Now the year is over....

... I thought I'd better write one last post for 2005. Let's start with a quick news catch-up:

As all of you probably know by now, opa and oma Blom have both passed away within 2 months of eachother. We're all so very happy for them that they didn't have to be separated from eachother for very long and that they can now enjoy their time together free of all mortal limitations. We do miss them however. We think and talk of them often.

opa and oma.. till we meet again!

One very positive thing that came from opa's passing away was that Michael was granted a few days leave from Iraq so he could be with us. He quickly arranged for Kate to fly over as well and we all had some time to spend together. Luckily Michael's time in Iraq was almost over as it was, and as of today he is safe in Utah where he and Kate are spending every waking minute getting ready for their wedding beginning of Febuary! We quickly bought airplane tickets when we found out what the definitive date would be, so we're flying over in the last week of january. Only 3 more weeks! I'm soooo excited.

Mike&Kate, Leiden, Sept. 2005

Big news for the Kootjes: We bought a house!!!
We'll be getting the keys on January 10th.. so we have a busy month coming up. A lot needs to be done do make the house fit to live in. It needs a new kitchen, bathroom heating, and new electricity all over. We have our work cut out for us... but I love having a blank canvas that we can turn into exactly what we want it to be. I'll post some pictures of the house as soon as we have the key. What I can tell you now is that we'll be living about a stone-throw away from mom and dad, and Lara will be getting a room overlooking a playground (her favorite thing in the whole world). The house has a total of 3 bedrooms, one small bathroom and kitchen and a good size living room. Unfortunately we'll have 2 sets of stairs to climb to get to it, but since we're born and raised dutchies, stairs will not be a problem!

Let's see, what else. Oh yes. Birthdays! Sander and Lara both had a birthday. Sander turned 26 on October 28th.

Sander, October 2005

Lara had her 2nd birthday on December 17th. She was spoiled very much, especially by her grandparents. She got a super deluxe play-kitchen from grandma Marianne, uncle Maarten and great-grandma Koot. From grandma and grandpa Blom she got a cute little table and chairs, a magnetic drawing board and a new carseat. From us she got a dollhouse and a pretty Christmas dress. She is starting to get into the "terrible two's".... meaning she answers every single question with 'no', refuses to eat anything you offer her, will only eat whatever she isn't supposed to, she likes to draw on everything she's not supposed to draw on (those bath crayons were the PERFECT gift Marissa!!) and she loves to poke her little sister in the eye. Her vocabulary is growing by the minute, but her favorite phrases remain 'oooh mama/papa stout!!!' (meaning 'oooh mama/papa naughty!) Here are some recent photos of her:

pleaaase mommy?

1

Silly nilly willy ol' bear

imprisoned :)

Thanksgiving '05

mmm, Jell-o!

Sinterklaas presents

Now the news on our cute little baby Julia. She is the chubbiest and sweetest little girl we've ever come across. She is so content and quiet that we are now completely convinced that we will have some extra rough teenage years ahead of us to make up for all of this sweetness. Her operation hasn't bothered her anymore but she hasn't been completely healthy. In the past four months she has probably had 1 week where she wasn't coughing. She's also had a stomach flu and had to have special re-hydration fluids because she wasn't getting any milk. Despite these annoyances she hardly ever cries. She does however, love to GRUNT! She grunts like there's no tomorrow and she has a grunt for every occasion and/or emotion. It cracks us up! She is now 5 months old and we can't wait till we get to show her off to our friends and family in the USA. Again some photo's, this time of Julia:

I can't move mom!

huh?

I've got my eye on you!

yay! more photo's!

Nijntje

Of course we all celebrated Christmas. Anneke, Jiska and Milenna came over for a couple of days to share in the Holiday Festivities, but I'm afraid we just made them sick. The same stomach flu bug that had started with Julia quickly passed on to everyone, including our visitors. Poor Milenna was sick as a dog on Christmas day, and the rest soon followed. We still managed to enjoy our time together and the special spirit of Christmas.

