Share and Share Alike

WARNING: Complaining Ahead! Ahh, sharing. That most important life lesson that toddlers struggle with each and every day. Our children don't want to share their toys, their snacks, or their mommy's lap. One thing they seem to have no problem sharing is germs. As Eli was finishing up his 3rd round of antibiotic for strep this week, Mary finally succombed. I brought her in on Tuesday with general crankiness and they found strep and an ear infection. Eli finished his medicine on Thursday morning. Today (Friday) he woke up screaming with a slight fever. Against all odds and most of my doctor's experience (even she is surprised now), he has strep - ONE DAY after his last sickness. And possibly stomach flu since he's trying to throw up and complaining about his tummy. So this is #4 in four months, not including the whole Mono incident. We now have more bottles of medicine in the refridgerator than food items. The doctor wonders if he may have a condition where strep lives permanently in his mouth. May need to test for that after returning from the States with an ENT Specialist. The fun continues.

So we have things to discuss regarding our trip coming up... do we find a pediatrician in Arizona or Montana to get another doctor's thoughts on the situation (we may have to, anyway, for more medicine)? Do we keep Eli away from everyone in fear that he is potentially contagious unless on an antibiotic? Can we even stay at Mom & Dad's in Montana with Mom's immune system knocked low by her chemotherapy? Please say a prayer for us this week and for Eli. I'm begging God for a healthy boy for 6 weeks in the USA and a little wisdom and rest as well.

Mary Contrary / German Philosophy on Children

First, our most important news... "Stubborn Girl Walks!!" Click on the links below to see the videos (couldn't get them into the blog, don't know why). Mary has joined the toddler club.

#1 Stubborn Girl Walking
#2 Mary Gets Bribed

We are exceedingly grateful. Mary is a determined "I'll do it!" kid and sometimes bully about almost everything. Finally she has added walking to her repertoire. Today she walked the main floor circuit twice, grinning, just to show me she could do it now. While my biceps may start to weaken (currently I can carry two children across a foreign city for miles) I am just glad we can put her down on the ground without worrying about her looking for disturbing things to eat... I caught her licking an ant off the floor last week.

Speaking of eating. Look who's feeding herself now. Last week we gave Mary a spoon and bowl at mealtimes. Just what she had been waiting for, apparently. Now we receive high-pitched lectures, withering glares, and hand slaps (our hands, that is) if we attempt to help her get food on the spoon or, heaven forbid, touch her bowl. I am going to try to get her 'death stare' on camera soon. We laugh and wonder if she will go to Hollywood instead of college someday.

But she LOVES her big brother. She has started giving Eli hugs when we pick him up from school and will pet his hair or put her arm around him when he reads her a story (but won't let him cuddle on her). And she copies, exactly, everything he does. She watches him closely and then mimics. This is good and bad. She has learned how to drink from a straw, fill and pour with cups, and "read" a book earlier than Eli did. But she has also learned how to climb on tables, beg for treats, and be naughty faster too.

There are a few oddities that I'll categorize as being part of the German Philosophy on Children. I'm only in the introductory course so keep an eye out for followup articles.

• Your children WILL be healthy. Several months back I got a long, unreadable (for me) letter from the Minister of Health, Justice, and Social Welfare of the State we live in (Saarland). It had to do with Mary and appeared medical in nature. I brought it to my doctor and they said they would take care of it. Just after Eli's 4th birthday I got a similar looking letter for him, forgot about it, got a second letter, and neglected to take it to my doctor on one of our many sick visits. Then on Thursday I got a third letter from this office with a handwritten form saying they would be at my house (gah!!) on Monday for a home visit from 10am - 12pm!!! Calling in a panic I found an English speaker who said if they don't hear from your doctor around your child's birthday that they have had an annual checkup, they will show up at your door to do the physical themselves. I called my doctor and think we have it all cleared up. Eli had a lengthy 4-year physical and developmental review (completely in German) which he passed just fine. Sheesh.
• Children are welcome in stores. Or... at least their parents' Euros are welcome. My kids get an average of 2 gummy bear packets, 1 balloon, 1 piece of sausage, 1 slice of cheese and 1 sucker each every time we do an errand run. And the grocery store, furniture store, and Ikea have free, supervised playrooms (with ball pits, slides, toys) where you can leave your potty-trained child while you shop. Eli loves these places. Mary is frustrated that she can't go too.
• Children are not welcome elsewhere. Restaurants (the kind with napkins and silverware), many video stores (strange but true) and even churches are included in this category. The local church offers a service for kids... once a month on Wednesday afternoons (when they take naps).... nothing is offered on Sunday mornings other than a regular service (no nursery, childrens worship). Our church is different, thankfully.
• Kid-Centered Businesses are Rare. A few toy stores, the pools, and some playplaces can be found but there are too few Pediatricians, no pediatric dentists, no kids hair cut places, no kids' restaurants (equals nowhere to have a birthday party) and no mid-range clothing stores. And good luck finding a babysitter. Everyone lives near parents or other relatives so this is not a common pursuit of teenagers in order to make money. I'm making a little headway on this lately, however.
• Supervision is optional. Kids as young as five are often running all over the neighborhood completely without parental supervision. My friends in other towns have seen very young kids out after dark, regularly, with no parent in sight. Yikes.

