Secret Santa Party

On Tuesday, Claire and I were invited to a Secret Santa party with all of our mom and kid friends.  We bought a gift for the kid whose name we got and we headed off to the party.  

Waiting for the train.  

Having fun on the train.

More fun on the train.

Once we arrived, I changed Claire into a very Christmassy dress.  Soon after, all of the other party guests arrived.  In total, there were 12 moms and 14 kids!  There were moms and kids at the party from Germany, France, England, Ireland, South Africa, Italy, Canada, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the U.S.  Each mom contributed a recipe from their home country to a recipe book which was made by our hostess.  I loved looking through the book to see the different recipes.  I might even try to make one.  Ha! 

After some playing and eating and chatting, it was time to exchange gifts.  Claire received some dishes for her kitchen and was thrilled with her gift!  I have been treated to many bowls of delicious soup since the party.  

Here she is, making some soup and sporting a very fancy hat.

The party was so much fun.  We really have been lucky to meet such wonderful new friends here in Switzerland and it was great to celebrate Christmas with all of them.  

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Location:Party!

Snow!

On Sunday morning, we woke up to see snow covering the mountains that we can see from our apartment. What a view!

Vacation's Over

We are now in the final days of November, which means that we have been living in Switzerland for exactly 6 months. This is incredible to me. It is truly hard to believe how fast time has gone by. For me, the first 5 months seemed like a majorly extended vacation. We were living in a new and fantastic place, going on great day trips and weekend trips, with a couple longer trips thrown in. Claire and I were making new friends and exploring new places each week. The routine that I strictly followed for the first year of Claire's life was nowhere to be seen. Naps, meals, and bedtime happened whenever they fit in between play groups, play dates, and outings. While this was a fun way to spend our first months here, it was also exhausting!

In the past two weeks, it seems as though reality has set in for me. We do indeed LIVE in Switzerland now. This is our home and it is time to start treating it as such. Over the past two weeks, I have made a huge effort to stick to set bedtimes and nap times for Claire, as well as to have all meals and snacks at set times. Play dates have been scheduled around Claire's routine, and not the other way around. As a result, Claire has been sleeping more, eating better, and playing harder.

I have also spent some time looking for a baby sitter so that Gordon and I can have an occasional date night. Date nights are something that have definitely been lacking in our life here. I found some great options for baby sitters, so all that's left to do is set up a night for us to go out. As much as I look forward to going out on a badly needed date with my husband, it's taking me a very long time to work up the courage to leave Claire with a sitter!

My next big task is to find a place to send Claire one morning a week beginning at age 2. I would love for Claire to learn French while we are here and I think that going to a French pre-school is her best bet in that regard. Fortunately, I still have 5 months before she will turn 2. I will probably need every minute of that time to get comfortable with the idea.

This week, our mornings have been spent enjoying what may be the last park days of the year. We have spent our mornings outside in the sunshine, exploring new parks in Vevey and leisurely wandering through the town. It is mornings like these that remind me just how very fortunate I am to have this one-on-one time with Claire. She is developing into such a sweet, silly, and adventurous little girl and I am grateful that I get to be there with her every step of the way.







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Long time, no blog

Last week, Claire and I returned from a month-long trip to the USA.  The trip was fantastic.  We saw many of our friends and family and it felt great to be in a familiar and comfortable place.  After a month away from Gordon, we were both ready to come back to Switzerland.  Last Wednesday, we returned to Vevey after an 8.5 hour flight to Paris, a 5 hour layover in Paris (where I was NOT allowed to bring my stroller through security.  Let me tell you, a 5 hour layover with an 18 month old and no stroller is not for the faint of heart!), a one hour flight to Geneva, and a one hour drive to Vevey.  Claire had a few not-so-great moments at the airport in Paris, but was otherwise a champ.  I am grateful that she is such a good little traveler.

