Birthdays!!!

It's been a crazy few weeks around the Raarup Belgique household, and filled with summer birthdays. First, back on June 15th we celebrated Monsieur Raarup's 38th anniversaire:



In what has become a sort of a Troy-birthday-tradition (here and here, for example) I fixed fajitas, guacomole, and margaritas for dinner, though my "marg" had to be a juice cocktail this year for obvious reasons. For dessert, I made Troy's favorite chocolate-cherry-armagnac cake. It was absolutely delectable -- Belgian chocolate is really superb, plus all that butter. Oh my.



Just over a month later Troy planned a lovely birthday surprise for my 33rd birthday. It started with dinner at a wonderful little Italian place in our "new" neighborhood. Called Dolce (Italian for sweet), this resto lived up to its name in our book -- scoring high on food, ambiance, and service -- this last being rather hard to find here in Bruxelles.


Eating a dolce at Dolce





The next day, on my actual birthday, I went to a friend's baby shower brunch. When I got home, I discovered that in addition to giving me a gorgeous Murano glass necklace and a pretty card, Troy had taken advantage of my absence to put little vases of roses around the house! So sweet and romantic, but especially so for a lady who was 8.5 months preggo!


Troy said these two roses represented me and the baby -- SO SWEET!!!

Speaking of being preggo, that leads me to the most exciting birthday of the summer: Just four days after my birthday, Little Miss aka Little Roo aka Monkey aka Baby Raarup made her surprise entrance!!!! Scarily, I came down with some sort of 48-hour mystery illness -- complete with horrible gastro-intestinal awfulness and a 38.7℃ (102℉) fever -- which brought on labor two weeks early. Suffice it to say, labor and delivery were very difficult. However, the baby was not harmed by it, and Maren Aurelia Raarup arrived safely at 6:39 am on July 21st, weighing in at 3010 g (6 lbs 10 oz) and measuring 49 cm (19.3 inches) long. This was the Fête Nationale of Belgium (Belgian Independence Day), so Maren's birthday is also a national holiday!


The beautiful Maren Aurelia

As I've said before, health care here is top notch and maternity care is particularly good. The typical hospital stay is 5 days and we profited from every minute, receiving much-needed attention and support from the wonderful doctors, nurses, sage-femmes (midwives), and kines (physical therapists) at the Clinique Edith Cavell.


A family shot in our hospital room


Leaving the hospital on July 25th


Maren's first nap at home!

Maren is now almost six weeks old, and my how the time has flown! Between paternity leave and holiday, plus the ability to work from home when needed, Troy was able to take off the better part of five weeks to be home with us! This was a wonderful Daddy-Daughter time for him and Maren, but it was also super nice for me too. He took wonderful care of me during those first weeks of recovery -- cooking, doing the laundry, and changing all the diapers(!) Over the weeks, I've gradually resumed a more "normal" routine, but it's still been great just having this family time. We've also felt so blessed at the shower of visits, food, cards, flowers, and gifts from friends and family, both here and in the States.


Troy with the beautiful bouquet he got me, eating one of the healthy meals he cooked for us


The gorgeous bouquet from my parents, aka Mamie et Papie

As for le petit poussin (the little chicken, as they dubbed her in the hospital), she is just the best baby! We have been extremely lucky in that Maren has pretty much had her days and nights figured out from the beginning, thus we haven't been as sleep-deprived as most new parents. Fingers crossed that this continues!!! She is a super strong little thing, so holds her head up amazingly well for a wee sprout. She smiled her first "social" smile on her one month birthday, and gave a genuine giggle at 5 weeks! Like her mama, she's an "eater" and has already gained 2 lbs (910 g) and grown almost 2.5 inches (6 cm)! She loves being outdoors, eating at cafés, and taking walks in her stroller. We head across the street to the Parc Tenbosch as often as possible, and try to take walks daily, Belgian "summer" weather permitting.









We have a series of visitors coming to town, so look for future posts with pics with the grandparents, uncles, aunts, and friends. For now, here are some shots from Maren's first couple of weeks.

Maren Aurelia 4 Week Photo Album - Click Here

Baby Shower!

One of the difficult things about living overseas is being separated from family and friends in the States. For many Americans living here, there is the added lifestyle change of having one of the partners stay at home due to the Herculean work permit requirements. As you can imagine, this could easily lead to isolation if you don't make friends. However, I have been blessed to have found a wonderful, international circle of friends here, many of whom like me are now stay-at-home wives and moms. And a couple of weeks ago, a bunch of these sweet friends got together to throw me (and Little Roo, of course!) a beautiful baby shower.


Simone, Cornelle, Maisie, Ali, Marcie, Angie, Erin, Raven (not pictured, unfortunately!)

My friend Maisie, one of the co-hosts, kindly opened her home to us for a Sunday afternoon tea, complete with finger sandwiches, chilled soup, fruit, petits fours, cake, and tea.






Maisie & Simone

The other co-host, Ali, is a baker-extraordinaire and she made this sweet cake, among other goodies!






Simone & Ali

They put together a little album filled with cards on which the girls had each written words of advice and well wishes. Plus, my mom sent photographs of me as an infant, including photos of me, her, and my father together at the hospital when I was born! In addition to these sweet things, I received a lot of cute and thoughtful gifts, including books, clothes, essential oils, a nursing pillow, and even a set of infant medicines with English labels (tummy drops, gripe water, teething gel, etc...).









