My Oma

Can I take a minute and tell you about my Oma? I think this post has been long overdue. I LOVE my Oma. She's the best sport. She will play tea party with me, swing with me, read to me...you name it...she'll do it. (Remember the water slides from the last post?) She's actually the one who introduced me to the zoo for the first time and is always willing to make a trek up there.



Everything I know about Oma is happy. Her house is filled with love and all kinds of unusual knick knacks that she lets me play with. I love her Russian wood eggs that she lets us pour out all over her floor by what feels like the hundreds. This last time up there she let me play with all these great rag dolls that she has. She is the first to pull out art stuff for us to play with. I don't think any of us cousins can think of AquaDoodle without thinking of Oma! (Actually I don't know if we'd even know what AquaDoodle was without her!) She also got these great tunnels for us to play with and always lets us take them outside and rough house in them. She goes out of her way to show us interesting things and make sure we learn about culture. All of her kids (the grown ups) know about art and musicals and classical music. She keeps making sure we get exposed to it too! I think she makes sure to be silly every day though to make sure there are still giggles in her and Apa's house!

Oh and my Oma loves to dance. Apa takes her dancing all the time. But she also loves to just move to the music and help us just move to the music. She's the first to sing or hum along or just stand up and start dancing.

I've been thinking about my Oma a lot lately because well, things are changing. Clear back when we were living in Oma and Apa's house, Oma and Apa came home early from their church assignment. Mommy and Daddy told me that it was because my Oma is sick. I don't really understand because she's still my same Oma at least to me. She has what the grown ups call "Alzheimer's". She's been really incredible during these last two years though. She's gone EVERYWHERE talking about how she is sick but that she still has a lot of life left. And it's true. We've done SO MUCH since she's supposedly been sick which has been my whole life! I love her and I'm glad that she's got a lot of "life after diagnosis". We're not done making memories but I just wanted everyone else to know that I have the best Oma in the world.