Our two toddlers

Milou is real a toddler now, no longer a baby. She is very active (just like Thijmen), always smiling (just likeThijmen) and when she doesn´t want someting she´ll let you know (just like Thijmen).

Here are some nice pictures of them from the past month.

Diving with sharks!

Paul´s birthday present this year was a dive in Underwater World, a big aquarium. He went together with Leon and Thijmen was watching. It was quit funny to see them behind the glass wall, between all the fish. They could touch the sharks and even feed the big eagle rays. Thijmen is still talking about it. "Papa, swim fish! I see."

Visitors

In June we had a few visitors. First grandad Huub came for one week. Thijmen and Milou really enjoyed playing with him. When grandad left, Thijmen kept saying: opa, airplane.

Two days after grandad had left, Edo arrived. Thijmen was really fond of him and called him ´uncle´ all the time. Since Thijmen saw Edo leave by taxi, he kept on telling us: uncle, taxi.

Grandad had taught Thijmen how to say cheers (´proost´), so he could practice this with uncle Edo. Here they are sitting in a bar at the Boat Key after a nice boat trip along the Singapore River.

Party time!!!

Last few months Thijmen and Milou have had many many birthday parties. Almost one every weekend. Thijmen is starting to understand the concept and is really enjoying it. Especially the moment when the birthday cake with the candles (never more than 1 or 2) arrives. The part he likes most is of course eating the cake. And so does Milou!

Milou can walk!

One and a half week before her 1st birthday, Milou started to walk and it´s going better and faster every day.

Milou´s 1st birthday

Last Friday we celebrated Milou´s 1st birtday. She didn´t know what to do with the candle on her birthday cake, so Lily helped her.

3 weeks in the Netherlands

The first three weeks of May we spend in the Netherlands. We stayed with Paul´s parents and had a great time there. Although the flight from Singapore to Amsterdam was a nightmare and we had to recuperate from our jetlag for almost a week.

We were really lucky with the weather, it was warm and sunny most of the time, so Thijmen and Milou could play in the garden almost every day. On the first day Paul bought two bicycle seats and I think we´ve been cycling every day with Thijmen and Milou. They really liked it, especially Thijmen. In the morning he would come downstairs, walk to the garage, point at the bicycle and say: "fiets, fiets" (bicycle, bicycle). In other words, he wanted to go cycling. So often Paul would take him for a ride, at 8 o´clock in the morning.

The second week, Corinne, Pierre, Luc and Julie came over for France and it was really nice to see them again after one and a half year. The children had a great time together and enjoyed being in the small pool we bought for them.

Push Milou, push!

What a lazy guy is Thijmen. He sits in the little cart and his little sister Milou has to push him!
But Milou seemed to liked it. And Thijmen´s weight helped her not to go too fast.

Melaka, Malaysia

Last week we went for a long weekend to Melaka, in Malaysia. It´s only a 3 hour drive from Singapore, so we could just make it without having two whining children in the back of the car.

It was nice to be outside Singapore again and stroll around in a small colonial town. It was not as relaxed as we had hoped, because both Thijmen and Milou where sometimes a little difficult to handle...

They both didn´t want to sit at the table in their high chairs during breakfast, lunch and dinner time, Thijmen didn´t want to eat and he kept on saying that he needed to go to the toilet. But every time we took him there he said: "don´t want", or he squeezed his nose as to say it was too dirty. But in between his tantrums and Milou´s fits of crying we had a nice time.

Melaka was in Dutch hands for 150 years and you can still see some typical features of Dutch colonial architecture. So we felt a little bit like walking along a Dutch canal in Leiden. Main difference was the weather, it was very sunny and hot!

Lily and Sofia

Our upstair neighbours have twins; Lily and Sofia. Two very cute girls, a few months younger than Thijmen. Thijmen is very fond of them and likes to play with them. When we come home and go out of the elevator at the 4th floor, he just runs to the staircase and goes to the 5th floor. There he takes of his shoes, puts them in the shoe rack and goes in. Before he used to knock on their door, but not anymore. Last week they went on holiday, so he has to miss them for two weeks, but he seems to understand that they are not there. The first day they left he went up, but after we told him they weren´t there, he hasn´t gone to their door anymore. Lets see what he will do when they are back. Maybe they will give eachother a big hug and a kiss, like they use to do when they say goodbye to eachother.

