What do we do if we desperately want to the seaside, but the weather is not even trying? We go to the seaside. Luckily, Latvia has a lot of picturesque sea shores where you can not only swim or take a sunbath, but enjoy white sand under your feet and amazing view.

So, the summer has started. And it’s even pretty warm outside, which is quite nice since the summer has started and we all (I mean us, our family girls) have some new light dresses that we all eager to try on.

Somehow I missed a few months of posting about Marge. But I feel that I should resume doing it, because I won’t remember these things after two or three years. My elder kids often ask about themselves, what they did when they were little like Marge, but I can’t answer most of the questions as I’ve already forgotten a lot of details.

So, speaking of Marge, the first thing I notice when I look through her pictures from the three past months is that she has much more hair now.

Well…

This baby is incredibly cheerful. She always wakes up with a smile. I don’t remember her ever waking up grumpy.
And as it should be, she has very inquisitive mind. She travels on her knees around our place in a very high pace. She can even try to “run away” from me when she puts something uneatable in her mouth as she already knows that she won’t get away with it.

Yep, the story about Milan still isn’t over. This one is about the third day of our trip. We were visiting Sforza castle this day and strolled in it’s park. We are not that kind of people who like visiting historical museums, but we do appreciate beautiful nature scenes, so we headed straight through the castle’s courtyard to the vast park that sprawled behind the Western gates of the castle.

Trip to Milan, Part I
Trip to Milan, Part II

The second day began with a gorgeous colours of a sunrise that was seen through our hotel room window. Marge woke up at a perfect time — 8 o’clock.

Marge tries to repeat sounds after us and says “ko” for a cat (the word “cat” sounds like [‘koshka] in Russian) and says “pti” for birds (the word “birds” sounds like [‘ptici] in Russian). She imitates the sound of a fall with “ba-ba-h”.

She puts things in my hand or somewhere (gives and takes) and tries to stack plastic toy glasses.

Veronika had a fever last night. I thought a little marvel of conversion would cheer her up. So I crocheted this tail of a mermaid for her Snow White doll.

Trip to Milan, Part I

First of all, I have to tell about how did we muster our courage on taking this trip. The truth is, we didn’t. Actually we were planning a whole different trip, and that’s the saddest part of the story. We had already bought tickets to London for a weekend. We were up to visit our friends and buy me a new lens. But apparently, it’s a real trouble to get in London (and is worth loads of money) if you have a status of alien in Latvia. Yep, it is as ludicrous as it sounds, a part of people officially have this status here, which is a result of them (or their parents) moving here in the time period when this place belonged to Soviet Union. Most of them had already got through a procedure of gaining the citizenship of Latvia, though. Well, don’t ask why, but my husband hadn’t. But this is really the first time when it actually mattered. And it was sheer coincidence that we found out before the flight about our need to make a visa for him and we had some time to change our destination (and thanks a lot for this bright idea to our friend, the one from England, as we were ready to lose our money for the tickets as these were of a non-refundable kind).

We have returned from our trip safe and sound. I’m telling this not only because we managed to actually see Milan behind the crowd of shoppers who arrived there for discounts and behind the emigrants who sell quick pods for selfies or exchange colourful thread bracelets for a “donation” for “long live Africa”.