Kyria's journal

Last week was kind of stressful due to all the things that needed to be done and ascencion day cutting the week short. Intold my manager that I was leaving and he tried to make me a counter offer. Sweet but no thanks. The contract for the new job was signed on Wednesday. Unfortunately my new salary is exactly the same as my old salary. Due to slight changes in pension and such my netto salary will be a little bit higher than what I am used to, and there is room to grow so that’s good.  

I am a bit angry at E for being away so much last week. He was away three nights, rehearsal on saturday between 11.00-17.00 and he had a stomach flu thing on Sunday. It felt like I had to do a lot of thibgs on my own instead of doing fun things as a family. 

Amélie is behind in her growth so a lactation consultant dropped by to see how she feeds and gave us a new schedule. I would love to not having to pump milk when I start my new job, and I really would like to get more sleep. She currently feeds at 19.00,24.00,03.00,06.00,10.00,12.00,16.00. Things could be worse but things could be so much better as well! Bottle fed children are supposed to drink 4 bottles of 200ml at her age. A doesn’t understand eating solids. She is enjoying sitting with us at the table and playing with her spoon and her food.

We received the information for when Eliza is going to school in novenber. She’s so big and sassy, I love having her around and I love having her experience school and make new friends. Mixed feelings, but all good. 

 Last week we both took the week off from work and we had some free time with our family. It has struck me that we're probably doing this holiday thing all wrong, as we didn't actually go on holiday. We stayed at home! I had a rough week before our holiday week, as E was out hunting for two days so I had to take care of Eliza and Noushka by myself for three full days. The other three I worked, two evenings I taught and on the seventh day we visited my mother in law. I was kind of dead after that.

But our holiday week was different! 

Monday
we went to the zoo in Amersfoort, where they have done a nice job of turning the old zoo into a mix between animal habitats (they have less animals, but the animals they do have variation and room. They also used very heavy plexiglass so we could be really close to the animals. We had a tiger lying against the glass, about 10 inches away from us. They also added 'jungle routes' for the kids. Kids can clim and use slides to get to small windows that look into the enclosure. For example a rabbit hole where they can go underground, or a tree top walk over the wolves. Very nice. Eliza loved it and so did we!

Tuesday
We brought Eliza and Noushka to their regular day care and E and I went to the city and had lunch. We bought some clothes (socks and underwear, I got me a pair of skeleton leggings because I wanted those for dance class). Got some really nice food at a restuaurant before it was time to head back. We also bought two new metal frying pans from the fancy shop with cooking equipment. We don't want to fry things in teflon pans any more, and these pans are expensive but they last for ages.

Wednesday
E and N went to daycare so we could go to Alexandrium, a large mall with loads of furniture and 'style' rooms. We're not happy with our current livingroom: it's okay but everything is old and it doesn't match. ever since we moved in together we have a bit of an eclectic thing going on with furniture that functions perfectly fine, but isn't something we both like. We got some nice ideas and a bit of a shock from the price tags. I guess that buying from IKEA has made us forget how expensive high quality furniture is. I also think that buying brand new designer ANYTHING isn't a good idea with a young kid and a dog.

Thursday
We visited the Miffy museum in the center! It was busy and Eliza was a bit put off at first. All that noise and random stuff going on, she wasn't having any of it. She loved seeing Miffy and wanted to kiss her statue, and got to playing after a while. It is a really cute museum, with Miffy's house, a zoo/farm, a place where kids can play with a hand puppet theater and everything designed to play with. Very nice. I bought a Pomelo at the local toko in the inner city that turned out to be unripe and a bit of a disapointment. A well. That's the only thing I miss: a nice toko or Turkish store with fresh herbs. I bought a big bunch of fresh Turkish mint and drank hipster tea for the rest of the day. Eliza also liked the bike ride as she can look around and see all kinds of things. She kept on talking about it.

