Muscat

Today and tomorrow are national holidays here in Oman so I can't get into the office. I don't fly back until tomorrow night so am currently sitting in my hotel room tapping into my laptop and generally trying not to let the view from the room distract me from working. Couldn't resist logging onto the blog to look at the pics and thought I'd share my dilemna.

We're out of here

There won't be much activity here for the rest of November. Sophie and Jo are going to visit Jo's folks in Manchester, I'm off to Oman for work and the Beast is going to a bargain holiday camp near Utrecht. See you in two weeks.

9 months

Sophie turned 9 months last Monday. She's going through one of those phases when loads of new stuff happens. She can interact (I make farty noise, Sophie makes farty noise; I go "Ga", Sophie goes "Ga") and her crawling is getting more controlled and is now at the stage where she has to be watched all the time. We're trying to remove all obstacles like wires (anyone know anything about wireless routers? ... can't get ours to work). She's also becoming more selective in her eating habits (she's turning into a toastetarian). Anyway here are some pics of her in some cool strides!

By the way, if anyone out there is waiting on tenterhooks to know how Mrs Beasterson's diet is going (see earlier blog) then we can report that, with the new hard regime, we've manged to get her weight from 9.1 kg to, errr, 9.2 kg.

All I want for Christmas

... is my two front teeth!

Forward crawling

Drumming

Sophie had her appointment today at the clinic. Her vital statistics are length 71 cm and weight 8.6 kg. She's dead on average for a Dutch baby and they're the tallest nation in the world ... and she can drum!

Shops we can't go in anymore

Two shops where future visits might be a little uncomfortable:

Cheese Shop, Frederik Hendriklaan - Earlier this year, just before going to the UK on holiday we dropped in to buy a piece of cheese. The man asked if we were on holiday and we said yes. Then we got into a difficult conversation about how nice The Hague was for a holiday. We figure we can now only go in once a year.

Butcher's Shop, Frederik Hendriklaan - Went in yesterday for some lamb chops. I was holding Sophie in my arms and, just as we were finishing up, the butcher said "Piece of sausage?". I said yes and he cut a small piece and handed it over. I popped it in my mouth, smiled and walked out. Only afterwards I realised that the sausage was for Sophie. It was nice sausage.