Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

Last Christmas, Eloïse was given a children's book with a difference by her Uncle Jack. The book in question was Goodbye, Penguins by Greg Stones.

Round at Jack's house one afternoon, he had the great idea of filming Eloïse 's spirited rendition, as she reads this book with verve. The result is very entertaining, especially if you've read the book (which very few people have, since the print run was only 550 copies).

Many thanks to Uncle Jack McKenna for the camera work, editing and playing himself as sofa companion.

We've now rolled past the 37th week of pregnancy, which means that Eloïse 's imminent sibling is now medically considered full-term. In simple terms, if Sarah went into labour right now, midwifery protocols would allow a midwife to assist us with an attempted home birth. Naturally, a home birth is our strong preference, so this is a pleasing milestone to have reached.

Work on the garden overhaul is in full swing and has been for more than a week. It currently looks as if a rather large bomb has been dropped on it. Over the last few days, multiple skips full of soil and gravel have been hauled away, hedges have been moved around, holes have been dug and a tree has been shifted from one side of the garden to the other.

It's hard to imagine at this stage what the finished article will look like, but it's pleasing that work is finally under way. We've been discussing a garden overhaul since we moved into our previous house, so it feels as if it's been stalled for a long time. Our current house's garden was perhaps our greatest concern when deciding whether or not to purchase the property, so I'm glad that this feature is now being improved.

This is a fairly large-scale project and will take at least another week or so to complete. We're excited at the prospect of having the new garden ready for the spring. We hope Eloïse is going to enjoy playing out there, and we plan to spend our fair share of time out there, too, once warmer weather arrives.

It's the little preparations for the impending birth that bring home the inexorable truth of what is about to happen.

Earlier this week, I fitted the new EasyFix car-seat base on the back seat of the car. Even now, it's still amazing to think that a new baby will be sat there in just a few weeks. That'll provide some good in-car entertainment for Eloïse , as the new baby's seat will, of course, face backwards. On the other hand, we rarely use the car, so it probably won't be until our next driving holiday that we reap the benefit of the children keeping each other amused.

The Bugaboo Cameleon's fleece upholstery has been washed and is looking almost as good as new again. Sarah has reassembled the carry cot, which has been unused since Eloïse graduated to the seat, and I have fitted a new riding board. With this addition, Eloïse can ride along at the back of the pram while one of us pushes it. I think she's going to like that.

Thuiszorg delivered a bedpan to our door at the start of the week. That's needed for the labour process, just in case Sarah needs to dump a load in the bed during all of the huffing and puffing. It's great that you can borrow these things for free and then return them when you've finished with them.

I finally got my arse in gear today and did a dry-run of setting up the delivery pool in the bathroom. It was much easier to set up than the pool we used during the birth of Eloïse . The pool has an inflatable base, plus three inflatable wall chambers. The multiple chamber construction makes it much sturdier, so that it can be leant on and support a lot of weight during labour.

There's even an inflatable seat built into the pool and handles around the edge. Personally, I think we're going to get a lot more benefit from this pool than from the one we used in Mountain View. We have an air pump for inflating it, plus a water pump for emptying it of water. A length of hose will be connected to the shower in order to fill the pool. We even have an aquarium scoop for removing any, err, detritus that accumulates along the way.

At this point, we're fairly well prepared for the manifestation of the new bairn. All of the materials to be used during the labour and birth are ready, as, indeed, are the items for the start of life: nappies, clothes, etc.

It's just a matter of time now and enjoying our last few weeks (or days, if fate would have it) as a threesome.

Eloïse has been out of nappies and in underpants for some ten days now. In that time, she hasn't had a single accident of the urinal or faecal variety. I'm impressed.

She still wears a cloth nappy for going to bed, but that's the only time she has one on. I wonder whether she will regress or if this is really it for daytime nappies. Time will tell.

There are only 11 weeks to go until the birth of our second child.

It may sound like an unbelievable exaggeration, but I'm feeling less well prepared for this one than I was for Eloïse .

