Spring Break!

We were going to take a road trip down to the California redwoods for spring break, but instead we decided to stay home and do fun things around here. Things we don't usually do. We each got to pick something that we wanted to try together as a family.

After a little family bike ride, Dutch-style, we began spring break with a trip to the zoo.

We usually go up at Christmas time for the zoo lights. I don't think the kids even remember being there in the daylight. Annabel kept asking when we were going to see the bats. Not so interesting during the day.

Alexander and Michiel drove up to Vancouver for Gamestorm. Now they have plenty of new games on their wish lists.

My pick for a spring break adventure was ice skating. Annabel was a bit shaky but seemed to do much better when she wasn't holding onto anyone. Alexander loved it! Just loved it! He wants to go back right away.

I got away for an overnight trip to the beach with a couple of girlfriends. Nasty weather, but we didn't mind one bit. While I was gone, the rest of the family tried out Superbounce.

The thing that Annabel wanted to try over spring break was skateboarding. (She also wanted to climb a mountain, but we didn't quite make that happen.) We hit up Uncle Eric to bring his skateboards and give a lesson. Super fun!

And what vacation would be complete without a night of eating dinner in front of the TV? Alexander even coerced us into buying TV dinners!

Next year maybe we'll take a road trip, but this year's spring break was perfect!

Annabel is 4!

Annabel turned four on February 21st. Here is a portrait of our girl at four:

Annabel is our lover. She loves to snuggle. Loves to kiss. Loves to love. Whenever Michiel and I hug or kiss, she has to get in the middle of it. She calls it a sandwich hug. 

She is not at all shy, and gives hugs to people she just met. It is a little heartbreaking to watch her offer hugs to her brother and see him reject them again and again.

Annabel is earnest about everything she does. She lives in moments of intense emotion--quick to cry, quick to laugh. She is determined, yet thoughtful and observant.

She loves to help with everything. Laundry, cooking, cleaning. And she's so articulate and capable that we sometimes forget how young she is and expect too much of her.

She's very social, and sometimes it's hard for her to play by herself. A common refrain when we are home together is, "But I want an adult to do it with me!"

She's turning out to be a little girly-girl, but she's keeping her spunk, so we're happy. She likes getting dirty, doesn't mind spiders, and loves to rough-house.

Annabel's favorite colors are pink, blue, gold, and silver. She loves dressing up and having "princess hair." That's when I put a bunch of little twisty buns in her hair at night, and she wakes up in the morning with curly hair. Often, she'll gaze at herself in the mirror and say, "I look beautiful."

Now that Annabel is in preschool, she's coming home with all sorts of new skills. She is so eager to read and write. Everywhere we go she sounds out words or picks up a pencil to write. Here's the shopping list she made for her birthday.*

The older she gets, the more I realize that Annabel is my girl. She loves to run and is almost as fast as her brother. I've been taking her to my drama and art classes, something Alexander never wanted to do. Annabel jumps right in. My little budding actor-artist! Here's a picture of the painting she did for her birthday. I came up with the Kandinsky idea, but she did all the painting.

Happy Birthday, Annabel!


*whipping cream, cupcakes, m&m's, frosting

Alexander is 7!

His birthday was February 9th and I'm finally getting around to writing...

I can't believe my boy is seven already! He's getting so tall and thin, and all his teeth are falling out and growing in crooked. Pretty picture I paint, ain't it?

Here's a portrait of our boy at seven:

He still has his lovely musical laugh, which we get to hear when we play chasing or tickling games or if we make pee, poop, or fart jokes. He has started to reject many of our jokes, even getting really mad if he thinks we're poking fun at him. Admittedly, sometimes we are. Lovingly, of course.

Alexander has always liked to follow the rules. He likes everything to be the way it's supposed to be. Drawers closed. Everything in order. So, I've thought, "Alexander is like me." But now that he's in school, I'm realizing that he's not like me in all sorts of other ways. I loved school. Just loved it. And I worked really hard to make all of my work perfect. We're realizing that with school, Alexander is a whole lot more like Michiel.

He's really proud of his math skills, but reading has been more of a struggle. Struggle for us, not him. You see, our boy is not a performer. (Like Michiel.) He doesn't like to do things in front of other people until he's sure he can do it just right. (Like me.) So, we don't actually know how well he reads because he will do anything to get out of reading time with us. Now, being read to is another story. That he can do until my voice croaks.

He has high standards for himself in things he thinks are important. Obviously, not cleaning his room or brushing his teeth. But he keeps saying he's not a very good lego-builder, that he's not very creative. it hurts my heart to hear his say that when I know that he's an amazing builder. Not only does he look up building instructions online and then modify for the pieces he's missing, but he also comes up with his own amazing designs.

Finally, I realized that when he says he's not a very good builder, he's comparing himself to the master builders he's seen profiled in his lego books or the builders who go to expos and show off their 4ft tall praying mantises. Well, yeah. He's not that good.

Not yet.

We wish he'd do more things for others of his own free will. He can get kind of wrapped up in himself. But then he'll bust out with a profusion of kindness, helping me pick up the living room without being asked, noticing that Mieke needs attention and giving it to her.

He does love his youngest sister. Unfortunately, right now he often wants to hold her or grab her when she wants to walk. Tears ensue. On both sides.

