September: Random Fun Facts

With no real news to report, I am posting a blog of just random things about us that I think about, but never remember to put in actual blog form.
Zach
- He started drinking from a straw back in May, but I still think it is the cutest darn thing. Unfortunately, he likes it so much that I can no longer enjoy a splurge of Caprisun around him, b/c he insists on getting a drink from the straw as well.

- For several months Zach was fascinated by turning the lights on and off. Some switches are looser than others, and quite easy for him, but others continue to baffle him.

- A new fun game for Zach is to lower the metal shades (rolatto) in his bedroom. He climbs up on the twin bed in his room and turns the knob to lower the shades. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he cannot turn the knob the other way to raise the shades. Part of every morning is spent in alternating light and dark in his room.

- Several weeks ago, Zach learned to stick his tongue out. We of course encouraged this b/c it was so funny (yes, we knew it was a bad idea). So he started using this as a way to say "please". He would ask for a cookie/juice/mouse/whatever, and when we would say no, he would stick out his tongue, all the way (not in the impertinent way of straight out), then pull it in again and smile. He was trying to get us to smile so that we might let him get what he wants.

- I was shocked not long ago how much of a little boy is in our tiny toddler. Zachary and I were walked to a playground near our house. As we were walking by a wooden picket fence, he stuck out his free hand (one was holding my hand) and ran his hand along the fence as we walked. It seemed like such a little boy thing to do. No longer a baby!

- Our little boy is now feeding himself with a spoon. If we put his food into a bowl, he will scoop it up and into his mouth. Of course he is still no pro, so many times food misses. It is such fun to see him eating "like a big boy" while we are also eating our food.

- Zach, like every toddler, loves loves loves to dance. He will often go over to the silent stereo and point at it and whine and stomp. He wants music! We have been impressed by his dance skills. His moves include the bounce, twirl, arm swing, and stomp. He has not incorporated the break dancing in again since we saw it at Annemieke's.

- Yea! Zach is finally clapping! He just did this last week. It is one of those skills that never got accomplished "according to timetable". All these tiny babies were clapping and Zach wanted nothing to do with it. Until now. He has even started incorporating it into his dance routine. So cute!

- So I hate to put this in, knowing my parents will be 'furious'. Zachary is a German toddler. He will not wave "bye bye", but he WILL wave when he hears "Tschüs!" (sounds like choos) which is how the Germans say bye informally.

- More German toddler. We think that Zach might be saying "Nein". He hears it a lot from his 2 year old friend Hannah. And now he has been saying this - we think, when we tell him no, or try and take something from him.

- Possible words: Ok, it is very hard to tell, but we think that Zach is finally got some words that we can recognize. He chats with us constantly and fully believes he is saying real words, but we are now starting to see them as well. We THINK he has been saying "tat too we" for Zachary. "Eees" for trees, when he points outside. And possibly "Eees" for eats/eating. He has said "tat too we ees" when I said "Is Zachary eating cheese?". So, we are not really confident that he is saying these things, but he is desperate to communicate with us. Which is odd, b/c he outright refuses to participate in any sign language - or at least any I am trying to teach him. He has his own: pointing, and back arching for one.
- The boy loves to empty and refill the laundry basket. All laundry. The box in his room, our hamper in the bathroom, you name it. He is addicted to throwing clothes around.

- Remote controls. Every kid loves them. Zach does everything he can to get his hands on them. He knows which turns on the stereo and takes the remote over and points it at it, hoping. It is a struggle to keep them out of reach. Good thing they are rentals! :)

Sh/Art
- We have officially joined our church. We are now members of the International Baptist Church of Dusseldorf. We thought we probably should be if we are going to be the youth leaders!
- The pastor and his wife have asked us to be on several committees at church. We have declined a few, but it is nice to be asked!

Dexter
- No longer allowed in the market. They told Art that they could be fined if an inspector walks in and sees Dexter. Art had a very hard time last Saturday trying to wrangle Zach AND Dexter in the market. Every time he would throw Dexter out, in again he would come. Then a dog scared both Zach and Dexter so Art was trying to pay for the groceries with Zach screaming, frozen in position at the door, and Dexter, freaked out, running back into the market. Art had to leave all the groceries and collect the boys. He was pretty frazzled when he got home. Now, not surprisingly, Dexter has to stay in the house when we are going somewhere. He follows us everywhere.

That should be enough reading for now! The pictures are also sort of random. I can't remember what that temper tantrum was about - there are so many, who can keep track! :)

September 4-6: Sassy visits!

