Mijn Fiets, Mijn Fiets!

There is nothing quite like the feeling of walking out to the bicycle parking area of the train station after a long day away from home, to find your bike has been stolen. First you think, 'surely I parked it here', while you walk up and down the entire row of bikes looking, then you know beyond doubt that your 2004 Batavus Old Dutch with customized gear addition, in beautiful red, the so called oma fiets is gone forever.
Never to return.
Then, you have to walk home.

It is insured, but of course that is not the point. The insurance won't cover the whole price... so I am not sure what I will replace it with. Probably a great bike, a lighter bike -a more practical bike- but I loved the grandma for the least practical reason-- just for the way it looked.

We went to the police station on Friday as a family outing. Mike filled out the forms while I watched James crawl about. They did offer therapy if I felt traumatized by the event. That was a nice touch. Mike assured them he was covering the therapy portion of the recovery.

Ensche-day

The commercials on television tell us that we have only 2 days until autumn, but we are enjoying another beautiful late summer in Enschede. We biked on Sunday to the Volkspark and enjoyed the scenery until James ran into his first brandnettles (aka fire nettles-- it feels like fire ants and it is not fun). Once we realized what had happened and dried the tears, the wee man was back to crawling about.
When walking through the city the other night I saw that the "architects of air" display was set up in front of the Oude Kerk (Old Church). Think of a jumping castle, but molded into turrets illuminated with sunlight when you walk inside. We dropped by today, and it is the IDEAL baby environment. The light effects can get a little woozy, but it is all crawling space with soft corners-- perfect for James. He loved it, charmed the crowds as usual, and we had a fun time. Here are the photos.

Old update

Things are moving along here in Enschede; I don't know if it's James' presence or that stage after you have moved someplace new but we are beginning to realise how soon we will be leaving- about a year from this December. The sort of longer view that comes with getting older has certainly kicked in- Katharine has always been a big planner but I rarely looked so far down the road until the last few years. Now 2 or even five years seems like nothing at all. We spend a lot of time now planning for potential moves after Katharine defends her thesis.
Before we started this blog while we were waiting for James, in February of 2005 we travelled to Egypt for 2 weeks to visit our friends Brian and Eugenia Cayce. Though Brian was called away to work- we had a great chance to stay with Eugenia in Cairo and travel around the country a bit to see some truly amazing things. I promise I'm working on a short story called 'Wake Up Mohammed!' about taking a taxi through the Sinai desert. I'll let you know when it's published...
I've put up some photos from the trip for several reasons- a lot of our family and friends haven't seen them- and some friends from Alaska are coming through to visit us in December on their way to Africa and wanted a look at our Egypt experience.

In other news, James began taking some solid steps in earnest last week. I'm afraid our enthusiasm may have scared him a bit though, as he still mostly crawls or knee-walks around the house. We have also moved to a single nap a day which is quite a change- still sleeping 14 hours in the night but it completely reorganises your day to have a more energetic baby little guy around. Not quite a self-feeder yet, James has also made great strides with his spoon and sippy cup.

Best laid plans, or making lemonade

Yesterday I (Mike) was supposed to fly to England for a weekend away at Frame2006, a sort of timberframing conference. I was looking forward to talking to a bunch of guys, in my own language, about old buildings. Sadly, it was not to be. Despite, or in spite, of the fact that we do a lot of traveling, sometimes you just forget things. Maybe it was because this was my first solo trip in 3 years and I have really gotten used to my wife arranging all the details... Anyway 30 minutes into my 2 hour train ride to get to the airport an hour before check-in, I realised I had left my passport. Quite boneheaded. Long, sad story short, turning back and catching the next train, I missed my flight (something I have never done.) We buy cheap non-refundable tickets and there was no way I could afford another one.
So, lemons. Bitter, stressful, lemons.
Luckily it was a beautiful fall day in Amsterdam and while Katharine and James came to join me to go to the Artis Zoo for the afternoon, I walked around the canals and saw some beautiful old buildings anyway.
I think the last zoo I went to was the Bronx zoo when I was ten years old; we all had a good time and look forward to going back and seeing the 2/3 we probably missed. James did play on the cool big kids playground but he mostly wanted to climb up the big slides as kids came down.


Note to fellow bloggers- our ability to comment on other blogs is frozen due to blogger-beta use and I've also heard its difficult to comment here for the same reason, they promise to fix it soon. If I had the time I'd probably switch back but hopefully it will be ironed out.

Exciting Times

Neighbors Ronald and Maaike came over with baby Lina for a belated birthday celebration- James got a very cool ball-hammering toy (a-la whack-a-mole) which he loves. Though sometimes he smashes his own hand... don't we all sometimes?
He has also become quite the proficient stairclimber- always under constant supervision on the open stairs of course- but I can't help be proud...