Sunday Duties

Picking up Andrian from his Sunday office duty is always a big highlight for Karl. Not only can he ride the subway AND the train to get there, then run through endless hallways, check out the train depot from the 19th floor, rummage through all the desks in the empty offices and charm the three other employees that are on duty as well. No, he also gets to spin around on daddies task chair after having eaten a whole bag of gummi bears with Alfred Hitchcock watching from the photo in the back.



Luckily we had lunch with a lot of healthy pancake-and-jam vitamins at his usual weekend hangout Kaiser Otto. They have a great kids lounge where he usually chooses to read some more books. Because we don't have enough reading material at home, you know.

Subway, Where Are You?!

After Karl's buddy Leo moved away from our neighborhood, started going to a different kindergarten and had had a little baby brother we haven't had the chance to have a play date with him even though we made several attempts. Yesterday we finally managed to catch up with Leo, Patty and now three-month old Moritz. Karl and Leo picked up where they had left right away and took apart all of the toys as well as the library in Leo's room.



Before we left we tried to tidy up together with the boys in order to teach them to be organized and helpful, but as usual that didn't really work out. In those moments I'm trying to teach Karl the word 'counterproductive'. Something he doesn't seem to understand... We all still had a lot of fun catching up though!



Please notice redheaded baby Moritz all the way in the background of the picture. Yea, I guess he's really hard to see.


On our way back home we had to wait for the subway for quite some time which apparently bored Karl after a while so much to everybody's amusement he screamed out loud: "Subway, where are you?!"

Reading Supplies

Not a whole lot has happened over the past couple of days. The weather has been grey and cold, play dates have been cancelled and even a long promised trip to Omi didn't take place. Ergo: Not all that much to blog about. Most of our fresh air intake was done during grocery shopping at the market and most of our spare time was spent reading books – since drawing, play dough, lego or any other kind of constructive play doesn't interest Karl at all these days.



But we had to exchange a book anyways and Karl had begged us to buy Barbapapa On Mars for a while now, so we got it. It's totally psychedelic, he was thrilled and I think I've read it to him about a gazillion times since Saturday. If anybody has any questions concerning the culture of the Barbapapas, please feel free to ask. By now our household has gained quite an expertise in that field.

Geese Attack

Every now and then you get a gentle reminder of how incredibly dangerous life in a city can be. Or is it that we actually do live in the country side? Whatever the case may be, we had a very exciting trip back home when I picked up Karl from his daycare place yesterday.



It started out with the close approach of a huge raven who might have picked up the scent of pretzel in my bag. Karl was torn between enthusiasm and fear, but let the latter win: no pretzel for the raven.



We also met a big flock of grey geese a little further into the park. I thought it would be fun to feed them a little as we have done so many times with the ducks in the same place. These birds seemed to be very, very hungry though! Only taking a piece of Karls pretzel made them run after us. I threw some of it at them to distract them a bit, but they still came running after us.



Some of them even tried a flight attack! I had to hide Karl's pretzel-holding hand in his footmuff and start running towards the safety of an underbridge...

Inventory

Because it's the new year Karl started out this Sunday bright and early by taking a full inventory of all of his books. Here you see him pointing out the evil hunters in his favorite book of the moment Barbapapa rettet die Tiere (Barbapapa's Ark).

Holiday

Bavarians treasure their catholic holidays, so we got with a day off today (3 Kings' Day, go figure...) we took a trip to the country. Went to the Fischmeister restaurant by Lake Starnberg (the one we took "Onkel Ritz" to a few weeks ago). We had some amazing food (a few menu items is everything that's traditional about this place, it's actually quite hip, especially the kitchen). Afterwards we had a stroll down the pier and went to the beach for some pebble throwing. With serious sub-zero weather we did get to explore what water looks like in it's frozen state, but we also decided that taking a nice holiday cruise kinda beats the whole walking and hiking thing, so we toured some of the nicely powdered Bavarian landscape, before venturing to the great indoors with some cake.

Happy New Year

We hope everybody had a great start into the new decade – it will be another exciting one, that's for sure!



Just like for the past three (!) New Years Eves here in Munich my friend Maria from the beautiful city of Frankfurt came to town together of course with son Paul and husband Tim. We're taking it supereasy and there's a lot of reading and bathing...



...and pillow fighting...



...and some more reading going on.

It's A Girl!

Yesterday Tina, Theo, baby Johan, Karl and I ventured out to the zoo to check out ten day old elephant baby girl Jamuna Toni. Luckily we got there sort of early, because she seems to be getting tons of visitors these days. She is after all the first elephant baby at the Tierpark Hellabrunn in the past 66 years!



