Happy 2011 in March....

Unbelievable it seems like yesterday when everybody was awaiting the year of 2000.
Now it is MARCH of the year 2011 and Annalie will turn 3!!! this year but we´re still not sure we will let her.
We always say to just freeze her right now because it is such a fun stage she is at the moment.
She talks at least a thousand words and jabbers the whole day. We´re often surprised how fast she picks up new words and se
We had a fun last six weeks while Omi and Grandpa where here. Annalie loved having them over and keeps asking for "Omi and Ampa". They sure knew how to have her have the time of her life.
She even started to pick up a few English phrases like "I love you , how are you, peek-a-boo, let´s go, let´s play, I miss you".
She now knows that she can make other people laugh. So she does that very often. Instead of calling herself "Annalie" she makes up funny names like "Annaluu" "Annala" etc. She loves to dance. She might have picked that up from her cousin Rebecca. She always has to watch her videos where she dances and then tries to dance just like her.
Annalie´s other cousin Maili is three weeks younger and both love to dance when we visit Oma and Opa. It is very cute to watch the both of them.
Michi is happy about his new job at Volkswagen and we couldn´t be happier.
We´re just about to buy a house close to Hannover. It will be build this year and we probably can move in by the end of summer.
Biggest news for this year: At the beginning of August there will be a little sibling for Annalie.
It looks like it´s going to be a boy. We are very excited and happy about that.

Annalie and her hats!

Annalie absolutely LOVES putting "hats" or "ietze" how she calls it on her head. Everyday she either puts on one of her hats or looks for something that might fight on her head (burp cloth, tupperware- bowl, pullovers, birthday-crown just to name a few.) It is soo funny to find her in her room, wearing her hat and reading a book. If you just look at our header you can see that she likes hats.

She knows how the stove works....

Annalie just found out how to turn on the oven and the stove. This afternoon she turned on all four hotplates and the oven. I called Michi to come and witness what she is able to do already.
He looked at her and asked: "Now who is going to pay for all this?"
She looked at him, smiled and said really loud: "Papa!!!"
We just couldn´t stop laughing. We guess she already knows where to get money from :-)

Walking, talking and helping!

We can´t believe Annalie is more than 15 months old now. She is the best. The moment she wakes up she is one happy active and chatting toddler. She loves to read books, play, dance and laugh. The other night we tried to count how many words she can say and figured she can at least say around 20 words already. 2 days ago she surprised me when being at her playgroup. She all of a sudden started walking. Not just two or three steps but really walking through the room. I couldn´t believe my eyes. She has been walking for some time now but only if she was able to hold on to something. Now she is one happy walker. I love to hear the sound of her feet tip-tapping over the floor. She still walks a little wobbly but gets faster every hour. Walking makes her really happy. Sometimes she just stands in the hall all smiley because she can stand and walk by herself. She is getting quite the little helper lately. She picks up the broom and starts to clean the kitchen. It is amazing to see how fast she learns and picks up things. She wants to do many things all by herself already like feeding herself. After her meals the kitchen usually looks really messy. That´s how they learn I guess :).

Endlich mal was neues

Rollmops "Steamroller" :-)

....so much better than crawling.....

Where to start??

I don´t even look when we posted our last blog entry. But we do have very good excuses (diploma thesis..... but I am done now- YEAH!!). Really! We should rename our blog into: News from the bad bloggers :-)
We´ll try and be better.
Annalie is almost 8 months now. She can sit in her high chair in the kitchen and pounds on the table when we say the words "patsch-patsch".
She looks so grown up now. She loves to eat her mashed vegetables and cereal and is a good sleeper too.
Now with two teeth it´s so much fun to bite and chew everything she grabs. We do have to be very careful when we see her looking at the DVD-player across the room because she likes those cords (she will roll there immediately). She can talk more and more like "ba-ba" (Michi is convinced she says Pa-pa), "ma-ma" , "da-da". She is really talkative and smiley. Especially when we go to the store she´s beaming at the people standing in line. She´s our little Roll-around-the-clock-baby. Instead of using her hands and feet to crawl she just rolls everywhere she wants to be and she is fast. When I am in the kitchen I sometimes have to run to prevent her from her from eating stuff she shouldn´t. We do have to childproof our appartment. She is so funny. She sleeps with her legs in the air. She never wakes up the way we put her to sleep. She likes to play in her bed.
In order to make her mommy and daddy proud she loves to play the piano and read books :-).

Omi and Annalie update :)

Annalie being almost 6 months old.

Annalie being less than 2 weeks old.

We definitely are no good bloggers....... shame on us. Such a long time since we updated on how we and especially our baby is doing.

At first we´re all doing great. Michi hopefully just finished his last tests in school and Kristin is still busy with her diploma thesis which she has to turn in by the end of May.
Annalie keeps us not only busy but absolutely happy too.
In less then a week she´ll turn 6 months. Time went by so fast. We actually realized that our baby is no real baby anymore when we spoted this little white thing in her mouth last Sunday which turned out to be her first TOOTH!!! We couldn´t believe it. We totally thought this would start a little later. But there it is. She loves to chew on everything. She hardly sleeps during the day because there is soo much to explore. She rolls over and plays a lot by herself which is so much fun to watch. She smiles a lot and laughs out loud too. A couple of weeks ago she woke us up because she was laughing at the wall - there must have been something really funny.
She hardly sits still on our lap because she wants to play and party and not just sit.
She finally starts to slowly enjoy her bath. She still is a little unsure what do as you can tell on the picture. At least she started to smile a little more and also move her legs instead of laying there without any movement- which actually was really funny.

