Miriam, the synchronized...."peek-a boo"er?

As Miriam rapidly approaches her 2nd birthday, her little personality is continuing to emerge and make us laugh every day.  Her latest favorite activity (and she is very passionate about it) is to synchronize everything we do.  She likes us to eat, drink and play "peek-a-boo" at the same time, where we all cover our eyes and then say "boo" at the same time.

Some other funny things she really likes to do:

- take her pants off and walk around the house in her diaper
- gallop around the house
- wear our shoes and walk around the house
- run around the driveway with her little backpack when we get home

She's very organized and has to have things a certain way...we think she got it from one of us...anyone want to guess who?  :)  She loves to have music playing when we are home, likes to have certain lights on, and doesn't like any of the cabinets to be open.  Luckily, she's old enough that she can open and close drawers and the refrigerator by herself, so she's getting a little bit more independent about helping.  And, we usually can distract her easily away from those things, but we are glad to know she has an organized personality! :)

We've been having some cold, dry weather lately and Mario and Miriam have been spending a lot of time outside.  It doesn't really matter what they do, but she just LOVES to be outside.  She picks up rocks, runs around our street (we live on a dead end street with a very small number of houses - kind of like a small cul-de-sac), searches for the neighbor cat, stomps in small puddles and steps on leaves, rides in her wagon, on her roller truck, and just generally loves to run around.  She has a great little personality, and we are enjoying her funny antics and ability to make us laugh every day. :)

Here are some recent pictures:

Pants off! 

Miriam wearing Mama's fleece

She's trying to figure out how to get her arms out to play with her music toy. 

Her hair is long enough for a back ponytail! 

Mario with his mini-me

"This drawer is big enough for me Mama!" 

Miriam's crazy "Jim Carrey" hair 

Miriam and Charlize (cousins) eating together at a recent game day 

"Look Daddy, I can put my own hat on!"

"How does it look?" 

Paris - day 3 (Sacre-Coeur, Eiffel Tower)

Saturday morning we slept in late, yet again, then checked out of our hotel late and prepared for our final day of sightseeing.  We visited our friendly neighborhood bakery again before heading to the Metro to go to the famous white church on the hill...Sacre-Coeur.

It was a gorgeous, sunny day outside, so we were happy that we'd have a great view from one of the highest points in Paris.  Once we got to the Sacre-Coeur metro stop, the street up to the church was packed with people and tourists.  We headed directly up to the church, which was very crowded.  This was the only place in Paris that we got hustled by street sellers...people trying to get us to participate in illegal street gambling, people selling bags/souvenirs/trinkets, and people selling/making bracelets on the spot.  We both just kept repeating "no" and moving forward, and we didn't get hassled too much more after that.  Once we got to the base of the church and off the street, the crowd was almost all tourists.

It was free to go into the church, and we went in with a large group of people.  Sacre-Coeur is famous for not only being the highest point in Paris, but also that there are nuns there singing and praying 24 hours a day.  We witnessed part of this ceremony when we were inside the church.  Unfortunately, there are no photos allowed at all inside the church, which was bright and airy.  However, after our visit inside the church, we waited in line to walk up to the dome.  300 steps later, we had a gorgeous 360 degree view of Paris on a beautiful sunny day.  We spent a lot of time...probably 1.5 hours, up in the dome taking pictures and video.  It was a gorgeous place...one of my favorite sites in Paris for sure.  After we came down from the dome, we had another yummy sandwich and sat on the steps of Sacre-Coeur to eat, enjoying the beautiful panoramic view of Paris.

Some pictures of Sacre-Coeur:

After spending most of the morning/early afternoon at Sacre-Coeur, we took the Metro back to the Eiffel Tower to try to get some better pictures in the sunshine.  Of course, as soon as we got off the Metro the clouds moved in.  The Eiffel Tower was twice as crowded that afternoon, because it was a Saturday.  We headed immediately to the park behind the tower to take some pictures.  After several more rounds of pictures, we slowly made our way back to the metro stop, eating dinner at a yummy pizzeria on the way.  After that, we picked up our luggage at the hotel and headed to the train station.  We were both excited to head back to Germany and see Miriam.  

