Preparations for the summer

We are in full preparations for the summer and so it seems the Australian media, which are full of advertisements of tanning creams (for the girls), barbeques (for the boys) and weight loss programs (for both genders).

Anyway, we have taken the opportunity to make the most of the first warm days (yesterday it was the first day over 30C since last summer!) to prepare ourselves for a typical Oz outdoor summer. Zoe loves the rucksack on walking excursions (see first pic below – although only an old one, because we don’t have a new pic). This made us think that she might also like a bikeseat for the summer to go on bicycle excursions.  So we bought and installed a seat, put Zoe in for trial in the garage and…

she loooovvveeed it! After such a positive start we decided to take her for a ride around the park and…

she HATED it!

What was going on? Well, basically, she hated the bicycle helmet she had to wear (no negotiation there, and it’s the Australian law). She always wanted to pull it off, which didn’t work because of the strap under her chin. So she got really angry, and was screaming all along the bicycle ride while trying to pull off this thing from her head. What should have been a short & quiet family excursion became a seemingly long and stressful outing. Back at home we had to think how we could make her believe that wearing the helmet was fun. We decided that we ALL would be wearing our bicycle helmets through the evening – including dinner time (hopefully the neighbours didn’t see us hahaha) – while telling her all the the time that her helmet was the most beautiful one and she was such a good girl when wearing her cool helmet.

The next morning, we got up and… Zoe wanted to wear her helmet first thing in the morning, and did not want to take it off. Relief…So we had a few days when she was running around with her bicycle helmet on most of the time (see other pictures below). Now she is always very proud of wearing her helmet when we go out on the bikes and she can’t wait to climb into the cycle seat for another ride.

How quickly things can change…

…now I’ve stopped smiling because she is so much heavier

…not sure yet about the helmet

Eating with helmet I

Eating with helmet II

Checking the laundry with helmet

Can’t stop smiling now…

Helmet mission accomplished… everyone happy

Lulu again

All good here. It is finally getting warmer and we had some visits to the beach and enjoyed the beautiful weather. So, we thought we post 2 short videos of Zoe which document everyday life in our household.

The first video shows Zoe’s relationship with her doll Lulu. Lulu is now taken everywhere… and we mean everywhere… except if Bunny is around…hahaha
Lulu has now even a “bed” beside Zoe’s cot and we kiss her also goodnight before Zoe goes to sleep. Interestingly, Zoe has been now much better with the other children and is more caring. But she still wants to have a bite from everyone’s food in the kindergarten. hahaha

Speaking of caring, the video below shows how Zoe is caring for Papa and exploring his eyes, ie are they opening and closing like Lulu’s eyes?! How exciting!

An Orange weekend

There we are again, back from our weekend trip to Orange – a small town in the inland of our state (New South Wales), located roughly a 4-hour drive from Sydney.  As you can see from the pictures, Zoe was already very excited during the drive out there, which resulted in complete exhaustion (see next picture). We stopped on the way to have lunch in another small countryside town called Bathurst. At the cafe we had lunch and Zoe was given some paper and pencils to colour, which she absolutely loved! So we had a very creative (and restful) lunch with some good food.

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On arrival in Orange we were all tired and just dumped our luggage in the little house we were renting. Despite being very tired, Zoe had to explore the whole house immediately, which included a very thorough inspection of the paperbins (see pics). Well, you never know what could be hiding in there!

Because of its inland location Orange can get quite cold in winter & spring, in contrast to Sydney’s mild weather. This meant we had night temperatures of -2C degrees! At last an excuse for my two ladies to dig out their winter couture, which they weren’t able to wear in the non-existent Sydney winter. On the photos you can see our little “model Zoe” showing off her fur tank top, which was given to her by tia Regina and tio Paulo from Brazil.

