Vigo's eyes can finally be seen again, since Vigo gave himself one of his famous haircuts last week. He's had lots of compliments on the cut from the other kids at school.
Our calm little winter solstice party went really nicely. Vigo and I made bite-sized bottle cap cookies by using a bottle cap for a cookie cutter.
We all dressed up and walked up to the top of the hill in the park, where we discovered a couple of other groups, who were getting little bonfires going.
Vigo is eagerly beginning to plan his own birthday party, which is more than a month away. I won't give out any details yet, though!
Vigo's German is starting to blossom since we got a TV. We let him watch some cartoons in the morning before school every day, now. He still enjoys Caillou as much as he did when he was three.
We had a really nice Christmas with Erik's older sister Iris in Dessau. Iris is Erik's father's daughter from a first marriage, so we also got to meet Iris's mother, Berbel. Berbel made a delicious herring and beet salad for the festivities along with what seemed like a bottomless supply of homemade cookies! Vigo didn't mind too much not having other kids to play with and spent hours and hours putting together his new Lego set. I had an especially great time on Christmas Eve, when Iris and I walked through the dark woods to the boat house on the river where some of her friends were having mulled wine around a fire outside.
Erik and Vigo and I made Dan and Iris each a board game about themselves. Vigo was very excited to give these presents and he said something really funny about them:
"We made your presents ourselves. But don't worry, they look very professional."
Here's the game of Iris. I forgot to get a photo of Dan's.
On Christmas Day, everyone except for Vigo and I went to the opera. The Show was Fidelio and the production was set in a WWII concentration camp. We figured if we took Vigo to see that for his first opera experience, we'd never get him inside an opera house again.
A week or so after Christmas, I took Vigo to see a special kid showing of Hansel and Gretel at the Deutche Oper here in Berlin. He got a little bit scared about the witch in the first part and kind of wanted to go home at intermission. Here's a picture of him worrying about the fates of poor Hansel and Gretel during the break:
Once the witch actually come on and wasn't just peeking out ominously from behind the trees, he was fine and he really loved the show. He's excited to go back. Our next show will be Swan Lake in February. Here are a couple pictures from the show we saw, including the witch. The singing in this show was just super, too.
We had a free ice skating rink near our apartment for the holidays, but unfortunately we only managed to go to it one time. We also got a couple of sledding nights in, even though I wasn't able to find a proper Berlin-style sled because all of the stores were completely sold out. Here's a picture of Vigo and one of his closest friends, Leander, at the skating rink, and sledding with another of his closest friends, Edward.
We're all still having a great time getting to know Berlin, but we're also very excited to be able to make a qick visit back to Somerville!
