Let's try this again...

This will be my second time to try and blog today, as Clara deleted my 3 paragraphs earlier.... she thinks it is hilarious when she touches the keyboard (b/c she knows she is not supposed to...).

First off, we got our STUFF!  Just minutes ago we actually unpacked the last two boxes.  Trying to fit everything in this little apartment is very frustrating.  I hated everything about the house in MO while we were there.. but now I miss it oh so much.  It is very crowded with the three of us in it, and the thought brining a baby into it frightens me.

The weather has gotten MUCH nicer.  It turns out the sun does NOT hate German and we have had several pleasant days in the last week.  When it is nice out, this place comes alive!  There are so many kids on our kasern that when it is pretty outside and you open the windows all you hear is kids playing.  Clara loves to go on rides in her wagon and watch the kiddos.  She loves it even more when she can get out and run with them (yes she is RUNNING now).  She wants so badly to keep up with them and gets very angry when I pull her away.  She enjoys the swing and the slide the most.  After she goes down a slide she will try to climb back up it (maybe a few steps) then sit back down as if to slide again.

We got her a picnic table for her birthday.  I put it together and it is in our living room and she will push it over to the TV stand and climb on top of it to get to the TV.  She thinks this is hilarious also... she pretty much thinks it is funny if she is not supposed to do it.  The terrible twos should be fun!

Granny and Grampy get here Thursday, just in time to celebrate Clara's first birthday!  I can't believe it has been a year!  They are excited to see where we live and see in person everything I complain about!  We are thinking about taking a short road trip somewhere, or a train trip.  We are going to be spontaneous though.  I have to drive to Frankfurt to pick them up, which will be my first long drive on the Autobahn by myself... Yikes!  As of now they will be staying with us, it should be interesting have 4 adults in this little apartment.  Hopefully it will make us get out and about.

Oh how I long for the house I hated in Missouri....

I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T

Clara's newest trait is her need to do absolutely everything on her..  Rarely does she want help, will scream when you pick her up, push the spoon out of the way when I am holding it, hates riding in the stroller.  She wants to walk up the stairs to the apartment by herself, which she can pretty much do, however now she would like to go down them on her own too.  While I want her to learn how to do this, it just takes about 5 minutes to walk down the one flight of stairs...  I have also resorted to a lot of finger foods for her.  She is working in using some training utensils, but it is usually at the end of breakfast where I let her "explore" using them.  She knows to dip the spoon  in the bowl, then that goes into her mouth.  Rarely does what is on the spoon make it into her mouth though...

Here is what she looked like after she won her fight for being independent at dinner...

Needless to say, bath time was pushed ahead about 2 hours last night!  The Ingrao's will be happy to know that that is an Italian dish all over her!  She loves her ravioli and spaghetti...  

Daddy at Happy Kids!

This Monday, Nick had off for Presidents Day, so we headed to Eppleheim to show him Happy Kids!  He had a blast climbing around with Clara!  It was also fun to show him some of Clara and Mommy's typical activities.  Needless to say, he was pretty worn out at the end of it!

At the top of the Alligator slide!

Weeeeee!

Keep up with me, Daddy!

Clara will barely take a break for a picture... this girl is nonstop!

One of the few times she accepts help from us... she is getting VERY INDEPENDENT.

She loves to play in the balls!

Daddy watching Clara in the balls (and possibly taking a breather)!

Down the big slide... she refuses to sit in our laps...

And we ended here for the day!

This keeps making me laugh-

So, the language difference here can sometimes be really funny!  A lot of the translations are very literal.  As in "Lizzy produced dinner" as opposed "Lizzy made dinner", etc.

The FUNNIEST one this far was when we were at the emergency room for Clara when she was so sick (when we were 5 hours away from home in a foreign country...) MURPHY'S LAW...

Anyways, the doctors and nurses spoke a decent amount of language and between all of us we were able to get our points across.  One of the nurses came in the room and gave us cream to use on the "baby's ass".  At first I was not sure if she had referred to my infants bottom as an ass or not... Then she came in again to tell us that "the baby's ass will get very red from being so sick".  Then Nick and I both looked at each other, like did she really say that?  Every time she came in she wanted to know how "baby's ass" was doing.  It made us crack up during a frantic time, so it was good.

When I want to kind of giggle about it and talk about the crappy language barrier, I have to remember that she knows a hell of a lot more English then I know German!

Oh yeah... and Valentines!

So, this morning, Nick took Clara and I brunch on post in Heidelberg!  It was great!  They have a really nice pavilion there, that they use for special events!  The food was great, and it was great to get up and out of the house early in the morning!

Here is a picture of Nick and his Valentine at Brunch!

Learning...

So today I decided I wanted to learn to make a cake using fondant icing!

I made the fondant from scratch using marshmallows and powdered sugar.  It was a lot of fun and the whole process kept me occupied for a nice amount of time!

