William and Emma in the kitchen

Emma and William in the kitchen this morning

Since Emma had just given a rendition of her November poem, William wanted to sing a song too. Here he with the  "Big Balloon song". As you can see, he can be terribly shy... 

November poem by Emma

Here is Emma's rendition of her November poem.  If you missed the October poem please click here and if you wish to see her rainbow recital from last June click here
 

And again:

Emma, if you ask me as many questions as today and if I can't remember: you were 5 years and 3 months old, at Melina's kindergarten in Mrs Theresa's class. ,-)

The rainbow poem - June 2012 end of school show

Here is Emma's rainbow recital - something that was prepared for the end of year show last June.(Wow! that is less than 5 months ago and she already seems so much older!)

The October poem

Every month Emma learns a new poem in class. Quick before the month is over, here is her version of the October poem.

In case you're wondering, she said (Because I am reading it on my notebook, ha! ha!... )

And she goes...

As an update to this post here is a short film of Emma cycling alone on her bike without trainer wheels for the first times.

These were filmed Monday evening after dinner.

Emma and Will chilling out before dinner

While I was preparing dinner tonight, Emma, joined by William, sat by the window and chilled out by creatively singing her way around pictures in a book .

I'm beginning to think that William is going to be quite a chatterbox too!! Oh dear!

Rockin' Emma

Singing Sibling

Wir sind Kinder einer Welt - Emma's SommerFest

Yesterday, Emma's kindergarden celebrated their SommerFest (to view pics click here)

Below is a little film of one of the songs Emma's group sang ; Wir sind Kinder einer Welt.
It's fantastic that there are so many nationalities in their kindergarden and I love that they are teaching children about acceptance of differences when they are so young and open.

Emma is wrapped in a blue kaftan & turban and is paying more attention to the little one crying behind her than to the song... One of these days I should tape her early morning rendition - she sings when she's up too early to get up.


Enjoy!

This little piggie

Emma's baby and Baa baa black sheep

Emma aufs Klo

or in English - Emma on the toilet. Plus some musical entertainment.

Qué serà, serà...

An update to my last post on the moon's effect on natural birth and more specifically the fact that Steph will be away;

As it turns out ALL my back-ups (the kindergarden Mums, the friends, the Pilates teacher, the babysitter...) will all be away as well. In brief, should baby decide to arrive on 30.03.2010 (the next full moon) Emma and I will be going to the clinic together.

I think it's unlikely, but I'm not the one to decide.

This afternoon, we popped round to the clinic to show Emma some babies (no babies around, so we had to make do with baby pics on the walls) and ask the Hebamme (midwife) if there was any way she could um, well, have a look and tell us that the baby was no way coming before a few days at least so that Steph could catch his plane tomorrow and we could be reassured.

Well, as it turns out, I was told that:

• they "cannot tell the future"
• even if they did check and told me there was no sign of labor, my waters might break 15 minutes after I got home
• the full moon had no influence on these things at all
• oh, and that the baby was fine
  

I can't say I feel much better.

Qué serà, serà...I guess.

In the meantime, I'll be using some birth affirmations to keep my spirits up and talking to the baby asking him to wait until Daddy gets back and possibly even until his Grandma (Gogo) gets here.


Here's a little film of Emma and Steph reading together this morning:

Fun family week-end & Emma being scary

Despite the fact that it snowed thus ruining my hopes that Spring was going to be here this week, we had a really fun week-end.

Nothing exceptional happened - oh! except Emma decided she wanted to pee on the toilet and actually did it!!! once - but it was really nice, fun family time with a good proportion of laughs and games, resting and eating, a meal out, some shopping, time at the park plus a touch of "culture" in the form of a play we went to see at Vienna's English Theatre.

I wish us many more of these.

Here's a little video of Emma being scary that made me laugh. Hope you enjoy it too!

Emma in the bath

Emma's favorite things

At the moment Emma's favorite things are:

Her musical Christmas calendar - thankfully it has pretty music!




and her crowns


She loves the crowns so much, it's now become difficult to convince her to wear her bonnet when going out in the cold!!!

and her English tidy up rhymes from kindergarden (click on pics to enlarge)

Time gone by

How quickly we forget. How much can change in a year when you are (or are parent to) a toddler.

