Another rearward facing video

This one slightly more technical... tackles common myths about car seats, plus crash test footage again.
Please pass it on!

Child Car Seat Safety

A somewhat emotional presentation put together by a mum- what's really scary is the crash test footage about half way into the presentation. Can't argue with that- Mira's definitely staying in the rearward facing car seat for a while.

Ribs!

Last weekend we ate with Sarah, Kris and Grace (from Sydney!) at Amadeus, all-you-can-eat ribs.

Yummy food, highly recommended, though its best enjoyed if you skip lunch on the day.

And the potatoes with fat butter are heavenly...

Mira showed her animal instincts and devoured a rib!

What will happen if you don't vote for the green party this time

This posting is not related to the federal elections of 10/6/2007.
I just like this movie, simple yet to the point. Watch the ice bear...

Mira's birthday picnic

One year has flown by, I still remember my parents, Parul's mum and sister (her dad on the phone) and my siblings awing at the tiny little baby on a mattress in our living room. Now Mira can stand up, walk with the support of a cart and crawl like crazy. She is a lovely daughter! We had a great pic nic for her birthday with lots of nice pressies. TXs
Jeroen (papa)

Mira, dat is nu al 4 seizoenen dat je bij ons bent, lachend en grimassend, mensen noemen je een zonnetje, een duimelotje, een bezeke en een blij madameke. Ik vind het heerlijk dat je nu al kan knuffelen en heel soms, enkel als je dat zelf wil, druk je je hard tegen me aan met beide armpjes rond mijn borst. Heerlijk!

London trip (Mira is standing and almost walking)

Back from a nice weekend in London, Mira is getting ready to stand alone. Click here for the album.

London is not a very child friendly city, especially if you are taking ancient stairs in the tube carrying a pram and luggage plus baby. When asking for a lift the tube people politely answer "I am afraid there is none, so you 'll have to cope with the stairs". However, traffic eased with the driving tax in the center and with the super warm April weather we were actually outside a lot. Angela and Simon's wedding (the main goal of our visit) was really nice.

Mira is scared of grass

Mira at the Zoo and in Limburg

10 - 11 months

Time flies. Jeroen was away for work in Laos and Angola two weeks in total. Mira is a strong girl now, we have an album of the last month.

A Mira time capsule

Dear Mira,

You are now nine months old, but like all babies, you are growing and changing very fast... Not long ago, you were tiny, fragile and immobile, and look at you now!
I want to record the things about you that I really enjoy now, another month and the list will be completely different...

• You want to pull yourself up to stand against everything- a coffee table, the clothes drying stand, my trousers or my skirt
• You've got this fake teethy smile going- its cute, and sometimes silly
  
• Sometimes when you are hungry or just need some mummy time, you come crawling to me like a little puppy, saying "ummmummumm" and sit at my feet looking up at me with big, innocent, pleading eyes
  
• Remember when you were lying in bed with us one morning and you started playing peekaboo with the duvet? That was impressive!
• As is the fact that when I read a story to you, you can turn the pages of a (cardboard) book all by yourself
• And that you're slowly getting the hang of turning light switches off and on, and what that does to the room.
• Your favourite finger food is a pear, cut in long slices, you love eating it all by yourself, and do a pretty good job of it too
• Today another baby was here to play, a couple of months younger than you, and suddenly you became interested in ALL your toys, specially the ones he was playing with! That was not very nice, but I guess all kids do that. Sharing is cool, Mira!
  

As I write this, you are quietly playing on the floor, systematically emptying the toy box, one toy at a time :-) Time to cook your dinner.
I love you.

Your mamma

fotookes

Een kus van de mama

Een cadeautje van de peter.

De papa doet Mira haar warm pakje dicht.

