Cuddling, Relaxing, Enjoying

I don’t know about Lorelei, but I enjoy moments like these… And in this case Lorelei stayed with me for quite a while. Usually she will be like this for just a couple of minutes (or seconds) before wanting to move on… This was a nice Sunday afternoon in May, after I had worked on the house for quite a while. I was kind of beat and just relaxing on our patio when Lorelei came up to me. I put her on my chest and just enjoyed :-)…

Eating by Herself

Lorelei is becoming such a big girl so fast… I guess you can’t help that, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder….. well, I don’t even know what to wonder so I guess I better enjoy it while it lasts….

Anyway, Lorelei can eat on het own. She has been doing that, first with her hands, then with her fork, and now with a spoon as well! It is still kind of hard for her and she is quite messy, but she is doing it. It was interesting to see because I just gave her the spoon and of course she knew what to do with it, but obviously she did not realize she had to do it by herself. So, she hesitantly moved the spoon into the oatmeal and got a tiny bite out. It quickly improved as the bite size and the speed of movement increased… as I am sure it will in the days and weeks to come.

It is quite cute, right?

I’m Walking Here To Be

Lorelei Loves walking. Usually we keep her confined to our yard when she is outside, but when Tobias is outside as well, it is kind of hard to keep her in there… it just is not big enough. So, she wants to go with Tobias into the alleyway behind our house. It is unbelievable how far she wanders off if you let her… Here she is coming back from a stroll to Gijs’ house (Gijs is one of Tobias’ friends). This was on one of my daddy-days and all three of us spent quite some time out there that day…. Lovely!

(Don’t you just love her outfit?)

Playing the Guitar

Lorelei had a brief obsession, still somewhat visible but much less intense, with my guitar. Pretty much every morning she would point to my guitar (which is hanging on the wall close to our kitchen table) saying “Da… da…”, meaning: “Papa, can you please play some guitar for me?”. Of course I love doing that so, I did.

Well, soon she discovered Tobias’ toy guitar and took a liking to that as well. As you can see she is quite proficient, at least in terms of holding it properly. She strums the strings and even kind of rocks back and forth as if she is rocking to some groovy tune… Now the signal for playing the guitar is when she grabs the toy guitar and climbs onto the couch with it. Her expectation is that I then grab my guitar as well and we start a jam together :-).

I just love this picture, and I am proud of my baby-guitar-girl!

Lorelei Loves Jip

My goodness, it has been a while since my last post. This has a few reasons, one of which is lack of availability of a computer (or rather, a well configured computer) due to a job switch… Lame excuse, but an excuse all the same. Then I have been working on my house a lot, painting, repairing doors, renewing our patio etc… And of course, starting a new job always requires additional effort. On top of that my new job does not come with a car, so I had to get a new one. In short, I have been busy.

Today was the first daddy-day in a while where I was just daddy, not a painter, brick-layer or anything like that :-). So, I am currently enjoying my daughter, who is eating a tangarine. Also, I switched my daddy-day from thursday to wednesday, which means Lorelei and I get to pick up Tobias from school around noon and then we can spend the afternoon together, although Lorelei will be taking a nap then. I love the switch, but it also makes it harder to blog, as I was kind of used to being able to do that while Lorelei was sleeping.

Well, back to my baby girl, she is lovely as ever! She doesn't walk anymore, she runs! She is much more of an explorer (or should I say dare-devil) than Tobias ever was, which is nice, but also scary at times... for example when it comes to climbing things... Also, she is much more of a girl (or should I say drama-queen) than Tobias ever was. She has a very clear understanding of the word "No", but she just won't take no for an answer, at any time :-). She will turn her had away, throw the back of her hand in a dramatic gesture and start crying. It is hard to keep from laughing when she does that…

As I wrote before, she knows the word “cat” although she (still) pronounces it “aths”. We kind of consider it her first real word and it is most likely not without a reason. She has been, and is still taking a strong liking to Jip. Of late you might even call it an obsession. She pets him, runs after him, cuddles with him and, as you can see in this picture can be very sweet to him. It is nice to see, but sometimes she has a hard time controlling her enthusiasm. That also happened not long after this picture was taken. Then Jip walks away most of the times, but sometimes, as happened this morning, he will scratch…. That is one of those scary things… she has a little scratch on her hand now, nothing serious, but….

Well, let’s not think about that, this picture is quite cute, right?


For news on Lorelei's brother Tobias visit: Tobias Quinn