Family U: May 2009

Sunday, 24 May 2009

A Walk along the Havel River

After a busy shopping-Friday - we rented a car and drove to IKEA - and a even busier furniture-assembling-Saturday we needed some recreation in the nature. Therefore, we decided to take the Potsdam water-taxi to go down the river Havel for some kilometers and then to walk back home along the river side. So Anna got her first boat ride! (Half of which she missed sleeping in her stroller.)

The weather was magnificent, the sky was blue, the water even bluer and the clouds reminded us of little sheep.

Lately, our little princess is a little bit picky concerning the way she prefers to travel and conquer the world. The stroller is reserved for the few hours she decides to sleep, but when she is awake, nothing can keep her in this boring vehicle. Daddy has to carry her in the pole-position!

And sometimes, even the baby-björn carrier is not good enough! Then Mommy has to carry her on her hip...

...which she obviously likes very much!

(Sigh, when do children finally start to walk by themselves???)

Saturday, 23 May 2009

Anna's Baptism

Last Saturday, we had Anna baptised in our old parish "Allerheiligen" (All-Saints) in Innsbruck. We had prepared a bilingual ceremony in German and Polish, because her god-mother Małgosia is from Poland. It was a very nice, familiar and personal celebration! So we were a bunch of twenty-five people, who gathered from Austria, Poland, Switzerland and Germany to accompany Anna joining the Christian Family.

The christening ceremony was kindly held by Father Józef Niewiadomski, who is dean of the faculty of theology at the University of Innsbruck and a friend of Micha's father. Father Niewiadomski is perfectly fluent in both Polish and German, and had a rousing and entertaining way of conducting the ceremony. Here is Father Niewiadomski, standing between Micha and Małgosia.

Anna behaved very well for the first three quarters of the celebration - even during her baptism!, then her patience was gone and she screamed for all the fuss around her to finish quickly! (It was quite a task to hold this 8-kg-baby in her long and slippery white dress screaming at felt 90 decibel!) Afterwards, she was all happy and smiled again...
Here, a photo of Anna with her godmother Małgosia and her godfather Christoph outside the church:

Of course, Anna was in the center of interest of all the family members! Here are my favorite pictures of this - Anna with her uncle Tomek:

After all this family-hurlyburly, Kamil and I hiked up to the Berggasthaus Rauschbrunnen, together with my mom and Anna, for recreational reasons.

Aaaaah! Nothing is better than a cool beer after a hike on such a hot early-summer day...

... or maybe rather a delicious apple juice!?

(Please, don't worry, Anna neither drank apple juice nor any beer - we are still "self-sustaining" - but she is absolutely fond of tasting glass!)

Anna meets her cousin

Time is flying and I still have not published the posting of the first encounter of Anna and Judith, her cousin, shortly after Easter! So, here are finally the pictures:

Judith is 1.5 years old and will get a little sister or brother this summer, so her parents were quite curious to see how she would react towards another baby.