Weddings - Dutch Style

This weekend we had a wedding reception for one of Bas's old interns from Chicago. First, I say only reception as in Holland that is usually all you are invited to unless you are very close to the bride and groom, in which case you are invited to the ceremony and a dinner afterward before the reception.

To begin, the invitation to the reception was "Scarface" themed. Not your typical wedding invite. Then a couple weeks before the wedding we received another letter in the mail. This one asking all the attendees to wear Mafia garb.

So Bas and I picked up a couple items and hoped we would fit in with the rest of the group.

Well, I wish I had brought my camera. When you walked into the reception room (the upstairs of a bar) everyone was decked out and it really looked like ...a mafia themed wedding reception.

Needless to say the boa was itchy and it was soon way to warm to be wearing something around your neck, so off it came and hung on my purse the rest of the night, the same with Bas's hat.

I also learned from this reception that I am getting old. It began at 9pm and ended at 2am. Bas and I left around 1:30am and since it was in Den Haag we weren't home until 2:30am. It is 2 days later and I still don't fully have my voice back and I needed to nap today when Max went down. I can't keep up with these Dutch people...but I did have fun dancing.

A Sobering Visit

The last couple days we have spent quite a bit of time at the hospital for doctor appointments. Yesterday we had a follow-up visit for Max's motility issues. It started off with an x-ray which once again involved both Bas and I having to physically restrain Max. After the x-ray we saw the doc. The good news is that all Max's blood work came back normal and that there doesn't look to be any major medical issues with his intestines. The bad news is that almost all the 60 rings he swallowed are still in him. We'll be giving him extremely high doses of a medicine to "clean him out" and he once again has to swallow the rings everyone morning. We'll go back next week for a follow up x-ray and hopefully see not as many rings inside him.
I asked the doc if Max's prematurity had anything to do with these issues. This brought up the discussion of The Netherlands practice on saving micro preemies like Max was. The good news is that in the past 3 years since Max was born, Holland has changed it's views and now has certain criteria for saving babies from 24 weeks on instead of the earlier 26 weeks.
This was when the sobering part of the visit occurred. I asked the doc if this means that Max would be saved if he was born in Holland now. The doc said that because Max's Apgar was 2 when he was born, he wouldn't have met the criteria to be saved.
Needless to say, I couldn't give Max enough kisses yesterday. I was so clearly reminded what a miracle he is. Not only is he doing better than we ever had hoped, but he is speaking 2 languages, riding his bike faster than Bas and I can keep up with and not to forget, giving the best hugs we can imagine. We are so thankful....to put it mildly.

Today we had Max's eye appointment. For those of you who don't remember, Max had laser surgery on his eyes when he was 4 months old to save him from the possibility of going blind. Because of this, for the rest of his life, Max is at high risk for retinal detachment. He goes every 6 months to be monitored and have his vision checked. We had great news today. His retina looks healthy and his vision seems to be IMPROVING. So no glasses for now! Yeah!

"Ik wil Grandma zien"

"I want to see Grandma."

This is what Max has been saying for weeks now. And since we are the kind of parents who give their child anything he wants (joke..sort of) we booked tickets last night. Max and I will fly next week Thursday the 28th to Chicago. Bas will follow a couple weeks later. And then on July 22, Bas and I will hop on an airplane for LA. We plan on renting a car and driving along the coast and flying back out of San Diego. My mom gives each of us kids a week of babysitting a year. We decided to use our week. After our trip we will be in Chicago another week and then we will all fly back to Amsterdam on the 4th of August.

I'm so psyched that I get to spend over 5 weeks in Chicago this summer. I'm craving the warm weather I've been hearing about. I can't wait to get Max to the beach and into the water. I'm looking forward to seeing my friends and family too. I'll also be doing some not so fun things like taking continuing ed classes for my license. So, anyone who would like to see me, let me know and we can make plans!

Father's Day Weekend

Saturday night we had some friends over for dinner. Joel and Nina are from Vermont and living in Holland while Joel is doing a PhD. They have 2 little girls, Addison and Sadie. Max and Addie are the same age and love to play together. We enjoyed a very American meal of hamburgers on the grill with potato salad, fruit salad and chips. You'll have to trust me when I tell you that you could only serve this meal to fellow Americans. I have found this out the hard way. Watching Dutch people eat a hamburger with a fork and knife, and being told chips are only for parties, not meals.

On Sunday, Bas and Max constructed a beach tent in the kitchen (this is what you need to do in the summer in this country due to it being 57 degrees and raining). Max loved it and wanted to take his nap in it. Unfortunately, I had to be the party pooper on this.

In the afternoon we headed to Bas's parents to celebrate with them.

And no, I didn't get Bas anything from Max for Father's Day. Max is going to buy him a new video camera in America later this summer.

In the Name of Science

Those of you who talk to me on a somewhat regular basis know that Max has certain, shall we say, ahem, digestive issues. Well, on Tuesday we went to a special clinic for Max for this issue. It was very interesting to say the least. Bas and I both have hope that these Docs will get to the "bottom" of the problem. However, that isn't going to be easy.

It started off with Max having to have multiple vials of blood drawn. When we sat down for this the nurse asked if Max had ever had blood taken. The she looked and saw his hands and arms with all the little white dots on them (little pin like scars) and realized that yes, Max had blood taken a gazillion times. However, we soon realized that although we should be somewhat immune to this, Bas and I , it has been a long time (well, maybe not that long, Dubai) since Max had blood taken. It is awful to have to physically restrain your child while they are screaming in pain...something most parents know.

