Embarassing Moment

When the priest finished his sermon on Sunday, it was completely quiet. Except for Nils clapping and saying "yaaaay." Since it's summer vacation, there were no other kids there we could blame it on....

Photos and Videos

I have been told that I haven't had enough photos or videos lately. Here are some new ones.

We had a house guest last week. He brought some gifts for the kids- a LOUD toy lawnmower (I disabled that noisemaker pretty quickly) and oversize boxing gloves. Jay and Nils have fun with boxing fights. And Michael too.

Tonight the kids were in a great mood after dinner. What can I say, I must be an amazing cook! Actually, they barely ate, so I can't take credit for their good moods.

Videos will be added later when MySpace isn't running so slowly. I have spent two hours trying to upload and I keep timing out. Argggh!

Jay's New Preschool

We had a meeting at the preschool and got to meet one of Jay's teachers on Friday. I learned how we will phase Jay into his group (the Blue Group) and various expectations. For example, I have to pack a little box with a healthy snack every day and we need to make sure he has a toothbrush for his cup, rubber rain boots, pants, and jacket for bad weather, and so on. We went on a mad hunt for rain boots on Saturday with no luck. Unless you want cheesy ones with a sailboat on the side...

Jay's group is a bilingual (German-English) integrated group. That means, instead of twenty kids ages three to six, there are fifteen kids. Some of them are disabled, that's why there are less. We actually are happy that he's in the integrated group. He will get exposure to people different from him and the group itself is smaller, so there is less of a chance he'll get "lost" among the wild ones.

Jay took really well to his teacher and didn't want to leave the playground at the end, so I think the transition will be okay. Nils didn't want to leave either!

Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed

You know you can't say "five more minutes" anymore when your 18MO hands you your glasses and says "come."

Nils has woken at 4:30 am the past two days, inconsolable (until we bring him to our bed, of course). It's a borderline time- at 4:00 we would probably make him suffer and sleep and at 5:00 we would simply take him to us. There's something about 4 am that makes it so tiring. When you're awakened at 1 or 2, you still have a chance for a full sleep cycle. At 4, the night is gone. We still sleep, but it's not the same- interrupted and shortened. Needless to say, we are a little tired and cranky this week.

Weekend at Emma's

I've been trying to get this post out all week.

Maria mailed me some photos of the kids' weekend at their place. I now have proof that Jay ate at least one bite of salad. And Nils must be a big fan of the Queen.... You have to love the hat photo with his drool and AC/DC tee.

I seem to have a lot of photos of them eating while at Emma's. I think it's because we joked that we could take Emma for a week and train her to do something we have no problem with Jay and they could take ours for a weekend and get them to eat veggies (or anything in general since both are pretty picky about all food except cookies). So the photos are all proof. And I have to say both kids seem to do a lot better with fruit now- thanks!

Berlin Update

Berlin was amazing. It is one of the hippest towns I have ever been to. Okay, it's really a city, not a town and very spread out, sprawling all over the place. Since we only had a weekend, we decided to focus on just a few things to see rather than rush and try (and probably still fail) to get it in all at once.

We saw the Reichstag and the Kanzleramt and their architecture was amazing. We saw the Brandenburger Tor, Checkpoint Charlie (do you remember playing that game as a kid?), the Siegesauele (we climbed all 286 steps to the top for a great view) and much, much more.

Of course, I lugged the camera around and we did not take a single photo. We were too busy enjoying ourselves. If you want to see what I just wrote about, take a look at these photos here: http://www.berlin-tourist-information.de/english/sightseeing/e_si_sehenswuerdigkeiten.php

As for me, the best part was Berlin Mitte. We went to some great places there for meals, drinks, and shopping. We had dinner at an Italien place, Schwarzen Raben , that had excellent food and service. And we had excellent service pretty much everywhere anyway. That's a lot to say when you have American standards of service in Germany. Take a look at the restaurant here: http://www.locationsite.de/berlin/schwarzenrabene.htm.

There is Asian food everywhere and I was not disappointed. Until now, I more or less have not had a single good Chinese meal in Germany. I have a dim sum place, but that's good, not great. Here there were so many places to choose from. We chose two: a place with food from all over Asia called Pan Asia http://www.locationsite.de/berlin/panasiae.htm and a fantastic noodle shop, Monsieur Vuong: http://www.monsieurvuong.de/.

Anyway, enough about our fabulous trip... I will have to blog another day about how Jay and Nils napped long naps, ate veggies (salad even!) and were overall absolutely perfect children who, in no way, resemble the two squirts we have at home!

Berlin! Berlin!

Wir fahren nach Berlin!

It means Berlin! Berlin! We're going to Berlin!

OK, that was a chant during the World Cup because the finals were held in Berlin. The people here would get excited in the hopes that the home team would make it that far (they got close, to the semifinals and ending up third overall). But Michael and I are going to Berlin this weekend. Yay! The kids will be at Emma's house and hopefully we won't get any calls begging us to come back and take Nils or Jay off their hands.

So no blogging this weekend, perhaps I'll have some new and interesting photos to post when I return. Take a look at our hotel's website--http://www.lux-eleven.de/