Potty Training

Potty training has started. We had made some lame attempts before, but now it is somewhat more serious. It started when a little friend came over and he was seriously working on it. He is a few months younger than her. His mom was putting him on the potty every hour or so. Well, we haven’t been doing that and still are not doing that, but that little boy’s visit triggered some potty sitting by Lorelei. Unfortunately most of the times she would want to sit right AFTER she had already done her business.

Today was an interesting day though. This morning she said she had to go wee and she actually had to go. She had not gone yet, or not that much anyway. Who knows, is she getting there? I would not at all be surprised if she is going to set her mind to it at some point and that would be that then… That’s kind of how it went with Tobias. We’re not making a big deal about it, but today was a proud moment .

New Room with Beanbag

Here I go again: I can’t believe how fast my little girl is growing. We replaced her baby bed by a big bed, took out the rocking chair and replaced it with this bean-bag (the girl-version of Tobias’). And she is so happy with it! Can’t you tell? We did all this right after we were back from our vacation. Why? Well, Lisa may have told Lorelei once that we would do that. Lorelei remembered and sure enough she reminded us right after we got back from our vacation. What else can you do than comply with her request in a situation like that.

We were worried she would have a hard time staying in her bed, her being unable to sit still and all. We haven’t had any trouble yet, though. As a matter of fact, she still just stays in bed in the mornings, even when she is awake. Only one time so far did she come down by herself, but that was in the morning while I was taking a shower…

So, mission accomplished, I guess….

Trampoline

God, I have so much to write…. and I will… but not right now. Right now I just want to share this wonderful picture of my girl on a trampoline at a friend’s house where we had a BBQ last night. It was hard to get her off that thing. She is quite the crazy girl copying everyone else, but isn’t she just the cutest thing?

Balloon Baseball

Today was my daddy day. Of course I had to take Tobias to school first and after that Lorelei and I kind of have our own little routine. We come home, I make some coffee and we sit on the couch and read (mostly Miffy these days…). Well, today was different, because Lorelei said (without any prompting): “Ik wil niet boetie lezen want ik wil boon baseball pelen.” (“I don’t want to read a book because I want to play balloon baseball” written with the pronounciation mistakes only in Dutch, because I find that also quite hard to convey in English… well, balloon baseball sounds like boon baseball, but the rest was in Dutch…). Balloon Baseball is something Tobias and I play a lot. It is basically hitting a balloon with some object like a sword (like in this picture) or a stick or something… then, it you hit it, running to the scratching post without getting tapped by the balloon…

Apparently Lorelei had been watching us closely because this is what happened:
- Lorelei got the balloon and gave it to me
- Lorelei got the sword
- Lorelei positioned me somewhere in the middle of the living room saying: “You stand here papa”
- Lorelei positioned herself on the carpet
- Lorelei said “Frow the boon papa” so I did
- Lorelei hit the balloon and dropped the sword on the carpet
- Lorelei ran towards the scratching post and stopped halfway
- Lorelei turned around, picked up the sword and threw it just beside the carpet (pretty much the exact spot where Tobias throws it)
- Lorelei ran to the scratching post
- Lorelei raised her arms and yelled “I won papa!”

x 100 .

Biker Chick (Continued…)

I think I have told you before that Lorelei is quite the daredevil… When I said that I thought it’d be a while before she would ride her real bike I did not mean just two months… I meant, maybe by the end of the summer…. Well, she is there already. Ok, she needs her training wheels and she is not going as fast yet and she still needs quite some coaching, I am amazed by how quick she develops her skills. I would not be surprised if I could get rid of the training wheels by the end of the summer… .

She calls biking on this bike “trappelen” which is really funny for Dutch people, but I find it hard to convey the humor of it in English… So, I’ll just leave this one for the Dutchies to laugh at .

(French) Indoor Playground

Like I said, we did not have great weather while we were in Paris (actually La Celle Saint Cloud…). So, we did a lot of things indoors, like this: going to a French indoor playground. Well, there wasn’t a whole lot of French to it…. It seems these places are the same everywhere….

Lorelei had some great fun riding this car. The guy behind her is Tristan, Valentine’s little brother. They were “racing” each other .

(Probably) my Favorite…

This is probably my favorite picture of Lorelei from the Photoshoot. You think she’ll be a supermodel?