Rocking The House

This is shot from last week when Karl was rocking the house with his buddy Magnus. There's no new pictures to post since our social radius is pretty limited these days. Karl has a bronchitis and of course is not supposed to infect other babies. The accompanying temperature brought out three new teeth on top tough which he's already gnashing, creating a weird and creepy sound.

Day At The Beach

Okay, this might be a little exagerated, because we didn't actually spend the whole day at the new Isar river bank beach, but it sounds really good, right? Since Summer has come back to Bavaria it was way too hot to spend a whole day out so we just went for a late walk and put our feet in the cool river water – and took some pictures. Karl does look like he's in a good mood, but since he's teething big time he has really been miserable these past days and by now totally exhausted. So this is him having fallen asleep while eating lunch.



Being to lazy to cook on this lazy Sunday we went to one of our little neighborhood restaurants, Hey Luigi. Andrian pulled out a secret weapon to keep Karl entertained while waiting for dinner: soap bubbles! I somehow had forgotten about their existence but they do keep your kid occupied for quite a while.

Here's Pointing At You

Here's Karl pointing at YOU dear blog-reader. Because Karl thinks YOU are really point-worthy. Gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling of counting and mattering, doesn't it? At least that's what we got from all the people Karl pointed at very adamantly during our long walk. His index finger was kind of like a cute overload laser gun melting innocent bystanders and nice old ladies to pure mush. "Oooooooh look at that blue eyed baby pointing at ME !!!! " I think Karl should go into politics. He makes people feel important. Which is a good start.

He also developed this whole new other thing with his index finger pointing skywards. Last time I saw this was from some Imam in some mosque. I think it's the international Muslim sign for "God Is Great".



I doubt Karl really grasps the concept of monotheistic deities yet. But it's definitely an attention grabbing gesture. In the meantime I'm learning a lot about my city, because Karl points lots of things out to me, like dogs, rivers, trees, bicyclists, the ice cream in my hand he can't have, the other trees, the bridge, the train, the other bicyclists, the barbequers by the river and of course Fred, i.e. MOM! Most likely the most pointed at person in Munich these days.

We Have A Dream

Obama was in Berlin, so Karl and I sat down and watched the whole thing with the pre- and aftershow and everything, and Karl got to sit on his Flag cushion, which is not meant to mean something like "I poop on your Star Spangled Banner", but more something in the vein of this is the flag that grounds us. Anyway, if he's lucky Obama's still gonna be president, when he starts grammar school. And so we watched the gazillion of teary eyed Germans rally for a candidate from a foreign country, which was pretty impressive, because the last time Germans rallied teary eyed for a candidate things got pretty ugly for a while. But hey, you know, we have a dream. When Obama becomes president on November 4th, on November 5th the Iraq War will be over and Guantanamo Bay closed and the banking crisis solved, also fossil fuels, trans fats and Christianity will be outlawed and America's gonna treat Germany nice again without asking her to fulfill her Nato, UN and other duties.

Cool.

Disclaimer: No, we don't let Karl watch TV for not even a minute, this picture was briefly staged for lame puns and mean-spirited political sarcasm.

Big Day I

I'm calling this Big Day I, because I'm assuming there will be more big days coming in Karl's life. This big day was about his first try-out time at the daycare center yesterday. I had to drop him off at 8.30 in the morning and leave him for an hour with the lovely ladies there. Since I had expected to stay with him I didn't really know what to do during that hour so I was walking around the blocks aimlessly and went to the café across the street right when they opened their doors at at 9 o'clock sharp. From there I screened the comings and goings at the daycare place and was happy that they didn't kick out my baby boy.



When I picked him up later he seemed quite happy to see me but I think overall it had gone quite well! He was certainly very tired afterwards. Today was his second day and apparently he figured out that when he cries people take better care of him. One lady explained to me that he had been pretty jealous and had been bickering a lot. Well, I'm sure they can deal with that – he's a baby after all. It's their job isn't it? And Karl will learn to share sooner or later.

