The Cake of Pure Evil

We were maybe going to have some play time with Starfruit & Cutiebug today but, after 2 days in a row without a nap, Wee Laddie woke up at 6 am. Ugh. And since he was in a time-out before 8:30, I decided this was not such a good day to try it.

We went to meet Guitarman for lunch (he was on shift the last 2 days so couldn’t eat with us). Wee Laddie was happily eating his kuppelkuchen (some kind of German cake) when he suddenly announced he didn’t like it and wasn’t going to eat it. Huh?? Then he started acting a little weird, like he had a bad taste in his mouth or something. Then he’d put his hands over his ears, then out to the side and shake them. We tried to get him to eat/drink something to get rid of the taste he didn’t like but that didn’t seem to work. Then his face started turning red and he got some welts on his chin & cheeks. Aha, allergy of some kind. Then he puked.

So while Guitarman went & helped him rinse his mouth out, I went to find out what was in the cake so that we can avoid it in future. Took a little while ‘cause they get their cakes at a local bakery so they were calling to find out but could only get the answering machine. Their baker said it was chocolate Bisquick and buttercream, which sounds so innocuous (and like something Wee Laddie had likely had before) but then they said also hazelnuts and marzipan. He may have had almond before but I don’t think he’s ever had hazelnuts. I’ll have to ask the pediatrician about it when we get back. I’d like to actually know if he’s allergic, but that seems best tested at the doctor’s office in case anything goes wrong.

It was a little scary, as I kept worrying about his tongue swelling up or him having an anaphylactic reaction. (*see update below) He had one allergic reaction to something once before but I don’t remember the circumstances... and I think we decided it was a contact allergy.

Anyway, I thought we’d best hang out on base in case we needed to head over to the clinic, so we went to the ACS (Army Community Services... they're the ones I've been facilitating the sign language class through) offices to say our goodbyes. Wee Laddie seemed to get back to his normal self pretty quickly. So we chit-chatted with our friends over there for a bit & took a few photos to remember people by. I figure that’ll help Wee Laddie adjust since the photos of people from back home seemed to help him so much while we’ve been here.

*Update: Turns out that this reaction actually was an anaphylactic reaction. Contrary to the popular notion that it always involves compromised breathing, anaphylaxis simply means that it's a severe allergic reaction, often involving more than one body system. And since he had vomiting (GI) and hives (skin reaction), that means two systems. We are lucky that the reaction didn't get any worse. The ones that come on fast like that sometimes get dangerous very quickly.

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.

Strawberries in December

Went back to the Weihnachtsmarkt in Nurnberg… this time with Starfruit (this is the moniker she suggested for herself, by the way) and Cutiebug. It was very fun. We did a little bit of actual shopping then played around at the Kinder Weihnachtsmarkt.

Starfruit took this first picture.





And here's Starfruit and Cutiebug.



Cutiebug was quite enamored of the fabulous strawberries I bought. The whole way home in the car she kept asking, “Mo’ tawbay, peese?” (More strawberries, please?) It was adorable and I’m quite impressed by her full sentences, Little Miss One-and-a-Half. It got dark while we were driving home and Wee Laddie started playing a Peekaboo game with Cutiebug to entertain her. And himself, of course. Those two are very cute together.

Definitely gonna miss them.

Lifestyles

After this experience, I have decided that it is a far bigger adjustment to go from city living to rural living than it is to move to a foreign country. (I’m sure that’s not always true, but it is as far as moving from the US to Western Europe.) The truth is that the lifestyle differences are more of an issue for me than the language barrier. I mean, you can get quite a bit accomplished just on gestures and smiles and a friendly attitude.

The big problem for me, here, is how to entertain my son. Sure, we’ve got all the playgroups & stuff but we do the same stuff week after week. After week. And as fun as they are, they get old. I used to be able to pop him in the car on a rough day and just run over to the Children’s Museum to let him run around for a couple of hours. Or we could meet some friends at the zoo or a play area somewhere. I just don’t have those resources here and it’s very wearing sometimes.

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.

Nürnberg Weihnachtsmarkt

Went to the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) in Nürnberg. Before Guitarman and I moved here, we’d read about these markets and planned to one day take a holiday cruise down the Danube and stop at all the markets.

