The (long overdue) First Week

   I knew there would come a time when I had not (as) interesting things to write about and I would get around to our first week here in Switzerland. That time has come. Unfortunately, that was 7 weeks ago and I have mommy brain which means that MUCH has escaped me. I do have a few memories that stick out that are worth jotting down.

    Flying with 3 children 4 and under is a feat, let me tell you. We flew from Chicago O'Hare International Airport, which means a 4+ hour drive to get there. We arrived at the airport probably 3 hours before flight time (for international flights you are supposed to arrive 2 hours early) but that was a very good thing because it took an hour to get our tickets. I didn't know then and I don't know now what the problem was, I just know the lady spent a lot of time typing. So by the time we got through security, changed some money into Swiss Francs, and got a little food, it was time to get on the airplane.

    My mother flew over with us so we had a one to one ratio with kids. This was good, but we really could have used a fresh team to step in. The kids were wired (except for Eli) and the adults were all drop dead tired. Eli was the best flyer- he slept through all of the first flight and some of the second. Jackson was the worst flyer, but he did have a pretty bad cough at the time so when he did try to sleep, he just coughed the whole time on the first flight. He sat by Grandma on the second flight and she says he was out before the plane took off. Johanna slept some on the first flight with her head on my leg and her legs on Kenny's shoulder- it was impressive.

    As I think back on it, the first flight (we had a layover in London) was a foreshadowing of my time here in Switzerland. Across the aisle from me sat an older Indian (dot, not “How”) couple that just kept staring at me. I felt like they were saying with the eyes: “Go ahead and let your kids get too loud. Do it. I dare you.” I believe I was reading into it. Just a bit.

    We brought Eli's car seat, primarily so that we would have one for the car ride from Zurich to St. Gallen. When we got to baggage claim in Zurich, we picked up all our baggage, except the car seat. It was coming in on a later flight and the airport would deliver it to us in St. Gallen. I was already prepared for the Swiss persnicketiness when it comes to rules and totally expected to be told we would have to wait for the car seat. But our driver did not seem to care. I kept Eli in the Boba carrier (the driver had car seats for the other two) and we were on our way.

Our first evening in St. Gallen.

As I mentioned, my mom flew over with us, and my dad was already in Switzerland on business so they both stayed for our first week here. That was great because they watched the kids while Kenny and explored and took care of some basics setting up house things. They also took us out to eat almost every night and my dad knows a fair amount of German so we relied on his communication.

On Tuesday we all went to Constance, Germany to swim in Lake Constance, known here is the bodensee (see is lake and boden means something like low I think). The lake was invigoratingly cold. If you were going to swim laps it would have felt great, if you have a two and four year old hanging on you, it's not so fun. There was a little wading pool that the kids loved and we even stripped Eli down. He was tolerant of his first swimming experience.

One more story. We were all out to eat and Jackson wanted pickles. Dad, our Communicator, kept telling the server he wanted “gerken.” The server did not seem to understand and left. We had a conversation at the table, that maybe that wasn't the word for pickle, but Dad was pretty sure that was right. A few minutes later, the server brought half a cucumber on a plate. It did taste slightly pickled, but I also noticed in the grocery store that the sign over the cucumbers says GERKEN.

 An attempt to take pics with the brother/sister shirts by Lake Constance...not the best, but there it is.

A note on this weekend:  All we did was work on our lazy weekend skills. We did take a couple of hikes= - one each day- despite the rain and fog.  The big event is that we are weaning our children from oral fixations.  No more pacifiers, no more snugglies (the unstuffed giraffe that Jack has sucked on while sleeping since being weaned).  The funny thing is that I have thought about this and pondered when is the best time to do this? When will it be the least stressful (on me and the kids)? Kenny takes one look at Jo's teeth, sees a slight irregularity in the way they are growing in and BAM! no more paci. Well, if we take paci away, we should be fair and take snuggly away-BAM! that's done too.  2nd day has gone better than the first, we just might all come out unscathed.  I'm stopping giving Eli his paci now. No sense in going through this again someday.

