Friday, April 20, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Learning to play
The past few days, we've taken Anna to several new parks. The fun thing is that she has finally hit the point where she really PLAYS at the park.
In the fall and winter, whenever we would go to a playground (perhaps due to the cold or her having just learned to walk in September), she just kind of stood there or would rely on us to put her on the rocking horse, pick her up and put her down the slide etc.
Now, she is learning how to climb up and then go down the slide all by herself - and she is SO PROUD! :-) It's really cute to see how excited she gets.
The other cute thing is that she likes to make friends with the other moms at the park (not so much the kids, but the moms). She'll cozy up to some stranger in the sandbox, which inevitably gets a lot of amused attention. She knows how to work a crowd.
The other day (on "Easter Monday" - the day that Czechs celebrate Easter), we went to a park near the Brevnov monastery, not far from our home. There was a little boy there playing with a bouncy ball with his mom. Anna's eyes got big and she immediately ran over and tried to take the ball. Fortunately, he found this amusing and sweetly shared it with her. For the next half hour, she chased him around, arms outstretched, little a tiny ball monster trying to steal it from him. It was really funny.
Anyway, all of this to say that "our little girl is growing up", which is both wonderfully sweet and a little sad. She seems more like a kid and less like a baby every day. But it's so much fun to watch her discover the world and her own abilities.
In the fall and winter, whenever we would go to a playground (perhaps due to the cold or her having just learned to walk in September), she just kind of stood there or would rely on us to put her on the rocking horse, pick her up and put her down the slide etc.
Now, she is learning how to climb up and then go down the slide all by herself - and she is SO PROUD! :-) It's really cute to see how excited she gets.
The other cute thing is that she likes to make friends with the other moms at the park (not so much the kids, but the moms). She'll cozy up to some stranger in the sandbox, which inevitably gets a lot of amused attention. She knows how to work a crowd.
The other day (on "Easter Monday" - the day that Czechs celebrate Easter), we went to a park near the Brevnov monastery, not far from our home. There was a little boy there playing with a bouncy ball with his mom. Anna's eyes got big and she immediately ran over and tried to take the ball. Fortunately, he found this amusing and sweetly shared it with her. For the next half hour, she chased him around, arms outstretched, little a tiny ball monster trying to steal it from him. It was really funny.
Anyway, all of this to say that "our little girl is growing up", which is both wonderfully sweet and a little sad. She seems more like a kid and less like a baby every day. But it's so much fun to watch her discover the world and her own abilities.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Friday, April 06, 2007
New hobbies
In the past week I have been trying to watch less tv, so Matt and I have been developing new hobbies. For example, last night we played Taboo (less fun with two people, but still enjoyable) and Speed Scrabble.
If you have never played Speed Scrabble, write me a comment and I will tell you how to play it. It' much more fun than normal Scrabble, in my humble opinion.
My other new hobby...which may not last more than a couple of weeks, but I'm having fun with it for the moment... is Myspace. Myspace is one of the American cultural phenomena which seems to have arisen entirely during our time in the Czech Republic (along with Paris Hilton, The OC, and the whole grain diet revolution). I never even heard of Myspace until about a year ago and I was convinced that it was definitely not for people like me. But I've given in and I'm actually finding it quite enjoyable.
Things I like about Myspace:
*adding a pretty background
*trying to find people to be my "friends"
*actually having contact with my sister Sarah via computer (this is a very big deal! :-)
*using a bit of html again - haven't done this since college
Other than the keeping in touch with Sarah aspect, I would probably loose interest in the other above mentioned things about Myspace, largely because I really am the sort of person who has a small, close knit group of friends, rather than the type who is up late at night ready random people's internet profiles and trying to build up my social connections. In fact, I have been bombarded with "friend" requests from complete strangers, none of which I have accepted because their profiles revealed them to be fairly scary individuals with whom I would rather not be associated.
The genius and perhaps the sickness of Myspace, however, is that I actually considered accepting some of those people's invitation, solely based on the fact that I feel bummed when I see that other people have, for example, 165 "friends" and I have (at last count) 16. Oh well... I never aspired to be Miss Popularity, so I simply remind myself that 16 very good friends are certainly more valuable than hundreds of complete strangers who pretend to be friends for the sake of a number.
So, that's my ramble for today.
If you have never played Speed Scrabble, write me a comment and I will tell you how to play it. It' much more fun than normal Scrabble, in my humble opinion.
My other new hobby...which may not last more than a couple of weeks, but I'm having fun with it for the moment... is Myspace. Myspace is one of the American cultural phenomena which seems to have arisen entirely during our time in the Czech Republic (along with Paris Hilton, The OC, and the whole grain diet revolution). I never even heard of Myspace until about a year ago and I was convinced that it was definitely not for people like me. But I've given in and I'm actually finding it quite enjoyable.
Things I like about Myspace:
*adding a pretty background
*trying to find people to be my "friends"
*actually having contact with my sister Sarah via computer (this is a very big deal! :-)
*using a bit of html again - haven't done this since college
Other than the keeping in touch with Sarah aspect, I would probably loose interest in the other above mentioned things about Myspace, largely because I really am the sort of person who has a small, close knit group of friends, rather than the type who is up late at night ready random people's internet profiles and trying to build up my social connections. In fact, I have been bombarded with "friend" requests from complete strangers, none of which I have accepted because their profiles revealed them to be fairly scary individuals with whom I would rather not be associated.
The genius and perhaps the sickness of Myspace, however, is that I actually considered accepting some of those people's invitation, solely based on the fact that I feel bummed when I see that other people have, for example, 165 "friends" and I have (at last count) 16. Oh well... I never aspired to be Miss Popularity, so I simply remind myself that 16 very good friends are certainly more valuable than hundreds of complete strangers who pretend to be friends for the sake of a number.
So, that's my ramble for today.
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