Best Playroom Ever

Went to play in Cutiebug’s playroom this morning. The original plan was the aquarium (Sea Life) in Nürnberg but they’re closed for relocation. Starfruit looked into a couple of play areas that looked really fun, but neither one opens ‘til like 2pm. And that doesn’t fit with nap schedule for any of us.

Happily, Wee Laddie loves Cutiebug’s playroom as she has practically every toy known to man in there. (And here I’ll mention that Starfruit told me she’s a bit embarrassed at my descriptions of the playroom and feels that she should clarify that most of those awesome toys were gifts or purchased secondhand. In other words, she’s not insane.) They played with some doctor toys and the kitchen for a bit, then they painted and played with Play-doh. Fabulous time.





After playtime we all went to Hotel zum Hirschen for lunch. Yum again. I tried the Wienerschnitzel this time (which was, indeed, very good) and Starfruit had Käsespätzle and we shared. And split with the kids, who both ate very well. And we still had food left over. Oh, don’t get me wrong... I’d have gladly chowed down on the rest of the Käsespätzle if not for the carb counting and the fact that I’d also had a small amount of the Bratkartoffeln (potatoes). My blood sugar was a beautiful 112 after an hour. (I thumb my nose at my goofball doctor.)

Friends & the Almighty Dollar

Went for lunch with Christina and her little Oliver to Hotel zum Hirschen. Even though we don’t eat there often, I will miss that place. I miss the Käsespätzle already. After we’re home and I’m able to be off the gestational diabetes diet, I am going to have to start doing some research and trying to replicate that meal. I’m not a “signature meal” kind of gal, really, but for that meal? For that meal maybe I’ll become that kind of gal.

Anyway, it was a nice lunch. Everything’s starting to have that “last time” feel to it. (Have I said that already?) We will see Christina & Oliver again, as we’re going to their house for the Expat Thanksgiving Dinner, but that may be the last time.



We went to Möbelhof after lunch and Wee Laddie was admiring the sling Christina was using to carry Oliver. When we got home, Wee Laddie used a pair of pants as a sling to carry Baby Spunky. And he was carrying him around in his jacket like this:



And the dollar is now worth .6535 euro. Ouch.

Big Belly Goes Shopping

Went to the big PX today for our usual Taco Bell fix. Happily, the weather was clear enough to drive up. It’s a long enough drive that we don’t like to go if the weather is iffy.



I actually found a few maternity tops I liked. The selection there is very limited so I usually find one shirt, max. And I tried on a few jackets ‘cause mine is already barely fitting me. There’s a brand here called Jack Wolfskin, that is sort of like the European version of North Face. They make some really good technical jackets & stuff. The jacket I ended up with is one of theirs. It’s fleece, but it’s some type of fleece that’s supposed to block wind 4x better than regular fleece. And it’s water resistant & all that, too. And it may actually be useable post-partum, too. Early Christmas present from Guitarman.

There was no line at the Taco Bell when I went to get in line. It was so awesome to be able to just go right ahead and order without having to wait 20 minutes! (Oh, how my standards for quick Mexican have changed!)

A Bit of the Mundane

Guitarman was on shift today. Wee Laddie and I went to Burger King breakfast, but it’s not as much fun without Daddy there. We go anyway because it’s our weekend tradition and sometimes Guitarman can at least swing by and say hello.

When we got home we played for a while, then ate lunch & had a nap. And Wee Laddie didn’t even fight it too much today.

Believe it or not, that does actually happen sometimes.

The Downside of Potty Training

What do you do when you’re in the car, with a ways to go, and there’s nowhere to stop? Wee Laddie had to pee on the way home from base. It’s too cold to stop anywhere outside and there’s not really anywhere convenient where we can stop inside. We had to go home for him to potty, which means I couldn’t drive around ‘til he fell asleep… and that makes for a tough naptime.

And then, my darling Guitarman wouldn’t go pick up a döner kebap, which is what I really, really wanted for dinner since the nearest Chipotle might as well be on another planet. I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Wee Laddie has been saying some pretty funny things lately. Well, they’re not really that funny unless you think about the fact that they’re coming out of a two-year-old’s mouth:

“Maybe, but I'm not going to do that right now.”

“Stay there. I'm just going to go play by myself.”