Friday
My mum came over to play with Eliza and E and I took the opportunity to visit IKEA. We looked at the furniture but couldn't find something that would fit our needs. Instead we bought a colorful tarp and two cushions to match. Our house now has a splash of color in it! It freshens it up a bit and makes it more playful. E took care of the two hares he took home with him the week before, and we ate hare for dinner. It was delicious.

Saturday
I went to Bussum to meet upo with Sense of Bellydance. We had a rather productive meeting (mostly talk) about our group photoshoot at the end of November. It went all over the place and I was a bit weirded out because the others were looking at me often, looking for approvement or agreement with the choices. Might be because I have done over twelve shoots and I carefully suggested that some of the ideas would look great but would also take out a big bite of our time with the photographer, that woul dbe bette spend on taking images. Plus bringing cushions, drapes and other items might sound like a great idea, but it only clutters up the image and makes it harder to photoshop/use for the flyer.

I asked them on advice for the studio and sort of had a break down (break through?) because things are growing over my head. My friends offered great advice and a shoulder to cry on.

When I got home, Eliza was asleep so I sat down and wasted time on Facebook instead of dancing. We hang around the house because it was rainy. I started painting Eliza's chair that she got from Little Brother when she was born. Turns out that the dance studio is also perfect for small furniture painting projects.

Sunday
E got inspired by my painting and he went out and painted the windowframe in front of the house. The one we replaced over two years ago and still needed to be painted. That one. I was elated. I took Eliza out with the cargo bike and we made a tour through the park, went to the stores and back home. More easy dinner was made (I love having stuff in the freezer that I can throw in the oven or in a pan and it's ready). It was another nice occassion to try our new frying pans and I love using them.

In short, the holiday was great though it was over way too fast :-( I look forward to December: we have two weeks off between Christmas and the second week of January. I have to admit that I am exhausted and I need to tune down a bit on various activities. I'm almost done with painting Eliza's chair (yay!) and we're planning ahead for her second birthday in a couple of weeks. Funny how time flies by.

Remember when I said the house is almost done? Well... whatever the builders were doing is done. It is now up to us to finish the rest and the list is getting longer and more expensive every time I think about it.

1. Get curtain rods up
2. decide what curtains we want, order them/buy them
3. put hearth back into the living room
4. put furniture back.
5. build temporary tv cabinet out of boxes and a shelf
6. E wants to build the bookcases by himself. Meaning four weeks of MDF, screws, painting, etc.
7. get Eliza's toys out of storage
8. buy more outlet protectors. Those things are way too interesting for Eliza
9. Get the paint splashes off the windows/tiles
10. Wash windows. Ugh.
11. clean everything AGAIN. Lots of dust coming from unexpected places
12. order new garden fence.
13. order new fence for side of the house for privacy reasons (Bay window gives excellent view from the street)
14. buy or make flowerbed for the garden
15. Buy sand for the garden, redo all the tiling
16. Wait for plants to grow through thick layer of construction debris, or get shuffle and start digging
17. buy new plants anyway, put them in flowerbeds on top of debris. Fixed it.
18. teach dog to not open doors to garden by herself. Fail. Drink wine
19. Be sad about the state of chaos in our house. drink more wine.
20. peek inside other people's houses while walking the dog to get ideas for interior design
21. decide that having furntiure and curtains in the first place is more important
22. Pet the dog. She's such a sweet girl. Reprimand dog for begging while Eliza's eating in her high chair
23. Hope that Elia will sleep through the night tonight
24. Mourn the loss of havign a clean and put togehter house, outfit, make-up and meals. Celebrate hugs, licks, pets, first steps, new words and lots of love from my family

Wait, what was I saying? Oh right, we'll have to get down to business and start cracking on the to-to list. And drink wine.

It was good. The Chief IT operations is youngish (like, forty?) and recently started there. We had a good conversation about the pros and cons. The next two talks are on Tuesday. I had to reschedule a meeting and I hope people are not getting a whiff of my plans before they are confirmed on paper. The more I think about it, the more I want this job. I notice how I get more agitated by regular annoying things at work. As my fellow ISO is leaving at the end of December and the Privacy Officer is leaving on December 8th, all of the work would have fallen on my shoulders. Except that I probably won't be there. this includes the student who is doing his graduating thesis on privacy at the HHs. Who will be left without anyone to supervise him.

