Photoriffic update

I think that the change in Clara in the last month has been the biggest month-to-month difference I've noticed in almost a year. Clara really interacts with you now, and she's always making me laugh. She's also trying to talk a lot more, although she still doesn't have a lot of the sounds down. New words from the last week or so are bear, owl, park ("paaaah"), and "wheee!" And she understands pretty well anything you ask her to do in either language.

Clara knows a huge number of body parts even if she can't say them yet. A close to current exhaustive list is: nose, head, hair, chin, mouth, teeth, tongue, knees, ears, eyes, feet, toes, fingers, hands, arms, belly button, and nipples. She's got clothes down too, with pants, sweater, boots, shoes, hat, jacket, scarf, and diaper.

Clara had visits this weekend from her Opa and Oma, and they brought her great presents! Opa brought a set of sea animals with holes in them for threading a string or stick through (great for improving manual dexterity!) Here is Opa reading to Clara:


Oma brought Clara her very own brush, and oh my does she ever love it! In the first five minutes she combed pretty well everything in her room except the cats - even her Daddy's "hair" (first time that's happened in about five years...)


Oma also brought Clara a new spring coat, which was unfortunately way too big. It's too bad, because Clara LOVED IT! Here she's in the middle of turning in a circle as part of her spontaneous dance for joy!


This weekend Oma and Mommy were busy at a training weekend for a mentoring program they are participating in, so Clara and I spend the entire weekend together. We went to the zoo in the morning on both Saturday and Sunday. On the way to the zoo on the first day we missed our subway by half a minute or so, but Clara loved sitting in a grown up chair to wait! She enchanted a couple next to us who have grandchildren a little older than Clara:


We went to the zoo to see the new one week old elephant (no pictures, sorry), and of course we also visited the baby hippos. It was very different being in the zoo so early. Lots of the animals apparently didn't know that we switched to summer time, and were sleeping in on Sunday morning. This definitely included these two baby hippos:


I love this photo of Clara in the hippo house! So serious!


Spring seems to finally be here, and that means lots of time on the playground! Here's Clara with her Mom on the swinging bridge:



And on the swings:



Finally, I love this photo of our little biker daughter:


On Sunday night we had a visit from Silvan, a friend of Tanja's since grade three. We played Skat, and those of you who don't can ignore the rest of the post.

Here's a hand I was dealt - I took a photo because I wanted to ask Tanja whether she would have played it. I ended up winning "without five"!


Wir haben am Sonntag Skat gespielt, und das war ein Blatt von mir. Ich habe gegeben, und der Skat war Pik Ober und eine Karo Lusche. Das Karo As wurde angespielt! Ganz einfach ohne funf für 72!