To many boys and not enough girls.

Natan's Quotes of the Day

“Well, we can't call her Betsy, because that is a boy name.”

As the only girl among three very active boys I often feel out numbered. I am not sure why at my age I have become to think more about girly things, especially pink. Which if you know me well then you know I have never been very girly and I have hated the color pink all my life, until now.

Well, I have finally satisfied my desire to have another female in the house. No, I am not pregnant again! This was a much easier, faster and bit less work than another baby. We have gotten a kitten. She is 7 weeks old and loves the color pink. How do I know this? I know this because she is very happy to eat from her pink food bowl and poop in her pink litter box and sleep with her pink toy mouse. O.k. maybe I did go a bit over board with the pink, but I have had 5 years of passing by pink things for boyish colors!

Anyway, she is precious and everyone is in love with her, even though it has only been 3 days. She is most interested in Kai and follows him around and comes up to him always, but Kai is not so interested. I guess this is better than him picking her up by a leg and carrying her around, which could possibly still happen.

We took a long time to decide on a cat since our neighbors moved away last July with Betsy. His name was actually Tefo, but he lived with us more than his own family and Natan called him Betsy and they were inseparable. So, we finally decided, looked online at hundreds of offers, made a bid on a kitten we thought was in Antwerp 30min away, won the bid and drove to Turnhout an 1hr20min away, but it was well worth it and although she is very little she is settling in wonderfully and I think she is quite happy here.

So, now the odds are a bit more even 2 girls and 3 boys.
(more photo's on daily photo's)

No names yet, but are favorites are;
Josephinetje
Otje
Kaatje
Mika
Zelda
Nu
Sasha

What do you think?

Happy Mother's Day

Sweet Mama, here is your gift,
don't be so curious, you get it now,
first a big kiss and now you can open it,
from your little rascal.

Zinneke

Every two years in Brussels is there an amazing parade, Zinneke! It is a city wide project that consists of many different groups, organizations and individuals who work on making costumes, vehicles and other objects out of recycled materials. We went 4 years ago and I was very excited to go again. Natan was a bit reserved, but Kai had a blast and loved all the scary loud creatures. If you can make a point of seeing it in 2008 I would HIGHLY recommend it. I put more photo’s on my daily photo's.

Waiting patiently for the parade!

Brothers!

Natan's Quotes of the Day

{2:00AM Kai is crying and Pieter stumbles in
disoriented and stands in Natan and Kai’s room}
“Milk, Papa”, Natan grumbles, “MILK!”, he grumbles louder.
“Papa, he is hungry go make him some milk!”

Natan is an amazing big brother always taking care of Kai, sometimes more than us. Mornings are especially interesting as Pieter has been working more the boys and I are often getting each other ready in the mornings. Some days Natan is a great help getting himself dressed, entertaining Kai and helping him get dressed and then helping get breakfast and his school bag ready.

On other mornings it is like pulling teeth just to get the two and myself downstairs, sitting at the table and then out the door by 8:30AM. On these mornings I wish I had earplugs for all the wining and crying that goes on, but I try my hardest to just remember that not every morning is like this! Some are truely wonderful, like this morning.

Blue is my favorite color!

Natan's Quotes of the Day

For some time now Natan's favorite color has been blue.
Everything had to be blue, but today as we start
to walk through the forest of blue flowers I ask
"Natan, isn't it amazing so many blue flowers?"
"Yes," he replies, "it is just a pity they are not yellow."
"Yellow is my new favorite color."

Today we acted like expats living in Belgium and visited the infamous Bluebell forest. I had heard about it many times from friends, but never seen it and not one Belgian I talked to has not only seen it, but has not heard of it. It is a forest just outside of Brussels that during two weeks at the end of April has thousands of Bluebells (wild hyacinths) in bloom.

It was pretty nasty, but typical, Belgium weather today, but you have to go anyway or you would spend your whole life indoors waiting for the rain to stop. We packed up our umbrellas, rain jackets, rain boots and snacks and set off to find the forest of blue!
It was really really beautiful. Like nothing you could ever even imagine! The good thing was we got there early before the crowds of people, so we could walk around and enjoy the peace of the forest and the wonderful site, but as we were leaving there were almost as many people as flowers.