I did warn Paul that I can't take over due to too much work but he went ahead any way. Sigh.

I am about to leave for my meeting at the other company, which is also interesting. Maybe they don't need me right now and I think I need to wisen up a bit on the technical part but it sounds amazing to work there. Afterwards I'll go to the University of Utrecht because Little Brother is defending his theses today, so after successfully completing his sitting he will get his Bachelors degree. WOOt! He is now 31 years old and tried 5 studies before he found his switch for pulling through when his study got hard. I am very proud of him!

The builders are working on the pipework and cables today, things are looking up. I am hoping things stay this positive for a while, all this good news is making em wonder when things will turn sour.

Our new living room will be ready in march or april next year but I am already googling my eyes out over living room ideas. When we moved in we took all our old furniture and threw it together. We did get new red curtains and laminate flooring but it doesn't tie in all that well together.

I started out by mapping the living space into designated areas. The dining area, sitting area, kids corner and the work space/hobby area. I then jotted down the functionality of that area and our wishes. And by our, I mean my. as far as E is concerned, we first have so many big things to worry about that he doesn't see the point of worrying about details. He is right, that's why I'm on it. I believe E can cover the big stuff like overseeing the building activities while I figure out what our style is and how to tie it together.

I keep ending up with grey tones and off white, with an accent color. Some interesting terms I googled:

-family command center/family control center (I want one!)
-couch console storage
-living room wall collage
-zenza lamp (this is for the dining area, gives a lovely effect when on. plus it's a touch of the middle east)
-tv furniture sliding doors (we probably need to make this ourselves, but it would be great to have a display part of the tv closet plus slide the door, and there's the telly!)
-french doors curtains/blinds (we'll have three sets of French doors when the remodeling is finished. They better get nice window dressing)
-kids area living room


So many choices! Let's dive in :-)

Last week I was home with the flu, and this week I am returning to a nearly empty building. No students, most of my coworkers are on holiday. In short, it's summer at the university!. This allows me to catch up with certain tasks and then get some preparation done for my next semester of classes. Plus I am teaching a workshop 'bellydance during pregnancy' on Sunday the 31th to two ladies and it's the first time that I am teaching it to non bellydancers. I need to go over my material and add stuff. Ideally, when the home studio is done, I'd be able to offer this workshop and maybe short courses on a regular base. It would be interesting to reach mostly non-bellydancers. I will do my best to make them go 'I really like to keep on dancing, this is so much fun!'.

Eliza is a bit bothered by the heat (it's between 25-30 degrees celcius). She has trouble sleeping, I ended up taking her sleeping bag off and putting her in her bed covered in a loosely woven cotton cloth. She then promptly slept between 23.45-05.45. Huzzah! We are slowly getting closer to her sleeping through the night. She has some mosquito bites that look really uncomfortable, Eduard is making screens for the windows to keep mosquito's out. I fervently hate mosquito's (who doesn't) and I have a hard time falling asleep if there's still something in the dark buzzing around.

Health wise I am trying to cut down on snacks. Due to breastfeeding, I have been snacking a lot in the past eight months and it is a habit that has to stop. I haven't gained weight because the extra energy is going into making milk, but it is unhealthy for my body plus Eliza is drinking less and will sooner or later stop drinking altogether. So far, so good: it's been roughly one and a half week and it is doable. I am still eating cookies or chocolate, but I stop at one portion. As compensation I eat more vegetables and fruit during the day to keep me feeling full. After a couple of days, my body started to send me hunger signals at mealtimes again. It is good to feel this again, instead of eating all the time and not feeling much difference between before and after eating.