Lucky us – Italy was again the host of a conference for an ABQ friend (Bruce), so his lovely wife, Saskia, came to visit us while Bruce was at the conference. The two of them were going to bum around Italy for a week after his conference, so she needed to be in Europe anyway. But how wonderful that she came to see us!

HOWEVER, the girl is way too hard-core for me! No, that does not mean that she was wearing all black punk w/ a Mohawk and brow piercings – it means that she had her appendix removed on Friday night, and left for Italy Sunday, arriving Monday, then coming to see us on Tuesday! Needless to say, she was a tad bit sore, and a teensy bit doped up on pain pills. Didn’t stop us from having a good time though. Zac and I picked her up from the airport at 11:30; luckily I had checked the internet for flight times, b/c she was delayed an hour. Z was sleeping in his stroller when she arrived. He woke up GRUMPY after a mere 40-minute nap, and proceeded to put on a show of his worst behavior during lunch. After lunch we mostly played around the house, waiting for Art to return from his institute-wide outing, so we could join him for a late lunch BBQ at the office. We finally made it for “lunch” around 3pm and pigged out on bratwurst, salad and yummy dessert for a few hours. Sassy got a comprehensive (more comprehensive than I have ever seen) tour of Max Planck campus (3 buildings) and the various ‘cool’ machines. By then Zach was pretty much DONE. He had not yet had an afternoon nap (it was nearing 5pm), and had only slept 40 minutes of his morning nap. So serious meltdown. Not surprising, he fell asleep minutes after we got him into the stroller and onto the bus to head home. I put him into bed, and Saskia and I just relaxed until Art got home. We had a light dinner of sandwiches, put Z to bed and had an evening of chatting.
Wednesday: We decided to not go to Köln (Cologne) for the day, and decided to make it a relaxing day. Art went to work while we hung out at the house, after a trip to the grocery store. Zach took a nap, and once he woke, Art came home for lunch, though it was fairly late. The boy was tired I guess. He had awoke around 5am and I took him into bed w/ us, where he was awake for about an hour before finally going back to sleep. After lunch we all headed down to the Altstadt to look around and see the Rhine. Saskia wanted to go to a bookstore and a toy store, so we headed to the mall, where they had both. We walked around the downtown area for a while then picked a nice place along the Rhine and stopped for coffee and kuchen (cake). We opted for one kase (cheese) and one apfel (apple). Both were great – EXCEPT they oddly put raisins in the cheesecake. Not right. We stayed there for over an hour when Z finally fell asleep for his afternoon nap. After some more walking around, we headed home. Art jumped off the tram early to stop at the Extra (the fabulous new-to-me grocery store that is as big as a Kroger/Smiths/Publix!) to get an Alt Beer variety pack for Bruce. Time will tell if Bruce finished prior to leaving Europe, or if he brought some back to share w/ the ABQ Enterprise group. After a dinner of puten (turkey) schnitzel w/ jager sauce, spatzel, mushrooms, and etches, we were all stuffed. Not too stuffed to have ice cream after Zach went to bed. We all cuddled up on the couch to watch Shrek 2, since Saskia had never seen it, and needed to for Shrek 3, which she had seen on the plane, make sense.
Thursday: Boo. Sassy had to go home today. It was raining out and pretty crappy, so we spent the morning in. Saskia had the privilege of helping me collect the laundry from the trocken room – a little insight into my life here. We played a LOT of cribbage. She beat me 3 out of 4 games, and even skunked me once, so I'll never play that again. Art came home for lunch, and we all had to leave a little past one to get her to the airport on time. Zach slept late and had to eat his lunch at the airport. I stupidly sent her down 2 wrong places to check in – I will blame it on secretly trying to get her to stay. Then she was gone, and I realized that I did not take a single picture while she was here. No Zach & Tante Sassy pictures, nothing. Sigh. Very sad. I was very glad that she came for a visit, and was only sad that it was not longer! Even if she did make serious fun of me for 1) knowing the exact tram/bus/train times and the exact minutes it would take to ride them (comes at 9:37 and is a 6 minute ride), 2) how sore I was after my first adult gymnastics class (laughing about this caused Zach to drop a glass bowl he should not have had and us cleaning it up for 15 minutes), and 3) any other thing that came to mind! ☺ Now, who else from ABQ is going to come see us?????

