month twenty Dec-2009/Jan-2010

Another favorite video of Hannah (and daily earworm of daddy ;-):

In Hannah's room, mommy opened a cupboard, next to the one where the laptop that we use for watching TV is located. Hannah noticed and said Maus (the children's program that runs every Sunday at noon), followed by Sonntag, then morgen, finally saying Oma (we phone her grandparents every Sunday evening). Thus, Hannah mentally made the connection cupboard → TV → Sunday → grandma. Impressive.

At freezing temperatures, we took the train to Hannah's grandparents. The sunshine soon was replaced with cloudy, snowy gray weather, and the train's delay went from 10 minutes to 50 minutes. Fortunately, we didn't had to change trains, so we just spent the long time (7 hours) in the train.

Went into the garden and built a snowman. Hannah wasn't too enthusiastic.

There's lots of freshly fallen snow in the garden.

At first, Hannah is a bit skeptical, and doesn't want to spoil her shoes…

…but finally, she lightens up and enjoys the little bells hanging from the tree.

Then, we go back into the warm living room…

…and uncle Benni plays with Hannah.

Went swimming with Hannah; she took a long time until she somewhat enjoyed it, even though she had the entire pool for herself and was able to wade through the 30 cm (and 31°C) of water.

Hannah is reading the newspaper…

…then tells grandma about the funny stories she's read.

With uncle Benni.

Breakfast with a petite cup made of fine English china, sweet bread and strawberry jam.

Hannah helps cleaning the living room; grandpa marvels at the tidy girl.

Hannah got a little white doily from grandma, and she soon started using it as a cleaning cloth, applying it to almost every flat surface she could reach: The living room table, various sofas, the carpet. Then she used it to vigorously rub a black plastic brick, as if she tried to make it white…

After all the preparations are done, time to relax.

Hannah has lots of fun…

…all smiles…

…really happy.

Despite all the happy photos, Hannah didn't feel too good in the evening and went to bed early, so we had to postpone the gift giving to the next day.

In the morning, Hannah is still a bit weak and cuddles up to daddy.

Hannah's Xmas gift to grandma: a bi-manual painting.
She's still very much into abstract art ;-)

Hannah had soiled her snowsuit when she fell into dirty snow some days ago. Today, we wanted to go for a walk, but Hannah refused to get into the (still slightly colored) suit. She's really squeamish about those things; a few days earlier, she couldn't fully enjoy the freshly fallen snow, because she didn't want to get snowflakes onto her shoes.

Hannah hides behind the curtain…

…and marvels at the tree decorations.

The old teddy bears from daddy and Benni have been retrieved from the attic…

…Hannah adopts them immediately…

…all of them!

We go outside, and Hannah poses for a photograph.

Look! So many colorful pens!

The week is over, and we're back home again!

Hannah crawls out of the suitcase.

Oh, look! Another set of presents, from Japan!
Hannah gets a second Xmas moment.

The whole family is recuperating from Gastroenteritis. Two days ago, Hannah woke up in the night and had vomited in her bed. When we took her to us, she vomited once more, but only a small amount. We initially assumed that due to toothache, she had put her fingers too deep into her mouth; this had already caused her to gag in the past. She was a bit frightened by the sudden discharge, but otherwise looked just fine. The next day, daddy felt tired, which he at first attributed to the unexpected action during the prior night. But in the evening, he was vomiting violently. When Hannah did the same again (emitting the bottle of water she had just consumed), we counted one and one together and realized that Hannah had been suffering from the same illness! Fortunately, she didn't suffer as much as daddy and recuperated quickly. She never fully lost her appetite, and kept drinking enough. Luckily, mommy was able to care for her; however, in the end, she succumbed to the same pathogen just as daddy was feeling better.

Slowly, one can really have meaningful conversations with Hannah. It's really astounding what kind of words she remembers; sometimes only after hearing them once or twice. (She saw the comic on my computer, and since then she points to it and says Dilbert!)
She's able to pronounce words with more than two syllables, e.g. Sauerkraut, hinsetzen (no wonder where she got that one from ;-), reisouko (refrigerator).

Hannah climbs on top of the loudspeaker to grab the mobile phone from the cupboard. She knows that it's verboten, yet still does it regularly. Today, the box (height 35 cm) tilted, the tipped over, with Hannah on top of it. She didn't hurt herself, but, frightened, still started weeping. Hopefully, she'll learn; a couple of days ago, she also fell from the sofa. We're still timidly waiting for when she falls off her chair at the table…

For the last couple of days, Hannah had a near insatiable appetite. This morning, she ate two slices of bread (with butter and strawberry jam). For lunch, a stew of carrots and potatoes. Reluctantly, she got almost a slice of stollen for coffee. (She really likes this kind of fruit cake with raisins.) Before lunch, she ate parts of a banana and some peanuts, her usual in-between snack. She finished the day with 3¼ slices of bread (again with strawberry jam), more than mommy and daddy had.

Hannah has a runny nose and coughs slightly. She got the infection from mommy, who's been in bed for the past two days. Hannah couldn't stay away from the sickbed; she even picked up mommy's used handkerchiefs and tried to eat them!

Hannah's sniffles are getting better; we pull long gobs of thick yellow slime out of her nose. Last night, we put her into our bed right from the start, but Hannah didn't want to sleep. Instead, she kept moving left and right, stood up, fell down on the bed, scratched the wall, all along talking to herself. This was quite bizarre, almost as if she were drugged. Must have been in a nervous trance of half-awake, half-asleep.

Continue with month 21…