Goats and pigs

Yikes!  It's Wednesday!  What have we been up to?  Here are some of the cool highlights:
Last Saturday, the 22nd, I left the house- alone!  Again! Second time out was a much bigger success than the first. It helped that Eli slept almost all morning. I attended a Day Away Seminar. English speaking women!  Traditional Continental/Swiss breakfast! And a great speaker who focused on overcoming frustration. I have had some of that recently.  Really great morning. It was a rainy day so we just vegged out the rest of the day.
   Sunday, we finally made it to Peter and Paul Wildpark.  We tried once before, but only managed to find some nice woods for walking.  Sunday, we realized that those nice woods would have led to the Wildpark if we had gone up more. Oh well.  It was a nice little outing, if you block out the whining. The place is kind of zoo like, except only mountain goats, deer, and reindeer in the pens.

Wildcats too, but we couldn't see any.

 The creature in the background was Kenny's favorite "exhibit"

I taught the kids to traverse the hill, walk in a zigzag pattern. Jackson kept reminding me to "reverse the hill."
   On Monday, after leaving a distraught Jackson at kindergarten, Johanna and I met up with new friends. Noga and Ytomal (I have no idea how to spell them) are from Israel. They are the family of one of Kenny's classmates. They are only here for a week right now, but they will be back in December and are then staying through the end of the school in February. Ytomal is Johanna's age, but after playing again today (wednesday) I think he prefers Jackson.
    It was really windy Monday evening so the kids and Daddy finally got to fly a kite!  There is one in the toy box and they have tried several times, but never had wind. I wish I had a picture, but they were too far up the slug infested hill for my liking.
  Tuesday I finally accomplished something I meant to do weeks ago- got a doctor for the kids! Eli can finally start his shots. I had the help of my fabulous neighbor, Andrea. Who not only arranged for the doctor, but also called TWICE to the immigration office to help figure out our health insurance situation. The Swiss have national insurance, residents (like us) must participate in this insurance. The loophole (and it may only be for students) is if you can prove you have insurance and the Swiss find it comparable to their plan, then you don't have to buy theirs. I think we are in the clear.

 Jack and Jo borrowed awesome hats from the neighbors. Jackson spent Tuesday afternoon being Teacher Firefighter Jackson and Jo and I were his students.

   I also learned on Tuesday that for Jackson's final day of school before fall break, the class was going on a field trip to see cows!  This is an annual event, all over this region of Switzerland (maybe more of the country). The cows have been grazing in the Alps all summer, and the farmers bring them down to their farms. There is a sort of fair/competition where the winners get very large cow bells.  All the kindergartners go to watch. It's a public event so Jo and I invited Noga and Ytomal to join us and we all went and checked out the cows.  There were a few other farm animals there for the kids to pet. This was Ytomal's first time for seeing real pigs.

 Women in traditional dress

 Ytomal and Johanna with the bells

 Ringing the bells

 Traditionally dressed men (at 10 in the morning) enjoying a beer and singing, or at least harmonizing. No real words involved.

   The overarching event that has permeated this entire week is the much anticipated arrival of not one, but two Grandma's. Diane and Debbie will be here next Wednesday and two weeks from today I expect to have extremely rotten children from all the spoiling.  I might just be rotten also, my list of things I get to do (kid free!) while they are here keeps growing (date night! haircut!, grocery shopping!) We even have a countdown on the fridge.

