Eurocco: Germany, Week One

Now that our Germany trip is coming to a close, it is time to begin recapping everything awesome that we have been doing the past three weeks. This will be not exact and probably really boring, but I'm determined to preserve these memories for our posterity. It was a really great three weeks, hosted by the most hospitable Germans we know in one of the prettiest German cities we've ever been to.

We arrived mid-week, but Nina was at her parents' house and Juwe was working three hours away near the Swiss border, so we were on our own for the first few days. We took the opportunity to: eat all the food in their fridge (Juwe stocked it with all things German: brats, cheese, bread), explore the many awesome parks close by (there are at least 10 parks within a one-mile radius) and bike to the castle (we got lost though, Atticus fell asleep, and overall it wasn't the most pleasant night).

The day everyone arrived home, they took us to the "playground in the woods" called Oberwald. It is a very short bike ride (we found out weeks later when we went on bikes) but with two preschoolers who insisted on walking, it took us at least an hour. Plus, we got caught in a brief, but torrential downpour and were lucky to be right next to a bridge during it. We huddled underneath for 10 minutes, then continued on in the rain-drenched path. We spent an interminable amount of time picking blackberries because the kids kept eating all of the ones I tried to collect in our container. They were perfectly ripe and sweet though, so I must admit I probably ate more. After we arrived at Oberwald, the kids played for hours... Nina and Juwe's friend Mark came by with his daughter and the adults chatted. We ate a lunch of this weird cold sausage stuff (think bologna smushed into a sausage shape), cheese, bread and fruit (this will repeat itself almost every day). After the kids were bored at the park we walked through the outdoor zoo next to it. Yes, outdoor zoo. Acres of wild animals hanging out. Mostly elk and deer types, but some buffalo and horses as well. We all walked back together.... picking blackberries and working through several meltdowns. Atticus even got hit by a bike and broke the girls' chain who hit him. He still talks about how sorry he is that he broke that girl's bike and it was his fault. I remind him it was her fault for hitting him (she was only about 12 though). Hopefully, they made it home ok, we didn't really stop to see.

He was obsessed with this stick-building pit

After leaving Oberwald, the Germans insisted we go and get a spaghetti eis, which is a weird ice cream thing that looks like spaghetti. It was delicious, but the portions were huge, and I felt bad when I couldn't finish mine (everyone was ordered their own, but I probably would've opted to share and should've spoken up). Since it was before dinner, everyone was feeling pretty sick so we headed home and relaxed for a while, and ate a light dinner (probably bread... German dinner).

The next day, our friends Ida, Patrick, Felix and Justus joined us while on a whirlwind tour of Germany to visit Patrick's friends and family. It was a full house for a few days but it was wonderful to spend time with them, and it felt just like the good old days of January 2013. We spent all day at the zoo (Tim stayed home to work) and playing in the water playground, then came home and played at the playground more. I know we also visited the castle and ate ice cream sometime during these few days. We ate schnitzel (not with noodles) for dinner and everyone crashed with exhaustion. Ida was adorably pregnant with their third baby, and their kids were as rambunctious as ever (Atticus and Felix got in a few physical altercations... but Felix is almost a year older and twice his size so he always got in trouble, which I felt bad about... Atticus needs to figure out fighting with a burly German/Norse child is always a bad idea for him).

Patrick and I got really into engineering a river down to the swimming hole. We were mostly successful, but maybe a little too determined.

Schnitzel with french fries.

Playground at the zoo.

Needing a nap.

Their faces crack me up in this one.

He carried around a stuffed giraffe the whole trip and they were by far his favorite site.

German zoos let the animals roam free.

After they departed, we spent the rest of the week in a typical pattern of spending all day out with the kids (me and Nina) while Tim stayed home to work. We went to the Natural History Museum (3 euro and really impressive), the river playground (but after the crazy intense thunderstorm that blew in scarily quickly and left us stranded in a very crowded ice cream shop for half an hour, the river was too cold to play in), and several other playgrounds around.

 

After we left the science museum, we headed to the castle grounds for a while and roamed, picking mushrooms and flowers. Also check out the clouds. The clouds in Germany are like nothing I've ever seen. They seem so close to the earth and are huge and look different every second. I would love to lay down and watch them float by....

