Fishing

Lorelei is really good at playing by herself. On my daddy days, after we take Tobias to school, I usually sit down with a cup of coffee and Lorelei just plays. She takes just about every toy off the shelf, plays with it, and then just leaves it there. Needless to say she can create quite a mess that way… Anyway, it is so cute to observe this process… Last wednesday she picked up her fishing puzzle and started fishing . And as you can see she did quite well, even with just her one hand!

Goofy Girl

I quite often posted goofy Tobias pictures on his blog, but I haven’t posted as many goofy pictures of Lorelei. That does not mean she can’t be goofy. In fact, she can be quite the goofy girl… Here she is standing up side down on the couch while singing “Blowing In The Wind” with me. That little purse she is wearing around her neck was a gift from Lotte, Gijs’ sister. She wore that for a week straight (pretty much…).

Working Together

Sinterklaas gave Tobias and Lorelei a toy to play with together. It had quite some playtime so far, but mostly by Lorelei. Today though, Tobias and Lorelei were playing with it together, even working together. Ok, the toy is for play-dough, but today it was used for letters. They made “chocolate letters”. It was just so sweet, I just HAD to post this picture…

Phone

Out of all the wonderful toys Santa brought this Christmas, Lorelei’s favorite is probably going to be her phone. These days it is the first thing she picks up in the morning. It is very interesting to see how a toy can help her learning her numbers. All the buttons “say” the number when you push them, and the number appears on the screen. So, she can not only say her numbers, she also recognizes them. On top of that each number shows a picture of items in the amount of the number. She sometimes associates that item with a number. Like I said, very interesting…

We have similar toys with letters and the process is kind of similar. Tobias learned his letters using those toys and now Lorelei seems to be too…

Writing…

Lorelei is very much into coloring, drawing and… writing! Of course she is not writing any words or anything like that, but she does call it by its name. When there are crayons and a coloring book it is coloring, when there are crayons and blank paper it is drawing, and when there is a pen and a notepad it is writing . Here she is writing with Lisa and look at the concentration on her face!

BTW: Isn’t this a lovely picture?

Update: Actually, they are playing a game with pictures :-)... Cute all the same though, right?

Decorating the Tree

It was Lorelei’s third Christmas this year, but her first time decorating the tree… Her first Christmas was spent in the hospital. Her second Christmas was in the US where the tree was already decorated when we got there. So, this year she got to do some decorating of her own. She was not too wild about it, but seemed to enjoy it enough… Of course, it created a nice kodak-moment, right?

White Christmas

After a white Sinterklaas, we also had a white Christmas in Gouda. That is actually quite a unique thing out here… I am not sure, but I think that had been a while… Anyway, it was quite nice I have to say. But, as you can see, also a lot of hard work. I was working out there with Tobias and Lorelei saw us. She is copying pretty much everything that Tobias does, including this. That pink ball back there is her shoveling snow .

Travel in Style…

Lorelei has a tendency to be (overly?) enthusiastic about things she gets. Like on her birthday when she got a winter coat and snow boots, and she was basically ready to wear them to bed, despite the fact that we had a fire going in the house and everything…. Well, this time is was a backpack (in the shape of a ladybug), a suitcase and cowboy boots… She just would not let go of it… We ended up hiding the suitcase because she just kept lugging that thing around the house…

Recently she had taken a liking to Tobias’ backpack after having it on het back one time on their way to school. She wanted to wear that thing every day since. Well, now she has one all for herself, and I am sure she is going to want to carry that thing every single day…

As for the boots, well, she doesn’t want to wear anything else when we go outside now. She loves those things! I guess that’s OK though, because the snow is gone now and she does not really need her snow boots any longer…. not right now anyway…

The suitcase remains hidden until we need it .

Happy New Year!!!

Let’s start the new year with a resolution: More blogging! Even though I now realize that with 80 posts in 2010 I did not do too bad…. But hey, one can always do better, right? I guess I will try to blog more frequently…

Anyway, this picture was taken last night and proves that Lorelei is part Dutch. Why? Well, she is eating a ball of deep fried dough called “oliebol”, which is a Dutch delicacy enjoyed primarily on New Years Eve… One takes the ball, dips it in powdered sugar and… Enjoy! And that is exactly what Lorelei did. The ball ended up disappearing much faster than anticipated…. I guess she likes it… .