Oh, the Basement

Spent part of today working on getting things organized in the basement. I’d really like to be able to find things a little easier than I have been able to do over here. “I feel sad,” Wee Laddie told me. We’ve talked about how it probably seems scary since he doesn’t remember what it was like when we lived in Denver before. So I tell him that we’ll be able to see his Grandma-Grandma and his Denver cousins all the time. We’ll be able to go to museums and on playdates with our friends. I think he’ll be really happy there when he realizes how many more people we’re connected to there, but it is kind of hard to watch him feeling sad about it.

I finished the scarf Wee Laddie asked me to make for him and he wore it all day. :) Baby Spunky now seems to be his lovey. He’s been calling it a baby reindeer.





Tonight was my last German class. That was kind of sad, too. That class was probably the most connected I’ve felt to something that’s not connected to the base. At least our teacher is German! And at least the class isn’t only people from base. And I finally got to find out what Wee Laddie’s polizei (police) car says:
“Zentrale, bitte kommen.” (Central, please come.)
And something about “Verrückter Fahrer, um die ______” (Crazy driver going the wrong way.)



Note: Since I'm posting this so much later than it actually happened, I don't have my notes on what the car actually says. We tried to decipher it the other day and I managed to remember some and was able to look up some. But I posted it anyway.

Wiggly Worm

Our little Schatzi is getting really wiggly. I love to feel him moving around in there. :) I know some women don’t really enjoy pregnancy so much... I love it. Parts of it suck, sure, but it’s just such an amazing time. I feel so lucky to be able to experience it.

In German class, we’re still working on past tense (vergangenheit… How’s that for an easy word?). It’s hard, but I’m glad I chose to keep working on my German even though we’re leaving soon. It makes me feel like I’m taking a bit more out of this experience to have at least tried to learn some of the language.

Wee Laddie didn't want me to go to class tonight and was really clingy at bedtime. He wanted Daddy downstairs & me by the computer (just outside of his room). We usually switch off, so this is Guitarman’s night to be upstairs. Sometimes we indulge Wee Laddie, sometimes not.

These Boots

Today while getting ready to leave the house, Wee Laddie pulled on his boots and stood up.

“You just stomp them on,” he told me. “That’s what Grandma says.”

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)

The Internet in Any Language

I’ve got a bit of a computer-related rant today. I know, I was just complaining about Microsoft dumbing things down. This one has to do with living in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. If you’re not in that situation, then you probably don’t know that there are web sites out there that check your location and default to a site specific to that country. And in that language. I get that… it makes sense.

Unless they don’t give you an obvious way to be able to access the information in another language (when you know that the information exists in that other language). English, say.

I type in www.google.com and get sent to www.google.de. And there’s a link called “Google.com in English.” Perfect. Many sites will have either a little British or American flag icon that gives you English. But Samsung’s site doesn’t have any such link. (Nor does myspace, not that I actually need to go to myspace… I’m just saying.)

But Samsung. It sure would be handy to be able to get the driver I need to re-calibrate my monitor so Photoshop stops giving me error messages every time I start it.

Halloween on My Mind

German class was just me and Kim tonight and I was clueless. It’s a little easier to BS my way through with more people there but it’s also that, since there were only 2 of us there, we had to participate more.

We talked a little about Halloween here and how it’s growing in popularity. How sad that it’s still shrinking in the US. Trick-or-treating used to be such a blast! I loved trying to think of a really unusual/creative costume and then seeing people’s reactions to it. One of my funniest Halloween moments was the year that two of my best friends and I went as coneheads. We’d made our cones out of cardboard (this was before they had ones you could buy) and they had holes in the top. We were at one house, and my boyfriend at the time went up on the stairs to look into the hole to see if he could read my mind. Pretty funny.

I’ve started to work on getting organized for the packing. We don’t have to pack our stuff (in fact, even if we did pack it, they’d have to unpack & repack it… I think because of customs and to make sure we don’t bring anything illegal), but I’m trying to get it organized so we can find things later. It’s a big job.

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.

