Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

The fact that one had to pay for the toilet in addition to the price of the actual ticket couldn't put a dent in it. The pink umbrella we purchased, which broke when opened for only the second time, couldn't put a dent in it. Even the fact there was no band as such, just a trio of girls singing along and dancing away to a karaoke set on a laptop somewhere, couldn't put a dampener on the proceedings.

This morning, we drove the 37 km to Leiden's Groenoordhallen, a glorified aircraft hangar, to see K3 perform in front of an audience of ecstatic toddlers, most of whom were girls.

Eloïse was as ecstatic as anyone, I have to say. She bopped her way through several numbers before succumbing to fatigue and spending most of the rest of the concert bouncing on my lap. Eloïse 's dancing style is primitive and clearly exhausting. I call it the kinderpogo, because she basically just jumps up and down, occasionally swinging her arms. She definitely dances as if no-one is watching.

Karen, Kathleen and Kristel, the K3 girls, actually have pretty decent voices live. I was surprised.

In fact, I have to say I had a really good time, better than last week at the Sisters of Mercy in the States. It was utterly heartwarming to see how excited Eloïse was to see her favourite band and how she danced with abandon to her favourite songs.

And Lucas , he looked on in bemusement for a few minutes, before nodding off to sleep, in spite of the loud music.

We even made it back to Amsterdam in time for Eloïse to go to peuterspeelzaal, so today has been a really good day, especially when compared to the rest of the week, which I may blog about later.

Both of our children had appointments at the Consultatiebureau last week.

Lucas is now 4.5 months young, weighed in at 7530 g and measured 65 cm in length. By way of comparison, at the same age, Eloïse was nearly 1400 g lighter and a couple of centimetres shorter. Yes, Lucas is a strapping lad.

Eloïse has reached the ripe old age of 3 years and 3 months old, weighs 15.5 kg and measures 97 cm. She'll soon shoot through the one metre barrier.

Not so nice was when the doctor diagnosed suspected abductiebeperking or, in English, abductive limitation of the hip in Lucas . She wasn't able to spread Lucas 's legs as much as she felt she should be able to.

Six days of putting the matter out of our mind ensued, as we tried not to think about the possibility that Lucas might have hip dysplasia (heupdysplasie). The orthopaedic department of the VUmc holds its weekly surgery on Wednesday mornings and Lucas 's suspected condition was diagnosed last Thursday, so there was nothing we could do, but wait.

So, off we went on the bakfiets yesterday morning, to have our jolly, permanently smiling little man checked out.

We first saw a very pleasant young doctor on one side of the Boelelaan, who, after prodding and exercising Lucas 's hips, could find nothing wrong with him. It's standard procedure to perform an ultrasound, though, so we left the building, crossed the Boelelaan and headed to the second floor.

There, we were reunited with all of the parents who had gone before us on the other side of the road. Happily, it didn't take very long before we were seen. By this time, Lucas was very tired and quite vocal in his sadness about not being allowed to doze off.

His ordeal didn't last long, however, and, much to our relief, no abnormality was found. His hips were given a clean bill of health.

This was one time I didn't mind having been sent somewhere for nothing. The health of one's children is an indescribably precious thing, but usually one taken for granted. It's not until one sees other children emerging from the doctor's office, their father carrying a cumbersome hip brace, that one remembers how lucky one is to have ferociously healthy, irrepressible children.

Consider me reminded.

At the Consultatiebureau a few days ago, Lucas weighed in at 6320 g, with a length of 61 cm and a head circumference of 41.4 cm. He's well on the way to doubling his birth weight, which was 3500 g.

We had to make a big decision today.

Eloïse was set to move after the summer from Het Speelhol to a new peuterspeelzaal, namely that belonging to the Amsterdamse Montessori School, about a kilometre from here.

The reason for the move was that Eloïse had been guaranteed a place at the Amsterdamse Montessori School from the age of four. However, places at the school are almost exclusively guaranteed to children who previously attend the school's own play-school from the age of three. In other words, to make use of the place promised to Elo&ium;se at the school proper, we'd have to move her away from her beloved Wanda before she's ready.

For months now, I've been trying to engineer a compromise for this situation. The school is adamant, however, that an exception to their policy cannot be made.

