Travels in Europe and Sleeping like a Baby

Sven, Johan and I are just on our way out the door to spend a week with Sven's parents on the island of Texel, in the North Sea. I hope the weather is good and we can spend lots of time on the beach!

It's been a very busy few weeks. We are now about halfway through our trip. We spent the first 6 days in Hagestein, where Sven's parents live. Highlights: meeting Vlinder, Sven's 7 month-old niece, doing a day trip to the town of Gouda, to see the cheese auction, and hosting a family reunion -- with about 30 of Sven's relatives coming over to meet Johan.

The day after the reunion, Sven and I headed to Brussels, where we spent two days exploring the city and hanging out with Marie (Andrea's high school exchange partner), her husband Patrick and their 16-month old son, Lucien. Marie and Patrick are expecting baby #2 in early September and so were eager to introduce Johan to Lucien to see what he thought of having a baby around the house.

After our quick visit with Marie, we headed out towards the French Alps, where one of Sven's best friends, Vincent, lives with his wife Ilonka and 1-year old son, Nils. The drive took us two days, including a quick stop in Grenoble, where Andrea did a quick walkabout, visiting her old apartment and the school where she was an English teacher way back in 1997!

Once in the little village of Vigneaux la Batie, close to Briancon, Ilonka and Vincent included us in a number of exciting excursions. We spent some time at the beach with a few other families of Sven's old co-workers from when he worked at Cimmaron as a kayak instructor and adventure leader. We did a challenging 5-hour hike up a mountain to see the Glacier Blanc (Johan loved this trip, perched in the Baby Bjorn). We went white water rafting (Johan sat that one out) and also did a Via Ferrata: a type of rock climbing using a fixed course consisting of metal rungs drilled into a cliff face. Johan also decided to sit that one out.

It was a really wonderful stay, and we are very excited to stay with Vincent and Ilonka in the future, as they are building a Gite in a nearby town and will soon be running their own inn!

The only difficulty that arose during this wonderful trip was the fact that Johan decided not to sleep. He woke up every hour for 5 nights in a row, which made for a pretty exhausting stay. Just when we were ready to beat our heads against the walls in frustration, Vincent passed Sven a Dutch baby book call "Oei, ik Groei" (Oops, I'm growing). In it, there was a handy chart showing difficult periods babies go through. And guess waht: there was a big black cloud with lightning bolts coming out of it at 4 and a half months. The book explained that babies of this age are making a big mental leap and that, while they start to see the world differently, they become very unhappy, as nothing makes sense anymore. The description of this difficult period seemed to fit Johan perfectly, so we just took a deep breath and did our best to love him and soothe him through his grumpy moods. Sven and I had to laugh when we saw that the book said that it was a bery bad time to travel with a baby!

Anyway, Johan seems to be over the hump, although he wakes up to feed every 3 hours or so at night. We never thought that he would regress from his 4-hour feedings, and were starting to look forward to him moving on to 6 hour sleeps at night. AAAAAH! Oh well, getting a good night's rest is apparently a relative thing. 3 hours at a time is much better than 45 minutes at a time!

Anyway, I have to run. We'll try to add pictures soon.

Dag!
Andrea and Sven.