Secret Club House

A present from his cousins Louise and Violette. Awesome. He squeals when he goes into it. An absolute blast!

cokie

Miles likes drinking"cokie" i.e. coffe. He has his own little cup that he carries around. One of his favorite words is "hot" which comes from us telling him to stay away from our hot coffee cups in the morning.  

 Enjoying some "hot cokie" with dei-dei. 

Christmas Celebrations

Christmas celebrations starter early when grandma come to visit last weekend.

Miles got his first firetruck!

This is our gift to Miles. We set it up on Christmas Eve, ready for him to see the next morning.

He quickly immersed himself.

A gift that will last and he will enjoy and play with differently as time goes by.

The weather was unreasonably warm today and we enjoyed lunch in the back yard!

A quiet, low-key Christmas for us with lots of laughter and quality time together.

We are awaiting more family this weekend, as our Christmas celebrations continue. It's nice to stretch the experience out and enjoy it thoroughly.

Frohe Weihnachten and Merry Christmas!

Germany Part One

We have been back from Germany for almost two weeks! Oy. What happened?

We had a great time, from beginning to end. The trip went very smoothly both ways. No horror plane stories. Considering the long trip, Miles did incredibly well. No freak outs, no tantrums. We were very lucky that the plane wasn't sold out (thanks to the economy maybe?) either way and we had an entire row of three seats to ourselves. At one point Frank was sleeping on the floor and Miles and I shared the row as our bed. On both trips, there was a little boy, Anthony, that kept Miles company now and then. Exchanging toys and snacks, it was good to have him there. It killed about 10 minutes here and there. Doesn't sound like a lot of time out of a 10 hour plane ride, but it was a nice distraction from time to time. It also helped that everyone else on the plane didn't seem too annoyed with a little boy running up and down the aisles.

It was a lot of fun spending time with family and friends that we haven't seen in a long time. Introducing my son to old childhood friends. Reminiscing about old times, recognizing places from the past, riding the train through familiar territory, wondering what it would be like living there again some day. Maybe.

Not to forget about all the eating! One delicious comforting German meal after the next. Eating whatever we wanted, because we only had so many days. Enjoying watching Miles engulf one pretzel after the other. Loving it as much as I do. Evenings of Miles sharing a bath with his cousins. It was the little things that made it so great.

Visiting Omi (87) and Nana (92) was hard. I am very glad to have seen them and to have seen them together with Miles.