Nina, about the castle: "It's not very old, only like 350 years." Which is like the oldest modern building in our country!

River playground, post crazy-scary thunderstorm:

Also at some point this week, the chimney sweeper came. She had short, bleach-blonde hair, lots of earrings, and wore a old-style chimney sweeping uniform like in Mary Poppins. She was super cool, and made sure all the gas lines weren't leaky and went up into the scary, hot attic to clean out the chimney. The kids were fascinated.

Week two: equally as awesome, though our stamina died down a bit...

 

Tallulah, 17 months

Being in Morocco and all, we have kind of dropped the ball on Tallulah's updates. She is changing so rapidly that it is sometimes hard to keep track of what she likes and does not like, what will make her happy, and what will make her explode in rage. She is turning into a crazy and hilarious toddler, complete with all that comes with the domain: uncontrollable laughing, constant exploration and discovery, and fits of frustration or exhaustion.

She still loves to nurse, and does so no fewer than eight times a day. I have the milk supply of a mom with twins at 3 months. For a while she had little interest in eating real food, but in Morocco, I did not either so I can't blame her. Now, she is eating everything that is put in front of her, usually brats, sauerkraut, or noodles of some variety. She loves fruit as much as her older brother, and can devour blueberries, pineapple, strawberries, and (now) bananas (which she hated for a really long time). She never liked cereal until two days ago when she ate a whole bowl of muesli. She still isn't a big fan of crackers, but she'll eat dried fruit and nuts like a seasoned hiker.

She is obsessed with going outside, and whenever the door opens, she rushes to the stairs in anticipation, usually grabbing "her" sand bucket and shovel she leaves by it. She knows how to gather up her shoes and bring mom's hers as well. She can navigate play equipment meant for much older kids, and has taken up the climbing rope wall as her personal challenge, and made it to the top of one a few days ago when we weren't paying attention, but she was totally unfazed by how high she was. She is a climber... and a fearless one at that. She also loves swimming, and will go under the water and come back up with huge smiles. She may be our little fish. She would jump right off the edge of the pool constantly in Morocco, and it became so exhausting keeping her alive that we opted many times to take our cautious Atticus alone because he is so much easier to watch! (terrible, I know)

She wants to ride a bike SO desperately.

She is a lover of reading. It took her a little longer to get into books, and she still hates being read TO, but she loves picking up a book and exploring the pages on her own, and I'll often peek in the room and find her in this comfy chair with a book. Sometimes she'll babble along and make up her own stories. So cute.

She still does not have any consistent words (surprising), but she recently took up signing and can sign milk, more, food, baby, please, and outside. We actually recently (yesterday) decided to send her to preschool/daycare in the fall, and she'll be going a few days a week in the afternoons. We were really on the fence about this one because we want her to have as much stay-at-home time as Atticus, but on the other hand, it's (nearly) free with the tuition assistance from the university and it will give Tim a chance to focus on his writing, assembly chair duties, and applying for grad school (maybe) without putting undue stress on me. This semester will be a little bit crazy as I'm going to be submitting and defending my pre-dissertation proposal for my research, taking 5th semester Arabic, and two reading-intensive seminars. It's a small classroom with 8 kids and 2 teachers, they play outside a lot, and it's located really close to our house. I think she'll love it, and maybe it will help her language skills develop. We get three weeks to try it out in September, so we'll see how it goes, and if we feel comfortable with it.

Her favorite spot

Everything makes a great phone.

Eating chocolate croissant in our Fes kitchen

Her adorable gap-toothed smile has brightened many a strangers' day, and she is never hesitant to walk up to strangers and befriend them. I know this is the place to say how fast she is growing up and how I can't believe she is almost 1.5, but that's not actually true for me. She has so much personality she feels like she's been here forever, and sometimes I can't believe she's ONLY been with us a little over a year. Maybe because we've had so many changes and moves since her birth 17 months ago (four moves? two cross-country drives? almost two trans-Atlantic flights? two-week train trip through Western Europe? how many 17 months have such a tumultuous life?) I forget about the time before she existed. We love her a lot, and tell her often. Atticus says it best: "Lulah is my best friend," which he says often and I think really means it.