We'd started to resign ourselves to the idea of having to just swallow the situation. After all, you'd don't want to jeopardise years of education at the right primary school for the sake of a few months at a fantastic play-school. We'd also met the staff of the play-school and Eloïse had enjoyed her visit there, so we had agreed to move Eloïse there the second week of August.

But over the last few months, criticisms of the Montessori method have started to reach my ears. They suggest an overemphasis on cognitive development and too little time spent on art and craft, music and movement. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the Montessori approach of letting children pick which works they want to do, ultimately leads to many children excelling in the things they enjoy, whilst neglecting the subjects that they don't.

A lot of these criticisms come from adults who went through the Montessori school system themselves, so I take them seriously. At the same time, however, none of the stories is shocking.

Nevertheless, we decided to rethink the situation and look around yet again at other schools, even though we're already either on the waiting list of most neighbourhood schools, or we've been told that we're too far down that list to ever stand a chance.

Our attention ultimately turned to the Geert Groote School, a vrijeschool (a.k.a. a Waldorf or Steiner school) about one and a half kilometres from here. We hadn't previously considered this particular school -- didn't even really know about it, in fact -- but after some research, decided that it would be a suitable school for Eloïse .

Compared to the schools of other didactic philosophies, it's perceived as quite radical. Its doctrines flow directly from the school of thought known as anthroposophy. At its most basic, Steiner education incorporates physical, emotional, artistic and intellectual elements, rather than dealing purely with the cognitive. Sarah and I feel a great affinity with this approach, because the role of the child's imagination is strongly emphasised.

Steiner schools are named after Rudolf Steiner, their founder, and also the founder of anthroposophy, eurythmy, and biodynamic agriculture (more commonly known these days as organic farming). Clearly, Herr Steiner spent a lot of time thinking about things.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Eloïse has been offered a place at the Geert Groote School for the school year 2009/2010. That means she can start there when she's four, after the summer of 2009.

This comes as a great relief to us. Not only do we identify more strongly with Steiner education than with the Montessori method, but it also means that Eloïse can stay at Het Speelhol until she's four, which is something we're all really happy about.

It's also encouraging that the Geert Groote School has shown itself to be flexible and accommodating. That promises good things for the future.

In the course of my research, I downloaded and read the last few years' worth of the educational inspection's reports on the Amsterdamse Montessori School and both locations of the Geert Groote School. The AMS actually comes away with the better judgement, but I believe that educational inspection favours the more cognitive schools. Not everything can be measured, especially a child's emotional development.

That said, the second location of the Geert Grote School (known in that community as GGS2), receives an alarmingly bad report. The school has earned the unenviable predicate of zeer zwak, which translates as 'extremely weak'. In fact, the school is threatened with closure if it doesn't manage to raise standards in very short order. The GGS1 location, happily, is free of these problems.

One very useful site I found that helped with my research into schools was that of the Onderwijs Consumenten Organisatie (Education Consumer Organisation). Amongst other things, they maintain a news archive, containing stories on all of the Dutch education-related news from the past few years. For one thing, that enabled me to follow the GGS2's descent into difficulties.

Incidentally, the Dutch vrijescholen community has its own Web site.

I hadn't got around to an update on Eloïse 's chicken pox until now, and I wanted to finish the saga.

She had a couple of really difficult days with the itching and fever and then it broke. Who knows how much good the homeopathic remedies did, but the calendula cream certainly eased provided some relief.

She's well on the mend now, but since she had such huge pocks on her forehead, the sores are going to be a long time healing. We hope they won't leave scars, but it's hard to imagine there won't be at least a few small ones.

Elsewhere on her body, the sores are healing quite quickly. Her buttocks are settling down now, as is her chest.

In the spirit of generosity, we've passed on the dreaded lurgie to at least one other child, whose mother brought her to the house to deliberately expose her. It sounds cruel, but it's better to get the virus when you're well-prepared for it. We'd previously exposed Eloïse , but she just couldn't seem to catch it.

Anyway, our girl was already feeling much better by the time Opa Tony and Oma Bernie came, but I just didn't get around to blogging about it. That's hereby rectified.