  

Random stories

So living here, the way we are living here (no car, 3 young kids) is physically demanding. If you haven't caught on to that, yet. To make things a little more challenging, this week the street construction right outside my house is now right beneath my driveway, which means I can't use my driveway. The alternative route is to walk UP to the neighbor's house and then down a lot of steep steps. Oh, did I mention this route leads past several dogs all with severe cases of SDS (small dog syndrome- you know, when small dogs bark ferociously as if to make up for their size). This TERRIFIES Johanna so that I must carry her.  The narrow steps nullify my stroller (if I am alone) and make grocery shopping with my handy little shopper

 (think tiny moving dolly with a canvas bag on it) daunting to say the least.
   Okay, all that complaining to say that every time I go out and exhaust myself I remind myself that it's a great workout and lately I've been telling myself that Jillian Michaels (of Biggest Loser fame) would be proud of me. Why Jillian Michaels?  When our internet is functioning and I have the time, I've been doing her 30 Day Shred workout video from youtube (I am THAT desperate to lose this stupid baby weight-no offense Eli).

     Have I told you that I have made Johanna terrified of slugs?  Forgive me if I've told this story. I write things in my brain all the time and I can't remember what actually makes it to the blog. Slugs are everywhere here- they are DISGUSTING.  Especially stepping on them. So I freak out whenever I see one that one of us is about to step on.  This has translated to Johanna being unable to walk if she sees one. She stands there and screams. It's somewhat hilarious.  
    Several weeks back, just when this fear was revealed, she and Jackson decided to hike into the backyard to the slide. Jo momentarily forgot about the slug phobia. I, of course, had to accompany them. And I, of course, am carrying Eli. We get up to the slide and Jo sees a slug.  She begins to scream and cling to my leg. But that isn't good enough, so she stands on my feet, still screaming. She then tries to claw her way up my leg, still screaming.  It is very difficult for me to pick her up because I am holding Eli and she won't stop screaming long enough for me to explain what she needs to do so I can pick up.  It's so hopeless that I start laughing- this isn't helping. Every tried to do something physical when you are laughing so hard you can barely breath?  She's still screaming. I finally move her to the small play house by walking with standing on my foot. Don't ask me how, I don't know. You probably had to be there, but now you know that if you ever want to keep Johanna from going somewhere just tell her there's a slug, but be prepared.

One more thought for this post:
The 12 year old boy inside my head.
    In German, the word "fahrt" means exit, or way out, or something like that.  It's everywhere, with all sorts of prefixes:
gute (good) fahrt!
extrafahrt
probefahrt

I see a sign, and I giggle. Then I think to myself, "real mature, Martha, real mature"

A bit of daily life

Rain before seven,
Sun by eleven.
I learned this from my jr. high math teacher and it has always stuck with me. Every time I wake up to a rainy day, I glance outside around 11am and sure enough, the clouds are dissipating. But not in St. Gallen. A rainy day here starts the night before. It's just a constant, straight down (doesn't seem to blow in from a certain direction), drizzle. All day. Sometimes I will think that it has stopped. I look out the window and it looks like it has stopped. I look closer and see that I am mistaken.
 Today was not a rainy day, but yesterday was, Last Wednesday was rainy too. Last week I freaked out about the rain. Walking a kid to and from school is fine and dandy when it isn't raining, but when it is...not my favorite.  Last Wednesday I had Eli in the Boba carrier and I tried lots of things to keep Jo dry- she can't carry an umbrella when it is open- I even tried to put her in the moby wrap on my back with Eli on my front.  That was a fail. She ended up in the stroller. This week I gave in to the rain. If she doesn't care if she gets wet (and she didn't) why should I?  I was so proud of myself for finding a rain poncho in a second hand store just like the one Jackson received from the visiting police officer last Friday. Of course both kids LOVE the ponchos- until it started to rain, then forget about it. Oh well. I wore the yellow rain poncho with a police teddy bear on the back- sheer awesomeness.
  Today was gorgeous; a crisp, sunny, autumn day.  The day started the same as every other day this week- Jackson crying as I leave him at kindergarten.  I said in one of my last blogs that Jackson was enjoying kindergarten? I take it back.  Okay, I take it half back.  I think he is enjoying some of it-everyday he tells me about the fun stuff he did. But every morning we go through the tears and whining. I feel bad for him. I have a very distinct memory of not wanting to go to day care and crying in the doorway. But it is that memory that helps me to say good-bye and turn and leave him at kindergarten as he cries.
  But back today. A little chilly, but so sunny that we just had to get out of the house. I lured the kids away from youtube videos of mickey mouse clubhouse with a visit to stadt (city) park. I might have mentioned it before. A great playground- little trampolines at ground level, a 50 foot long giant concrete snake (balance beam?) a cool spiderweb swing. The kids really enjoy it and it's a change of scenery for us. Now that he is going to kindergarten, Jackson doesn't get to ride the bus much, and he LOVES the bus.
  The kids have taken to playing duck, duck, goose. Just the two of them-it's so cute. Jo yells "I'm the goose!" as she runs around shrieking with laughter. Jackson is much more serious about it. They played that for a bit in the grass.