I didn’t do a good job of looking up directions or anything online, so we totally lucked out that my randomly selected GPS destination was pretty close to the whole thing. There’s a little artisans’ market in one section,



then a few blocks away is a Kinder Weihnachtsmarkt with carousels and things in addition to booths with gifts, ornaments, food, etc. Then there’s the main section, the Kristkindlemarkt. They were all absolutely JAMMED with people! We took the stroller in case Wee Laddie got tired of walking (or if we needed it to keep track of him in the crowd), so that made navigation a little tough. It was too insane to actually shop, so I’m hoping to go back during the week to get a few little things.

We also completely lucked out with the weather. It’s very grey here and has been raining & snowing pretty often lately. We felt a couple of sprinkles, but did not actually get rained on. Hurrah! It wasn’t even actually that cold, although we were pretty well bundled up. Not that Wee Laddie looks like it here:



I decided that I just couldn’t be here at a Christmas market, in Germany, and NOT try Gluhwein. It was different than I expected. I was expecting it to be cinnamony, but it was more of a fruity/sweet taste. Maybe that’s just ‘cause I got the Heidelbeere (blueberry) kind. But now I can look up online how to make it and that can be one of my “life souvenirs” from our time here.

Thanksgiving, part Deux

When Wee Laddie woke up this morning he was talking about a dream he’d had with a fire alarm at the movie theater. (Fire alarms have been a frequent topic of conversation around here since this one and this one at the PX in Graf.) And he said that his mommy got him out, but I wasn’t his mommy in the dream. So I told him that dreams were weird that way. It’s incredible to me to have someone this age be able to talk about his dreams and kind of understand (at least by appearances) that they’re just stories in your head and not things that really happened.

In the late afternoon we went to Charlie and Telise’s for a late-Thanksgiving/early-Christmas dinner. It was lovely and Telise did the whole thing... turkey, stuffing, potatoes, the whole shebang. Yum.

She also gave us a copy of her painting of Wee Laddie, which is just such an awesome thing to have. What a treasure.

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.)

The Baby is How Big??

Another OB appointment today. It’s sort of weird to get an ultrasound every time. We ended up with another arm shot, ‘cause Schatzi really seems to enjoy facing backwards. He’s head-down now... facing a different way than Wee Laddie was when he was in there.

My belly seems absolutely HUGE to me (and, apparently, to Wee Laddie and Guitarman), but I’ve only actually gained 3.2 kilos (7 lbs, for those of you who are metrically challenged like me) so far.

The doc seemed concerned that Schatzi is growing too fast, and she made it pretty clear that she doesn’t believe me about my blood sugar numbers. That sort of ticked me off, as I take the health of my children very seriously. (It was Wee Laddie whose tiny presence got me to quit smoking, after all, and I also managed my blood sugar well with him.) I don’t get it, ‘cause my numbers have been really good. Like my one-hour readings are often lower than the goal for two hours after eating. I’m hardly eating any bread products at all and have been eating lots of salads and smaller portions of everything. I’ve had a few high readings in the past week, but other than that I usually get like 1-4 high readings per week (testing 4x a day). The doc was predicting a 10-pounder and telling me that not taking care of this now can lead to him having problems with diabetes later in life. So then she looks at the graph again and realizes she’s marked it on the wrong week... and says, “Oh, that’s not bad.” Grrrrr. Because at this point I’m all friggin’ stressed out about it (still, frankly, even though now she’s saying it’s okay… ‘cause I don’t know if she means REALLY okay or just semi-okay) and questioning whether or not I’m testing correctly or if there’s something wrong with my glucose meter. I’ll be so happy to get back to my regular doc.

After the doc, Wee Laddie and I ran over to Laaber to pick up Christina and Oliver and the four of us went to IKEA. I broke one of our bowls the other day and wanted to replace it before we leave. So we had lunch there and did a bit of shopping. Of course, they didn’t have the bowl I need. They have a similar one, same shape and very nearly the same color but it’s not exact. And they wouldn’t let me take the display bowl that WAS the right color ‘cause they’re getting more shipped in. Sometime. I’ve no idea when. Or how annoying it’ll be to replace one stupid bowl. And I should just let it go, but I suspect it’ll bug the crap out of me every time I look in the cabinet and realize that we only have 5 bowls but 6 of everything else. Like the spoon from our silverware set that went into the garbo. Still bugs me and it’s been like 7 years.