“I'm just going to look. I won't touch them.” (in regard to the babies at Total Mom)

My Little Helper

Wee Laddie very much likes to dress himself so I usually let him… mismatches and all. Two different socks? Boots when it’s warm out? Whatev. So today, no big deal that he put his pants on backwards. At lunch Guitarman commented on it. I said that yes, I knew they were on backwards. Wee Laddie makes a remark about taking them off and putting them back on sideways. I laugh, ‘cause I’m trying to picture sideways. My son jumps up & drops trou right in the middle of the mess hall! Guitarman jumped up and stopped him… I was laughing too hard to be of any help whatsoever.



I’ve figured out a new way to get a few minutes to work on a project: let Wee Laddie wash the dishes. He loves to do it and it takes him ages so it gives me time to actually do something, as long as I can do it close by… because it makes me nervous, him standing on a chair or something. (I’ve been using his highchair for it since it has kind of a step on it.) So today I got a little knitting done while he did the dishes.

Now THAT is a beautiful thing.

When Do We Eat?

We tried to have brunch at the mess hall this morning (which we’ve been doing a lot on the weekends) but all of a sudden they’re only open for breakfast from 8:30-9:30 instead of brunch’s timeslot of 9:30-1:00. Now, despite the fact that we were there just LAST weekend for brunch, they all acted completely surprised that we would show up there a little after 9:30. Expecting food, of all things.

Having not learned our lesson (nor read the schedule) we tried again at dinner, since we haven’t had a dinner there yet. We picked what we thought was a logical time for dinner (6ish, I think it was), but they foiled us again. Dinner is from 3-4:30! Wow, talk about early-bird hours. So we went to Burg Imbiss, my favorite döner shop. (There aren’t many options, so we’re delighted that the döner shop that is right nearby is also very yummy.)

Sightseeing at Last

Since we keep going to Würzburg but not visiting the castle, we decided to do a little sightseeing there (well, we had to go anyway as the pair of speakers Guitarman thought he'd bought turned out to be just one speaker). We were planning to go to the castle but drove around a bit & ended up at the Parkplatz Residenz. I believe it was built for a bishop or something. (With Wee Laddie in tow our chance to actually find out what we’re looking at is a bit limited.) We didn’t go in but just walked around the gardens. They were beautiful. I want to go back in the spring or summer…I imagine it’s just stunning then.

Having some trouble with the slide show here, so if it's not working here & you'd like to see it, here's a link.

We had dinner at Burger King on the base (sometimes we do that ‘cause it’s open, sometimes for a stop for something at the PX and sometimes just ‘cause we’re feeling lazy, languagewise). Guitarman picked up a copy of Bavarian Times (a magazine they have on base) and they had an article about Würzburg. Turns out we were right outside of the building that houses the world’s largest fresco painting! Guess we’ll really have to go back now. Maybe when my mom comes to visit, since she might find that interesting.

We saw Paloma, a friend of Wee Laddie’s from the Friday playgroup. I pointed her out, then Wee Laddie talked about her throughout the rest of dinner. 'Poma cheeburger,' etc. So we went to say 'hello' on the way out. We got outside and Wee Laddie pointed at a car and said, 'Poma car.' I said, 'Oh, is that Paloma’s car?' He said, 'Yes.' I don’t know… he could be right.

Guitarman Heaven

Got a couple more inches of snow overnight. I woke just after 5 am, the snowplow came about 20 minutes later. Our neighbor started shoveling at 5:45 am. On a Saturday. Are you kidding me? Good grief, some people have no manners. I was still awake after 6 am and was thinking of leaving my two guys up there snoring in bed. I had just about decided what to do whilst I drank my cuppa, then Wee Laddie semi-woke saying, 'Grandma’s house, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.' And then he was really awake so I had to snuggle him back to sleep. I have a pretty hard & fast not-before-7 policy. If I’d gotten up it would’ve been all over.

Drove up to the Thomann music store in Tippendorf with Guitarman just for the ride. It’s a huge music store out in the middle of nowhere. They have tons of instruments, though, including strings, drums… even DJ stuff and whatnot. Guitarman seemed pleased with it. The guy that rang Guitarman up was British but has lived here a long time. Guitarman asked how long it took him to learn German, he said 6 months. He said most people go to the Irish pub with friends and watch CNN, but he jumped right in with an apprenticeship and had to learn. That supports my theory that we should mostly watch regular (German) satellite instead of AFN (Armed Forces Network, which is all in English). But I may be alone in that theory. At least at our house.

Had lunch at the Bistro Pizzeria Alberto right across the street from the guitar store. It was yummy but smoky… we’d only just gotten used to dining smoke-free in Denver and now we’ve gone back a step (says the ex-smoker). Guitarman tucked in Wee Laddie tonight, so I got a little time to myself. Happily, I didn’t have to spend it studying for the drivers’ test this time. Sadly, no internet at home yet.

