It's been a while since you've gotten a good update on what has been going on in Finchley's and Jack's lives. There has been a lot of eating and even more sleeping as well as the occasional fight with a neighbor cat through the window and frequent visits to the kitty litter. All is well in cat world.
The Ikea bag provided a little entertainment one afternoon.
The highlight was definitely when one cat was inside the bag and the other was outside.
Another great pastime is lounging in the windowsill, although some cats around here don't really fit in the windowsill that well:
I am up every morning from about 2:30 to 4:00 and Finchley sleeps on the chair in the living room, despite my turning the light on and making a ruckus. Jack, on the other hand is ready to rumble. This is hardly his best performance, but here is a taste of what he can do in the fetching department.
Last night we went to Jim's black tie holiday party, so we tried to take some nice pictures of ourselves in our finery, which mostly ended up looking pretty goofy. I appear to have wall eyes in most of the pictures of me.
Jim looking dapper:
Me, looking slightly deranged (I'm including this psychotic looking picture only because you can see my almost 35 week pregnant stomach):
Last night we had our first prenatal class (or antenatal class, as they call it around here). It was fun! I couldn't take pictures (because that would be weird in such an intimate setting), but I can describe what it was like.
Jim and I walked/waddled over to our instructor Ruth's house, where we found other people walking/waddling along, looking for her elusive house number. Eventually we all arrived on her doorstep, en mass. Ruth is very enthusiastic and holistic and we all gathered in her living room, which was decorated with various anatomical posters of babies in wombs and dilating cervixes. She enthusiastically bounced on her yoga ball and took us through a few meditative exercises which involved strategies for decreasing labor pain. Then she thoroughly freaked us out by showing us lots of pictures of naked women in excruciating labor pain. We were supposed to come up with strategies for the partner to help with the labor pain. Jim and I both came up with a good strategy: DRUGS!!!
After all the scary pictures of labor, we got on to the actual baby and what happens to him/her once he/she is born. There is a big push for skin to skin contact and not having the baby taken away immediately for weighing and there is a lot of focus on being assertive about things in the hospital. AND it was also emphasized that the Dad should change the first diaper, which is the one filled with the gross, black/green muconium poop that the baby has stored up in utero. Jim is mentally preparing himself for this fun filled task.
We're also thinking about hiring a Doula, who will be a constant and reassuring presence for us and will help take some of the "coaching" pressure off of Jim. If we find someone, she would get to know us before the birth, be on call for a couple of weeks before and after the due date, be there for the birth and also come after the baby is born to help us with things like learning how to bathe the baby and to cook us meals and give us a little bit of a break until our Moms get here! It's like having a mother figure around (who you have to pay) and who will help be a voice for us during the hospital part of things.
Anyway, we thought our first class was really interesting and enjoyed meeting other first time baby couples from around our neighborhood. We both definitely learned a lot of new things last night and I think we'll be better prepared for the unknown once it finally gets here!
For the past two years, we've just kind of ignored Thanksgiving (we did make a halfway attempt at Thanksgiving the first month we were here, but it wasn't that great and definitely didn't feel like the real thing). But this year, we decided to go all out and invited a bunch of friends over to celebrate with us. Our friends were English, Polish, Kiwi (New Zealand), and Bangladeshi, so it was a pretty international crowd and most people's first Thanksgiving celebration!
Warning...the following are horrible pictures of me, post-nap and pre-shower and in my PJs. So sorry!
Our turkey!
Meg sent us a delicious and butterlicious turkey recipe. The first step was to separate the skin from the breast....kind of a weird feeling (as evidenced by Jim's face). Jim actually did the turkey and it turned out to be PERFECT!
It was a little bit of a tough bird, though:
Putting the turkey in the oven!
Mom's biscuits (which were an international hit!)
We dragged the outside table in as an extension and crammed everyone into the conservatory. It was a cozy Thanksgiving dinner! On the menu: Turkey with homemade stuffing, vegetarian stuffing, green beans with almonds, biscuits, Jim's delicious mashed potatoes, lentils, gravy (American style).
