - these past few days, and we've been enjoying it... at the town party:





well, only husband enjoyed this bit (as in, i didn't go):



and at the pool with husband's cousin, his partner and their little boy:



missy loved the floaty ring at the pool, because it meant she could move around wherever she wanted without assistance. she's trying to be so independent now that she can crawl around - climbing and pulling up on things, prefering to self-feed rather than spoon-feed, etc. a whole new world has opened up to her!

take care,
em

the denmark experience - part 2...

after arriving in roskilde at lunch time on monday, we caught the train into copenhagen and crammed in as many sights as we could in one afternoon, which was actually a fairly stressful way of doing things. then getting back to roskilde proved challenging, because we couldn't figure out which train we needed to catch - a frustrating thing for two stubbornly independent people like husband and i. at least danish people are helpful, and they thought missy was cute, which made them even more happy to help us.

tuesday was a much more pleasant day - here's a pic of husband and missy as we cruised the canals of copenhagen on a tour:



this was a real highlight for me - seeing so many landmarks while enjoying some time out on the water.

tuesday evening was another highlight for us, as we explored roskilde. here's a pic of a random wheat field that we discovered - it turns out the field holds the ruins of buildings from medieval times, and the wheat crop is grown to help keep the field undisturbed. you can see boats on the fjord in the distance:



a real lowlight of our trip is the next photo. i'm tempted to keep this to myself and never speak of it, lest i suffer the wrath of both my mother and husband's mother, but in the interest of being honest, i will share. we stayed in a bed and breakfast type arrangement in roskilde, which turned out to be more like a converted loft in the home of some empty-nesters looking to make some extra cash without having to do very much. anyway... we forgot to ask if there was a baby bed available. and there wasn't. so after racking our brains, we decided the best (i.e. safest) solution was to make a little cage for missy so she could sleep on the floor and not escape. she did not like it all that much. but she got some sleep, as this pic proves:



we're sorry miss! we'll never do this again!

but this last pic, taken at husband's aunt and uncle's dairy farm in germany, where we spend wednesday night, shows that we have not scarred her for life:



(the picture is coloured orange because of the sun shining through the orange curtains in the room we stayed in.)

it was fantastic to meet some more of husband's family - they were exceedingly generous, we felt very welcomed and it was great to see their farm at work. we enjoyed lots of sunshine and strawberries here before heading back to the netherlands to stay with another of husband's aunts and uncles, which is where we are now.

phew. that will do.

i hope all is going well with you, wherever you are.

take care,
em

the denmark experience - part 1...

julia gillard, eh? the things that go on when you're out of the country...

we arrived back in the netherlands from our trip to denmark (via germany) yesterday - and it's certainly good to be back in a country where one of us at least can understand the language!

here is the hire car that we've been travelling around in for the past week:



conspicuous, no? at least we never had any trouble finding it in carparks... we kept getting funny looks from other drivers on the autobarns in germany, which made husband a little concerned about his driving until we realised that people were dumbstruck by our car...

here is a pic of the harbour at fredericia, the danish town we stayed in last sunday night:



the hotel we stayed in didn't deliver on many of the things it promised (i.e. hot water and wireless internet - thank God for mcdonalds for the latter), and the wine we had with dinner ended up costing more than the two mains put together, but the beds were comfy and the breakfast was huge and delicious, so i think our time here was positive overall.

it's a bit hard to show it in a photo (especially a photo taken from a moving vehicle), but this is a pic of the enormous bridge we crossed to get from the second danish island to the one where copenhagen is (can you tell that i know a lot about denmark now?):



the bridge is engineering at its most excellent, but the more husband told me about the way the bridge managed to stay stable, the less i wanted to know (because it was scary, not because it was boring.) clearly i don't trust cables and concrete pillars as much as i could.

we decided to stay in a town called roskilde for monday and tuesday nights, taking the train into copenhagen (35km away), to avoid having to drive and park in the city (a good move.) here's a pic of us eating lunch on monday, having selected things from the menu because we understood 20% of the words in the meal's description:



luckily our surprise lunches proved delicious :)

i will leave this post here and recount the second part of our trip in new post. all this scrolling up and down is making me concerned that i'm about to destroy my work...

