Lunch with Mom.

We only had daycare for half-a-day today (something about New Years--although we don't have daycare on Monday due to New Years either?).  So, I picked up Lulu at 12:30 and we had a nice mother-daughter lunch at Panera.  The weather was cold and overcast (I say cold, it was in the lower 50s) and a bowl of soup sounded tasty.  So, I had chicken noodle soup and Lulu had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

She was having such a good time, I couldn't resist snapping a photo with my cell phone to share:



Afterwards, we each had a cookie to enjoy for dessert. Lulu picked the cookie with little M&Ms sprinkled over the top.

Sooooo delicious!

Christmas 2011

For Christmas this year, we flew from Sacramento to Texas to visit my family.  We rented a car and drove up to my parents' house in Gainesville.  We had lots of fun:  decorating the Christmas tree, building a gingerbread house, baking and decorating sugar cookies for Santa, coloring, and just generally spending time with Oompapa and MauMau.

Where to put those final remaining candy pieces??

Eating a Cinnamon Roll--the traditional Christmas Morning Breakfast for my family

During our visit, we also managed to squeeze in some last-minute shopping (including a ride on the carousel at the mall) and a post-Christmas trip to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

Look at that proper riding posture!  Such a natural....

playing around in an outdoor sculpture
in front of the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art

For those who want more photos, here are a few slideshows I put together:

Santa Claus is Coming to Town!

I'm posting this un-chronologically for thematic purposes. We were seranaded (tortured?) with an endless loop of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" while we drove down to Fort Worth on Dec 27th to visit the Kimbell. But, somehow, this video just screams to be posted on Dec 25th.

For Christmas Sake.

Books from Oma und Opa

Lulu received two packages in the mail on Friday afternoon from Oma and Opa in Denver. One of the boxes was full of books for Lulu to enjoy and I wanted to share some photos I snapped as she sat there and insisted on reading every. single. one.







And Mama's personal favorite:

Breaking News....

....Lulu is currently dressed in her bathing suit, complete with her pink tutu from ballet. She's circling the kitchen singing, "Hansel und Gretel."

Clearly someone has had waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much sugar this morning!

First Haircut Ever.

I took Lulu to get her first ever store-bought haircut this afternoon. Walter and I went back-and-forth about whether we should get her hair cut or not and finally decided that if nothing else, she needed the end of her hair trimmed so that it was even. After three years, I have to confess I had second thoughts earlier this afternoon, wondering if I was doing the right thing.

I've been priming Lulu for the experience by telling her that we were going to get her hair done "like a princess" on Thursday and afterwards she could have chicken nuggets and french fries (her favorite).

I called and made an appointment with a hair salon that specializes in cutting children's hair. They had Wii stations at every hair cutting station and a TV with Nickelodeon on in the corner. After the joy of dance class on Tuesday, I made sure we were early so that Lulu would have some time to get used to the place before her appointment. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the boy before her (~20 mo?) was screaming his head off. So, we went for a walk around the shopping center and stopped and had a smoothie for ten minutes or so...

When we returned The Scream(er) was gone and Lulu climbed into the chair without a problem and started playing/rummaging through a box of toy figurines. I told the stylist that this was her first haircut and she was nice enough to save some clippings for me in an envelope to take home.

Once she was done with the trim, she asked Lulu if she wanted her hair "princess-style" and Lulu said yes (of course!). So, she put a small french braid in on the side and tied it up with pink and green ribbons. When she stepped away and showed Lulu the mirror, the look on her face was priceless. She was so excited!

And afterwards, we hit the drive-through lane of Chik-Fil-A for a kids meal of chicken nuggets. Mama keeps her promises.

Before

After

And everything in-between:

Dance Class FAIL.

Last night was Lulu's last dance class this year. Next Tuesday evening, they are performing a Nutcracker, but we will be in Texas so I didn't bother to sign Lulu up this year. (Besides that, I didn't see the point to pay $40 to watch her stand on a stage and look freaked out) Then, there is a break over the Christmas holidays, so we won't be going to dance class for three weeks or so.

Adding to that, Lulu's dance class instructor is pregnant and is getting far enough along now that the running, jumping, and bending over required in ballet-like movements is getting harder for her. So, last night, they had another teacher in the classroom, with the pregnant instructor, to help transition the girls.

Lulu was having none of it. NONE. OF. IT.

As soon as she saw the new teacher, she refused to go into the room. I wheedled, I cajoled, I even went into the room and stood by the door (which was the only way Lulu was going in there), but as soon as I made a motion to leave, Lulu fell apart.

So, we left. And I feel guilty and spent the rest of the evening second-guessing myself--should I have pushed her as hard as I did to go to dance class or just shrugged and handled the whole thing gracefully by saying, "Okay, let's go"?

Sigh.

Reading a book

Lulu has really taken to reading her books to us lately. Last week after dance class (hence the dance leotard), Lulu decided to read us The Curious Cat, a book that has a sequence of holes in the pages that get progressively smaller as you read the book. The cat meets all sorts of animals and asks them about their holes.

According to Lulu, they use their holes for sleeping with their babies, a lot:

Code-switching

Now I have a name for what it is that Lulu's doing: code-switching.

Individuals who are bilingual (and I think Lulu can lay a stronger claim to that than either Walter or me at this point) do often switch back and forth between languages. I've found myself doing that when I'm talking by dropping German words into English sentences or reverting back to English for a word that I don't know in German. To her credit, Lulu is usually pretty consistent about using one language or the other or switching between sentences, not in the middle of them.

