Ninth and tenth month

Hi everyone,

sooo, it's been more than month but we're back. We were quite busy with arrangements around buying our new house and moving in. We moved one month ago and are very happy in our new home. Unfortunately, I haven't taken any pictures of outside of the house or garden yet, hopefully I'll do it soon and add photos in the next post. I also have to take a camera with me for the walk and take some pictures of the village and countryside around. It's really beautiful here. We had quite typical fall weather in the past weeks, with rain and cloudy sky, but hopefully sun will show up more often in the upcoming days. We also had our first snow last week, but it didn't last even until the dusk.

During those two months Karolina started to crawl on all fours and recently discovered standing as well. We have a staircase in our house, so she is on the stairs frequently and can even climb all the way up to the first floor (with our assistance of course). Her first tooth is slowly growing into its full size. We had our ten month checkup recently and she is now slightly over 8 kg (~18 pounds). I think she likes the house a lot because it's so much more space here and so many things that she can discover. I'm looking forward to spring and summer when we'll be able to be in the garden as much as we want.

Well, that's pretty much all for this time. I'll try to post something before Christmas, which reminds me that I have to figure out all the presents soon! So, you can look at the photos and I'm going to browse internet for some gift ideas :-)

See you soon!

Photos / Fotky

Karolina's seventh and eighth month

Hello all,

so I was finally able to catch up with real age of our daughter, yay :-) So, what happened during those two months? We spent great four days with our friends on vacation in Austria, in a small village  Podersdorf am See. It's located on the shores of Lake Neusiedler, close to the borders with Hungary. It was only two-hour car ride from Brno and yet you get very different landscape and experience. This area belongs to Burgenland state in Austria, which is known for great wine. We tasted some wines there and bought a few bottles for special occasions, so we can confirm the wive is really good :-) The area around the lake is perfect for biking and is also popular for bird watching. The lake itself is clean and it feels like you are at the sea. It's quite windy there, so sports like kiting and windsurfing are number one.

We had a very good time there and after that we spent quite a big part of summer at our parents. They enjoyed time with Karolina and we appreciated more pleasant environment with house and garden, much better than apartment in hot Brno.

In August, we attended an intensive week of swimming lessons. It was great and Karolina liked it so much. We learned how to operate with baby in the water and also how to prepare it for dip into the water. After this course we had a break and then two weeks ago we started to swim again regularly once a week. There was a photographer present at one of the lessons, so you can find nice photos of me and Karolina in the album below.

Last but not least, Karolina started to crawl last week. It's quite fun, her most favourite place to play is under the desk, where Josef works. So, we must be really cautious about her, especially when she is suspiciously quiet :-) There is a video of her crawling and also two videos from swimming lesson.

Well, that's about it. Today we had an eight month check at the doctor, so I can give you some numbers: weight 7 630 g (16.8 pounds), hight 68 cm (26.8 inches).

Have a great fall and see you in a month!

Photos / Fotky

Fifth and sixth month

Hello y'all,

I hope you are all enjoying great summer time. It's been some time since last post. I'm actually quite late with this one since Karolina is already more than seven months old. When writing this I have to go back to my notes because I don't remember what was two months ago :-)

So, what happened since the last post? Karolina has become quite active and skilled in playing on her belly. She started to rotate and also experiment with turning from back to belly. Besides laughing a lot she also tries to say simple syllables like "abu" or "baba" (common basic sounds of Czech language). 

We attended another wedding of Josef's friend from high school and also went for a weekend trip to the mountains with group our volleyball friends. It was a lot of fun, we rented whole cabin since it was around 50 people there... half of it were children. We were hiking every day, with beautiful nature and typical Czech mountain cabins around.

The big news is that we are currently in the process of buying our very first house. We are excited about it and hopefully should be moving during October. The house is in a small village not far from the city where we currently live. So we can still be in touch with our friends and have a comfort of everything that the second biggest city in the Czech Republic offers. So, now we finally have a place to accommodate our potential guests and we are looking forward to visits!

All right, that's all for now. I hope I'll have time to complete another post soon, you can expect photos from our vacation in Austria and also see me and Karolina in the swimming lessons!

