Guus Bosman

We had dinner in the Afghan Kabob House, near Whole Foods.

Their chicken kabob is delicious and Nora shared from our plates. The kabob is spicy but Nora kept eating. At one point we noticed that her eyes were all teary and she refilled her water bottle twice, but she liked it. I was proud of her.

Nora walked to and from the restaurant with us - a total distance of 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometer). We did bring the stroller but we only used it for Meneer Prascho, haha.

It's only been a week since we're back from the Netherlands but in that week there have been a few noticeable changes. She hasn't used her high chair for several days now. She sits on a regular chair, next to Sasha, and eat all her meals there. Without her bib, even.

Yesterday she started a next phase in her potty training, and that is going pretty well too. Tonight I read her a book for beginning readers ("AVI-1") and we started looking at some words. Cool stuff.

Since a few days she is very much into taking care of her stuffed animals. They get clean diapers, she feeds them, and she makes sure they sleep -- either in bed or "in het hok". It's very cute but takes a lot of them; when we tell her to go to bed she will start preparing the stuffed animals first. It used to be that all animals -- especially Meneer Prascho -- had to be physically present before she'd fall asleep. Now she just wants the assurance that they are "in their own beds".

Other things go smoother now. For many weeks, she didn't want to sit in the bath -- only on her knees. It's always the same thing: I tell her she needs to sit normally so I wash her feet, she laughs and only then she will sit down. However, tonight that changed and we didn't have our usual discussion.

From Ghent we took the train to Haarlem, the city where lived until we moved to the United States. It was the first visit for Sasha in 10 years and to walk together through the city was amazing, from the very first moment we got off the train.

We saw the completion of several infrastructure projects that were in the early stages when we left a decade ago: the Raakskwartier, the Appelaar parking garage at the Grote Markt and the car-restrictions on many additional streets in the city, including at the station. It was like a jump in time.