Point Made

I didn't really capture the whole pointing thing in the Findings Of Today post, so I tried again and here are the results. This is Karl pointing at (from left to right): lamp, butterfly mobile, power plug. And yes, he's proud.

Juicy Story

We went to the Viktualienmarkt today to do some grocery shopping and were surprised by a gazillion provincial idiots celebrating the 850th city anniversary. Karl kept his cool and got himself a large pineapple mango orange smoothie.

Findings Of Today

- Pointing at stuff grabs attention and might lead to somebody's action.
- Standing up works best when assisted.*
- Hitting one thing with another thing makes noise.**
- Some things in the cookbook have been pigs in their previous lives.
- The closet in the bedroom has a sliding door.***



* Trying to pull yourself up on somebody's leg usually makes that person assist you.
** Doesn't work on sheep skin.
*** Move feet before sliding door to close; Box with shiny shoes on bottom right shelf.

Horizontal Adventures

Karl has been thinking about subletting three quarters of his bed.

Vertical Adventures

I thought I had to preserve this important moment of Karl pulling himself up and standing by the bed. Some things are better left unphotographed though: intrigued by the presence of a camera, he let go of his safe grip, lost his balance and of course fell right away on the hardwood floor. Please do not call child services – he is fine. Although he did bite his tongue and had to cry for quite some time.

Questions

Karl's eyes seem to be asking so many questions. Like 'Why am I on this subway?' or 'Why am I going backwards and you don't?' or 'Why did you make me get up at seven o'clock in the morning the one day I actually wanted to sleep till nine?'or 'Why are there only two other people with us on the subway and why are they wearing blue coveralls?' or 'What's up with this horrible plastics wood veneer subway interior?'.

I guess he'll find all the answers one day. But first we went for a swim.

Christopher Street Day

Munich's Christopher Street Day Parade is coming through right under our window every year, so we had to go down and represent. Karl liked the soap bubble thrower best. And he was kinda into the drag queens with all the glittering and stuff. But all that Abba-Madonna-Techno-blasting? So last century. And Karl's a true 21st century man. So next year - get with it, if you wanna come down our street.

Now our living room is resonating from the floats' woofers like a Florida crab shack from a Jeep bass in July. So we gonna retire to the kitchen to have us some lunch.

Rodeo Reading

Karl likes books. And just so he's not mistaken for a nerd, he invented a thing called Rodeo Reading. This involves attacking a book like a bucking bronco and struggling it down, before it can kick you in the butt. He also invented a reading chant he's reciting during the struggle with the pages... (read to the rhyming rhythm of Sir Mix-A-Lot)

I like big books and I can not lie
You other babies can't denie
When that books's full of animals
A really good story it sure tells

This is mostly followed by a glorious victory over the last chapter. Go Karl!

Otherwise we're having a boys' day in, because mom's out there learning mad new skills. In a minute we're gonna go out though and buy some manly things like music, meats and mandolins. Alright, were not buying mandolins, they're not that manly either, but it sounded good with that alliteration thing.

Finally Back

I know, he was only gone for a week, but it felt like a long time. Karl is very happy to have his father back as well, especially since he brought a lot of cool gifts. And yeah, I never thought that I would ever buy one of these cheesy balloons either, but here we go... It's all for the blog.

Possible Supermarket Ban

This was an eventful day for Mr. Karl. We started out with yet another round of swimming and diving. According to the instructor I don't know how to do the correct leg movement for the crawl and Karl is not building up enough body tension to keep his head out of the water. But does this woman know who she's talking to? I mean, I'm a certified DLRG Life Guard and Karl is just a really relaxed baby! Next time she has another one of these comments she might learn that I'm a qualified boxer, too.



Later in the day Karl spend some play and lunch time with his buddy Magnus while I had the pleasure to go to the dentist. It seems to be a lot of fun to inspect other people's toys, read other people's books and mess up other people's apartments. You can pull off everything when you're cute though.



