Sturm und Drang und $&#@

Well, we have had one eventful evening here in lovely southwestern Germany. I got home from work about 8:15, took the pooch out quickly and got on the phone to chat with Rachel. Scout waited as patiently as she could to go out for a longer run, but as I was hanging up with Rachel and preparing to take the pooch to the forest, I heard the first peals of thunder.

With our walk off, I headed upstairs to read and watch the college football scores trickle in. The rumble of thunder went on for over an hour with no rain and then rather suddenly the sky opened up. The noise on the roof was so loud that I thought I would be making an insurance claim for hail damage to the car. I even went downstairs to check. But is was just rain. Well, not just rain. Rain in huge drops, wind driven to be nearly coming in horizontal. I came back upstairs and Scout had her ears down in that "I am scared or guilty or both" position. I let her hop up on the bed but the roar of rain and thunder had her so scared that she hopped off and crawled under the bed, where she stayed for nearly 3o minutes.

And, then the fun really started:

Started hearing voices outside, went down to see what was going on. The street had become a shallow river, happens all the time, why so many spectators? Weird. Back upstairs, 14 minutes later, lights of police cars through the window, get a little nervous. Maybe I should have moved the car to higher ground? Throw on jeans and boots and go to grab my wallet to go down and move the car. But, shit, where the hell is my wallet? No time to worry, gotta get down there, the water looks pretty deep. But oops the cops won't let anyone do anything. And the water is only 2 inches below the door! Crap. Just gotta hope now. Go back upstairs, look for wallet, nowhere to be found. Think, think, think. Came in the house with an arm load of crap, greeted by wailing pooch, threw it all down to get her out, came back up, emptied pockets, headed to phone....whoa back up....emptied pockets, but noticed no wallet, assumed I had already taken it out....must have put it some place weird because pooch was standing up and crossing her legs to hold it in. Scour the house, nowhere to be found.

Okay, back up, think, think, think. Last time I spent money...for a coffee...oops that wasn't money...but used the card in the wallet. And after that, just work, work, work. Look down, notice baggier jeans that often let go of wallet when ummm...I am in dispose...wallet probably on floor of bathroom stall at work. Of course! I was in a hurry to get my prep finished and ran out of the bathroom without checking. Check outside, yay, the firefighters stopped the flood. Run down, open car, find it dry, yay again! Get in, it starts, yay, planning to run to work and get my wallet. But, crap, I need that card that is in the wallet to open the door to get into the building to get the wallet that has the card that opens the building to get the wallet...frick.....but the night security guard is nice. He will let me in. And, then I will explain to him and take him and show him that my face is on the cards in the wallet that happens to be right where I said it would be on the floor of the stall...sounds like a plan. Turn car around and head out, crap, so much debris in street from flood, police have it closed at the end, turn around go back home....double frick.

Decide to go to bed. But, uh-oh, brain won't stop. Wallet is trapped. Wallet with driver's license, bank card, money, immigration card....but the building is secure, right? Germans are honest, right? It would be pretty stupid to use a coworkers credit card after stealing it, right? Have to drive in tomorrow without my license, crap...what if it is gone, have to pick Rachel up Monday night. Don't have enough gas to go get her either, no money, no bank card....have a choice: start counting out change from the junk drawer or write a blog post...will count change in the morning.

worlds collide

Good news for fans of baby photos- Ellis and I caught colds and so will be staying with Bridget until Monday. So, many more opportunities for getting pics of Ellis and Silas together. There is even rumor that the video of their bath together last night will be going up sometime. Here's a few until then- Silas practicing his tickling and then borrowing Ellis's sock for a chew . More on our trip soon.

Ireland ho!

Hey, who are you calling a....
Oh wait, we're going to Ireland today. So, I should be finishing up packing and not blogging! It is baby's first plane ride and our other baby's first stay at a kennel- which is scarier?

Here's another first from yesterday evening:

Are you paying attention?

This past week the Senate and the House have both seen legislation in committee related to the (illegal in my opinion) warrantless wire tapping programs that the Bush administration continues to defend as both constitutional and necessary to the war on terror. The particular bills in the House and Senate are not exactly congruent and a second bill in the Senate, sponsered by Diane Feinstein, is in many ways simply contradictory with the other one sponsered by Arlen Spector. All three may see floor debate this week and it is time for us all to sit up in the buggy and pay attention to what the hell is going on. I, for one, never thought I would wish to have C-SPAN, but I do this week. This is a crucial debate and everyone should carefully consider in November how their congressmen stood, bowed before the would be King, and voted on this issue. Better yet, write a letter now, especially if your guys in Washington are among the Republicans likely to go along with this.

