New Bike

Ilianna is either a real Slagman or a real Dutch girl, she just loves to bike! At school, when they play outside in the morning, or in the hallway in the afternoon, she is always biking! It's been nice weather here lately, except yesterday and today, and we got Ilianna's trike out of the shed and she's been biking every day lately.

On Sunday the three of us went for a walk in town and it became obviously clear that her trike is getting too small for her. We had already decided we were going to buy Ilianna a bike this spring, but we decided that it was needed soon, so Tuesday morning Ilianna and I went to the bike store in town and picked out a new bike for her! We had one in mind that we had seen the week before, but it was a bit on the small side for her, so we got one that's a bit bigger, and it will do her well for at least two seasons!!

She is as proud as a peacock with her new bike! It's a real challenge sometimes to get her to put it away and come back in the house! And even though it's a little big yet, she handles it great and you have to practically sprint to keep up with her!!!

Some nice pictures of Ilianna

Here are some nice pictures I've taken in the last few weeks.

The first two are pretty funny. Ilianna likes wearing her hat and mittens, even inside the house:















The next ones are of Ilianna playing with the kids I babysit. Here she is playing "doctor" with Johanna: They switched a couple of times and took turns being the patient. Very cute.

Here is Ilianna with Justina:

Here's Ilianna with Gerjella:















Here she is with Helena:















And here is Ilianna with Gerjella and Helena, making music and having a great time! You can tell that she really loves these girls!

Ilianna's "new" school

Well, Ilianna has been going to her new school now for about 5 weeks, and is really loving it! Last week thursday we brought her there because we had an appointment with our contact person at the school. When we drove up to the school Ilianna said, "There's school!", in Fries of course ("dêr skoalle").

I posted some pictures of the outside of Ilianna's school on a previous blog, and here are a couple pictures of inside:

This is her "classroom", and in the picture below you see all three of her teachers, Nynke, who is standing, Mieke, who is sitting down on the right hand side, wearing glasses, and Jellie (pronounced Yelly), who has a little blond girl on her lap.

This following picture is of the hall that the kids play in every afternoon for a half an hour. Ilianna usually sits in the car or on the trike.

Last week when we brought her to school, we got to see first hand how much she likes going there. She ran to her classroom and when she was there she looked at everyone and said their name, so in her own way, greeted them. Her face was just lit up! It was really wonderful to see!

It's been a challenge for the 3 teachers to get used to Ilianna, especially since Ilianna has hit the "terrible twos" the last few weeks, and Ilianna has also had to get used to the way things are done there, but it seems to be going very well. It's nice to know that she is happy, and that makes it easier to let her go 3 mornings a week!