3 words: Sponge Bob Schwammkopf

A Toddler’s Approach to Time

The mess hall is open ‘til 8:30 for breakfast. We got there about 8:27 this morning. For some reason, Wee Laddie was determined to eat everything in sight. But veeerrrrryyyy ssssllllloooowwwllllyyyy. Oy vey. I kept saying, 'Are you done? Are you almost done?' Meanwhile, the mess hall staff is cleaning tables, stacking chairs, removing all the food. I was caught in that whole not-wanting-to-create-any-later-food-issues mess.

We went to the EFMP (Exceptional Family Member Program) playgroup today. It’s put on by the EFMP and a couple of other on-base services but says it's open to everyone, so we went. And it was fun & good. Different than the other one… this one is more like smaller-motor activity. And there’s a PT and a speech therapist there to help in any early intervention situations. I noticed that some of the people were using sign so I asked the PT if they offer any classes here. She said they don’t, so I said I’d be willing to teach one if they’re interested. I’m not certified or anything, but I’ve been using sign on & off for--yikes--25 years? She sounded interested and had me talk briefly with the New Parent Support person, who also seemed interested. I think I’ll order the Signing Time videos for Wee Laddie… then I can brush up, too.

Had lunch w/Guitarman and then took the rental car back. The rental car guy told Guitarman the car was supposed to be clean when we brought it in. Guitarman asked where he could take it to vacuum it and the guy told him. And he said, 'And the car wash is right… ' (and pointed) Guitarman looked up at the rain and said, 'You’re kidding, right?' The guy said, 'Okay, we’ll take care of that.'

We talked about me taking Guitarman’s car (a mid-‘90s BMW) and him getting a mid-‘80s BMW. A real 'hoopdi.' (I don’t know if I’m spelling that right… it’s what they call and older, cheap car.) We’ll probably look at cars soon. It’ll be awkward here with one car. Not like Colorado, but still inconvenient.

We had dinner from Burg Imbiss döner kebap (Turkish restaurant) here in Parsberg… very yummy. Better than the place in Seubersdorf, I think.

A Place to Sit

Had lunch at the mess hall again. The first Mexican food we’ve had since we got here… beef enchiladas. They were completely wrong (flour tortillas and the sauce tasted like that chile con carne from grade school), but somehow not horrible. I guess because I wasn’t expecting it to taste like a real enchilada.

We went to Möbelhof after lunch to get a sofa. The one we’d picked wasn’t in stock so we picked another (there’s literally nowhere to sit on our main floor since our stuff from home hasn’t arrived yet) that we both actually like a bit better. (I think it cost a bit more or we’d have picked it to begin with.) It’s orange, but doesn’t quite go with the rug we got (the sofa’s in a brighter palette…more citrusy) but we’ll eventually put it in the loft, probably. I think (and hope!) that our red sofa will go better with this rug… and we can pick another rug later for the loft.

The Deutsche Telecom guy came out today and got our home phone line working… yay! And we’re one step closer to having DSL now, too. First they guy said we need to send a letter but later he said he’d have an English-speaking colleague call us. I’m hoping that means he’ll kind of grease the wheels a bit for us. Bureaucratic stuff is supposed to be very slow here, and I’m already going nutso from my lack of contact with my friends, my family, my co-moms. I just about broke down in the library parking lot yesterday because I was so pissed off that I couldn’t get 10 freaking minutes of 'me' time to check my email. So far I’m the only one putting Wee Laddie down at night (which usually still takes a while), and then Guitarman comes to bed early enough that it’s not even worth going back downstairs once Wee Laddie’s asleep…not that I’m still awake. (We’re all in one bed ‘til we get a low bed for Wee Laddie.)

I’m so caught up on sleep that I’ve been skipping naps (like Wee Laddie is sleeping as I write this) and still waking at like 5-6am most days. And I’m so not an early riser.

Strykers & Ugly Furniture (One to Take Care of the Other?)

Had brunch at one of the mess halls. The mess hall meals are usually pretty good and always cheap (basically an all-you-can-eat, although you only get one main dish, for $3.65), so we’ve been eating there a lot. The downside is that it’s easy to overdo on semi-decadent foods that you usually avoid (biscuits, bacon, etc.). And it’s easy to overeat in general, just because it’s there and pretty yummy and I hate to waste food. Gotta work on letting that go so I don’t gain more weight again!

