Isabella just turned 1 year old, what did that time go by fast. A year ago both her and Michelle were in the hospital, Isabella even had to stay for almost a full month as she was born two months too early. And because she was born so early, she had a bigger risk in going back to the hospital (50% more chance than full-term babies).. but, fortunately she stayed healthy as can be, and she is currently catching up to the full-term babies also.

So yesterday, on August 25, she turned 1 year old, but her birthday was celebrated by the family of Michelle’s side (my family is at the other side of the world, so they couldn’t be here unfortunately) about a week ago as there were some family members (who live on the mainland) visiting Hawaii that week and Michelle’s mother preferred to do it in that week so they could join also. Michelle’s mom arranged a Hawaiian buffet, which was very good, and there were about 50 people, it was really nice.

Here are some pictures of that birthday party:

Of course we have filmed a bit with the birthday cake, but you can find that a bit more down

A week later, on her real birthday, Michelle and I celebrated it again, but a bit smaller than the week before First we were on Skype in the morning with her Dutch grandmother. Great invention, about 8000 miles away from each other and still being able to speak and see each other (and free too haha). After that Isabella went for a nap, and after her nap we had to go to the doctor for a her regular checkup…

Yeah, believe it or not, but they planned that nicely on her birthday at the clinic (and we can move the date, but you can easily wait another month before it is your turn again). The doctors visit isn’t so bad actually, but she also had to get 3 more vaccinations…. and that was very sad, to see her cry on her first birthday ..at the clinic they were able to translate it to “getting your health as a present on your birthday”, but we saw it more as a sadist thing, to get the shots exactly on that date… I guess it is just the way how look to it Oh well, fortunately she didn’t cry too long, she is a pretty tough little girl when it comes down to these things.

After the doctor we bought a cake for her, one that was also completely meant to be hers. If we had some left overs after she was done with it, then we could get some, but it was first meant to be hers… well, we found out what she thought about that hahaha!

Before we gave her the cake, we put together a big present for her, in her play area, which she totally loved (thanks grandma and auntie in the Netherlands), and after that we had the cake.. and yes, we filmed the part of the cake, and we made some pictures as well. So, instead of talking too much, here are first some pictures, and below that a fun video.. have fun

Here is the video:

A small update (08/07/2010): I wrote yesterday in this post that it was the Black Pearl but I just found out that it was no longer named the Black Pearl but the ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’, Captain Blackbeard’s ship. This probably explains why the ship looks so damaged (and why they were rebuilding the ship when it first arrived). The ship, however, did arrive as the Black Pearl, but the current name is the Queen Anne’s Revenge.. Due to this, I changed the titles and text in this message of this message a bit.

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I have blogged before about the Pirates of the Caribbean and them going to film here in Hawaii but until recently we thought it wouldn’t be really accessible, it would’ve been more luck than anything else to see something of it all.

However, last week, we read in the local paper that they were filming in a pretty nice accessible location and today we decided to take a look if they were still there. After searching a bit along the coast (we knew on what side of the island they would be but not the exact location haha), I suddenly noticed a few masts and figured I would know where the ship would be, and I was right (they would be here for about two weeks, or so we were told, so if you are in the area and want to take a look in the coming days, you can find them here (click)).

Unfortunately we didn’t see them actually do some filming, and we didn’t see Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) either (it was probably too late on the day), but we did see the ship ‘the Black Pearl’ ‘the Queen Anne’s Revenge’. I can tell you it looked a lot better than the last time we’ve seen it, when they were still building and doing repairs and such (see pictures of that here). It looked more ‘finished’ now. Well.. finished?

To be honest, it kind of looked like the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge has been on fire… I don’t know if this is supposed to be because of the many fights in the earlier movies of the Pirates of the Caribbean, or if it was something that happened in this movie (and what we will have to see when the movie comes out). It is, however, very clear that when you look closely on the pictures that you can see the ship was pretty battered. The masts look a lot shorter than they should be (or so I think), you can see soot and burned wood everywhere, pieces of railing are missing and you can continue this list. It was pretty cool to see.

Next to the pictures of the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge we also made a few pictures of the surroundings, which I will add below, so who knows, you might recognize some of the area when you’re watching the movie

And like promised, a few pictures of the surroundings.. I am curious if we will still recognize it all when we watch the movie..