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!

Aztec Dancers

To celebrate Native American Heritage Month, they had an Aztec dancing group perform in the movie theater on base. I’ve been waiting for it for weeks, so I was pleased to be able to take Wee Laddie to see it.

I was a little disappointed that a) there was only one dance demonstrated and b) the dancing portion was only about 20-30 minutes long… the rest was Q&A (but they didn’t tell us that, so we waited around a bit ‘cause there was a woman there in a dance shawl so I thought she might dance). Other than that it was great! And, frankly, I thought it was kind of cool that they even had something a little more esoteric than the kinds of dancing you might see on TV or whatever. This seemed even more culturally rich, in a way. Wee Laddie enjoyed it very much…up until the Q&A part, not surprisingly.

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.

Another Fire Alarm??

Ugh, more crappy weather here in Bavaria. I have this idea I’m working on that has something to do with illustrating just how crappy the weather is here. When I get it done, I’ll come back here & make a link to it or something. But seriously. It’s grey here pretty much all the time. Today there was a bit of blue sky and Wee Laddie looked up and exclaimed, “Oh no! The white is going away!”

We made another trek up to Graf and there was another fire alarm! I was waiting for our food (yes, of course, Taco Bell) and the alarm went off. So we all trooped outside to wait. Fire truck came again and the firefighters went inside. Not sure what happened, but it wasn’t long before we were allowed back in. I went up to get our food and gave them the receipt so they could see what we had. While they were working on that, the alarm went off a 2nd time! Ack. They rushed over to give me my food. I’m like, “What am I supposed to do with that?” They, not realizing that 1) I have a toddler and 2) I do not enjoy eating my food outside, standing up, in the cold, thought that I’d just take it & eat while we were waiting. Um, no. But I forgot to get the receipt. Luckily, the wait to get back in was even shorter this time, and our tray was still on the counter when I went back in. So I just took it & we went and sat down. Poor Wee Laddie is going to think there’s always a fire alarm when we come up here.

I’ve been thinking about the expat Thanksgiving and I realize that I’m a bit envious of the other expats. Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to going home. But I’m kind of sad about feeling that way. This was supposed to be our grand adventure, our new way of life, our chance to be European for a while… to learn a new language and have our son get some great language learning in a foreign place. And that’s not at all what happened. I’m envious that these were couples who were both happy to be here, both learning the language and experiencing & enjoying the culture and who will probably spend more years here. We’ve talked about Germany for so long (and I’ve wanted to live somewhere in Europe for so long) that it’s kind of like giving up on a dream.

Best Seat in the House

Wee Laddie loves to watch TV like this...

Early to Rise

Wee Laddie woke at 5:45 am, after not falling asleep until nearly 10 pm last night. It doesn’t happen often that he gets up that early, but it always makes me wonder why my husband hasn’t gotten tired of co-sleeping yet. Don’t get me wrong, I like the co-sleeping, too. To a point. I suspect that we’d be making better progress with the nighttime potty training (the pooping in the diaper every night thing, I mean) if we had Wee Laddie in a bed with a plastic mattress. Like, say, the toddler bed phase of the convertible crib we bought… which is set up in Wee Laddie’s room, but goes largely unused. Especially since he usually now sleeps on the air mattress when he goes to sleep in his room (which is every night nowadays). Aaaanywho...

This morning while we were getting ready to meet Starfruit and Cutiebug for swimming, Wee Laddie fell on our stairs. Thankfully, he didn’t fall all the way down...but it scared the crap out of me anyway. He was trying to bring the broom upstairs and I have no idea what happened, as I was in the bathroom getting ready. I saw a flash of something (broom handle probably) and then heard the bumps. I came running out and he was lying about halfway down the stairs (just starting to cry) with the broom on top of him. God, how I hate these stairs. I will not miss them.