Another great thing to tell is that OMI just arrived a couple of days ago. She really was amazed how much Annalie has grown. The last time she saw her she was barely 2 weeks old.
We´re so excited she´s here not only because of all the presents she bought :) but also to finally spend time with her, eat some great cake, have good talks and play a lot with the baby.
Annalie is happy to have her Omi over and smiles at her a lot.

Our little sweetheart!

Just another picture we took a couple of days ago. I think you can see her face really well and her blue eyes. We think she might keep them. She´s so funny smiling and laughing more and more each day but as soon as we go get the camera she stops smiling and starts to stare at the cam. One thing she also really likes is her playmat as you can see she´s so good at grabbing things especially my hair.... ouch!!!!

Uncle Christian getting Annalie to laugh

Finally we got a good shot off her giggling
Unfortunately it´s a little dark, but here you go:

Happy New Year 2009!

Happy New Year to everyone.
Tomorrow Annalie will be 3 months. She has grown so much and can do so many things like:

• smiling
• giggling
• making the cutest sounds with her wonderful little voice
• smiling at mommy and daddy when waking up
• turning from tummy to back
• grabbing everything ( we surely have to watch out when changing her diapers so she won´t grab the dirty baby wipes...)
• playing with the little bear (as her cousin Rebecca calls it) on her playing mat and pulling it so it´ll make sounds
• slept 3 nights in a row for 6 hours
• loves to get attention and to look at people
• loves to have something on her face when she falls asleep (you can see on the picture, sometimes she takes the blanket and pulls it over her face, that´s why we always have to check on her so she gets enough air. This little funny one.

4. Advent

Wonderful visit

Our little woodcutter.

Rebecca loves the baby. In the morning when we were still in our bedroom we could hear Rebecca say "baby,baby".

Rebecca loved to "drive" Annalie around. She was fast.

Annalie really enjoyed her Aunt Emily especially being held by her.

Uncle Jörg holding his little niece.

Dreamteam: Michi and Rebecca.

Emily, Jörg and Rebecca came and stayed with us and it was wonderful. These last two weeks were full of a lot of fun, eating candy and having a great time with the two babies. Especially when watching the Grinch - Rebecca would make all of us laugh.We really enjoyed having them with us and already miss them a lot. Annalie keeps looking and looking around for her cousin, her aunt and her uncle from the States.We miss hearing Rebecca say all worried "be-be-bear", "no-no-no" or "hi" "Bye-bye".She is the funniest 18 months old we´ve ever met. We can´t wait to see all of them again and spend more time together.nAnnalie is getting bigger. Today she looks like a little Santa Clause with her big belly.hShe´s 10 weeks old on Saturday and keeps on getting cuter everyday. Her kind of cry sounds very "girly" already. She´s such a good and funny baby.Tomorrow we´ll have her first round of vaccinations and we´re not really looking forward to it.

Cousins

Our little doll!

She loves to lay on the cute little quilt her Omi made for her.

Just like her daddy.

We are sooo in love. We could look at your little sweetheart 24 hours a day :) but because of some lack of sleep we have to go to bed and stop looking at her at least for some hours :).

We´re so excited the Christmas season is about to start. Today we already start to decorate our appartment since Tuesday Rebecca, Emily and Jörg will come - YEAH! We´re so excited since we haven´t seen Rebecca and Emily for a whole year. Way tooo long.

Annalie is still getting bigger. We´re about to put her newborn-onesies away. Unbelievable, isn´t it!? One new thing she loves is laying on her changing table and strechting her legs and arms at once while making loud sounds. Next time she does it we try to record it on camera and put it online.

New pics of little Annalie!

We copied the idea of Emily, Jorg and Rebecca´s Blog to take a picture of Annalie each month to show how fast she´s growing. The black and white picture shows her cute little smile. I can´t believe she doesn´t really look like a newborn anymore. Our baby is growing!!

Our little Speckmäuschen

Our little sweetie is now almost 6 weeks old. We can´t believe how fast that went. She´s so much fun. A couple of days ago she gave us her first real smile. That was soo cute and made us really happy. Now getting up during the night seems much easier whenever she looks at us and smiles.

Last week we had her third examination at the pediatrician. The doctor said she´s a real girl and a very active child. She even smiled at the doctor. She also gained a good amount of weight (4,4kg or almost 10lbs) and we call her our little "Klopsi" or "Specki".

She normally wakes us one or two times during the night and usually sleeps 3-4- hours and loves to look around or just concentrates on Mama´s or Papa´s eyes for minutes. Whenever we change her she´s like a little squirmy wurm and just dances on her changing table.

We´re so happy with our little funny girl. Life is so much better having her around!!

Today is a special day since we have our 9 year since we started dating anniversary! This is so crazy and we feel very old but it´s been the best 9 years for us and we´re so happy that we have so many years still to come :) and now even happier with our little baby.

Having fun and growing and growing!

We couldn´t believe it when Annalie all of a sudden started to lift her head when laying on Papa´s stomach. She is so intelligent and smart and beautiful, adorable, fun, ......

She can do so many things like:

- Playing with her hands

- smiling in her sleep

- Talking and making funny sounds while having her diaper changed

- looking around (Michi thinks she especially likes to look at the Michael Jordan poster in the office)

- she follows with her eyes when being showed something

- loves her binkie

- riding a bike

- counting to 100

- reading books

Well the last three were a little exaggerated.. but it won´t be long and she´ll be able to do all of them. Now watch and enjoy :)

Pictures

Annalies first Halloween Outfit ,

thanks to Tante Emily & Uncle Jörg





Papa holding Annalies head with only one hand




Annalies favorite blanket/sleeping bag

A little "Thank You" to Birgit

Not only did Birgit bake this tasty welcome cake, she also cooked us meals for the time after the hospital and even a week beyond her return home! She really was a great help while she was here. Her stay was more like work than a vacation visit. Thanks again, we really appreciated it!