Karen's Home Page

Kate, Jane, Tim with Erik, Cees and Tara
(August 22, 2001)

Welcome to our home page! Read all about our family and visit our photo albums, the old one or the new, still under construction one. Or have fun reading the CTTDs (Cute Things They Do) collection.

Introduction

We are a Dutch family who is currently living in the United States. We first lived here for more than 3 years and then had to move to the Netherlands for about 6 months while we were waiting for a visa. We used to live near Burlington, Vermont, but now we are back in the States, we live in Lebanon, New Hampshire, close to the border with Vermont.

Sander

Alexander is a software developer. He used to be a stay-at-home dad, because he was not allowed to work here in the States (visa-reasons). But things have changed. He found a job and has been working since October 1998. He thinks this is a nice change. He works at Concepts ETI, a turbomachinery design company.

Hobbies: quite varied actually. Apart from being an obligatory linux enthousiast he's for example also into bread making. Both he and Karen are big fans of the British fanatsy author Terry Pratchett. At age 35, Sander still plays with LEGO. Having his children born in two different cultures has left him fascinated with differences in childbirth between various cultures. And at another end of the curve, he's also a long time space enthousiast.

Karen

Karen quit her job as a SAP consultant at IBM at the end of 1997, and now is a stay-at-home mom. She likes reading, swimming (if only she could find the time :-), hiking and communicating with other parents on the internet. Her friend Catherine got her addicted to bread baking.

Karen really enjoys reading birth stories, and has set up a collection of them. It started with the June 96 moms page, and those led to the Birth Stories!!! page. She wrote an article on Childbirth in the Netherlands, so you can see how things there differ from childbirth in the States.

One of her favorite places on the internet is Parents Place, where she often chats with the handle karenpl. She is a regular at the Tons of Kids board and even leads one of the weekly Tons of Kids chats. She has been having fun with The Large Families FAQ Every one with a large family will enjoy reading it and will recognize a lot of it! :-) More large family articles she has written are 'How our large family came to be' (although we had only five kids back then :-), Keeping on top of laundry, and 'Ten ways to find one in one time for your kids'. And if you think my life is pretty crazy now, read about one of those days from when I had only two kids. Most days with six kids are less stressful than that one was :-).

She has become addicted to car seat safety and has been writing some pages on that too. Please visit her Car Seat Info page to check out some common errors people make using car seats. Or find out How to Select the Best Car Seat for Your New Baby, or If your baby is ready to face forward in the car. And if you are wondering whether to buy the Britax RoundAbout or the Maxi Cosi Priori, this page compares them for you.

She has written some opinions at Epinions.com. Here is a list of all her opinions, ranging from potty training to Priceline, and from obstetric myths to quacking ducks.

Karen believes in long term breastfeeding and child led weaning and she found a great, humorous story about the first sexual encounter of a young man on a different planet, that translates common breastfeeding myths to sexual terms. Read about The Thing!

Cees

Cees (pronounced as 'Case'), full name Cornelis was born at home in the Netherlands in 1991(Read about Childbirth in The Netherlands). Here is his birth story. He now is a typical 9yo with an unlimited imagination, a fascination with superheros and a preference for bathroom humor. He loves to play games with dragons and monsters. He is reading everything he can get his hands on! His latest book favorites are The Hobbit and we just got him the first book of the Fellowship of the Rings. He was very excited when he found out that Gandalf was in this one too, this was his favorite character from the book. Other favorite books are Goosebumps, Goosebumps and Goosebumps :-)

He loves playing on the computer and Nintendo. If we would let him, he would play day and night, stopping only to eat some junk food. But alas, he got an out of luck error on that one, and has to try to survive with only a limited amount of computer/Nintendo time, after some school work has been done :-)

He is being homeschooled, which works great for us. He wouldn't want to go back to normal school! We use both American and Dutch curriculum materials. He is officially entering fifth grade now, although we are covering all kinds of levels, dependent on where he is in that particular subject.

Click here to read scary, funny and other stories he wrote a while ago. I should get more of them on line, but life keeps getting in the way :-) I did manage to write a 9yo age update on him though!

