Sleeping on the floor

This week has been great, we've spent time with friends and had a chance to watch a movie. We went out to a Mexican food place with a friend from the first apartment we lived in, then met a friend who works at MPI that we met at Duke. Our neighbor, Savoyanne came over after the kids went to bed and we sat up on Thursday evening talking about lots of fun things like kids and travel and our lives. Friday evening Nate figured out how to stream a movie! Tara was in bed around 7:45, so we watched Inception with Leo DiCaprio, it was quite good, but I did not like the ending. Let me know what you thought of it if you've seen it. I thought I heard a noise at some point early in the movie, but since there was no cry, we ignored it. As we were going to bed, I checked on Tara as I usually do, meine kleine madchen (my little girl) was not in bed! she was curled, with butt, up in the air, on the floor. There were no bumps, (though her cheek was quite cold), so she must have slipped out of bed somewhat carefully but been too tired to climb back up :)
Today we waited for Tara's nap time and spent an hour in the optics museum, it was quite impressive, lots of history of the lens including microscopes, telescopes and cameras. Tomorrow we plan a short bike ride probably in the AM. We send our love to all!

Experiment

So you know how I've been saying that it has been fun experimenting with food. There is something on the menu we can't translate, so we decide to try it. Well I think I'm all done with that.
Today we were in the square downtown, we had ordered zwei grosse pils and Tara had decided that she wanted to go over to the fountain. So Nate said, here this has rings of onion and apple, lets try it. Usually I would decide on my main by the accompanying (sp?) sauce or veggies, so I say, SURE! and run off to the fountain. Then Tara's noodle soup comes and she actually eats the meatballs as well as the noodles, so we are off to a great start. Our food comes and mine looks great, it has mashed potates that were quite good and the thin cut sauted/grilled? onions and the baked ring of apple was perfect. My first thought when I tasted the meat was, 'oh what a delicious sauce' then I chewed a couple of times and just tasted coagulated blood...I was eating liver :( We had a laugh, Nate even tried it b/c of the sauce, and I managed to eat maybe 15 bites, I did not want them to think that I was wasteful or that I had no idea what I was ordering. When a third waitstaff came out just to survey the three tables that had people at them we decided that he might be the cook/chef and was trying to see who was crazy enough to order the liver :) Now all I taste is liver. I've eaten three cookies, drunk lots of water and tried juice too, yuck. I was actually wondering if I had slight amemia b/c the first bites went down pretty well, hehehe.
One of my comments was that I comapared liver to soylent green. Nate said No, there is no comparison, but come on, liver is liver in any mammal, its the same thing. I feel yucky :) I hope you are laughing by now, but I know my storytelling is not that of some of my friends, so I hope you are enjoying this as much as I am!
On a separate note, my dad had rotator cuff surgery yesterday, and is now home and feeling fine, although I spoke to him at noon and he was going to bed :) Huh, he had a bovine patch applied to his muscle to help stabilize the tear. I wonder if I ate cow liver?
On that note,
Auf Wiedersehen!

Catching up

Hi all!
We've been quite busy over the last two weeks. We moved out of our cute little apartment at the Institute and are now comfortable our new neighborhood. When I next skype with any of you I'll take you on a tour. But it is quite large with a circular floor plan downstairs, Tara loves to ride her Puky around when there is not great weather. Upstairs is an open hall with three bedrooms and a bathroom. We have a tub now, but you have to sit down to shower as the hose is quite short :)
The neighbors are great, there are two moms that stay at home with their youngest, so we have some company during the day. All the kids are out playing all afternoon evening in the parking lot that is designated as a playplace. There is a sign that means that no cars can drive faster than a person can walk. What a wonderful concept!
We bought bikes a few days ago and have now been out on two rides. The first of which was up to a tower in the forest. The forest was pretty and dense, so I have no idea what you might have been looking for at the top, maybe there were less trees when it was built??? Anyway, a nice path to walk. I gave up even pushing Tara up the VERY steep street about 1/2 way up. I was slipping backwards, so Nate came back for us. Then we walked up a path to the tower. We then biked VERY slowly down the VERY steep hill, and circled back in the next closest valley where 'we' biked up again. Nate actually managed to bike up part of the way, but the second hill was even steeper than the first, so Nate pushed my bike with Tara on it and I pushed his. We came to a forest path that had very little change in elevation and we biked along the hilltop, then quite by accident we realized that we were back where we started on the first hill :) We decided to go downtown and eat at that point. Here are the paths we were on: http://www.berggesellschaft-forsthaus.de/

The second days biking we headed out toward the river and downtown, we found a great park for Tara to play in and then came home. Down the hill to downtown, flat along the river and up, up, up to home :) Quite a nice ride. Tara was having fun pointing out cars, trucks and backhoes (der bagger, ba-ba). She fell asleep just as we turned onto our street, so I stopped and took her in and Nate came back for the bike.
Tara is starting to use german words. Her favorite is tschuss = bye-bye (pronounced like a mixture of choose and juice) and bitte = thanks, her pronouciation is biba, as well as der Bagger = backhoe, of which there are two per every city block, so we get ample chances to say ba-ba. She says these with a huge smile on her face. She is also getting danke = thank you, but only when prompted. Her favorite animal sound right now is for horse, neigh, but she says it flatly and it sounds like how you'd say no in german, nay nay.
What else is happening in our lives, hmmm, our neighbor with a 6 month old was watching me sign to Tara, which I still do a lot because her sounds for most words sound the same (Ba-ba is more, der Bagger, backpack. Da-dee is daddy, doggie, there or any word she does not know... the list goes on) So she asked if I thought that it delayed speech, so I gave her the lecture and now she is starting to sign to Jonas!!!