Next, but certainly not the easiest in the process is the research project. We decided that Max would enroll. This means that Max has to swallow 10 little rings (as seen on the pic) every morning for 6 mornings. Then on the 7th morning we go back and they x-ray Max (should be fun) and see where the rings are in his digestive track. This would be no problem except for the fact that Max is a texture freak when it comes to things in his mouth. As all the rings have to be swallowed around the same time everyday that coincide with the time for the x-ray next Tuesday, I give them at breakfast. The first morning, in my many failing attempts to get him to swallow these rings, breakfast consisted of cookie dough ice cream, yogurt, juice and finally pretzels. I won't go into detail, but as every ring has to be accounted for, I found myself picking through regurgitated yogurt.

So, three days down and three to go...wish me luck!

Sprookjeswonderland

Yesterday, Max had a field trip for peuterspeelzaal to Sprookjeswonderland. This is a sort of amusement park for kids ages 3 to 9-ish. Max had a great time even though it was in the 60's and raining. He played on a lot of the toys and really enjoyed going down a super high slide (much to my surprise) and riding the little train. The point of the park is little house about fairy tales...he wasn't much interested in these. After 5 hours of running around in the rain, it was time to gt back on the bus to head home to Amsterdam. Max and I were both asleep on the bus within minutes.

Not to make this e-mail about me, but sometimes you look at your life and can't believe it is what it is. Yesterday, as I was sitting in a double-decker bus with about 50 Dutch parent and their kids, riding through North Holland on the way to my 3 year-old's first field trip, I had one of those moments. Who would have ever thought I would be doing what I'm doing.

Bicker's Island

Since we were too embarrassed to show our faces in church with Max after last week, we decided to do a little city touring by bike. Sunday mornings in Amsterdam are very quiet to put it mildly. I think no one goes out of their house before noon. So it is a good time to see some parts of the city where the streets are really narrow, like Bicker's Island.

It is only a 10 minute bike ride from our house, but it does feel like it's own little world. It's said that some Amsterdamer's don't even know it's there. It's full of bricked streets, old shuttered houses, and grachts (canals) lined with houseboats. We had a nice ride for about an hour and then Max was telling us that he really needed to go to a park. So we stopped at a park in the Jordan and had a little snack of chocolate croissants and appletaart before heading back on our bikes to home.

A Busy Saturday

Saturday was a busy day. While I was out running, Max decided to "help" daddy and opened up the whole puncher so all the little white paper dots fell out onto the floor. Max was very interested in how the vacuum cleaner picked them up.

In the afternoon, we went to a party at Uncle Michiel's house and played with Thijs. After that we stopped at the toy store across the street because Bas is like a magnet to toy stores these days. He bought Max a little playmobile garbage truck which Max has played with at least 6 of the last 24 hours.

After the toy store we wanted to try a new restaurant. We didn't have reservations but we were there at 5pm. The place was, as we expected, empty. What we couldn't believe, was that they turned us away! They said they were fully booked. We walked out of the empty restaurant a bit stunned and went onto a Thai restaurant that we like. We didn't have much better luck there (see previous blog).

Only in Amsterdam...

Only in Amsterdam would a waitress spill steaming hot Pad Thai down your legs, leaving blisters no less( I was wearing capris), and you're still charged for the meal. Welcome to the country of customer service...NOT!

Trix

Trix is Max's speech therapist. Every Monday since February, Max has been meeting with Trix for a half hour. And boy, have we seen results! After the first 3 appointments, Trix gave us her assessment of Max's verbal skills. He was developing quite normally but was having great difficulty with articulation. It has been very interesting for Bas and I to learn about Max and what his delays are because of his prematurity.

Max has less strength in his mouth due to being tube fed for his first 4 months. He also has trouble closing his mouth due to being on a ventilator for his first 6 weeks. These are things that Trix is working on with Max. She gives Max homework every week. For the past couple weeks we have been working on various forms of "lippen dicht" or closed lips. Now, Max even makes his stuffed Tigger do "lippen dicht". We have also been working on the Dutch "v" which is pronounced like the English "f". Needless to say, Max's appointments are in Dutch and even I am learning too. Just today, Max said a word in answer to Trix, that I had no clue about. It won't be long until Dutch is this secret language between Bas and Max!

Vondelpark

Last night, Bas, Max and I hopped on our bikes and biked to Vondelpark. It was a beautiful day and we thought we would take advantage of it. We took along a bottle of wine and some bottles of H2O and picked up a pizza and some pasta along the way. We enjoyed a nice picnic in the park and Max loved to eat and run around at the same time.
For those of you not familiar with the Vondelpark, it is Amsterdam's Central Park. It is a big green space in the middle of the city with lots of little ponds, trees, a couple restaurants and lots of people to watch. However, I think there is probably a bit less pot and booze in Central Park.
As we sat and watched the people I was thankful Max is too young to fully understand what was happening around us. I observed a father putting a straw into a drink box one-handed because the other hand held a smoking joint in it. His little 2 year old did seem thankful for the drink. I also smiled as the lady wearing a tight little Scottish kilt and high heels with socks walked by us selling little pills out of her bike bags. The sweet smell of pot was everywhere and there was quite a contingent of African men selling cans of beer to one and all.
Needless to say, no one bats an eye and the kids run around next to the drug dealers and walking bartenders...just another day in Vondelpark.