And now she is two

Has it really been 2 years since my little girl made a rather delayed and fraught entry into this world? It must be: the dates says so. I could go all emotional recollecting the past two years. And yet nothing can put into words how I feel about this little yet very strong 2 year old who has made our family complete.

With Cubling at school now, I have had the rare chance to spend one to one time with her once again after over a year. It is as if I'm starting to get to know her all over again, and this time is most definitely rare quality time, because usually it's a frenzy between trying to accommodate the needs of both girls while also managing house chores or timetables. It is wonderful to be able to go her pace, see the world with her eyes and just be with her calmly, without the hustle and bustle of the days were we are three or four. Picking brambles, spotting swallows, getting excited about the movements of a slater - this is the kind of stuff that has been more than overlooked in the past year, and while I it pains me that my big girl has to sit on a school chair 5 days a week, I've gained this special time on a Monday with Snowflake.
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The mellow baby has become a strong toddler who will stand her ground, even when she doesn't know what exactly that ground is. Now that she is entering the world of mischief with the guidance of her big sis whom she adores and copies to the letter, I thought it would be fitting to hand over to said sister, who knows her best. And world, watch out for the pair of them!

Tell me something about Snowflake.
It's her birthday!

What is the best thing about Snowflake?
Cuddling her

What does Snowflake do?
She plays in the bath and in the play park

What makes her laugh?
When I do silly faces

What's her favourite game/toy?
her favourite game is playing on trees. Her favourite toy is peppa pig

What's her favourite thing to do?
pulling down the curtains

What does she hate doing?
she hates going into the bath

How is she like you?
She's nothing like me.

How is she different from you?
she has short hair and she's a baby

What's her favourite food? and drink?
Her favourite food is egg. Her favourite drink is milk from mummy

what does she think about you?
I don't know

What's funny about Snowflake?
she kicks me and slaps me on my face and tickles me

What makes her cry?
when I jump on top of her

What make her angry?
when I kick her

What's the best thing to do with Snowflake?
playing with her!

What will she be when she's grown up?
a dentist

I love you to bits and I'm thankful every day that you are with us and brighten our lives. I love your raised finger telling me "nein Mama, Snowflake selber!" (no mummy, Snowflake do it self), your tantrums at every single supermarket visit, even your jealousy of your big sister making sure that mummy's lap is yours only. I love how your favourite mode of transport is on your sisters lap in the buggy, how you get so excited when the word "Spielplatz", "nursery" or "Fahrrad" is uttered. I love you for your hysterical giggles when your sister gets you to laugh, for the way you want things just so and your dislike for mess of any kind. I love how you conquered your fear of animals and now enjoy their presence. I love those baby curls that will disappear soon. I love how you, and only you, can make my dad smile. I love your cuddles, your kisses that are given freely. I love your eyes as they meet mine and start to smile.  
Happy birthday Schneckchen.

Hip hip hurray!

The past few months have felt a bit like an episode out of the book "when will it be spring?". Time is relative in the three year old mind. There is no concept of days, weeks, months. Even "tomorrow", though uttered, may mean something entirely different.

She had wished her birthday to come, like a fairy. And wished it again. A groundhog day question of "when is my birthday?" "Is it my birthday yet?". So we measured time in BIG STEPS. When it's spring, it will be your birthday. When will it be spring? When the flowers are blooming and the trees pop their new leaves out of their buds.

Every sign of spring was noted, explored, watched. Snowdrops caused enthusiasm, so did crocuses, though they confused with their many colours, surely they can't all be the same plant? We watched buds turn green and the slow progress of the daffodil stalks.

Because, above all, it will be your birthday when the daffodils are blooming. Because, four years to the day, you were born to a sea of daffodils, with a daffodil song humming in my head, a song half remembered, well loved, a bit like your birth itself.

And here you are, little fairy princess mermaid, 4 years old, an independent little big girl, confident in your world, the most sociable person I've ever seen, ever on the go, with an exhuberance of emotions that is unrivalled. Today, at last, we were able to wake you to the soft words of "it's your birthday". And all day you celebrated that you were four years old, and that you would be four all the time now. So proud to be a big sister, convinced to be taller than daddy even. How you loved every one of your presents, the puppet theatre and hand puppets that I spent every possible 10 minutes of Snowflake's rare evening sleep time trying to sew together in time, the Disney Princess jigsaw and the Hungry Hippos game, the fairy that your granny and granddad sent you, the Prinzessin Lillifee purse from your Munich friend, the many books - all promises of fun times we will spend together.