Eloïse has quite a bad case of chicken pox. Whereas a lot of children get away with a handful of pocks on their face and chest, Eloïse is covered in the bloody things. They're all over her face, chest, arms, and bum; and she has a good number on other parts of her body, too. They must number several hundred, I'd say. She may even have as many as I had a couple of weeks ago.

The whole family endured a pretty much sleepless night last night, thanks to Eloïse 's discomfort. We had to get up at irregular intervals, every half an hour or so, to put calendula cream on her welts. They're very bothersome to her now and she's feeling very sorry for herself. In particular, the ones on her bum are clustered very densely and are very itchy. She says they hurt a lot and she is visibly in pain when she attempts to sit on a hard surface.

We've also put some menthol talc on her today, but it's hard to say whether it's helping. She's suffering with diarrhoea, too, and her mood is very depressed. Poor little girl. She went to the peuterspeelzaal this afternoon, which I hoped would help lift her mood, but she came home again within a few minutes.

We're treating her with the same two homeopathic remedies that I took when I had the virus, namely Antimonium tartaricum 200K and Rhus toxicodendron 200K.

I do hope she'll be feeling somewhat better tomorrow. It's the worst torment in the world to see your child suffering in front of you and be unable to do anything to help.

We took Lucas to the consultatiebureau last Friday.

It turns out that he now weighs 5830 g, is 60 cm long and has a cranial circumference of 40.4 cm.

That's quite a leap from his birth weight of 3500 g, so he's now above average in all measurements for his age. What a bouncing boy.

Add the usual incubation period of chicken pox to the date Lucas and I first started showing symptoms of the disease and, lo and behold, you arrive at Friday last. That's the day that Elo&ium;se started sprouting pocks.

Thankfully, she doesn't seem bothered by it at all. Her spirits are high and she had plenty of energy today at the Little Gym. Hopefully, it'll have blown over within a few days and we can finally stop thinking about chicken pox in this house.

Lucas has chicken pox. He doesn't seem to be bothered by it, except maybe for needing to sleep more than normal. He's so young, though, that he's unlikely to develop immunity from this infection and will probably need to get it again.

Unexpectedly, I also have chicken pox. Since you can theoretically only get it once, I must not have had it when I was a child. Without that knowledge, I've been bracing myself for the moment that my children contracted it to see if I would, too. Well, now I know.

Chicken pox is apparently more severe in adults than in children and that certainly concurs with my experience so far. In no particular order, the last few days have brought:

• the shits
• aching balls
• dehydration
• powerful headaches
• dizziness
• throbbing pain in my lower back
• welts all over my torso, upper legs, face and scalp
• itching
• sleeplessness

It comes in waves of one or more of the above symptoms. The dizziness, headaches and itchy welts are the most consistent.

Sometimes, it's so debilitating, that I certainly wouldn't be able to blog. I might be lying on my back again in an hour, so I should post this now.

I'm not sure whether I've had the worst of it yet. I do hope so, because this is certainly bad enough.

A little late, but I should mention Eloïse 's third birthday, which was last Monday.

It had been preceded by a birthday party the previous Friday at her peuterspeelzaal, but the real party was on the birthday Monday itself. That turned out to be very well timed, because the weather was gorgeous and it happened to be the second day of Pentecost (Tweede Pinksterdag), or whatever it's called in English, which is a bank holiday here.

The birthday party proper was a real success, with lots of Eloïse 's friends in attendance.

She was positively snowed under with presents; too much so, in fact. Even the recently reattached Irish branch of the family sent a couple of T-shirts and a card. Thanks to everyone who attended and helped make it such a terrific event.

Sarah baked the cake and helped Eloïse blow out the candles. She seemed to really enjoy being the centre of attention for the day, which is funny, because she's normally quite shy. Of course, she was in her home environment, which helps.

Eloïse 's main presents were a Mijn Eerst Laptop (My First Laptop) computer and a Kidizoom digital camera.

The quality of the pictures taken by the digital camera are pretty awful, but that seems to be of no concern to Eloïse , who happily snaps away at anything and everything. They're supposedly VGA (640x480), but there's so much noise in the photos that they remind me of the first generation of digital cameras from the mid-nineties.

