percy in the netherlands

great, now the bloody blog site is in dutch!
oh well, at least that's easier to interpret than russian.

we've been living with rob and phil for a week now in their lovely apartment in the gorgeous town of den bosch. apologies for the silence- i've been enjoying sleeping without jackhammers, drinking the water from the tap, walking on level footpaths, hey, just footpaths are novel, speaking english (as opposed to pointing and grunting), eating identifiable food and indulging in hot chocolates and the local treat a 'bosche ball.' which is a pastry filled with cream and surrounded with chocolate.
it's going to be hard to return to the developing world....

percy is coming along in leaps and bounds. she is determined to crawl but hasn't quite figured out the co-ordination of both arms and both legs at the same time. she'll alternate from holding her head up high with arms out to face planting with her butt in the air as her legs come up under her. i'm sure she'll get it eventually. it's also entertaining in a mean sort of way that she usually face plants into a big spew she did while she had the head end up. i know, i'm cruelly laughing at my baby's attempts to become mobile. i do clean her up- promise!
she also loves standing up. her version of standing; which is me holding her upright and her taking her weight on her feet. i think the longest she'll take her weight is 5 seconds. okay, hardly running marathons but 5 seconds is a long time for a baby. it becomes a long time for her mums arms too. hoisting that weight up and down is tiring.
she likes her new books being read to her too. we usually sit on the floor with her between my legs and hold the book in front of us. i fairly confident she looks at each page with interest for a while- until she tries to jam in in her mouth! everything is mouth bound these days. for the past few weeks she is determined to get everything she possibly can taste tested. invariably the taste test continues over many days and results in drool coating anything that comes in contact with her. oh well, how harmful is baby drool?

she also enjoys her baths immensely. it's cute to watch her writhe around and splash and suck on the face cloth. if we go into the bathroom before the bath is full (baby version full) she stares at the water coming out of the tap with a very determined look on her face. i wonder if she is trying to figure out where it's coming from. unfortunately i'll have to stop her drinking her bath water when we go back to kiev. you'd think a city of 3 million people would sort out it's bloody water supply.

the only thing percy does badly is sleep. which is the worst thing because then i don't sleep either. i'm hoping paul is enjoying some nights of sleeping thru while we are away. percy sleeps for four hours and then wakes. nearly invariably. sometimes she still only does 3 hours. this is at nite. her day time sleeps, which are supposed to be 2 hours long often only make one sleep cycle: 35-40 minutes before she wakes and needs to be resettled. and the resettling sucks.
anyways, case in point- she's awake and crying, ought to go to her... don't really want to. i'm a bit over this baby thing. just selfish i guess but it gets so frustrating and tiring and depressing.
see ya