Now we went swimming despite my hesitations about it after last night’s lack of sleep. Lesson learned. Wee Laddie kept throwing toys no matter how many times I asked him to stop. He got a time-out-of-the-pool (sitting on my lap watching everyone else have fun) twice, and once I just took him back into the locker room while I decided what to do. One time-out was for not listening when I was calling his name (the circumstances were that he was headed down the steps into the big pool… I got to him JUST as his head went under!), the 2nd was for pulling Cutiebug down in the baby pool. (I know he didn’t mean to endanger her or anything but since we’d just had an issue with him grabbing her and them both falling plus the whole fact that it’s dangerous for him to do that in the pool, I felt I had to let him know that it IS actually a big deal.) And then he threw yet another toy… and we made our locker room trip. We ended up coming back out to have lunch and went home after that. I’d thought about trying to swim again after lunch but Wee Laddie wasn’t listening to me during lunch either and I’d told him that maybe we could swim again if he listened really well during lunch.

On the way home, he fell asleep… a bit too soon, as I’d feared. We got home right around the 20-minute mark. Our neighbor was out using the log-splitter for his enormous pile of firewood, Wee Laddie woke as I was loosening the car seat strap and was looking at the neighbor when I got him out of the car, so I thought it was all over. Took Wee Laddie upstairs and snuggled up and took slow, deep breaths right next to him… and (wonder of wonders!) he fell right back to sleep.

Sometimes even the strongest fighters succumb to the lure of a good nap.

The Expat Thanksgiving

I think I've only been away from home for 3 Thanksgivings. The first was during my student exchange to England during high school. The People-to-People group (their part of the Sister Cities Int’l group) threw us a Thanksgiving dinner which I find very funny, since it seems almost an anti-England holiday. The second was just a few years ago when Guitarman and I went to visit his parents in Florida for the holiday. And then this year.



We had a very lovely dinner at Christina’s. It’s an annual tradition for them to invite local Americans & other assorted friends to the Expat Thanksgiving Dinner. It was an interesting collection of people... about 1/2 American and about 1/2 other, I’d guess. I had a nice chat with the German neighbors, who were talking about how Germany doesn’t really have an equivalent holiday with a celebration & food and all of that. They seemed to really enjoy our holiday.

And the food was fabulous. Everyone brought a dish to share. And far from being a replica of all of the traditional American Thanksgiving foods (green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top) it was a fantastic spread of all sorts of international flavors. Yum. The stuffing was made with apples & sage, for example. I brought a curry-butternut squash soup that was yummy. I overheard a couple of remarks about it, one of which was a wife to her husband, “Here, you’ve got to try this soup,” which was followed by a brief chat about how he’d have never thought to put cilantro with it but that it really worked. So yay me. Or rather, yay Allrecipes.com.

I’ve learned that my kid is a natural problem solver. Ok, I already knew that. But isn’t it much more fun when I make it seem like you’re along with me on this journey of learning fun things about my son? Remember, he's just shy of 3. Anyway, he was trying to get a container of toys through the baby gate but it wouldn’t fit. So he tries again and still no luck. So he slides the container up to the top of the gate and reaches over to grab it. Genius, I tell you. ;)

Cutiebug's Playroom

We were invited to spend the morning in Cutiebug’s playroom. Wow, I thought we had a lot of toys! It’s amazing. She’s got a kitchen, a medical cart, a Bob the Builder workbench. And all the toys that go with each. An art table & chairs. Playdoh tools, paint, toy food, scarves, books. Just a ton of stuff, really. The kids had a wonderful time.



After playtime we went to have lunch at Hotel Gastof zur Post. I would definitely recommend it if you need a place to eat in Velburg. The food was good and the waitstaff was very nice.

We were letting the kids kind of walk around in our section (we were the only ones back there). There was one section of floor that was higher than the rest and Wee Laddie and Cutiebug were right by the edge there and I think Wee Laddie was trying to snuggle Cutiebug or something and he fell and pulled her right down with him and she bonked her head on the edge. Ugh. I felt horrible, he felt horrible and Cutiebug felt pretty horrible, too, although for a completely different reason. And she ended up with this big goose egg on her head. :( Forehead, of course. And right before they’re getting some professional pictures done. Of course.

This evening after nap, I went to the commissary solo to get a few things for my contribution to the expats Thanksgiving “do” at Christina’s. I really like shopping in the local stores and it would’ve been more convenient timewise except that I don’t know that they’d have everything I needed (and I know they don’t have frozen waffles, which are worth their weight in gold to my son). Plus it’d probably have cost a small fortune.

When I got home, Wee Laddie came over and hugged me around the legs and said, “I’m glad to see you.”

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.

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.

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.