Caroline's birthday

1. C and James breakfast together, 2. Caroline feeds James, now she is 6. 3. C at her birthday party. 4. Cupcakes 5. James decides to get down and walk (first time!), since it seems to be a day for celebration.


C's sixth birthday was on her first day of summer vacation, and she woke up bedazzled by all the sleep, strange for a Monday. She remembered straight away though, that it was her birthday and that she was the grand age of 6. Then she looked in the mirror, stared herself up and down and said, "But I don’t feel older. Am I bigger? Are my hands bigger than before?"

Six to C means being grownup, so she decided to be regally polite, and invited James to join her for breakfast at her red table. She even pulled out a chair and poured him some cereal so they could "dine" together. (James plays with cereal, rather than eating it, but as long as he stays in his chair, the flakes don't go too far).

While she breakfasted, we decided that for her birthday dinner she'd like knedlicky with a red sauce. She reassured me that it was easy, much easier than what Dada and I usually made and if I would just get some tomatoes and mash them up she was sure they'd taste fine on the dumplings. And she told me, confidentially, that it was really okay to buy the knedlicky in the store, almost no one made them from scratch any more.

Breakfast finished, and a little time left before our babysitter arrived and I headed to work, we squeezed in a reading from "Now we are Six."

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
"What would I do?" I said to Pooh,
"If it wasn't for you," and Pooh said: "True,
It isn't much fun for One, but Two,
Can stick together, says Pooh, says he. "That's how it is," says Pooh.

That's how it is, Mommie, said Caroline. And I gave her a hug and a twirl for being six and my girl.

May Days

 

Holidays fall fast and thick in May in Europe. Last Friday, May Day, we celebrated our first May holiday and James' first birthday, all at once!

How did we spend our May Day? From left, counterclockwise:
[1.] Playing on the recently refurbished Riegrovy Sady playground, now one of the nicest playgrounds I've had the chance to push a swing in.
[2.] Baking and decorating fairy cakes, and then gobbling them up.
[3.] Taking James to his first beer garden to meet up with friends.
[4.] Prepping for the cocktail party we threw Saturday to celebrate surviving a year with two children. I made a ton of food, including deviled eggs. Yum. These two plates represent approximately 5% of the tastiness outlaid.
[5.] Gratuitous cow pic I added for the fun of it. The word in Czech for cow is krava, and we suspect that a Czech family by the name of Kravin had a good sense of humor, way back when.

July, shortly

James keeps getting bigger and bigger. Here he is today, almost grown out of the blue sleeper that swallowed him when he came home three months ago.

The hole outside my window has also gotten bigger and bigger. We suspect they may be digging to China, or at least to the metro.

We celebrated Caroline's birthday (at the end of June) three times in July. As a result, Caroline became a candle blowing-out expert. She says she is a "big 5," now that she's hit 5.07 years old.

Baby life isn't all about crying and spitting up any more. See? J's on his baby playground here. Caroline likes to join him sometimes and pretend she's Gulliver.

Myself, I'm mostly found with a baby draped over one arm, phone in the other. I'm working full time from home and chasing after that elusive thing called sleep.

What are you up to, this side of July?