We try to go on an “adventure” every week. This doesn’t have to be something super special but it takes us out of the area where we live and exposes us to new impressions and experiences. Here come my favorite places to go at the moment.

1 – Camels at Weil im Schönbuch

We LOVE to visit the camels at camel farm Weil im Schönbuch. It is a lovely hike from the car park to the enclosure. Most of the trails are paved. Only a short part leads you down to a small pond isn’t paved but it is manageable with the stroller, too.

It is an easy 3 km walk that takes us around 1.5 hours to complete (with a snack break on a bench and a stop at the enclosure to check out the camels). You even pass the pretty tree top houses of Oase Weil.

At the moment this is our most favorite excursion for small children in Stuttgart. Here comes a link to google maps .

2 – The beginning of Herzog-Jäger-Trail at Waldenbuch

Herzog-Jäger-Pfad is one of the most beautiful hiking trails in the area. It even got rewarded “Premium Hiking Trail”. The whole trail covers 13 km and is thus way to long for our little one. But we like doing just the beginning of it and ad our own little extra loop which brings us to a small historic house.

At first you walk through the forest and then you you arrive at a large meadow with wild flowers. Perfect for kids to go explore. There is even a huge Sequoya/Redwood Tree close by. Quite a sight for little children 🙂

Here comes a link to google maps that shows you how we walk.

3 – Donkey Mill at Leinfelden-Echterdingen

The Eselsmühle (Donkey Mill) at Musberg/Leinfelden-Echterdingen is one of our all-time favorites. It is a short walk from the car park on a paved road to the mill. There you find donkeys and chicken as well as a little shop with organic produces and a café.

Here comes the link to google maps.

4 – Wilhelma – Stuttgart’s zoo and botanical garden

A zoo is always a good idea 🙂 The Wilhelma in Stuttgart is not only a zoo but also a botanical garden with thousands of beautiful plants and flowers. Plus, the historic buildings will enchant you as well.

After it was closed for such a long time because of covid I was super eager to go there with the little one two weeks ago. And what can I say, even though the weather wasn’t great we still had a wonderful time. As always 🙂

These are our 4 favorite outings for small children in Stuttgart. What are yours?

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[Post with amazon affiliate links*]

To get to the toy simply click on the picture and the link will lead you over to amazon where you will find more product information.

Our little one got this ring pyramid around her first birthday and she is still playing with it (she is 20 months old now). It is great for practicing hand eye coordination and arm movement. The big holes in the middle the rings help with stacking them on (we have another pyramid where the holes are much smaller, that was a bit frustrating for her at the beginning). Nowadays she uses the rings as bracelets 😀

We have a toddler walker quite similar to this one. I didn’t want to go for one of the combinations with toys/activity games etc as I want her to concentrate  on one thing at a time. It was great watching her taking her first steps with the help of the walker. Small steps towards more independence, away from mom and dad’s helping hands 🙂 Nowadays the walker is still in use as a stroller for her toys!

A ball pool definitely belongs to the category great toys for 1 year old children in Germany and older! It is still a hit in our house and I reckon it will be for a long time. This model also looks good (we got a used one on eBay Kleinanzeigen and we hide it in a corner because it is way to pink for our taste 😀

A set of finger puppets are great toys for 1 year old children in Germany! This set of forest friends  also teaches them which animals live in our local woods.

At the age of one you can start offering easy puzzles. This wooden one teaches the kids a bit about farm life and the pieces can be easily taken in an out by little hands thanks to the extra large wooden buttons.

This wooden play center is one of the toys for 1 year old children in Germany that will stay in your household for quite some time. Around one the kids start sorting out which form goes into which opening. Then the gear wheels become interesting, then the wooden clock… Definitely a great toy.

Building blocks become a thing when your little one turns one year. These ones are extra big so they can be picked up and put on top of each other easily.

I hope this list was helpful to you for finding toys for 1 year old children in Germany.

You can also visit my post about toys for 18 months old children in Germany.

If you want to find out how our German kids room looks like at the moment, check out this post.