We also filmed a little bit from the road that goes around the bay over there, I still have to convert that and upload it to Youtube. When that’s done, I will add it to our blog

I know.. it is pretty quiet on our blog lately. I cannot do much about it really because there are not that many things happening, and ok, maybe sometimes there is but sometimes I just don’t feel like writing for all kinds of reasons, plus it is a lot of work to write a piece like this, and to translate it. But don’t worry, no news means good news

I wrote in one of my older posts that we would have a new layout soon. Well, that layout is waiting, but I haven’t had much time to actually implement it into the blog. Mostly I am just too busy as Isabella is becoming a handful nowadays. It might take a while longer haha.

But ok, how are things here? Things are doing welll We cannot complain, nice weather and we go out once in a while, like to the beach for example. Isabella really likes the beach haha. Here are some pictures

Last weekend we also went to the Byodo-In temple at the other side of the island:

I don’t think we have that much new pictures besides these (we have them, of course, but they are a bit older by now and they don’t show anything really new in the sense of the backgrounds and such).

Isabella will have her first birthday later this month, so we surely will have some more pictures by then. There will be (and I am not surprised that this amount will be doubled) about 50 people coming to her birthday, we’re doing a buffet through a catering with some Hawaiian food, yummy We will do this a week before her real birthday because there will be some relatives from the mainland who will be visiting the islands, so they can celebrate along (this was the wish of Michelle’s mother). There goes our small party which we originally wanted haha. Oh well, it doesn’t matter, we will still do something small on her real birthday

Maybe we will go back to Kaneohe later this week as we found out last weekend that they are currently shooting for the Pirates of the Carribean on that side of the island.. who knows, we might see some famous people

Yesterday was the last day of May, Memorial Day. This day is similar to the Dutch “dodenherdenking” (remembrance day). People remember their loved ones on this day, those who fell during active duty in the armed forces, but also their other loved ones.

Like I said in my previous blogpost, we were thinking about going to the beach and to get a lantern which we could lit later in the evening, during the ceremony, with on the lantern a written memory (think about a small piece of text, with the names of the loved ones), and place it on the water to let it float into the wide ocean. The candles in the lanterns are meant as a guidance for the spirits to their next life, and to bring their loved ones on earth some peace.

They would start to give lanterns out to people at 1pm, and since there would only be a limited amount available, we were waiting in the queue at 1.30pm. Well, ok, Michelle was waiting in the line, I couldn’t find a parking spot (it was very crowded) and so I dropped her off first so she could claim a spot in the line. To give an impression:

The first picture was made by Michelle with her telephone while she was waiting. You can see the tent in the distance. By the way, try to find Michelle on the second picture.

After we had a lantern and floating device in our possession, we found that we had about four hours left to do something else before the ceremony would start. We decided to visit her dad’s grave, to lay some flowers at his grave, like she does every year. It was pretty busy at the graveyard, like you can also see on the next picture.

The graves here do not have standing tombstones, but tombstones that are put flat in the ground, everything that you can see in the picture are flowers and such that are put there by their survivors. There were also people having a bbq at some of the graves, something you don’t see so quickly in the Netherlands but which is a tradition for many over here (this comes mostly because of the Asian influences in Hawaii).

We drove back into town after this, parked the car and went towards the beach, where it became more and more crowded. Just before the ceremony we heard in the welcoming speech that they had more visitors than last year, which was 40,000 at that time, so there were more this year.

While we were waiting for the start of the ceremony, we played a bit with Isabella who thought the sand on her feet was amazing. She was making all kinds of cute sounds and was really busy, she really enjoyed herself.

You can see on the last picture that it became more crowded. The ceremony also started by then, with a speech from the spiritual head of the Shinnyo-en Buddhism order, as you can also see on the screens. She was there on a stage but that was pretty far away, that’s why there were screens (plus it was nice they had these as she spoke Japanese and they showed an English translation). They also had hula dancers and a few artists who sang some fitting songs.

After this it was time to walk towards the water and lit the lanterns, but before we would let them float on the water, there first were some canoes that transported even more lanterns with messages from people all over the world (you can send your wish or thoughts to them over the internet or by mail, and volunteers will place these on the lanterns) and that placed the lanterns on the water as they passed by.

And then it was time to let the lanterns float on the water and to send wishes of happiness over the world.

