Coddled!

Day 5 in my new life as a couch potato and I must admit that it's not all that bad! Jos has been taking care of me like a true mother hen. He's been cooking up a storm and cleaning like crazy and of course bringing me water, books, tea and the phone as I lay cuddled up on the couch. He says he's in daddy training and he actually seems to be loving it (except maybe the endless amount of dishes he keeps washing... time to get a dishwasher!).
Meanwhile we have a builder in working on our bathroom. Jonathan. He's an English guy who worked with my parents on their place. So there's lots of hammering and sawing and no shower upstairs. I thought it would drive me totally out of my mind to have him living and working here for a week but it's turning out just fine (he's good fun) and we're so looking forward to having a new bathroom! Also, it gives Jos a few more tasks in his "daddy training"... going to the hardware store, helping to rip up tiles, consulting on design choices. It wasn't exactly how we'd planned to spend our Christmas vacation, but it's actually turning out to be rather relaxing to just be home and concentrating on home stuff.
I've been doing endless loads of laundry myself. Getting all the baby stuff washed and ready. Hopefully the little guy will wait at least another two weeks... but we're ready for him now! I've even got my suitcase more or less packed up and ready for the hospital. We're moving into the home stretch.


This was once our bathroom...

A scare...

Happy holidays one and all! I am sitting at home on the couch next to our wee Parisian style Christmas tree. We were supposed to be at my parents' place celebrating, but there's been a bit of an uncontrollable change of plans ... Some of you already know, but for those who don't... I ended up spending a fascinating 60 hours in the hospital at the beginning of this week. I woke up Monday morning bleeding and so we immediately rushed off to the clinic where they hooked me up to all sorts of machines to see what was going on. It turned out that I was having contractions that I wasn't feeling. But everything was fine elsewhere... my cervix wasn't opening yet or anything so they just had to attach me to a drip and feed me medication and monitor me in order to stop the contractions and make sure that baby didn't arrive 6 weeks early. So they kept me in there for two nights and most of the third day. I was home on Christmas Eve at 7:30 p.m. By then my contractions had stopped and all was well. But they said that I have to stay more or less lying/sitting down at least for the next two weeks. And no traveling. So we couldn't go to my parents' place and we can't go to Belgium to visit Jos' family. James and my parents came to our place for Christmas. We had a very sweet time. They all rushed around with Jos and cooked and cleaned and finished preparing the baby room and I tried to stay put. Not such an easy task. So now they've gone and we're home alone. We were very sad not to be able to go to Belgium. We were so looking forward to being with Jos' family and showing off my big belly. This whole thing came as such a complete surprise after such an easy and uneventful pregnancy. You can't plan for everything though I suppose. So now that I shall be lying on the couch for the next two weeks I'll be able to blog all the time. I better take full advantage of all the rest and relaxation while I can get it!

Here I am on Monday on the monitor and the drip.

Home improvement... finally!

Well, I'm finally back! So sorry it's been so long. I thought that this last month would be relaxed and that I was done with all the traveling but in fact, since I last wrote, I've been back and forth to Spain twice and last week I was in Athens (I left just before all the craziness started there). I can't believe how much traveling I've done this year, but it was hard to turn down such good gigs and it has actually been quite fun being so active. And my giant belly definitely added a little spice to the cabaret. This little boy certainly has been on stage a lot! But now it is all officially over. Phew. No lying this time I promise! I am finally home and concentrating on home stuff. Things have been busy on the home front too. Our new parquet is in! It's been pretty intense getting that prepared and cleaning up after it. We had to clear everything out downstairs including the kitchen tiles (thank you Rick!!) before it went in of course. And now we've just spent the last two weeks putting everything back together... attaching all the shelves to the walls, cleaning each and every dust covered book... It's definitely worth it though. It sure does change things to have a nice floor. Before, it was a painted cement floor and we couldn't quite imagine the little bean crawling around on it. Especially since it wasn't the most even of surfaces. So it's a wonderful relief to have that done. We feel like we're living in a new house! Now the next job is his room. The crib arrived a couple weeks ago but we still haven't managed to put it together. By the end of the week the house should be more or less ready. Wow. Time sure does fly. It's hard to believe that in about a month and a half we'll be a family of three. Incredible!

het wordt spannend!!

hello everybody! dag allemaal!

Wij zijn in de 7de maand en het wordt alsmaar spannender...we kopen spulltjes, kleertjes, speelgoed, beddegoed, een bedje:het huis wordt te klein! Nu al! En dan leggen we ook nog gauw een nieuwe vloer, in bamboe, en de badkamer krijgt nieuwe tegels op de muur. Zoveel is nieuw, blij, vol verwachting. En als we de stad in gaan zien we niets dan
baby's, overal baby's!!
We zijn nog niet helemaal vast besloten hoe het ventje zal heten, maar de lijst wordt kleiner. Desalniettemin blijven nog alle voorstellen welkom, als het maar goed klinkt in het Frans, Engels en Nederlands!

