K is now, as it turns out, old enough to understand the concept "friendship". The other day while we were eating lunch, he grabbed my hand, laid his head on my arm and said:

"Mommy, you are my FRIEND!"

*sigh* My heart turned, as M would describe it "into a juicy steak" (or, as I would say, into goo). How sweet, right?

Then today, I said "is Mommy your friend?" and he goes "No, Mommy is my Mommy!" Heeee... I guess our friendship wasn't meant to last... But that's okay. "Mommy" is an honorary title to me, and I'm proud to be his mommy. Lately, he has been quite emphatic about that - he tells people "this is MY mommy!"

I can't wait for him to understand the concept "love." I think I might faint the first time he says he loves me... wow. Sometimes mommyhood is especially good.

K is scratching his chicken pox bumps now, poor thing. I hope he sleeps through the night... Better get some sleep while he's still sleeping!

What was the first time your child told you (maybe not in so many words) that he or she loved you?

First, my apologies for not keeping this blog updated. My excuse is: we were busy househunting!

So we bought a house - a semi-detached, very modern (steel on the outside!) house with a nice big garden. It has a playground literally a stone's throw away from our garden, three storeys (four bedrooms), and oh... a greenhouse! I can't wait to start growing our own tomatoes! (We'll start small...)

I'm super-exited, I can't wait to get in there and paint. It's 8 years old and in pretty good condition, but we are repainting the walls and changing the wallpaper in some places. We're putting in new flooring in the living room and I'd like to repaint the staircase if we have time. We only have three weeks from the time we get the key until the time we have to move out of our apartment.

We get the key on May 22nd!! Time if flying by at the moment - we're looking at floors, curtains, wallpaper. We've pretty much got the finances settled (mortgage and home owners insurance, and everything else, too. I've set up a spreadsheet to track our finances. We will be on a very strict budget until I graduate and find a job, but that's ok.. we can eat our home-grown tomatoes until then .

Did I tell you I'm excited? I'm EXCITED! Yay!

~ Hilde

So it was a, well, challenging Christmas season, once again....

As usual, we celebrated Christmas with my in-laws in Germany. My husband's parents are divorced; his father is remarried, and his mother's mother (now a great-grandmother to our son!) is still alive. She is 88 years old.

• We stayed with my mother-in-law, as we usually do. My father-in-law and his wife have cats, and I'm allergic.. There was drama - FIL felt neglected, because we didn't spend as much time with him as we did with MIL -;
• There was awkwardness - MIL doesn't "get" that it's sometimes hard for me to spend a whole week with my in-laws (she thinks she is easy to live with - but she's really, really not. Plus, she moved to a smaller house, which made it difficult to stay with her without getting annoyed with each other);
• There was fatigue - we slept in one room with our son, who had a bad cold. My husband did too, so every time he coughed, baby awoke, and every time baby awoke, I did, too. Needless to say: we are still trying to recuperate from the whole thing.

We've thought about staying home for the holidays, but then how would we deal with the divorced in-laws? We live in tight quarters, too, so we can't very well have them sleep here (there is no bed for them, let alone a room to put it in...). Plus, hubby's grandma, who we love dearly, doesn't travel anymore. She likes to sleep in her own bed, and at her age, I think she deserves to do whatever she pleases! So I think we'll be traveling at least until we have a house, and possible until grandma dies (although... her own mother lived to be close to 100 years old, so maybe that's a bit long!) In any case, if I get pregnant again, physical problems will most probably prevent me from traveling, so we'll have to change our plans then.

I suppose we should be grateful to still have hubby's parents and grandma - and we are! - but I'm just not made to be the perfect daughter-in-law for a whole week. I need some room to breathe!

My mother is whole other story. We always stay for one night at her house on our way to and from Germany, and it's a delight. She lives in a huge house, so we  have lots of space, and she has more toys than we do, plus a crib and anything else we might need. We don't need to unpack everything there, which is great. Plus, she lets us do our own thing while she plays with our son - awesome! You would think that I just feel that way because she's  my mom, but even my husband is more relaxed at her house than he is at his mom's...

So that was Christmas. When we got back, we found our heater was clogged and our kitchen had an inch of water everywhere... welcome home! The clog was fixed in under 30 minutes, which was awesome, but the cabinet that holds the heater needs to be replaced. Just when we were going to put our home on the market! *sigh*

Anyhoodle... everyone have a happy, healthy, relaxing New Year!