New Year's Resolutions

1. Work out more (upright)
2. Be more articulate in my needs (verbalize stuff)
3. Diversify my diet (try out solids)
4. Laugh at my parents (not with them)
6. Hate strangers (all my real friends are online)
5. Stop smoking (cigars at least...)

Baby Escort

My parents dog Nelson had some trouble doing crowd control when the whole family was around, but after everybody else had left he was happy to focus on protecting Karl (who likes stripes) and his rattle ring.

Merry Christmas Pt. 3

Yesterday the Bensheim part of the holiday festivities took place. One of the main attractions were the two cousins Karl Julius and Max-Laurin meeting for the first time. Max-Laurin totally wanted to hold hands, but his cousin Karl was not into that and pretended that he was sleeping.

Merry Christmas Pt. 2

Karl already knows what to do on drives to and from relatives. Sleep! Since he sure needs some energy for all those exhausting cuddling and cooing sessions with adult people formerly unbeknownst to him. Today he performed well as Baby Jesus at his grandfather's house, entertaining grandpa's new family, not letting on that stage fright actually creeps the bejeezus outta him. But he scored with a surprise ending..... ooops, sorry, yeah, I know. No poop and fart story policy still in effect. He also got a pair of beautiful red gloves for Christmas, that - much to his delight - have also doubled as a mobile for about half an hour.

Merry Christmas

I know dress rehearsals are not for public viewing, but since it's Christmas in Germany toDAY, here's Tscharlie (as Charly's spelled in Bavarian) getting ready for his first gig. He's still not fully in time yet during his lipsynching part. But hey, did you see the Spice Girls lately?

Talking about spices - I went to famous Munich delicatessen Dallmayr (established in the year 1700) to get a chicken and some last minute supplies. Well, He who liveth by gluttony shall die by gluttony. All my own fault to go there on the morning of Christmas Eve. So I was treated to some real Munich experiences. First I had to turn around, because I made the mistake to enter the store near the caviar counter where the wait was 20 minutes (NO I didn't buy any caviar, raw fish products for a nursing mother, you kidding me? But I overheard some fur clad lady bitch about it) and the cued crowd impenetrable. After I had entered the store through a different entrance I saw a young mother stranded with her stroller in a shopping crowd bottle-neck. After I returned victoriously from the produce counter she was still there. So being a stroller operator myself these days I used my massive New York City style Spiewak coat to block all traffic. Which didn't earn the young mother not some 'Oh sorries', but some sneers and a 'well, aren't there beautiful baby slings you can buy these days?'. A general sentiment confirmed by Fred who noticed that the majority of the people helpful to young mothers with strollers tend to be not Germans.

But back to the usual spirit of the holidays: I did get the chicken and the quail eggs and the smoked ham and now we're about to pig out while Karl is watching the new feather mobile Fred made for him, which about hypnotizes him everytime there is a faint breeze making the feathers move in unison.

Awesome Outfits III

Last week my friend Tine (2nd pic on the left) invited us for a little "Adventskaffee" in order to get some social airing. After being all cute and romantic by looking out of the window for two hours Karl went back to his old gangster self so we left before anything bad could happen.

You might have seen this outfit before, but its origin hasn't been mentioned then. The supercool K.J.F.-Hoodie was given to us by my friend Claudia (on the right) who hand-printed the silver initials. Thank you, Claudia!

Dream Catcher

My old buddy Claus, who's the founder of the World Uranium Hearing and Germany's leadig expert on American Indian culture, brought Karl a Dream Catcher from Wounded Knee. According to Sioux tradition there was a little Sioux boy who was plagued by nightmares. So the spider woman spun him a web to catch all the bad dreams. Thus the dream catcher was invented, which still hangs above childrens' beds all over the Sioux' reservations today. As you can see, Karl's already diggin' that native American protection.

Paternal Bliss

After a long day of hunting and gathering food and supplies for the family the alpha male returns back to the habitation and immediately begins to work on bonding with the offspring.

Pure Genius

Before we leave Munich in order to meet the Bothe part of the family in Bensheim for Christmas we're planning on teaching Karl some ingenious skills so that he can compete with his cousin Max-Laurin who is currently about twice his age. By now Karl is able to grab his rattle and sing three different Christmas carols.

