Epiphany queen

New interests

 William loves his new screw driver or (drive skewer as he calls it) and is constantly using it

Emma is into  Zumba dancing and drawing

oh and into painting her nails

(here she is watching a cartoon as they dry...)

Emma's first toothless smile!

Emma's first tooth fell out!!!

Emma at the Olympics swimming pool

At the end of November Emma started swimming lessons during art and crafts time at kindergarten on Thursday mornings. Today I went to watch Emma during her lesson at the Olympics swimming pool. She has had 8 lessons so far and is really enjoying her time in the water.

Here are some pics of today's lesson.

 

Emma the butterfly

Emma's fourth birthday

Emma has celebrated her birthday 3 times this week; once in kindergarden with her friends and teachers on Wednesday (strawberry cake), once with Will, Steph and I yesterday at home with a home-made chocolate cake and again today at the Family Fun park with friends and their parents with a strawberry cake, a mountain of nuggets and fries and lots of fun!
She is very happy about this and I am really glad we stayed in Vienna for her birthday this year so she could celebrate it with her friends. I think we managed to make it all about her this year and I think that's exactly as it should be. ;-)

Tomorrow morning really early we head off to Geneva!

Here are some pics of Emma's birthday celebrations:

Chocolate cake for breakfast! Yeah!

Discovering her new IKEA kitchen

and her pram, nearly as big as Mummy's

here she is wowing at her impressive candle

William enjoys the balls at the family fun park


after the cake, chicken nuggets and fries and a huge bowl of ketchup!
Emma and friends eating

That little boy in the blue t-shirt is Will enjoying the fries ;-)

Keeping Vienna clean

Today Emma and kindergarden friends cleaned up the park nearest to their kindergarden by collecting all the cigarette butts, ice-cream and candy wrappers, newspapers etc. that were lying around.


They looked so cute in their little uniforms (which we get to keep!) and were so enthusiastic about picking up the garbage. I think it's a great way to make them aware about keeping their city clean.

happy and dreamy teaching us to chill

At the moment, Will is causing chaos and mess within a nano second as soon as I have my back turned - pulling out parts of the dryer, clothes from drawers, tissues from tissue boxes, pans and saucepans from cupboards and drawers. Even when we are face to face and we are having dinner he manages this quite well as you can see from the below pic, it looks like a war zone below his chair after dinner. ;-)

I have become quite zen with all this, knowing it is useless to tidy up right after him if I don't want to do it 20 times a day and even giving him a full basket of clean socks to sort through when I need a few minutes to make a call or brush my teeth.

I have a bit of a theory that Emma is teaching us the value of taking one's time or slowing down (she actually told Steph "Wir haben kein Stress" when he was badgering her to get ready for school the other morning - hilarious!) and Will is teaching us the value of letting go, letting the small stuff slide and enjoying the fun of the moment (as he is only interested in having fun). These are difficult lessons to learn for speedy, objective oriented, super-efficient/organized and stress prone parents. Hopefully they will continue to be good teachers and we will learn well.

Will sorting through the paper recycling bin.


Peek-a-boo

Here I am!

Happy Will after a nice walk and play in the park

I like stripes, can't you tell?and pretty Emma

quite dreamy making do in the "baby swing"
since the "big girl" one was taken