Back to our ever running questions about Germans and Germany. Why have Europeans in general not taken to fixing animals? All the dogs here have free hanging balls, and there are cats aplenty around every neighborhood.
Then we come to street signs, Does the woman walking the child and a bike mean that you should ride your bike on the sidewalk? It there is a bike picture and the word frei (free) below it, does this mean you should not ride your bike here? I've been looking for a children's book with street signs, but I have not found one. It is quite fun to make up our own meanings though, I just hope we have not offended anyone too badly :)

And now on to my thank-you's:
Before we left all of our mommy friends packed up a care package for us. This has been instrumental in Tara's happiness in our travels and settling in. She loves her handmade backpack, she carries it everywhere, especially out shopping, she likes to help! The drawing books are amazing. One pretty piece of paper around many blank pages and then sewn down the seam, ingenious, simple, pretty. One we just use, one I take out on special occasions, like the train to Jena from Berlin, or our first day in a new house, so maybe in a year we will see her progression. Her KU bear is in her words, a "baby" who loves to go on walks with us as well as bounce down the stairs which is when she screams BABY- BABY DOW, and we run after it then walk back up the stairs and repeat. Well those are but a few, I'm sure I'll mention more later, but I'd like to thank all of you for your thoughtful help.
Talk to you all soon,
Love from Jena (pronounced Yeah-nah, in case you were wondering)

Our last day w/o Nate

Yesterday was hard, I tried to keep Tara as busy as I could and would like to thank mom for skyping right after Tara woke from her nap. Tara is now very used to waking up, nursing for a time and then talking to daddy on skype, so since he was in transit, we were having a rough go of it.
As I mentioned on Facebook (FB) I bought Tara her bed guard rails at the mall yesterday and tomorrow we move to our apartment downtown. At which time Tara will be an official big girl, sleeping in a big girl bed! I hope it goes well! We've practised at nap time for more than two weeks and she seems to only flip over one time, nights are different, we'll just hope she doesn't take too many tumbles. As we were dressing to go out, Tara chose one of each shoe. Apparently she found it comfortable to wear two different shoes, she kept them on until she went down for her nap. We got a few stares, and one comment that I could partially understand :)

We took a walk with the snails and slugs again and took pictures. I thought they were lovely. Tara actually had the patience to watch as the snail came out of its shell! We finished our walk at the blackberry bush, as is typical :) Tara wanted to pick her own this time, so I tried to make sure she did not get stuck. Those bushes are prickly!
This morning we went to the park and stayed out until nap time, so when she wakes up we'll go meet DADDY!!!!
I'll post again once we've moved

Great new things

Vanilla or banana johurgt and dairy in general
the weather
snails
the pool
transportation
the library
stay at home parenting
Well I've already posted on FB about the yummie vannila yogurt, we tried banana yesterday. Can you believe that it was made with real banana! So it does turn more brown after is is opened, but oh my god, it was sooo tasty, none of that fake flavor or jelly in the bottom of the yogurt, just some chopped up or mushed fruit. You can choose from 0.1-40% fat, seriously, and they all taste great. I don't know what I'm gonna do when I come home. Cultural Revolution yogurt was my favorite, but hands donw, nothing compares to what we're eating :) I bought some 'mystery' milk yesterday. It seems to say most of the same things as the bottle I regularly buy, but it is in a brown jar. I wonder what it'll be like! I love the surprise.
The weather has been rainy, but much nicer than anything I've been hearing about in the states, with storms and blackouts and over 100 for forever. Which brings me to my next subject, snails and slugs. Because of all the rain we've had lots of snails and slugs out. Tara looks at them, sort of backs away and says bye-bye. I'm trying to get her to see how cute they are and how amazing their abilities are, but she is less than impressed so far. Some of the snails we see are the eating kind, I don't think I'll look up a recipe, but they are rather beutiful. Tara kicked a ball this morning over a slug in the path and we watched for 5 min's before it expanded and started crawling away. I was trying to show her that even if you hold your hand near them they will retract their antenna, but she was not that interested. I'll keep trying. Right now I'd say she is a budding ornathologist: "bird (pointing), bird, caw, caw, bird, daddy, daddy, bird,up" That is the gist at any rate.
We spent our pre-nap outing at the library today, so tomorrow we will be at the pool again. With it's kiddy water slide and snake fountain and something like 85F temp. we'll be having a ball. In the regular pool they have a lagoon area with a current. I've been swimming on my back and having Tara hold around my neck and we go around in circles in this great current, it is strong enough that you cannot stand still in it. I think Tara is a bit warry, but I try to be full of smiles and laughter. She's only gotten water up her nose once :)