Mr. and Mrs. Clause

Santa's

Milenna & Anneke

Reighndeer

Presents!

Christmas Koots

Anneke & Julia

Xmas music maestro

Xmas bath after vomiting all over myself and mommy!

In Holland we have what we call 'Second Christmas Day'. This is basically a day we take to officially have a day off to recover from Christmas and eat all the left-overs. It is also often used to make sure not one side of the family is left behing... so we used it to visit Sander's family in Dordrecht. First we had a nice Second Christmas Day Breakfast though!

Xmas breakfast

Then we were off to the home of aunt Ada and uncle Piet and their daughter Nicole, where we had more delicious food!

Oma Marianne

Nicole

Feeding time!

Piet and Ada bring in the food

As you can probably tell we've had a wonderful Christmas. It was filled with happiness, family, wonderful food and the reason we even have this special day: the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. How blessed we are!

And now here we are, January 1st, 2006. Another year is over, a year filled with experiences, blessings, hardships and most of all, Love. We have so much to look forward to in 2006: a new house, and Michael's wedding to begin with. I hope all of you have a wonderful new year. We love and miss all of you and can't wait to see you in 2006!! Some photo's of the four of us, in case you haven't had enough of us yet *wink*

Lazy Saturday mornings

2

Lara loves to play with her little sister!

at the tram-stop

:D

Julia's blessing

Till next Blog!!!

Catching up!

Hello everyone! OK, it's been a while since my last post and A LOT has happened. I'll try to get everyone up to speed as good as I can.

June: Mama Diane left for the US to see Michael who would be on leave from the army for 2 weeks. He had no idea she was coming, so seeing her at the airport was very emotional for both of them.

On the 25th I had my 24th birthday. I had a really nice day. Sander, dad, Lara, Liz and I ate out at the TexxMexx in Scheveningen (yum yum!). After that Sander and I went to Rotterdam to see the Cirque du Soleil. That was awesome! I had already seen all their shows on DVD, but the real thing is sooooo much better :)

July: For the first two weeks of July Anneke and her daughters, Jiska and Milenna, came over to have a little holiday at Hotel Koot-Blom. It was busy yet fun having them over. Though I have to admit, I was glad to have some quiet time for the last 2 weeks of my pregnancy. It was really hot too, we had a heatwave and temperatures came up to around 90 Fahrenheit, or 30+ Celsius.
On the 20th mom came back from her 'holiday'. Though she had had a good time in the US, she too was glad to be back and have some quiet time before the birth, because it'd been an emotional trip. An awful thing happened while she was in Kaysville: a 1-year-old boy named Lincoln, the grandson of the family she was staying with (which are also Michael's in-law's-to-be), fell into a stream and drowned. We were all very shocked and sad when we heard the terrible news and our prayers still go out to his parents and family.
It was a good thing mom didn't stay in the US any longer than she did, because she got only a week to recover before I went into labor on Thursday the 28th!