Pictures of the Eiffel Tower, round 2:

Before I publish the blog posts, I asked Mario for his thoughts about Paris, to share on the blog.  He said that one of his favorite things was to see all of the historical artifacts and old paintings at the Louvre.  Overall, we had a fantastic time and were able to squeeze a lot of sightseeing into 3 days.  We are both very glad that we went!

Paris - day 2 (Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Elysees, Louvre)

On our 2nd day in Paris, we slept in and started our morning slowly, since we were still jet lagged and quite tired from our first day of sightseeing.  We walked to a bakery near the hotel and started our morning off with French pastries - croissants and a chocolate filled pastry.  Then we hopped on the metro to head to the Arc de Triomphe, the famous arch in Paris at the end of Champs-Elysees.  It started raining as soon as we stepped off the metro, of course, but luckily we'd pack a compact umbrella.

The Arc de Triomphe is surrounded by a huge, bustling, crazy traffic circle that has 5-6 lanes of traffic going in and out of 6 major streets surrounding the arch.  To make things more confusing, there are no lines painted on the circle, so there aren't technically "lanes" for people to drive in.  Rather than subject pedestrians to crossing the street in the midst of that craziness, they built tunnels under the streets to and from the arch.

After taking pictures of the arch from the front and underneath, we decided to wait in the (very short) line to walk up the stairs all the way to the viewing platform at the top.  It was 234 steps to the top, and since it was a very cloudy (low clouds), windy, rainy day, the (single file) stairs and viewing platform were not very crowded.  We spent 45 mins to an hour on the viewing platform, then walked back down the stairs and took some pictures of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is underneath the Arc de Triomphe.  They keep a flame burning all the time at the head of this tomb.

Here are some pictures of the Arc de Triomphe.  It was so cloudy/foggy that the top of the Eiffel Tower couldn't be seen, as you'll see in the pictures...

After we visited the Arc de Triomphe, we walked down the most famous street in Paris, the Champs-Elysees.  The street is 8 lanes across and VERY crowded with both cars and pedestrians.  The sidewalks are very wide (the width of a regular road) to accommodate lots of pedestrians.  We window shopped our way along the street, stopping in a mega store to pick up our museum tickets.  They've got restaurants, high-end stores, cinemas, car dealerships, hotels and apartments...pretty much everything along this street.  And, since it was just after Christmas, there was even a large Christmas market set up at one end of the avenue.  The street itself, from the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre gardens at the end, is about 2 miles long.  The Christmas market was towards the end, at the less busy end of the street, and we took advantage of the space to get some food (fresh cheese/meat sandwich for me, sausage for Mario, and the standard Nutella crepe for dessert) and rest our feet for a bit.  (And just a side note about the food...if I could eat sandwiches the way they make them over there, I would eat sandwiches every day...fresh baked baguette, gourmet fresh cut cheese, with salami and/or prosciutto...yum.) 

After our quick stop for food, we continued our walk through the gardens at the end of Champs-Elysees and went to the Louvre.  As with most Paris landmarks, there are huge lines, even on a cold December day.  However, we'd bought tickets in advance, with help from my dad, so we got to bypass the entire line and go in the line/door marked "persons with tickets".  There was literally NO line for us.  Once we got inside, it was packed and bustling.  We waited in line to check our coats, and then also waited to get an audio tour device, which Mario used throughout the museum.  

The Louvre is HUGE, and very confusing to navigate.  There are 3 wings, like 3 parts of a letter T, and each wing has multiple floors.  Some floors you can't access by stairwells on the end, and some you can, while other things have multiple rooms set up in what seems like a maze.  I know we didn't get to see even half of what the museum has, and we were there over 4 hours.  We did, however, get to see Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting, and we also saw Michelangelo's "Prisoners" statues and the famous Venus de Milo statue.  Some parts of the museum (Mona Lisa, French paintings room) were packed, while other parts (ancient Egypt/Greece, early European statues) were mostly empty.  One of my favorite parts of the museum was the "Medieval Louvre" part, where you can see parts of the original Louvre building, which was built as a fortress in the 12th century.  

Pictures from the Louvre:

After the Louvre we took the Metro back to our hotel and rested for a bit before going out to dinner.  We went to a restaurant right next to our hotel.  Mario had a plate of various meats and sauerkraut, while I had goat cheese ravioli.  They were both delicious.  And of course, we had fresh cheese and bread.