Da Keiki Blog

My cousins Andreas and Mathias, Mathia’s girlfriend Tanja and her son Jakob, my aunt Jutta and us.

Jutta has many Iceland horses

Kesselfall hike near Semriach

Landscape near Semriach

Gerd Opa playing the piano

Inka and Auntie Alex

Inge, my brother Klaus, and their kids Kiron and Lilith (and Leilani :)

Lilith and Leilani playing the Ducky game,

How can I know which one?	Is this the right one…
… or is that the right one???	Hihihi, not that one!
…hmph…	Hahaha, Lilith lost!!!!
I know now which one!	I won, I won I won!!!
Congratulations Leilani!

Kiron joins the game

It’s almost bedtime…

Edelweiss in the Kärntner Alps

Picking flowers (but no Edelweiss)

On the phone with Andy she remarked: “I am back from Kärnten at Oma’s house, so when you are all done with your work you better come home too.” (Andy is in SF talking to Google and partying with Ruwan)

Leilani brushed her doll’s teeth. I remarked how good her baby was, how much better than my baby who is the doll’s mommy and asked why that was. Leilani’s answer: “Because I buyed this baby at the store”

“Can I ride a horsie?” “No Leilani, we’ll see Inka tomorrow.” “How about a plastic horsie?”

When we came home from Kärnten we stopped at a “Autobahnraststation” – a restaurant along the freeway for Leilani to go to the bathroom and to eat. She tasted a lot of things that I had piled on the salad bar plate, and did not like anything but the olives (not even beans). I asked her to try the sheeps cheese and she was not too happy, but did as I asked. After a little chewing she grimassed, spat the whole bite into her hand and tried to give it back to me. After disposing the cheese I asked: “Leilani what’s wrong, you usually like sheeps cheese?” she answered: “I only like good Schafskäse (sheeps cheese) not bad Schafskäse”

Hiking on the Kulm with Ingo and Edith, and Leilani falling asleep and being “schlepped” most of the way.

Visiting with Franz:

Mmmmh, chocolate ice cream…. Auntie Inge gave Leilani a big portion and poor Andy had to finish it:

Leilani made a mother’s day gift – Trude did not see it yet:

Yesterday we hiked the Raabklamm, a small gorge carved though some limestone layers by the Raab stream. After a bit of coaxing and promising to tell her stories, Leilani walked almost 2 miles …

… and was really good, stepping over roots and rocks and holding on to ropes and other handholds–and we went through all the adventures of Pippi Longstocking I could remember.

With (l-r) Gerd, Lara the dog, Trude and Gerd’s brother, Ingo (and his wife Edith in the photo above):

After playing in the river, she got too tired and the path became too hard and Andy carried her the rest of the way.

The last of the many foot-bridges across the stream, rebuilt 3 years ago after a flood:

Ladybug:

Leilani’s new pool and boat, just the right size:

And a new Arielle (the little mermaid) bathing suit from Inge and Franz.

Yesterday in the car Leilani was singing – “We are the same, the same, the same, all one sun,” (repeated over and over) I was impressed, since it sounded like one of her self made songs, but probably it is a new age song that she has heard somewhere before.

We are very pleased with Leilani during this visit, not only does she sing very nicely, she also behaves great, is very adventorous and brave, but without being too daring or doing risky things. She also tries any kind of new food we put in front of her (dandelions with garlic, asparagus, various Austrian and Italian dishes) – her usual comment is “Du kochst sehr gut Oma” (You cook very well Grandma). 

Finally, she plays a lot by herself, we realized it’s the first time we can let her play unsupervised in another room and not be worried (the fact that she sings to herself helps us know she hasn’t wandered off). One of her activities is cutting up paper with children’s scissors. She’s always been fascinated by cutting with scissors, I suppose it’s something she saw big children doing. But now she can do it herself, holding the scissors the right way and opening and closing them to cut repeatedly, all the way across a page. She also makes random cuts, reducing a page down to small shapes that she even drops into a bowl instead of on the floor. Andy thinks it’s some sort of self-calming activity, where the concentration helps her be calm, because she’s done it several times for up to 45 minutes late at night when she would otherwise be whiny. Best of all, we’ve figured out to give her colored paper, and then we use all the little pieces to make collage pictures, another activity she likes.