The laptop is fun. It has keys with all of the numbers and letters, but it's not a QWERTY keyboard. It's not a real laptop, either, of course, but a set of educational number and letter games in a laptop-like casing. You choose an activity and then it tells you what to do. The laptop even comes with its own little mouse and one of the activities trains the child in its use. Eloïse 's already made some progress on the machine in the last few days and seems to enjoy it.

Both the camera and laptop were things that Eloïse had requested for her birthday without any prompting. You can imagine why she might have thought they would be fun to have: Mama and Papa spend an awful lot of time playing with theirs.

The great thing about having a camera phone capable of a decent resolution is that you're always able to record an unexpected but precious moment for posterity.

Today, I took Eloïse out on the bakfiets for a raspberry ice-cream at Pisa IJs. She had got up at 06:00, so she was tired and quickly fell asleep. When we arrived at Pisa, her head was still lolling around, so I parked the bike and captured the moment on video.

06:45 and I'm already up. I've dressed Eloïse and she's outside, riding her bike around the garden.

Ugh.

Schiphol experienced its busiest day of the year yesterday, as 170,000 passengers milled through the airport and headed off on their way.

It's the start of the May holiday here, which this year includes Koninginnedag (the queen's birthday), and Hemelvaartsdag (Ascension Day). That means workers only have to take three days off work to get a nine day consecutive run, so many people have decided to go on holiday this week.

We were originally planning to be a part of this group ourselves, and go to England today to visit Fenella et al in Cornwall. Time is short, however, as Sarah's folks arrive next weekend, so we'd need to be back by then.

Car, plane and train all seemed inappropriate for this trip. Lucas isn't yet used to travel and we were reluctant to start him off with a trip that, one way or another, would mean quite a long day in transit. He's still so young and tiny at the moment, and I feel that we need to stay close to the nest for at least another few weeks.

Not only that, but there are things going on at home, too. The garden, for example.

Yesterday, Eloïse 's climbing frame was delivered and installed; and today, the lawn sods were laid down on top of chicken wire (to thwart the moles), thereby rendering the initial laying of the garden more or less complete.

As I've written before, we have yet to put in the new lighting and there are a few places where plants and flowers are still missing, but this should all be taken care of in a matter of weeks. We've started looking for new garden furniture and may already have found something appropriate. We'll know in a few days.

We had beautiful weather today. The Vondelpark was teeming with people. When I got home from having my hair cut, Eloïse was standing atop her climbing frame and clearly enjoying herself.

She spent the rest of the afternoon riding around the garden path and patio area on her outdoor tricycle. She, for one, is clearly going to get a lot of use and enjoyment out of the garden.

The sods need a week or two to settle without being trampled underfoot, so we're going to have to try and keep Eloïse off them. The problem with that is that the slide of her climbing frame lands on the grass. We'll have to see how well we can control her tomorrow.

Lucas had his first visit to the Consultatiebureau today, where we learned that he has now grown to 4210g and 53cm. That's quite an achievement in such a small space of time. No wonder he needs to sleep so much: it must be exhausting to increase your bulk by 20% in just over three weeks.

I've put up a few more week three photos, as well as a bunch from this week. The week four photos are definitely the best yet; Lucas even has his eyes open in some of them.

Sarah made a fruit smoothie the other day and added a spoonful of ground placenta to the mix, just to see how it tasted. Whichever positive qualities the placenta possesses, a pleasant taste is not one of them, it has to be said.

Our birth announcement cards arrived in the post today. I'll be posting some of those through neighbours's letterboxes tomorrow and sending the rest out in the post at the start of next week.

If I were designing a birth announcement card for my friends, I'd probably choose something with a geek element, such as the following bit of Ruby code:

family << Child.new( { :name   => 'Lucas Alexander Caspar Matthijs',
                       :sex    => 'Male',
                       :dob    => DateTime.parse( '2008-03-31T13:31:00+02:00' ),
                       :weight => 3500 } )

Clear enough, right?

Sarah would never allow it, though: far too sensible and traditional. Oh well.

On Tuesday morning, we took Lucas out for the first time in the car. It was also his first trip outside of Amsterdam, but only as far as Amstelveen, so he's not exactly a globe trekker just yet.

We all went to the Amsterdamse Bos, specifically to Boerderij Meerzicht and had pancakes for lunch. It was Sarah's idea and she'd picked a gloriously fresh spring day for it. After pancakes, Eloïse played in the playground and I took some photos. Why don't we do this every morning?