Photos / Fotky

Fourth month with trip to Poland

Hi everyone,

we are back with a short story and a lot of photos :-) Fourth month of our daughter Karolina was full of fun and she experienced her first trip abroad. We attended a wedding of our friends Kasia and Chris, which took place in Poznan, Poland.

It was supposed to be a five-hour drive from my parents' house to Poznan. Unfortunately, we hit a traffic jam on the highway in Poland caused by a bad car accident. We found out later there were seven casualties. So at the end, we spent nine hours in the car, including stops for feeding and changing diapers. It was quite a journey for such a little baby but she managed well and we safely arrived to our destination.

We took both our moms to help us with the baby, so we could enjoy a wedding and be with our friends for a bit. It was great to see the both of them again, as well as their families - we stayed in Chris parents' home in Alabama for a week around New Year's Eve in 2012. It felt like we saw each other just last week and not half a year ago. Although I had my camera with me, I didn't take almost any pictures from actual wedding... I had a baby to take care of, the wedding to enjoy, so I better left it to the professional photographer. Maybe later I'll put some additional pictures into the album, once I get them from Kasia. The journey back to Czech was without any problems and we were happy to be back to our routine :-)

Other than that, nothing too adventurous happened. Karolina has started to be more responsive and playful, she is grabbing things, smiles a lot and since the weather has been nice since March, we were finally able to take her out of stroller in the forest near our apartment. This album is a collection of photos where most of them don't have any description - they are just random moments captured on camera. I have already started to prepare fifth month's batch and I hope that within a month (or two :-) there will be another post.

A little teaser... Karolina will appear with earrings and there will be another wedding :-)

Have a great summer and see you soon!

Photos / Fotky

New adventures

We hope that you all are enjoying beautiful springtime as we do. Here is another load of photos from our everyday life. Since the last time Karolina has grown up to 59 cm (23 inches) and her weight is now over 5 kg (11 pounds). She is now 3 months old and it's the sweetest little girl. Every day is exciting and she learns something new. It’s amazing how quickly she develops, she smiles a lot, trying to talk and has started to grab things. She enjoys her moments in the crib and in a new playpen, it’s so much fun to watch her play.

When she was almost 2 months old we went to the ceremony of welcoming to the community in my hometown (Koprivnice). It was Karolina’s first longer trip by car, around 1h 40 mins, and she managed perfectly. For the whole ceremony (~ 20 mins) I fooled her with my little finger - she was sucking it to keep herself calm - while other babies had to go out crying. She does not want a pacifier at all so this is the only trick we have in case of emergencies. And finally we have some nice photos of all three of us, so overall a successful trip :-) Since then we have been traveling to both our parents' homes without any problems.

When she was 10 weeks old she had her first sleepover outside home, when we went to visit our parents for Easter and again she did great. We have more challenging trip to Poland planned for the next week, when our friends from USA are getting married, so hopefully it’ll work out great as well. We are going to take two babysitters (both grand-moms) so it should be fine :-) Not much else is happening nowadays, Josef goes riding horses about once a week and I keep taking photos, so next post will be coming soon!

Photos / Fotky

Moving to Czech Republic and first weeks of Karolina

This a first post from hopefully many to come for our friends in different parts of the world which we got to know in USA and who we miss so much. But of course as well for anyone wanting to learn a little something about Czech and how life here is.

In late September last year, we have moved to our home country, after 4 wonderful years in the land of the free. It's been a great experience and the people we had a chance to meet were definitely the best part of the years. That and all the places and parks we had a change to visit :-) But times are changing and since we were expecting family, we decided to stay a little bit closer to our families and give them a chance to see our baby more often and not just over the internet.

We moved to Brno, the second biggest city in Czech, about 350,000 people altogether. both me and Gabriela went to college here and worked here before moving to USA in 2011. I kept the same job I got in the USA, since our company (Liferay) is international and offered me to continue working with them even after moving to Czech. After all, we have offices in Spain, Germany, Hungary, UK and several people working from various places in Europe from home office, so I'm not the first to work remotely.