Another positive aspect of Orange is that it is located in a small but very nice wine producing region of Australia. This was obviously the perfect excuse for us to taste some of their wines. We visited a small vineyard called Bloodwood, run by Steven and Rhonda. They were the pioneers of winemaking in this region of Australia ~25 years ago (see last photos). We had the pleasure of tasting their wines in the kitchen of their house, guided by Rhonda’s helpful comments. It seems their wine got to our heads because suddenly our car was full of wine bottles/cases, with our other belongings carefully draped around this precious cargo. Well, at least we don’t need to buy wine for a quite a while, and we bought some delectable bottles.

All in all, the Orange weekend was a big success. We all enjoyed ourselves immensly and could even relax a little bit from the city life (no computer for 2 full days!).  Now, it’s back to the rat race and 25C in Sydney – spring has truly arrived here!

So much excitement…

… too much excitement!

Beautiful Mamae

Drawing together

Say: “Cheese!”

Has anyone checked this already?

Well, I do it then.

Confronting the camera

In a pensive mood…

Vineyard I

Vineyeard II

Orange countryside

Zoe and Lulu

Zoe has a new friend: Lulu.

Lulu is her first doll, which is now carried around a lot -  although “Bunny” is still the unbeaten champion of Zoe’s unashamed adoration and love. Anyway, we thought it might be good for Zoe to practise some social skills with a little baby doll. The reason is that Zoe can be sometimes a bit “rough” with other children, and in particular smaller children. So, to teach her how to “be gentle” with other children, Lulu was purchased as a …ahem… well, a test crash dummy. We can see already that she understands much better that one needs to be gentle with other children after we show her “what Lulu likes”.

Below some pictures of Zoe and Lulu, as well as other pictures from this week. As you can see she has really the look (and sometimes the behaviour) of  a “cheeky monkey”, “danadinha”, “Frechdachs”… She definitely didn’t get that from either me or Nene… hahaha

Zoe and Lulu

An opthalmologist in the making…

Clapping hands

VIVA! Hurra!

Showing off her teeth

Showing off her belly

Blowing a kiss

Cars and other means of transportation (or Zoe’s German side)

Two short videos:

• On the first video Zoe is showing a new love for cars (what a good German girl!). She is now taking her toy cars always for a spin and making vroomvroom noises. She is completely self-absorbed doing this and does NOT want to be disturbed by anyone, in particular her parents! We caught her on camera while “driving” through the flat.
• Talking of driving, she is now in love with the ladybird pushbike, which Bine & Stefan brought as a present when they visited us in March. She previously liked pushing this ladybird around with her hands but now she found out that she can actually push it with her feet while sitting on it. What a delight! Now she zooms (or vrooms) through the flat – with only the occasional furniture collision

… and again her world has expanded a bit more. Enjoy.

Car obsession

“Taming the ladybird“

Sandstorm and bunny addiction

As you might have heard, we had today a huge sandstorm in Sydney which brought the red sand straight from the center of Australia. So, we woke up on “Mars” with everything coloured in red. Below two pictures I took from our kitchen window. One was taken at 6.30am during the storm and the other one was taken in the afternoon after the storm had settled. Incredible how low the visibility was but not surprisingly Sydneysiders were not impressed and the day was completely normal with people jogging out on the street and dropping children at school. How laid-back can one be?

I also attach 4 other pictures of our precious little one, showing again her addiction to the bunny which some days does not get out of her mouth. She is therefore dragging this bunny everywhere while rummaging through the cupboards, reading books, poking in candles … you get the picture. She had developed again so much and is now much more vocal by saying lots of things – although in a language we still do not understand. We also noticed that  she gets now frightened by loud noises and recognises things by their sound, so she turns when she hears the cat meowing or an aeroplane passing etc.  She loves pointing to the planes (like Marianna used to!), cats and dogs, while saying something we can’t follow. What a change to the little baby we had a while ago.

“Life on Mars”

Life back in Sydney

Bunny sucking I

Bunny sucking II

More bunny sucking…

Nice smile!