We walked a bit into the water, the water was nicely warm, placed the lantern on the water, and then something dismal happened. A little boy, who was there with his parents, came from nothing and took the lantern with him for a couple of feet while he was swimming. We were quite stunned that this happened as we wanted to do it slowly, to take some pictures of the lantern and then push the lantern into the wide ocean when we would be ready for it, but that was not possible because of this boy. In my hurry and shock I tried to make a picture but I apparently moved a bit too much and it blurred a bit. You can still see that the kid pushed the lantern:

I thought this was a shame, and I am actually a bit angry about it. I understand it is just a kid, but if it was my kid who did this, he would have received a spanking (so Larissa and Isabella, you know what not to do). I don’t think this is acceptable and I don’t understand why his parents didn’t tell him he couldn’t do that. They said something like “hey, that is far enough”, but nothing like “hey, don’t do that”. You have to understand that some people write some deep wishes, thoughts and memories on these lanterns, things that make them think about their loved ones. For many people this was an emotional experience, and that was the same for me. And then a brat like him comes along who pushes the lantern away. I was terrified that he would push too hard and that it would turn over or that it would make water in the front.

Yeah, I think I should’ve said something myself at that time, but I was so shocked by this, that I really didn’t know what to do. Next time I will do some things different from the start (like walking further into the deep, where there are no small kids). I thought it was a shame. The whole thing was pretty spiritual and it gave me a good feeling, and then something like this happens.. not that much fun, but oh well, fortunately it didn’t take away all of the spirituality.

Right, before I stop with this post with some pictures that I made after we had the lantern in the water, I want to add that this is a really beautiful experience, and something we want to do again next year. If you want to go on vacation to Hawaii, and you don’t know when, you should consider to have Memorial Day in your itinerary so you can enjoy this also, it is really special.

Recently someone told me that it seemed as if I posted more messages through Twitter than actual blog posts. This is true, of course, I do post more frequent on Twitter. It is however, as far as I think, not really like I write less on this blog than before. I have said it once before, there is not always material to make a nice long blog post, and often I just didn’t write anything back then when I didn’t use Twitter yet, but now you get to see those things in small messages so basically there is more to read about than before, which seems even better to me

Anyways, it is time for a bit longer post right now

Yesterday we went out in search of the Black Pearl, the ship from Pirates of the Carribean. I told about it before, that they would shoot their fourth movie (’On Stranger Tides’) here in Hawaii, and I also knew that the ship arrived about a month ago and that it was in dry dock for repairs and such. They wrote about this in the local newspaper, and that’s also why I knew it was not somewhere inside, but that you could easily see it from the road.

And that was true!

We found the ship after a short search in about the spot where we expected it (here), there was a fence but you could easily look through the fence. We looked at it from a parkinglot near a boat ramp, from which I just found out it was a private boat ramp (which explains the security at the entrance of the parking, who was not there, by the way, when we entered it). I don’t know how far they could stop us from going there, though, according to Hawaii state law they always have to grant you access to the coastline. I think they just want to discourage people from going there than to really stop them.

Whatever it is, we did see it, and pretty clear as well. Here are some pictures:

As you can see, the Black Pearl is currently not really black, it’s more like black-brown.. I think they will give it a new color (well, it will probably be black haha), and that they sanded it because of that. You can also see that they removed the cabin from the stern and that it now just shows a framework. The figurehead is gone, and so are the masts. They’re really renewing some things on it, and probably also adjust some things for the new movie.

You can see one of the guards sitting on a chair behind the fence on the second picture, they hired those because of the large number of people who want to see the ship.

Here are some more photo’s:

Some of the materials that you can see in the foreground of the pictures are, I think, from the Black Pearl itself. Many of those things look like how you can expect them on a ship such as this.

By the way, I think we viewed this ship pretty late when you see the following pictures of when the ship was only just in dry dock about a month ago. I also added a photo of how the ship looks like in the movie itself. By the way, these pictures are not made by us, they come from the Honolulu Advertiser website:

Like I said, you couldn’t see the stern like that anymore, which is a shame really. I would’ve loved to see it with those statues and such. Oh well, they still have to shoot the movie, who knows, I might get lucky and see some of that.

A fun fact: The Black Pearl (or ‘Sunset’ as it’s name really is) is actually a motorboat with a maximum speed of 9 knots. The masts are only there for the view, and it is actually a ship around a ship.

After we took some pictures here, we went to the other side of the harbor, to the Ko’olina resorts, where you can find some lagoons, and where you can walk nicely with a stroller and such. And because the people from Europe and the US mainland want to see the summer so badly, here are some pictures to get you started haha:

For those who wonder why I am wearing a black thing around my wrist, this is because I recently found out that I have a Carpal Tunnel Syndroom. The splint is making sure that I can’t move my wrist too weirdly and such. Not so nice to have, but I think it is the price I have to pay for all those years (about 25 years) of sitting behind a computer too much. I will now have to take it much easier when it comes to computers and such (and I am doing that also).