Maybe this will be the first birthday you will remember many years to come. I hope that we will remember, how proud and happy you were to be four. No longer a baby, not a toddler even, you are indeed your very own self, your own person on her own two feet.

And I love this person to bits.

40

I can still remember one of my dad's favourite sayings, one which he must have coined when he himself turned 40 (I was 8 at the time) - "One should be shot at 40" (or, "mit 40 gehoert man erschossen"). It's his kind of humour, and what he meant was that it's all downhill from here. I don't feel like this at all, but there's no harm in looking back a bit, and maybe also in looking forward (I'll leave that for another post). What did I get up to in my first 40 years? Well, here are 40 things I've done or what has happened to me:

1. I've had two beautiful daughters (does that count as 2?)
2. I had a miscarriage
3. I ran a marathon
4. I got a PhD
5. I lived in Spain
6. I lived in Ireland (a few times)
7. I lived in England
8. I've lived in Scotland
9. But I grew up in Germany really
10. I travelled to Mexico, Iceland, Canada/ U.S. Pacific North West and Cuba
11. I travelled to many other places in Europe because I have a serious case of travellitis - there are only a few countries in Europe I haven't visited
12. I walked the fire (as in did a firewalk - over hot coals and all that, no not coals, it was wood really)
13. I climbed up the highest peak in the UK (Ben Nevis), been to the most north-western, south-western and the northernmost points of the UK
14. I was a teacher without being a teacher (i.e. I didn't have a teaching qualification at the time)
15. I'm a teacher but don't work as a teacher (now I have a couple of teaching qualification and don't use them)
16. As a child and teenager, I wanted to become a vet, then a photographer, then a journalist.
17. I worked as a free lance journalist when I was 17-21
18. I also worked as a cleaner in a hospital (which was hard work but also harrowing as I was assigned to the two stations where many people died)
19. I worked as a paper girl, shop assistant, checkout girl and tour guide
20. I used to do muay thai (Thai kickboxing) though never in a real fight (unlike hubby... and no, we didn't meet through kickboxing but much more sedately at a ceilidh!)
21. Previously, I worked as a bilingual secretary and legal secretary
22. I also taught German at a university and also for language schools and business customers
23. I'm really a teacher of English and Spanish though (just don't tell anyone)
24. I got married to my amazing and beloved Mr Cartside, who proposed to me on top of the Nebelhorn (and that was after I'd already given up all hope I'd ever meet Mr Right)
25. I was at my mother's death bed (although I lived in Scotland at the time) and still regret every day that she didn't live long enough to meet my children, her grandchildren she had so very much longed for.
26. My favourite subject at school - apart from languages - was chemistry
27. I got my only "6" ever in chemistry (a 6 is the worst possible mark in a school test/exam, as bad as handing in a blank sheet of paper. I had handed in 10 pages of hard work)
28. My least favourite subject at school was PE (I'm the girl who got picked last every single time - did I say I ran a marathon? Ha!), and the last to learn how to swim in my class.
29. I saw my niece being born
30. I lost one third of my body weight and went from obese to normal weight
31. I've lived at 4 different addresses since coming to Scotland, all within 2 miles of one another (I won't count all the addresses I lived at because I don't think I can)
32. My parents had an allotment when I was young and I had one a few years back here in Scotland
33. My mother taught me to knit and my father how to embroider and sew. My mum was a better teacher than my dad... (and I mean that in the kindest sense, my dad is an avid sewer but just not patient in passing his skills on)
34. I've met Bob Geldof (and was rather embarrassed by the experiences, though he was really quite friendly)
35. I taught a member of Westlife German. Not very successfully. That was before Westlife existed.
36. The first gig I went to (the first of maaany, there's nothing like live music) was Nik Kershaw. I still like his music. Well, sometimes.
37. I used to be mad about learning languages. I learned English, Spanish, French, Irish Gaelic, Latin, Dutch, Italian, Catalan, Russian (in the order of the rough level of proficiency I have now, although proficiency is definitely not the right word for most of them!!!)
38. I learned to play the recorder, the guitar and the tin whistle. I play none of them well.
39. I used to sing in a choir (alto) - the perfect way to sing when you're not a great singer
40. I've been to Auschwitz and it left a lasting impression on me, and made me join and be a founding member of a local group of Amnesty International at 17. And I'm still a member and a volunteer trainer/facilitator with AI, even though I'm a fair bit less active due to lack of time.