New York?

One could think that this picture was taken in New York, right? There's our friend Rich, there's a Kiehl's shop, even the little point-of-sale displays are written in English. But I guess the just the combination of Rich and a stroller in a perfumery should be a hint that the picture was snapped somewhere else...

Awesome Outfits II

Check out this beautiful onesie. It was given to us by our friend Sooki from Göteborg, Sweden. Not only is it the prettiest onesie ever, but it's also made from organic cotton and extremely functional. These Swedes... always one step ahead in the design world. Good thing they have Sooki the Great among them now. She will keep them right on the edge designwise. Thank you, Sooki!

Please read Sooki's blog about how she's adjusting to her new life in Sweden after eight years of New York.

Rich from Red Hook

Rich stopped by from Paris to see Mister Karl, so Karl had somebody to stare at mesmerised, because he has not just one, but two cool hairstyles.
Two fun-filled days in Munich despite the cold snap. Which made Rich wrap his Moroccan shawl (just aquired in Morocco, see accompanying blog posting) around his freshly Al Qaida styled head. Which made some elderly Bavarian lady at the Christmas market ask him "Oh, are you from India?". She meant well though.
We proceeded to have some molten wine, which has the wonderful effect of slowing your motor skills down to a level that makes you conserve energy, which is probably the whole purpose, being excklusively served in cold weather at outside stalls around here. Wonder if Charlie thought he was kidnapped by mountain men, since it also makes you smell like an Alpine stable full of herb fed goats.

Irony Boot Camp

Karl's having some visitors from the US of A coming by, so he got a good workout in irony. First up was Sebastian, our Bavarian ambassador from the Hollywood Hills, who's already mapped out Karl's future in the media with the help of photo shop after checking out the blog, while this post was up (the 'Politische Früschoppen' used to be Germany's equivalent to 'Face the Nation').

Currently visiting from Morocco via Paris: Richard 'Best Man' Fleming.

Awesome Outfits I

Karl Julius Blog presents: The Awesome Outfits Series.

Karl was lucky to get a lot of gifts so we will showcase them here. Let's start with these supercute little hand-knitted shoes that were a gift from my friend Maria from Frankfurt. They go really well with jeans and are perfect for the cold weather. Thank you, Maria!

Miserable Service

Today, after not receiving any food for at least 15 minutes after the order was put in, Karl's mood went sour and he ended up having to eat his sleeve.

Karaoke

This is Karl singing along to my karaoke playlist. Of course we are very much looking forward to our first karaoke outing in New York with his future best friend Bruno who was born on 24/11/07. Hello Bruno!

P.S.: Today Karl weighed in at 4540g / 10 lbs. He's getting heavy! And helping me to get some of my biceps back...

The Pressure

Just in case anybody was wondering: we're still working on an official birth announcement. Oh, the pressure! How do you take the first glamour shot of a future superstar? When is he finally wearing the right outfit? How do we get the perfect light? What is an adequate design? So hard to figure it out... Hopefully you will see a result at some point (something that didn't really happen for our wedding thank-you-notes).

Omi

My mom, Karl's grandmother, a.k.a. Omi, was here this week to check in on the development progress of her third grandchild. We went for some more walks around here and when at home she looked after Karl so I could take care of stuff like doing nothing for a change. She also took a gazillion pictures – as grandmothers are supposed to do. I liked this one below the best.

Chinese Tower

I wanted to mix it up a little bit and went to the park yesterday, to the famous Englische Garten. Of course in this weather it's just as creepy and grey as the Isar river banks, but when we walked by the Chinesische Turm we noticed that they had a little christmas market going on there (definitely no holiday market). Like in any quality Bavarian event there were drunk people at 2 p.m. enjoying the seasonal mulled wine (Glühwein). I had roasted chestnuts and waffles with chocolate sauce instead. And I offered Karl to take a ride on the carousel but for some reason he showed no interest whatsoever.


But since this blog is about Karl here is also another random picture of him being cute.