I have been struggling trying to get a post together on this, but in my rage and with little time to give to it, I had failed until today when Slate magazine put up this article summarizing what is going on. Please read it and then go out on google news and read more about it. Unfortunately, the legislative situation is confusing making it hard to figure out what might happen with all of the competing bills. But, one thing that is clear is the White House position: Bush wants the power to wiretap Americans to become the full province of the executive branch with no oversight.

This is a potential turning point for us as Americans and our civil liberties. Personally, I think the turning point already happened and I missed it, otherwise there would be much more outrage brewing over this legislation. At stake is our right to live our lives without fear that the government is watching us. Most importantly, we are witnessing a brazen attempt by one branch of our government to cut another branch of our government out of the deal, at least in this area. The executive branch isn't just seeking to legitimize secret searches through legislation, it is seeking to seal the whole issue off from challenge by putting up a big secret roadblock that will keep it out of the courts.

In addition to the constitutional issues of checks and balances and the 4th Amendment we also have to consider how an administration who firmly believes they are acting with the will of god on their side, might choose to use these powers. (Here is a link to an interview with Jimmy Carter, himself an evangelical christian, discussing the dangers of fundamentalism in American government.) We know that past administrations, notably Nixon who got caught, but others too, have abused the office. Indeed they may all have. Do we really want to make it even harder to catch them? Especially when our current administration believes they are aspiring to the will of god? What better justification could one have for ignoring the laws of man?

While I have found most comparisons between the Nazis and Bush to ring rather hollow, there is an important parallel here that must be considered. The Nationalist Socialist Partei rose to power in Germany through constitutional means. There was no revolution. They then were able to gently subvert the constitution of the Weimar Republic to consolidate their power, outlaw opposing political ideologies and finally become the authoritarian regime that did all of the horrible things we learn about in history classes. The early subversion of the constitution was sold as being good for Germany and her rebuilding from the ruin caused by unfair reparations following The Great War. We are also being sold this attempted subversion as being for our own good and we must reject this argument.

Now, no one should get any idea that I am comparing Bush to Hitler as a man or leader(in fact I have leapt to defend the President on more than one occasion when a coworker here has compared him to Hitler). I am only speaking narrowly of the subversion of the Weimar constitution and the lesson we should learn: blindly trusting those in power and assuming the constitution can protect us from them is a false sense of security.

Of course, none of us have anyway of knowing if this administration has nefarious intentions. (Although, as long as Karl Rove has an office in the White House, I wouldn't bet more than a donut against it, and then not a good donut, maybe a really old Crispe Creme. Everyone knows they are only good when the are still warm.) But are we really willing to give up this protection and open ourselves to surveillance for a program that functions where we can't see it? We can't even determine if it will make us safer. The whole point of checks and balances and individual rights is that "just trust us" doesn't work.

While the American constitution is clearly much better than many of those that have failed around the world in the last few hundred years, I would argue that a portion of its success has to be attributed to the vigilance of those in government and the electorate. Maybe we have gone to long without a serious threat and our guard is down; maybe it is the fear of terrorist attacks; maybe we are all so caught up in "just getting by" that we don't have the time; maybe we worry about how we will afford to fill up the SUV if the oil stops flowing; or maybe I am so out of touch that I don't understand that this is what Americans want.

We can't make a default decision on this one and we should be holding our senators's and congressmen's feet to the fire. Just as the President is using this issue to twist arms with the threat of being called "weak on terror" in the up coming election, we need to be letting our elected officials know that "weak on the constitution" is a whole helluva lot more important. Keep in mind that Senators and Congressman who vote for this legislation are putting their re-election above the constitutioanl role of their institution by voting away a little piece of their power to oversee the actions of the President. Is this the kind of folks we want to represent us?

The old bumper sticker says: "If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention." It has never been more true.

remain in crappy job mode

Once, back in college, Bridget and I were raking leaves and our grandmother's house, but she has many trees so it was taking forever. We were hoping to be done by a certain time to go see a movie or something. We were running out of time and it was becoming obvious it was going to be impossible to finish the yard without lowering our standards, so I said, "There's no way we're going to get this done. Enter crappy job mode." Bridget replied, "Enter?"