When Sarah fell pregnant the first time, there was an endless stream of visits to the midwife, shopping trips, childbirth classes, reading and research. This time around, I have a better idea of what to expect, so there has been much less to do. For example, there have been no childbirth classes and only a couple of visits to the midwife. We just haven't felt the need this time. Furthermore, with an arsenal of baby items in house, we haven't needed to shop for much at all, so there have been few products to research, either. And with more knowledge and experience of babies, there has been less need for reading this time around.

With Eloïse taking up so much of our time, the circumstances are thus such that Sarah's second pregnancy isn't on our mind day and night. Although I haven't exactly forgotten about it, the 29 weeks to date have absolutely flown by. Sarah's starting to feel increasingly tired now, however, so we're becoming more constantly aware of the pregnancy than we have been.

When I sit back and contemplate just how soon the new baby will be here, I must say I find it a bit daunting. Although not much practical preparation has been required this time around, the consequence of not having done any is that these daily activities haven't been subtly and gradually adjusting my mind to the idea of a new family member.

So, it's suddenly hitting home quite hard: there's a new baby coming in 2.5 months!

We're not totally unprepared, however. We've bought a few items of clothing recently and I'm about to order a new ISOFIX car-seat.

We're probably going to invest in a new cargo bike (bakfiets), too, although we haven't yet decided which make and model. Bicycle or tricycle? Which colour? If a tricycle, do we get wheels that turn independently of the box? Decisions, decisions.

I bought a preprinted baby logbook yesterday, in which we can record all of the milestones along the path of our new child's development. I also eyed with envy the 2008 models of the Bugaboo Cameleon pram, but our almost three year old model has plenty of life left in it yet, so I can't justify a new one of those. Sarah doesn't even want to buy a new set of fabrics for it, so it looks as if we'll be sticking with orange over blue.

Names are something we're still wrestling with. We didn't start seriously looking at names until a couple of months ago. Much of the groundwork was, of course, done for Eloïse , so we didn't feel the need to start as early on.

Although I would emotionally be just as happy with a boy or a girl, I'm almost starting to lean towards preferring a girl. There are a few reasons for this:

1. I am familiar with being a parent to a girl. For example, one thing I know about girls is that their anatomy renders then incapable of squirting urine at me. Girls are therefore more practically engineered than boys (in this regard, at least).

2. Boys seem to be generally more trouble. If there's a stabbing at school, it usually involves two boys. Who causes all of the wars in the world? Mostly men. Boys need to prove themselves to survive amongst other boys, whereas girls don't; at least not in the same way. Girls can present serious problems too, but on the whole, I suspect they're statistically less likely to die tragically. Yes, I'm a pragmatist.

3. It's much easier to choose a name for a girl than for a boy. Why is that?

This article by Laura Wattenberg delves into the reasons behind 'boy block' and provides some compelling evidence for the phenomenon. Sarah and I are definitely sufferers, but I didn't know why until I'd read this article. I've been convinced.

Since we've chosen to follow nature and not discover the sex of our baby until the birth, we have double the workload when it comes to finding a suitable name. The task is further complicated by the fact that Sarah and I are from quite different cultural backgrounds. Even amongst names that are phonetically or stylistically similar, we find that we have quite different taste.

We're not even inclined towards choosing the same number of names. A first name and a middle name is pretty much the de facto standard in the US, whereas I do not feel bound by what I view as an artificial, self-imposed template.

Nor do I believe that the first name has to be the one that the child goes by. It's very common here for the child to be known by its second name or even some (often more colloquial) derivation of either the first or the second.

That means that I may want to put a name that Sarah really likes in second position, because the B-A order sounds more pleasing to the ear than the A-B order. To my mind, nothing is lost, because the child can still be known by name A. To Sarah, though, this is often unacceptable. A must precede B, because the first position is where the child's everyday name goes. I care more about the phonetics than the positioning. Sarah would rather solve this issue by choosing a different name altogether for the second slot.

Tricky, isn't it?

There are other issues I'm not going into, because they're mostly the result of our different culture and its accompanying popular heritage. For example, your average American has watched (or is at least aware of) a vastly greater number of films and television programmes than I have.

This means that certain names that, to me, have little or no association are unacceptably linked to a certain, often fictional personage in the US. Brand names, too, can turn out to have irretrievably tarnished names that are, to me, at least, still perfectly usable.