Eduard is teaching a private class in hunting horn to a man who works with biological produce. Instead of paying in cash, he pays with whatever is available that week. Yesterday we ate garden beans, he brought some biological apple/pear juice and I've experimented with beets. Eduard would love to try and go all organic, with the meat being provided from the hunt and the vegetables and fruit from our kitchen garden. That's not really an option as we don't spend enough time on both activities to create enough to sustain us. But this option with receiving biological vegetables and fruit plus Eduard going hunting once a week and bringing home the geese is a nice middle way. I can now identify five different types of geese plus I am getting more and more creative with vegetables and fruit that are uncommon in the super market. It is fun to work with food in this way.

We started to clear out the garden in anticipation of planning permission. We have a stack of wood that Eduard moved to the other side of the garden and on Monday night we lighted a campfire to burn the smaller twigs and branches plus wood that is unsuitable for burning inside. Eliza went to sleep around 21.30 so we had an hour of sitting outside, roasting marshmallows, singing campfire songs and huddling on a woolen blanket. Noushka was a bit weirded out but ended up huddling with us so it was all very cosy and nice. As we're not going on holiday, we're going to make the most of our house and garden while we can.

Slowly we're making progress on the remodeling plans. The contractor is making the drawings for submitting to planning permission. We're having a meeting in a week or two to discuss the plans, and then he can submit them. In another 6-8 weeks we'll have a go or no go. Building will probably start in October but right now the planning is a bit up in the air. It's making me anxious as I foresee a very stressful time for us as a family. It's true what they say: having a baby is a strain on your relationship. We're good, but both tired plus we both have our extra activities that take up time away from the family. I can only imagine the added stress of taking the whole family to another town/house/living with my mother or mother in law.

I like our house. I like our routine. I like knowing where everything is. My limit to accepting changes is getting lower as I age and this is a lot of change in a relative short timeframe. I hope that construction will be done on November 25th, on Eliza's first birthday.

Speaking of Eliza, our little girl is working very hard on growing up. She managed to pull herself to a standing position yesterday at day care, followed by panicking because she has no idea about sitting back down yet. She has six teeth and we're expecting the next two. Based on hw she's sleeping (not much) they are due any day now. E. swears that she's saying mama, dada and Noushka but it's all a bit random babbling around which is delightful. As is the smile on her face when she sees me and recognizes me.

I installed the maxi-cosy carrier on the back of my bike and she loves hanging out in the back and looking around. Once she can walk, we'll have to keep an eye on her all the time! My plan was to get her a necklace or armband with a gps tracker, just in case. Does that make me an over caring parent?

I am now capable of recognizing when Eliza is tired and need to take a nap. I can walk upstairs, sing her a song and put her to bed. And she protests but I then pat her back, turn on her music box (twinkle twinkle little star) and walk out of the room.

And when I'm downstairs, she's sound asleep. I am currently sitting downstairs, stunned and wondering what to do with the free time I now have on my hands.

Funny thing is that in the past six months I was unable to recognize her signals and get the timing right for her to sleep. Ending up with an overtired baby and an exhausted me. And overnight, I suddenly get it. It is the weirdest experience in ages. Now that I get it, I don't understand why I didn't get it before. It's so obvious now.

Have to do something with this in class today.

Four more days to go and Eliza will be five months old. I've silently been counting towards the six month mark because that's when most of the early problems with regards to feeding, the digestive system and sleeping are getting easier. Before getting pregnant I decided that I wanted to breastfeed if possible for at least six months. Now that the six month mark is getting in sight, I have to ask myself what I want with regards to feeding.

Before actually trying to breastfeed, I didn't understand how hard it is. I always thought that it was kind of a natural, peaceful and pain free process where the baby latched on. In the first week I soon learned that this was not true.

Things I did not know about breastfeeding

1. It hurts (at first). It feels like your nipple is being attacked by piranha's while being fixated in a vice. Not fun. For some people, the pain subsides after a couple of days. It took me five weeks, after which feeding is mostly pain free.

2. Then it hurts AGAIN. Feeding is now a matter of keeping a close eye on her: at the end of her feeding she starts to goof around, including nibbling with her razor sharp tiny teeth while smiling. Not fun.

