Jan-Feb Update

Greetings and Happy Way Belated New Year, dear reader. The people have spoken and they want an update. Ahh, my public! I haven't had much to blog about so I needed to wait until we did a bunch of stuff.

We had a good slide into the New Year, as the Germans say. My parents were with us for Christmas again for the third year in a row overseas. By the way, we recently hit our third anniversary of living abroad! It feels longer, like at least eight years. Feeling out of place and elated when I actually manage to communicate is my normal.

So, the folks...We had a very nice Christmas together this year. The boys were on cloud nine having a grandma and grandpa around to play with all day for two weeks. There was no snow, but it ended up being kind of nice to have a warmish Christmas so we could go outside.

Decorating cookies

Christmas morn

Doren got a Cabbage Patch baby

 "Isn't this book hilarious, Papa?!"

"Yeah, its a riot."

At a traditional German restaurant.

Muther and one of her famous Fairy Gardens made from stuff they found outside. She actually sewed the door out of pine needles!

Their first set of matching shirts from Grandma Carol

Wondering how the boys are doing in German school? Jonah's teachers tell me he understands a lot and even says certain things in German but honestly, all they really say at his school is "let's wash our hands" , "let's put on our coats" , etc. so I think he hears the same stuff everyday. He doesn't complain at all which is pretty amazing considering we're talking about Jonah. They make cute little projects with beads and string and everyday there is something different like a puppet show or an adventure walk. One thing I find funny is sometimes Marc will switch the words in a book to German and Jonah gets so mad and yells, "Stop speaking Johrman!" yet he goes around singing songs he learns at school all day long!

I'm happy to say that Tobin is doing great at school. He has coped amazingly well with first grade in German. I moved to a new school in the middle of second grade and I thought that was rough. I can't imagine how difficult it is to switch languages on top of that. He has his rough days, mostly just Mondays, but I truly did not expect it to go as well as it has. He couldn't speak a single word five months ago and now he can speak, recognize written words, do math and write in German. He's not fluent yet by any means, but he's taught me phrases I didn't know and I took German for three years! Both boys have the accent down and can say the difficult /r/ and umlaut letters. Its an amazing transformation to witness. The dream is coming true!

One of the things I love about both of their schools is that both have kitchens with ladies cooking real food from scratch. The smell is heavenly when I pick Jonah up. Oh, how I would love to dine with the preschoolers! Has anyone ever said that before?! Unfortunately, he can't eat lunch there because he's not full-time, but Toby is required to eat the lunch at his school (fine by me!) Everyday I ask him what he had and it always sounds healthy and amazing.

I can see a change, too, in Toby's development. For the first couple months of school he wanted me to walk him all the way to the building door. Then in November he asked me to stop at the corner of the school yard. Now I have to say goodbye at the very edge of the property where most kids get dropped off (but he still wants a kiss goodbye). Its really cute to see how he's growing up.

His face is going to change so much when the big front teeth come in.

At a local crazy kid place.

I've been trying my darndest to make some friends and it's getting a little better. No besties yet, but maybe someday. This Mom Dating thing is so hard because someone's kid is always sick - mine or theirs and always the morning of the day we're supposed to meet. I tried five times to get together with four different women and each time something prevented it. You wouldn't think it would be so difficult for two stay-home moms to get together, but it is. But I have met some really nice gals (American and German) so I'm feeling less lonely and isolated. Yay!

Marc has been taking a night class in German and we both keep up with a learning app. Sometimes I feel pretty good about it, especially when I'm able to speak with someone who doesn't speak any English (even though I know I'm butchering the language). I get a confidence boost and I think maybe, just maybe, I can learn this thing. And then other times, when someone is flapping their lips and I don't understand a single word, I realize just how much I don't know and feel like there is no way I can conquer this beastly language! Someone please tell me WHYYY there needs to be three definite articles?! THE! Just THE! It could be so simple!

Why is a baby neuter? I don't know and I don't care!

And this is the least of my troubles. The sentence structure, a gazillion expressions, four cases, and the Pfalzisch dialect on top of everything. It feels like an impossible feat, but we're trying. I know English has it's difficulties but there is even a phrase in German that translates to "You can speak German, you can speak a difficult language." The thing that keeps me going is I love the way it sounds and I want to be able to sound like that and have a normal conversation.


Last weekend we took advantage of the one sunny day forecasted between a bunch of rainy days to check out Bad Dürkheim, a town about 30 minutes from us. It's a mineral spring town right in the middle of the wine country. Wine and mineral baths? Hmm, OK! Next time we'll bring our bathing suits and hit up one of the indoor pools. I had no idea there was such a wonderful, beautiful town and so close.

The entire front of the house is tile. It was really pretty.

This structure stretches along for several hundred feet. Water is trickling down the dark brown part which are tightly packed sticks. It's something to do with filtering the spring water.

Find the Toby

Of course we ended up at a playground. There was pipe organ music coming from the church so I went in to listen to it booming. And this is all set against a lovely view of the hills. Sighhhh 

The next day, a rainy one, we checked out a science museum called Dynamikum. It was full of really well done, hands-on sciency stuff for people of all ages.

The best part, obvs.

Trying their hardest to lift us up. SCIENCE!

SCIENCE?!

If you pedal fast the bottom fills up with air and they can push it around. SCIENCE!

This past Monday was a holiday from school for Rosenmontag and Tuesday was Fasching...or Carnival or Mardi Gras. It's a really big deal here and the main day for kids to dress up (way more than Halloween).

His Army man costume was a big hit.

Aaaaaand this is what I'm dealing with every day. It reminds me of something Buzz Lightyear said. "He has the destructive capacity to annihilate an entire planet!" Or house in this case.

Did I do that?

This child embodies all your typical toddler features that his brothers never did, so its kind of new for me. For example, maybe I'm cutting up grapes for him. I turn around to see him standing on the kitchen table licking the salt shaker, so I get him down and lay all the chairs down (pictured). While I'm doing this he has pulled the knife off the counter top that I left too close to the edge when I went to get him off the table, so I lunge to grab that out of his hand 'fore he stabs himself. When that is taken care of I turn around to find him sprinkling milk from his sippy cup all over the pile of books he deshelved five minutes ago, so I grab the roll of paper towels to clean that up. Since I'm down here I might as well sweep up the mountain of crumbs he left from breakfast. As I'm sweeping I see him coloring his face and the walls with a stray marker he found under the couch so I run over to take that from him only to see that he's now dancing in the neat pile of crumbs I just swept and was about to throw out. So I brush off his feet and continue sweeping before it gets worse but now he's pushing the temperature buttons on the freezer. I let that one go. I finish the sweeping and look to see that he has unraveled about fifteen feet of the paper towel I left on the floor. There is still marker on the wall, crumbs on the floor, milk on the books and the freezer is starting to defrost but he's screaming and throwing a tantrum for the grapes I never finished cutting. And he just filled up his diaper so bad that he needs a whole new outfit. Again, with the face...

Why, Doren? Why?!

I can't keep up because I don't have eight arms and three sets of eyes. Sorry! This is why it takes me a full month to write a single blog post let alone anything more important I would like to accomplish.

You have no idea what I'm capable of and I'm just getting started.

I leave you with my favorite latest find - sugar beet syrup. They grow all over the place here which makes this is a local vegetable. I put this vegetable on cereal, oatmeal, yogurt, and toast. I would send you some but there is that no liquids rule.

IT'S A VEGETABLE!!!