Victoria (New Zealand) made some REALLY good Pecan pie (her first pie ever!) which was hands down the favorite pie of the evening. She also made whipped cream:
Ben (England), Monika (Poland), Fatema (Bangladesh) and me, after supper and before dessert.
Jim and Mushtak having a chat in front of the fireplace that doesn't work:
The women finishing dessert:
The men, in the kitchen (why do men and women always divide at some point during parties?):
Dessert demolished. Pumpkin pie was a new taste sensation for most of the people in the room and they liked it! They did think that pumpkin in a can was kind of funny.
Jim, master turkey chef AND maker of outstanding cappuccinos (thanks to Meg and Dan's cappuccino maker).
It was an excellent dinner party and well worth the two days of cooking it took to make all that food! We are totally impressed with our moms, who have been cooking Thanksgiving dinners for over 30 years (and usually in only 1 day!). Now we know we can do it, too! And Jim has his coveted Thanksgiving leftovers, which he says is the best part. Happy Thanksgiving!
But first, the pies I made yesterday (in all their slightly deformed and a little burned glory. Pumpkin and apple, in case you can't tell.):
Well, we keep saying "as a last hurrah" about trips that we take, but our trip to Amsterdam was definitely the last hurrah because I'm tired and I'm also not allowed to fly anymore. But as a last hurrah, Jim and I went to Amsterdam for the weekend.
It got pretty cold in London as we were waiting for the train to the airport, so Jim let me borrow his hat. It would turn out that I was VERY unprepared for the even colder weather to come, so Jim didn't really get to use his hat very much.
It was already very Christmasy in Amsterdam, as evidenced by the decorations around town and the SNOW! Here is one of Santa's helpers (in case you don't remember from our last Amsterdam blog, in the Netherlands Santa comes over from Spain with his 8 black helpers and puts candy or switches in the children's shoes. More on that later.)
Some night shots:
SNOW!
As luck would have it, we happened to be in Amsterdam the weekend that Sinterclaus came over from Spain. Jim caught him with his 8 Black(faced) helpers on video as they made their way towards some VERY exciting children.
I guess it is more realistic that Santa come over from Spain on a boat with some...helpers...than Santa flying from the North Pole in a sleigh pulled by airbound reindeer with blinking noses and assisted by small, magical people. But we still find this cultural difference interesting.
The weather continued to be pretty miserable and cold and my really cheap umbrella almost didn't make it. Jim at the floating flower market. We were also supposed to seek out the houseboat for homeless cats, but we kind of forgot.
While we were wandering through a market in the Jewish Quarter, it started to hail. So we popped into a cafe (NOT one of the famous 'coffee shops,' for the record) and had some hot chocolate. Jim really enjoyed his.
We finished our afternoon with more food at a funky place called Bazar, where they had delicious Mediterranean food. The lighting was fun, too.
Sunday was our cultural day. We started with a walking tour of a new area we hadn't been to before. It was still snowing, off and on. On an old bridge in the boatyards:
And on the tram, having decided we were tired of freezing and would rather ride in warmth to our next destination:
We went to the Rijksmuseum, where we stood in line in the freezing cold to get in and some annoying woman invaded our personal space (I think I was the only one who found this annoying). The museum was partially under renovations, so we saw the highlights...lots of famous paintings and sculptures and doll houses. The main attraction (according to the museum) was Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God," which was an 18th century skull, inlaid with diamonds. It was...sparkly? Worth a lot of money? Worth standing in line for 45 minutes in the freezing cold with an annoying lady in my space? I'm not so sure....
But fortunately, after the museum and being cold, there was another cafe! (do you see a theme? We tend to eat our way through vacations...) It really started snowing while we were enjoying our soup and lattes.
We walked through the snow and back towards our hotel...and FINALLY we found a second hand place where we could buy some hats that were actually WARM (and cheap). There was much rejoicing:
It's amazing how much a warm hat can help warm your whole body up. We were able to continue wandering around in the snow for a couple of more hours!
It was a fun trip. Amsterdam is a lovely city, the Dutch people are awesome and it was a nice FINAL last hurrah!