Oma’s visit

Time flies again and it’s already nearly a month that we are back in Sydney. Luckily for Zoe, grandmother (Oma) Beate came to visit her, to keep her entertained and distracted from her boring parents. Zoe obviously enjoyed A LOT this extra attention, and went with Oma to the playground almost every day. They both had a great time with each other and Nene & I were often by-standers watching the spectacle

Now, it’s only us three again and we are enjoying the coming spring here. Some days are already quite warm (25-26C) while others are still more winter-ish (19-20C). We use the warm days already as an excuse to go swimming and playing on the beach before the real brutal summer sun shows its face and condemns us to the shade most of the day. Incredible how life has changed since we moved away from England, and what a different lifestyle we have here. But enough of amateur philosophy for today, I leave you with some pictures.

Love yogurt!

Independent eating

With Oma

Busy drawing

Give me this camera!

Enjoying her bath…

Sao Paulo to Sydney

Back in Sydney! After nearly 5 weeks of travelling we are back – though still dazzed and confused with jetlag.

But first things first, after our time in Eneida’s parents hometown (Bandeirantes; Pop: 30.000) we went for a week to Sao Paulo (Pop: 20 million) to see lots of friends and also family. We stayed with our very good friends Gege and Goiti, and took over their apartment with all our suitcases, toys, nappies etc. hahaha

Below some pictures of the people we met. As always, it doesn’t cover everybody – our apologies to the people we didn’t take photos of! Just to say that we had a great time. We explored so much of Sao Paulo and met so many people. Suffice to say that Zoe loved all the attention

With vovozinhos

Looking through the door

With Sandra and Juninho

With Gege, Goiti and Lucas

Having fun at the MUBE

Investigating a little book

With Andre at the Terraco Italia

With Mimi

With Marcos and Lidia (and baby!)

After having yummy churrasco

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First steps

Here we are in the final days of our stay in Brazil. Currently in Sao Paulo, seeing lots of friends, drinking too much coffee and eating far too much good food. Anyway, we wanted to share a video of Zoe’s walking development with you. All the clips were recorded during our stay in Brazil and you can see how her steps and walking have changed during that short time. She wants to walk now all the time, which is really great but also means that we procede at snail’s speed currently when on foot. Eneida & I are again taken by surprise by how quickly things can change with children. Enjoy the video, it might take longer to load as it is a bit longer than the previous ones.

Cambridge to Sao Paulo & Bandeirantes

Here we are on our final stop on this round-the-world tour. We left Cambridge with plenty time to drive to Heathrow where we returned the rental car and checked-in for our flight. All went well, but we found that the security restrictions in the UK are just sooo over-the-top. Travelling with a baby you are allowed to take liquids (ie water) in a quantity of more than 100ml with you in the hand luggage – bascially to make the milk bottles.  In all airports we went though, the officers just open the suitcases and check that it is baby stuff you are taking – except in the UK. At Heathrow Terminal 5 Eneida was requested to “taste” the water for all bottles and eat a spoon of all the baby food glasses we were taking along. It is just so telling that you are regarded as a suspect in the UK, no matter what. Bascially, you have to proof your innocence, instead of them proofing your guilt…

Anyway, we finally got on the way and the flight went alright even though Zoe was a bit restless because of over-tiredness. We landed early in the morning, where we were picked up by 2 friends of ours (Angelica aka Gege and Renato aka Goiti) who woke up in the middle of the night to pick us up at 5.15 in the morning – bless them! Guess what we did the rest of the day?… obviously shopping was on Nene’s jetlagged mind and we spent the rest of the day in different shops. Thankfully the nephew of Gege joined us to the great pleasure of Zoe, who loved her playfriend because she seemed to be missing Marianna and Eva who entertained her in Cambridge.

The next day, Nene’s brother (Raul aka Zinho) picked us up and we went by car to Eneida’s parents hometown (Bandeirantes) ~6 hours west of Sao Paulo. Eneida’s parents as well as her sister (Renata) and partner (Jaimie) were already anxiously waiting for us…  let me correct that… they were waiting for Zoe.

More from here soon…

Gege & Zoe

Zinho & Zoe

…for those who didn’t get it yet…

Toda familia