That first trip in the car was hopeful. Lucas was quiet and patient. Only on the return trip, when we were just around the corner from our house, did he begin to get restless and cry.

I still remember Eloïse 's first trip in the car, from Mountain View to Los Altos in California, to get a passport photo taken. The return trip was hellish, and that was even shorter than our trip to the Amsterdamse Bos on Tuesday.

Speaking of passports, we picked up Lucas 's passport yesterday afternoon from the mercifully bustle-free stadsdeelkantoor.

Getting a passport is a relatively efficient process in this country. Lucas isn't yet three weeks old, but he already has his travel document. We'll eventually have to get him a US passport, too, because of the silly rule there that you must travel in and out on an American passport if you're a citizen (which he automatically is, thanks to his American mother). This can wait until he's about to make his first trip, however.

A woman from the Consultatiebureau came to the house this afternoon to do a check-up on Lucas . He's growing well and has now passed the four kilo mark at 4010g.

We had a good conversation with this woman about why we don't have our children vaccinated. She wrongly assumed, as do many people, that we were selfishly choosing to reap the benefits of herd immunity, whilst not having our children contribute to the herd. Not so. The reasons we don't have our children vaccinated are many, but can basically be summarised as follows: we don't believe the vaccinations are effective. In fact, we believe they are actually detrimental to society.

I could fill many on this subject alone, but people far more knowledgeable on the subject than I have already done so. I can give pointers if you're interested.

Finally, the new boy in town has also gone on the waiting list for Eloïse 's peuterspeelzaal. You can never enrol your children too soon for anything here.

Things are going well here.

The last time Lucas was weighed, he had regained his birth weight and progressed beyond it. He's supposed to be putting on about 50g per day and, judging by how he's feeding, I suspect he's hitting his targets.

We went out on Tuesday with Lucas to Bagels & Beans for lunch. We used the Cameleon pram frame with the Maxi Cosi car-seat on top as transport. The reason for the car-seat in spite of being on foot was so that we could pass by a photographic shop on the way home and get some passport photos of Lucas taken.

The car-seat turned out to be unnecessary for securing him while the photographs were taken. Instead, Sarah just sat him on a chair with one of her hands behind him to prop him up and support his head.

Lucas was getting his photo taken when he was just nine days old. Eloïse didn't go for her passport photo (in Los Altos) until she was a full thirteen days old. In both cases, the big issue was the eyes, i.e. keeping the little buggers awake, so that their eyes are fully visible in the photo.

I don't know why they make such a big fuss of the rules for baby passport photos. Newborns bear no resemblance to their passport photo within just a few months, so why bother?

Similarly, Lucas had to appear in person the next day at the stadsdeelkantoor, while I dealt with his passport application. Sarah came, too, as she needed to sign the form to give her consent. It went very smoothly -- I didn't even need to fill in a form -- and Lucas 's passport should be ready for pick-up next Wednesday.

Lucas had his first bath today, unless you count the one he was born in. He seemed to enjoy it, although he'd definitely had enough by the end.

Cora's last day was Monday, as planned. We miss her, but on the other hand, it's also nice to have the house back to ourselves.

Wednesday saw the installation of an apple tree and a Chanticleer pear tree (a sierpeer or decorative pear tree in Dutch) in the garden. They look very nice,although they'll need to grow a bit before they look at home here.

With that, the garden is on hold again for a few more days. I'm not altogether sure what the hold-up is this time, but there's no real hurry, in any case.

Anyway, photos of Lucas 's second week of life are now on-line, including photos of his first bath.

It's hard to believe that Lucas was born a whole week ago. My, how the past week has flown by.

Saturday was Cora's next to last day at our house. She'll be back on Monday for the last time (in connection with Lucas , at least). Cora's been a great help: cooking, washing, massaging, etc. Most importantly, she has created the breathing space for Sarah to rest and recuperate.

Friday was Sarah's first venture outside the house since Lucas 's birth. She came with me to pick up Eloïse from the peuterspeelzaal, which is close enough that it made for a perfect first outing. The other mums and dads were excited to see our new family member.