In the afternoon Fee (his favorite babysitter these days) came over to take him for a long walk. No photo of her but this is us finishing off the day with an extraordinary screamfest at the supermarket. I'm starting to think that a) our son is crazy and b) we will get banned from the supermarket.

Who In The World Taught Him That?

Funday

After hanging out with our neighbors Felicitas and Frank this morning in our lovely backyard, we headed out to Nymphenburg in the afternoon for Ariane's little birthday get-together. Karl needed a nap in order to be party ready so we walked by the Nymphenburg Castle which actually looks really nice (who knew?) and then through the also very pretty Hirschgarten. I had never been in this part of town before and was pleasently surprised. It seems like these are the kind of places all these tourists go to before they get wasted in the beer gardens.

At Ariane's place everybody was thrilled to see what a big boy Karl has become. And Karl was happy to see that there were four pregnant ladies working on new friends for him.

Sounds Like Scream Spirit

Back in the day when I still had jobs working in agencies, I always wanted to write a book about it. The title was supposed to be "Imaginary Conversations With My Boss". The content could have been summarized like Karl did in the little movie below.
(No children were harmed in the making of this film. Please don't forget to turn up your volume really high!)

Redial

Karl hit redial after I got off the phone with his father. We miss you!

Inside Out

Whaaaaat, you're going to say, that's pretty much the same picture as the one in the previous posting! It's true, but we had so much fun with food today. I mean, Karl did. So much fun that he used his little fingers to take the food that he already had in his mouth back out and spread it in his face, on his clothes, well, everywhere. Yeah! Fun!

And to all our U.S. readers: Happy 4th of July!

Excuse Me, There's Something On Your Nose, Sir

Today around lunchtime Karl won the prestigious
Red Dot Design Award.

Da Steht Ein Pferd Auf'm Flur*

*There's a horse in the hallway



As some of you know this song was a big carneval party hit in Germany at some point in time, probably in the seventies. Which probably made me subconsciously always want to have a horse in the hallway. And there it is. It's a pommel horse, but nevertheless. After a long hunt for the perfect bench and after finding out that anything designed by Florence Knoll is out of our price range, we found this in a thrift store. Karl loves every second someone is helping him sit on it. I hope it doesn't inerfere with our career plans for him as a boxer. Imagine he would want to become a gymnast all of a sudden...



Karl had his buddies Magnus and Ferdinand over today. You wanna know what they're all looking at? Can't tell you, but it was fascinating.

Scotch Tape Is Sticky

That was the discovery of the day. Karl got really mad at the scotch tape because it was so sticky and at me for not helping him out but taking photos instead.



In the morning at the yoga studio, Karl worked on his Urdhva Mukha Svanasana by using a direct connection to one of the buddhas sitting around.

And since I know how you're dying from anticipation: this is the time when the Bru from New York ate Karl's foot.

Long Distance Diving

I know, this has been the lamest blog ever. We probably lost all our readers by now and we don't even have an excuse – but things will change! At least for a while, since Andrian is in New York for a week and I promised to post every day. Which I really need to do so that he doesn't all of a sudden forgets about his wife and son and wants to go back to his happening New York life. No, we wouldn't want that.



Of course there needs to be some retrospect blogging as well, because I totally neglected the crazy adventures Bruno and Karl had together. Like the time when the Bru ate Karl's foot. Or when they had lunch on the Schliersee. You will see...
For now there's finally a picture of our baby swimming class. I brought my old camera which must be somewhat waterproof since it has lived through large amounts of baby saliva. Today we did long distance dives. It sounds scary and of course it is, but Karl is fearless. They don't call him Kamikaze Karl for nothing. His workout buddy Magnus was there as well, together with his mother Jessi.



And later we went for a well deserved soup at the Suppenküche, a Viktualienmarkt institution.