In my attempt to find a career-family compromise, I've been exploring some work from home options. Right now I'm teaching at an online university and doing a little contract technical writing (actually, it is writing test prep manuals in chemistry and biology, is that technical enough for you?). There are some things I don't like about it: grading programs is mind-numbing and I suspect I'm a bit underpaid. And some things I do: I am paid at all and writing some of the science stuff is interesting and making me a more efficient writer. One of the other things I don't like though, is that I'm afraid I might always be in crappy job mode. First, I am always holding or listening for Ellis, so I can never fully concentrate on writing. What I'm doing is of reasonable quality and could be better and I have a terrible time estimating my hours when they are nearly always interrupted. Then, I worry that Ellis is missing out on my attention-even though it's only around 10 hours a week- should I be more actively playing or talking to him instead of rearranging the boppy so I can type OVER him?

I know that a lot of moms that stay home with their children also do some work for pay. How do they do it? Especially with multiple kids? This weekend my own mother told me that multi-tasking is just what being a mother means. Will concentrating be a luxury until this baby and any others we might have leave for college? Anyway, at least I have a good reason for figuring out how...

paint it black

...or brown.
Once we got the apartment furnished, one of the first things I wanted to do was to get rid of the pink with purple trim paint job in the guest room. So, 5 months after moving in, and 2 months after buying the paint, we finally got down to painting today.

While we were painting, Trey requested we listen to NPR's Morning Edition over the web. While this wasn't my first choice for listening, I agreed because Trey was helping paint and it wasn't his first choice (also a second hour of Johnny Cash seemed to be only alternative). Unfortunately, though it was early afternoon here, it wasn't quite morning in America. So we ended up listening to Speaking of Faith, which is pretty hit or miss. We thought the guest (former senator Danforth of Missouri) might have something interesting to say. But the interviewing was so poor, it took him a long time to get any point across. This caused Trey to devise a new program idea: "I'd like to see an 'NPR Challenge' where different hosts all interview the same guy. Wouldn't you like to hear Teri Gross or Diane Rheim get a crack at this guy?" What a public radio nerd.

Anyway as far as painting, Trey found the paint mixer drill attachment to be most satisfactory. The painting was slower going than we thought because the walls are very textured. This means that even with the long nap roller, we had to use a lot of paint and a lot of pressure. As for the cutting in, it was even worse and I ended up sort of smashing the paint into the corners- handling the brush with the dexterity of a 4 year old. On top of that, Ellis decided he wouldn't be requiring any naps today. I tried wearing him around while we painted, but even that only lasted for a about 40 minutes. Eventually we managed to get everything covered- but finishing the trim will have to wait for another day. Here's a pic of it not-quite-dry everywhere.

Hail, Hail, to Michigan....

For the game today, we broke out Ellis's wonderful Michigan attire from our friends Jessica, Erin and Sara. It is a little big on him, but should be perfect by the Rose Bowl.It is going to be hard to teach him what he needs to know about Michigan football from over here. In the first place, he can't stay up late enough to watch the games, according to his mama. Plus, we won't be able to watch except via internet. How am I going to teach him the subtelties he needs to know like how far behind Michigan has to get before you start rooting for the other team hoping that if they lose by enough they will fire the coach? Or, when Michigan loses an early game, say to Notre Dame, how to properly enjoy the rest of the season as a spoiler of the hopes of other teams. And, how to argue at bowl time that "at this point in the season Michigan is really one of the top three teams, if we had Notre Dame this week, we would take 'em."

international domestic affairs

A friend of ours recently wrote Trey to ask some questions that the blog has apparently not addressed sufficiently. Christen is still wondering...

what's with germans tossing their bedding out the window to "air"? I've vaugely heard of this but my housekeeperly self wants to know how other nations do this. Plus, I'm still waiting to hear about the whole bleach issue (american perspective: bleach is a simple, less toxic way to clean. German (i've heard): bleach is the antichrist of mutagens! ban it! ban it! Is this true?

what will you do when ellis starts solids? This is so way early, but I want to know what those crazy folks think is a good start. In poland, they do vegetable soup first! in the old usa, you squirt some breast milk into a bowl and mix some organic rice cereal into it.

Why do all the pictures of your meals look like gourmet magazine? God help us. I want to see some mac n cheese microwaved and the disclosure that you ate it standing in the kitchen with two forks out of the serving bowl.

so is ellis waking up a lot at night or is he sleeping through a little? Will he take a bottle, or is rachel hogging all the feeding?

