Cheryl’s Last Day

Today at Little Troopers, Wee Laddie went over to one of the moms and stuck out his now polish-free tootsies. “No more red toes!” he told her.

Sadly, today was Cheryl’s last playgroup. She loved her gifts and was so impressed that I’d somehow personalized the photo book. (Sometimes I forget that the world is not filled with designers.) I was pleased that she seemed to like it so much. She said they were 2 of the best gifts she’d ever gotten, because they were so personal. So we did good. I still stand by my review of the product, though.

She brought her replacement (at least for the playgroup) so we got to meet her. I’ve forgotten her name already. I hope the group keeps going with the great vibe that it’s had so far. I can’t imagine what I’d be doing over here without these playgroups to keep me sane and to connect me with people.

Went to Neumarkt after nap. We bought 2 more “Cars” cars (Hamm and Miss Sally) at the toy store, and went to OBI for shelves for the basement. I was so happy to manage this outing… it sometimes takes weeks for us to be able to make a trip like that. First you gotta work around nap, then there are store closings and the long drive and back in time for dinner… blah, blah. I should shop online more, I suppose.


Anyone else see some Halloween costume potential here?

Photo Finish

At Kids’ Club this morning I was talking with Kelly (Kaitlyn’s mom) about taking the kids some other places just to break things up a bit. Maybe the zoo or the pool. And Zoe brought me some info about an indoor play place (like Monkey Business or something) that she’d gotten a brochure for. It looks fun but I’m not sure how far away it is. I think maybe some of our problem is the fact that we live in the country here. When I really think about it, it’s probably like living in Wyoming or something. There’s probably not much in the way of those kinds of places for kids, whereas Denver’s got loads of them. I’m just not used to living in the sticks.

One of the other Little Troopers moms is putting together a scrapbook for Cheryl, so I went to drop off my page (finally). It’s my first ever scrapbook page. Looking at it compared to the other pages, I can see that my design experience is a bit more conservative and formal than the typical scrapbook page. Mine is so much more businesslike. I don’t know whether it’d be different if I’d had more stuff (though I’m still not into the frou-frou things a lot of people use) or more time… or if I’m just too used to doing corporate design work. Even the little bit of movie stuff I did was pretty limited in terms of actual creativity.



And I finished the photo book. Overall, I’m really not thrilled with the Epson Storyteller kits. I’ve often looked at them & thought they’d be really cool. Not so much. The layout designs are pretty limited… I ended up doing my own layouts in Photoshop ‘cause I wanted a really clean, studio look. But the worst part is that it’s really hard to get the pages to line up correctly (and let me tell you that I’m freakishly able to eyeball straight lines… I can literally spot when something is off by 1 pixel on my computer screen.), so although each page was lined up fine on its own sticky tab thing, the whole book didn’t end up being aligned very well. Partly my fault for forcing it to go 2-sided, but still. Had I finished the book in time to order it online, it would have been much less expensive, taken much less time, and looked much cooler. Lesson learned.

You Know

Wee Laddie’s photo was featured on this month’s advertisement for the Little Troopers. That’s him on the dog, eating Cheerios.


Sorry about the terrible photo.

For some reason, Wee Laddie has chosen some odd additions to his usual speaking repertoire: “so,” “but” and “you know.” Of course he’s been using all of those for quite a while now, but not all together in a phrase. He’ll be talking and then he’ll just stop and say, “So… but… you know,” and kind of shrug. I’m afraid I know exactly where he gets it, even though I (er, I mean whoever he picked that up from) don’t really put them together in quite that way.

Mommy vs. Daddy

Tonight was Guitarman’s turn to tuck in. I still usually try to mention that early in the day so Wee Laddie isn’t caught off-guard. (He adores his daddy, but really always wants me at bedtime.) So we were in the car and I told him, “Daddy’s tucking you in tonight.” He said, “Mommy tuck you in,” which I contradicted. Then he said, “Daddy tuck you in.” I said, “Yup. That’s right.” And he started saying, “Mommy’s at work. Mommy went back to work.” Trying the old switcheroo, I guess. Funny kid.