August 11: Ritter Fest (Knight Festival)

Today we went to a renaissance type fair with a couple from church and their 2 year old daughter (Katrina, Heinz, Hannah). [Note: This is the same couple that invited us over for a 4th of July party – he is German and she is American.] The fest was held in the grounds of an old castle, which added to the ambience. We took the train to Mulheim and met them at the station and took a tram to the castle around 12:45pm or so. Our first stop, once inside, was at one of the food tents. It was a burrito type thing that I hated, so lucky Art got to eat all of it. No worries for me, because a few meters away was a Crepe tent, and everyone knows I CANNOT resist a crepe mit Nutella! Yum. Then another few meters to a wine tent. We tried several different types of strange “medieval” wine, and found one that both Art and I liked. We bought a small, cool-looking bottle of it for 5 Euro. It is possible that I was more excited about the bottle than the wine. Then off for a kids jousting show. It turned out to be fairly boring and too hot to sit in the sun, so we all took off to explore the rest of the grounds. It was very interesting because it appeared that the people working there (odd carnie types of course) also stayed there, in these cool medieval tents that had real beds w/ animal skin blankets on them. Some of the tents were pretty serious on the inside which made me think that perhaps the summer Ritter Fest tour is not a terrible way to make some cash. :) Around the edge of the grounds was a place where, for a mere 1 Euro, you could throw 3 hatchets/axes at a board. We hemmed and hawed around a bit, and finally Heinz and I agreed to do it, with me giving Art one of my throws. Heinz went first, and did pretty well. Then my turn, and my first throw was terrible, but after he instructed me to throw it hard, my second throw was great. Didn’t stick in the board, but quite satisfying. So satisfying that I HAD to do it again. Another Euro gone, and I had agreed to give Art my third throw. Nope, that didn’t happen. I got so into the axe throwing! I was about to fork over a 10 Euro bill and get serious about it all when Art made us leave. Apparently the sight of me getting way psyched about throwing axes was somewhat unnerving. :) We meandered around a bit, then stopped to let Hannah take a pony ride. It was seriously hot outside, so we headed for the drink tents. While getting refreshed, a minstrel-type band started playing, which was very cool. Until one lady, all decked out in Ren-fest gear, decided she could no longer be satisfied with her sideline belly dancing, and had to jump out in front of the band (which she had no association with) and start a little belly-dancing routine. Her moves were not bad really, but the arrogance of it all, plus the multiple rolls of love handles were a little much for me. So odd though. When I saw her dancing on the sidelines, I indeed wondered how long it would be before her desire to perform overrode her other sensibilities. By then it was near time for the jousting tournament. With a quick stop for Zach to play w/ a jester and his puppet, we headed to the pitch. It was fabulous to watch the guys on horses and even their hand-to-hand combat stuff. The whole plot was a little lost on me (beautiful princess wants to marry one knight, but he must beat the other knights to win her hand) b/c I, of course, could not follow the commentary in German. Zach was great all day until this moment. He was so tired, but refused to sleep (my one rage-inducer). I even took him into the shade and let him lie down on the blanket, where he curled up and ALMOST went to sleep. In the end, Art had to miss part of the tournament b/c he was walking around w/ Zach. So is the life w/ a stubborn toddler. We were SHOCKED that he did not fall asleep on the way to Katrina’s house. He even did fine all evening, playing w/ Hannah and eating dinner. He finally lost it, which was a good clue to go home. It was a long day, but very enjoyable! Fun to do a Renaissance Festival German-style. We kept looking for our friend from ATL, Steve Downin, to show up, b/c this is his kind of thing. I did seriously consider buying Zach a sword or shield…but does he really need that, and do I want to somehow get it back to the States?

September 7-9: Utrecht Trip -Happy Birthday Annemieke

[editor’s note: I cannot spell any of these names, and Art is not much help, so I have to apologize profusely to any Dutch relatives who read this and are appalled]
Happy Birthday Annemieke! We rented a car this weekend and went to Utrecht to celebrate Annemieke’s birthday and attend her party. She was super gracious and let us (all 3 of us – poor Dex stayed in Düsseldorf) stay in her room while she slept on the pull-out couch. That was wonderful for us, b/c we didn’t have to try and find a babysitter and be tense during her party – Zach just slept downstairs through the entire thing.