3. No sleep for the wicked. Yes, when she wakes up in the middle of the night I can feed her right away. But I can't miss a feeding. The first months I couldn't miss a feeding because my breast would have exploded, and now I can't miss a feeding because we don't have enough milk stored in the fridge. This means that for the first three months, my day and night consisted of being awake for one hour and being asleep for max two hours. If I was lucky. Now she feeds every four hours and if we're lucky she skips or delays one feeding at night, allowing me to sleep for 4-5 hours.

4. My body isn't mine. With every passing week I feel more and more like myself as a separate entity instead of 'mom'. Which is great! As long as I breastfeed, my body will not be mine.

5. Pumping milk requires massive logistic skills
I have to think before going out of the door if I have the breast pump with me. I have to clean the bottles and breast shield every night and pack them up in the morning. I have to plan a week before going out on how many feedings we should have in the fridge. Arriving an hour early or later might make the difference between missing a feeding or not.

Despite all the negatives, I am a poster girl for breast feeding. Within eight days of giving birth, we worked out the latching problems and my milk production was up to speed. Eliza thrives in her growth and development. I have been pumping four days a week for the past two months and my production is still going strong. All things considered, I am contemplating continuing breastfeeding Eliza up until her first birthday*. After all the hurdles we took, seems like I might as well enjoy the benefits a bit longer.

*the World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for the first two years but that feels like an eternity and a bit overkill for me

While browsing the baby store I found this book called "I'd really like to eat a child'. It's about a little crocodile who wants to eat a child, while his mother is giving him fruit and vegetables.


As Eliza has recently started teething, I am for now calling her my little crocodile :-) She has one lower center tooth, and the incisors on the lower yaw are breaking through. It makes her irritable, she drools a lot and she sometimes has to cry because it hurts. Inbetween she is still her happy, smiley, wriggly self. The consultation office told me that yes, she is moving quite a lot. She is quite strong in her arms and legs, rolling over can happen any day now. As I can relate to moving a lot, I find it good news. It probably means that we'll have to go outside for playing games, walks, dancing around the living room. It's good because those are the kind of activities I enjoy too.

CB also had doubts about her hips so we are going to the local children's hospital for an ultrasound. If she needs correction, she has to wear a special cast for a large amount of the day. I am hoping that the resistant that the pediatrician felt is coming from her muscle strength, not because her hips need correction. Eliza also got her third round of vaccinations, which made her fussy between 16.00-19.00 and made her fall in a deep sleep around 21.00. I got home at 22.00 after teaching, and got to sleep between 23.00-04.50. Woohoo!! It's probably only this one time, but it feels great to be slightly more rested.

She is now 63,5 cm long and weighs 6280 grams. According to the curve, she is slightly below but this is to be expected as she is still breastfeeding. Turns out breast fed babies are a bit lighter at this stage, and they catch up once they eat more solids. Which brings me to...

Her first bite of solid food! We got the green light to play around with bits of fruit and vegetables to get her used to new tastes. Try one item for three days in a row to let her get used to the taste, for one time during the day (not right before feeding her). Yesterday she ate broccoli and she was a bit meh about it. We'll try carrot next, as it is a sweeter vegetable it usually goes over well. I can't believe how fast she's growing. Parenting is demanding, scary and exhausting but overall, I feel we're doing pretty well. Probably because I am very good at not caring about a clean house. We try to stay on top of the dishes, I'm in charge of the laundry and we both make sure there is plenty of healthy food in the pantry. I want the house to be a nice place to live in, plus with Noushka running around we have plenty of hair and dirt every day coming in. We vacuum twice a week and call it good enough. Eduard I better at vacuuming and cleaning, thank god we have a small kitchen and bathroom so we usually clean up at the end of the day. It takes about twenty minutes to get everything back in it's place and the counter and furnace wiped clean and were ready for the next day.

The more Eliza is eating, the more food will get spilled on the floor/wall/table/everywhere. We're expecting Noushka to get really fond of Eliza during meal time on account of throwing food her way.