This phenomenon also works in reverse, from me to Sarah, but it's less pronounced. I'm more likely to think that a name sounds stuck-up or pretentious. At least we can both agree that Adolf has been sullied beyond patronage; I would also claim that George has suffered a similar fate.

I'm also revolted by the continuing American trend to bestow surnames on children, particularly boys. Often these names, like Hunter, Cooper, Parker, Carter and Porter are derived from old professions, to which, in my mind, they are still inextricably linked. It would be like calling your child programmer or system administrator. What a nice name!

Fortunately, Sarah's not drawn to these professional surnames-as-first-name, nor to the non-professional variety, either. Surnames are best left as surnames, in my opinion. You don't want your child's name to read like the engraved plate over the door of a firm of solicitors or accountants, do you? Well, apparently, many Americans want just that. What to me sounds ghastly and pretentious is very much in vogue over there.

We have a short list now, but as mentioned before, we're closer to a result with the girls' names than with the boys'. Be a girl and make life easy for us! We could probably name this child and a third without much difficulty now, as long as both were girls, of course.

We've made it to Providence without any delays, which is good going, considering the number of people whose flights have been severely disrupted over the last few days.

We usually fly to the US for Christmas a little earlier than this, but it was important to allow Eloïse to finish the school term properly, as the entire group had been working steadily up to Christmas. The excitement culminated in the Kerstfeest, which was held after school on Thursday. And what a party it turned out to be.

I've also put up the photos of last week's visit to the Weihnachtsmarkt in Münster.

On Monday, we had the 20 week ultrasound of our slowly ripening little geezer or geezette. A DVD was made of the event, which I have dutifully ripped and uploaded to the Internet.

The full nineteen minute version silent film is available in our gallery, but for those with less patience, the seven and a half minute embedded version below represents the first foray of a McKenna-Macdonald into the world of DIY YouTube flicks. Not bad for someone who hasn't even been born yet.

For anyone who cares, the YouTube version of the DVD (comprising just the first two chapters) was encoded to Xvid, using mencoder as follows:

mencoder /media/SONY_DVD_RECORDER_VOLUME/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB /media/SONY_DVD_RECORDER_VOLUME/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB \
    -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1 -oac copy -o /dev/null
mencoder /media/SONY_DVD_RECORDER_VOLUME/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB /media/SONY_DVD_RECORDER_VOLUME/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB \
    -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=256 -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -o tmp.avi
ogg123 -d wav -f sr.wav /media/audio/sigur_rós/takk/06_sæglópur.ogg
mencoder tmp.avi -o echo.avi -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -audiofile sr.wav

The final two commands were necessary to convert the file I wanted to use as the soundtrack from Ogg Vorbis format to WAV, and then to encode it into the video using variable bit rate MP3.

I keep forgetting to mention that we took Eloïse during autumn half-term to see the children's musical, Nijntje Op Vakantie at the Meervaart.

I think I enjoyed it only slightly less than Eloïse , for whom I purchased a copy of the CD containing the songs. Unfortunately, every time I try to break the silence in the home by turning on some music via the Sonos, Eloïse demands that I play Nijntje Op Vakantie instead of whatever I was planning to play. And she's really quite insistent in that convincing way that only a two-year old can be, sending one running straight down the path of least resistance.

Anyway, if you're in The Netherlands and Nijntje Op Vakantie is coming to a venue near you in the next six months, you could do worse than to take your toddler along. We all had a very good time and it was fun to expose Eloïse to a live performance.

Sarah's participation in Moeders Voor Moeders ended today.

For the last ten or so weeks, Sarah has been collecting her urine in flasks and a man has been coming to the door on Fridays to pick them up. Subsequently, Moeders voor Moeders extracts the hCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) hormone from the pee and then uses this to produce medicine to treat infertility. Apparently, millions of litres of pee are needed to produce just a few grammes of hCG.

Apparently, the hCG collected in this country is sent all over the world, including to Japan and the US, because very few countries have a collection programme in place.

If you're pregnant or plan to be in the future, consider donating your pee for hCG collection. After all, what else would you do with it?

It's the end of Eloïse 's first week at peuterspeelzaal and what a successful one it has been.