Now to change subjects completely. I knew that our parenting style was working with Tara and that we were happy with it. But now I've found that it has created at least one resonably responsible adult. I was talking to an undergrad in the kitchen this afternoon and she started talking about how she liked how I interacted with Tara b/c it reminded her of her upbringing. We talked about offering two positive choices, both of which get you to where the parent needs to get. About timeouts and just ignoring and not talking about it after (with the thought that your child is in fact smarter than a dog. If you punish your dog and don't have to explain why, your kid will also know why they are being punished). The undergrad did have a wonderful suggestion. She said that whenever she or her sister were going to get into something that their mother did not want them in, or was dangerous, the mom would say "gee, I sure could use a hug right now" and the little girls would run over, full of laughter. It might be a few more months before I can use this one, but what a great idea!
Tara has progressed on the 'instant gratification' area. We were in the Goethe Gallery mall, where I do most of my grocery shopping, where they have the cars and two horse carosell things that you can put money in and they blink and spin and whatever. Well Tara loves the fuerevahrauto (firetruck), so I pointed it out and told her that if she could refrain from screaming in the grocery store, then we'd be able to play with the car. I had to reminder her twice, once after 20 mins and then I reminded her that I knew waiting in line was the hardest part, but that if she would sit in the cart and be quiet, we'd be able to go to the car. She sat in her cart and talked about car/truck/bus's for the five min's of checking out and then we got to go to the cars. Hopefully this was not a fluke and that it is repeatable, we'll be testing the theory on Monday :)
Breasfeeding: it being breasfeeding awareness month, atleast according to FB, I was about to write the mommy mafia about my issues and now Tara seems to be tailing off. As most of you know, we were down to twice a day, morning and bedtime, before we left. I thought she might have become addicted, b/c after two weeks here she was up to four and five times a day! And ALWAYS talking about nursing or reaching down my shirt (especially on the bus). So now that Nate has been gone more than a week I think she has settled into a routine and relaxed a bit. Her world is 'normal'. She has gone back to morning (although it is up to an hour! sometimes) after nap and bedtime. She still asks, but is not adamant when I say "we can do that after nap". So hopefully we have a quick ajustment to Nates reappearance in a few days, and her world stays 'safe'. We are moving when Nate returns, so we'll see how she does with that. My boobs need a rest.
I'm nearly done with 'Cast of Shadows' and next I'll be starting 'While I Was Gone' by Sue Miller. I'm really happy to be reading again. It is nice to have some time!
I hope you enjoy my trains of thought :) Love to all!

NEW BOOK

I now have a week to finish my fourth book. I'm counting from arriving in Jena, and not arriving in Germany. I started 'Cast of Shadows' on Nates recommendation, yesterday. I have only read 12% which means I'm at least sleeping on a regular basis.
Yesterday afternoon Tara and I made banana bread, well I did and Tara played with rice on the floor (much easier to clean up than flour). It came out a bit powdery, probably b/c I used an extra teaspoon of the mixture known as backpulver. Better than not rising at all I suppose. I'm now on the hunt for shortening, I've never like to use all butter in my recipes.
Our morning excursion was to the library where we were unable to get a card because I did not bring a proof of address. At least that is what I think she said. She only spoke German, but said NO reisepass/passport, and pointed at my address and said something like residency. So tomorrow Tara and I will try again. This time I will bring all of our paperwork, birth certificates, insurance, bank statements...then I will not have to leave empty handed again. We did spend an hour in the childrens section. It has two toddler sized tables, three for bigger kids, a three step up landing with beanbag chairs and pillows and stuffed animals. Puzzles and games line two walls and we found a train set, an abbacus and a dog pull toy to entertain us today, most of which you can check out! All in all, a great library! I was thinking I'd get a few games and make Nate play scrabble or some such other evening entertainment.
I was walking to the bus stop when I saw a storefront with kids clothes in it. I finally found a second hand shop! They have a table and bench I'd love to purchase when we move into our apt upon Nates return. There were trikes and push toys and lots of clothes. Now I just don't want to wait two weeks, but it'd be silly to buy the stuff, get on a bus, move it to MPI, just to put it back on the bus to move down the avenue.
Our evening walk entailed me wrapping Nates sweatshirt around Taras middle and tying her to my back, she held on well, and went up the hill to pick blackberries. Yesterday I put her on my shoulder and held her, that is when, score, we found two blackberry bushes! This did not seem feasable again since by back has been hurting all day. I wanted to take a dish and collect all the ripe ones so I could share them with everyone who lives here. It was quite fun. Tara insisted on carrying the bowl, she did a remarkable job. With only two instances of tripping, involving the loss of only two berries, which she immediately picked up and put in her mouth, and one short rest period. I tried to take the pan, but she would have none of it. We managed to get home with enough berries to share :)
That was my evening.
Love to all,
K