Minnesota is Heaven, But Virginia is Home

I have discovered Etsy . I kept reading blogs wherein people extolled the wonderfulness of Etsy. And, it is wonderful. I haven't bought anything yet, but I will soon. The choices are endless. It's worse than eBay! Check it out, if you dare...

August Peter 8 lbs 5 oz (unbelievably, this one is smaller than Sam!) 19" Born at 8:50 this morning. Both mama and babe are doing well! More news and pictures when we get them. All I know are measurements, time and I've heard via Mom via Scuba that Gus has a smaller head than Sam. That's it for now. Welcome to the herd, Gus! We're glad to have you! Love - Auntie Rachie

Also the title of an excellent, excellent movie that Hans and I quote on a regular basis. Today, though, I'm talking about my sister, Genevieve, who is probably (maybe) sleeping right this minute. It's 1:00 a.m. in Minnesota. They have to be at the hospital at 6:00 or 6:30. She's scheduled for her C-section at 8:30-ish...we all know how hospital procedures go, so no doubt it won't start at 8:30 on the dot, but hopefully we'll have news by late morning. Now I just have to kill an entire day. I can't call Mom until 4:00 p.m. Germany time. What to do, what to do? Guess I'm finally understanding why Gen and Scuba chose not to know the sex of this baby. It really does keep the excitement high right up until the last minute. Like watching "The Bourne Ultimatum". I'll have more info later this evening...

My new haircut, which really isn't all that new but just a slightly different version of the bob that I've been wearing for years. It's shorter in the back and I have some bangs, that's about it. If I would have been truly brave, I would have cut it really short. Lovin' our new camera!

Josiah's latest favorite thing is the book Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. We have it on loan from the library and have read it to him a few times. Between us reading it to him and him sounding out words, he's able to read the entire book himself. Which is nice, because although Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom is an adorable book, it does get a bit dull for the over-4 crowd. For those of you not familiar with the story, it's about a little alphabet who climbs up the coconut tree, thus overtaxing said coconut tree and causing the bending and eventual tipping of the alphabet characters onto the ground. One day, he was in his room and was suspiciously quiet for a long period of time. When I went to check up on him, there he was, arranging some alphabet puzzle pieces into an exact replica of the alphabet pile-up in CCBB . I guess it's better than coming in and finding him putting the final strokes on his recreation of "The Last Supper" in marker on his bedr...

Yay yay yay!! Guess what I got at the store today? However did you guess? Yes, that's right, Tri-Ominos! Well, I was excited, anyway. I don't think I've ever seen Tri-Ominos or its sister, Quad-Ominos, on store shelves since 1983. Now all I need are Gen, Eli, some Kool-Aid, maybe a block of cheese and some popcorn and I'm all set for a Tri-Ominos game. And I'll make sure that the Kool-Aid consists of 13 different colored packets and four cups of sugar, so it's the color and consistency of a mud puddle. But sweeter. Hmmm, what else has been happening? Not a whole lot. Tuesday was a busy day. Annika had her two year check-up first thing in the morning. She weighs a whopping 26 3/4 pounds and is 33" tall. And her head is 49 cm in circumference. It's 158 cm in circumference when her hair is wild. Seriously, how can I control this curly 'fro? I have never had to deal with curly, wild hair in my life. I wish that my hair would have develo...

Do you remember Cornholio? Cornholio may become Annika's new nickname. Last night at supper, I turned just in time to catch her stuffing a kernel of sweet corn up her nose. I pinched her nose at the bridge and squeezed out not one, not two, but three kernels of corn! Out they came, pop pop pop... I'm not sure how she accomplished such a feat without one of us noticing, but she did. In other news: spent part of the day today with my girl here: http://fildorado.de/ . Our neighbor Jen invited us. We had quite a little party of adults and kids, actually. Josiah is not crazy about pools, but Annika loves the water, so it was decided that Hans and Josiah would have a "boy's day" and Annika and I would have "girl's day". Annika, predictably, loved it. She loved the bathtub-warm, shallow kiddie pools. She loved the cold wave pool. She loved the really amazing uber-warm outdoor pool (it was around 35 degrees here today). She even went down an enormous, pitch...

Sometimes brothers can be so helpful...like when it comes to unwrapping gifts! Hans stages an impromptu puppet play in Annie's new theater. Singing "Happy Birthday"...I'm directing The biggest cake EVER...I accidentally ordered a 1/2 SHEET Josiah helpfully blew out the candle for her too, but here she is...giving it a try A great deal of frosting was eaten before the cake was cut The party scene Our friends Carson & Nicholas graciously came upstairs for cake

February 15, 2007 February 15, 2006 Well, it's Annika's second birthday today. It's just plain unbelievable to me that she's two already. It seems like just a few months ago, I was enormously pregnant and incredibly irritated with her for not being born in a timely fashion. Even though I was technically in the second phase of labor (and had been for a few days) and had spent hours walking, or rather--waddling, she just refused to emerge. She didn't come until she was perfectly ready and until I had made my peace with the situation. And then, she came in a fine hurry, as if to make it up to me! I still remember the feel of her tiny, pefectly shaped, amazingly hairy little head... Anyway, she was born in Japan, had her first birthday in Newport and now a second birthday in Germany. She's like some rich heiress or something. Maybe we'd better try to have her third birthday in Cannes or Greece or Rome, just to keep things interesting! Annika, tha...

