I love you, Du-das!

Lukas loves Alex. Sometimes he doesn't even like to get up in the mornings if Alex hasn't hugged him yet.

And the affection seems to be contageous. Everything that Lukas does Alex absolutely MUST do, and when we pick his big brother up from school (after a mere four hours), Alex smothers him with wet kisses and super sweet hugs. It looks as if they've been apart for weeks.

In huge news, Lukas experienced his first (pop) kiss! How do I know this? Because I walked in on him kissing his little Belgian / Korean friend Julie on Tuesday. When we talked about it afterwards (how could we NOT?), I discovered that it also happened while Julie was at our place for a visit a few weeks back.

Now, I knew that this day would come, but I thought it was a few years down the line! According to Lukas, Julie "always wants to do what she wants to do [kiss], and never what he wants to do what he wants to do [play]". Now most of Lukas' good friends are girls and he has never shown any physical affection towards them, so I kind of suspect that he wasn't the one who initiated it... yet at the end of the day I guess it doesn't really matter who made the first move. But how do four-year-olds know to go into a separate room and close the door??? That's what I struggle with.

Meanwhile, little Alex is growing up faster than I can snap photos. This week he walked all the way around our (large) block with Felix and I. He's quite the little athlete! When a couple jogged by us during our walk Alex took off running, saying one of his new favorite phrases, "fast, fast!". Alexander speaks (or at least comprehends) two languages fairly fluently now, "Flugzeug!", "aufpassen", "gefährlich!", etc. Best of all, he's finally saying "Lukas", although it sounds more like "Du-das". Alex is also our little destroyer, and has now stuffed change into our car CD player, dropped a cordless phone in the bathtub (while Lukas was in it!), smeared my mascara on our South African Nguni hide carpet, threw the dog's €10 food bowl on our tiled foyer floor -- of course smashing it beyond recognition, and that's just within the past week.

Most people say that the second child tends to take more risks, and ours gets hurt - really hurt - about once a week. Last week Alex fell on the sidewalk and got a bloody lip. Today he closed the child gate improperly and went flying down a half dozen tile stairs. It seems to have just startled him, but I think I nearly went into cardiac arrest. And yet I should be used to this by now with Alexander. For him they created the saying, "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

If you want to see something adorable, watch both boys as they sing their new favorite song, the Celebration Mix of Keenan's "Wavin' Flag" in full World Cup form. ´Which reminds me, Lukas recently insisted while we were at the mall that we find him a "Deutschland" jersey. So cute!

Well, the kids will be getting up in a few hours, so I had better get to bed. Take care and thanks for stopping in!

~Liz