Today, it was a special afternoon out, with her whole group being driven down to the Amsterdamse Bos for an autumn walk through the woods. We found toadstools and frogs (or maybe they were toads, but they weren't sitting on their stools), plus lots of fallen tree trunks to clamber over.

At the end of our walk, the children had snacks at Boerderij Meerzicht and then spent the remainder of the afternoon playing in the playground outside.

As I wrote yesterday, Eloïse loves her new play school. I must say, I'm pretty enamoured with it, too. The children are a sweet bunch and the parents are very nice, too. I've really liked everyone I've met and I wouldn't be surprised if the place serves to enhance my social life. After all, one sees these people every day at pick-up and drop-off time.

Most importantly, though, Eloïse 's happy. She already treats Wanda as one of her family -- as do the other children -- and she seems so at ease in the environment that it's amazing to think that the past week was her first one. Even Wanda was surprised how easily it went and remarked that Eloïse seems very solid. I like to think that's partially down to us, her parents.

Another thing that's been occupying our thoughts of late is the fact that Sarah is pregnant again; thirteen weeks gone, to be precise.

To answer the question we get asked the most often: no, we don't know what sex the baby is. It's too early to tell and -- as was the case with Eloïse , we don't wish to find out before the birth.

Eloïse had the working title of Franbert, but this baby doesn't have a code name at the moment. Maybe one will emerge later.

Eloïse is pretty excited at the prospect of being someone's big sister. She regularly kisses Mama's belly and talks about the baby.

Our two ultrasounds to date show the baby to be in good health, breakdancing in its amniotic fluid and with a nice heartbeat and all limbs growing as expected.

We haven't been keeping this a secret. I think we made the first pregnancy known after just a few weeks. No, this time, we've just been so busy with preparing for the move, actually executing the move, getting stuff done in the new house and dealing with Eloïse , that there's scarcely been a moment to blog about it and let the cat out of the bag.

We have a lovely midwife arranged to perform the birth at home and are looking forward to welcoming our next little hellraiser into the household. Eloïse just doesn't keep us busy enough, so we needed to add another one to the mix. That's a joke, if you were wondering.

As with Eloïse , discussions of suitable names began way before the pregnancy. It only takes nine months to fully bake a new human-being, but it takes considerably longer to name one.

Monday was a big day for the McKenna-Macdonalds. Eloïse attended peuterspeelzaal, or play school.

As it was her first day, we both stayed with her for the whole session.

As we entered at 13:30, she began to cautiously look around. Wanda, the peuterleidster, encouraged her to come into the sand pit, which she did. It wasn't long before she was building sandcastles, which signalled the start of an afternoon packed with stimulating activities.

There was playing with water, time to play with toys, gluing paper leaves onto a paper tree, story time with Wanda, walking in a circle and singing nursery rhymes.

Of course, there's also biscuit time, when all of the children sit at a table and it's the turn of one of them to bring a tin of biscuits around to all the others. They wash their biscuit down with a cup of squash.

At the end of the day, a tray is brought upstairs by the assisting parent (all parents are expected to help out for an afternoon from time to time) containing all of the peeled fruit that the children brought that day. The toddlers sit in a circle and the tray is passed around until all of the fruit has been eaten. It's a delightful sight.

The first day was thus a big success. She not only held her own in a new environment, but seemed to throughly enjoy almost all of the activities. Only walking in a circle, whilst holding hands and singing nursery rhymes was something she didn't want to do.

On Tuesday, I left after the first half an hour and Sarah left after a further fifteen minutes. I went back two hours later to see how she was doing and was pleasantly surprised to find her busily painting a paper hedgehog. She was having a whale of a time and missed story time in order to paint a second hedgehog.

At 17:00, it was all I could do to get her to leave. We spent a further twenty minutes playing in the garden of the peuterspeelzaal.

Today, Eloïse had her first typical day at the peuterspeelzaal. Sarah took her at 13:00 and left with the other parents at 14:00. She didn't return until 17:00. When she arrived, Eloïse was perfectly happy and had not been asking for either of us.

When she got home, she showed me the paper squirrel she had been playing with.