In the last picture you can see a building that is still under construction. This is going to be the new Disney resort: Disney Aulani. I think this is going to be a beautiful (and very expensive) resort when I look at the the pictures and drawings.

In the second last photo it looks like there is a pineapple growing in a tree.. which isn’t the case.. I have no idea what it really is but it is no pineapple, that’s for sure haha. It kind of also looks like a way too big pinecone.

And then we went back home again. However, when we were on our way to the car, I noticed that we could also see the Black Pearl really well from this side of the harbor:

So if you really cannot get in on that side of the harbor, then you should just go to the Ko’olina resorts with binoculars or a zoom lens for your camera (you can also see it really well with just your eyes, by the way), where you can still easily view it.

And that was our little trip of yesterday.. I don’t think I have much more to tell you. If there is anything else, I will let you know

Oh, we will go out for swimming soon (and you might not believe this, but it will be the first time since I am here, can you imagine that? Hahaha!).. we bought a few of those swimming pants with diapers inside of them for Isabella, a factor 50 sunblock, and we will buy a small hat and a thing for her to sit in, in the water.. that’s all going to work out nicely, I am looking forward to it already

Like I promised in my tweets yesterday, I would upload some pictures of our visit to Maui. However, when I was watching the pictures and videos today, I noticed that we didn’t had that much pictures, and they’re actually mostly whale pictures and not much of our visit to Maui itself.. and as for the videos, they are also a bit disappointing as we didn’t even have enough to edit it to a normal video.

I can explain, though, we wanted to film some on board but I was mostly busy with my photo camera, and Michelle had her hands full on the baby, who woke up while we were on the ship and got hungry. And, well, the number of pictures we made of Maui are a bit disappointing because we left both cameras in the back of our car the whole time, instead of the front so we could easily make some pictures.

I guess we will have to go to Maui again soon to make some more pictures and videos.. we might do it multiple days, so we can do a bit more than just watch whales from a ship.

Anyways, I should make a short report of our trip to Maui. Like I said before, i was especially curious of how Isabella would behave in the airplane. She usually is a very sweet and quiet girl, but yeah, how would she behave when the air pressure will be different and when she gets her ears popping? Well, it all went a lot better than I expected. She was ok with everything and I don’t think she was impressed by it all, even though I had my own ears popping quite a few times haha (I have it worse on these short flights anyways, it’s like they climb at a faster rate with those small planes). The turbulence during the landing in Maui was also no problem to her, she went to sleep because of the rocking haha. No, I doubt I would have worry for when we make the long trip to the Netherlands.

Going through security with Isabella was also pretty easy. I read a lot up front to see how it would be, and I also read quite some horror stories, but we didn’t experience any of that, everything went extremely fast and easy.. it was almost like I traveled alone.

Once we got to Maui, we first picked up our rental car, went to Walmart for some bottles of pre-made milk for Isabella, and then we ate some food at Sam Sato, a local restaurant, as Michelle love their dry noodles.

After that we drove from Kahului to Lahaina, on the west side of Maui, and we noticed that the land there was so extremely dry. I already read about it a couple of weeks ago in the paper that some areas didn’t get enough rain, but I never expected it to be this bad. It really looked like a desert at some spots.

Once we got to Lahaina, we weren’t sure if we wanted to make a boat trip to watch whales. They announced that we might see high waves, as high as 25-30 feet, around the isles, and well, you don’t want to be on a small boat with that kind of waves haha. But fortunately it looked like the water was really calm, the sun came through and all of the sudden we noticed a whale jumping up from the water, a bit like the one in the following picture:

No, unfortunately this isn’t made by me, we didn’t see any other whale jumping up like that unfortunately. Michelle just noticed this picture and her reaction was “Hey, we didn’t see them like that during our boat trip, we have to go back, we only saw lazy whales” haha. We will do that for sure, it was really fun to do.

We bought some tickets for the boat trip and boarded shortly after. We have seen quite a few whales, and even though it was not like the one above, it was still very much worth to do it. It was really beautiful to see it all. But ok, I know some people want to see the pictures instead of me talking, so here I’ll keep quiet for now so you can see the pictures. Some comments are below the pictures as usual

Right, I think this should do it for now. I promise to have more different shots the next time we are in Maui (and we might have some underwater shots, we wanted to make a submerged tour but we didn’t had enough time for that now).