 snack on the snake

 

Cool swing, right?

It totally feels like fall.  Cold weather here smells like bonfires.  A lot of people (most?) heat with wood. When I catch a whiff, I feel like I should be making s'mores :)

Ebenalp

We did it!  We went traveling again!  This trip went MUCH better.  We again went to the Appenzeller region of Switzerland, but this time we made it UP a mountain.
  Saturday was not as beautiful as I was led to believe, but it wasn't raining and sometimes that's all that counts. We had a lazy morning- letting kids sleep as much as they wanted ( it could have been more) and got started around 10:30. We just missed a train headed up to Appenzell because of a pointless stop at the Post Office. But this gave me plenty of time to enjoy my 8 CHF pumpkin latte from the train station Starbucks.

 Yep, that was for a small one-Splurge!
Our train left at 11:37 and an hour and umpteen games of "I Spy" later we changed trains at Appenzell and headed for Appenzell.  Our final train stop was Wasseraun where we headed up the mountain in a luftseilbahn (gondola? cable car?).

 It's a good thing I claimed a seat on one of the 2 benches- my tummy does not travel well, especially in the air. 
   Like I said, the weather wasn't the best, but when the clouds did clear, wow!  what a view!  We enjoyed watching the parasailors flying through the air (with the greatest of ease).

    We did a short, "easy" hike down to the Wildkirchli caves.  Excavations have uncovered ancient bear skeletons and bone tools from the Stone Age.  There are also altars that hermits used in the 17th-19th centuries.  Doing this hike with a 2 and 4 year old made it nothing short of terrifying.  I'm not afraid of heights, but I was feeling some vertigo. Much of the path was up against the face of the mountain with a sharp cliff on the other side of us.

  Beyond the caves is a little restaurant/Guesthouse where we stopped and ate some of the most delicious Rosti...probably because it was warm, turns out that it is colder up in the mountains.

This is the Rosti- shredded potatoes, fried with cheese melted on top- and Kenny's kirsch tea- tea with cherry liqueur.

 By the time we were ready to head back to the Luftseilbahn, the kids were cold, except for Eli, he was snug as a bug in the Boba carrier.

 Instead of try to make the kids hike back up the mountain, Kenny took it upon himself to move them up there the fastest way he could come up with.

   We were heading back down the mountain by 4 and home by 5:30.  I am totally encouraged by this trip and looking forward to more.  Maybe to Germany to do a little shopping- Kenny's pants are about to fall off of him.

An update on the chocolate bar: It took us a a week and a half to finish the 400 gram bar. A little longer than I expected, but we did buy other chocolate in that time frame, including a nifty little candy bar that is like a kitkat made with nutella. Whoever makes Kitkats should get on that.

One other note: we have a new neighbor in the house. She is a professor from Wisconsin, here on sabbatical doing research at the University. A lovely woman who says it is always nice to have children around- good to hear!