It's still early days, but any fears we might have had that the transition from her parents' side to peuterspeelzaal might be a difficult one have more or less been allayed. Our daughter has a secure family background and that clearly allows her to take strides into new and unfamiliar situations with the confidence that we're there to protect and encourage her, if needed.

Our little girl is blossoming into a confident and intrepid little person. We're filled with pride.

What could be lovelier than sitting on the couch, snuggling up to your 21 month old daughter and watching Mr. Benn?

Eloïse has developed quite a fondness for this timeless children's classic and there's something genuinely heartwarming about seeing her enjoy the same stories that captivated and thrilled me some thirty-odd years ago.

When she tires of Mr. Benn's escapades, we also have The Clangers, Bagpuss and Ivor The Engine waiting in the wings.

One of the cool things about children is that they give you a practical excuse to be a child all over again. My irresistible inclination towards nostalgia thus combines with the joy of seeing Eloïse 's intrigued expression, providing a doubly enjoyable thrill.

Eloïse took her first tottering steps today. For several weeks, she'd been pulling herself to her feer and staggering a step or two before falling down again, but today she got up and just walked across the room. Similar amazing feats of pedestrianism have been occurring all day long.

We're so proud.

Wiesje is getting rather large and tiresome now for Sarah to always be carrying her around in the sling. Although we have a pram, too, there are certain situations and kinds of terrain where a pram just doesn't work: whilst on hiking trails, for example.

With an eye to our upcoming trip to Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, we decided to invest in a baby carrier; not one of those Baby Björn things that make your back ache after fifteen minutes if the baby's more than three months old (we have one of those, too, but got very little use out of it), but a more heavy-duty construction that will remain comfortable for both baby and beast of burden for a couple of hours at a time.

After much farting around in Bever, Demmenie and Carl Denig, we finally settled on the Vaude Butterfly Comfort, because of its comfortable harness and cradling head-rest. Eloïse just seemed to be the most comfortable in this model. For me, too, the carrier is highly adjustable, so that I can obtain the right fit and centre of gravity, enabling me to carry her for longer without developing aches and pains.

With this device in the back of the car, I'll be able to share the baby-carrying duties with Sarah and Wiesje will get a new, slightly raised perspective on the world.

Now all we need is a bit of cooperation from the weather, which, it has to be said, has been total shite for about two weeks now: endless grey skies and downpours that last most of the day, stop for about half an hour -- just long enough to coax you outside and away from the safety of shelter -- and then mercilessly punish you by recommencing with a vengeance, which then goes on for the remainder of the day. That's not really the ideal weather for going on holiday and, since we have no jobs to dictate our schedule, we're quite flexible about when we leave.

We're busy tying up the loose ends in preparation for our trip to Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, which starts next week.

That means paying all of our bills, getting an annoying vibration removed from the dashboard of the car, making sure we have a bottle of engine oil and windscreen wiper fluid for the journey, giving spare keys to the neighbours, arranging travel insurance, etc., etc.

Sarah has been busy planning the route, reading masses of information on the places we will visit and sticking coloured markers to the map, so that we can get an overview of the areas we want to cover.

Our Baby Boardrent order turned up today, just one day after placing it. We bought a Marco hanging chair and a swimming nappy.

The hanging chair is so that we can place Eloïse at our table while we eat, even if the restaurant in question has no high chair available.

The swimming nappy is so that Eloïse can enjoy public pools and spa baths. Without such a device, she either wouldn't be allowed in or we wouldn't be able to relax, out of fear that she could drop a load at any moment.

Unfortunately, the hanging chair stinks of cigarette smoke. In fact, as soon as I opened the cardboard box containing our order, I noticed the vile smell coming from within. Obviously, the stock at the shop is kept in a smoky environment, which is very offputting. Still, it'll be OK once it's had time to air.

Other things that were delivered today were our dining chairs. Finally, we have some lovely, comfortable chairs to go with our nice dining-room table.

I wonder if we'll find any nice items for the house in Czechia, Slovakia or Hungary. Next week, we'll start to find out. In preparation for our trip, I've booked our first night's stay in Leipzig and programmed the route into the car's sat-nav system. Just a few more days and we'll be on our way.

Nothing is safe in this house any more.

In the last couple of days, Eloïse has started climbing out of her high chair and onto the dining-room table; but that's not all.