I am LEARNING so it is not perfect at all.  I have a lot of left over fondant, so I will probably be trying again this week.  Considering I have about 5 kitchen utensil, I don't think it is too bad.  When I get all my kitchen gear, this will be even more fun!  My goal is to get really good by Clara's birthday so I can make her a cake to match her tutu!

Here is my first attempt!

Tutu Cute!

So, the boredom has gotten the best of me, and I made Clara a tutu today!  It was SO EASY and SO CHEAP!  Tulle is only $1.25 a yard at the PX in the town over!

Today, when I was looking for a first birthday outfit online, I was amazed at the prices, so I did some research, and....

This one is too big... I made another one because I had extra fabric!

My mom is going to look into getting a shirt!  We think we may just get a black one and get my sister to embroider it! If you are reading this Leah, I would like it to say 1st Birthday!

Boo...

So... it looks like our household goods, AKA, everything we own will NOT be here when they told us :(  It is running late.  They "think" the ship has made it to the port... but that is all they could tell us!  I am so ready to have furniture, rugs, toys for Clara, more then 4 outfits, kitchen appliances...  Oh well... We have been without it for 2 months now, it just gets frustrating!

Nick has another 4 day weekend tomorrow through Monday, but we think we are just going to hang around here seeing as though we are all on the mend.  We may go to an indoor waterpark around here, and go try a resturaunt in the town over where they cook your meal on rocks at the table?!?!  If we go there I will for sure take some pictures!

And so...

Baby #2 should arrive around August 24th, 2010!

We had our first Dr. appointment today at the Klinikum (hospital) and it was interesting for the most part.  The doctor said everything looks fine, and the baby had a strong heart beat.  

A few things are REALLY different in Germany as opposed to the states...  

1) they don't wear gloves to do anything... to draw blood, to do a pap smear... nothing... 

2) You have to ask for a gown, I guess in Germany when you go to Dr. you just lay butt naked on the table for them.  However the nurse informed me that they keep gowns available "for Americans"... damn prudes!  

3) Guys you may want to stop reading now... I had to most interesting pap smear of my life...  I don't even know where to start... it was umm... awful?  There are none of those clampers.. just like two smooth hooks and a different nurse holds each one of the hooks pulling in opposite directions... enough said.   

4) They only have what they call a "walking epidural" during labor... which means you can walk while you have the epidural... not much of an epidural if you ask me.   So, we will see as we get farther along in this how I feel about having the baby in Germany vs. going back to Texas.  I am very intimidated by the differences in the two places, and am very nervous about the fake epidural, because lets face it... labor is cake with the right drugs and hell without them!

5) They take blood every 3-4 weeks.  I may be wrong, but with Clara I think I only had to get blood drawn two or three times... They take blood every 3-4 weeks without gloves... The health dept. would be all over that in the US!  

6) Of course there is the whole unit of measurement thing... but that's an easy one... They kept asking me if I knew my height and weight  and Clara's height and weight at birth in metric units... I did not.. so they converted each time, not a big deal.  P.S.. I like my weight a lot more in Kilograms :)

Thats enough complaining for now!  Gotta get to cleaning this mess now that we are all back from the dead... AKA stomach flu!  

Tschüs!

We will keep you all posted 

What a wonderful trip we had!

So... we got out of town this weekend!  We headed to Bavaria to attend a retreat with Nick's new company.  We met a lot of great people, and saw some neat things.  On Thursday morning we headed out!  We followed our friends all the way there!  They were wonderful to let us tag along with them!  The 4.5 hour drive took us through Germany, into Austria, and then back up to Garmisch.  We were driving next to the Alps for a good part of it and they were breath taking!  We also passed a few castles (which I have no idea what they were).  We got to Garmisch at about 2:00 PM.

The fact this this is totally LEGAL had us cracking up!  Plus the fact that people were probably legally going 20-30 mph faster than us!  Nick has decided we may need to get a newed BMW or Audi, but I am pushing for the Volvo SUV.  We are going to look into it, as they are quite cheaper over here, and we get them minus the 19% tax included on every price over here in Germany (and you thought US taxes sucked...)  We'll keep you posted on the car search!

This was our view for the majority of the drive!  Not too bad, huh?

A cool tunnel that is cut through a mountain.  We pretty much went in the tunnel in 

Germany and came out in Austria!  

Nick and Clara on thew balcony at the hotel.

So, Friday was much more eventful then just driving, we went into Munich and got to explore the town for a few hours.  It was swarmed with Polizei (police).  Literally 10 on every corner.  People we saying to be careful because all sorts of violent demonstrations go on there, but it turned out some NATO diplomats were visiting... which I guess could have led to demonstrations, but we were fine!  Nick did not let Clara and I more then 5 inches from him the whole time though...

Here we are in front of the Marienplatz in the center of Munich.  It was very cool, lots of neat details, and the clock does some crazy thing when it hits 5:00 PM, I believe! 