I have noticed that even if I'm speaking German to her, she will respond to me in English unless I insist that she speak to me in German (and that's only if she wants something or is asking my permission). This is a change from her earlier responses when she would respond to me equally in German or English. And when I asked her this weekend, in German, why she doesn't speak German with me, she responded that she only speaks German with Daddy! While she does respond in German to Walter, she initiates conversations even with him (at least that I've casually, unscientifically observed) in English, too.

The interesting thing to me is how German has influenced her speech in English, too. I can definitely hear both grammatical structures in her speech but I think I recognize it more in my native language than I do when she's speaking German. Because the auxillary (helping) verb in German is typically at the beginning and the action verb is at the end of a clause, we hear her adopting that grammatical pattern in her English sentences, too:

We are going to the house, Mama.

or

Wir sind zu Hause gehen, Mama.

becomes

We are to Hause going, Mama.

And she's certainly doing well in her mastery of irregular verb conjugation, both in English and German. I have yet to hear her say something like "runned" instead of "ran" and I think that's at least partly attributable to needing to know how to use that irregular verb in two languages?

Anyway, Lord knows I'm not a speech pathologist or child development specialist, but I do find what's going on in her brain very, very interesting....time will tell how it plays itself out as she gets older.

Pizza Party mit dem Weihnachtsmann

Merryhill hosted a pizza party last night with the opportunity to take pictures with Santa Claus. Someone ate her weight in pepperoni and cheese pizza in her own inimitable style:



The toppings are the most important part, clearly:

And after pizza was over, we waited our turn to take photos with Santa. Unfortunately, there were 2-3 really young kids in line before us whose crying freaked out Lulu (who prior to that point, was looking forward to her photo with Santa). But, I think we still managed to get a nice photo anyway:

Can't wait to see what that looks like in Lulu's art file on Monday!

And here's a close-up from our camera:

Dancing

I think those ballet classes are really starting to pay off....



She insisted that we needed to sit down on chairs from the dining room that she had dragged over for the occasion. And when she finished, Lulu looked at us and commanded us to clap!

The similarities to this are pretty remarkable....

A few photos of Mom

Being the person taking the photos is both a blessing and a curse...it's a blessing in that I'm not in many photos and it's a curse for the same reason. So, here are a couple of photos of Lulu and me recently (neither of them especially flattering):

taken on a Tuesday after dance class and dinner
(hence the ballerina pink leotard on Lulu and dirty plate)

I know--it looks likes she's frenching me.
I'm sitting on the step-stool b/c she's "driving" me to school
I think this might be a good-bye kiss?

Lulu is VERY into bossing people around right now--she's always doing role-reversal games and pretending to be the Mommy or the Teacher. I have to confess it's kinda fun to give her a taste of her own medicine and whine and complain--I think that's where the kissing came into play in the second picture. What I really wish is that it were possible to capture the expression on her face when she's bending over you and telling you words of comfort like, "Don't cry, Baby!" It's the sweetest expression of concern accompanied by a head-pat.

She's a very good mommy to her stuffed animals right now, too. This one is of her comforting her bunny rabbit and keeping him warm:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ballet

Lulu had such a fun time in ballet class yesterday. I took quite a few cute pictures and they just beg for sharing.

turkey-themed motivation poster for Thanksgiving

I love her chubby thighs--I just can't help it!

look at those ringlet curls!

They were frogs after the teacher cast a spell with her magic wand....

too silly!!

bar exercises

Cooking with Children

Walter teaches econometrics on Monday nights. So, on those evenings, Lulu and I get to prepare dinner together. Last week, she helped me make chicken meuniere.



And peel carrots.

Under close supervision, of course!

So proud!

And Daddy thought it was delicious when he came home...after she was bathed and put to bed.

Friendship Feast

On Friday, I re-arranged my office hours so that I could attend the "Friendship Feast" at Merryhill with Lulu.  I was really stoked because it's the first event they've done during the day that I felt I could legitimately attend without worrying about how it might be perceived.  Plus, it was a Friday and I only had one class and office hours that day anyway, so it wasn't a big accommodation to make anyway.

I volunteered to bring corn and there was also turkey & gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, fruit salad, and dinner rolls.  All very tasty (although enjoying it wasn't really in the cards).

L-R:  Samantha, Lulu, and Adam (or He Who Shall Not Eat Eggs)

In hindsight, I was too ambitious when I filled her plate.
But I was hoping to eat off hers until her teacher insisted I fix my own.

Lovely scene of children enjoying thanksgiving dinner with each other

I have to preface the rest of this with the admission that I'm not as impressed with Lulu's teachers this year--she adores them and they adore her, but their um, "crowd management skills" aren't as good as her previous classroom. So, there were approximately 15-18 toddlers, a large subset of their parents in the room, and food. And when the toddlers (children? when does one stop being a toddler?) were done eating, it was CHAOS.

Bridge (the school principal) and Carmelina (one of the teachers) attempting to
organize the disorder with some music and dance

And for proof, I offer up this video:



I swear, it was like a drunken frat party but without the drinking. And the whole experience lasted (from start to finish) exactly 45 minutes. By the end, some of the kids were crashing and burning into naptime, so they were sent outside to the playground to allow the teachers/parents to clean up the classroom for naptime.