Captain

Too bad most of our non-German-bred readers do not know the words to the song "In meiner Badewanne bin ich der Kapitän" (in my bathtub I am the captain), otherwise you could help us form a transatlantic-inter-European choir of soothers helping Captain Karl weather the first storms in his olive oil filled baby bath bucket. Yes, it's olive oil those strange bubbles in the water. What'd you think it'd be? Makes a baby's butt soft like, well, yeah, a baby's butt.

That Sunday bath night actually proved the lifestyle supremacy of our neighborhood, since we discovered we're out of olive oil around 7PM on a Sunday night, which is the official time when weekendish Germany isn't just dead but starting to decompose. But we didn't have to walk far to score a bottle of fancy ecorrect olive oil, advertised as having a "faint scent of tomato", which definitely beats the disctinct smell of ..... *##*%&#$(&@#$ .... sorry. No- poop-and-fart-stories-policy is of course still in effect.

Fight Night

Karl cheering while watching his first fight ringside. After showing himself in public in his pimp style garb, local authorities became aware of this new power broker in..... alright. No smug references to 'American Gangster'despite the mack daddy outfit, since most readers of this blog probably either hadn't have the chance nor the time to see this movie. But our fave 12 year flyweight world champion Regina Halmich weathered her last fight with bravado before going into teary eyed retirement.

Shut In

After having done daily long walks on the Isar river the weather turned super-grim, so we had to stay in and pretty much sleep all day. Meanwhile Andrian is giving a lecture at the Ludwig-Maximilian University about how women could organize kids and career learning from the U.S. Let's hope the Bavarians bring their brains...

Baby Butt

This piece of clothing has a label saying 'BABY' in the back. Just in case people would confuse it with a two-fingered glove, a funny harlequin hat or maybe an elk sock. No – only a baby butt fits perfectly!

Could it be...

Could it be? The superweapon of cute? The pulverizer of adult resistance? The crusher of serious thought? The into-puddles-of-glee-turner? Dimples! Maybe they're just figments of my imagination. But don't we love to hold on to those anyway?
(shot on the banks of the river Isar)

New Humor

Of course one has to watch out for some taste trappings of parenthood. We caught ourselves laughing out loud about this one. Well, maybe it is kinda funny. Things have to be brought to a thundering halt though by someone, if somebody catches us whistling Rafi songs (or whatever the German equivalent would be), reciting ´Jungle Book´ by heart, wearing 'World's best Mom/Dad'-Tees or if we should have our toddler leave outgoing messages on communication devices.

New Music

More firsts. New challenge - music to please newborns.
Karl's Top 10 so far:

Rufus Wainwright

Simon & Garfunkel

Goldberg Variations (played by Glenn Gould)

Beethoven's piano concertos

Bill Evans

Oscar Peterson (with orchestra arranged by Claire Fisher)

Ramsey Lewis (playing the Beatles)

We didn't get any further in having a Top 10 yet. So - more to come. And yeah, you try playing hip music to a baby. Not working.

Adventures

This now is the new definition of adventure - firsts! Today first bath. Yesterday - first wind, first fog, first damp chill (yes, we do live in Germany and sometimes it's very German). Brillant baby tactic to avoid too much pressure during adventures - sleep. Don't work in that baby bath bucket though, so other forms of protest were used (well, no, can't tell, still sticking to the no poop no fart policy of this blog, even though it was very funny).

Mischief

What age are they capable of mischief? I know we're not supposed to read anything into his facial expressions yet, but he sure looked like he was up to something. Aaah, parents. Hopeless suckers.

Growing in Fashion

After Karl already grew out of an outfit within the first week of his life, we figured that it doesn't make sense to buy pricey baby wear. But it seems like that if you don't want to spend 50 Euros on a one piece, the only other option in this town is hideous. Ugly. Little bear appliqués hell. Please, when is Old Navy going to make it to Europe? Well, there's always H&M you're going to say. But of course they cater to the questionable taste of the resident Bavarians, so they carry a lot of hideous stuff, too. But at least they have a third style option: hysterical!

The Wrinkling of Faces (extended version)

It took our team quite a long time to get the lighting right, but now here you go - masterful forhead wrinkling live in action. With the added bonus of Karl Julius' best impression of a baby seal. See it and weep.

