Bottle makers

This week I am home alone with the kids. As it was raining quite hard and I was busy making sure we would not have another flood I was not so fast responding to a crying Duuk nor to Rick's suggestion that he maybe needed a bottle.

But no worries, Rick and Kaat decided they could get it organized for me, well for Duuk really. And so I encountered 2 very concentrated kids busy in the kitchen making a bottle for their baby brother. Unfortunately I did not have a camera ready to take a picture of their proud faces.

Then Rick said: 'Duuk will be very happy once he drinks this bottle', and I was thinking - yes and very constipated afterwards as I am pretty sure Kaat was pretty generous spooning in the powder.

"And if Duuk-ie is crying again" Rick said "we will just make him another bottle!"

I was in tears of course. I have the most amazing kids in the world!

Kaat's Class

Very serious!

The face says it all

Pizza!

The options for where to hold kids birthday parties if you don't want to host them at home are much more limited then in Houston as you can imagine. The mechanics are very much the same though. Almost all relevant friendly families are invited with all their kids. The parties have fixed beginning & end times, usually have a theme and involve the distribution of goody bags at the end. Last Sunday we had a party for Ricky's friend Serena (her mom is my friend) but the one who was most pleased about it all was Kaat - the party was held at a nice Italian restaurant and involved pizza making.

Kaat LOVES pizza!

and so despite not ling hats much - or things on her head. She kept it on this time. Rick was more on to analyzing and evaluating the whole process and who was doing what.

So happy, so cute!

Testing the tools

Letting mommy taste the result - of the cupcakes they also decorated whilst the pizza was being baked - there was no way I was going to get a slice of that pizza!

The monsoon is coming - inside!

We are starting to get an occasional shower and so when it was dark at the end of the afternoon earlies last week and it looked as if rain could come the kids decided they wanted to go to the playground in full wet weather gear...unfortunately for them the rain did not come that day so they where wetter inside their jackets then on the outside.

However we got a decent shower friday night followed by a significant one on Saturday.  We where loving it, especially with the cooling effect it provided, untill we heard water on the floor inside the house somewhere....an it did not just sound like a trickle....Soon we realized water was streaming down the walls near the staircase.

Upstairs outside we have a hall leading from the staircase to teh roof garden and we had a few cm's / inches of water standing in there. It was not leaking in alongsde the door but underneath teh windowframe and so we had no good means of stopping it other then throwing down every beach towel we own on the stairs (and we have a lot of beach towels!)

We called maintenance who despite the late hour showed up fast. Kaat came up to investigae, tell us it was wet, fall with her clothes on in the water and then to decide that shwe wanted to swim 'up there' and so she took her clothes off. In the meantime the guys started poking into the drains.

In the end they opend the drain next to the door and water gushed out. They already dug up part of that drain in the front garden once since we live here but apparantly did not fix the right part as the water is coming down from the roof just fine (once opened the roof was drained in 2 min), but it cannot go anywhere. And the Monsoon season has not even started yet. Can you imagine what happens if this does not get fixed and we get daily rain?!?

The aftermath was not so pretty as the housekeeping crew never showed on SUnday morning to help clean up. The walls neednew plater and paint , the drain needs to be dug out & replaced and we have some door frames which need sealing.

This in a week where:

1. we found out rats ate parts of one of the AC (fortunately outside the house),
2. we realized that the pool pump is not working so well,
3. found that we urgently need pest control to come out and spray and place some rat traps just in case,
4. the garden lights which where supposed to be installed where found back lying around in a window still
5. we have argued with home owners and maintenance about the illogical placement of musquito mesh in the living room (we have some finally but it is not effective w just 1 door & poorly fitted)
6. a painter showed up at the house - we thought to cement utility holes near the ACs against the rats - proclaiming he wanted to paint the living room (which indeed was promised a 2nd layer 5-6 weeks ago), understanding when we asked him to come back on weekdays before 3pm that he should come after 3, and who in the end was send for the utlity holes but had not understood. (So we are seriously wondering when he will come again and what work he then will undertake - maybe just paint the areas of the new leaks?)
7. we found that the roof at the back of the house over the utility area is not watertight (at all) thanks to the holes they cut for wiring and so Eelco needed to reorganize all his tools
8. our requests for a bigger water heater, repair of deck and poolside and activation of the landline for security intercom keep on being ignored.

