Walk by holding someone's hand

Mami bought the walker for quite long already, however, Alyssa found it too fast to control until recently.



Yesteday, Alyssa had the confidence for the first time to hold Mami's hand and walk. Before that, she only found the very very stable chair trustworthy to push round as walker.

Mami was so overjoy with this and went straight to a shoe shop to buy Alyssa a pair of 'Lauflernschuhe' (yeah... a pair of shoes that is good for learning walking!!!). Mami and Alyssa found a very good saleslady and she introduced us the following pair of shoes. The soles are so very very very soft but yet with all the good protection to the little feet. Mami guessed it must feel like wearing no shoes ;-). The size is EU 22. Quite big.



So today, we were so eager to try it out outside. Alyssa was all ready for the outing.




Alyssa used one hand instead of two for the support of the stroller. She insisted to hold things on her other hand most of the time.



We arrived home after the 'walk' just outside our home. And we took a photo just in the hallway with the big mirror there. Alyssa still held on to her sand toy.


She slept for 3.5 hours after lunch.. That's pretty long...... (btw, only 1 nap recently... finally..).

Belgium - Brussel

We left Brugge and moved on to visit Brussel. Below is the famous boy fountain, someone told me before that he has different costume every day. When we visited him, he was in this blue sailor outfit.


We did a hop-on-hop-off bus tour.


Alyssa... relax... don't bite too hard on the camera bag, no good for you teeth.


Here is a big building from an Expo many years back. It is an atom they said (atom !!??? It looks more like a molecule than atom....) anyway... It looks quite nice for a photo. The very top ball contains a restaurant.

Belgium - Zeebrugge 2

Below is the new stroller that we used for the first time in this trip. We like it a lot so far, especially the big sun canopy, see how far it can go and Alyssa was well covered from the sun and also from distractions (and hopefully that make it easier for her to fall asleep on the way).


After the little princess went to sleep, Mami and Papi could sit down, relax and enjoy their lunch and delicious Belgian beer!


Finally, Alyssa woke up and totally recharged for more fun on the beach.

Belgium - Zeebrugge (Nordsee)

We spent the first day in Brugge, but then on the next day, we went to the sea side (Nordsee). It was Alyssa's first time to be on a beach, though she had much experiences in sand playing.


See how Alyssa threw sand on Mami's jean.


We walked quite long until we reached the sea front.



Sweet moment from Papi and Alyssa. Alyssa gave some *sand* to Papi as gift.

Belgium - Brugge - 2

Here is the old market place of Brugge. Quite nice, isn't it.


A prove that it is a World Heritage Site of UNESCO


In another big place, an old man played a big musical box and invited people to try. We were relaxing on a bench and Alyssa was sleeping in her stroller (finally).


Funny 'flower pot' that we found.

Belgium - Brugge

After driving 3 hours, we arrived at Brugge (in Dutch) /Bruges (in English) in Belgium. Brugge is a World Heritage Site of UNESCO. It is a cute historic little town. The gate to enter the little old town looks like a castle gate. Such a cute town.



Alyssa slept 2 of the 3 hours during the drive and the remaining 1 hour, Mami had to entertain her with toys, songs and games....

In Brugge, there are quite many bridges and some canals.







It was quite relaxing there.

Mami got well and we went to Belgium

After 5 days of having fever, Mami got well again. Her fever has once reached 39.3 degree and she went to check if it is H1N1. The process was not nice. They sticked long cotton-tip stick into her noses to get some muscus for diagnosis. She had no clue how bad will it feel. The doctor asked her to get a piece of tissue in case she needs it. At that point, she thought maybe it is for wiping her nose afterwards. Indeed, it was for wiping her tears..... Ouch.... such a nasty feelings. Mami hoped that Papi and Alyssa don't need to go through this.

After a few hours, someone called and said 'Negativ'. Yes, that means negative in English. Great !!!!
And two days later, Mami had no more fever. It lasted totally for 5 days.... Don't know what it was.... maybe a normal flu.... Mami forgot to ask more about it, she was too happy to know that it was not H1N1.

As Papi still have his holiday (he took 1 week off for going to switzerland), we changed our plan to go somewhere closer. And we chose Belgium !!!

Brunch at the Altstadt of Heidelberg

The sightseeing group in this photo are German tourists. The old town of Heidelberg is very nice, it is much better than the one in Düsseldorf, but not as good as the one in Luzern :-))



We had brunch in the old town.



The high chair provided by the restaurant was not so safe, the gap between the chair and the stand crushed Alyssa's finger once... ouch.. so very painful.




As Mami was sick, she told Papi to take 100% care of Alyssa during the few days. Mami checked her temperature very often and this was a proof to show to Papi that he still needed to talk 100% care of Alyssa ;-)))). 100% care means all the feedings, diapers changings, bathings, putting down to sleep/nap and playings.





While Papi was feeding Alyssa, Mami was enjoying the nice brunch :-)))



Last picture before we headed back to Düsseldorf instead of Switzerland.

Only could make it to Heidelberg but not Switzerland

Our trip to Switzerland has been canceled/postponed (at the moment we are still planning for a trip to switzerland in August, hope it will happen). We planned to travel by car from Düsseldorf to Switzerland and stop a night at Heidelberg.

However, Mami had fever the day before we headed to Heidelberg, it was not that high (about 38.3 degree celcius). Therefore, we decided to continue to go Heidelberg and crossed our fingers to wish the temperature would come down.

Even Mami had fever, she looked quite fine in the photos in Heidelberg :-)).

It has been more than 10 years since Mami last visited Heidelberg. She had an old photo with this monkey too. But the photo is in Hong Kong (no digital camera at that time).

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Blowing kisses

Other than blowing kisses, Alyssa can clap hands, wave goodbye/hello and 'give others a high 5' :-)))

Banging things to make sound

Whenever Alyssa holds two objects, she will bang them together to see what it sounds like. The usual things that she has tried includes, plastic cups, jar food covers and toys. The unusual things that she has tried includes two small pieces of chicken meat, a piece of her toy with her mother's thigh. When she found out that the plastic toy and her mother's thigh does not make impressive sound, she tried with her whole hand and slap on her mother's thigh to get some 'nice' sound, then she was satisfied.