Oh dear. This is awfully long. I'm sure there will be more later so you can go to bed now.

Wildlife

Lately my children have switched roles. Eli is the wild one - see picture of legs below. Each day Eli comes home from school (where he spends 3 of 4 hours outdoors) with brand new colorful and bleeding injuries on his arms, legs or face. He doesn't seem to notice or care very much so I guess he's a regular boy. Mary has been risk averse but she is starting to walk a little each day, however reluctantly. Wildlife in Germany consists mostly of animals small enough to step on, though there are deer crossing signs on the autobahn.

The wildlife of interest at my house includes huge, black, furry bee-like creatures that can be as big as the bouncy balls you get from those 25 cent supermarket machines. I have no idea if they sting but I don't like them and tend to swat erratically at them while panicking when they try to fly through my open front door.

But most commonly sighted are what I affectionately refer to as crunchy spiders. They come in 3 sizes: squishably-small, scary, and terrifying. And yes, they have a lot of exoskeleton which makes audible crunching sounds during the process of elimination. I have kleenexed many small ones, vacuumed up many scary ones (about an inch across), and faced down only one (prayer of thanks) terrifyingly massive arachnid. I took a picture - sorry, my hands were shaking - before getting out the dustbuster and i'm telling you, this thing was so strong, it would not go into that suction tube for several long seconds. It measured at least 2.5 inches across. Kevin was on a trip to the states when this happened last fall. I had flashbacks for days.
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As my primary weapon, the Black-&-Decker handyvac the company gave us is one of my most prized posessions. It is also old. I have looked in store after store for a filter replacement with no luck. But my desperation knows no bounds so I hand-clean the filter and carefully dry it every few months so I will not lose this valuable tool. Maybe i'll bring a suspicious looking filter along to the states... Oh and don't be afraid to visit, now. I am skilled and will defend you.

And, finally, it appears we have some wilder teenagers somewhere on our hill. A few weeks back we woke up to an entire TP-ed neighborhood. All the garden walls and bushes and utility poles. It was a mess since it had also rained. A few days later someone shot fireworks directly over our house.... found the launchers in the front yard and the paper remains in the back. Ooooookaaay. And our friend Gabe - lives next door - has an 8-year old Audi that someone apparently wants for their own since they tried to break into two different windows on two nights in a row, unsuccessfully (though the windows are trashed). Such is life in the wild town of Einod.

Paris... Pourquois Pas? (Why not?)

Eli will tell you he knows three languages now, since he can say ' please' (s'il vous plait) and 'thank you' (merci) in French. He was pretty proud of that fact. Pictures are to the right and a quick rundown is below.

Day 0 (Wed): Bit of an ominous start... Kevin bumped into a car in the parking lot (no scratches) and then we realized we had missed the train due to faulty mommy-brain when reading European times printed on tickets (you'd think i'd know by now) and arrived in Paris at bedtime instead of dinnertime and 50 penalty Euros poorer. Thankfully the kids did great on the train, which had a dining car, and we found the apartment no problem.
Day 1 (Thur): Woke up in a very cool neighborhood - too cool for us but we stayed anyway - found our way to the Eiffel Tower, then the Arc du Triomphe, and down the infamous Champs Elysee boulevard. All pretty darned neat. Eli loved the massive traffic circle around the Arc. We ate at McDonalds. Took a nap. Went to Notre Dame but were too late to climb it so walked around inside and ate dinner nearby. Then we took an hour long boat ride along the river to see the sights.
Day 2 (Fri): Montmartre (Paris' hill) and Sacre Coeur church in the morning. Strange adult men, some drunk and dressed in suits, offering to draw our kids on sketch pads at the 'artist' colony. Back to Notre Dame and climbed up, up, up to the Gargoyles and a view. Naps. Then we played at the park in the Luxembourg Garden, ate sushi (yum) and walked through the Tuileries Garden to the Louvre, which was open late for cheap with no lines. Saw 'Mona' and 'Venus' then hightailed it home. Felt cool to be in a room with the most famous painting in the world, I must admit.
Day 3 (Sat): Musee D'Orsay for an hour with Monet, Manet, VanGogh and other greats. Sat on a bridge exhausted for awhile. Ate at McDonalds (don't laugh, we have kids). Went shopping at Gallery Lafayette (Paris invented the gigantic department store idea) and Eli got.... a toy car (shocker). Naps. Explored our neighborhood and then Les Halles - a magnificently large underground mall complex where most of Paris lives or hangs out (no tourists except for us) - and had ice cream (Ben & Jerry's!) before bed.
Day 4 (Sun): Saint Chapelle royal chapel with it's incredible 800 year old stained glass was our first stop. And there was a Sunday-only bird market nearby. Large guys bartering around a bird cage and huge sacks of birdseed. Not something one sees every day. Then we slipped into the Rodin Museum gardens to see his famous bronze works before we headed back to the apartment to pack, struggle our luggage to the train station, and go home. Kids were tired and Mary was impossible but we made it (whew!) home.... 4 weeks to the day until we fly for hours and hours and hours with a toddler on a small airplane to Phoenix. Can't wait!