Homesick

So maybe some of you have wondered, I know I myself have wondered, when would homesickness set in?  It hit me last weekend (I am mostly recovered, finding canned pumpkin would help greatly). I had a little twinge last Thursday when the downstairs neighbors (the ones that were living in our current flat) left to go home.  I saw their bags all packed and thought- "They are going home. That sounds nice."
   The real kicker was the weekend. Having all our stuff packed up, moving it, not having a set system for the new flat (things like: we keep the toys in this room and the tweezers are on that shelf in the bathroom) and having no food in our house led to some serious pining for home.  We moved on Saturday which meant we had no food for Sunday. Everything is closed on Sundays, I wasn't even sure what kind of restaurants we would find open, especially for lunch.  There were plenty open, it turns out, but I had already mentioned "McDonald's" so the kids were set on that.  WoW! is it expensive!  But that's pretty much my mantra here.   The kids got burgers and Kenny and I decided to try the "US- Mex" restaurant.  Mexican sounded good.... we got what looked like chicken stew (including green beans and carrots) with tortillas. It was a silly idea- I think we went partly because we wanted to see how the Swiss would do "tex-mex." I think we will stick to eating at the bakeries.
   I'm usually all about the local flare and generally avoid chain restaurants, especially when out of town, but I must admit that I find myself drawn to the familiar. There is a McDonald's downtown and a Starbuck's at the train station; I find them so tempting- especially with the language barrier. And that is the beauty of McDonaldization- you know what you are getting (roughly), even thousands of miles from home.

Speaking of home, here is a picture of ours.  The kids talk about how we have 2 homes right now- our Swiss home and our Illinois home.

 If you are wondering, they do not talk about being homesick or missing things-people do get mentioned occasionally. And I think they have mostly stopped "acting out" their homesickness. It would be nice if Johanna would start using the potty again, but pull-ups are a small price to pay.

The Fat Lip Kids

Jack and Jo are starting a new gang- the Fat Lip Kids.  Jackson busted his on the post of the lofted bed on the first night in the new flat and he still slept up there. Go Jackson!  Johanna was standing by the fence watching the road construction in front of our house and suddenly looked up with tears in her eyes and blood in her mouth.

Here is the promised first day of kindergarten picture.  I should add, (if I haven't already) 1st year kindergarten is definitely like US pre-K- a lot of play happening. (which I think is great). Yes, that is Jo standing next to him. Why would I want to take a picture without her?

I mentioned road construction. Here are a couple of shots.  I'm not super happy about this happening right in front of my house from 7am to 6pm but it is impressive to watch them work in such a tight space. And they are very quick. It's also crazy to watch the traffic go by- half on the sidewalk -and the school kids running through the construction zone.

Moving!

Moving!!

It's Saturday and it's moving day!!! Moving is a pain. Even when it is just down a couple flights of stairs. We had to stop buying groceries in an attempt to empty the cabinets (again). Packing everything, remembering where I pack everything in case it is needed urgently. Entertaining kids while packing. Okay, I'm done complaining because I am REALLY excited to be living on the first floor. The toilet and bathtub (yes, tub!) are not on complete opposite sides of the apartment from one another. We have a sun room and don't even get me started on the kitchen :)

Allow me to wax poetic for a moment.

As I was packing up the upstairs apartment I started thinking how we were there for such a short time- so short that we never made it a priority to put all the suitcases out of sight and those were a regular reminder that we would be leaving the apartment soon. This lead me to thinking about the impermanence of life period. (insert Casting Crowns song here). This is not my home- not in Switzerland, nor in the U.S. As Paul (I think Paul...)says, I am citizen of Heaven, I am an alien on this Earth. I am constantly thinking how it would be nice if we had this or that (English television!) to make life more comfortable here, but the slight discomfort is a good reminder that I shouldn't be comfortable anywhere.

Okay, done with the preachy stuff, now how about a tour?