Jeez, who is so interested in laundry? Anyway, here's what little I know:

Bleach does appear to be in use here, but not extensively. I've seen some amongst my neighbor's laundry supplies and there are definitely a few brands in the stores. There isn't nearly the selection of scents and sizes as in America, but that is true of most consumer products. It doesn't appear that there are a lot cleaning products that include bleach (i.e., 409 with bleach, etc). Other laundry info: there don't seem to be fabric softener dryer sheets- only the liquid form; the washing machines have insane spin cycles (I think so clothes contain less water when they go in the dryer and you use less electricity drying them); many people, including us, have condensing dryers, which have a little trap that collects the water, rather than venting humid air (meaning you have to remember to empty that AND the lint trap).

Yes, they are big on "airing out" stuff. Here are our neighbors' linens on their window sill. This lady goes through an elaborate airing out/ shaking ritual everyday. Something along the lines of: wipe off window sill, air out bedding, shake out cleaning rag, air rugs, shake out rugs, shake out towels, shake out cleaning rag, shake out dust mop, shake out cleaning rag, wipe off window sill. I have also occasionally seen mattresses on roofs, leaning against the (snow catching?) rails you can see on the roof in the picture. It seems to be mainly a response to their concern about mold. It is wet and cool here for much of the year, so perhaps it makes sense.

Not sure when Ellis will start solids- when he seems ready, I guess. Somewhere around 6 months probably. Breast feeding seems to be a little more popular here. My midwife said 90% of German women start breastfeeding, though, of course, many stop for various reasons. Most mothers with kids under 3 don't work, so I think they also tend to breast feed for longer (have to save the politics of the 3 year maternity leave for another post) and so solids are also introduced later. The selection of jarred baby food at the market is small. Like the German diet in general, it is mostly meat and a few root vegetables. I've heard that most parents just mush up what they are eating and feed it to the baby, which seems like a perfectly sound approach, especially with the non-spicy food here. On a slightly different note, the baby clothes are a little different. The standard set-up is: a thin shirt, something that looks like overalls with feet, a tie on bonnet/hat, a cardigan, and booties.

Ellis sleeping through the night? Ha ha ha! Trey can't even sleep through the night without getting up for a snack, you think his infant son can? Most nights Ellis is pretty good about sleeping between snacks, but occasionally he will only go down with a fight. We think he is on a sleep strike, trying to get better baby work conditions. But the baby power movement continues to be heavily hindered by the lack of a good spokesperson.

Finally, Trey is actually the "food stylist" around here. I don't think most of our meals look like they came out of Gourmet magazine, but we typically eschewed packaged food even in the States. Thus, we've been slow to adopt the even less tasty kind they have here (also we live 50 yards from a pizza place, so...). And I am always trying to get more vegetables into our dinners because I believe that vegetables have sort of a matter/ anti-matter relationship with chocolate. So, the more vegetables I eat, the more chocolate I can have later. This is increasingly important here, in The Land of Chocolate, where the even the cheap chocolate is good.

Any more questions?

Baby Jungle

"Hmm, I thought this thing was just on the floor to trip Papa, but maybe it could be fun."

"Who made these animals?They are very unrealistic. 'Learning toy' my cute little ass. "

"I said 'ass'. I can't wait till I can cuss like Papa."

"Crap, Crap, Mama, the rattlesnake-spider-beetlejuice-monkey-lizard bit me. Get Aunt Lindsey. We are gonna need to sue."

"Whew, the venom in that thing is really...going...to...my head."

Remembering

This week, bloggers all over have typed up fitting posts to remember the tragedy that is now simply known as 9-11. Some have chosen to participate in projects to memorialize an individual who lost their life that day. Others have chosen to write about what they did that day and what changed for them as a result. And, a few who have been blogging long enough relisted their original posts from those days when we were all still in shock. After reading this all week, I feel like I have to make a small, somewhat redundant contribution of my own focusing on some of the other equally tragic losses that have followed as a result of 9-11 because the more I think about it the more I feel we are behaving as the terrorists would have hoped.

The terrorists, I am sure, would like to wipe America off the map. But, they don't really have to in order to succeed in destroying America as we know it and they hate it. All they have to do is succeed in destroying the economic structures that bring us our prosperity and the freedoms that we supposedly cherish. Our government's responses to the tragedy of 9-11 has damaged our economy to an extent we may not realize for a decade. The freedoms of our citizens have been terribly weakened as the power of our executive branch to act without proper checks and balances has expanded. And, America's luster has been tarnished in the eyes of other nations.