She climbed the stairs for the first time a couple of days ago; under supervision, yes, but still. You just can't turn your back on her any more. Before you know it, she's off and running.

She crawls around the house at high speed now and can scramble up onto the couch from the floor. She then stands on the couch, leaning forwards onto its back, and jiggles up and down with enthusiasm. It's only a matter of time before she climbs over the back of the couch and falls freely to the ground.

She used to be content to sit and play with toys, but not any more. She still does that sometimes, of course, but as often as not, she'll pull herself to her feet, lean against the couch and then walk around its perimeter to the side-tables we have, where she proceeds to help herself to anything we've been foolish enough to leave on them.

Yes, the time has come to babyproof the house, although it's rather daunting knowing where to start. I need to find some kind of expert to come in and assess the place.

On the eating front, she's doing well with lots of fruit and vegetables. The consultatiebureau told us to give her bread, because the masticatory action would supposedly expedite the path to speech, but this seems to be nonsense as far as we can tell. There's so little nutritional value in bread and so much potential for allergies of one kind or another, that we're holding off on introducing too many grains at once.

Speaking of speech, she's still babbling like a loon at regular intervals; anything from LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA to BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA to PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA. It's easy to think Papa is in there somewhere, but that's just egocentrical wishful thinking.

Eloïse 's birthday went off very well last week. She had a lot of presents, ranging from wooden toys to bedtime story books. Thanks to everyone who sent a gift.

It's hard to believe that, one year ago, she was only just being born. Now, I'm filling in the forms to enrol her at the school she will attend just a few years from now. It's a lot to get your head around.

Happily, Montessori schools abound over here; perhaps because Maria Montessori ultimately settled in The Netherlands and died here. In fact, the headquarters of the Association Montessori Internationale, the organisation she founded, is on the Koninginneweg, just around the corner from where we live. The nearest Montessori school, too, is just a short bike ride from our house.

Speaking of furniture, we also bought two seats today for our little bundle of joy. They're not in the house, though. No, these are for our Pack Max and 995 bikes from the Fietsfabriek.

With summer now well on the way and Eloïse now large and strong enough to cope with the rigours of a real seat, this will give us an element of freedom we haven't enjoyed before. For example, Sarah will now be able to bike with Eloïse without requiring me to be present. She doesn't feel comfortable with the 995, a.k.a. a bakfiets, so the child seat on the Pack Max will allow her to carry Eloïse using a bike to which she has grown accustomed.

On other occasions, we'll still use the 995, but now we no longer have to place a child's car-seat in the trough. Instead, we have a proper bicycle seat affixed to the bench. The only disadvantage of this system is that it will be much harder for Eloïse to sleep whilst being biked around, but we're just going to have to see how that works out in practice.

At our latest visit to the Consultatiebureau, Eloïse weighed in at 9210 g. Her growth has slowed a little since our last visit, but that's quite normal at this stage.

She now has more teeth breaking through, three or four of them on the upper jaw, but I can't yet be sure of the number. They're just starting to breach the surface of her gum.

She's still not truly crawling, but is getting closer to doing so with each passing day. However, that's not to say that she is immobile; she can drag herself around somewhat, but the rhythm of the true crawl still eludes her for the moment.

On the food front, she's still being breastfed, of course, but in addition to that, she enjoys apple sauce, pureed carrot and mushed up prunes. She's also very fond of beetroot, which turns her shit an alarming shade of burgundy. It pays to remember when she has recently eaten this particular root vegetable, lest you be beset by a moment of panic when removing a poopy nappy and discovering what momentarily resembles a haemorrhage.

Bedtime is almost invariably preceded by the reading of a couple of stories. Allemaal In De File and Nieuwsgierige Lotje are her current favourites; or perhaps they're mine; I'm not sure.

This evening ended up being a late bedtime for her. Whilst she was playing on the floor just after having had Ik Wil De Maan and Over Een Kleine Mol Die Wil Weten Wie Er Op Zijn Kop Gepoept Heeft read to her, I noticed some blood on her index finger.

