Our Spring Visit to England

We've been back from England for almost two weeks and somehow still the cold we managed to catch (and share) lingers on.  I am so looking forward to a trip to England that doesn't result in us getting sick, but to be honest, for the trips to go so well in spite of the illnesses that have been around is pretty impressive!

This visit we spent the first 3 days in London staying with Keith, Char and Otto.  In our time there we saw Sonja and Sham and even got to see Sana and her main squeeze Kazuki.  As a nice celebratory Ayyam'i'Ha dinner we went to a Persian restaurant that happened to be right around the corner from Char's place.  Keith was kind enough to offer to stay with the babies and Char and I met up with the group and had a lovely evening together.  The area that Char lives in has many great options for babies including a fantastic library with a huge kids area.  There was a lovely cafe that was baby friendly, and on Sunday morning they hold a really fun soft play event in half of a gym.  Otto and Liam had such a good time!

The group of us out for Persian food

 Kazuki and Sana

 Me and Sonja - all the other photos we're making ridiculous faces

 Otto and Liam having a bath together -they were actually so funny to watch! 

 Monday we took the train up to Nass's and descended on them after they just got back from SA.  Thank you guys for being such generous and gracious hosts, despite fatigue!  The week was good even though I managed to get so sick.  The kids had a great time together for the most part - though after a while Lua started letting Liam know that she needed her space!  Leo and Liam had some good times together, and even the sharing issue wasn't too big of a deal. 

Liam is a big fan of laundry, and apparently, laundry baskets!

 This was such a sweet time.  The three of them were really playing together some sort of tea party game.  I loved watching them!

 The train became a slight point of contention in the mix because such exciting things are hard to share, but they did manage to take turns enjoying rides, and since then, Liam is definitely much more interested in sitting on, straddling his legs over, things.

Liam's first Music Class

I forgot to post pictures from a little music class that we went to about a month ago.  We did it with all the other moms and wee ones in our little group, and it was quite sweet just to see what they all got up to.  Liam sat and paid close attention in the first few minutes, but later seemed more interested in hiding and laughing under a table with Drake and Stirling.  He did like shaking his maracas though!

Stirling and Leigh with Alison and Elle in the background

Liam watches the teacher bunching up a scarf - Christina and Sam and Courtenay and Isla

Stirling returning the scarves to the hat - Pei Ling and Isabella in the background

Here's a sweet video of them playing under the table!

Day Trip to Luzerne

A few weeks ago we felt very proud of ourselves for taking a spontaneous day trip to Luzerne.  It's a 2.5 hour train ride and more often than not that can feel quite daunting.  However, a fellow colleague happened to have 2 transport passes for just 35CH each so that we could go anywhere in Switzerland on any mode of transport for the entire day.  We decided it was as good a time as any to give it a whirl, especially at such a great price, and off we went!

Despite 5 hours total on the train, we felt it was a lovely day.  The weather was perfect and we had a good 4 hours or so in Luzerne itself.  We wandered around the old town, checking out the farmers market, stopping for a very special lunch at Hotel Balance while Liam napped in his stroller, and made sure to pick up a brezel or two before a visit to Starbucks.  We felt rested, happy to be out and about and quite separated from our normal routine in Lugano.  It was lovely!  And best part yet is that it didn't involve any compromising of Liam's schedule.  We left around 8am and were back by 6pm so it was business as usual with him in bed by 6:30pm.

Here's a funny picture of him just waking up from his nap.  For some reason the second upper tooth has been taking forever to come in and the one in already just keeps getting longer, so here he is with a real of a  chicklet grin.

Here's Liam being attacked by one of the swans on the lake!

Words

I'm a bit sad to not have been more diligent with recording some of the recent happenings with little guy over here.  It seems like in the last month he's really growing into a full-on toddler, and each day brings some new little surprise.  Most noteworthy is his talking.  As we all know, he's never been shy about expressing himself, and he has certainly been talking in his own language for a very long time, but recently he's been very clearly and specifically trying to say some of our words. I think his first set of words really was "dis", "dat" and "der", but he soon moved on to many more.
This is what they sound like:
Ah daaar
Ah taar
Ah dooh
Ah dawh
It's sometimes quite tricky to know what he's talking about.  We use indicators like what he's pointing at, or the noise he makes after to make the most educated guess we can.  We now know that the words above refer to a car (well any moving vehicle really), a door, or a dog.  They can seem interchangeable at times, but more often than not they refer to cars - his new obsession.  It really came out of nowhere but all of a sudden he's thrilled with cars and plays with them all the time.  We hear him exclaim: "Oh! Taah!" All the time, often followed by: "brrroom, vrroom" noises.  He also talks about dogs and then does a small high pitched bark to follow.

Besides these words, he says Mama, but with a real intonation, and more recently, he says: "da-oow!" - ciao - and gives a little wave.  He also says "bifis" sometimes referring to breakfast, or he indicates he's hungry by clicking his tongue and saying "nana".  "Nana" also can be banana, in which case he is more likely to say "anana".  For a while now he has been saying "dirt" for dirty and uses it whenever he's trying to touch garbage cans, or outside if he's picking something off the ground.  If I tell him something is dirty he follows it by saying "dontush", meaning don't touch.  A child after my own heart!
In just the past week he's started saying "bah" for ball, "booh" for book, and "ah dah" for all done.  He also sometimes says the name of his favorite sleep companion Bertie (he says Bert).  He can also frequently be heard saying "oh yisss", or his favorite alternative: "oh, no!"
It's quite astonishing how quickly all this is coming about!