*Disclaimer: All links in this post are amazon affiliate links. This means that when you visit amazon from this page and buy something, amazon has to pay me a little compensation. This does not effect your price but helps me maintain the blog. Thank you for your support 🙂

The post Toys for 1 year old children in Germany appeared first on Living in Stuttgart.

[This post contains non-paid links to products and services I like as well as affiliate links to amazon. When a link is an affiliate link I will write that after the link. Affiliate means that if you buy something on amazon.de I get a little reward while your price is not affected. This helps me to maintain my blog.]

How is the little one at 5 months?

She is very active 🙂 She actually prefers lying on her stomach over lying on the back now. I totally understand because in this position she can play more easily and that’s what she’s into these days. Oh, and she has gotten her first tooth!! 😀

The biggest highlight in the last four weeks definitely was celebrating Christmas with the little one. Obviously she did not understand what was going on but just having her around, showing her the tree and singing Christmas songs for her was so beautiful. We had our parents come over at Christmas Eve to our place and our baby girl got some lovely presents from her grandparents. Then we all sang some songs together and she looked at us with big eyes and listend carefully. Around seven we put her to bed and then enjoyed Raclette 🙂

By the way, I found a great substitute for sparkling wine. If you are also breastfeeding or pregnant and need to avoid alcohol, you have to try Prisecco from Manufaktur Jörg Geiger! I saw their stand at the Stuttgart Christmas market this year and remembered that we once had their alcohol free Prisecco at a party in my office years ago. And I remembered that it was really good. So I bought it again and what can I say: I LOVE it! It’s not your usual, super sweet alcohol free sparkling wine. It is a refreshing, sparkling and fruity drink that tastes delicious. It definitely comes with a price (nearly 10 Euro for one bottle?!) but it is high quality and locally produced. We had it again on New Year’s Eve and it was a hit. I bought it from my local EDEKA but you can order it online, too.

What she loves:

• We have noticed that she tried to grab the fish in the “pond” I pointed out in my last mom life update and got quite frustrated because she could not get them. So we got her a new play blanket, one with all sort of things to grab and touch. I have found this one from Lamaze [affiliate link] but I bought it second hand on eBay Kleinanzeigen. It is actually quite cute as the butterfly and the leaves make sizzling noises when you grab them and the little bug and the baby bird are rattling/squeaking when she shakes/squeezes them. She LOVES it 🙂
• Being carried around – while we are outside, taking her for a walk “in” the pram. She usually sleeps in the pram but nowadays she is more often awake and gets bored lying in there and starts complaining. So we have to take her out and as soon as she is in our arms she is happy again and looks around very interested.
• Parsnip. It turned out my little girl is actually a little gourmet. We introduced slurry to her diet two weeks ago. She was not very keen on carrots, this much I can tell you. There was an incident with a spoon flying through the room… 😀 But then we tried parsnip and it is a hit! She is even leaning towards the spoon now and has a big smile in her face when she has the slurry in her mouth.

What we’ve been up to this month

Memories for a life time

When babys are small like our little girl is at the moment it is hard to picture them as toddlers, teens or grown ups. But they grow SOOOO very very fast! It makes you want to freeze the moment. And a few weeks ago I found a way how we can actually preserve this special time – at least a little bit: Did you know you can make life sized replicas of your baby’s feet and hands?! I just learned that in December and I LOVED the idea of it.

I found the lovely midwife and artist Kerstin Steiner through a recommendation of a friend and made an appointment with her at the beginning of December. This gave her enough time to finish the replicas before Christmas because Moritz and I thought that these little artworks would make the perfect Christmas present for the grandparents! 😀

Kerstin is based in Waldenbuch, just a 20 minutes or so drive from Stuttgart. She welcomed us warmly and showed us around. She actually does baby belly artworks as well and photoshoots for families. And she is experienced in working with English speakers.