I told Karl she was his size but weighs ten times more than him which didn't impress him much. I guess she was still too small and too far away. Only the fact that she ran away from the animal keepers when they were trying to wash her sparked some interest.



As usual much more excitement was caused by apes and monkeys. It's always amazing to see our little half monkeys in front of the real ones. Unbelievable that there's actually people who deny evolution since this is clearly where we're coming from.



On a different note: Many thanks to everybody for all your holiday whishes and a happy New Year 2010!

Christmas

Christmas went like... that. So did all the fun people from near and far who were like a resident entertainment troupe just here for the excitement of Karl. As well as the constant stream of presents, first slowly fueled by the Advent calendar with the little package every morning, containing a knickknack or a snack, followed by the presents on Christmas eve and then by the presents from all the traveling entertainers (our favorite: the firetruck/ambulance combination with working sirens and lights that can also double as an alarm clock, if positioned on the pillows of parents). The daddy highlight was of course decorating the tree with junior. Next stop - whittling a boat from a tree we fell ourselves and then taking that boat on a tour of the lakes around here to fish for some tasty carp and whitefish that we prepare over an open fire in the tree house up in the mountains that we built with the leftover wood from the boat.

Santa Clausa 2009

Somehow it looks like Karl has the same expression on his face like last year for the same event. Is it because I told him that Santa doesn't really exist?

4th Advent

It was the now 3rd annual Christmas brunch of our building. Does that make it a tradition already? It always features a great tradition though - "Schrottwichteln", which loosely translated means trashy Santa. Everybody brings something she/he wants to get kinda rid of, but never did, wrapped as a present and puts it anonymously into a big sack. After the meal everybody throws dice. Whoever rolls a six gets to pick one package. Karl got a joke glass, that looks like a mini-champagne glass filled with something that swills around, but never emtpies, Fred got a mini-fog-machine (I guess from the yoga teacher neighbor's DJ son, who at least knew what this weird item of consumer electronics does), I got an inflatable cushions with a huge b/w-portrait of Sigmund Freud that kinda scared Karl, so I deflated it (oooooh, how much of an analogy of parenthood was that little scene).

Later on Karl and I took our new car for a spin to the Christmas market in the park. Karl thinks it looks "fast" (which should make the carmakers' design dept. very happy). Since he fell asleep on the way to the park I took the opportunity to enable his nap and confirm his first impression by taking our new family wagon out to the Autobahn. Afterwards we had waffles at the Christmas market, gazed at the nativity scene (Karl's totally into it, I'm afraid there might be something genetic - his great-granddad was a minister, he sure didn't get the knack for churches and religious kitsch from his faithless, blasphemous, sinful parents), looked at the shiny, crappy things they sell there, gazed some more at the nativity scene, tried to ride the caroussel, had some minor hissy fits, gazed some more at the nativity scene and went home for a nice, hot bath.

Fred made Karl this really fantastic Advent calendar, which is a German tradition. Kids get 24 little packages and from December 1st to Christmas Eve they get to open one each morning. Today Karl's had a can of spray-on soap foam in bright pink. Here I just blasted him with the first round of this strawberry-smelling soap and Karl looks very mildly amused, but more like he thinks I'm way too old to be that silly.

Cold

Today was really cold. So cold that instead of four carrousel rides and one warm waffle only one ride in the Porsche (the 'real' one this time) was requested followed by three warm waffles.

Flash Flood Danger

When Andrian is not around and I'm too lazy to unmount the changing table from the big bathtub I still give Karl his bath in the small one. I guess this has to change. There's definitely not enough space anymore for my little big boy, all his Barbapapas, fishies and duckies.

Mother's Little Helper

After Karls excessive complaining about the three snowflakes that were falling from the sky and the accompanying wind on our way to and from the bakery in the morning, I decided to stay at home for the rest of the day yesterday. We made an apple cake for Andrians return from Copenhagen and surprisingly my son turned out to be a great help in the kitchen: Not only did he do all the dishes afterwards, but he also made sure my apron would get enough wearing time for the rest of the day.

Another Slow Day

With Andrian being in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference I was happy that Karl let me sleep peacefully till 8:30 a.m. and that we subsequently had a very slow morning. It was snowing like crazy in the early hours (but didn't stick) so it was okay to be a bit late for our soup lunch at the market. But because of our tardiness everything was already jam-packed with Christmas time tourists. Which I really loathe, but Karl doesn't mind. He especially enjoys every kind of street music and doesn't judge between a brass band of blind Christians playing Christmas hymns or a middle eastern looking trio playing Frank Sinatra inspired holiday tunes. I think they were hoping for even more goodwill of the passersby in these times of economic crisis by standing in front of a big shop window declaring bankruptcy.