Having grown up in Hamburg, Germany, the abundance of sunshine in NYC* never ceases to amaze me – especially the near guarantee for a clear blue sky right after a major snow storm has passed.

Today was such a beautiful day. The snow on the trees quickly melted down to form bizarre little icy cotton balls. On the ground, the situation was not so pretty: depending on the neighborhood, sidewalks were still a piece of work to maneuver with a stroller. Especially larger intersections had knee high walls of snow blocking the pedestrian crossings because the snow plows kept pushing every crumb to the sides of the streets. Determined to see Bruno (since we missed him last week), we made it over to the Slope anyway and treated the boys to lunch at Perch, an old favorite of Mika and Kai.

* Just compare the first column (‘Average Sunlight’ per day)!

NY Public schools were closed today and Mika was looking forward to 10 – 16” (25 – 40 cm) of snowfall. Unfortunately, our neighborhood wasn’t quite living up to the forecast: only about 6” (15 cm) came down until the late afternoon, but gusty winds made it look and feel more dramatic. Sung worked from home and was able to leave his perpetual conference calls for an hour to romp around with the kids. With temperatures right around freezing, the snow was extremely wet and sticky – perfect material for building snowmen.

Olivia didn’t let her new baby brother mess with a long planned sleepover and came over for an evening (and night) full of big girl fun. She and Mika did science experiments, had dinner and bedtime stories with Tobin and played until 11:30 pm in the dark. Pretty much the same as last time, so we’re bracing ourselves for an early morning. Hopefully the winter hours work in our favor…

The last picture is Mika’s view of Olivia and her new brother Theo. Congratulations again – we’re looking forward to meeting him in person!

BONUS: Mika recorded a song celebrating Olvia’s sleepover (courtesy of T-Pain, of course)
[audio:http://www.minitosu.com/audio/Mika-Sleepover.mp3]

Tobin was a bit bummed this morning that his play date with Bruno got canceled. I tried to cheer him up by visiting Nara – it’s been 2 months since we last saw her and Tobin always liked being around her. Nara is sitting up on her own these days and started on solid foods. Still, Tobin made his point clear that he didn’t want to play with babies today…

In related news, he ditched his diapers altogether and is sleeping through naps and nights accident free. Big boy stuff.

Another fun Thursday morning with Henry: the boys did some band practice, took care of a giant snake (aka a draft stopper from our balcony door), and cooked up a storm for lunch – see above. If only they would fix our lunch as well…

Every now and then our bath toys are taking a break. On some days, the kids give one of their stuffed pals a much needed scrub. On other days, we invent new bath toys. Today we had some fun with surgical gloves from the home improvement bin and a sharpie.

Mika’s German reading and writing class got canceled today on short notice and we took the opportunity to have a rare weekday play date with Luna. The girls played mostly behind closed doors, locking out Tobin and their moms. During dinner time they had their own agenda as well and proved to be rather camera shy.

Tobin was invited to his first love Suko’s 3rd Birthday party. Luckily, the “big girl” still liked him as she did this Summer and he had a blast. He was allowed to check out all of her gifts (i.e. funky-colored German bath soaps) and ate three (!!!) cupcakes in honor of the occasion.

Dear Halmoni, we wish you a happy and sunny Birthday! All the best for a healthy, lucky, and prosperous new year from Mi, Ni, To and Su. Until our package for you arrives in the AM, you can guess your present. Hint: Mika drew it on the back side of your picture (see the second photo)…

Bruno came over for an indoor play date today. We had no desire to set foot into the gusty, 16°F (-8°C) weather that took hold of the city last night. The boys enjoyed tinkering with real- and pretend foods, puzzle animals, instruments, and disassembling the Lego digger for the nth time.

In the past couple of weeks, Tobin has developed new types of games. Of course, he is still in love with all of his diggers and construction equipment, but he has been “finding” imaginary, tiny “babies” that he carries over to me in his cupped hands, instructing me to take good care of them as he transfers the air from his hand into mine. He also lets his stuffed animals speak on their own behalf – in individual voices – and has been pretending to be a cat several times every day (crawling on all fours, scratching my legs, begging for cat food). In the photo above, he just invented a new variation of the game “you can’t cross the gate!”, by lining up all of his play wallet gift cards in a crack of a floor board.

Here’s the latest on Mika’s (English) writing at school. The Kindergarteners have frequent writing workshops where they try to bring a whole narrative to paper. They use some studied common words, a lot of “invented spelling”, and draw matching illustrations to add more details to their stories.

The first story is about Easter (Jan 12, 2010 – 3 pages):
IT WAS EASTER TIME AND WE ALL GOED (= went) INTO THE GARDEN
I WAS EATING A CANDY FROM MY EASTER BAG. TOBIN DID TOO.
WE GOT SOMETHING TO SCRATCH ON.

The second story is about bedtime (Dec 14, 2009 – 2 pages):
ME FEEDING MY CAT. NAME IS LUNA. AND I WAS STILL AWAKE.
I AM IN BED AND I AM SLEEPING.

I don’t know where she got the “zzz” as symbol for sleeping, but love the aerial view of her in bed and Tobin in his crib. She even included the leaf over her bed.