Here are two videos of Emma "live" last November at approximately 15+ months:
She couldn't speak much but she already knew what she wanted, was repeating words she liked, and was intrigued with the camera.






Now compare those to most recent films of her in this post and this one.
Wow. Wow! right?

Ever since I can remember, every evening I sing Emma a good night song which actually wishes a good night to all family members. Well that's how it started anyway.

The idea was to overcome one of the challenges of expat-life and keep grand-parents, aunts, uncles and cousins living around the world "alive" in her mind in between visits.

So I sang "bonne nuit" (good night) while pointing to pictures around her room and naming "Grand-maman", "Nonna" and "Gogo" "Deda" and "Tallie" "Grand-papa François", "Pata", "Tata-yéyé", "Aka et Bruno"... (Talk about stimulating! here it's simply "Opa und Oma" while Emma has a totally different name and language for every grand-mother and grand-father!!!)

Anyway, gradually, we started to include friends' names (both hers and ours) in the "bonne nuit" song as well as objects like dolls' names, the swing at the park, flowers and leaves, the sun and the moon, the ducks and the cat and any new vocab. we had come across in the day...

Now Emma not only adds on names to the song and sings it to herself when she does not fall asleep right away, she also sometimes sings it in the middle of the day pointing to photos up in her room and wishing them good-night.

So if you occasionally feel slightly drowsy in the middle of your dinner or tea, think of Emma wishing you a very good night...

The "terrific" in terrific twos

So while we are still in the midst of the terrific twos and Emma does still spaz out (stomp feet, growl, lose her temper, pout and run away) some truly wonderful things are happening too.

Emma is a huge chatterbox! Talking is incessant at dinner, in the car, at breakfast, while playing - Emma is telling us about something or more likely how to do it or not. In fact on top of being a pipelette she is a bit of a dictator too; she often tells me to stop singing "arrête maman!" so she can listen to the music, tells me to finish my meal or asks us if we want more "encore salade Papà?". During the day, she'll command "c'est Papà/Maman qui fait" depending on who she wants bathing her, dressing her, etc.

On the upside of this, she is quite happy to chatter away in bed to her doll and animals if she awakes before we get her up and frequently does a solo repeat of our goodnight song should she not fall asleep right away. She gets very creative with this and once she has run out of names she wishes all sorts of things goodnight. Quite funny and freakin' fantastic as far as I'm concerned!

Another relatively new trait - or maybe it is appearing more clearly now - is that Emma is incredibly possessive; "meine Mummy!" "meine Papa" and "meine caca" are favorites. And, yes, "caca" is "poo" in our house.
She actually gets into verbal fights with "colleagues" from kindergarden where each one shouts out "meine Mummy" or "meine caca" (both have happened but with different friends) and it was incredibly intense. The mummy part was easier - both children's Mummies were present and so we could explain that each one had "meine mummy" but the caca? Why on earth?
On the same subject, although Emma is still utterly disinterested in using the potty or loo, she now asks to see her "caca" in her nappy. Mmm. I wonder.

And what about the baby? Well, she understands that there is a baby lurking somewhere and most of the time she understands (or at least indicates) that it is in a belly. Only, she points to hers... So now, when we say goodnight to every family member at bedtime, she also says goodnight to Mummy's baby and to Emma's baby. Oh, and she also attributes one to her good friend Isabella on certain days, a sure indication of true love.


Yesterday was Tata yéyé's birthday and although we had quite successfully practiced singing "happy birthday to you" during the afternoon, when the time of the evening phone call came - no cigar. Below the filmed version over dinnertime just before Daddy got home.
Tata yéyé, I hope you will not be offended by the association with the "tomate" (tomato) and "assiette" (plate). As I mentioned above, Emma uses all sorts of vocabulary in her creative singing.

Enjoy the movie!

Trampoline fun - Emma's new passion

Emma is not so hot on "swimming" in the sea, but the "popoline" has totally won her over... No matter that she hasn't quite figured out how to jump on her own yet.

At any rate, it means that by bedtime we're both totally beat and sleep like logs.