A feast with Gruffalo

Sunday afternoon Jakob was invited to his friend Serik's 3rd birthday party. Serik, Fritz & Jade's son, has picked the offices of the Astria Kids Academy as location for his party with 15 of his friends. As usually Jakob was rather shy and quiet in the beginning and it took him a while before he joined into the musical programme the team of the kids academy has prepared. But once the hand puppets have disappeared - our sunshine is not very much into anything that is in disguise - and real instruments as well as balls came into play Jakob was all fired up and enthusiastic and danced, played piano and jumped around.

 Jakob and music go along well

Later on a few parent s performed a little play and we were prepared already to leave the room with our junior as all the characters were disguised. Some more. Some less. Interestingly Jakob was all fine to stay, even when the terrible, terrible Gruffalo - Fritz portrayed him almost perfectly - appeared. Most likely the fact that the Gruffalo was afraid of the "mighty" mouse took away a lot of its scare.

Jakob was respectful, but not scared of Gruffalo

After the performance it was time for pizza and cake and Jakob obviously was all excited about that, taking the seat right next to Serik and sharing a piece of cake with mom and two slices of pizza with dad before playing with the other children (aged between 2 and 6 years) on the slide, improving further his piano skills and collecting the sweets and mars bars that were raining over the children (alongside lots of confetti) from paper buckets as grande finale for the party.

Finally - Food also for the children!

When we reached home at 1800 Viki and Stefan as well as Marina and Fabio were already waiting for us and they joined us for cold dinner and gave Jakob the opportunity to continue playing with a friend in a however more  calm way than at the birthday party and thus conclude a very nice and exciting Sunday.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

Tinkering a lantern

Thursday started like a normal day for our little sunshine when went to the kindergarten as every weekday with mom and continued as usual with being picked up again after lunch and a nap around 1400. He was however somewhat confused when Markus was back home and in the later afternoon Jakob, Kerstin and Markus at 1600 got dressed and left for the kindergarten again. Never before has Jakob been to the kindergarten in the afternoon and never before dad was coming and staying there. The afternoon got even weirder when Jakob realised that all his group-mates were there as well and all of them had one or two of their parents with them - he has never seen the room so full. The reason for this get-together was easily explained however: It was time for the annual tinkering of lantern for the upcoming "Laternenfest" - Jakob's first big group event in the kindergarten.

I have a job to do! Don't disturb!

We joined the other kids and parents handcrafting, painting and stamping and Jakob had lots of fun applying the colours on the stamps, the paper and bottom of the lantern as well as himself and once the colours have all dried Markus had the honourable duty to assemble all parts together and finish the lantern. By that time Jakob had forgotten that is was late afternoon and a rather uncommon time to be in the kindergarten. He had already eaten 5 slices of supplied cake as the handcrafting obviously was exhausting and he played with his friends just like every morning. Our sunshine was also very proud to show us parents around in the room and present us with all the features - toilets and washing basins in the right height for children, the cupboards for their dishes and the loads of toys the little ones are playing every day. It seemed that he really enjoyed his time with mom and dad in the kindergarten but was very happy when we left for home at 1800 again. After all it was dinner-time!

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus