All posts by admin
Falling behind – sort of
Ro is turning three next week giving us pause to look back on the last three years. What a roller-coaster it has been. And the love that grew inside of us for this little being is endless. With his laughs he turns around the worst days and make them all but unimportant. I don’t use this word very often, but he’s truely a blessing in our lives!
Lately we’ve been surrounded by friends who are now on the second or third round of babies – a trend we decided not to follow :-). But it makes you feel wanting that little helpless baby again. Congratulation to all of you who just had your third ones!
Adi’s BDay party
Saturday was Ro’s best friend’s birthday party. We joined the day care crowd at a local outdoor entertainment venue.
The equipment, while technically outdated was very functional and Adi and his friends had a blast while riding Ponies, riding the Chu-chu train, flying airplanes hanging off chains or driving boats in real water around in circles. This place was a welcome change to the indoor playscape places we’ve been going to for the laast couple of friends’ birthdays.
Crazy TX weather
Yesterday, May 1st, we had a cold front moving through Austin. Saturday and Sunday moring’s temperatures were in the 90ties (33C), when all of a sudden the temperature dropped to 18C within an hour. You would expect violent thunderstorms going along with such a drastic change, especially in light of the destruction in the Mississippi area (from tornados) this year. But not even a rain shower out of this system – just gusty winds, that was it. So this morning it was all fleece and heater in the car when driving to work, not the usual muggy weather for A/C and T-Shirt. It was 47F (9C)! Texas weather never seizes to impress me.
Baby Logic #8 – not a sticker!
Yesterday Ro and I were playing with an Easter Egg coloring kit. We had bought one of those all in one theme kits, that come with coloring tabs, stickers, egg holders, some game cards and more stickers – all Sesame Street themed.
While we were playing with the contents and the box the following dialog happened:
Ro: which sticker do you want?
Me: I don’t know, let me look.
Ro: Here… (giving me the sticker sheet and patiently waiting for me to choose my sticker)
Me: I take the green one
Ro: OK, (peeling and very serious now), they sometimes don’t come off like that…
(I love it when he shares his rich life experience with me :))
Me: Let me look at the box what stickers there are
Ro: there’s no sticker on the box
(The box showed a bunch of colorful eggs decorated with all kinds of stickers)
Me: *yes*, there are stickers on the box (me now pointing to them on the front of the box)
Ro: (looking very interested, holding the box up against the light in an angle and claiming): Naaa, that’s no sticker! – That’s a picture!!!
Of course he was right. The box had a picture of eggs with stickers, not the stickers themselves. Funny how we use language in context never thinking much about it….
Baby Logic #7 – grown up
Ro (staring at my glass filled with an orange liquid): Daddy, what’s this?
Me: that’s campari-orange.
Ro: I want juice, too.
Me: This juice is for grown ups!
Ro: I *am* grown up!
Me: No, you’re a toddler, not a grown up – you’ll be three!
Ro: No, I’m a grown up, I *am*!! – I use the green soap!
Funny way to prove his age.
The green soap bar is only used by me in the house, all other soaps, including his, come from soap dispensers.
Bratkartoffeln und Bratwurst
This Easter Week-end I was suddenly overcome by a craving for real crispy German Bratkartoffeln – the kind you can never get at any restaurant, just because the preparation time is too long. So I used lots of potatoes, lots and lots of oil, two sizzling hot pans on the gas stove and the vent hood at full blast.
After 40 min I was rewarded golden brown crispy Bratkartoffeln. Along with a simple German Bratwurst, Mustard for the Wurst and Ketchup for the Kartoffel, I was in heaven. Even Ro liked the Wurst and ate more than one and a half!
Sad news – a good friend gone
Over the week-end I learned the sad news that an old friend from my glider club in Germany had a fatal crash while doing what he liked best – soaring.
He had a non survivable crash in the French Alps with his LS-8 glider.
It makes me sad that every year some of the pilots among us have to pay the ultimative price. I’m not necessarily a safety fanatic, but when it comes to flying, a basic safety consciousness at all times is required to survive this beautiful sport.
I couldn’t imagine living without soaring although news like these go straight to my heart. It’s so upsetting, disturbing and makes me sad. The sadness stays over a long time – at times it has taken the fun out of flying for me for multiple seasons.
When an accident like this happens, the beauty and innocence of this sport is taken away by force. The sadness over the loss of a friend dominates and the joy of flying is subdued.
Fare well Ingemar, you’ve been an inspiration in my life! I’ll miss you.
Baby logic #6 – stickers
Ro loves stickers. He frequently asks for his little car stickers, horse stickers or any sort of stickers we give him for good behavior. No wonder that he served himself with H-class stickers @43cents a pop from the counter the other day. I’m wondering were we’re going to send him now! 🙂
Here’s the stamps booklet after peeling the usable ones back off his body:
Baby Logic #5 – the blinking mystery
On our daily commute to day care, Ro consistently pointed out a blinking office at a certain point. Every time I tried to see which building he was looking at I failed to understand. The fact that I have to merge onto the free way in heavy traffic at that location didn’t make this much easier. So it took me more than two weeks of probing, asking, looking to finally see what he sees. There weren’t any blinking lights close by, only on the antennas far away. No lights in windows either, or neon letters on buildings – so I remained puzzled for many more days.
But this morning when he announced the blinking office I finally realized what he meant: There’s a little church bells tower in front of an office building. The bells are enclosed by wooden lattices arranged in a square. So when driving by, you can see light shining through the tower top and then it gets blocked by the opposite lattice, and then you can see light again – blinking, you know !? Ro was very delighted when I finally saw what he saw: The blinking office.
Another mystery solved.