Other Paris Notes: The Metro is a blessing and a curse. You can go anywhere BUT you're lugging your stroller and kids up and down thousands of stairs (and calling the stroller several kinds of names when it gets stuck in the entry/exit gates). The kids love it, the parents not so much. Naps are a must - at least for the adults. The stroller becomes an advantage at famous attractions because you're considered like the handicapped and get to take an elevator - when everyone else has to take the stairs. At the Rodin Museum we got to go past the entire looooong line of people directly to the front and right into the gardens because of the stroller. Mary would charm the guards and Eli would be cute so really, kids can be a plus. The negative is you don't get to stay very long at any one place. Eli walked and climbed and walked and climbed... he was terrific. Mary did really pretty well for a toddler. We had a great time. Come on over and we'll go with you, too.

Moseying the Mosel

We have a Pattern here that goes something like this: Sick Child - Medical Intervention (3 Doctor Visits + 2 Pharmacy Visits) - Vacation Travel - Newly Sick Child (usually the other one). Lots of fun. You should try it sometime. Thus far God has graciously allowed us sickness-free travel vacations, but icky illness is our punishment upon returning home. Eli got his 'all clear' from Mono yesterday. Mary woke up with a nasty-cling-to-mommy-and-whine-cold at 5:45am today. Kevin is gone. It was raining on a Saturday when we had our first social get-together in many weeks planned for the outdoors. I nearly cried. But our friends from church called, said I could come over anyway with my sick kid, and the day was saved. She fed us Mac-n-Cheese with hot dogs and good company. Never say that God is without mercy.

(Note: Links included in this blog entry.)

Last weekend we spent 3 nights on the Mosel River (see pics) watching the river traffic, gaping at the 1000's of motorcyclists and bicyclists, cruising the river and the road, seeing a castle, and generally traipsing around vineyard towns. The Burg Eltz castle, going through a river lock, and riding a chair lift were highlights. We fed swans, went to the pool, and had a wine-cellar tour as well. Cheap and yummy, wine is not remotely snooty in Germany, it's what everyone drinks with their dinner. A few observations we made:

• You're never too old to ride a bike. I mean this literally... 90 years old? So what? Get on your bike-with-a-basket and go to the bakery. Many, many older couples do this in smaller-town Europe.
• Motorcycle Payments = Mortgage Payments. The bikes cruising the Mosel valley were more expensive than all of your cars put together and the riders were outfitted in complete head-to-toe coordinated leather suits with helmets, gloves, and boots to match. Not one singe rider was wearing jeans.
• Summer homes can be portable. In the States motor homes are for travelling. Here they are cheap summer homes that are planted in one beautiful spot on the riverfront from May until October and used as someones weekend home for six months of the year. They do not move from that campground. They have huge tented porches with fancy furniture and neighborhood flea-markets. They have to leave in late fall when the river floods and retakes the campground for the winter.
• Town monuments should have basic rights. Our weekend stay in Zell meant we had to find the 'Schwarze Katze' (Black Cat) statue that lends its name and image to all the local wines, tourist shops, and restaurant dinner specials. After fruitless searching despite many kind strangers directing us to the center of town we finally looked under a tent that had been set up for some fest and had an Oompa Band (lederhosen, green wool knickers, corny music) playing. Behold, the black cat statue had been turned into... a bar. Built completely around the statue and serving wine and beer, it was the worst abuse we've seen of a town monument, ever.

Surprise!! Kevin went to Iowa the day after we got home and will hopefully return in time for our Paris trip the day after he returns. But he also flew to Montana for a quick weekend visit to surprise Mom & Dad. I hope that it's a good one, despite the fact that he didn't bring his kids. Mom is on 'round 2' with the chemo and for some reason isn't finding it to be loads of fun. While we feel very, very far away most of the time and would like to be there especially now, a quick visit by Kevin will have to do until we arrive 'en masse' on the first of July. And Dad made a CaringBridge page for Mom that looks great, keeps us informed, and helps shrink the miles between us.