A few weeks ago my daughter (who I've nicknamed Mini for the blog), was interacting with a young baby lying on a playmat. It was a cute little girl around 3/4 months old who was smiling up at us. It was a sweet moment until the child's mother said to Mini, "would you like to have a sister?" Mini can be a little shy sometimes and wasn't saying anything and I just said "No, no.." and shook my head. Instead of noticing my obvious discomfort at the topic, the women then said to Mini "tell your mother to give you a sister!" I was quite shocked to be honest and because I tend to be a people please ..read more

A friend shared this image with me recently and it made me chuckle. The weather has been so up and down lately. We had some quite warm days the other week where it even reached 17 degrees (62 Fahrenheit) and was lovely and sunny! I noticed lots of flowers had started to bloom - pretty snow drops and crocuses, and I started getting my hopes up that the coldest winter days were already behind us. However it all changed again and now today it's a chilly -2 (28 Fahrenheit) with a bitter wind. There was even some snow falling yesterday! I am very much ready for winter to be over and for Spring ..read more

As most people know, babies and children grow out of their clothes and shoes pretty quicky. Sorting out the clothes by size, figuring out what to do with things that are outgrown, acquiring new clothes and shoes for the next season can be a whole job in itself! I remember the first year of Mini's life, she would only get several months at most, maybe even weeks sometimes at a particular size before having to size up. From around age one to two, she was finally able to wear the clothes for longer. Sizes in Germany are based on height, and I remember "92" size fit her well for at least a year ..read more

In January 2020, I guess I was feeling pretty ambitious because I created a list of 101 things I wanted to achieve in 1001 days. My daughter, Mini (her nickname for the blog), was almost two and life was becomming a little less hectic, as it felt like we were over the hardest of the baby years and finally getting a bit more sleep! However as you know, in February 2020 everything changed when the world was thrown into a global pandemic Immediately life became a whole lot more stressful. There were several lockdowns that lasted months on end when our Kindergarten was closed and we had to juggle ..read more

We made it over to Ireland for Christmas 2022! The last time the whole family were together was Christmas 2019 prepandemic. It was so lovely to see everyone again. Since we are a big group (with 5 grandkids) we decided to go to Center Parcs in Longford for 5 days over the Christmas period. That worked out really well. We stayed in two lodges beside each other, around a ten minute walk from the "village". Most of the restaurants there have play areas for kids which is great. Loads of the activities had booked out super fast unfortunately but my Dad still managed to book the Santa experience f ..read more

During the worst stages of the pandemic, many people stopped physically greeting each other in the same way. Elbow bumps replaced hugs. Waves instead of handshakes. People were advised to keep their distance. The pandemic isn't officially over yet, but many people have resumed many aspects of life before the pandemic. Some of my friends and I hug each other when we meet which is really nice. However with many other friends we end up automatically keeping some distance still. Sometimes I would like to hug a friend but I don't want them to feel uncomfortable if they are still anxious about cat ..read more

In June we went on a family holiday to Mallorca for ten days. We've been a few times before but this was our first time going since our daughter was born. We love it because it's only a short flight away from Germany and it's a beautiful island. It has gotten a bad reputation at times in the past as being a hotspot for drunkenness and bad behaviour from tourists but it's very easy to avoid those areas! We stayed in the Play de Muro region. The beaches were long and beautiful. We stayed at a very family friendly hotel which was perfect because they had kids disco in the evening followed by an ..read more

We finally made it over to Dublin! After two years and four months (due to the pandemic, otherwise we would have travelled many times). There's always something comforting and nostalgic about going there for me. It was so nice to spend time with family and catch up with friends. Hopefully we'll get over there in the Summer again ..read more

Well of course we couldn't avoid catching Covid-19 forever and our luck finally ran out. We aren't actually totally sure where we got it from but we suspect it was probably from Mini's daycare. I'm actually impressed we even managed to go a full two years without catching it! Mini came down with symptoms first - a high fever and the first few nights were rough. She complained of tummy pains on and off as well as having a blocked congested nose. Luckily, she seemed to fight it off quickly and was back to herself after a few days. For me it felt like a really bad headcold and I felt crappy for ..read more

One of the aspects that has bothered me the most about living through a global pandemic is that it often feels like real life is on hold. That we are only passing time. I really hate that feeling because life is actually short but I certainly don't feel like I'm living life to the fullest these days. Much like the majority of people I don't live to work. I like my job and I'm happy there for the most part but I am not typically jumping out of bed Monday mornings in anticipation of logging into my computer! Pre 2020 on Mondays I would usually be looking forward to events such as meeting up wi ..read more