We have now been back in Vevey for a week and we have been keeping busy and having lots of fun.  We are back to daily playdates with friends and I'm back to my twice-weekly French lessons.  It has been great to reconnect with our friends here and to get back to our not-so-new-anymore routine.  I feel like we are finally settling into our "new" apartment.  Great news regarding the apartment:  I used the building's laundry room on Monday to wash our sheets and I used the dryer to dry them.  When I put them in the dryer, I fully expected them to come out only half dry, but to my ultra pleasant surprise, they were completely dry and fluffy when I took them out!

This weekend, we plan to go to France to a ski sale as the ski season is quickly approaching!  I think I will rent for this year because I don't know how much I'll be able to go, but Gordon is definitely going to buy some as he plans to ski often.  Also on the agenda for this weekend is stick shift driving lessons for me.  Our car died a painful death in Italy and we'll get our new, manual transmission car on Friday.  Wish me luck!

Looking Out My Back Door

After a long, busy, and frustrating week, we are finally completely moved into our permanent apartment.  Gordon completed the exit inspection of the old place this morning and handed over the keys.  I am grateful that we had the temporary apartment to stay in, but I am happy to be out of there!  We've only been in our new place for 2 nights and already I feel more at home than I ever did at the old place.  We are right in the middle of Vevey, so everything is very easily accessible.  We have grocery stores, bakeries, playgrounds, and the lake all within a 5 minute walk.  Along with being in the center of Vevey, however, comes the city noise of the cars and buses on the street, but I think we'll get used to that pretty quickly.  It's truly a small price to pay for the convenience that it affords.  And the view!  We have a fabulous view from our apartment.  Here I sit at our dining room table, writing this blog post, and looking out my back door with a view of Lake Geneva.  And on the other side of Lake Geneva, I can see France!  I love being able to see France from my dining room table.  These are the things that remind me each day how fortunate we are to be in the place we are.  

This week is only going to get better because tomorrow, my mom will board her plane in Chicago to come for a visit!  She will arrive in Geneva on Wednesday and I can not wait to see her.  I miss her so very much and I am excited to be able to show her around this beautiful country.  Wednesday can't come soon enough!  Until then, I will keep organizing our new apartment and continue to make it into our home.

Moving

On Friday, we completed the entrance inspection of our permanent apartment and the keys were handed over to us.  Finally, we were about to begin the process of settling in.  This had been a long time coming.

Inspection finished, we brought a car full of our belongings over to the new apartment and began moving in.  Finally!

Early Saturday morning, we took Claire to our friend's house where she would spend the day.  While Claire played with our friend's kids, we went to IKEA and bought 3 armoires (there are no closets in most Swiss apartments) and then we rented an IKEA truck with which to transport the armoires and some other furniture.  We picked up a dining room table and chairs as well as a sofa that we found on the Swiss version of Craigslist.  Thank goodness for IKEA trucks!  It was so convenient and so inexpensive.  After lugging everything up to our apartment, which is on the 6th floor (thank goodness for elevators!), we returned to pick up Claire.  This was the very first time that Claire has been watched by anyone but Gordon or me since we moved to Switzerland and I was very nervous about how she would react.  But she did great!  She started playing as soon as we arrived and didn't cry at all when we left her.  She played hard all day and even took a nap there.  It was very nice to be alone with Gordon, even though we were doing some hard work and it was really great to know that Claire is still fine without one of us at her side.  On Sunday morning, we had planned to take our bed over to the new apartment.