When we arrived she connected with our little girl instantly. As a former midwife she knows how to treat babies so that they feel comfortable and relaxed. We were offered hot drinks and then Kerstin prepared everything for the big occasion: A box with a warm, liquid mass where the little one had to put her feed, later hand, in. So far, so good. The trick with babies is to make them hold still. But the four of us were a great team: Moritz was holding our baby girl, I was standing in front of her, singing and making a fool out of myself to distract her and Kerstin gently put her feed/hand in the mass and held it until the mass got solid. That only took 2 minutes and luckily our angel played along nicely.

Kerstin could see right away that the feed imprint was perfect. With the hand we could not be sure, we had to wait until she had formed it out. You can imagine what wonderful news it was when she contacted us a few days later to tell us that all the replicas turned out great! I was so happy!

There are countless options how the replicas can be presented: in a frame, on a frame, on a canvas… I wanted them to be viewable from 360 degrees so Kerstin put them on little stilts. I am SO happy with the results! They will always remind us on how tiny our girl once was. And she will look at them later and wonder how tiny she was 🙂

And of course the replicas made great presents for the grandparents!

Kerstin, thank you SO, SO much for your wonderful work! You are the best!!

Baby massage course

I wanted to do a baby massage course much earlier but never found one that suited me time and location wise. But some things happen for a reason I think. Because a few weeks ago I met wonderful Josette. Josette is co-organizer of the Bumps meet-ups at Karl’s Kitchen (you find more about them in my former post as well) AND she teaches baby massage courses in English! When I met Josette I felt instantly that she is a warm and caring person and that there was a connection between her and my little one. Josette is a former neonatal cardiac nurse from the UK so this lady knows what she is doing when it comes to handling babies! I needn’t think twice and booked a massage course with her right on the spot. And after the Christmas holidays me and the little one visited her at The little Nestling Place to learn how to give baby massages.

Josette teaches her courses in her beautiful home. She helped me put the pram inside (there are some stairs to climb) and when we entered the appartment I found that everything was already prepared: cuddly blankets in the middle of the room, cozy temperatures, a thick and comfy diaper changing pillow in the middle of it all and a lovely light setting with LED lights around the pillow. Josette offered me tea and coffee and I started to get the little one ready for her massage.

Josette is a wonderful teacher with a soothing and calm attitude. She had a baby dummy on which she showed me the different strokes and touches so that I could copy her. She explained every step, had tips for when I will be massaging the little one at home and answered all my questions. I seriously couldn’t have found a better baby massage course in Stuttgart. This one had everything I had been looking for and more: I even got a gift bag at the end of the course. I won’t give away what was in it as I want it to be a wonderful surprise for you just as it was for me 🙂

From the bottom of my heart I can recommend a baby massage course at The little Nestling Place to you. I also found out that Josette has just finished a training and is now certified to also teach newborn massage courses. I can imagine how wonderful it would be to massage such tiny human beings and how much it will help bonding with your newborn with the help of such a course.

Packing for baby’s first big trip

We have quite an adventure ahead of us. As you guys know, Moritz has taken one year Elternzeit which basically is payed parental leave here in Germany. And it has become a “trend” that many families use some of this very special time to travel. Because, when do you get the chance in your adult life again to travel for a longer period of time, right?!  So at the moment we are super busy with packing. Preparing a big trip with an infant is quite a different story then it was when it used to be just the two of us.

We have a long distance flight ahead of us. In order to keep the little one entertained I did some toy shopping: I bought a chain that consists of teething soothing rings and rattles when she shakes it. We will also take a litte “book” with us that makes noises when she is touching it. And I found an amazing butterfly with all sort of fun things to explore attached to it: a mirror, sizzling wings, rings to chew on… I hope that keeps her entertained for a while. We also learned some finger games and songs (the people sitting next to us on the plane will LOVE us :-D). Question for all travel experienced moms and dads: Do you have any tips for us how to entertain a 5 months old on a long flight?! Every hint is highly appreciated! 😀

I won’t be writing much about our travels here on the blog as most of you guys are mainly interested in Stuttgart focused stuff, right? But if you want to follow us along, hop over to my Instagram account as I will publish the one or other story about our adventures abroad.

The post What I’ve learned from being a new mom in Stuttgart of a 5 months old baby appeared first on Living in Stuttgart.