take care,
em

the planetarium...

yesterday we went to the eise eisinga planetarium. science is not something i am normally all that interested in, but this place is amazing - it makes me wish i'd paid more attention in maths at school! the image below (which has changed colour for some reason...) shows the scale model of the solar system that a bloke named eise eisinga made on the ceiling of his living room. using only mathematics, he was able to calculate and create a scale model of the solar system as he understood it in 1774 (so no uranus or neptune), where the planets hanging from his ceiling orbit the sun hanging from his ceiling at exactly the same rate as the real planets do. his motivation was to address a theory being promoted at the time that the planets were going to collide, push the earth into the sun and cause the end of the world - his model demonstrates that could not happen. the model also includes a clock, calendar, moon rising and setting times and astrological seasons, and it's been running continuously (aside from repair work) since it was finished in 1781, making it the oldest and longest running planetarium in the world.



tomorrow we are heading off on our road trip to denmark. we'll be back next thursday, and i'm not sure what access i'll have to the internet while we're away, so i may not blog again until after then. hope you're all going well.

take care,
love em

guess who's crawling...?!

when we first arrived here last sunday, out of the blue, missy figured out how to get from her tummy to a sitting position - she'd never done that in australia before. she also attempted a sort of one-step crawling manovere that day - she assumed the position, moved forward once and plopped back down on her stomach. but yesterday afternoon, with no real fanfare, missy again assumed the crawling position and proceeded to move towards a tasty-looking leaf she could see off in the distance. i'm so excited for her, and it's hilarious to watch a little person toddle around on their hands and knees!



take care,
em

cycling in the dutch countryside...

cycling is such a fantastic way to get around in this part of the netherlands. though it can be quite windy (attested to by the many wind turbines that litter the landscape), it's been really refreshing to get out on the fiets (bike) - i am extremely keen to get a baby bike seat for missy when we get home. and here's missy on the bike, near the park where pake used to take husband and his brothers to feed the ducks:



missy has taken to the bike like a fish to water. in fact, she fell asleep while we were riding home on tuesday, she was so relaxed! in the past couple of days, we have cycled to several places that have significance for husband - his pake's old house, his old house, his old school, etc. we also visited pake and beppe's grave, returning a day after this photo was taken to plant a bright yellow flower in the soil:



yesterday we cycled to the seaside town where omke moors his boat, to meet omke and tante as tante arrived back from her holiday. we spent the afternoon on their boat, enjoying the sunshine. here is missy enjoying the bunk bed, where she was supposed to be sleeping:



hope things are going well for you.

take care,
em

from the netherlands...

hello from holland! it's monday morning here, and i'm writing after a great night's sleep, which itself comes after being awake for 41 hours straight (i didn't sleep at all on the flight!) - well, that is, if you don't count the involuntary powernap shane and i had on the couch yesterday evening (omke went to start dinner and came back to two sleeping beauties!) missy slept a reasonable amount on the plane, though we were without bassinet from kl to amsterdam, so her inflight sleep was a bit restless. she is much better today, and here is a pic of the lovely one herself, happily playing in the sunlit patch under the window of her bedroom this very morning. (the dutch really know how to design houses to maximise natural light!)



husband's family have been so wonderful and generous at welcoming us. we are currently staying with husband's aunt and uncle in a gorgeous village - here's the view from our bedroom window:



yesterday arvo we took a walk to pake's old house, in an attempt to stay awake so as to adjust to this time zone, and to just enjoy the beauty and family-relevance of where we are - that's it on the left:



today will be another quiet one, just exploring the local area - perhaps even by bike!

take care,
em

some gifts for missy...

last night i finished off a few little things for missy to take to the netherlands - two pairs of slippers, this time in patterned fabric, and a ribbon blanket. when missy was first born i found the concept of a ribbon blanket a little odd, but since she's developed a fascination with tags and the tassles on our rug in the last couple of months, i now get it. i'm hoping the ribbons will go some way to keeping her entertained on the plane, but at the very least, the blanket will enable many games of peek-a-boo. it's cord on the front (though the mid-blue panels are cotton) and fleecy on the back, so it's soft and fluffy to touch.



