On May 12 my brother and his girlfriend had a teeny, tiny baby girl. Her name is Khloe and she weighed in at about 5 and a half pounds when she was born 2 weeks early.
This morning at 1:41am my sister-in-law, Shauna, and her husband Dave welcomed their second baby boy to the world. Brennan Layne Edwards weighed in at 7 lbs 11 oz
The rain has finally moved on (at least for now) and sun has been out. It warmed up to 70's today! Colin has been in the pool the last three days straight. I fill it with warm water and with the sun shining on us it's warm enough to swim. Colin LOVES it. He calls it a bath no matter how many times I try to tell him it's a pool. He loved collecting big rocks from the garden and putting them in the pool, throwing them out and then tossing them back in again.
Today we took Colin to the Wild und Wanderpark, which is a big forest area with lots of animals that the kids can get up close and personal with. I took Colin once before when he was about 10 months old and too little to walk. This time I knew he'd be nuts over the animals being so close to him and being able to feed them. First thing we came to was goats and they were very friendly and eager to help themselves to the food. Colin laughed as they came up on the fence to greet him and at the tickle as they took the food from him.
Soon after he fed the big goats in the pen a couple of little baby goats came running down the sidewalk outside the pen and he was very excited about that.
He fed the goats some more and a couple started fighting, Colin didn't care but I thought it was pretty cool...watch out for goats!
After we fed the goats we looked at the wolves and buffalo, which you are not allowed to feed (go figure). Then we came to the horses, which Colin was excited to see at first. The horses were farther back in their pen and when one heard the food he came over to greet us. Colin wasn't so sure about the horse anymore once he was right up at the fence and in his face. He didn't like feeding the horse, he kept pushing Shelby's hand over to the horse with the food in it and wouldn't take the food to feed it himself.
After the horse we walked the forest part of the park where there are all kinds of deer running around. We met several along the path and fed them. They come in groups and overwhelmed Colin a little bit, but he did very well. We also saw the wild pigs and fed them too. They can be mean! There were babies that were pretty cute too. Here Colin saw a deer and took off after it...
And here we meet another mob of deer on the path and feed them too
Tonight for dinner I made some delicious chicken stir fry with rice. Colin has a very hard time with rice so I made him some rotini pasta and put his stir fry over that instead of rice. When Shelby gave him his plate with his little fork he was not pleased. He looked over and saw me eating with chopsticks and saw Shelby's chopsticks laying on the table and frantically pointed to them repeatedly saying "this, this, this!" Shelby handed him the chopsticks and he was happy as could be. He didn't eat much with them, they were more or less entertainment and he eventually did use his fork (and hands) to eat his food.
What are these things?
They make fun noises!
In other news, the sun apparently has not been swallowed up by a black hole and decided to grace us (very temporarily) with its presence this evening. The view from my bathroom window...
The bunny was not happy about our visitor. Bunny was outside in his pen area and when the hedgehog got too close the rabbit started thumping his back feet on the ground to tell him to beat it. It was kinda cute, just like Thumper in Bambi, lol.
Colin was playing in the yard. I see him about to put something in his mouth and I say "Colin don't put that in your mouth". So what does he do? He sticks his tongue out and teases me to see how far he can go with it. Turkey!
OK I need a few words to explain... Colin climbed on the desk the other day and discovered a fake cat my parents got me ages ago. It looks like a real kitten all curled up sleeping and I'm pretty sure it's (gasp!) rabbit fur. I came in to find him sitting on the desk, kitten in his lap petting it and saying "hello kitty" "hello cat". Since then he carries it everywhere just as gentle as can be and gives it hugs and kisses. He even shared his Twizzler with the kitty today, and as you can see, read to kitty too.
Colin has learned from some where, I cannot possibly imagine where, how to yell Shel and Shelby. He knows who it is and in the morning he will wake up in his crib and sometimes start yelling "Sheeeel, Sheeeeeelbyyyyy" LOL Here is a little video for you :)
Sunday morning, Happy Mother's Day! I got nice cards from the guys and we picked up the hotel room to check out. Our hotel was awesome by the way, very nice and we scored a last minute, same night reservation for about half the regular room rate. Totally recommend the Parc Bellevue in Luxembourg. Our nice weather on Saturday was short lived and it had rained in the night and was still drizzling Sunday morning. We put on our raincoats and hit the streets anyway. Since it was raining Shelby wanted to move the car to the parking garage in the city instead of having to walk back to the hotel (less than 2 kilometers) so we did that first. Colin loves parking garages (and any place else he realizes he can hear his echo in) and will yell loudly so that he can hear his echo. He will just yell over and over again the entire time...of course that is until you put the camera on him and actually WANT him to do it! Usually we shush him the entire time we are in the garage. Here are some videos of him and his echo.