And now I'm off to unwrap presents, eat birthday cake, and of course party!

(and if anyone else has a birthday, please consider yourself tagged to come up with x number of facts about you, and tell me about it!)

Celebrating Now

I'm slowly tapping back into some form of normality. Pregnancy is still making me tired at the end of the day. This translates to half of the posts I've got in my mind not being written, knitting needles being somewhat neglected and my camera not getting the same use as I'd like to. However, I have been doing a bit of all of this as well as managed to celebrate Cubling's birthday in style. What with not having a proper party last year, she got two this year. Imagine 11 toddlers, 3 or so babies and relevant parents at party number one, to be repeated by a slightly lower toddler count (but greater adult count) the following day. Lesson learned: the second round is much easier, practice helps. Still, I'm not sure if I'd recommend having two rather large children's birthday parties on two consecutive days if you're pregnant. Of course, it was all worth it for her, to show her how special she is, even for the overtired whining at the end of both days.

The doll's house was a great success, and has been played with much more than the train tracks. Cubling loves to put the dolls to bed, to wake them, to rearrange the house, to clear the rubbish out (literally decluttering it, something that we need to do ourselves urgently) and she even does bedtime routines for the babies.

She's always been a very physically active girl, with lots of energy, and while I don't know what exactly she gets up to at either the new nursery (which currently has an exercise theme) or the forest kindergarten, but she sure has made another leap in confidence and ability to climb rather worrying heights. Or throw herself down a slide backwards and head first (I recall that as a child, this was beyond what I felt comfortable with. Not at 3 - but ever). While I admire her energy and physical ability, her climbing reduces me to an overprotective mum, I feel my legs go just watching her. She also manages to run off so fast that I have no idea which direction she went to, but fortunately she is reliable in responding when I ask where she is. So far anyway.

We are still being tortured with endless why questions, plus the rather entertaining first question of the day "what morgen doing?" and the question upon return at home "what you do today?" Her world is that of interacting with other people, she'll go up to any stranger and ask for their names, that of energetic play and activity, that of glueing and painting, role playing, singing and sharing books. She has no time for numbers or letters, no concept of counting years (although she does have a concept of quantities), clearly life is much too busy for any of that. And right she is. I still can't see her as a school girl and I'm glad that she still has a fair bit of time before she'll be made to sit on classroom chairs, because thanks to her March birthday, she'll be starting school at 5 1/2. She is exhuberant and excitable, yet also extremely keen on cuddles and kisses. She will say "I liebe dich" again and again in such a sweet voice that it can only melt your heart away. The longer she can enjoy these pleasures of worryfree life, the better.

Outdoor pictures taken at Finlaystone Park which in spite of the hefty entry cost I can only recommend as a day trip destination for any energetic toddler.

Hip hip hurray!

Just for a bit of fun and variety I thought it would be nice if Daddy Cartside would write a post on this very special day.
 
Happy Birthday! Our wee girl is three today, and I'm falling in love again. I once saw a TV program where the presenter declared that she could determine the adult characteristics of a child at three years. So now I can't stop looking at her; trying to imagine the "big girl" or even adult version. I know I shouldn't; I hope it's a phase. The council nursery sent us home a photo sampler, and she looks so sweet and happy. To be honest, that's because she is! Not that she can't be grumpy too, but overall she loves to laugh and giggle, and delights everyone she meets. As you can imagine, we're very proud and happy too. Where did she come from? Was it really Mummy's tummy? It's all a little bit like magic isn't it?

You know she's learning German, right? Did Mummy Cartside tell you what she said the other day? "I love he." No, she wasn't referring to yours truly, it was the Gruffalo! Well, a tiny cuddly Gruffalo. I seized the initiative and lined it up for our bedtime reading session; and we got through it no problem. Hurray!

In the morning we'll show her her new doll's house, and the train set in the evening. I hope the nursery remember. Will they sing her a song? Give her a card? Make her feel special? I do hope so. Will she know her age at last? She did the other day, but "didn't know" by the evening.