Vocabulary Building

This morning Wee Laddie was sitting in his little rocking chair in the living room singing, 'baby boat… moon…by.' Those are lyrics from 'Baby’s Boat,' which is the song my mom always sang to him when trying to get him to nap. He doesn’t let me sing it to him very often. Whenever I ask if he wants to hear it he says, 'Grandma sing Baby Boats.'

Wee Laddie's language is quite astonishing. (Hey, it’s totally legitimate for me to be insanely impressed by my son’s mad language 'skillz!') During a couple of his naps in mid-January I made a list of the words he says (I did this a few months ago, too, and thought it’d be interesting to one day share with him what words he felt that it was important to know). I came up with 450 words that he uses independently (as in not after I say them to him) and in the right context. Wow. No wonder he really seems to understand nearly everything we say to him!

Checked out the thrift store on base today. Not terribly interesting… very typical for a small thrift store. I was hoping to find a sewing machine (I sewed the bathroom curtain by hand and it took ages and now it bugs me that the stitches aren’t totally straight) but no luck. They had a little ride-on motorcycle that I got for Wee Laddie. It was only $3 so I figured I couldn’t pass it up. It’s motorized but needs a battery, so now we have to get that part figured out. Wee Laddie was beside himself about his 'mocycle feeney' (see?). He wanted to bring it upstairs while he took his nap.

The Toys Are Back in Town

Today Wee Laddie and I hung out in 'his' room (not that he sleeps there yet) while I unpacked some stuff. Wee Laddie was so cute…he was totally excited about each toy. I’d put one in the toy box, he’d spot it and pull it out to play with. He napped on top of his Elmo phone and plastic keys. He even woke briefly once to find that the keys had slipped out from under him… he tucked them in again and went back to sleep.

I seem to have a problem with overusing the word 'thingy,' as evidenced by my son, who now uses it (pronounced 'feeney') in nearly every sentence he utters.

The Furniture Returns

Got our stuff, at long last! They didn’t put everything together, nor did they unpack everything. We were led to believe they would do both. We are really not too impressed with the company that has orchestrated this whole thing (Cartus, in case anyone’s looking for an int’l mover to NOT use). They didn’t keep very good track of the paperwork. Oh, and they charged us 100 euro for storage. What? Shyeah… as if we haven't been waiting weeks already to get our stuff. Aargh!

I have an apple song that I created (over several nights) at Wee Laddie’s request. (I couldn’t think of a single song that talks about apples, which he was fixated on at the time.) He usually wants me to sing that song to help him fall asleep. Today at naptime he told me, 'No Apple. No sing, Mommy, just bounce.' Wow. His language skills are blowing me away these days.

Online Again, Online

Got the DSL installed. (Of course it overlapped, so we had to miss Kids’ Club time, but I think it’s better to have a sane mama.) The installer was the same guy who had come to fix our phone before. His English isn’t perfect (still MILES better than my German, of course) but he’s very nice & friendly and totally willing to jump in with guess-words.

He also told me how to have our phone quit calling us (which, it turns out, is the answering service that we have…after every call we get, the phone calls every 15 minutes to let you know that you got a call. Great idea, but not so helpful when you didn’t answer the phone because you have a toddler who is trying nap.) He also switched it to English so we can understand what it’s saying to us. :)

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

Hoopdis All Around

Wee Laddie and I went to Kids’ Club. It was just us for 45 min or so (I guess because of the snow?), then 3 others eventually showed. The group that goes regularly seems to play well together. There are very few altercations, and the moms are all pretty involved. (Hmmm...perhaps that’s why there are so few altercations.)

Apparently our stuff is getting closer… Guitarman has been asked to fill out a customs form. We’d like to know why it wasn’t done ages ago, but the moving company doesn’t really seem to have their shit together.