Birth Story

We were in the Ikea in Delft when I started having Braxton-Hicks contractions. They were about 12-15 minutes apart and just strong enough for me to need to stand still for a minute untill the contraction would go away. The contraction kept coming the entire evening and night, though I was able to sleep through most of them.
At 5 am I couldn't sleep anymore and got up. The contractions were now 5 minutes apart and still not very painful. That morning I had an appointment to go see my midwife, so mom and Lara and I walked down to her office, stopping occasionally for me to wait out a contraction. We must've looked funny! We probably looked sweaty too beacuse the 28th turned out to be the hottest and most humid day that week... lucky me! The midwife did the usual check-ups (everything was fine) and also checked to see if my contractions were doing anything. I turned out to be 1 centimeter dialated and 100% effaced. She told me to go home and get some sleep because I might just be having a baby that night!
After that whole walk sleeping sounded pretty good, so when we got home that's exactly what I did..... for about 30 minutes. At 12.30am I was awoken by another contraction, though this time it was a rather painful one... and they kept coming regularly. First every 10 minutes and closer and closer untill they were about 4 minutes apart. That's when we decided to call the midwife. She came over at 3pm and when she checked I was 4 centimeters dialated! I was so excited! With Lara I had been in labor for over 24 hours and was still stuck at 1 centimeter, so this seemed to be going really well.
The midwife decided to come back at 5pm, since things seemed to be going quickly. When she came back I was already 8 centimeters dialated, so we decided to break my water (this usually speeds labor up even more). We all got a little shock when she did that: the baby had pooped in the amniotic fluid which can cause serious problems should the baby inhale the meconuim (=first baby-poop). To be on the safe side we decided I should deliver the baby in the hospital, so an ambulance was called. I was not happy. I had really been looking forward to having a home-birth (a very common thing in Holland by the way!), plus... being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance at 8 centimeters dialation is not exactly a pleasant experience! It seemed like every single bump in the road made my contractions worse. To top things off, Sander had decided it would be fun for all of our neighbors to come and watch while I was strolled outside to the ambulance, strapped onto a guerney, wrapped in a heavy blanket (on the hottest day of the summer so far), and moaning in agony. This of course made me very happy. Not.

Anyway, I survived the ride and finally made it into the delivery room and onto the hospital bed. Everything and everyone was ready for this baby to be born (especially me!), when my contractions became very infrequent. The doctors were thinking they might have to put me on a pitocin-drip to get my contractions going again, but my midwife had a better idea. She told me to try and lie on my left side, since that sometimes seemed to make contractions stronger. So I slowly turned over. In mid-turn I felt a contraction begin. That contraction got very strong, very quickly, until I was having the mother-of-all-contractions! I couldnt move, and suddenly I felt the baby coming out! I yelled 'THE BABY IS COMING!' and the doctors told me to get back on my back, which seemed impossible to me but I managed to do it anyway. (They also told me to stop pushing, but that was not something I was doing voluntarily... my body was just doing it's thing and I had no control whatsoever..) As soon as I was on my back again the head came out. The doctor quickly suctioned the baby's airways and still in the same contraction the baby was born and handed to me. She was very healthy right from the start, but very dirty from the dirty fluid, so after Sander cut the cord she was given a bath and dressed while the doctor checked me for tearing (I had none!). After the doctor was through and everything was fine, The little baby was handed back to me and Sander and I finally got to take a good look at her. That's when we saw exactly how beautiful this little girl was!

We decided to name our daughter

Julia Marianne

Here are some photo's:

Arrival at Leyenburg Hospital


30 seconds old


proud parents


first bath


all clean


alltogether


spending the night...


going home!


four generations


great-grandpa


Grandma Koot


Uncle Maarten


Koots


Ineke Spijker... the midwife


mommyLUV


Jacintha, the 'kraamhulp'


Party!


all snuggly

August: This has been a tumultuous month. When a new baby is born there's a lot of things going on at the same time... and it doesn't help when everyone gets sick at the same time! Lara had the flu, Karina had a breast-infection which she needed anti-biotics for, and poor little Julia had her first operation (hopefully it will be her last!). Luckily it was a small procedure: she had an infection on her right breast that needed to be operated on. Julia and I spent one night at the hospital together and then we were aloud to take her home. One week later she had completely healed and she is still doing great. The only negative that came out of the whole situation is that I couldn't continue breastfeeding, but luckily she is handling bottle-feeding really well.
Apart from that minor set-back we are all doing great and Sander and I love being the parents of two beautiful daughters. It's definetly worth losing a little sleep over! lol

Of course one more thing worth mentioning in August is Marissa's birthday! Our own sister-missionary turned 22 on the 16th. I love you Marissa, happy birthday!! Keep up the good work :)

There, I think that about covers it. The most important bits anyways! I vow to from now on do a better job at keeping the blog updated... which should be easier nog that my little family is starting to get back into something of a regular rythm again.
Love everybody! Till next Blog!