Dear Sammy - 11 months

Dear Sammy

You are one month shy of your first birthday. Time is flying so fast and you're going to be a toddler so soon. But who cares, you will always be our baby. :)

Oh man this blog post is so late, but its better than never.

You're getting so confident at assisted walking. You're able to put one foot in front of the other and when someone is behind "chasing" you, we are so astonished at how quickly you can "run"!

We brought you to Berlin last week and you were such a trooper! You managed the 7-hrs car ride to Berlin and 5.5-hr car ride back to Stuttgart really well. You slept, ate, read your books and just talked the whole way.

During the last hour when we were stuck in heavy traffic in Berlin, you had enough and yelled quite a lot. That was pretty stressful. But we think that for an 11-month old baby, you were really calm and easy-peasy for the first 6-hrs already. Well done you! :)

We know that we are so blessed with your good nature cos you were so co-operative during the many hours when you had to sit in your stroller while Daddy and I went on walking tours in Berlin / stayed out late for dinner. You just slept on the go and enjoyed the sights, while charming people who met you.

You're becoming very smart young man! Now that you're crawling confidently, we can play crawling games with you such that you have to "catch" Daddy / Mummy. We would disappear around the corner from the bed and before you crawled over, we would climb onto the bed and re-appear on the other side. After "tricking" you once or twice, you no longer climb to the end of the bed to see if we are there but you'd rather just stand up at the side of the bed to see if we were lying down on the bed!

Daddy and Mummy were both in stitches when we saw how your brain just clicked and you realized that we were playing games with you!

Oh boy, we're so looking forward to doing more things with you! Of course we will miss your helpless baby stage, but we know that things are just getting more interesting! 

The past month was tough for Mummy when I suddenly developed acute back pain. It was so painful that I couldn't lift you up nor do anything with you really. And the weird thing is that it just came out of the blue, while I was hanging the clothes out to dry.

Thank God that the pain has since gotten much better but Mummy has to pay more attention to how she lifts you up / interact with you. It's not easy but we'll trust God to heal Mummy completely. :)

Ok sweetie, we're so blessed to have you in our little family. We know that we're so blessed to have you in our lives. May the Lord continue to watch over you and may your little heart know the Lord at a young age.

Love
Mummy & Daddy

Practising your walking

 Accompanying Daddy for a summer festival at one of his client's place

 You smell sooooo good after a shower! (even better than usual)

With the Gunzenhausers. Love this photo cos you actually smiled when I said "cheese"!

 Finally meeting up with Godma after she came back from her 5-week vacation in the U.S.

 Love your look of contentment while pushing your "toy" aka laundry bag

 Hanging out with your Opa when Mummy was recuperating from her back pain

 After an intital "I don't like sand" phase, you're happy playing in sand now! 

 "Mummy do you want that ball? If not I will eat it!"  

 That was the only position I could hold you - lying down