On the first pictures of the humpbacks you can see a mother with her calf, and on the last photo’s you can see a female with a male between us and the female. He probably did this to protect her from us because, well, imagine yourself that our ship would want to mate with her, that’s something he obviously didn’t want haha.

After we returned ashore, we drove towards Kihei, where we wanted to get some Shave Ice, but Isabella became a bit cranky, she was tired and didn’t sleep much, she got hungry and she needed a clean diaper.. well, I would be cranky too in her case haha. So we parked at a beach park and stayed there for a bit while we relaxed and watched the sun going down on sea.

Once Isabella was ready, and we got hungry, we went back to Kahului where we wanted to eat at Koho. And what do you think, once we finally sat at our table, Isabella started to cry pretty hard… I didn’t know where to look, it was so busy and then your baby starts to cry.. pffff… thankfully she was quiet once Michelle held her and she could see the ceiling fans (she loves those, especially when they’re on haha), and then we could still enjoy our food, which was very good in my opinion.

After Koho we bought some donuts at Krispy Kreme, who make really delicious donuts. And after that we went towards the airport of Kahului so we could fly back to Honolulu.

By the way, I really noticed how easy it is to become prejudice thanks to the terrorist threats and such, we had a pretty odd person on board of our plane (we saw him already at the check-in) that raised some questions with me (and with the flight attendants as well as I could hear (we sat on the front row in the first class, so you hear everything they say)) and there were a few more people who didn’t make me completely feel at ease.. it is a prejudice, and probably nothing special, so it is kind of sad when you think about it, but yeah, thanks to all those negative stories in the news, you sometimes think twice. I really notice you look more around these days during flying.

Oh well, the flight back went pretty smooth. We sat pretty comfortable in the first class, and Isabella had fun as well I think. There was no turbulence when we arrived (which is pretty nice because those planes are very small) and the flight was also over in no-time, we were hardly airborne for 30 minutes haha.

Right, like said, next time we will have more different pictures, and probably also a video

In other words: merry Christmas and a happy new year!

I know, I know, it has been quite a while since I last posted a message, and of course posted some pictures. It is not like I didn’t have anything to tell, but the new thing (about me moving here) is a bit gone and to post things double is a bit odd too. We don’t go out too much lately, also because of the H1N1 (mostly becasue it is a huge risk for Isabella), so we miss a large part of things to tell already.

But ok, the end of the year 2009 is getting closer, so it seemed like a plan to write a new post before the year would be over again (plus I received lots of questions of people as they wanted to see new pictures and such of our little Isabella haha, so yeah, that also had something to do with it).

Isabella is doing well, by the way. She is still a very sweet baby, with the hours between 5PM and 8PM as exception.. I think she doesn’t like the transition from day to night that much, because she can cry quite a bit in those hours. Officially she is a bit colicky (a baby has to cry for at least 3 hours 3 days per week, and 3 months to be classified as a colic baby), which was something we could expect as she was so early (it seems to be one of the complications) but fortunately it is not as bad as you hear sometimes about, it is usually not more than three to four hours and it doesn’t happen every day.. oh well, if that is everything, then it isn’t as bad as it could’ve been

Isabella now weighs a bit more than 10 pounds (over 4.5 kilos), so she gained quite a bit. Thankfully she is healthy, and I have to say that sometimes I was a bit afraid as they say that an early baby, such as Isabella, can easily end up in the hospital during the first year due to all kinds of complications. So we can say that we were very lucky so far

My family can call themselves a bit less lucky, though. At first we would go to the Netherlands during the holidays, because I haven’t been in the Netherlands since I moved here over a year ago, and also because none of them has seen Isabella in real life so far. But the H1N1 has made us decide to delay it until it would be a bit less bad, if Isabella would get infected with that flu, it would be very deadly for her as she is still so young and, well, you don’t want to risk the life of such a young baby.

But ok, enough talk for now, I should post some new photo’s of the little Isabella..

In November we went back to Waimea Falls again, mostly because it rained a few days earlier and we could expect a nice waterfall:

91 years age difference:

Recently I noticed that Isabella was sucking on her thumb for the first time.. I wanted to make a picture of it but unfortunately it never goes the way you want it.. oh well, still made the following photo’s:

And then the last few pictures.. A few days ago an uncle of Michelle came to visit Hawaii. They had not seen him for about 12 years (and then I complain about my one year haha), and of course we made some photo’s:

And that was all again for now. I don’t dare to make a promise about me posting a new message before the end of the year, you’ll always see that something comes up so you can’t do it haha.. It will come.