Earlier this week, a sprinkler company subcontracted by our gardening company came over and laid down our new watering system. It's only a sprinkler installation, I know, but it's very clever. Technology is technology and this system is well-engineered. Good engineering is always impressive, whether it's a washing-machine or a computer program.

The gardeners will hopefully return tomorrow to continue the task of readying the garden for spring. Spring's already here in theory, but Mother Nature doesn't seem to know it yet.

Our friends Marc and Miranda came over to meet Lucas this morning. After they left, I drove Eloïse to a birthday party in IJburg, where she had fun playing with the other children.

Lucas still spends most of the day with his eyes closed. I've seen them, though. They're blue. Sarah says he looks like me, but so did Eloïse at that age. Who's to say whether it'll stick?

I've put up a few more photos of Lucas . These are of days three and four.

The remainder of Lucas 's umbilical cord snapped off Wednesday evening. I'm glad that's out of the way.

Laura is going to make a little drum out of the main part of the cord that she took with her after the birth. Similarly, she's drying and preparing the placenta for future medicinal use. It will end up as a pot of powder that Sarah can dip into as needed. It's supposed to do you a power of good and, even if it's beneficial effects are exaggerated, it certainly won't do any harm.

It's a contradiction in terms, I know, but I am impressed with Dutch birth bureaucracy. I registered Lucas 's birth only yesterday, but already the bureaucratic machine has swung into motion.

The doorbell rang this afternoon. It was the GGD, coming to do Lucas 's neo-natal hearing test and heel prick. We had no idea they would come so quickly, or without first calling.

Luckily, Lucas was asleep, so he made no sound while his hearing was being tested. We're pleased to report that both of his ears passed the test without issue.

Eloïse never had the hearing test, because she was born in the US, where the test isn't performed (unless the child is born in hospital). Indeed, the way she ignores our instructions sometimes, we do wonder whether she's deaf, but it's just healthy infantile contempt for our parental authority, of course.

Afterwards, it was the turn of Lucas 's foot for the heel prick. He didn't even wince as his foot was pricked and a few drops of blood were drawn. If we haven't heard anything after three weeks, it means that all tests were negative (which in this case is positive, if you see what I mean).

I registered Lucas with the doctor this morning and arranged for the birth bed-pan to be picked up tomorrow. It wasn't actually used during the birth.

We're pretty much on top of things here, not in the last place thanks to Cora, who continues to endear herself to us. Expect to find us suffering withdrawal symptoms after next Monday.

Our difficulties with choosing child names are well documented. We went through the mangle with Eloïse (née Franbert) and it's been no different this time with Mr. X.

Happily, that process has now run its course and concluded, partially thanks to Dutch law, which gives new parents just three working days to register the monicker of their new progeny.

Henceforth, Eloïse 's new sibling shall be known as Lucas (Luuk ) Alexander Caspar Matthijs Macdonald.

I registered the birth this morning at the stadsdeelkantoor on the Koninginneweg. It took only a couple of minutes.

Apart from a birth certificate, I came away with a present from the local council voor de nieuwe Amsterdammer (for the new Amsterdammer). It turned out to be a red, hooded bath towel on the I Amsterdam theme. A nice touch and a pleasant reminder of why it's cool to live in Amsterdam.

Luuk is doing well. Neither he nor Sarah has left the house since his birth, but we're thinking we may briefly venture out on Friday. It all depends on how fit Sarah's feeling.

The house is embellished with blue streamers and whatnot, inside and out, so none of the neighbours can be in much doubt about the fact that a baby boy was recently born here.

Tiny male genitals are proving quite a challenge. At any moment, a nappy change can (literally) erupt in an escaped hosepipe scenario. Sarah, Cora and I have all been sprayed across various parts of our body. The wall by the changing table has also had a good dousing. At some point, we'll get the hang of this.

Our bed has pretty much reached its maximum capacity now. Eloïse and Lucas both comfortably fit in next to us, but we're no longer swimming in excess width. If Sarah had surprised us with twins, we'd be scratching our heads now.

With the name and birth registration taken care of, the next item on the agenda today was health insurance. I ticked that one off this afternoon. Tomorrow, I'll call our doctor and register him with the practice.

The next step will be to get mug shots done and apply for a Dutch passport. The American passport (required for travel to and from the US if you're a citizen) can wait until closer to the time that it's actually needed.