So, this is called the Munich Residenz and it is where the Bavarian Monarchy Resided a long time ago.  To the left is a really nice garden (I am guessing it is nice when it is not the middles of winter) that we walked through!

Our last stop was at theHofbraehaus.  Apparently it is very touristy, but it was a lot of fun!  We hung with a dual military couple that Nick will work with, and they were a lot of fun!  

That night, Clara got the stomach flu and threw up until I decided it was best to take her to the hospital.  Being in a foreign county and going to the hospital SUCKS!   I felt like I couldn't really relay to the doctor that I was worried about dehydration.  She gave us a suppository to give to her and told us to give her tea.  Germans are very holistic, I was expecting to hook her up to an IV, but apparently tea will do the trick because as soon as we left the hospital it started to come out the other end... She calmed down a little, so we decided to drive to our friend, Susi and Martin's (Martin is the Germany officer Nick met at Ft. Wood).  On the way there it got really bad!  Poor baby would SCREAM each time she got a stomach ache.  When we got to there house, we decided we may need ot back to the hospital, because she still has the stomach issues and would not eat.  Luckily, Susi and Martin we with us and speak excellent English and could translate for us.  The hospital monitored her, and we decided against an "infusion", their translation for IV, and they gave her tea... hmm... It turned out to be just a 24 hour bug because at about 4:00am in the Hotel room in Martin and Susi's town, it hit me and Nick..... Poor Martin and Susi just thought we here coming to hang out... and ended up taking care of us!  We are very grateful for their friendship to us!  

We finally made it home after the long weekend and are all still in recovery. I think we have been through 50 diapers in like 2.5 days....  Nick went into work for a little while and Clara and I slept for most of the day.  Here is to hoping we are all back to 100% before Nick's 4 day weekend this week...

Getting out of town!

So, this week, Nick's Brigade is offering a FREE TRIP to Edelweiss, a military resort in Bavaria.  It is technically a marriage retreat, so we have to attend a few classes, but besides that we get to hang out in the resort, visit Munich and meet some new friends.  We are going to see if we can take our own car (instead of riding the bus) so we can visit Martin. (Martin is the German NATO officer Nick befriended while we were living in Missouri.  They live about an hour away from there.

Edelweiss Resort:

If it is fun, we are thinking about taking Granny and Grampy there when they come visit!  Bavaria is apparently one of the most traditional places in Germany, and not far from there is the famous castle the Neuschwanstein.   I don't think we will get there this weekend, so we will have to go back anyways! 

While packing, I needed to make sure Clara's bathing suit fit her, so I put her in it!  She was so funny.  I never have her in shorts because it is so cold here, so I forgot about her chunky little legs.  

She also started posing for the camera! 

As you can see, the house is a mess.  My family will say its because I suck at cleaning, however Nick is really good at cleaning, we just do not have anywhere to put anything, therefore Clara has free rein of everything EVERYWHERE.  We have piles of dirty clothes (the laundry basket we borrowed from the Army).  Piles of toys, which Clara thinks is a game, she starts throwing pieces of the piles around....  It is starting to get really hard to live with piles everywhere... Our TV is on the floor, our coats are in a pile on top of a box, (we don't have hangers, which I could buy, but I have like 1000 coming...)  Anyways, here is the story about this... My neighbor just had a baby (she is beautiful)  and I made them dinner twice, tonight they came down to thank us, and when I answered the door there was crap everywhere, including some incredibly real looking lobster toy I got for Clara, books, clothes, etc... I apologized for the mess and got the mess (they said they completely understood.... all military in Europe have lived like this) and then after they left Nick said he was so embarrassed about the house, then I realized not only was the house a mess, but I has just taken off Clara's swimsuit (after making sure it still fit) so she was running around the apartment screaming in her diaper... not to mention I was in sweat pants and a t-shirt... they must think we are complete trash!  Oh well...  I got a good laugh out of it, because at this point, if I don't laugh  at the fact that we have been living out of suitcases, off the floor,  and with the bare essentials for the last two months I may have a melt down...

And She Has Hair!!!

Clara finally has hair coming in!  Everyone told me it would start to come in around 1.  She even has a tooth coming in on the top... She has three full ones on the bottom already!  Here is Clara sporting her new do!

We also braved the cold this weekend and took a trip to down town Mannheim.  It was actually pretty interesting.  There is some great shopping (for Mom) and some interesting things to look at (for Dad).  There is also great food.  They sell pretzels and rolls on every corner and they are usually about 3 for 1 Euro.  

Clara at the train station! 

This is a Holocaust Memorial in downtown.  It has the names of the people from Mannheim that were victims of the Holocaust.

The main street in downtown.  It has TONS of cool shops!

They have a farmers three times a week downtown.  I really wanted to buy some produce, but I am still a little intimidated by the language barrier!  They have produce, flowers, meats, breads... it is really neat!  We were looking for it for quite a while, until Nick asked some lady if she spoke English.  She told us she spoke a little english, but then was able to give us turn by turn directions on how to get there... in English!