Irony

Oh those hints of innocent smiles.... We're trying to figure out, when kids start to understand irony though. Very important skill, if you wanna grow up sane in this household. He got off to a good start, since Fred came up with a pretty good quip at the height of pain. When that got a bit unbearable a very sweet anesthetist was called in, who immediately understood the situation and skipped the bureacratic filling out forms and questionnaires part of his job. He just asked "Is there anything you have to tell me?" To which she deadpanned: "Yup. I'm pregnant." Definitely won over the delivery room crew.

1st Outing

When taking Junior for his first outing in wintery conditions one should of course make sure he is appropriately dressed. Should any confusion about suit sizes arise always opt for larger. Any children lost in oversized snow jumpers can easily be retrieved later by using common household tools.

This by the way is the legendary Black Denim Bugaboo in action. The stroller that makes all fellow parents in the neighborhood pale with envy. The one Fred fought for like Patton over Normandy:

Go Karl!!

Now here's a different kind of cute. It starts with the quivering of the lower lip and the look of the weight of the world bearing down.

Which is followed by a hearty wail that actually does make your ears ring. How do they find this pitch? Piercing is the word.
of course we thoroughly checked Karl for all possible sources of real discomfort, talked extensively to the wise and friendly visiting midwive (ha! Europe! Insurance pays for midwive visits to help you with childcare for weeks). So that wail is mostly a healthy sign of self-expression. Which makes a father proud.

Go Karl! Go Karl!

Ok, I shouldn't jinx it, since so far we were spared all-nighters. But he still is cute in a kind of baby macho way, showing off his baby powers.


And sure it can be a sign of passing discomfort. Or pure greed of wanting to feed not according to schedule, but more like - constantly. Which can be temporarily satisfied with the help of an artificial soothing device. And that look of drama in his eyes will break your heart.

So cute!

The Wrinkling of Faces

And now by popular demand - cuteness and parental bliss! This of course just gives you just a hint of the aforementioned forehead curling. But future parents be warned: the wrinkling of any parts of the face will render you helpless.

The Thinking Man's Baby

So the audience demands cute (see comments in last posting). Karl! Your cue. Ah! The thinking man's pose, just to prove that one is never too young for sophistication. That leading thinkers are molded and formed at an early age. Of course YOU SHOULD SEE HOW HE WRINKLES HIS FOREHEAD WHEN HE YAWNS! Which sends all sophistication to the bleachers. More cute overload to come.

K & K

Luckily historical analogies to Karl Julius didn't come just from Germans. Our friend Markus for example, who's Austrian and who threw the three day bash in Vienna Fred and I had met back then. He reminded us that Karl's initials stand for the reveered K & K monarchy, that the heart of that monarchy used to be Klosterneuburg. Where Duke Karl defeated the Turks. Where during the three day party one of the lunches took place. At a restaurant once owned by Markus's grandmother. Which also used to be the hangout of the Austrian actor Helmut Qualtinger. Who became famous with the monologue "Der Herr Karl". Which he performed nearby, getting drunk after his performances with wine served by Markus's grandmother.


Definitely beats the November 9th remarks we got all around. Oh, and Markus sent Karl a rather avantgarde white teddy bear by Hermes. Which he took to quite fondly already.

Born on the 9th of November

Karl Julius. Born on the 9th of November 3:11 AM at the Frauenklinik Maistrasse in Munich. The birth stats: 3225 grams, 51. That's 7 lbs., 20 inches for all our metrically challgend friends.

Yes, life changes right away. Yes, it's like discovering love for the first time all over again. Yes, Fred is a hero. Yes, he's the most of everything.

And since we promised some friends never to tell any poop and fart stories now there is a blog for that.

They did make fun of us coming home from America after all these years and having a child on the 9th of November. Which is like the big whoop date for Germans. They call it The Day Of Fate because of a all that history and shit. There's like 15 significant 9th of Novembers in German history. Ya know, Einstein got his Nobel Prize on a 9th of November. The pogroms started. The Berlin Wall came down. The first one was in 1313, when Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian defeated Friedrich the Beautiful in the Battle of Gammerlsdorf, therefore gaining power over all Dukes of Lower Bavaria. If your cared to know. But that's our privilege as parents now - to tell stories no matter if people wanna hear them or not. And this is where it starts.