It's been a busy couple of days, as you might imagine.

Cora, our kraamverzorgster, is a real blessing. She cooks, she cleans, she bathes the baby, she tends to Sarah's nether regions, she does the laundry, she washes up. There's not much that she doesn't do. We love having her around.

We settled on Mr. X's new name Monday evening. I went down to the stadsdeelkantoor today to register his birth, but soon learned that the burgerzaken department closes at 14:00 on Tuesday. Wednesday is the last day for registration, so I'll be there in the morning to take care of it. Until that happens, we're remaining tight-lipped about the name. That also allows us to have a last-minute change of heart. We've already had one of those this afternoon, so we don't expect any more.

Eloïse got to hand out beschuit en muisjes at peuterspeelzaal today. In English, it's crispbread with tiny little aniseed sweets on top. It's traditional to have this with either pink or blue aniseed sweets, depending on the gender of the baby. It was good for her to be able to do this, because -- in spite our resolve not to neglect her in favour of our new acquisition -- the simple fact of the matter is that time spent breastfeeding the baby and changing his nappy is time that is no longer spent with her. Prior to last Sunday, all of our time went to her, so it's taking a little getting used to; for all of us.

She also got to ring the bell at the end of the day and spend some time sitting on Wanda's lap, so she came home looking pretty lucky. The mums and dads of the peuterspeelzaal had had a whip round for us and bought Mr. X his first toy, a cuddly red car. They also bought us a puzzle book, which Eloïse loves. She's already done all of the puzzles in it. This was a really kind gesture and serves yet again to indicate what a special place her play-school is.

Mr. X himself is doing excellently. He sleeps enough for ten men, has taken to the breast like a professional, and cries only when his nappy is being changed; no doubt due to the cold air circulating around his rude bits.

Jackie (the doula) came around Monday afternoon and talked to Sarah about how the labour had gone. This afternoon, Laura (the midwife) came over to see Sarah. We are so impressed with the loving care that Sarah has received from everyone involved during pregnancy and birth. It really couldn't have been any better.

So it's all going perfectly, really. No breastfeeding issues, no nothing. The meconium nappies finally passed today, giving way to the instantly familiar scent of breast-milk based poop. It smells identical to my memory of Eloïse 's early nappies.

Check out our gallery for some day two and three snaps.

Today was the day. When the call of nature comes, there's no stopping it; and I'm not just taking about the need to pee.

Sarah went into full labour on Sunday morning. Aided by me, our doula (Jacky) and our midwife (Laura), she gave birth to a healthy baby boy at 13:31 CEST on 2008-03-30.

The baby was born underwater, using our birthing pool.

It was quite an experience. There was just enough time before the contractions came on really strong to take one last pregnancy photo.

The grandparents will (rightfully) hang me out to dry if I don't post some photos, so I've now taken care of that.

There are lots of photos of the labour, too, but these need to go before the eyes of the maternal censor before they can withstand the scrutiny of the Internet.

Mother and son are in excellent health. Big sister is very happy with her new sibling.

Mr. X doesn't have a proper name yet, which is why he's called Mr. X. Until he came out this afternoon, he didn't even have a gender in our mind, never mind a name. Give us time. In any case, Dutch law requires that we register his birth by Wednesday.

I'm off to bed. The kraamzorg will be here bright and early in the morning.

We've just emerged from the coldest Easter in 40 years in this country. And, whilst Easter may have ended, the chilly weather certainly hasn't.

Today alone, we've had snow, sleet and hail. The gardeners continued their work, regardless. It's basically been snowing here since last Friday. You never get a white Christmas in Amsterdam, but you can have a white Easter.

The traffic jams in the Netherlands were almost at an all-time worst this morning. Only one day in February 1999 had worse traffic jams (measured in total length of all jams across the entire country). I'm glad I don't commute.

I was the meedraai parent at the peuterspeelzaal today, which meant I got to help out with the afternoon's activities. It's its own reward, as you get to see your own child playing and enjoying herself in a wonderfully stimulating environment.

Tomorrow, Sarah hits 38 weeks of pregnancy. If Eloïse is anything to go by, that would put the birth of our next baby just eight days away.

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 put a copy of this video on our MythTV, where Eloïse likes to watch and read along with herself.