Comment on the new album about January and February, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/jeroen.wvh/MiraJanFeb

taxi in Bombay

Mira and her dad in a taxi in Bombay. After 1,5 weeks at home with the flu, I found the strength to put these last photos from our India trip online (click below). The album below starts in Delhi, via Bombay, (where we stayed at Parul's friend Puuja's place), and Istanbul to Belgium. The main bit shows Bombay, which is a happy place with an amazing energy, I was happy to get to know it better, including a nice sunset at salt water grill. When I see movies about Bombay now I recognise much more. Last we saw Munna Bhai, a great comedy with a serious message too. I never laughed so much with a Hindi movie :)

I am slowly getting better, recovering from this flu. Mira is asleep and healthy and Parul is working at the ANEC annual report.

Bombay transit album

Tiring bike ride

On Sunday we went to my parents place for a reunion, my youngest brother Bram is back from 5 months in Italy. We biked over after installing Mira's bike seat. She was singing at the beginning but ended up falling asleep. Bram hadn't seen Mira since September and really liked her earrings. He took the picture of her in sepia.

Mira chasing

A silent movie in which Mira shows off her crawling skills chasing a balloon. When motivated she is quite good, if there is nothing to chase she prefers to try and pull herself up to stand.

Ik vraag het aan

bi- or trilingual?

Many people ask us what language we speak with Mira. We both speak our mother tongue, Dutch and Hindi. We sometimes also speak English to each other, a language she is bound to pick up.

Apparently babies learn to distinguish between the sounds they need to know for their mother tongue. More on the matter in the article itself.

Zondagslunch in Wattman na de lichtmis

Lichtmis is celebrated 40 days after Jesus`s birth, his parents brought him to the temple for blessings so we did the same with Mira, our princess. Mira's Belgian grandparents came too and after the mass everyone had pancakes, very social.

The priest in Zurenborg (where Mira was baptised in June) was happy to see Mira and remembered her Australian grandmother with happiness.

life goes on

Jeroen here, life goes on without too much time to write about it. It is worth sharing some things though, especially Mira's latest development, so let me try.

Now that Mira is 8 months old she loves crawling around. During our three weeks in India crawling was still new and her technique didn't allow her to shuffle off and try and eat plugs, wires, plants or other things. But soon after we got back she started moving around on both knees really fast. We didn't even need to look up the guide "How to make your baby crawl in 6 steps" available on the web :)

We are changing the house around a bit so she can't access too many dangerous things. I really love the way she silently plays and observes all these new objects. Observing is the wrong verb since she will always taste it, chew is and if it is good chew it some more.

I am back at work at Handicap International and we have our New Year's party tonight (even though it's Feb). I like doing communications for an NGO and with some luck we can push some states to ratify an international ban on cluster munitions this year. Israel has recently apologised for having used these weapons in Lebanon, weapons that mainly hit civilians. Peres admitted yesterday to Al Jazeera that it was a mistake to use them. You can help too by signing the petition online. You can check on the website whether you know any of the famous Frenchmen or others who have already signed for a ban on these weapons.

Meanwhile other battles continue, like the one for our second-hand car, which is under warranty repair at a garage that closed down two weeks ago. He probably closed his business before officially going bankrupt and we will not see much more than the unrepaired car. Lawyers advise me to forget the warranty and the repair costs and to be happy with the vehicle itself. Lawyers giving me lessons in resignation, I like that.

Parul has a new boss who has a Narnia cupboard in his office, but I 'll let her write an update too. I am afraid that will have to wait until our sleeping experiment with Mira is over. We are trying to make her sleep through the night and teach her how to fall asleep on her own in her own bed. We adults can all do it, but it is really hard to teach someone how to do it . Hence the reason for very little blog traffic.

take care and keep commenting, tips are welcome!
Jeroen

EU debating banning the Swastika, originally an Indian Symbol

Hindus opposing EU swastika ban

Hindus in Europe have joined forces against a German proposal to ban the display of the swastika across the European Union, a Hindu leader said.


Source BBC



Parul was interviewed about the topic by Inne from De Standaard. Here is the article with a reference to Mira's mundan that we did two weeks ago in India.

donderdag 18 januari 2007

Hindoes verzetten zich tegen Europees verbod swastika

Voor hindoes en boeddhisten staat het hakenkruis al duizenden jaren symbool voor vrede en geluk.