A random door, just because I thought it was amazing... Hohenzollern, high atop its hill Annika at the park yesterday Josiah Me at Hohenzollern...

Lichtenstein Annika & Hans in front of the castle The castle from the valley Annika Josiah, Annika & I waiting for tickets

Hans thought that it would be funny to work "Hall & Oates" into the title of this blog entry. For all of you who now think that we are hopelessly stuck in the 80s, I dare you to listen to Hall & Oates without finding yourself singing along and possibly snapping. Don't worry, we listened to some "cool" music too--Reel Big Fish, whoever that is. Some ska band from Florida. Hans may have to clarify. Some of the songs were pretty damn obscene. So, we had the Hall & Oates to counteract the evilness of Reel Big Fish. Hans would like everyone to know that he recently broke his land speed record. Drum rollllllll: his new standing record is 147 mph. I wasn't in the car to verify this amazing feat, but I believe him. And I also believe that at some point, he will beat 147 mph. And then his head will explode, because that's what happens when your ego can't get any bigger. I'm joking, honey. Today being Valentine's Day, we decided to do somet...

Dear faithful readers, you're probably getting tired of me asking you for advice. Especially advice that seems like it doesn't really need to be given in the first place. I think I profer these situations to you, readers, because I want you to tell me that I'm not a crazy, hyper-protective mother. Let me set the scene: Josiah has been attending preschool for about six weeks now. Two times per week, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:00-11:00 a.m. The problem I'm having is this: his room is usually empty at 8:00 a.m. He's always the first one there. Sometimes the teacher isn't even in there and when she does come in, she'll make comments about how it's "so early" and that "most of the kids come later". This morning, it happened again. Josiah was there promptly at 8:00 a.m., his teacher was not, then when she came in, I asked her if I was wrong in bringing him at 8:00. I asked her if that was not when class started. She told me t...

Josiah trying to climb the "mountain" (he didn't make it) Inside the ball pit Jolo's, and a random and blurry German kid OK, parts of Jolo's were kind of lame. Like this one-handed, bare-chested, barefoot, cowboy (?) in the faux-Western setup of the miniature train... A train!!! Did I mention there was a train!!!! Josiah only rode it 486 times. Hopefully he won't have nightmares about the creepy cowboy. Annika and Josiah in the ball pit (yes, he's in there, look carefully) I love you for your pink cadillac The aforementioned cool roller slide, Hans is putting Annika on behind Josiah

Remember the balloon room in Yokosuka? I'm sure that we dragged the grandparents there when they visited. For those of you who don't recall, the balloon room (not it's actual name, but a term coined by Josiah) was located at the local Daiei Mall in Yokosuka. It was a big area filled with pens full of slides, mechanical animals, balloons being blown about by fans, and ball pits. In other words, a child's and bacteria's favorite hangout. If I recall, it was around 200 Yen (or 2 dollars) to sit there for a couple of hours and watch Josiah tear around. Totally worth every yen. Yesterday we loaded up, fired up Dora and headed for the magical children's paradise known as Jolo's. This is a mystical, mythical place alluded to by all of our neighbors with children, who kept asking "Have you gone to Jolo's yet?". I thought about going on Thursday, alone with the children. Thank heavens Annika decided to sleep through the entire afternoon, thus e...

I mentioned in my last, mushy, self-absorbed post that I have discovered Snapfish. Actually, I've known of their existence for awhile as they send me e-mails on a regular basis. More often than some of my friends (and no, J, I don't mean you, promise). I made Annika a very cute book for her second birthday. It was so delicious to reminisce and browse through all those pictures of her, from hot off the presses to last week. She sure is a little doll. Except when she takes her pants off and refuses to put them back on. Or spills chocolate milk on her carpet. Or starts screaming randomly when I do something crazy like buy eggs or put books in the library bookdrop. Anyway. I finished picking her photographs, arranged them all in the book (or Snapfish will do it for you), picked a theme, made some cunning captions, uploaded everything and voila! Snapfish will be sending me a hardcover book in 5-7 business days. Or thereabouts--APO takes a little longer. Then, I decided to ...

What happened to the prolific poster? Sorry about that. For a few days, I was blogging more than once a day and then, I cut everyone off for a week. That's very unfair to the six people who are addicted to my blog. I love you guys! Thanks for your patronage! The truth is this: last week was a gray week. Not so much weather-wise, but just Rachel-wise. I couldn't get motivated to do anything. I felt tired and depressed all week. I don't feel like I accomplished a single thing worth mentioning, thus the non-blogging. There are many days when I hate this blog and the fact that I feel like it's not really a true representation of what I'm experiencing. I'm not saying what I really want to say sometimes. Maybe learning this kind of self-control is good for me. But sometimes it just wears on my last nerve. Anyway. Last week was made even more happy by the fact that my preschooler decided to have some sort of scatalogical regression session. That's ri...