Adventures in Baking

(Like the Halloween PJs Jan has him in to bake Christmas cookies?  ;)  )

Forbidden Books

Here are some pictures from the archives back when Blaise found the "forbidden Christmas books" that Grandma Rose had stored in this dresser in the Guest Room.  There is no safe hiding place.

Please shake Santa's nose, Mommy

My Morning

I was reprimanded for not being more diligent about blogging. Fair enough...I'm hoping to catch up with our summer activies. I'm super excited about the fall and the beginning of September makes me all giddy. Lots of fun things to blog about coming up!

I thought I'd take some videos of our morning. This is of course only a small portion, but you get the idea of how funny and cute Blaise is. He really seems to be in a great stage of understanding, but still baby-like at the same time.

My Mom was interested in seeing Blaise walk with his (my old) toys. He is clearly becoming more opinionated:


It is really hard to take videos of him because he's always wanting to SEE them at the same time. Here are some of his words:


He used to say "ball" like "bau," now for some reason he says "bee"...I don't know...


He LOVES this (forbidden*) Christmas book. It was a present to me from MY Grandma and Grandpa Scofield in November of 1980 after a day of Christmas shopping.
*It's not really forbidden, it is just that Grandma Rose feels Christmas books should only be read during Christmas season. I'm not so much a stickler for tradition (in this case), I'm all about Christmas music before Thanksgiving! ;)


We fixed the window in the forbidden book - here is Blaise demonstrating his "thank-you" sign:


He starting hidding in the cute little cubby hole in his room yesterday. He was pretty excited about the results :)


Here he is turning around to head back to hide:


He is really good at puzzling. I started giving him two at once with the pieces mixed to up the challenge.


This was (I think) the first puzzle that he mastered. It's great with the knobs!


This and the first animal puzzle both were mine when I was little. Grandma Rose sure does have some storing skills! Not only is it nostaglic, but great recycling! (or is that upcycling?)

I married my Dad

Got this (very sweet) Mother's Day card in the mail today from my Mom and Dad. Not sure I deserved it, after all the years of shirking card responsibility myself, but nonetheless it was appreciated. I hope I can live up to my parents' image of how great a Mom they think I am - at least I had a good example. The humorous part is of course how my Mom addressed the envelope. As she wrote she was probably remembering me reprimanding her for addressing things to "Mr. and Mrs. Jan Schröder" and how I threatened not to open them if they came that way (although, maybe I only made that threat in head?). I thought the mistake was cute, and this is not a way to publicly "call her out" - it just maybe shows how it isn't so easy to let go, even after all these years.  I am starting to understand why.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Looking forward to seeing you Saturday.

Grandma and Grandpa Came to Town

Grandma Rose Came to Town

My mom got in on Friday morning to spend about a month with us. Blaise was happy to see his Grandma!

We spent the first morning at the park on the Rhine with her

PS: I uploaded more 4 month pictures to http://blaisekarl.shutterfly.com/