But as nice as the gifts were (and they were really nice!), I think the best part was everyone getting together, offering their support and friendship, and getting to hear all the stories and advice that everyone had to offer. It made me feel special and loved, even very far from home.


Troy bought me these gorgeous flowers for the shower -- this is me posing next to them at home the next day.

Château-ing in the Val du Loire (Loire Valley Pt. 2)

Our anniversary falls in late May (the 28th to be exact), and is almost invariably a lovely time of year to travel. We have often taken our yearly, 'long' holiday around this time, but with a baby on the way this year we decided to go for just a long weekend. Between Troy's busy new project at work and our pre-natal classes, we had quite the scheduling challenge for this trip, but ended up traveling on our actual anniversary weekend.

It was a little cool and rainy on the day we visited Chartres, but the next day dawned bright and sunny for our visit to the first chateau on our list, Chambord. The lovely weather was especially appreciated after our bad night at an interesting B&B in Huisseau-sur-Cosson. This was the first bomb from our otherwise wonderful French B&B book. The less said about it, the better. Happily, the other B&B I had been considering still had a room available when we called early Saturday morning and, as my dad would say, we got the heck out of dodge!

With its proximity to Paris, the Loire Valley was a favorite escape for French royalty and nobility. After several centuries of castle-building, today the valley is littered with fantastic chateaux. Begun by François I in 1519, the Château de Chambord was built as a hunting lodge. (Seriously. You can see why the French people revolted!)



Chambord is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is a crazy fantasy of turrets and towers, with 77 staircases, 282 fireplaces, and 426 rooms!


The main entrance is around back







This is the central stairwell at Chambord, a distinctive double-helix form thought to be the work of none other than Leonardo da Vinci!



There are actually twin spiraling staircases with openings at each turn, across which you can see your spouse, for example, but never the paths do meet.





After a nice lunch in the chateau courtyard, we set off for the village of Sologne and chateau number two.


Lunching in the courtyard of Chambord

Our second castle of the day, the Château de Cheverny, is a private home and has been in the same family, the Huraults, for more than 6 centuries! Well, technically they "lost" it twice -- the first time was in the 16th century when Diane de Poitiers, having been kicked out of Chenonceau by Catherine de Medici, bought Cheverny as her "bridge" chateau, i.e. the place to live while renovating her future, permanent chateau of Chaumont-sur-Loire. The second time occurred in the 18th century when the heirs "lost interest in their inheritance" and sold the place. However a Hurault ancestor re-bought the ancestral home in 1825, and it has remained in the family ever since.

Cheverny is a pretty chateau with lovely grounds, and is known for the richness and completeness of its interior furnishings.




Embroidered wallpaper inside Cheverny


This chandelier is silver-plated solid bronze and weighs over 100 kg (220 lbs)!

The owners of Cheverny are keen hunters and so the chateau is also home to ±100(!) French hunting hounds. The kennels are a tourist draw in themselves, but personally we found the whole 'dog zoo' thing to be rather weird.



Our favorite parts were the much lovelier potager (kitchen garden) and the back gardens.




In the potager


In the potager




In the back gardens


The orangerie



After our bad experience of the previous evening, we were SO glad to receive a warm welcome at our "rescue B&B", the lovely Clos du Golf. As that evening was our actual anniversary, our kind hosts even arranged dinner reservations for us next door at the Restaurant de l'Hôtel Fleuray, a restaurant gastronomique listed in the Guide Michelin.


Our fancy entrées (appetizers)


Delicious dessert!

We devoted our last day in the Loire Valley to one site: the beautiful house and grounds of the Château de Chenonceau. It is a fascinating, fairytale domaine (estate), complete with castle dramatically-sited over a river, formal gardens, maze, orangerie, and farm, all set in a lush forest.


A formal allée of trees lines the central path to the chateau, but then charmingly blends into the wild forest.

Our visit fell on a beautiful, hot day, and we enjoyed strolling through the surrounding formal gardens "taking some sun".





As beautiful as the grounds were, though, the chateau itself was equally impressive. The current house was constructed in the 16th century, and its most famous residents were Henri II, his wife Catherine de Medici, and his mistress Diane de Poitiers (though not all at the same time, obviously). The property changed hands several times throughout the centuries and even served as a field hospital during WWI, but has survived remarkably intact.



The Marques Tower is the only remaining building (the keep) from the earlier, medieval castle and mill that used to occupy the site.



Chenonceau spans the River Cher -- as in, the piers are literally sunk in the riverbed.



This makes for some pretty interesting interior spaces -- long, lovely galleries, and rooms and windows sited to capture the sound of the water and the river views.





Another super interesting feature (and my favorite part!) of the chateau is its HUGE, beautiful kitchens! Located at river-level, the kitchens have their own dock so that, during Catherine de Medici's day (back in the 1500s), boats could simply pull up to drop off supplies.







After our day of sun and chateau-ing, we headed to the nearby town of Amboise for an early dinner of pizza at a sidewalk café. Back at the B&B, we settled in with our books at a little outdoor table overlooking the golf course, and enjoyed the fresh country evening until it grew dark (around 10:30). A lovely anniversary weekend and a great "last big trip" before we two become three...



Loire Valley Photo Album - Click Here