At the beginning of the school year, we began giving Alexander an allowance. He's very serious about it and likes to plan what he's going to buy when he saves up enough. It's always something lego-related. I thought he might go crazy and buy lots of gum or other things we don't let him have regularly, but all he does is save up for his next lego set.

Alexander has become a great eater, trying new things and loving them. He likes to play games and has learned to have fun even when he doesn't win. He thrives best when he gets enough quality time with us.

Oh, and did you see that cake? Am I the best mom or what?

Papa!

First words are so hard for me to pinpoint. Mieke has been saying, "Ma-ma-ma-ma," for months now, but it's not always directed at me. With prompting, she will say, "up," when she wants to be picked up. And she says, "Abba," an awful lot. At first, we thought she was trying to say, "Annabel," but it comes out in all sorts of situations when Annabel isn't around. Maybe it's a general word to mean family-member-that-I-love. Who knows.

But yesterday, her word was very clear. I was nursing. Michiel came home from work. Mieke sat up, looked at him, got a huge smile on her face, waved her arms, and said, "Papa!"

It made Michiel's day.

Mieke at One Year

Our littlest girl is one year old! I can hardly believe it. Poor thing was all snotty and tired for her party on Thursday. She whined when we tried to feed her cake. Awful parents!

Well, she's not walking yet but does take a couple of shuffling steps here and there.

Here's a portrait of Mieke at one:

Nicknames: Miss Mieke, Miek, the Miekster, Mieke-la, Mieke-pie

She's still about 25lbs and plenty rolly-polly although all the moving around is thinning her out a bit.

She is the happiest, most content baby ever. Annabel's teacher calls her "the baby of the world." And she really is. She makes you want to stop everything and just hold her or be with her in whatever exciting learning/eating/bathing moment she's engrossed in at the moment. We said she would be our Buddha baby, and one year in, she definitely is.

She loves bath time. Often, when she hears us start the bathwater, she will stop whatever she's doing, throw down her toy, and crawl just as fast as her little knees will carry her to the bathroom. Usually, Alexander and Annabel fight about who gets to be in the bath with her. About a week ago, she discovered Alexander's penis and had to use her pointer-finger to boing it until he finally had enough and called for help. "Maaaaamaaa! Mieke won't leave my piemel alone!"

The other thing that she gets really excited about is dogs. She hasn't been around too many, and I think big ones are exempt from this. But when we put her on the floor with a small dog, she goes crazy with delight. She squeals and claps and giggles, making all sorts of sounds we don't hear at any other time. She follows the dog around and is surprisingly gentle when she tries petting.

Mieke just recently learned how to give kisses. So, now when I say, "Kiss?" she will dive toward my face with her slobbery mouth wide open. If she really likes me, she'll have her tongue out. Oh, these days are so precious.

When Alexander was a baby, he used to nurse on one breast and place a proprietary hand on the other. Mieke has her own version of this. She whips up her foot and places it on my shoulder or chest, as if to say, "All this? It's mine!"

A few things about her emerging personality:

• So far she's very good at listening. We usually only have to tell her not to touch something a couple of times before she leaves it alone. Maybe she'll try again next week but often only halfheartedly. It makes baby-proofing really easy!
• She's a little builder. She's so interesting in learning how to stack and build. She hardly ever knocks over towers and is always trying to add to what the kids are building. And she can play with tiny Lego pieces for 10 minutes before it occurs to her to put them in her mouth.
• Loves to be outside
• Loves, loves, loves her big brother and sister...even when they are manhandling her and throwing things at her and knocking her down. She just laughs and thinks they are the greatest.

Zoo Lights!

Ooops! I wrote this in December but forgot to post it:

Every year we make a trip up to the Portland Zoo for their zoo lights display. It's really quite dazzling and the kids LOVE it. This year we brought along a couple of school friends, and the four kids ran from one light display to the next with shouts of joy and awe. 

The highlights, aside from the lights themselves, were the bats and the elephants. The bats were awake and active, "walking" along upside-down, fighting over food, and just being their creepy, batty selves.

In the elephant house, we had a good laugh. The mama elephant stood facing away. All we could see was her swaying backside. Her back was covered with sawdust, and there was straw and sawdust and large lumps of elephant poop scattered on the floor around her. Beneath her feet, lying on his side was the baby elephant.

"Do you see the baby elephant?" I asked the row of kids with their noses pressed to the glass.

"Ye-es!" they chorused.

"I see the baby elephant!" Annabel yelled. "And look! I see more baby elephants!"

"Where?" the other kids asked.

"There!" She pointed away from the mother and baby to the far side of the enclosure to the brown lumps lying on the floor.

"Those aren't baby elephants, Annabel," said her brother. "That's poop."

And then the boys started in on the poop jokes. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

Welcome 2014!

Happy New Year everyone!

Well, my prediction did not exactly come true. I can't really say that Mieke was walking by the end of the year. But on New Year's Eve she did take five steps. Five lurching, about-to-fall-over steps. But five steps nonetheless.

And she leaves 2013 behind with a total of four teeth. Two on top, two on bottom.

We celebrated the new year with two other families, games galore, and fondue. And I didn't hear one resolution all night. Alexander made it to midnight and beyond, but both Annabel and Mieke conked out early.

Happy New Year!