Thijmen feeds Milou

The other day when Milou was eating her fruits and Thijmen was sitting next to her, he suddenly wanted to feed her. So he took the spoon and started to feed her. Surprisingly it went very well and Milou seemed to like it. He just copied what we do when we feed him and he also got a little irritated when she didn´t open her mouth. Now he knows how difficult it is when someone doesn´t cooperate, because some days Thijmen just refuses to eat although he is very hungry.

Milou 9 months

Time is flying and Milou is 9 months already. She is getting stronger and wants to stand al day long. She loves to play with the leaves on the balcony and chew on them. As she likes to put everything in her mouth and chew on it. Another thing she likes to do is play with all the plastic cups and plates in the kitchen cabinet and sometimes she even climbs in the cabinet. One thing she doesn´t like is to be left alone, so when you leave her alone for one second she starts to cry and follows you everywhere. And she is getting very fast crawling!

Milou latest trick

The latest thing Milou can do is pull herself up to a standing position. And she just started to make small steps along the sofa or the coffee table as well. Sometimes she gets overconfident and holds the sofa with only one hand and starts to wave with the other one.

Thijmen and the MooMoo

Thijmen is telling us a lot of stories lately, especially about the "MooMoo". We don´t understand much of what he is telling and we have no clue what a MooMoo is, but it´s definetely something that has made a big impression on him.

Milou 8 months

Milou is changing very fast lately. She is very active, just like her brother. Today she started crawling on hands and knees and when I didn´t look she had opened a drawer and taken something out.



She is eating very well and likes everything. We just started giving her bread at lunch time, in the morning she has fruits and a warm meal in the evening.

Thijmen´s 2nd birthday!

Yesterday we celebrated Thijmen´s 2nd birthday and he really enjoyed it. He understood much more of it than we had expected. The balloons, the presents, the birtday cake and blowing the candles! He was really exited about it all.

Father and son, father and daughter

A cute picture of Paul and Thijmen















and of Paul and Milou.

Milou can crawl!

This weekend Milou started crawling. Not yet on hands and knees, but she can cross the room quit fast. Especially when she is playing with a ball that keeps rolling away. And it seems to make her very happy.

Thijmen & Milou, January 2008

Thijmen and Milou are having more and more fun together. Sitting next to eachother in the big club chair and horse riding on Judith´s lap. Great fun!

Koh Samui, Thailand

December 28 we flew from Singapore to Koh Samui, an island on the east coast of Thailand. We were 8 adults and 3 children. The couples with children (Arnoud, Shiqi & Mylène and the four of us) stayed in the mountain villa with great sea view. The others (Joost & Waihan, Leon and Eelco) had a nice house on the beach, where we often went with the children to swim in the sea, play on the beach and sat on their terrace. Although the daily routine of the ones without children was very different (in the mountain villa the day started around around 7:00, in the beach villa around 13:00), we had a very nice time together andit was an excellent holiday.

As soon as Milou woke up, Thijmen and Mylène ran to her room and wanted to play with her. Very cute!

We often went to the beach or the swimming pool and made some trips with the jeep. Thijmen would sit on the front chair of the car (in his own seat) and loved it! Sitting in the back of the jeep even more!
New Year´s Eve we celebrated on the terrace of our mountain villa with a nice Thai meal and Champagn on the roof terrace from where we had a great view and could watch the fireworks.

Christmas dinner 2007

Eelco arrived in Singapore on Christmas eve, so we had our Christmas dinner on the 25th. With Arnoud & Shiqi who arrived the day before and Joost & Waihan and Leon already living in Singapore, we were eight. After we had put the children in bed we had a lovely meal. Of course, like every Christmas dinner, it was too much but delicious.

And Leon did a great job cutting the leg of lamb.