Out for Dinner

It is not very often that we get to go out to dinner with just the three of us. In fact, I think last year’s Christmas Dinner at Tobias’ school may have been the last time. Well, tonight, while Tobias had his Christmas Dinner, we took Lorelei out to dinner as well. It was a nice dinner with a really sweet girl. Oh, and Lorelei and I got to share some ice-cream :-).

Ice Skating

The ice-skating rink is in town. Today we went out there and Lorelei had her first ever ice-skating experience. In this picture it does kind of look like ice-skating, but I can tell you, it is not, not yet anyway. She was able to stand on the ice, and she was able to move a little bit, but I had to keep a firm grip on her the whole time. She did seem to like it and we were out on the ice for quite a while… Both my ankles got poked by a skate and keeping that grip kind of broke my back, but I had a good time nonetheless…

Notice Tobias in the background. He went skating with school on Monday. He was on the ice without anyone’s help. That’s a first too… last year he still needed my support pretty much continuously, but well, when you’re with your peers I guess you kind of have to do it by yourself… Today he had to as well, because I needed all my attention for Lorelei. He did fine. He started our holding on to the railing, but after a while he just went around and around. It is not very confident yet and not very fast either, but he is doing it, and, he is proud of it (and so am I).

Lipstick

My daddy days with Lorelei are so entirely different from the ones with Tobias. There are many reasons for that, but one of the main reasons is most definitely that Lorelei is a girl… With Tobias we would always have to fix something, play with cars, play soccer, play hockey, play with the racetrack, and so on…. Boy stuff…

Well, first of all, Lorelei plays a lot more by herself. She will just wander off to her doll corner and start putting her baby to bed or getting her up or walking around with the baby in the stroller. Also these days, she goes into her room and listens to music on her CD player while reading a book or playing with her princess doll. But today we were sitting on the couch and all of a sudden she goes: “Oh, I need lipstick!” and she ran off to the hallway to get her purse. Yes, she has a purse, a gift from Sinterklaas, and it came with all sorts of stuff including this little make-up mirror and the lipstick (well, technically it’s lip-gloss I’ve been told…). Anyway, she races off and comes back with her purse, pulls out the mirror and the lipstick and starts putting it on… (the only thing I had to do was open the lipstick :-)).

Like I said: different, but I love it just as much!

Potty Training Baby

Lorelei is (almost) potty trained. It took her a lot longer than Tobias and she had some ups and downs. Now all she needs to do is the night, and get a little bit more comfortable and timely with #2… Anyway, it has to be on her mind because this morning she was playing with her baby doll and all of a sudden she came up to me saying: “Papa, you have to turn the light on in the toilet, baby has to do a wee!”. So, I turned the light on and got to observe this spectacle… She took baby’s clothes off and put her on the potty encouraging her to do a wee… :-).

New Look

Some great new blog templates came out recently. I thought I'd try something new: the dynamic layout. I particularly like the FlipCard view, but I decided on the Magazine view as a default. I also used this template for Tobias' blog. Let me know what you think... (for example by posting a comment to this message).

Update: I missed the link to my other blog and the history overview too much, so, I reverted back to a more classic (yet different) layout...

Not Quite Herself

Lorelei is not quite herself today. She was a bit feverish this morning, has a stuffed up nose and is not anywhere near her usual energy level. A perfect excuse to cuddle up on the couch and watch Ice Age and Buurman & Buurman, and read lots of books. She said she was cold, so I wrapped her up in this blanket.

She’s still cute, even when she’s sick, right?

Sinterklaas

This year was Lorelei’s fourth Sinterklaas, but her first where she was really aware of it. We went to see Sinterklaas come into town, we saw Zwarte Pieten several times and places, and we listened to lots of Sinterklaas songs. Lorelei was even able to sing some by herself! So, she realized that there were presents in the bag. To see the excitement on her face when some of the presents were hers… Priceless! Her favorite was a purse with hairclips, lipstick and a mirror in it… What a girlie girl .