Note he walks on the line, silly boy!
In this one you hear him stop and say "auto" when he gets to the car, that is the German word for car, which he prefers to the English word at the moment.
Something exciting was happening in the city that day because there were barricades and police on the streets and they had shut down some roads and blocked off parking. Probably some parade or something, we left about 2 pm and nothing had started yet. We did see 2 motorcycle police escorts with a marked official car with a crown on the license plate instead of numbers. There was a lady in it and people were taking pictures of the car as it drove by. I don't know if they were tourists or if they knew who she was. The Duchess perhaps?
Since it was raining we went to the Bock Casemates first. They closed at 5 the day before and we missed them, and since they are underground the rain wouldn't bother us. The Casemates are a fortified castle, built on the Bock promontory in 963 by Count Siegfried. At it's peak, the Casemantes comprised 24 forts in three fortified rings, 16 defensive works and a network of 23 km of casemates. The casemates were capabale of housing thousands of soldiers and their horses as well as workshops, kitchens, bakeries, slaughter-houses. Later on during the World Wars the Casemates were used as shelters for protection. More info and pics about them can be found here. The views from inside were very cool since it is build into a bridge and you can see out both sides. Colin loved running through the tunnels and looking out all the holes. The stairs were crazy! Tight spiral staircases that I'm sure were a pain in the butt to carve out and make and to run up and down. After the casemates visit the rain had stopped so we wandered through some other areas of the city. While out and about we saw an old man who looked just like Santa Claus and he was wearing a red raincoat. He had a serious camera and was taking pictures, I told Colin he better behave! Here is some video of Colin walking around and asking for up. He'd been carrying a rock around waiting for us to pick him up and put him on the wall so he could throw it into the river below. You can hear him say "bye bye, see you" in it. He says this often...it usually goes "bye bye, see you, tchuss" Tchuss is German slang for goodbye and it's pronounced like chews. Colin waves bye bye, see you, tchuss to everything.
Here he is throwing his rock.
After a little more walking we stopped into a spring festival that had food booths and carnival games set up. Colin and I had brats and pommes (fries), and Shel ate a steak sandwich. There were all kinds of yummy waffles with sauce, beignets, crepes and other French and German festival food...we skipped all that though.
Saturday the weather finally turned nice and we spent half the day trying to figure out what to do and getting packed up to go. We decided on Luxembourg because it's only an hour and a half away and looked fun. When we got there we checked into the hotel and right away hit the streets to check out the city. Luxembourg city is the capital of the country so all the official buildings are there, we saw lots of those. There is a huge wall built and a huge fortress built inside part of it. The first fortifications were built as early as the 10th century! Interesting info on the Bock Casemates (underground fortress) that is worth reading can be found here. We got to the Casemates too late to go in the underground tunnels so we had to go on Sunday. We did walk over to the area though and the views from the bridge are fabulous. It is a very beautiful city with all the gardens, architecture and sights. After we walked all around the city it was time to eat dinner. I got to choose and of all places we ended up at Chi Chi's Cantina! LOL I chose it mainly because I know how slow European service can be and Colin was fading FAST. ChiChi's brings out chips and salsa right away and I knew that would buy us valuable time with Colin and help avoid the stink eye from people trying to enjoy their meals. It worked, we made it through dinner fairly free of evil glares and I had a damn good burrito :) After dinner we strolled around some more and headed back to the hotel. Colin refused to nap in the car on the ride to the city so he was dead by the time we got him to bed after 9 that night.
**Colin singing in the car on the way to Luxembourg - please excuse my head in the way, he refused to sing with me looking at him so I had to hold the camera up in the air and pretend I wasn't taking pictures for him to keep singing.
**Here is an example of what happens anytime we get in the car...Shoes come off and are thrown around the car, socks come off and most often make it onto his hands before being thrown around the car as well.
Right now the German countryside is A-MA-ZING! It is full of huge yellow fields of flowers here and there and everywhere. Apparently the flowers/plants are used here to make oil for cooking, similar to vegetable oil but healthier I believe. You look off in the hills and you can just see a huge spread of yellow covering half the hillside. It's so beautiful!
Colin had discovered he can unzip his PJs and remove his diaper for fun. Mommy and Daddy are not amused.
After diapering and clothing the crazy kid we went to do a little shopping and then rewarded Colin with a trip to Super Dubber Kinderland. He had a ball at the playground and liked driving the go carts with Shel and I.