Wee Laddie is talking up a storm. Today he talked about 'shovel cars' (snowplows)…his growing understanding of how to make sentences astounds me. He’s saying lots of things where he’s playing with the word order, like 'In there Daddy office?' becomes 'Daddy office in there?' It’s like he gets that it goes a certain way and plays with it ‘til it sounds right. My fave phrases of his are, 'Honey, honey, honey,' which he uses if he’s starting to get frustrated with something… can you guess why?) 'Guess so.' And, 'Thank you, you’re welcome, thanks.' Said all together so there’s not even room for another person to do the 'you’re welcome' part. He’s actually been doing this for a while, but it’s now getting clear enough for other people to understand easily. And they usually laugh.

Got Guitarman’s car tonight. Now I’ve got the schmancy car of the two of us. I should tell you, though, that my fancy red sports car (’95 BMW 3-series) only cost $4K. That’s only $1K more than the crappy little car I was driving back home. And even though it’s more than 10 years old it handles really nicely… better than any other car I’ve owned, actually. If we have to leave in October, I’m sure going to see about shipping this car back to the US.

The Telephone Is Calling

Went to take that drivers’ license test. Did pretty well. Passed, which is the most important thing. Now I’m legal to drive Guitarman’s car (there’s a weird tax implication if I drive it without the license) and we can go get another car. I didn’t think the test was that hard, really, if you study. Apparently a lot of people don’t pass it the first time.

Went to a Mommy & Me exercise class on base today, after the drivers’ test and before lunch. It’ll be ongoing if there’s enough interest. It’s kind of a combo of Yoga and Pilates and the kids just run around & do whatever they want while we’re exercising. Excellent…I’ve been wanting to do Yoga regularly for such a long time! Wee Laddie spent most of his time trying to snuggle a little baby that was there. She’s about 4 months old. Luckily she’s got an older brother so her mom wasn’t totally freaked out that my son was lying on top of her baby to give her hugs.

Today Wee Laddie discovered he can put his hands in his pockets so he’s been running around all day with them there.

Our phone is calling us with messages in German. What do they say? We’ve no idea. And it calls like every 15 minutes, too. Guitarman finally started pressing random buttons and it stopped calling. Whew.

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.

Is This a Hurricane?

Kids’ Club today... 5 other mom-tot sets there. (This was actually our 2nd time there, but I was whining so much last week that I didn’t write about it. ) The kids seem to play together well. Wee Laddie really likes this German mom named Sabine. She reminds me of Rutabaga's mom in her 'anything to make this kid have fun' attitude. Her daughter’s fantastic, too… very happy & playful. This playgroup is in a gym on the base and they set out big gymnastic mats & tunnels & things. It is so good for Wee Laddie to have some serious run & climb time!



The satellite installer came to look around & see what he needs to do to get us set up. There’s apparently free German satellite TV (Astra), which I love having. Guitarman wants to sign up for AFN (Armed Forces Network) so we get some stuff in English and so we get the sports he wants to watch. I’d rather have just the German… it’d kind of force us to learn the language, you know?

Made my first trip to a local market… Netto. (I used to know a girl named Netta so it reminds me of her.) My observations: They were out of bananas. Yup, just plain sold out. No blizzard, no nothing...just sold out. Weird. Also, there were very few big loaves of bread. There were a lot of loaves that were like half or so. It must be because of all the bakeries...they must be used to having their bread really fresh.

I got some email time, thank goodness. Oh, how I miss the regular contact with my 'peeps.' It makes me crazy to just have these stolen moments online… it’s not enough time to actually accomplish anything, just enough time to make me realize how behind I’m getting!

Oh, and apparently we’re having a hurricane. A bunch of stuff on the base closed because of the wind. I went to the library. While there, the guy who works at the library went back to talk to a woman who works at the library. Here is the gist of their conversation:
Him: 'The weather is horrible. Go straight home when you leave here.'
Her: 'But I was going to stop at the store.'
Him: 'No, you need to go straight home. It’s really bad out there. Everything’s closed.'
(I’m really downplaying some of the drama.)

So a little bit after that, I go outside to go home. The weather? Perfectly freaking still. Seriously, not even a breeze.

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.