Blood always looks more serious than the actual cut that produces it, of course, so I wasn't too worried, even though seeing my daughter's blood for the first time definitely made me uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the placement of the cut made her want to pick at it with her thumb, so we had a devilish time getting it to stop bleeding. A sticky plaster was made short work of by her, so we had to resort to playing in the bath to distract her. That mostly stemmed the ooze, but Sarah had to eventually put her to bed in the hope that she would fall asleep quickly and thus not be tempted to play with it any more.

We just can't figure out what caused the cut. My best guess is that she tugged on a page in her book and gave herself a paper cut. The cut is straight enough that this explanation seems plausible. There's simply nothing else on the floor where she was playing. I was right there with her, too; I barely took my eyes off her the entire time.

Anyway, she wasn't bothered about it at all, and just seemed rather frustrated and annoyed that these two big oafs were running around after her and delaying her being put to bed.

Sarah and I had ordered a new changing table for Eloïse a couple of weeks ago. It was delivered by Casa Luce yesterday afternoon and I finished putting it together this evening.

It's a Stokke Care. I really like Norwegian Stokke's line of baby furniture. The Tripp Trapp we bought a while ago has been great.

With the arrival of the Care, I no longer have to cripple myself, kneeling on the slate floor of our bathroom. The extra planks also give us a convenient place to store our stacks of cloth nappies, liners and covers.

I went down to the Audi dealer today and was relieved to discover that the new steering-column has fixed the fault I found last week. The steering wheel position can now happily be adjusted vertically, not just horizontally.

The arrival of our new car meant that I was finally able to properly fit our Maxi-Cosi PrioriFix car-seat that we purchased in January. The PrioriFix seat is fitted using the ISOFIX system, so that it is anchored to the actual chassis of the car. Because there's no need to use seat belts any more, the seat is more firmly held in place and becomes virtually impossible to fit incorrectly. This latter point is important, when you consider that something like 60% of child car-seats are fitted incorrectly in some way or other, rendering them anything from less effective to downright useless. Eloïse should be able to use this seat for the next few years.

Anyway, apart from the ISOFIX system (which is still non-standard on Audis and so has to be ordered as an extra), some of the other features I've played around with so far are:

• the satellite navigation system, of course. The DVD is dated September 2005, so it should be up-to-date with all of the one-way systems and other nonsense that sometimes confused the navigator in our borrowed car. I noticed that this version also has an altimeter. That'll be handy in a country under sea level!
• the DAB radio tuner. Unfortunately, there are relatively few radio stations in The Netherlands broadcasting in DAB, but the publieke omroep (public broadcasting company) does. Coverage isn't national yet, though, I believe.
• the analogue/digital TV tuner. I had this fitted in case I want to get a paid DVB-T subscription later on. Right now, all I can get in this country are Nederland 2, Nederland 3 and a few local news channels, but it'll still be handy for when I'm parked somewhere, waiting for Sarah to return to the car. Nederland 2 is available as a free-to-air DVB-T channel, so the quality is consistently good. The tuner even includes teletext capability, which makes me feel really spoilt.
• the car phone. Rather than arse around with car-kits and cigarette lighter adapters, I opted for the built-in phone. I can dial numbers from my steering wheel and even read SMS messages. Yeah, I know; not exactly safe whilst driving. At least you need to pull over and pick up the handset to actually send an SMS. I have a DuoSim card, so I can share the same number between my mobile phone and the car phone.
• advanced key. This is Audi's name for not requiring that the key be inserted in the door to unlock it, nor be in the ignition in order to start the car. One need only have the key in one's pocket to gain entry to the vehicle and start it. It sounds like a gimmick, but one gets used to this convenience very quickly.
• voice recognition. I can talk to my car and tell it where I want to go and who I want to call on the telephone. It then obliges me by programming that destination into the navigation system or by calling that person. Next year's model will drive there on autopilot and hold the conversation for me, too.

The car contains much more cool gadgetry than just the above, but I've only driven a handful of kilometres so far, so I have a lot more to try out and become acquainted with in the coming weeks.

On the way home from the dealer, I stopped off briefly at PCH to transfer the parking permit from the borrowed car to the new one. Then, I headed home to show off the car to Sarah, who seems to like it. She'll like it a lot more, of course, when I pull my finger out and take her on a road trip in it.