Went to Vilseck again today to check out the furniture store there. First ugly furniture I’ve seen in Germany. It’s that big, over-sized, overly-ornate stuff that I just don’t like. (Please, if you like that stuff, don’t be offended. I realize it has its place… that place just isn't anywhere in my house.) There was like one sofa and chair in the whole place that would go with our stuff, but that’s not what we need.

To get to Vilseck, we went out the back side of the base. That means you go through some of the training areas where they have tank crossings along the road & stuff. They do some blackout night training there, so at night you’re supposed to stop & listen for the tanks since they may be coming along with all their lights off. Guitarman was talking about how some people have never seen any vehicles out there so they kind of get careless about stopping at all the yield signs. (Yeah, yield doesn’t mean stop, but wouldn’t ya hate to have a tank run you over ‘cause you didn’t want to take the time to do a full-on stop?) Anyway, we’d just passed this yard thingy where they maybe store tanks (we don’t know what all the stuff is on base) and 3 of the Stryker vehicles went right by us. Wow, are those things quiet! We’d never have noticed them (they did have all their lights off) if I hadn’t happened to look over in their direction (they were on a road next to the main road). We also saw a few Hummers driving along another road. Kind of weird to be here, driving on by on our way from dinner (we ate at the bowling alley), while the military is out here training. Apparently they have fake towns on base and they hire locals to interact with the soldiers & stuff. Interesting.

I finally finished putting the bed together and got the 2 baby gates put up. We’re going to see how it goes to not block off the stairs from the main floor going upstairs… hoping that Wee Laddie won’t go up far enough on his own that he’ll fall down. (I’m sure some people are wondering why we still need gates for him. I’ll tell ya, this child does not pay enough attention to what he’s doing. Sometimes, he’ll nearly fall down the stairs even with me holding his hand!)

Nary a Vegetable in Sight

Went to the base at Würzburg to check things out. The PX there is huge… way WAY bigger than the one here in Hohenfels.

Had dinner at the döner kebap (Turkish food) in Seubersdorf (a town where there’s a house we’re going to look at on Sunday). We always get a good workout for our German when we go to foreign-food restaurants run by people for whom German is a 2nd language… they frequently don’t speak English so we’re on our own. It was sort of a weird little place--part restaurant part cyber café, I guess (although the computers there weren’t on). The owner showed us a game room in the back (not sure why but he seemed to like us) that had pool tables & stuff. At first when he was calling me over to see it I felt like I was in a mob movie or something… here’s where you see the back room where the secret poker games take place. Anyway, the food was good.

Tonight we tried to have Guitarman tuck Wee Laddie in… didn’t go so well. He was very upset, crying a lot. The manager of the hotel called to check on him. She told me that someone said he was outside, but I guess she could hear that he was in the room with me ‘cause she said, 'All ist klar,' and hung up. Now I don’t know if that was really the whole story or what but it made us uncomfortable. Guitarman was worried that someone who hates Americans might report us for something we didn’t do and the police would come arrest us or whatever… I was annoyed that we were having to make different choices than we want to just for the sake of placating other guests at the hotel. I mean, I’m sorry our child was crying and I wouldn’t want to keep the other guests awake or anything, but we still need to do what’s best for our son. We’ve only been here a few days but I already feel like we’ve got to get out of this hotel if it’s going to mean that we’re not free to make the choices we need to make for the best of all of us.

This Ain’t Hollywood

Wee Laddie had his 2nd celebrity sighting at breakfast this morning. (His 1st was Buddy Guy—here's a picture of them—from a trip to the airport with Guitarman last year).



Wee Laddie was talking at breakfast to a guy with really cool dreads and it turns out he was on Wilmer Valderrama’s crew. Wilmer showed up a little later. He was very quiet, only said about 2 sentences. Hence, no picture. Oh yeah, plus it was one of the few times I didn't have my camera with me. Of course. I'll catch it the next time we have breakfast with Wilmer.

After breakfast, we took a short walk in Hörmannsdorf. We didn’t go far…not that there is a 'far' here. At least not without leaving town. All the houses here have these cool roller shade things outside all the windows. You pull a strap on the wall to open and close them and you can have them closed with a little light coming through or you can shut them down tight, in which case they are very good room darkeners. I have no idea what they’re called, but they’re very cool. The big one in our hotel is motorized. So you don’t strain yourself, I guess.

Guitarman also saw some of the 'Yo Momma' crew at breakfast. He said a guy walked over and took the lid off of one of the pans and said, 'Oh, god. Another sausage.' Welcome to Germany, dude.