Amsterdam

I AMsterdam sculpture outside of Rijksmuseum

Elliott loves the window seat

Last week we went to Amsterdam for 5 days. It overlapped Hannah's 4th birthday so we wanted to plan a few special things for her birthday into the trip.

Our airplane!

John found a great apartment for us to stay in, sort of on the East side of the city. The apartment was advertised through a company called Kid & Coe. It advertises family friendly apartments. Ours had tons of toys and everything was Elliott proof :). The kids loved it, especially the TV (we have never had a TV in Switzerland).

A picture of the kitchen/living room of our apartment. 

Riding in the center... the famous canals

We had hoped that we could somehow rent bicycles for our transportation, instead of using the buses. We had to walk into the city center to find a bike shop with kid seats also for rent, but it was worth it. The kids loved it and we loved it. The bike lanes are separate from the road with their own stop and go lights, very safe, and the cars really pay attention to you. It was so fun to travel a city this way. We also noticed how the traffic even to the city center was never to bad, we never really noticed a traffic jam. Plus we got to see so much more of the city up close on bikes.

Anne Frank's House

Our goals for our visit, besides traveling around on bikes, was to eat some good food (John also wanted to find some good IPA beer), go to the Zoo, find some nice parks, do a little shopping, find the best cookie place (according to Trip Advisor) as Hannah's special birthday treat, and to see a few different parts of the town.

The canals and architecture were so quaint and beautiful.

We definitely enjoyed some good food. I had two amazing Hamburgers!! We have yet to really find hamburger meat that tastes very good to us in Switzerland... we probably need to try buying it right from the farm.  We had some amazing bagel sandwiches and salads as well, also things that we can't find as easily in Switzerland. I loved all the food, the variety of restaurants to choose from, and the fact that most of them served organic food. The one negative is that very few restaurants had high chairs. Elliott needs to be strapped in to keep him from wanting walk around while eating.

Hamburger and Fries!

Hannah's Birthday treat... yummy caramel inside.

Hannah's birthday was the day after we arrived in Amsterdam and sadly the kids were still a bit sleep deprived (left the house at 3:45 AM the day before to catch the plane) and Hannah seemed to have a bit of an upset stomach. We still managed to ride to the center, see Anne Frank's House, find the famous cookie/dessert shop, and do a little shopping (there are so many cute shops!). That afternoon we went to one of the many nice parks in Amsterdam. There are so many green spaces (about 2-3 miles perimeter) with playgrounds, cafes, and jogging paths in the middle of the green space. It was quite amazing really how many green parks there were, I wasn't expecting that and it was a pleasant surprise.

Beer and ice cream at a playground, inside a huge park, Awesome!

The next day we went to the Zoo. The Amsterdam Zoo was the perfect size for our kids. Since we had no stroller Hannah was happy walking around the Zoo for about 3.5 hours. In that time we were able to see everything, if it had been bigger she wouldn't have been happy walking! We got to see so many animals including: Elephants, monkeys, lions, giraffes, ect. It was a great morning and both Hannah and Elliott seemed to really enjoy it.

Looking for the animals

We would definitely recommend visiting Amsterdam. I think we got lucky with the weather as it only rained a few times for 30 minutes the first day and was a bit drizzly the last day. We biked through many different districts in the city and never really saw a bad part of town. It seemed safe, clean, and had a very "alive" atmosphere.

The girls :)

Rembrant's House

Example of the bike lanes/streets

Biker gang... seriously so fun!

Wanted to rent one like this, but they were all gone. So practical!

Hannah 4 year and Elliott 18 month update

 

Last week we had a check up scheduled for both kids. It ended up being 1.5 hours with the doctor and both needing immunizations. L I love the pediatricians here. They do so many tests, looking at eye sight, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and overall health.  It was not fun having both kids get shots, Hannah being a bit more of a screamer when things hurt was rather unhappy for about 30 minutes, Elliott cried for all of a few seconds.

 

Hannah has started to grow and slim out. She is in the 60% for height and weight now. She is 104.5 cm and a bit over 18 kg. The doctor was highly impressed with her writing ability and the self portrait that she drew. Her eye sight and hearing tested ok. She continues to need to work on her gross motor skills, like standing on one leg and hopping on one leg. She has always been slower with these things. It is most likely a combination of fear and inability. She doesn’t like to work on it, so we will have to get creative. At four Hannah seems to be more of an introvert, loving to play with the friends she already has, and likes to be in environments that she is used to. She likes to play with her baby, draw, do any type of art project or activity book, and is good at imaginative play.  

 

She will go to three sessions of preschool every week this year which she is very much looking forward to.  Hannah still takes a nap most days after lunch and sleeps very well at night for the most part. She and Elliott have shared a room since April, which has gone pretty well. Although sometimes Hannah goes to sleep later and would sleep in, but Elliott wakes her up in the morning since he goes to bed earlier at night.

 

 you may notice that Elliott likes to play with no shirt on

 

Elliott also had his 18 month check up last week, which as mentioned above included shots. Elliott is a BIG boy weighing a bit over 13 kg and is about 83 cm tall. This puts him at 90% for both height and weight. This is exactly how Hannah was at 18 months, so I expect him to slim out around 4 years as well.  Elliott has been picking up more words recently and is a mix between English and Swiss German. He still mostly just says one word at a time but has a few two word phrases: big boat, thank you, big boy ect.  Elliott is not cautious like Hannah, we turn our back for 1 minute and he is standing on a chair or something. 

He loves to be outside trying to climb things, finding ways to get wet, going on walks, and looking for puppies!  We tend to explain Elliott as happy go lucky as he usually has a smile on his face, but has shown he has a stubborn side and has started to test us with some tantrums… all related to wanting to be a big boy! Both kids continue to be babysat by a Swiss nanny in our home when I work on Tuesday and Thursdays. Elliott does well with this, except for the 30 seconds after I leave, in which he cries for mommy, but then he carries on having fun. We are excited to see how he continues to change from baby into little boy.