It's a real luxury to have your own car, especially one that you ordered brand new from the factory after picking out all the specific features you wanted, then waited more than three months for it to be manufactured and delivered. Hopefully, it will provide us with many years of reliable service.

Sarah went out this morning to her first La Leche League meeting (you should blog about that, Sarah), so I seized the opportunity to upgrade Gallery from version 1.5.2-pl2 to 2.1rc1. The new version has lots of nice new features, including vastly improved security when it comes to keeping one's photo repository outside of the Web server root.

On the other hand, it required the configuration of a MySQL database and, for some odd reason, this version has lost the ability to auto-rotate portrait photos on import, based on a bit in the EXIF tag. Why wasn't this feature carried over from version 1?

Anyway, all of this was in preparation for uploading the long-overdue photos detailing months eight and nine in the life of the world's most beautiful baby.

In addition to these two new albums, the Tall Timbers album contains a lot of new photos from our recent trip to see Fenella, Tim, Cameron and Willow, out in rural Maryland, USA. Some of those are really lovely, so if you're the kind of person who coos over cute children, you won't want to miss that one.

Phew! That should keep my mother-in-law quiet for another month.

I keep forgetting to mention that Eloïse now has a couple of bottom teeth. I don't get to see them very often, but they're definitely there. I can feel them while I'm attempting to brush them.

She's growing up and it's all going so fast. One minute, she's being born; the next, she's smiling; soon after that, she's rolling over; then, she's sitting upright; before you know it, she has teeth! At this rate, she'll be having her own children some time in 2007!

Even though I'm at home with her every day and essentially miss nothing, the speed at which the days, weeks and months go by is discomforting. Perhaps that's because so much has happened in the last twelve months; I don't know. We have plenty to do this year, too, what with furnishing the house and finding our niche in the new life we've created for ourselves, but I nevertheless trust that the pace will be less frenetic. After all, we have no plans to have another baby, move across the world or buy another house this year.

Yes, by the end of 2006, I do hope that it will feel as if it has slunk by more slowly than the year before it.

Wiesje (a.k.a. Poe-Poe, a.k.a. Eloïse ) paid a visit to the consultatiebureau this morning. She now weighs 8.87 kg, is 70.5 cm long and has a cranial circumference of 46.5 cm. What this means is that she's growing well and hovering around the national average. The doctor was very pleased with her progress.

She's getting heavy now. The days of comfortably carrying her around in one arm are long gone. In fact, two arms are now prone to ache after a few minutes of lugging her lovely, chubby little body around.

We'll put up some new pictures soon. Whereas whe was a carbon copy of me for the first few months, she's now looking more and more like Sarah with each passing day. Looking at photos of Sarah as a baby, it's hard to tell them apart. They're like two drops of water.

At the official weigh-in on Tuesday, Eloïse registered 7810 g. She's 67 cm long. That puts her at the 50th percentile for both weight and length. Her head circumference, however, is 45.2 cm, which puts her in a much higher percentile: 75-80%.

It's official: she's a big head!

Today was the intocht van Sinterklaas, or the arrival of Sinterklaas in Amsterdam. We proceeded around noon with our favourite small person (yes, Eloïse ) to the Dam, where an almost two hour wait ensued before Sinterklaas finally rode down the Damrak into town on his horse.

It was very busy with parents and children and had started to drizzle by the end, but we got to see the goedheilig man and were handed some pepernoten by one of the many zwarte pietjes leading the way.

Eloïse has experienced her first Sinterklaas! Hieperdepiep! Hoera! Hieperdepiep! Hoera! Hieperdepiep! Hoera!

OK, OK, we've listened to your nagging and put up photos from months five and six in our darling daughter's life.

She's growing well and weighed in today at the consultatiebureau at 7.120 kg, with a length of 64 cm. She's now more than twice the weight she was at birth, which Sarah says means there's now twice as much Eloïse for us to love. Awww!

She threw up onto the floor of the Volvo dealer yesterday. Today, she threw up in a furniture shop. Perhaps it's time to get some liability insurance.

Lots of people have been nagging us to put up some new photos, so we finally have. Since the move, we haven't been diligent about taking photos whenever a good opportunity presented itself, but we'll try to be more discplined about that from now on.