Visiting Grandma and Pram Envy (April 28)

I love this picture!
This is Max at Labuznik, the trendy little child friendly bakery with free wi-fi.

We had a great day today. We visited with Jarek's grandma. Its his mom's mom and she is such a sweet, great lady. When we got there she was cleaning her plant. You can't really tell from the picture but the plant is as tall as she is. She said it used to be just a little plant but before winter she moved it to a bigger pot and now it is as big as she is.
Jarek's cousin and her daughter Tereza live with his grandma. Tereza was instantly in love with Max. She gave him that little stuffed giraffe he is holding in the picture and doted on him the whole time we were there.
Max loved his great grandma! She was so good at interacting with him and he smiled and giggled in response.

This is his face watching her.

She made us cake! It is a cake Jarek remembers her making for special occasions
when he was a kid. It was delicious. And, she gave us the recipe.

When a recipe comes out of your grandma's house and looks like this
you know it is going to be good.

I wanted to know more about her life and I thought it would be a nice opportunity for Jarek to learn some of his family history. I asked him to ask her what year she was born (1936) and that was all it took - out came the pictures. And there were some really cool pictures. We learned that she was quite a looker in her young days and she bleached her hair blond. We learned that she had 3 sisters and 6 brothers. We learned that her dad was a blacksmith. We also learned that he spent about 18 months in a concentration camp, but we don't know why. She said that neighbors were watching him and reported him other than that she said she didn't want to talk about it. We also learned that her husband was killed in a auto-train accident 43 years ago. Very sad.



This certainly wasn't the coolest picture she showed us, but I thought it was a funny picture of Jarek's younger and awkward teenage days. She let us take some of the cooler pictures so we can scan them and make a copy for ourselves.

And here they are, 4 generations (sadly with one missing). I think its really cool that Max was able to meet his great grandma.


On a different subject, I have always loved prams. I really wanted to get one but we priced them and they are expensive! So we got a hand-me down stroller instead. Its very nice and we love it. And we do the American thing and attach the car seat to it. They don't do that here. And they think it is the weirdest thing. I have been doing a lot of walking here and I get so envious when I see all the other mom's with their fancy European prams. And I get lots of weird looks when they see my giant contraption of a car seat attached to a stroller. I have pram envy. Below is a picture of Romana's pram next to our stroller just to give an idea of what I am talking about.


Max decided to help us out and save us the looks we get having the car seat attached to the stroller. He decided that he was too big for his car seat. After sitting up like this for about 20 minutes on our walk we decided that the car seat must go. I can't even imagine the stomach muscles that must use to sit like that in a moving stoller.

He loved sitting in the stroller like a big kid!

When we got back to the house Romana was visiting with her two girls. It was fun to spend some time with them. I'm a little jealous of how she can just walk to her parents so the kids can spend a couple of hours with grandma.

Karolina thought it would be fun if Max had a turn in the swing.
So with babicka's help Max had his first swing.

What a nice day! I am really loving my time here.