Here are some videos of the Skyeberry on her birthday…
caution… some of these are longer than usual (for the grandparents).
Category: family life
skye turns 1!
More to come about her birthday celebration. Here are some recent pictures of our one-year-old.
a good day
So we had made some tentative plans to go to Vienna sometime this weekend or next, and we woke up on Saturday, and just decided to go. The weather was mostly nice, and we still had time to catch the train. So we got all our stuff ready and left. After a few miscommunications by the bus schedule and some frantic bus catching, we finally made it to the train station with about 5 minutes to spare. We boarded the train and were off for another country.
SK update
Wow, I can’t believe it’s already been 2 months since we’ve arrived! Time is cruising by but December still seems like a long way away.
We’re slowly moving outside of our bubble, although our day to day routine keeps us within it most of the time (which is why we don’t have many new pics). The process of applying for our visa’s has broadened our scope a bit though. Today we all went to get the required physical exams necessary for temporary stay permit/visa. My colleague had a terrible experience with this, so I was expecting scenes from the movie Hostel; dirty medical equipment in a dark office in the basement of a rundown building. Maybe it was my low expectations, but it wasn’t bad at all. He must have paved the way for us, or maybe having Skye with us forced a more proper establishment from the lady taking us around.
random pictures
Here are a few pictures I’ve taken recently.
The first set is from Slavín, a war memorial and cemetery on the hillside that commemorates the liberation of Bratislava from the Germans in WWII. It’s crazy to think that the history of the war that you hear about on TV and read about in books actually happened here. It also has a really good view of the city (I have more pics, but I want to make a panorama of them before posting them all).
The first image is of the memorial itself. It really is fairly tall, more so than I had imagined. The second image is a view of Bratislava looking east across the city. The third image is a view of Bratislava Castle, and if you look closely on the left, you can see the top of St. Martin’s Cathedral (not taken from Slavín, but from a break in the houses on the walk back home. On a side note, there are some amazing houses up here.)
And the second set is, of course, pics of our little one who is just too cute not to photograph every second. In the set is her first bump on the noggin that she got the other day. She likes to stand next to the shelves we have on the ground here, and pull out everything she can and throw it on the floor. She was doing that, and was standing on a book, which slipped out from under her, and she fell and began to cry. We consoled her from the couch, because she often falls and doesn’t hit anything, just scares herself, and that’s what we thought happened. When we looked over a few moments later, she looked at us and smiled with a bruise on her head.
The first image shows her little bump on the noggin, not bad, but it was her first one. The second image shows her new thing lately, where she tilts her head to one side and looks at you in a shy, cute kinda way. The third image is her in the tub with bubbles, which she wasn’t sure of at first, but is starting to enjoy more and more each time.
Well… that’s all for now, more to come, I’m sure.
Meeting new people
This last week we went to an indoor play gym we had been contemplating for a while. I think Skye was a little overwhelmed, she didn’t really start playing for several minutes. She would just watch the 2 older children there playing. They had a ton of varying toys for varying ages, ALL of which are a new inventory of her current toys. It was fun to do something for her that I’m sure she’ll enjoy doing more of. She loves watching older kids and is fascinated by them. I’m hoping it will be good for her to be around other kids. She’ll still too young to really interact with them, but I think it’s important for her to be exposed to people under 30. It only cost 2 euro/hour (in the states something like this was about ~15/hour). We stayed for an hour, talked to an Irish mom for a minute and Skye finally started exploring. She loved the balls from the pit, but she also liked being pushed around in a toy dump truck. (camera died after this pic)
When we were back in the states and I was panicking about moving with a baby, I found an SK expat (foreigners living in another country) website and started asking questions from other expats. I started talking with this guy from here, asking him stupid questions like, can we take a stroller on the bus (panicking, yes I was). We finally met up with him, his wife and their 18-month old daughter for lunch. She is from here, he is from Texas. They were really nice and it was great to socialize for a bit. Hopefully we’ll hang out again, but even if we don’t, it was great to hang out with another family, the same age and in a somewhat similar situation.
From this same website, a few expat mothers are trying to get a playgroup started. The first is this Wednesday, so we’ll see how that goes.
This week we also have our first pediatric appointment for Skye. The doctor is a close friend of my boss and through our e-mails he seems like a really nice man. Skye is fine, we just wanted to make contact with him and ask a few questions about her upcoming transition into her first year.
It’s really bizarre and way out of our comfort zone to extend ourselves like this. You totally have to put yourself out there, be vulnerable and see what happens. At this age, you are just accustomed to having your circle of friends and take advantage of the fact that they can be called at any moment to hang out. So here’s to making a few new friends in a foreign land!
skye video dump
here are some random videos of Skye. they’re not terribly exciting, just Skye being Skye and all her cute self.
Skye showing off her teeth and her new squishy face
more after the jump Continue reading “skye video dump”
6 weeks in the grand SK
It’s been almost six weeks since we arrived in Bratislava. Now that we’ve had a chance to settle into our routine and figured out how to get around a bit, the entire maelstrom of getting over here doesn’t seem so dramatic anymore.
I leave the flat around 7–7:30 to go to work. The most stark difference to my daily life back in SLC is, of all things, not having a car and using the public transportation over here. I really can’t complain too much about it; buses and trolley’s and the like run frequent enough that the most I spend waiting is about 15 minutes. Everything is a short bus ride away. However, between walking to the bus stops and waiting for the buses and riding the bus, makes outings with a stroller 3 times as long and difficult as they would be with a car. The only difference I can tell about public transit can also be said about the Slovak people in general: the people are aggressive and there is no such thing as courtesy on the bus. Continue reading “6 weeks in the grand SK”
SK videos
Here is some terrible hand held footage at the Devin castle ruins. I took a few video’s that day and this was actually one of the better ones! I suck. :)
Just saying Ahoj (Hello).
Aaaand a Skye vid.
devín castle
so we went to devín castle the other day. our first trip outside of our little bubble here in Slovakia. it was the strangest thing to actually see things that you only really read about or see on discovery channel. to say this castle was old is an understatement. the things that I’ve seen in salt lake that are old are like mid-1800s at the oldest?… this was orders of magnitude older than that. it was so old… (insert yo mama joke here)