"Ilja ... Growing on ("peutertje" 1 to 2)" by Pavlik_NL

Ilja was quick with walking and full of energy all the time. In fact everything is going splendid, but the sleeping at night. Often he wakes up around four AM and is hungry.
Still, mom' spends all her days with Ilja caring, walking and teaching him a lot. Then when dad comes home from work, often it means partytime!

On my first birthday I got a lot of attention from family and friends. With presents I was spoiled. From my grandma and -pa I got my first bike (okay, okay, it's a threewheeler). But I earned it hard as everybody was totally surprised that I knew how to blow out that one candle. Now ... about that wish I made ...

I told you already how much I like to swim, so you can imagine that when everybody starts to have bad mood because of the continuous autumn-rains, I live up to see my street change into a big pool. Even in the puddles I can have big fun with my brand new rainboots and extremely Dutch raincoat (orange).

(Saint Nicolas, who doesn't know him?). A few weeks before the 5th of December the Dutch children get nervous. The holy bishop will arrive again from Spain and give presents on the night before his birthday (5th) to everyone, but especially the children that he loves more then all. The shoes are set and filled with candy, chocolate and ... great presents! If only in America they would know that this guy actually is also their Santa Claus! Well, when I grow up ... I'll explain them.

Though we had a week of nice cold weather and some ice, the Christmas is again traditionally wet. I am amazed when my father and mother suddenly carry a three into the house (are they crazy?). But when the dress it up nicely with lights and cuddly bears (especially for me!) this holiday is fine by me! The dark but cosy days take care that we are more often all together and so ... Ilja is very happy (as well as we all).

When we manage Mom' and I go swimming every week. Dad is sometimes coming along and then we have realy big fun in the water of our swimmingpool "De Grote Koppel". The teacher of our class brought a underwatercamera, so now you all have proove of my excellent divingskills.
For some wintersportfun you should go to our Medeback-page, where we had fun in the snow and ... also swam in the tropical pool there.

Ilja's second word is "auto"(Dutch for "car") which is ponounciated as "oto" and almost synonimous with "papa" (by the way, his first word was "boom", which is Dutch for "tree"). Reason is his fascination by the car that drives us anywhere. My mistake to take him once on my lap to realy drive a little. Since then he didn't want to go in his safetychair with mom on the backcouch. Only when we replaced it on the passenger-chair he is more or less quiet.

Ilja is developping fast ... so fast. He is now speaking his first words and although they are not enough to make whole sentences, he's babbling like no other in our house. And he is clever, follows every example (even the wrong ones) we give him. Today we were breaking down the gardenshed and replacing it with another (smaller one) and he was helping where-ever he could. With his toy-screwdriver, hammer and saw he was repeating all movements that daddy made. Amazing and good for many laughs.