School Daze

Ok, it's not really school, but Lily's started to go to a German play group. Her first day was this past Thursday and she was really excited to go, even if she had no idea what she was getting herself into. Since Nicole is due in about three months and will probably need to slow down as the time comes, we thought it was important to get Lily into some kind of non-parent driven activity a few times a week. There's actually a second play group starting in another couple of weeks too and once that's underway she'll be at the "spiel gruppes" four days a week for three hours a day. Oh, and they're German-speaking, so hopefully she'll be picking up more German in a hurry too. Nicole stayed the whole time on Thursday to ease the transition and left Lily alone with the group for about half the time Friday and apparently she did just fine. So the changes continue around here.

Besides going to "school by myself", Lily keeps on changing too. She definitely challenges us a lot these days, but in general she's a really sweet and fun girl. She loves to go to the pool and ride her balance bike, and is constantly singing. Seriously, I think she sings about half the time she's awake. Over the past couple of months she's actually started carrying a tune too, so that's at least nice for our ears. She's definitely a protective little girl though, always making sure no one is using anything that's hers. Including her house. Most of the time we see someone in our apartment building, and sometimes just when we're out around town, she'll say "no go to my house", as in "I don't want that person to go to my house". Not sure where that one came from. Others are a little more obvious, like at the play group they have a snack time (called "brotzeit" which literally translates to "bread time" which I find hilarious) where the kids take out their little snack boxes and chow down. Lily sits between two other kids who of course are curious about what she has, so she sits with one hand covering her food in the box and the other stuffing it into her mouth. Pretty funny.

Here are some pics and video from our past couple of weeks of swimming adventures. Lily saw some other girls jumping from the starting blocks in the lap pool and decided she wanted to do the same thing, but only if Mommy would hold both her hands. The pictures are from today when we went to a great outdoor pool facility a short bike ride from our place. A great kiddie pool, a big play pool with a big slide and a big 50m lap pool. My favorite Munich pool yet, and the weather was so nice we even had a picnic.