Here is the view from the front door

 The bathroom. I'm cool with the Euro style separation of toilet and everything else, but not when the two room are on opposite sides of the apartment like the previous apartment.

 Eli's room/office/fun lofted bed.  The kids were going to sleep in this bed but Jo freaked out and then I decided it would be better to have this room available after kids go to bed since computers do not get any wifi reception in the living room or kitchen

 Our bedroom- why yes, that is a closet system you see.

 Living room- this flat was remodeled so the living room and kitchen are open to one another

 Kitchen :)  Can you see all those cabinets?! Lovely.  There's even a dishwasher. I was totally resigned to hand washing, but it's a nice bonus.  Still no microwave, which I only miss for heating up leftovers and popcorn since I don't have my air popper.

 Here's the "winter garden" as they call it here. Great for drying laundry :)

 And here's Jack and Jo's room- I interrupted bed time for this photo.

Football and Barbecue

      Tuesday Kenny and his class took their first trip to Uzwil- the town where the company Buhler is located. Buhler supports the school and provides a training facility for the students. This is probably destined to be Kenny's favorite aspect of the class and the most important for him. He's a hands on learner and this is all milling machinery. So that was pretty exciting. His class called an impromptu soccer practice (this will make sense in a minute) that evening so the kids and I went down to the sports complex in town. There was so much flat ground- I didn't hardly know what to do. So we watched the soccer practice. We met another wife and child of a student. They are from Greece. The daughter is a little younger than Jo and it is really cute to see them together talking to one another and giggling. 

Here she and Jack are playing football.

     We spent more time with them on Wednesday when the school hosted a Soccer match between the current students and previous graduates of the program (they tied) and a barbecue.

     We learned that a Swiss barbecue is bratwurst (that's about all they seem to eat) and bread. And mustard. And beer. Okay, so I wasn't impressed with the spread, but it was a nice time. I got to meet several of Kenny's classmates and they are all so cute around our kids- kind of like little old ladies (and I mean that in the nicest way). They all ooh and aah over them. I met the sole female in Kenny's class- Laila- she's from Morocco and she loves kids, which is nice because that is about all I have to talk about. 

      It is really neat to be around such an international group of people. I overhead the Italian student and Laila conversing in French. They all speak English, but they find other common languages among them. I hope to get to know them better.

   

Kindergarten redux:

     I have a kindergartener- WHAT?! I spoke with our neighbor Andrea about what I should do regarding the letter about kindergarten. My idea was to keep Jackson in the Spielgruppe until the Fall break (they take 3 weeks here) and then send him to the kindergarten after the break. I didn't really know how to go about getting this message to the administration. What was I going to do? Call and ask “sprechen zie Englisch?” - Nein?- okay, click. Lovely Andrea offered to call the school administration and ask some questions for me. Well, I jumped on that offer. The admin did not like my idea- He should have been in school 4 weeks ago! Get him to kindergarten. -Okay, we'll try it out. 

        We visited on Friday. And let me tell you, I have one excited 4 year old. All the kindergarteners get these refective orange safety V's to wear to and from school and Jackson has wanted to wear his non-stop since it was given to him on Friday. (First day pics to be posted soon) He starts Monday. He will go 5 days a week 8:50 to 11:40. I'm not too nervous about it. It helps that I have no expectations other than have a good time and hopefully pick up a little Swiss German. He has been very reluctant with the language so far, but maybe the daily exposure will help.

Appenzell

We got out of St. Gallen today (Sunday)! We took the Appenzeller Bhanen (train) to the town of Appenzell (it's also what the region is called).

We started to day with going to church, as it was an English translation Sunday. We learned today not to miss the bus down to the train station. There isn't another one for 20 minutes. In that amount of time we can walk to the train station, so we did. So we got to church a little late. Unfortunately, Jo was not so keen on the nursery today. She burst into tears as soon as we walked in the door. She was well behaved throughout most of church and spent the majority of the time in Daddy's arms. Kind of amazing.