Due to the war, the national debt is growing with the potential to hit Reagan era proportions and affect our economy for a generation if it is not quickly brought under control. This can't solely be blamed on the war; imbalanced tax cuts have also damaged government revenue. But running off half-cocked with our sites on Saddam has been a big contributor. Now we are in the middle of a simmering civil war which may keep us bleeding (literally and figuratively) for a decade. Domestic programs are feeling the brunt of lost funding and no matter how you feel about big government or small, I can't see how anyone would rather see dollars sent to a useless war than to our schools. If we shift too much of our economic treasure away from preparing for the future through education and research, we simply pile that damage on top of that wrought to the fundamentals of our economy by a large national debt.

Beyond the economic impact, our government has admitted now to sanctioning torture, denying detainees their due process rights and spying on the citizens of our nation. In that same time, our President and his administration have defended each of these "programs" as necessary to our safety as Americans as they fight to protect our democratic ways. As much as I am a pragmatist and want to believe that the ends justify the means in many cases, I have to say that this is a matter that requires a certain amount of idealism. We cannot hope to defend democracy by occasionally setting it aside. Either we stand as a democracy or we fall as one, but let's not fall as a sometimes democracy.

It is an unfortunate truth that America has lost some of her status in the brotherhood of nations. We no longer can play our historical part as the brave men that saved Europe from facism or the country that protected her from the eastern bear. To think otherwise is simply foolish. We held sway in those days by using the fear of the east, the shame of the Nazi aggression and the gratitude from those countries we liberated to further our own interests. The new world requires partnership and cooperation. We are the only "super power" and that does give us the option of behaving brazenly, but we have to consider what is responsible if we are to maintain a position in the community of nations that allows us to advocate our interests reasonably. Former allies now look upon America as not quite a rogue state, but one that is slightly out of control and will use its might when wisdom counsels otherwise. We are that kid in your fifth grade class that was a little bigger than everyone else and a little less mature and couldn't be reasoned with. Did you like sitting with that kid on the bus? Did you trust him to borrow a pencil? Did you trade baseball cards with him? Remember the relief when that kid got picked up at his door by the short bus one day and went to the special school?

I have to ask, who is our enemy here? Surely the man who attacked us, Bin Laden, but what about the man who misused intelligence to convince us to go to war under false pretenses or possibly was going whether he convinced anyone or not? We have now lost as many lives in that war, as on 9-11 and surely are distracted from the main goal of protecting ourselves from actual terrorists. By destabilizing Iraq, we have given Al Qaieda an unchaperoned playground to attack both our military and Arabs they find disagreeable. How can one not conclude that Bush has parlayed Bin Laden's 9-11 triumph into a much larger victory for the terrorists? We may not even be able to judge the level of damage for decades.

It has been reported that Bin Laden was over joyed when he learned that the trade center towers collapsed and called it a bigger victory than they could have hoped for. Part of me wonders if five years later he is sitting in a cave in Pakistan chuckling that America's response to the attacks has been so damaging to America. But part of me also thinks he isn't chuckling at all, he is complimenting himself for a well laid plan that has simply proceeded as expected, maybe a little better. Why even plan another attack? It makes more sense to lay low, hit easy targets in Iraq and see how much damage we can do on our own. Better yet, why not fund the repeal of the 22nd amendment and see if he can keep this administration in place for as long as possible.

1k words

The other day on our around town adventure we took a couple of other interesting pictures. I didn't want to ruin the continuity of the "Pie Hole" franchise, so I held them back for a later, random post.

At the orchard, they had this thing:At least one, full-grown patron gave it a big pat on the rump before entering the store.

Much more interesing is this:I have seen a lot of these over here. The wheel chair is a normal, human propelled job. But this single, electric motor driven wheel connects and disconnects in less than 30 seconds. These things zip through the pedestrian zones at 4 times the speed of someone walking and allow the guy in the wheel chair to manage distances on his own that would normally require the discomfort of entering and exiting public transporation.

Pie Hole Hits the Road

Well our day yesterday started with a trip through downtown Bammental for our weekly bigger shopping trip. Ellis joined us in his stroller which doubles as our shopping cart. Usually these trips involve stops at the main grocery, the butcher and the bakery. Today we added the green grocer, healthfood store and the French wine store for what ended up being a pretty big haul. Ellis got cranky at one point because we put too much stuff in the basket under his seat and the potatoes were pushing on him. Rachel performed a quick rearrangement to rescue him from a lumpy ride home.

Since we have been here, we really haven't seen much of Heidelberg beyond the touristy stuff where we have taken guests. What with the baby and getting settled and a new job, we just haven't done a lot of exploring. So, today we decided to head into town and seek out the Asian grocery store and the guitar store.