From a sunny, and warm Hawaii (it is still 85-90 degrees during the day, it is a dry and warm winter) we wish you a Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!

Yep, time flies. Isabella is two months old now (and a day), and the funny thing is that she wasn’t supposed to get born until tomorrow (October 27).. that she is already here, and is in good health, can only be seen as a small miracle.

I know, I know, I didn’t post in a while, and with that I didn’t show anything of Isabella anymore. This is mainly due to my busy schedule nowadays, mostly because of Isabella of course, but also because of some projects that I am working on, and because of that, I didn’t see much time to write something again.

Well, Isabella is, like I said, in good health. She has been to the doctor’s office today for a checkup as she is two months old now. They took her weight (she also gets her weight every week at the lactation nurse, because she was born so early and her weight needs to be closely monitored), and they took her length also. According to this scale (I don’t like this scale, as I will show you in a graph), she is now weighing  6 pounds and 2 ounces (2778 grams), and her length is 19.1 inch (48,5 centimeter). When you compare this to when she was only just born, then this is a big difference as her birth weight was only 2 pounds and 10.9 ounces (1220 grams). Yeah, she seems to be on a roll with her weight. I’ve placed her weights in a graph, by the way:

As you can see, there is an odd gap in that graph. This was the other time that they took her weight at the doctors’ office, and not with the (more secure) scale of the lactation office. Two days after that weight, she was weighed by the lactation nurse, and there she was back in her normal line. So if there is such a difference between those two, then she should actually weigh more right now. But ok, I won’t find out about that until next week.

At the end of this visit, Isabella received 3 injections and a small drink. She had to get a number of vaccinations, against things such as Polio, Diphtheria, Hepatitis B, Rotavirus, and more of these things. The nurse who gave her the shots, warned me that she might cry a lot as these injections seem to hurt badly. But what do you think, there were two small screams, and that was it. The nurse was quite surprised and said that normally all kids seem to cry a lot. I told her that it was possibly because her adventure in the hospital, where she had a lot of shots, and that this might have been a minor thing for her. But oh well, whatever may be the case, I am pretty proud of her that she is so incredibly strong.

Those shots made her pretty drowsy, which they told me that might happen. I don’t really mind that this happened as I now have the time to write a message here haha. She might get some fever, as a side effect of those injections, apparently there is a big possibility. I hope she wont get it, I doubt she’ll like it.

Anyways, I also have to give you guys a few new pictures, so you can see she grew a lot. So here are a few new ones of today:

She is currently pretty drowsy and sleepy, sometimes a bit weepy, so I will make some new pictures somewhere later this week, on which she will be a bit more awake, and a bit less weepy

A few people asked if we couldn’t post a few more new pictures of Isabella online. Of course we can, here they are:

Isabella is finally home since Sunday afternoon!

She was able to get into her new carseat pretty easy, so we didn’t have to purchase another one lol. I have to say that I feel a bit like she is drowning in her carseat, she is so small compared to that seat haha. As you can see on the following pictures, she really needs some extra support from those sheets:

This carseat is, however, just a temporary solution, as soon as she is big enough, she is going into her own real seat. Personally I think her real seat is a lot nicer and better in color.. plus we can have it on a stroller, so I don’t have to carry her constantly, which is also nice haha. Her own seat looks like the following, by the way:

Next to the seats above, she also has another seat which is placed in Michelle’s car for when she takes Isabella with her. But ok, that one is also a bit too big at the moment haha.

We stayed in the hospital the following night, Saturday to Sunday, because they offered us to room in for a night, so we could see if we’re ready ourselves.. they offer this to everyone so everyone can get used to their child for a night, to see if everything goes as planned, and when it does not go as planned, so that the nurses are still close by also. I had never heard of it before but I kind of like the idea, it is a good tool to get a feeling of how things are.

Of course we didn’t sleep much that night, of course there was Isabella making all kinds of sounds (not much, but still), there was a lot of noise coming from the hallway (after all, it is a hospital, not a hotel), and every now and then there was someone checking up on us around the time that Isabella needed to get her food. So we didn’t get much sleep and are pretty tired right now (because, yeah, try to catch up on your sleep when you have to feed a small kid every three hours haha)..  oh well, things will be alright

Here’s a few pictures of Isabella in her new environment, we will post some more photo’s of Isabella in her new room later of course: