Last Kids’ Club

Today was our last Kids’ Club and we said our goodbyes to Jeannette and Ashley. I have sort of mentioned to a few others, just in passing, that we were leaving but we certainly didn’t make a big production out of it. Partly ‘cause there aren’t many people that we’re that close to... partly because this population is so transient anyway that it would feel weird to call attention to it.

I've been taking some pics around the base. Not sure if that's legit or not--security issues and all--but I want to have a personal record of it (I won't be posting those anywhere) so I can show Wee Laddie when he's older in case he remembers any of it. But he's starting to get annoyed and doesn't want me to take pictures of certain things. Like the gym where they have Kids' Club. Not sure what's up with that.

We did also pop into Kristen’s office to say goodbye. She’s one of the first people I met when we first got here... her son, Ben, is a year older than Wee Laddie and we were all at Hotel Yogurt together back in January.

Today was the 2nd day in a row with no nap. 15 minutes in the car doesn’t count, despite what my son might try to tell you.

The New Tenant

I’m a little sad about leaving Germany. This part of it is clearly not for us, despite the fact that it’s lovely, the local food is great and the people have been incredibly friendly. I still think we might have had a totally different reaction had we been living nearer a big city. And there are a few people from here that we will definitely miss. Not many, but a few. Hopefully we’ll be able to stay in touch with these people and maybe reconnect geographically sometime in the future.

A woman came to look at our house tonight. She was here with another woman who appeared to be her assistant, as she was doing a lot of “ma’am”ing. She seemed to really like the house and is planning to call the housing office tomorrow. Get this: It’s going to be just this one woman living here. She’s a GS employee and apparently gets a really large housing allowance. This place seems pretty big for the three of us, since Wee Laddie can ride his bicycle and/or motorcycle around in the living room... it seems enormous for just one person!

Wee Laddie too a reeeeaaaalllllly long time to fall asleep. Maybe he’s anxious about the move? (It probably was weird for him to have someone looking at the house and us talking about her living here.) Maybe I need to re-think the nap thing. I should do a nap log to see if no-nap days are always quick-to-sleep nights.

I scheduled a hair appointment for right after we get home. I’ll have to wait to see about an OB appointment. We’ll still be on the out-of-network insurance until Guitarman’s back at his old office, so the coverage will be weird.

Weigh, not Organized

The movers came this morning to do an estimate of the weight of all of our stuff. Wee Laddie and I had Total Mom so Guitarman came home from work to meet with them. We are semi-organized, but there’s still lots to do. I guess it wouldn’t actually be horrible if things went as they are now... it’ll just simplify things a lot once stuff is in storage if we can get it more organized. I’m working on it in bits & pieces (partly so it doesn’t bog me down too much, partly ‘cause that’s kind of my only option what with a toddler to entertain).

Guitarman had a software group dinner tonight, so it was just me & Wee Laddie for the evening. Nap got off to a very late start, so we weren’t even back up until 6pm. (I usually wake around 5:30... must’ve been tired today.) We got up & had dinner and then I put him back into bed!

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)

Memos & Morning People

Ugh. This morning Wee Laddie woke at like 5:30 or something (I’m not even sure what time it was, I was in such a stupor) and did not go back to sleep. It’s moments like this that make me wish my hubby wasn’t so pro-co-sleeping. But I don’t argue ‘cause it’s his one kind of crunchy, granola “vice” and it’s also a great connector for those two, I think, to have that time just being close. But anyway, Guitarman isn’t the one who ends up trying to keep Wee Laddie quiet and in bed until at least 7 am. I’m not sure whether he goes back to sleep or not... although he's mostly very attentive, he has been known to sleep through the sound of a crying baby before.

My child apparently did not get the memo: Mommy is NOT a morning person.

This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day. Add to that the fact that Wee Laddie was completely squirrelly from waking up early himself, and you can imagine how friendly a bunch we were today. The trip to the grocery store was sort of a nightmare, although there weren’t any tantrums or anything... just a constant barrage of “no” and then, once he’d been banished to riding in the cart, trying to keep Wee Laddie from grabbing everything within reach.

Then tonight, it took until nearly 10 pm for the child to fall asleep. What is going on??

Nap? No, Thanks.

Today was yoga class. Turns out that all of the regular yoga & pilates classes were cancelled but this one wasn’t. This is officially a 'Mommy & Me' class and wasn’t on the cut list. Yay!

Wee Laddie was crying for Daddy on the way home (nevermind that we had JUST had lunch with Daddy), then he fell asleep. Of course, he woke when I was getting him out of the car (he almost never sleeps through that) and then wanted to look at pictures of Grandma. So we did that and he stayed awake for another hour plus. When I finally got him to sleep he slept for 2.5 hours. Crazy boy! It seemed like he would have slept even longer but I woke him up by trying to move him.

