Guus Bosman

It's unbelievable how much has happened this first year. So many "firsts", so many new things to learn for both us and Nora, and so many loving visitors... On Monday Nora celebrated her first birthday.

We had a house full of family and it was a great day.

When Nora woke up the house was full with pink balloons and garlands. When she entered the room in mami's arms she pointed out each and single balloon. From an alphabet book she had learned the word balloon already, so she happily said "ba, ba" to every one of them.

We had blueberry scones for breakfast and when I came back from picking up the cake Jonathan and the kids had just arrived. We made a birthday hat for Nora and prepared the lunch. Nadia had baked a special pitka, a Bulgarian bread for parties, which turned out great.

Nora opened her presents. She was particularly happy with a plush dog in a plush doghouse.

After lunch we cut the cake. Nora was getting tired so she got scared by the cake and the singing, but after a quick cuddle things were fine. Julian helped her blow the candle. In the afternoon she played with her cousins and she had a great day, and so did we.

On her birthday Nora learned to say "bye bye" from Uncle Jonathan. She has known how to say "чао чао" and "dag dag" for quite some time but this was her first English word and she liked it a lot. So for the past two days she's been saying "bye bye" at regular intervals, much to my dismay! I'm joking of course -- English will be her primary language -- but it's amazing to see how quickly she picks up certain words now.

This morning I thought it was over. I took Nora under my arm to get a cup of coffee and in the elevator a lady talked a little bit to Nora. She didn't reply much, but sure enough, when the lady left and said "bye bye", Nora smiled and started repeating it again.

At the upside, she's doing pretty well with the two languages she's been hearing at home. One of her birthday gifts was a plush dog in a doggie house. She was playing with it tonight and when I asked "waar is het hondje?" and Sasha "къде е кучето?" Nora in both cases looked at the dog.

Another word she has learned is "hoppa", which is something we say when we put her down somewhere. And the biggest hit of all is "ba, ba" for ballon -- something she learned from an alphabet book Nadia has been reading to her.

Pictures of her birthday are coming soon.

This is so much fun! Over the last few weeks I've been playing with Google Sketchup and I've tried to faithfully draw our apartment.

A special rendering plugin converts the sketch into a semi-realistic image. Using PaintShop Pro I added the background (from this photo), and here is the result.