Knee-walking

Clara hasn't walked again since she took those 3 steps the other day. Instead, she's discovered 'knee-walking'. A compromise between crawling and walking, and handy when you've got something to carry in your hand.

Nanny

Clara had her first day with her new nanny today. She came to spend a few hours with us in the afternoon. She came at lunchtime and after lunch we played a little at home and then we all went for a walk down to the park. There is a large playground there with baby swings (the little playground near our house, unfortunately, doesn't have baby swings), and Klari-neni (the nanny) pushed Clara on the swings for about half an hour, and two older girls came over and 'helped' too. Clara coped very well. She was a bit clingy, especially at first, but she was quite happy on the swing with all the attention she was getting. Andras and I took a little walk around the playground where she could still see us and she was ok. She called out 'Mummy' a lot, but I think that's because it's one of her favourite words at the moment, so she just likes to use it a lot anyway, she does it all the time at home too.

Anyway, the nanny is coming back on Monday and Tuesday for a little bit in the mornings, then we're going to go to the cottage from Wednesday to Sunday. The following week, I think the nanny will start coming for half days, which will give Andras and I some time to finish getting the house organized, and then from Wednesday of that week we start work.

All in all, I think it went well, and I think the nanny will be really good. She was very attentive to Clara and talked to her non-stop the whole time they were playing. I think it will be hard for Clara at first to get used to being away from me, but she'll be in good hands.

Walking!!

Clara walked today! She took 3 steps without holding on to anything! Yay! I was such a proud Mummy! So happy and also so sad at the same time. Thrilled, of course, to see her accomplish it, but sad that this is the end of her babyhood and that she's growing up so quickly! She was very proud of herself and at the end she fell into Daddy's arms with a big 'proud-of-herself smile'. (Actually, Andras reports that she took one step 2 days ago and then fell, but since I wasn't there to witness it, I'm not counting it!!)

In other news, we hired a nanny today. We interviewed two more today in addition to the one on Friday, and had a 4th scheduled for tomorrow, but after today's interviews we picked one of the ones from today. She had been our first choice before the interviews, and the trainer at the nanny agency had recommended her as the best choice in her opinion. So after interviewing her and it going well, we pretty much decided. We interviewed the other one right after, and she was also good, probably a second choice and possibly will be a substitute in case the first one gets sick or anything. The one we picked (who, incidentally, is named Klara) gave all the 'right' answers and was also very personable. When she arrived, her attention went immediately to Clara and she took some time to interact with her before turning her attention to us, which I liked. And as a bonus, she speaks pretty good English although she said it's been about 10 years since she used it so she's a bit rusty. Anyway, we're pleased. She's coming on Friday for a couple of hours to spend time with us all together, to get to know Clara a little bit and for Clara to get to know her. Not sure yet what we'll do, I'd like it to be a special fun activity so Clara will have a positive association with her from the start.

Speaking of fun activities, yesterday we went to the public pool park. It's a large park on the island in Budapest, with 4 or 5 large pools surrounded by grass parkland and a playground, etc. We spent the whole day there and Clara loved it! She went swimming with us for a bit and spent the rest of the afternoon crawling around naked in the grass. She loves to be naked and she loves to be outside, and she loves to be around lots of people, so it was like heaven for her. She crawled all over to visit all the neighbours in their little patches of grass, and found all kinds of interesting sticks and leaves to play with, birds to chase, and people to wave at. It was such a nice day! (Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures as theft is a problem in Budapest so we didn't take our camera there.)

Anyway, enough fun, time to get back to unpacking this week! :(

Moved!

Well, we've finally made it! We have completed the move to Budapest (though not the unpacking), have found a new apartment that we like, have gotten some new furniture and have it assembled, and are interviewing nannies. School starts for us in 2 and a half weeks, and for students 2 weeks later.

Clara has settled in amazingly, we're so proud of her! She is quite happy to go to sleep alone in her new room, whether it's for her nighttime sleep or daytime naps. We're working on getting her to sleep in until 6am, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. She likes her room and the house in general - the living room has space to ride her Bobby Car around inside, and from the terrace she can watch the birds in the garden. We also have our own little garden space, though we haven't used it much yet as we don't have anything there yet, it's just a little patch of grass and thorny twigs. We got a sandbox but no sand yet, still trying to find some, and we need to get a rake to get rid of the thorns. Hopefully before summer is over!

We've signed up with a nanny agency and had our first interview yesterday. Three more on Monday and Tuesday. The one yesterday was good, she's great from our perspective: she answered all our questions just as I would have liked, she's trained as a pediatric nurse, and she has years of experience working with young children. Her only drawback is that she seems a bit reserved and serious, perhaps not as 'fun' as Clara would most enjoy, so from Clara's perspective she may not be ideal. We'll see how the others are.

The move has not gone at all smoothly. In addition to the stresses from before, we've also run into some potential snags with Andras' citizenship status. It's not clear whether he will really qualify for the tax-free status that we were promised, due to his Hungarian citizenship, in which case our income will greatly decrease. We'll see. We've been in touch with some lawyers and are now waiting for everyone to return from summer holidays to sort it all out. Then of course there's all the little annoyances like trying to get the phone and internet and everything sorted out. There's always problems with that sort of thing, aren't there? Turns out that in our neighbourhood we have to choose between high-speed internet OR cable TV, we can't have both. Oh well. Of course, we've chosen internet!

We're starting to get settled though. Most of the rooms are now at least livable, if not quite unpacked. We've located some stores where we can buy basic necessities, though the shopping here is not great. It's hard to find things and goods expire almost immediately (in fact, when Andras was shopping for chips the other day he noticed that several of the bags expired in 2006!). When we get the nanny, she'll be assigned daily market trips. Until then, we're having to go grocery shopping ourselves every other day, which is a time-consuming pain. And until we have a car, it's very inconvenient to get the things we need to 'set up house'.

The weather has been good, though, not too hot as is usual in Budapest. It's perfect summer weather - hot but not too hot, humid but not too humid, with lots of thundershowers in between to cool things down and provide entertainment (Clara likes to say 'BOOM' when the thunder sounds!). Our apartment is surrounded by green trees, which is lovely, and we have a nice large terrace.

Oh, I hear Clara is up from her nap. Will have to go.