We got a dual-voltage, multisystem (NTSC and PAL, at least) DVD HD recorder with HDMI (at this point my mom tunes out of the blog). Somehow we forgot to check on the regions. Turns out it’s only for Region 1, so if we want to watch any German DVDs (which we most definitely do) we have to get a Region 2 player. I understand the whole piracy thing, but the security stuff sure can be a pain at times like this.

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. :)

A Narrow Miss

Wee Laddie didn’t sleep well. Sometime in the night he and I had a disagreement about whether or not we could sleep with his arm wrapped around my throat (I have trouble even wearing too-tight turtlenecks, in case you were wondering which side of the argument I was on). Ended up with me getting grumpy and him getting very upset. It later occurred to me that this is still a very huge, strange adjustment for him and I need to bear that in mind. I mean, our stuff still isn’t even here… it must be hard for him to feel any sense of security or stability. And, as all parents know, young children LOVE routine.

We were supposed to get our DSL installed today. This morning I asked Guitarman if they’d said afternoon or if I was just guessing that.. he said the thought it was afternoon. Then he pulled out the letters from T-Com and guess what? The freaking router is on backorder until APRIL. (yup, you read that right) So I just about had a nervous breakdown before breakfast, even. Perfect timing that I’d bought that dictionary last night or I’d never have been able to figure out what the letter said. Oh, or that they were in fact scheduled to come in the morning, by 10 am.

Long story short, I found out that they shipped us the router on 29 January so we should have it today or tomorrow. I’m supposed to call when we get it and they‘ll reschedule the installation. Thank goodness. Some of you can well imagine how upset I was at the thought of TWO MORE MONTHS of no internet at home.

The German word for relieved: erleichtert

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.

Lunch with Grandma

We met Guitarman at the mess hall for lunch, then I took Wee Laddie to the library on base. I was thinking that maybe if he got a chance to look at books or play or something he might give me a few minutes to check my email. Ha. Boy, was I kidding myself. I can’t remember if I was even able to log into Yahoo (I definitely didn’t get to read a single email) before he started screaming. He absolutely wouldn’t settle down so we left. Of course, I first had to carry him screaming through the library to put back the books we were going to check out. (Sometimes follow-through is a pain.) Turns out I’d kept him up too long before his nap… he fell asleep even before we’d gotten off the base!

Today I asked Wee Laddie, 'Do you want to have lunch with Daddy?' He said, 'Lunch with Grandma?' I repeated myself and he answered the same way. Poor thing, he’s really missing Grandma, his cousins, his friends.

And he’s been stuck inside for weeks! The last 2 weeks in CO were so snowy that he couldn’t really play outside and it’s been so wet & chilly here that he still can’t. I have to find some things for him to do to burn off some of his energy. I haven’t seen any kid play-type places that are indoors where he could run around in the crappy weather.

This Hotel Room Ain't Big Enough for the Two of Us

Semi-sick day. We skipped the hotel breakfast (which is pretty good, as German hotel breakfasts seem to generally be) because of excessive whining. Not by me, though I'm going to whine a bit right now. The hotel room was way too small for us today… we had a bad night’s sleep and a bad nap.

Guitarman was charged a 2nd time for a notebook he’d already bought at the PX (he told the bitchy cashier that he’d brought it in and she totally ignored him…and he’d even written in it already, not that she checked). It was less than $1 but it’s the principle, you know? I’m not sure why, but the German workers on base all seem to hate Americans. (Actually, I’ll revise that: The security people at the entry gate are nearly always nice as are most of the mess hall employees. But the people at the small offices around base are mostly pissy.)

I can totally understand why some people might not like Americans... especially Americans stationed in their country. But, really, if you feel that way, why the hell are you working on an American military base??

How to Wear Out a Toddler

Wee Laddie slept ‘til 10:45 and I still had to wake him… not like his usual 'Mommy wake up?' at 7am. I feel pretty decent (I seem to adjust fairly well to time changes). I mean, I am tired and slept late… but sleeping late means I wasn’t up at 4am or anything (which is what happened the first few days of my trip to England with Lori). Went to the military base for lunch… didn’t really do much else.

It’s cold here and grey. On the upside, there aren't 2 feet of snow on the ground like back home.

Wilmer Valderrama & his 'Yo Momma' crew were at Guitarman’s office today (apparently I just missed them when I went to pick him up), taking a tour or something. When we got back to our hote, there was a tour bus outside. Who knew Hörmannsdorf was such a happenin’ place? (That comment is funnier if you've ever seen Hörmannsdorf.)