We are now well into the 7th month en things are getting more and more exciting..we are busy buying things, clothes, toys, bedding, a pram: the house is getting too small! Already! And we are also putting in a new floor - in beautiful, natural bamboo- and fresh tiles on the bathroom wall.
So much is new, joyful and full of expectation. And when we go into town we see nothing else than babies, everywhere!
We have not yet decided on a name for the little man, but the list is getting shorter. However, all suggestions are still welcome, as long as it sounds nice in French, English and Dutch!

Jos

Craft time!

In between my escapades around Europe my mom and I have been busy with needle, thread, paint and brush. Here are the projects we've churned out so far (most of the credit goes to my mom of course)....


The Quilt.
We made this in September. It wasn't so easy to find all our quilting supplies in France, but we were happy with how it turned out.




Elephants on Parade.
These guys will hang above the crib... or something. They were inspired by a string of elephants that my mom bought for me when I was a baby.




The Mural.
My mom just finished it this week! I love it! I keep walking into the room to stare at it. I think it's going to be so fun for the little one. I'm sure he'll have names for all of the animals.

I'm back

Sorry to have been away for so long. It's been a long and exhausting three weeks. I was teaching long hours in England at Warwick University and spending all my spare time trying to finish up several grant proposals for our new show next year. Now it's all over though. oof. I'm so happy to be home and to have free time and space in front of me. I'm exhausted. Time to settle down I think. Now it looks like the only thing in my calendar for the next few months is endless doctor's appointments.
As I write this the little guy is kicking away. He has become quite the acrobat over the past few weeks. It's probably getting tight in there for him.
When I went to see my midwife before I left for England she took one look at my ultrasound and said, "Whoa, you've got a big one there!" I guess I should have figured that out by the gigantic size of my ever growing belly.
So now it's time to start some serious nesting! I've spent hours surfing on the web trying to find the perfect crib, the nicest clothes... There's a great French site that has all sorts of ecologically/baby friendly things. I think we're going to get one of their cribs... Here it is...
Tell me what you think:
http://www.natiloo.com/berceau-banquette-duovolo-p-6100836.html?cPath=10_135&osCsid=a337c58eb9bb50f7f9829f1a5d7d1b34

Traveling mama, traveling baby

For some reason my pregnancy so far has been full full full of travel. I suppose it’s mostly because I’m starting to work more regularly… more touring, more teaching, more rehearsing. Luckily it’s actually been really easy for me to be so active so far. Thank goodness! I haven’t been sick even once and my biggest complaint is having to go the bathroom all the time (including 5 times per night…no joke!). I realize I’ve been incredibly lucky. I can only imagine what touring would have been like this summer if I had wanted to throw up each time we performed. Yikes. So I continue to travel without much trouble. Today (three days after coming back from Austria) I’m off to Warwick, England to teach for the next three weeks.
So far globe-trotting baby has been all over France (the Alps, Alsace, Bordeaux…), Spain (Barcelona, Saragossa, the Pyrenees), Austria (Corinthia, Salzburg) as well as Germany and Belgium. Now he’s off to visit the U.K. and next month he’ll be off again to Spain.
Though it’s been fun I must say that I am looking forward to settling down and doing some good nesting. I won’t really be able to stop moving until the end of November, but I’m starting to fantasize about just being home and preparing and planning and resting.

In Austria...

Jos has been working on a show in Salzburg and I came to join him for the week. It was a chance to breathe some delicious mountain air and get some baby shopping done. Austria and Germany have such wonderful wooden toys and it's not so easy to find them in France. So yesterday and today we raided the toy stores! A lot of the stuff we got won't be usable until the little one is over a year old... But I couldn't resist all the beautiful things!


Beautiful wooden stacking blocks, a soft rattling cube, a cushy velcroed tower and an adorable little elfin hat.




A jumping-jack cat, a wooden boat with all sorts of activities and a rainbow tower that makes music when you send you send a marble down it.




Colorful wooden clutch toys.

getting bigger

The belly on the 13th of August (3 and a half months in)


9th of september (4 and a half months)


21st of september (5 months)



october 11th in salzburg, austria. (6 months)



october 22nd at home. (6 months and a week)


october 22nd in leamington spa, england (6 and a half months)



december 14th at home (8 months and a week)

It's a...

On the 26th of September we had our second ultrasound. We saw the wee bean squirming around. And his feet and hands really looked like feet and hands! Yes, his... now we know, it's a little boy bouncing around in there.
So now of course we can really start concentrating on choosing a name! We had vaguely started writing things down earlier but our list of girls names was about ten times longer than the boys. It's great to know who it is we're expecting. Everything becomes so much more concrete. I've started staring at little boys in the grocery store and on the metro... analyzing and imagining what he might be like...
So... the names. Well, we've been scrutinizing film credits and reading the newspaper just for the names of the journalists. So far our very favorites are:

Quinn
Aster
Leander

We also kinda like:

Alexi
Cai
Kolya
Florian

But the list is ever expanding. I'll keep you informed...

Can I keep a blog?

I think this is a good idea. I live so far away from so many people that I love so dearly and I want to be able to keep you all informed of the growing belly and baby... buuuut... I am famously bad at most forms of communication... so I wonder if I'm up to the task (I hope so).
Well, I'm not promising anything, but I'll try my hardest to keep this space as up-to-date-ish as possible. Here goes nothing.