It’s not true, but it is. I took a look at the blog today and found that it’s been almost three months since the last post. Oops. Despite this, you all did a great job at clicking and reading the posts over here – the stats tell me there have been more views than ever before, so thank you for this! But I guess now it´s really about time to post something and let you know what´s been going on the last months, especially since not everybody is following the stories and posts on our social media.
So we are not particularly bored as of June 3rd this year. As you probably already know we expanded our family and welcomed Mila, who is almost 4 months old now, to our family. I temporarily put the blog on the sidelines at her expense as well. And rightly so. Family simply has to come first, and social media already requires some valuable time, let alone blogging and writing longer posts.
Meanwhile, Mila has become a true little traveler. From Germany, where the young lady curiously peeked into the world, we took her to Slovenia at the age of six weeks. We would have gone earlier, but it didn’t work out due to the German bureaucracy. But let’s leave the unpleasant things out of this post. Being back home was really nice. We enjoyed our pretty much carefree hot summer days between Ljubljana, Piran and Kranjska Gora, with friends and family and got some visits from France as well which was very nice. Also Lu finally came for his long-awaited summer vacation, which is significantly shorter in German schools compared to Slovenian ones. So, we had a lot going on actually. On the last day of August, the time of farewell came though and this time we returned to Germany with our Defender. It felt too good to be back in our Landy! 12 hours of driving were no problem at all. I admit, I am a little proud of Lu for being able to stand such long drives without a smartphone or iPad. Well, Mila did awesome too. Her first long journey to Slovenia was already heroic (9 hours and over 1000 km in one go), and this time we had a pleasant drive without crying in the opposite direction too. We only spent a couple of days in Germany and moved once Lu started school again.
Then the three of us swapped rainy and windy northern Germany with sunny northern France. Again, we did one long drive the first day, this time around 800km, through the Netherlands and Belgium all the way to the French city of Calais, where we started our two-week road trip around Normandy and Brittany. Our first real road trip with Mila and also the first one with our new rooftop tent on the Defender. It was great. It was different than usual, of course. But it was just great. We didn’t complicate things, we didn’t pack “half a house”, but only took the essentials, the weather was mostly favorable, there were no more crowds of tourists, and the landscape of the northern France is simply beautiful. More about this adventure and what it is like to travel & camp with a baby in such a way is coming up soon in a separate post on the blog.
Slowly driving the coastal roads we finally reached our final destination for a while, the beautiful island of Ile de Re, where we´ve been enjoying hanging out with our French part of the family for around 10 days now already. There is already a post about it on the blog for those who are interested to read it, plesse browse the menu above. Since we are staying here for a while more, you can also follow the stories and posts on IG and FB.
Mila will be 4 months old on Sunday. Mila doesn’t have a baby room. She doesn’t even have her own bed. She doesn’t have a play corner with 1001 toys. Instead, she has already driven over 4,000 kilometers in a total of 6 countries. She has a bunch of exciting experience, she is surrounded by three languages and meeting new people on daily basis. She spends most of her days outside, even when the sun is not shining. She dipped her tiny feet in the Mediterranean Sea as well as in the Atlantic. And she has parents who are next to her 24/7. Parents who don’t have to go to the office at seven in the morning. Parents who are not under the stress of everyday life. Well, at least 95% of the time not. I know it’s a privilege, both for her and for us. I also know it won’t be like that forever. That’s why we enjoy it all even more now.
And even if she will not remember any of this, I’m sure all of the above contributes to her happiness and overall well being. I don’t know what we did to deserve such an “easy” child, who not only sleeps a lot, is calm during long car drives and practically never cries, but on top of that charms everybody with an infectious smile and sparkling eyes as well. We are certainly grateful for that and appreciate this pretty much free and effortless parenting for now.
So what is next? We return to Germany in mid-October. Again, just for a couple of days, to pick up Lu and head north together. Well, at least that’s the plan. This year, however, nothing is completely 100% sure, so we also have a plan B. And there is also something new – if all goes well, I will finally move back to Slovenia in November, after almost 11 years in Germany. More on that some other time. So I hope I manage to write a couple of posts abour Bretagne before the big move, but they should definitely be online before the winter comes. For now, I’m sending sunny greetings to all my readers and wish you all a lovely colorful Autumn!