Tim

Timothy, born in 1993 in another Dutch homebirth (his birth story). Tim is being homeschooled too. He is officially entering third grade, although with him we also work every subject on the level he is at. He thrives on the routine of schoolwork every morning after breakfast and I have found out that for him it is best to just continue homeschooling during the weekends, and not take the customary break. My solution is to just let him do less in the weekend, that seems to be working well. He always has been a very spirited kid, starting temper tantrums when he was 11mo, improving them until at 18mo he was able to regularly throw a temper tantrum for 3 or 4 hours straight!

He has quite some challenges in life, has ADHD, a reading disability, a severe articulation disorder and sensory integration issues.

He is very creative and loves to do arts and crafts. He also is very caring for his younger sisters and brother, always checking whether they are keeping up when we are walking somewhere. He is a smart little boy, although it is not always easy to assess that with him, as it was with Cees.

I have written a 6.5yo update on him, with a great picture of him dressed up as a king. You can read about Tim's 7th Birthday! including a picture of his 'Castle Lego Cake'! And his latest update is an 8yo update, with a body paint picture :-)

Tara

Tamara, born in 1996 is our first American baby. Another homebirth, but she couldn't wait for the midwives to arrive or mommy to get out of the bath tub, so we had her as an unassisted home water birth :-) (check out her birth story) . She is 5yo and thinks everybody should do EXACTLY as she says. I wrote a 3.5yo update on her, and just recently a 5yo update. She has joined our homeschooling activities and is on the verge of reading and loves doing math. She reminds me of Cees a lot in regards to academics.

Karen participated in the June 96 moms mailing list during her whole pregnancy with Tara.

Check out the biography of Queen Tamara (A.D. 1160 - 1212).

Jane

Jane, our second American baby was born in 1997. Her birth was very similar to Tara's. This time we did plan a water birth and that worked out great. But it was unattended again, the midwife did not make it in time, we are getting used to that :-) Read her birth story. She just turned 4yo, and is still very physical, very intense, and very independent. She reminds me a lot of Timmy at this age. She is always climbing, jumping and running, and has a hard time 'turning herself off' at night. She just mastered the monkey bars and spends hours at the playground, doing them over and over, getting stronger and stronger. I try to make her more tired by doing lots of physical activities with her, but she gets in a better and better condition instead, lasting longer and longer at them, and still not sleeping! :-)

She can do calm activities too, and will totally focus on them when she does. She loves drawing and cutting, so much that we have had quite a few hair cutting incidents over the last years. Oh well, it will grow again! Her last age update was a 2.5yo update for my Birth Stories page. Click here to read it and see her newest pics.

Kate

Catharina, born in 1999. Kate kept us all waiting impatiently for her birth, but finally decided to come out when she was 10 days overdue. Usually I enjoy going overdue, but this time was different, because we knew that we had a green card trip to the Netherlands coming up and we needed to get lots of administrative things done (like a passport for Kate) before we could leave. We ended up traveling when she was only 10 days old! What a stress that was! Here is her birth story. At least the midwives made it this time!

She is 2yo and she figures she might be smaller than the rest, but she is nothing less. She is totally determined to do exactly the same things they do. She is very physical too, and full of energy. She is going to start gymnastics, I think she will enjoy it, it is exactly the kind of thing she loves to do. She is very verbal, very TWO and very cute :-) I have a page about her first birthday and you can see more pictures and read more about her in her 10mo, 1yo, or the newest, her 2.5 yo update.

Erik

Erik, born in 2001. Here is his birth story, another great home water birth. He was born with his bag of waters intact, which was neat. He just turned 1yo and is a very active baby. He started moving around the room (by rolling) at 5mo, crawling at 6mo and pulling up everywhere at 7mo. I just wrote a 1yo update on him, about his first year and with first birthday pictures.

I kept a weekly pregnancy journal when I was pregnant with him, you can either click here to read it, or click on The Sixth Time banner underneath. After his birth, I wrote a Bunch journal, but only kept it up for a short time. He also prompted me to write an article on Ten Ways to Deal with Morning Sickness.

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Page last updated: Sunday, January 20, 2002.