Daddy’s Fault

We saw some jets going over Parsberg today. The helicopters fly over here fairly often (it only really annoys me at naptime or late at night), but we don’t see jets too frequently. They must have been practicing something, as they were in formation… 3 together. I don’t actually know whether they’re American or German. There aren’t planes on the base here, so we’re not sure where they come from.

Somehow, Wee Laddie peed down his leg (with a diaper on) twice today. The 2nd time, Guitarman said, “It’s Daddy’s fault, sorry about that,” so for like the next 10 minutes Wee Laddie kept saying “It’s Daddy’s fault, it’s Daddy’s fault.” I’m like, “Yeah, but it would be okay even if it weren’t Daddy’s fault. This potty thing takes practice, and it’s all fine.” He didn’t seem to be listening to me, which has me a little concerned. Are we sending him some kind of negative message when he misses? Or is it some kind of pressure he’s putting on himself? Not too long ago we were having some nakey dupa time and he was sitting on my lap and started to pee. I felt it hit my leg and popped him up off my lap, but I didn’t jump up or anything. He immediately started crying and saying, “I peed on you!” So I told him that he’d just barely hit my leg, but that it was no big deal anyway… I’ll just wash it off. I suppose I need to increase the nakey dupa time so he gets more used to it.

So far I’m not too impressed with the Epson Storyteller photo book thing… it’s only set up for one-sided pages (and the layouts are not like what I was working with online), so I’ll have to do the layouts myself in Photoshop. Good thing I’ve spent so much time in Photoshop—and have already planned out which photos go where--or this would be stressing me out a little bit. It’ll be tricky to get it done in time, but I’ll manage.

Our Little Director

Yesterday we’d watched some of the behind-the-scenes stuff on the Finding Nemo DVD for the first time. We’ve been watching the Pixar shorts (Mater and the Ghostlight/Hook und das Geisterlicht and Knick Knack) for about a week now, and Wee Laddie likes to watch them multiple times in one sitting. Well now he’s apparently finding the director commentaries and stuff very interesting. When I told Guitarman we’d watched it again today (while he was on base doing laundry & going to the gym), I told him that maybe Wee Laddie would get some cool job in the entertainment industry and we could both live vicariously.

Happy birthday today to Grandma-Grandma! Her card will be embarrassingly late, despite the fact that I bought it like a month ago. (Much too early to send it, which is why it’s now so late. Had I bought it at a good time to send it, maybe I would have managed an on-time greeting.) Grandma-Nana’s birthday was just a week or so ago… if I were a better daughter-in-law, I’d probably have it written down somewhere.

The McCafe

The mess hall is on the early breakfast schedule again, so we had Burger King. When we first moved here, Wee Laddie was getting up earlier in the morning, and the brunch schedule (9:30 start) was too late for us. Now the early one (6-8:30) is too early, ‘cause we can’t even get there by 8:30. Sometimes even the 8:30-9:30 time is too early for us!

So this weekend, we had the breakfast-lunch fastfood two-fer that we avoided last week. The McDonald’s had fully reopened, so we went there. God we’re pathetic. I would actually love to go to the döner shop at times like this, but for some reason, Guitarman finds it very awkward and doesn’t like to go there very often. I thought it was going to be our “next best thing” to Chipotle, since it’s cheap and pretty healthy. But alas.

At any rate, they have completely revamped the McDonald’s near us… it’s now a McCafe. It’s actually kind of swanky-looking inside. It’s got a coffee counter (and even had paninis on the menu in that section!) and had a 4-sided fireplace and everything. I’ve seen the swankier McD’s on TV, but never in person.

Went to Schweinfurt and Würzburg to look for the photo book for Cheryl. Schweinfurt didn’t have it, but they do have a Taco Bell, so that was good. Finally found the photo book at Würzburg. I wanted a 5x7 size and they had exactly one. Whew. I’d have picked up an extra if they’d had any more… I didn’t want to commit to an 8x10 book, which they did have a few of.

At Würzburg we were toy shopping a bit. Wee Laddie, rather than his usual, “I want that. Wee Laddie wants that,” spiel, was trying out, “I’ll use that.” You can picture it, I’m sure: He points at a toy and says, “I want that.” Mama says, “It’s for babies, sweetie. You’ll never use it.” I think toddlers are hard-wired to be little manipulation machines.