Friday we arrived around 4pm and had coffee w/ apfel kuchen (apple cake) with Oma Holland and Tante Mieke, and Rex of course. It was a very nice visit, and Zach was kept very busy playing with the little blue men from the tower of Pisa game and avoiding Rex’s tongue. We left a little before 6pm and headed to Annemieke’s for dinner. We all went to the store and picked out dinner and snacks for the evening: pizza, salad, chocolate peanuts, hamkaas, vla, etc. YUM. We also picked up a movie for the evening: Music and Lyrics which I had only seen once and LOVED (hint for Christmas present), and Art had not seen. So fun. Saturday was quite busy. We went to Marieke & Ruurt’s for coffee at 10am. We got to see their new son, Timo, as well as 2.5yr old Evette. She never spoke, so Zach made himself at home by picking food from her plate and feeding it to Art. Then they played outside w/ the sidewalk chalk we brought for her, and had a good time. It was a really nice visit which ended too quickly. Zach fell asleep on the way back to Annemieke’s and proceeded to stay asleep for 3 hours. We at the yummy sausage brotchen that I can’t spell for lunch and helped Annemieke prepare for party 1 with the arrival of Onno/Aimee and 3 kids, Liesbeth/Cees and 2 kids and Oom Taco/Tante Anneke. BIG NEWS: At one point the music was playing and some people were standing around not really dancing, but just chatting and moving a little. Zac was pretty tired and had his head on Art’s shoulder, when all of a sudden “the rhythm finally got him” (according to Art) and he pushed out of Art’s arms, started his bouncing dance, followed by his stomping and turning, THEN, here is the big news, he got on the floor and spun around a bit, then stood up and bounced some more. Everyone just stared, until someone said “Did he just do a bit of BREAK DANCING??”. It was so very funny. The families were all gone by the end of dinner which gave us about an hour to get ready for party 2. Matthijs showed up first (Sabine had previous plans) and we put Z to bed, hoping for the best. Then Haan, Marten, Eva, Taco/Nina, and Bart. A good size party. I was in bed at 12:30, and Zach mercifully slept late until nearly 8am. Sunday was good and relaxed with us having leftover apple tart for breakfast, and just lazing around. Zach took a nap and we all showered and got ready to leave. We took off around 3pm to visit an old co-worker of Art’s. He and his wife live in Holland (Edah?) about an hour from Düsseldorf. We stayed there and chatted w/ them for a few hours. During which Zach took a nap in their bed, and when he woke up, he got out of their bed and walked into the living room like it was no big deal. We were all pretty shocked. It was fun to sit and chat with them. Richard is Canadian and his wife (Susanna?) is Dutch and he works for a German company. They are expecting their first child in December, so there was plenty of talk about newborns and children. We left their place around 6:30, stopped at a rest stop around 7:15 to feed Z dinner and got to our apartment around 8:30 or so. It was a great weekend! Annemieke also loaned me a book and 2 movies to make my transition back to Düsseldorf easier.

Dexter's New Life

Dexter has a new lifestyle here in Dusseldorf. He is now an inside-outside cat. It all started back in July when Art's parents were here. It was SO HOT that we could no longer get away with just tilting the windows open at the top, and had to throw them all the way open so as to entice a breeze here and there. Windows here in Europe generally do not come with screens, so Dexter had full access to leave the apartment, which he did. After a few days of trying to see how this would work, we have developed a sort of routine for Dexi. He gets to go out in the morning, come back in an hour or so later for breakfast (when Art leaves for work - otherwise Dex follows Art), then out again for a few hours, and back inside for a nap. If we leave the house for an extended time, Dex has to come back into the house, because he has taken to following us wherever we go. We thought it was very cute when he started following us the 100 yards to our local market, but then it became less funny when he started following us INTO the market. Imagine if you can, me trying to wrangle a toddler and a cat in a grocery store. Once I put Dexter into the grocery cart w/ Zach, which worked great until Dex jumped out and into the cake asile shelves. Sigh. Alas, he is not allowed to go into the store with us anymore...though Mohammed and the whole clan think it is hilarious. I was in the store w/ Zac when I heard Mohammed say "there is Zachary's katze".
The funniest part of Dexter's new life is that occasionally he meows to come back in the house, and I am either in my jammies still and don't want to come open the door for him, or he is in the back yard area. In these instances, we have developed a hilarious way of getting Dexter back into the house. We lower our canvas COUNTS bag (again Joanna, what a great Christmas gift) out the window or over the balcony, Dexter jumps in, and we pull him up. We had to use treats to convince him that this is a good idea at first, but now he happily jumps into the bag and allows us to pull him up. Very funny.
Dexter is now a much nicer cat, and rarely aggressive. He likes his freedom, and life could only be better if he had a cat door so he could come and go as he pleases. When we move back to the States, we will have to try and work that out for him. We have had suggestions of putting a long 2x4 out the balcony for him to climb up and down, but we have not yet persued that.
Part of Dexter's new life is apparently getting stuck in a tree. He did come down on his own though, however it was NOT graceful.
I do miss having Dexter in the house during the day, but he is a happier cat for it. And still sleeps with/on me at night. I have to save room for him next to my pillow otherwise he licks me to get me to move over.
Another cute picture is when we caught Dexter in Zach's crib for the first time. We have not seen it since that one time. So odd.