A report on our (almost) 2 year old, the comedian

Miriam has a promising future career as a comedian.  She easily laughs at herself, and makes others laugh as well.  She's really comfortable with people she knows and in places she knows, but she isn't comfortable with strangers.  This morning at Home Depot, another little girl (also almost 2) tried to approach Miriam and talk to her, and the girl was really getting into Miriam's personal space.  Miriam kept backing up, and the girl kept moving forward and saying "hi!".  Miriam was looking up at me and saying "up, up!!"  It was pretty cute.  But when we are at home, she runs around with her arms flapping, puts animals on her head, falls down on purpose, jumps off her chair, takes off her pants and walks around in a diaper, responds by laughing and saying "meow" when you tell her you love her, and generally is a joy to be around.  The girl is definitely strong willed, opinionated and likes to have her own way, so she's started to have occasional timeouts.  However, we've started using a counting technique and giving her choices, and that helps a lot with her saying "no" or not listening to us.  She continues to LOVE being a helper, and has assisted me with many dinners and baked goods.  As soon as I ask her if she wants to help me cook/bake something, she runs to the utensil drawer and gets out a measuring scoop.  She's an adorable little girl, and we can't believe she is going to be 2 in about a month!  We love her to bits, and we feel so lucky to be the parents of this energetic, happy, comedic, sweet, helpful little girl.

She's on the move so much these days that we don't often get a lot of pictures, but we do have a couple from recent weeks.  The last one is from right before we went to a birthday party earlier today.  See how grown up she is looking?!?

A diaper and boots is the way to go! 

She wanted me to leave her room so she could read books by herself...

Messy hair after a long day of a ponytail...

Reading/listening to a book from Grandma Jan

Ready to party! 

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!