Nils at Baseball

No, Nils isn't playing too. But sometimes he wishes he could! But most of the time he's happy running on the field or playing on the swings. This past week he actually ran to the very end of the field and back- soccer field distance from us!

Spring Training

Wow, I started this post a long time ago! Jay began baseball again and this time around he loves it (yay!). So I actually took the plunge and ordered him a glove. He's a lefty, so they are pretty hard to find here.

There are a lot of kids participating this year- well over fifty. The coaches are fantastic. They have various stations (fielding, base running, catching, hitting) that the kids rotate between. Jay really seems to like his coaches a lot.

Here are some photos. I hope to get some more off the camera this week to update.

Zzzzzzzz

It's been a while, but our Internet keeps going out on us for days at a time. Grrr.... I will be posting a few entries today since we have a lot of photos and different themes. First comes Nils.

Nils has started skipping his nap lately. I've been expecting this, but I am still not all that happy about it. He was never a great napper to begin with, 20 - 40 minutes is his usual nap. Even as a newborn he slept 3x 20 minutes a day. But that rest is really necessary! Now when he skips his nap, he is so dead that by dinner he is ready to collapse (if he hasn't already). Here are some photos of him literally passed out at the dinner table. He actually fell asleep while eating, you can see him trying to feed himself more rice. And, yes, he is always that messy. Since he has always been so independent, it's been hard to "help" him so that more food makes it into his mouth and not on the table. We're bad Chinese- we don't eat rice too often simply because of the mess!

I have a video too, but it is over the Blogger limit. I have to try and see if I can post it elsewhere (Facebook?) and link it in here.

Schokolade zum Fruehstueck

Schokolade zum Fruehstueck is the German name for Bridget Jones' Diary. It actually mean "chocolate for breakfast" and is why the kids love Easter.

Happy Easter to everyone! Easter here is a four-day weekend (yahoo!). Of course, Thursday afternoon our internet decided to quit on us. And since everything is shut down, we had to wait until today to get it back up and running. Our TV runs via internet too. Of course we forgot until Saturday that the cable company still has not shut us off, so we (shhh!) used it for a couple of days.

We took the kids to their first movie ever- Horton Hears a Who. We actually went to a theatre half an hour away because they had the best show times available. While we were waiting to go into the theater, Jay and Nils "played" a driver video game. We anticipated Nils getting fidgety and Jay asking to leave during the movie and figured we wouldn't see the whole thing. In reality, Nils sat still the whole time. Sometimes he was on my lap, sometimes in his seat. Jay asked only once to leave, but we didn't. In general, the kids didn't ask a million questions (like usual) during the film and were pretty well behaved.

On Easter Sunday, we woke up early to watch the F1 race (go Kimi!). The kids came down and hunted for eggs and chocolate and had a lot of fun. We also did some spring cleaning over the weekend. The kids seemed to like it a lot when we turned the sofa over to vacuum under it.

With all the action this weekend, Nils was so dead that he simply passed out on the living room floor!

Happy Easter everyone!

Birthday Weekend

Michael and I are dead tired. We had two birthday parties this weekend. I took Jay to the one on Saturday, but the one today was a family affair at an indoor playground. It started at 10:30 in a town about 30 minutes from here. No problem, but our kids normally let us sleep until (easily) 9:30 on weekends. So it was an early day for us.

After four hours, we were all done. Thank goodness the party was over. We ran, jumped, climbed, you name it. We enjoy doing the stuff with our kids, but, man do they have a lot of energy. Thank goodness it's bath night. They are sugary, sweaty and sticky (ugh).

I've attached a bunch of photos of the kids having fun. I've also attached a photo of Nils eating frosting- not to show you how dirty and sticky his face is. It's the first photo where you can see where his stitches were as well as the black eye he still has. And how he wants to ride the bucking bronco. I've also attached a link a blog post from the last time we were at the same indoor playground- my how the kids have grown!

http://stuehrenbergs.blogspot.com/2007/06/jungle-gym.html

Hockey Jay

Jay and Michael had a Papa Day today. Next week Nils gets a Papa Day. Then again, I could say that Nils had a Mama Day. Except that he slept for most of it (yay for me!). They went to a hockey game. The arena was sold out. In anticpiation of this, Michael got Jay some ear mufflers so he wouldn't be overwhelmed.

I got a call after about 2 periods- Jay was dead tired and ready to come home. Michael arrived home with a sleeping Jay (he is still asleep) and laid him down on the sofa. Here are some photos from the experience.

Jay just explained a little of it to me. I guess there were a bunch of penalties because "a lot of hockey players had to go into time out."

Poor Nils

Nils' Kindergarten called on Thursday to tell me that he had fallen and hit his head. They thought I should take him to the hospital for stitches. Expecting the worst, I got there and he was playing and still running around and there as virtually no blood. (How?)

Poor Nils needed three stitches in his forehead. He was in a great mood, playing and joking around. Until the needle came. The it was all over. it took three adults to hold him down and one to stitch him up. Thank goodness he only needed three- I was tired! Wish me luck on Thursday when we do the same procedure in reverse.

I was lucky the Kindergarten called when it did. Just fifteen minutes later and I would have been pretty far away. Luckily, I was just climbing into the car when it happened. Or else he would have had to go in an ambulance. (Don't tell Nils, he might be upset that he didn't!).

And the accident? Apparently a bunch of the kids were running in a no-run zone (hallway). Of course it was my kid who fell and got hurt. Maybe they learned something!