Duitsland wil als EU-voorzitter het Duitse verbod op de ontkenning van de Holocaust in de hele Unie proberen in te voeren. Ook het verbod op het afbeelden van de swastika of het hakenkruis, dat de nazi's gebruikten als symbool van het Derde Rijk, zou tot het pakket maatregelen behoren dat Duitsland in de Unie wil invoeren.

Hindoes uit België, Nederland, Italië en Groot-Brittannië zien zo'n verbod absoluut niet zitten. Ze willen campagne voeren om het oeroude symbool niet uit de Unie te bannen.

De swastika, een woord uit het Sanskriet dat ,,geluksbrenger'' betekent, is inderdaad het heiligste symbool van het hindoeïsme en het Jaïnisme, en het komt ook in het boeddhisme voor (zie tweede foto). Maar het symbool bleef zeker niet tot de oosterse cultuur en religie beperkt. In Egypte en Zweden zijn swastika's gevonden van minstens veertienduizend jaar oud. Het Römisch-Germanisches Museum in Keulen telt verschillende Romeinse swastika-mozaïeken (derde foto). En op het Griekse eiland Kreta kwam de swastika al rond 3.500 voor Christus voor.

Sinds de Tweede Wereldoorlog kampt de swastika in het Westen echter met een gigantisch imagoprobleem. De swastika draagt sinds het nazi-tijdperk een duistere connotatie van haat, racisme en dood. Moet het symbool daarom in de hele EU worden verboden?

,,Je kunt dan net zo goed het kruis verbieden omdat de Ku-Klux-Klan het ook gebruikte'', zegt Parul Goel, een Indiase uit Antwerpen. ,,De swastika is een vredessymbool dat misbruikt wordt. Het hakenkruis nu verbieden biedt geen oplossing. We moeten eerder van die negatieve connotatie af en iedereen aan de oorspronkelijke betekenis van de swastika herinneren.''

In het Oosten wordt vooral het spiegelbeeld van de Duitse swastika gebruikt, maar het kruis wordt in beide richtingen afgebeeld. In India verwijzen de twee verschillende swastika's naar de zonsopgang en -ondergang. De swastika die de wijzers van de klok volgt, symboliseert vooruitgang.

Het dagelijkse leven in India is doordrongen van de swastika, zegt Parul Goel: ,,Als je een nieuwe auto koopt of in een nieuw huis trekt, wordt de swastika als geluksbrenger ergens op getekend. En een bedrijfsleider tekent met nieuwjaar een swastika op de eerste pagina van het jaarboek.''

Onlangs hielden Parul en haar Belgische man in India een hindoe-geboorteceremonie voor hun dochtertje. ,,Daarbij werd haar hoofdje kaalgeschoren, als een soort zuiveringritueel. Toen ik mijn grootvader vroeg wat hindoes nog meer doen, zei hij dat we met rood poeder een swastika op haar kaalgeschoren hoofdje moesten tekenen. Maar zo lang konden wij ons dochtertje niet rustig houden. Het had anders wel een geweldige foto opgeleverd.'' (lacht)

Van onze redactrice Ine Roox

back from meeting family and travelling in India

Mortsel-Istanbul transit

We had a nice pre-Xmas dinner in Belgium and on the 23d we left for India via Istanbul.

We spent 3 weeks in India, the first week at Parul's cousin's wedding in Pune (close to Bombay). Mira was an attraction for the whole family.

Kedar and Urmila's wedding (India trip 0607

In between the various functions at the wedding I (Jeroen) had the chance to visit a Tata power dam with my kaaka (uncle). Tata runs a few social projects for the local villagers, I was very impressed. Did you know that Tata Steel, for example, began the eight-hour work day for employees in 1912, long before the US or Europe, and a year after Britain accepted the 12-hour day. Read the article about Tata, integral part of Indian life.

Tata Power visit PUNE

Happy 2007