We had a picnic lunch with us- the reason we missed the bus. So we went straight from church to the train station and headed South. Appenzell is a pretty touristy town- lots of Swiss souvenirs. 

     We've decided it will be a great place to bring my family too when they visit in December. As we walked through town we discovered that in a couple days Appenzell is hosting the Tug of War World Championships- how awesome is that!?

     We ended up taking a path up a “hill.” You've heard of cowbells, right? Well, it turns out they are not just for awesome SNL skits, but also for cows! As we walked up we could hear the clinking of bells from all over the hillside- pretty cool. We met a lovely older couple who were hiking down. They gave us a suggestion on a path to take so we wouldn't have to backtrack. We didn't take their suggestion. Whiny kids + not knowing how much farther we needed to go = turning around. But turning around meant Kenny got an Appenzell beer and I got Alpine butter. I don't think I'm enough of a butter connoisseur to appreciate it's alleged greatness. 

       A note on the Swiss: they are really outdoorsy. Cycling, mountain biking, Nordic walking, swimming, football (soccer)- of course. Do you know how big soccer is to the rest of the world? It is a HUGE sport everywhere but the U.S. I watched women's soccer from Korea on TV the other day. I don't get it- but I don't like watching any sport on TV.

      Back to the Swiss. They are all about get out and do. All over the place there are yellow signs and yellow diamonds that indicate walking paths- wanderwegs- where the path will take you and how long (maybe even 3-4 hours away). On our hike today, these signs would direct people through the middle of a pasture. There would be a little gate in the fence and we could see trampled grass to indicate a “path.” We stuck to the pavement.

   I'm wondering how much more we'll get out of the city. Keeping kids entertained on a train is difficult and there isn't much we can do when we get their that holds their interest. And so far we just end up really tired and beyond frustrated. Maybe we just need to be better planners. We get our residency cards on Thursday which means we can leave the country without problems getting back in, so maybe we can shoot for another country next time.

Bibble Bop

Bibble Bop. Isn't that a great little phrase? It's Johanna's word for rain. It's so cute when she says it too. It did a lot of Bibble Bop Friday and Saturday. Like ALL day. I about went crazy on Friday. We had to find a lot of things to do in the apartment including hallway ping pong.

Johanna (and I) got yelled at the other day. I bought her a long umbrella (she calls it her cane). She was dancing around with it- nothing crazy- while we waited for the bus. An older lady (with her own cane umbrella) walked by and as she got closer to Johanna she apparently got concerned that Jo was going to hit her or something and started speaking harshly in German. Jo did not even notice. I started giggling silently when the lady turned to me and let me have it. I wanted to respond with “shows you, I don't speak German!” but I just shrugged my shoulders. I have to say that I would have been mortified if Jo had been anywhere close to being in this lady's way. 

As we walked back to the flat from grocery shopping on Saturday (I made it to Aldi's! It really is cheaper! Not cheap, but cheapER!) I decided to check the mail. No reason to check it, not expecting anything, but I peaked in the box and found an official looking letter. I figured it was junk but opened it just in case. It was in German, of course, but I could tell that it was from the School Administration and it was about Jackson. I brought the letter to church to ask an acquaintance to tranlate it and it turns out that the Administration wants to know what kindergarten Jackson is enrolled in because according to the law he is of age to be in kindergarten. We just paid a crazy amount of money for him to go to Spielgruppe, but part of me wants him to go to kindergarten. And not just because he would go everyday for a few hours, but I think it would be a really neat experience. He may not go, everyone I talk to about it think I should just explain how we are leaving at the end of February and they'll just leave him be, but I kinda just want to play along as long as Jack is handling it well and it's not stressing him out. Stay tuned... PS the Spielgruppe instructor is pretty nice and I think I'd get at least part of my money back.

Eli turned 2 months old on the 29th. Here's some shots to commemorate.

 Here's his smile...kinda.