Not a good week at the house! But the roof is not caving in and the water damage is not anywhere near to places where it would really have mattered and the kids don't mind cold showers and neither does Eelco now he started to run again right in the hottest time of the year. So we are fine. Maybe after 40 visists tthis week some of it is fixed by nex weekend. We'll see.

Hairy back

As I cut Eelco's hair last week we had no good reason to get to a barber shop with just Rick so I cut his hair too. The boy has soooooo much hair that everything, including his back was covered in it. Next time we will cut his hair outside as it was a major clean-up operation!

The before (yes I cut it the day after the school pictures not before) - gorgeous but hot: 

 and after.....well Rick was busy eating his chapati and did not really want to show you.

81 Days Duuk

Baby Duuk is a happy giant. We call him the bear of Bangalore. In just 4 weeks he managed to gain almost a whole kilo and he is close to 6 kg now. He has depending on who measures also shot up quite some measuring 56 - 58 cm. He is doing great, is strong, easy going and very generous with his smiles. Herewith a little impression of his development since the last Duuk dedicated post.

The hospital from the outside where Duuk was born.

Rajastani lunch with Opa, Elena and Mama in the fanciest mall in town.

 Lounging in peacock feathers (India's national bird)

Sleeping on his tummy he still looks quite small

 But the way he wants to use his legs and stand up all the time does look more like a 4 month old!

 Kaat occasionally shouts out 'give me', 'give me' and then just decides to take him.

 As our shoulders got so sore I got out the exersaucer this week. Rick & Kaat only first got in at > 4 months but Duuk was sold in seconds - 'Lovely!' he appeared to say.

Engineer Rick was intrigued.

 and to show you it was not just a fluke.....a happy Duuk yesterday.

At the same hospital as pictured above for his check up with his nanny Sarala

The bear of Bangalore is doing fantastic and is very happy.....as long as he is standing up or sleeping nose down.

Utorda Beach, Goa

We cannot leave the country at the moment as baby Duuk has no papers, and when he does get them he can leave but not come back. We had also missed the big easter exodus from Bangalore so decided to get away for a few days before I had to get back to work and we picked Utorda Beach in Goa. Nice family friendly resort, good food, nice weather, endless pools and a great wide clean beach.

With 3 kids and a driver our luggage does no longer fit in the car so we had to buy a new roof rack too....no we did not drive to Goa, just to the Airport. Goa is a 50 min flight only from Bangalore.

For baby Duuk it was his first holiday, or adventure as we call them. But he was very well prepped by big brother Rick on how these things work and so he behaved as if he had done it all a million times before, our beach boy.

Everybody was ready for some relaxing:

 in their own way

 just swimming, sleeping and lounging.

We decided that the baby was ready for the pool and he loved it and Rick & Kaat loved having him in the water.

Duuk was so relaxed being swayed back and forth in the water that he would fall asleep!

Kaat & Rick spend 80% of the time in the water.

 Rick ventured out quite far alone with the floaties. Kaat was brave but only with dad or mom around. We where commandeered into the water frequently.

 Getting ready for the water took some time - 3 kids with swim clothes, sun screen etc and then our own and dividing who would look after who.

 The beach was big, clean and safe but as the sea was quite rough and hence not appealing to the kids for long or at all as they could not do anything alone we did not spend too much time in the salt water.

 It was pretty, hot & hazy.

 Our biggest adventure was Mr Rick putting his hat down a pool drain. He was in tears when it did not come back out. He had wanted to see how far it could go. This was right around siesta time so there was hardly anyone else near the pool except personnel. There was a bit of trial and discussion as to where that drain pipe was going, in which process we found a yellow little car. I said to Rick his hat had turned into a car after which he asked me to turn it back into a hat. When the maintenance crew showed up with shovels and 1 man in swim shorts and started digging a hole in the plants of to the left on the picture we got a little worried. Fortunately the guy in swim trunks only needed to stick his arm into the tank to retrieve the hat. Rick's reaction whilst holding the yellow car and looking at that and the retrieved hat: "You found another one!"

We managed to all just get a little pink, including Duuk, but nothing to serious or painful.

 And we even managed to have elaborate dinners and sample the multicultural-Indian-Portuguese-Goan cuisine with the help of our most favorite and flexible sitter - the iPad

 and the other kids present who where all also in for running around endlessly.

So we saw nothing but the resort for 4 days. Next time we will do the forts, the spice plantations, the elephant rides, lunch at the beach shacks, fishing etc etc.