Baby Has So Much To Do

What's Left of the Holidays

This a bit late, but we've finally managed to pull our holiday pictures and put them up on the blog.

Like the previous holiday, we decided to spend last Christmas with Chris's family in Berlin. Cora was old enough this year to understand the excitement, and she really enjoyed all the attention coming from Oma and Opa. We also got our first look at our new nephew Baby Elvis, as we affectionately call him (his real name is Cillian-Darin Elvis).

Pictures of all the Christmas riot can be seen here.

Just between Christmas and New Year, we managed to sneak out of town and got ourselves on the train to Prague, while Cora stayed behind with the grandparents. Woohoo, our first couple trip after Cora's born!

 Prague was absolutely gorgeous, even if it was bitterly cold during our stay (no snow, unfortunately, just dry and cold). I love the food, I love the beer, I love the charming old buildings, but next time I come back I'll make sure it's not in the middle of winter. We didn't take many pictures in Prague, since it was rather uncomfortable to take our hands out of the pockets to snap pictures with, but the few Chris took can be seen here.

 Meanwhile, back in Berlin, Cora seemed to have a fun time with her grandparents. She had lots of new toys from her Christmas present stash and was sharing them with Oma and Opa. She doesn't get to see other family but the two of us very often, but she quickly bonded with her grandparents and had no trouble at all being left by us.

We got to see Cora again after 4 days in Prague, and by that time she already spoke quite good German! Dang, I need to catch up on the language department.

More pictures of Cora and the grandparents can be seen here.

 After we went back to Berlin, we also took some time to take Cora to the Berlin's Legoland. I'm sure they have lots of cool things to do in there, but we never get to see any of the real attractions, since Cora set her eyes on a jungle gym set in the cafeteria and decided to spend the whole visit monkeying about in that thing, along with other children. It's amazing how charged up they can be in that thing, releasing the kind of energy that I'm sure comparable to a small powerplant.

Chris also took her on a ride into a tunnel where you can view a fairy tale about some dragons and knights (I didn't get in myself). Cora was scared and was hugging Chris the whole time. When she got out of the tunnel, she came to me and said, wide-eyed, 'Mummy, it's monster train.'

The rest of the Legoland pictures, here.

Is Donker

 

While putting Cora to bed.

Me: "Good night, Cor. Tomorrow you're going to babyschool again."

Cora: "Is donker." (is dark)

Me: "Not now, tomorrow."

Cora: "Is donker."

Me: "Yes, it's dark now, but tomorrow we go to babyschool when it's not dark anymore."

Cora: "Is donker!"

I guess she doesn't yet understand the concept of tomorrow. But then again, the conversation (if you can call it so) kind of captures the zeitgeist of the season, with the winter going to the deepest end, the temperature drops and it seems like we live in the dark most of the time. We even got a couple days of snow already (which quickly melted back to the ground).

With the weather we receed back into the house, and here is the comeback of the indoor pictures.

 

We have just installed the bar table by the window for our laptops, as you can peek from Cora's pictures. We already had the bar stools for quite a while now, but at last I found the perfect bar table to go with it. I didn't even have to custom order it, it fits perfectly across our two kitchen window, at the perfect height that when we're sitting on the stools, we each get a heater under our feet. In case your're wondering what's the framed text over it, it reads "You Deserve Pie" (and who doesn't?).

For the rest of the album, click here.

For a bit of Cora's winter madness (I simply asked her to laugh to the camera, and look what the drama queen did):

The Little Helper

Cora is always eager to help. Partly from the sweetness of her toddler heart, partly because she wants to do whatever mummy/daddy does, and partly because she is always curious on how things work. Her absolute favourite is the hoover. 

More pictures of Cora in action with the hoover are to be found here.

(Apologise, these set of pictures are rather out-of-date.)