Guus Bosman

The other day Adrian fell on his front tooth, and it got partially pushed back in. I brought him to the dentist yesterday to have it checked out.

The dentist wasn't worried about it and said the tooth should come back down by itself in a couple of weeks.

I took Adrian by bicycle, which he was excited about. "Helm!" he said several times. We used the new windscreen for the bike, which was good because it was cold.

The boys were both quite impressed. Sasha was holding Leo, and I was holding Adrian and Nora when he arrived in the main hall. Adrian was staring with wide open eyes. Later, in the smaller room, he was pointing several times and yelling: "kaas! kaas!" (He can't say "klaas" yet).

Nora was quite shy. When we left the car there were a few Piets and she wasn't too ready to engage with them. Later that changed and she happily accepted pepernoten. The boys only needed a few minutes to figure out that the Piets were giving away good stuff, and the Piets liked to give them candy so after about 8 handfuls we decided to slow that down.

Nora's gift remained unopened until we got home. Instead she opened her chocolate letter right away -- she was probably hungry because we skipped lunch. Leo received a Playmobil 123 helicopter, Adrian a garbage truck ("bah!"). The boys also liked to boxes with the chocolate letters. Shanthi helped them unpack their gifts.

This years there were fewer parents that we know; there haven't been many playdates recently. Overall attendance seemed a little lower than last year.

Traveling to the Embassy is always a little challenging -- Leo threw up in the car, like last time, and it was right in the middle of nap time. But we had an absolute blast.

On Wednesday night the Zane family arrived, late at night. Ilana finished her last homework at 1.00 am. We saw each other in the morning -- the boys were up at 7.00 am -- and it was great to see everybody.

I finished the last cranberry sauce and decorated a cake in the morning, and after the turkey went in the oven Sasha and I took the kids to Hayes park. Julian took Leo by the hand and held him really well.

Judy joined us at 12.30 pm and the turkey was done shortly afterwards. We had lunch around 2.00 pm and it was a lot of fun. My cooking experiments worked out -- the green bean casserole was a big hit. The full menu is visible on the last photo below. For dessert we had Irena's brownie, a Dutch slagroomtaart and two other pies.

After dinner we walked to the Quincy playground and on the way back Leo reached out for Julian's hand, who happily took it.

After a renovation the Quincy park playground reopened yesterday. We went to check it out, as did many other families -- it was very crowded. The next day it was cold and very windy and we went again, and it was virtually empty.

It's a beautiful playground, with equipment that is fun for bigger kids too, which is nice because Nora is starting to get a little too old for the things at Hayes park. Adrian loves the music equipment. Not so much to make music yet, but there are "sticks" there to play with, and he loves grabbing those. Leo enjoys playing with the gate of the playground.