Monday, April 6, 2009

Sunday with Cousins

Opening birthday gifts continued on Sunday with the arrival of Ulf and Olivia Nilsson from Köln, Germany! Ulf is my husband's other brother who owns a foo-foo wine shop in Hagen. He is one of Europe's wine masters (with title)! He always brings us wonderful wines to enjoy at the moment or some to savior in the distant future. The one he served last night, which I couldn't have, was exceptional apparently but he left a bottle for me to have after I've beaten this rotten cancer! I'm certainly looking forward to that! Olivia and Maya had a jolly good time outside as well as inside together despite their language differences. Olivia only speaks German with some Italian (her father has taught her Italian since he used to live in Italy for 10 years and he hopes she will be fluent some day--perhaps to take over his wine business?). Maya with her Swedish and English (and bits of Spanish) gets a little frustrated that Olivia can't speak SOMETHING that she can understand! But amazingly enough they find the way to communicate with each other enough to have a lot of fun together! Kids always do! Here they are preparing something that never flourished...but they certainly look artistic! They are exactly a year apart in age, Maya is older & slightly taller but Olivia is more muscular and tougher than petite Maya. Both are PRINCESSES! Although Pepe wore this tutu with pride, he wasn't such a cooperative dancer in the troope. He preferred to be a member of the audience!
With the right music, the ballerinas performed their best piece yet!
Bravo, BRAVO!
At the moment, (Monday afternoon) the cousins are out on a picnic with Farmor, Farfar, Papa and Pepe! I've taken the quiet time to sleep, take a walk (went 600 meters today! better than yesterday!), and catch up on this blog! Oh...here they come back!
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Farmor is COVERED with Maya's car sickness throw up! GROSS! But Maya is fresh in clean clothes and running to the swings with Olivia. Poor Farmor! (Maya reported that she PUKED ALOT!) It was rather obvious by the look of Farmor's clothes and hair (even in her ear!). Yuck!
Sorry to share so much but this blog tells it like it is! That's life!

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PS- Ever since our upstairs bathroom has been "in renovation" Maya and I have been taking a shower and sauna together in our basement bathroom. (We have very interesting sauna talks!) Before our Sunday guests arriv
ed we were again doing our routine there in the bathroom, it is often difficult for me to bend down to pick things up from lower levels and Maya has proved to be quite handy to have around as she is so willing to be a Mommy's helper! I asked her to please pick up the dirty clothes to take them to the laundry room and she did it without a fuss. Then I asked her to hand me my socks and pants which of course she did without a fuss. So I said to her how much I appreciated her help, especially when I only had to ask her to do it once (instead of our usual bantering!). She replied, "I want to help you as much as I can Mommy so you won't die!" (choke! my heart flew to my throat!) So then I answered, "I thought you were doing it to be nice." "Oh and that, too!" she said.

I had the awful thought that if I do die she might think it was HER FAULT for not helping me enough! Each comment I make is so weighted these days. It's a precious line between the wrong and the right way to say something to her sweet little ego ...I just hope I will say and do more right things than wrong things.

4 comments:

Lori S-C said...

Love how Maya does her climbing in the foofy dress!
Nice photography!

Vicki said...

I'm just getting back to reading all my blogs! I love all the fun you are having - birthday party, swimming lesson chats, etc. I didn't get any postcards out for March, so I better get busy on April!
Hugs!

Amanda said...

I tried wheat grass once and didn't care for it, but I wasn't offered any tasty juice with it, so perhaps that was the problem. I know that my good friend Ian drank it a lot when he was ill, and still does I think. It must be so difficult to know what to say to May for the best, but it sounds to me as if you're doing a brilliant job at keeping things as normal as possible for her, whilst being open about the problems.

Sara said...

Maya is so precious! I love her dresses and it looks like she and Olivia had a great time!

Poor thing, thinking you are going to die. That is hard, my boys, especially J, were really freaked out about it!

Hope you are feeling okay, or some better!