(the blanket actually has missy's name on it, but since i've gone to the effort of not using her name on this blog so far, i thought it best to cover it up with the slippers. i'm pretty sure everyone who reads this blog knows what her name is anyway!)

take care, will blog next from the netherlands,
em

i am thankful...

today, a day in which missy has cried more than she has cried in a long time, and so i am feeling extremely edgy, i am thankful for a lot of things.

i am thankful for the family and friends who have wished us well as we get ready to jet off for a few weeks - for their phone calls, their prayers and their genuine hope that we have a really great time. for the friend who tagged-team with me at bible study this morning, rocking and walking and trying to convince missy to sleep in her pram (with eventual success.) for my mother-in-law's knitting prowess and problem-solving abilities, as she professionally adjusted a lovely knitted jumper so that missy's head can fit through the neck hole. for the generosity of mums who are a few steps ahead of me, who've given us their no-longer-needed baby paraphernalia. for the way that God moved me to go back outside and deal with the semi-recyclable items our neighbour put into our bin, which i had self-righteously pulled out and tossed aside, with loving kindness instead of pride and selfishness. and these things are just from this morning.



(can you see the breadcrumbs in my carpet?)

take care,
em

edit: here's another pic i took after i posted the above...

almost ready...

we're almost ready to go. if only i could get the rest of my washing dry. after the undeniable cold of this week, the warmth of early summer in the netherlands is sounding very good indeed!



take care,
em

curiosity at work...

missy's been loving our guitar this week. i enjoyed watching the kids at school exploring the guitar last year, and missy is just as captivating - pulling the strings and listening, tapping the body, running her fingers down the tuning pegs, giving the guitar a big lick, etc. she's even using it as a prop for standing up - she stood up in her baby bath last week as well, holding on to the side of the big bath, so even though she still hasn't bothered to crawl forwards, there's plenty of development going on in the movement department. i love watching missy's explorations - it's so refreshing to see her curiosity at work, particularly the workings of a mind that doesn't assume it already knows everything it needs to know (like i often do!)



take care,
em

like it?

from this (excuse the serious faces):



to this:



like my new haircut?

take care,
em

my creative space - no more sock-chasing...

this week's creative space features the same turquoise cord fabric as last week, though this time fashioned into a wee pair of shoes for missy. after growing weary of picking her socks up off the ground every place we go, i decided that it was finally time to use the baby shoe tutorial i found here, and churn out some slippers. so here they are:



the tutorial is very easy to follow and is sized for babies of 6-9 months of age. i felt fairly tense sewing an 1/8 inch seam around the sole of the shoe, seeing as i've largely only sewn in straight lines up until this point, so my plan for next time is to enlarge the pattern (which i'll need to do anyhow, as missy's foot is almost too long) and try sewing a 1/4 inch seam instead, which i can trim afterwards. advice on whether this plan is doomed to fail would be appreciated!



missy's been wearing her slippers all morning, and they haven't even thought about falling off. huzzah!

take care,
em

the most unfavourite...

lunch is definitely my most unfavourite meal of the day. i suspect if i was able to eat wheat and dairy, and so have melted cheese sandwiches everyday, i would like lunch a lot more. but i can't, so i don't. which is why i've been making soup so often lately. i thought i'd broaden my horizons this time and include vegetables of colours other than orange. i had quite a rainbow:



shame that when you mix them together they produce this colour:



oh well, the soup tastes good but.

take care,
em

baking biscuits...

i've just baked these anzac biscuits for our bible study group tonight, and i'm so pleased they've turned out well. this recipe brings back vivid memories of the night missy was due to be born (which turned out to be 6 nights before she was actually born.) i used this recipe to bake some biscuits so i'd have something in the house if people came to visit, but in my fat-lady-"hurry-up-and-be-born-now-baby" haste, they turned out quite badly - the butter and golden syrup separated from the rest of the mix while they were in the oven, so the biscuits spread out and were really hard - i've never had a "cooking fail" quite like it! husband and i ate them anyway, they tasted okay if you were prepared to test your teeth out on their rock-like exterior, so they were mostly gone by the time missy actually arrived, but i'm still not quite sure what went wrong that night.

now our house smells like biscuits. mmmm...

take care,
em