Feelin’ Like a Moron

We went up to one of the other furniture shops by IKEA... it’s called Hiedl. There was a discount furniture place that seemed a little lower in quality than IKEA so we didn’t get anything there. I mean, IKEA’s got good bang-for-your-buck, but if you go much lower than that on quality I think you might have some regrets. We got a rug for the living room (I was surprised that Guitarman actually was okay with a big orange rug for the living room… he’s said before that he didn’t want to have bunches of colors in the house just for the sake of having lots of colors. And we do already have a red sofa!), some childproofing things and a stroller.

I had my first official 'I’m an idiot for never becoming fluent in another language' moment. We were checking out and while Guitarman was doing VAT forms and I was confused about the German instructions we were getting on how to actually get the stroller (some stuff you can just stick in your cart, some stuff you have to have sent over from the warehouse, apparently) we forgot a bag at the counter. We got to the car and realized it was missing so I went back in to get it… it had already been sent to where we had to go to pick up the stroller. So we get there and the guy says something to me in German. I told him I don’t understand German and he just walked away. He brought over the bag and asked if it was ours (through gestures), so I said yes ('ja') and he gave me that and our stroller. It was one of those moments where you can just tell exactly how big of an idiot another person thinks you are. I hate those moments.

Wee Laddie is having a lot of trouble listening lately. Well, I suppose it’s more the doing what we want him to part that he’s really having a hard time with. I know he’s two and all so there’s that. But I also think the upheaval is taking its toll on his behavior. We’ve been doing all this furniture shopping (another factor, I’m sure, along with the fact that it’s almost never warm & dry enough to spend any time outside here) and he just takes off running through the store and won’t stay with us at all. Makes it even harder to get this shopping done.

A Better Place to Stay

We’re definitely renting the house in Parsberg… Guitarman met with the landlord & a guy from the housing office today to do a walkthrough. He’s supposed to take the rent check to the landlord tomorrow. It’ll be really nice to get out of the hotel & into a place that’ll be ours even if our stuff won’t be there for a while yet.

We made a run up (down? over?) to IKEA in Regensburg tonight after Guitarman got off work. It was a horrible trip doing something I normally really enjoy. The people who lent Guitarman the truck (it’s connected with work so they can only use it for a short time) didn’t have their paperwork together, so it took him like 1.5 hours to get the truck. Those of you who know how patient he is can imagine how that affected his mood. (And I’ll just leave it at that.) He was supposed to have the truck at 4pm, IKEA closes at like 7 or 8pm (I forget exactly) and it takes probably 1/2 hour to get there.

The drive up was awful...my first time driving on the autobahn. Here’s the deal with the autobahn: There is technically no speed limit for the whole autobahn, but certain areas are marked with speed limits for certain conditions (60kph when wet, 80kph because of road damage, etc). And if you’re in an accident and are doing over 130kph (which is roughly 80mph) you can get in some big trouble if they think you were driving too fast for conditions. Still, a lot of people drive very, very fast. So I’m driving this Lancia rental car that is essentially a Euro minivan… tall, top-heavy, plus it’s shorter and narrower than a US minivan. And on this drive it was really windy. I felt like I was getting blown all over the place! So I wasn’t able to drive very fast but was trying to hurry. I'm a fairly confident driver except when weather conditions make me uncomfortable.


(photo from constructeurs.photos.caradisiac.com...trendy people included for perspective)

Wee Laddie and I ate dinner in the car (sandwiches from the Esso gas station…gotta say, much better than the 7-11 kind) and then we made a mad dash around IKEA, Wee Laddie in tow, trying to get all this stuff. We wanted to get: a bed for us, a bed for Wee Laddie, bedding for all, a TV stand of some kind, and some seating for the living room while our sofa is en route. What we got: a bed



and bedding, but just for us. (Guitarman had already picked up a TV, of course.)

There’s a weird phenomenon here… all the people in shops love to give out gummy bears (or sometimes lollipops) to the little children. Wee Laddie was being really whiny at the Esso when I picked up dinner and the woman handed me one for him. I stuck it quickly in my pocket so he didn’t see it because I was not about to reward his whiny behavior. I did refrain from telling her that, though it probably was mostly because my German is so limited.