This was a job that Claire could not be present for, so we took her to meet up with one of our friends at the park so they could play while we moved the bed.  As I put Claire into her carseat, I put the keys on top of the car.  Then I got into the car and we drove off.  It wasn't until we had dropped Claire off and returned to the apartment that I realized that I never took the keys off of the roof of the car.  We scoured the streets all along the path we drove, but the keys were nowhere to be found.  I felt sick.  I could not believe I had been so stupid.  Nearly everything in Switzerland is closed on Sunday, so we were unable to get into the new apartment all day.  Because of my stupidity, we lost an entire day of moving.  On Monday morning, I was able to get in touch with our building's concierge and he was able to give me our third key.  I have been checking the police station daily, but our keys have not shown up.  By the end of this week, if the keys don't show up, we are going to have to pay 500 francs (about 700 dollars) to have the locks changed on the apartment.  What a terribly expensive mistake I made, monetarily and time-wise.  Fortunately, we have until this coming Monday to get everything out of the temporary apartment.  I have been working like a crazy woman this week to get everything done so that we are ready to go this weekend.  I have been putting together our armoires, taking car loads of our things over to the apartment, buying the necessities for the apartment, and sneaking in some play time with friends for Claire.  I am so tired, but it will all be worth it in the end.

On Tuesday, I took Claire over to Gordon's boss's house for the day.  His boss's wife offered to watch Claire so I could work at the apartment.  I was nervous because this was a new person for Claire and there weren't going to be any children there.  Nevertheless, I brought her over there, hoping for the best, and to my surprise, she did great!  She immediately wanted to explore the house and play with their cat.  I quietly exited the house and I was able to do so much work at the apartment that I could never have gotten done with Claire there.  When I picked her up, the baby-sitter told me that Claire did great and had a lot of fun.  They live out in the country and they have a lot of fun things to do out there.  They went raspberry picking and Claire ate every single ripe raspberry that they picked!  The baby-sitter took Claire to see the cows that live across the street from their house and Claire enjoyed mooing back and forth to the cows.  Claire even took a nap at their house!  I was so happy to have such a great report when I picked her up.  So happy, in fact, that I'm bringing her back there tomorrow.

Hopefully, by Monday, I will have some pictures of our new apartment to share on here.  I can not wait to be living there.  It really is a great place and I think that we will be happy there.

Playgroups

This week is the week that all of the play groups and activities begin again for the year.  It happened that the week after we moved to Switzerland was the last week for most of these activities before they took a summer break.

So yesterday, we went to a Kindermusic class.  I was excited about this class because I thought it would be a great opportunity for Claire to be in a structured group setting.  The class, however, did not live up to my expectations.  There were far too many children in the class and it was complete chaos.  Also, it took us 25 minutes to get there and 25 minutes to get home when the class was only 45 minutes!  Fortunately, we had not yet enrolled in the class and I decided afterwards that we would not enroll.  One great thing that came out of this class was that I met a mom from Indiana who just moved to Switzerland a month ago.  She has a one year old daughter and we are planning to get together to play tomorrow.

Today, we tried another playgroup that is right here in Vevey at an English church.  After a short 5 minute walk, we arrived at the church and were immediately welcomed by the leader of the group.  Claire was delighted to see all of the fun toys in the room and got right down to playing.  Lots of other moms and kids arrived shortly thereafter.  Claire played with play-doh for the first time, she colored a picture of a butterfly, she enjoyed the music time, and story time, and she definitely made some little friends while we were there.  My heart smiles so big when I see her walk up to another kid and hand them a toy while babbling in the toddler speak that they both seem to understand.  She still gets overwhelmed when the rest of the kids get crazy, but she seems to enjoy the company of other kids much more now than ever before.  After 2 hours, the session was over and we headed home for lunch and a nap.  We will definitely enroll in this playgroup.

This weekend is a big weekend for us as we are finally moving into our permanent apartment!  I am so happy to get out of this temporary apartment.  On Saturday, one of my friends will watch Claire for the day while Gordon and I begin the move.  I hope that we'll be sleeping in the new place Sunday night.

Claire had her first Swiss doctor appointment this Monday.  To my surprise, her appointment was pretty much exactly the same as her appointments in the USA.  The doctor said she's healthy and right on target for everything.  She got 2 shots and took them like a champ.  It seems that doctors are the same everywhere because we had to wait 45 minutes for the doctor to see us!

With all of these activities beginning and us moving into our permanent apartment, it feels like our summer-long vacation is ending and real life in Switzerland is beginning.  I hope the real life here is as good as the summer was!