I AM NOW OFFICIALLY DONE WITH MY BACHELORS AND GRADUATED!!! I finished classes on the 25th of April, completed my student teaching internship on April 30th, got word that my portfolio (remember all the stupid papers and rationales?) passed (with a 4 out of 4 by the way...I'm just that good!) this week and now I am just waiting on the diploma to show up in the mail :) I've already been hired by DoDEA as a substitute at the same school where I did my student teaching. I am now going through the process of getting all my background check, fingerprints, medical clearance anad all that crap done. Anytime you get hired by the federal government it's a pain in the butt. I'm also done with Chili's since I cannot be employed by another agency when I am processed as a hire for DoDEA. So that means I'm also doing more paperwork and steps to be done with them...leaving a federal job is also a royal pain in the butt. I'm researching the paths to certification over here since being in Germany and working for the government is a little different than graduating and getting licensed in a state like if I lived in the US. I'm hoping to get a concrete answer soon on what I need to do and which licensing exam(s) I need to take so I can register for those and start studying. I would like to be available to take a certified position this fall should I be lucky enough for one to open up and it be offered to me. At times I felt like I would never be done, now it's finally over!
Colin loves FISH! He watches the fish in our tank all the time and we've been wanting to take him to an aquarium for a while. Shelby took 6 days of leave and we were supposed to be heading to Amsterdam to see the tulips. However, tulip season was just past peak and we couldn't find any good last minute deals on hotels so we decided to scrap that trip and do it next year. The weather was crap anyway, hence the need for indoor activities such as the aquarium. I remembered about one I had seen an ad for a while back and so we drove a little over an hour to check it out. It was nice size and Colin had a ball. He was saying fish over and over and pointing to them. He also liked that he could run around freely someplace public because that doesn't happen all too often. He behaved himself well and charmed anyone who would pay him attention. He loves being around other kids and gets so disappointed when they don't share the same enthusiasm when he's around.
After the aquarium we stopped off at Ikea because I will never get tired of Ikea's köttbullar (swedish meatballs) or browsing the store. Once we had lunch we shopped a little and found Colin his own chair for the living room. He LOVES Elmo and asks for you to turn it on anytime you go within 5 feet of the TV. He also likes to stand right in front of the TV to watch it and sometimes gets very upset when you disturb him to put him on the couch. So we decided he needed his own little chair. Of course we found other unecessary things we couldn't live without (such as an alligator bath mat...we couldn't say no, IT WAS A GATOR!)
When we got home Colin helped Shelby put together his new chair, which he was very excited about. Shelby told him he was just like Handy Manny (Disney cartoon) and then Colin spent the rest of the time putting the chair together and saying "Handy Manny" over and over again. When he was done we put it in the living room and Colin and Elmo sat down to watch TV. Of course they watched Elmo!
Colin got in the box after his bath and was hiding. He thought it was hilarious at first, by the time I got the camera it wasn't quite as funny to him.
Saturday we headed over to Karlsruhe, a little over an hour from here to check out the zoo there. The zoos here can really be hit and miss, we had heard this one was very nice and I will be going there on a field trip at the end of this month with my class. I thought we could go check it out ahead of time with Colin. Not to mention I have been promising Colin for weeks I would take him to the zoo and show him a proper elephant. You see, his room is done in a jungle theme and there are elephants all over. However, all those elephants are blue! Yes, I said BLUE! He has an elephant face cut-out on his wall and the elephant is blue. He has a stuffed elephant on a shelf...blue, elephant shaped book about elephants...blue, elephant by his lamp...blue! I had to go all over his room to find something with a grey elephant on it and the whole time I am explaining to him that this is an elephant but elephants are not blue. So anyway...I've been promising to take Colin to the zoo and show him that elephants are in fact grey.
We had a fantastic time at the zoo, the rain held off for us and we saw all kinds of animals. It was one of the nicer zoos we've been to in Germany and the grounds also have a big garden which was gorgeous as well. Colin had a ball riding around in his wagon and running all over the place. He learned how to say all kinds of new animal words. He now knows elephant, camel, monkey (which he always ends up sounding like mommy when he says it and I have to remind him mommy is NOT a monkey!), hippo (which is probably the cutest thing he says), bear, bird, and I can't remember what all else. Here are some videos of him saying his new words
I'm a mom to three boys, a furry Boxer kid and two crazy black cats. I'm caring, loving, stubborn and passionate. I'm a Capricorn and a Florida Gator. I have a Bachelors in Elementary Education and a Masters in Early Childhood Education. I'm a born teacher. I've traveled the world and lived in 8 different cities in 4 different countries over the last 13 years. Germany stole my heart and I can't wait to move back. Now living on the island of Guam in the Pacific, I get to call an island paradise where most people only vacation my home.