Once we got into town, I suited up with the bambino in his carrier. Here we are in Weststadt (one of Heidelberg's main neighborhoods) walking from where we parked up to the store. Ellis is a little miffed that I suited up with him facing my chest. This position is better for sleeping baby, but not so hot for baby who wants to see everything. In the end, he dozed back off pretty quickly.

In the Tiger and Dragon Asian grocery, the baby carrier was complemented by an old Chinese woman. I think she said it was nice, but not usually for Papas. I couldn't tell for sure because the only thing worse than speaking a foreign language poorly is two people speaking a foreign language to each other poorly with extremely different accents.

Rachel described the store as a "gold mine". The place wasn't huge but they had a couple of everything. We got our preferred type of miso and the dashi fish broth for making miso soup. We also got good deals on large bottles of sesame oil and soy sauce and found some mirin as well. Rachel got some sushi ginger and seaweed to round out a pretty satisfying trip. We both suspect that this place probably has some other hidden treasures to be found in the future.

After a brief stop at the guitar store where I successfully got picks and strings, we headed back to the car and went in search of Mandy's, the American style diner, to celebrate the arrival, today, of Ellis's passport and birth papers. This place is a couple of old train cars decorated with old posters and signs that suggest Americana. It is pretty close to the military base and was indeed filled with mostly Americans. Oddly, they gave us menus in German but my knowledge of food related German is good, so we had no trouble ordering a "Farm Burger", a reuben, strawberry shake and a giant (by German standards) root beer.

The shake and the root beer were both good. The "Farm Burger" was 0.4 lbs of meat (a huge serving for over here) with lots of bacon and cheese. I can't say it is the best burger I have ever had (that would be from Casey's Tavern in Ann Arbor, served with cheddar, guacamole and bacon) or the even in the top 20 (I only keep records down to 20), but it was the best burger I have had over here. Fries were good too, but the German's never screw that up. The Reuben tasted good, but much to Rachel's chagrin came with pastrami instead of corned beef. However, the meat was stacked high and it was indeed reminiscent of home. After eating, we didn't linger for long, wanting to hustle home for a full belly nap.

But, we sort of took the long way so I could stop in at an orchard on the way. Their orchard was quite beautiful, on a gentle hillside and comprised entirely of dwarf trees, some no taller than me and still covered in apples. I had hoped that I would find that they had started making cider or fresh juice as they call it here. Over here, you see, there is no such thing as "hard cider". "Hard cider" would be redundant, as all cider is hard; the stuff we call cider is just apple juice. They didn't have any juice, but they did have cider produced from their apples by a local brewery. At 2.50 Euros per wine-size bottle, I couldn't resist locally produced cider in the French style so I bought two .

We had one bottle with our dinner tonight. It was much better than I was even expecting. As promised on the label it was "extra trocken" which means "extra dry". It was carbonated about like champagne and very clean tasting. At 5% ABV, splitting a bottle ends up about like having a beer a piece. I think Rachel especially liked it. We had wanted to learn more about wine over here and so far our explorations haven't produced much that Rachel really likes even though we have experimented with French reds and some Rieslings from our wine tasting adventure. So I am happy that she liked this so much. Maybe it reminded her of home a little too, since we have made hard cider the last few years.

it's our 100th post + Ellis is 3 months old!

Yup, as you see from the title, the excitement never ends around here. Sorry I am a day late with this. Anyway, here's the baby stats....

Height: 25"
Weight: 16.5 lbs, that is 3 lbs. in one month. At that rate he will be over a ton when he retires.
Eyes: Still blue; we think they're staying so they'll be no further reports on this.
Hair: Very little, which is accentuating his ears, unfortunately.
Favorite song: He's beginning to favor Greg Brown despite Trey's attempts at indoctrinating him with Johnny Cash. Trey suspects he just hasn't experienced enough hard times to appreciate J.C. But perhaps this is an indicator that we're doing a good job as parents.
Favorite hobby: A couple thing are in the running: looking around, grabbing the little tiny hairs on the back of his mama's neck, sucking on fingers (his or others).
Motor skills: Slowly improving, especially his grip is getting strong. And he's smiling more at faces and tickles and not just at random so much.
Mobility: Some developments happening here; he hates being on his tummy for more than a few minutes so we don't know if he'll be rolling over soon. Yesterday though, he almost fell off the changing table, buy scooting himself up with his legs until his head was hanging off the end! Dad to the rescue!
Disposition: Still pretty good, often he both goes to sleep and wakes up smiling. However, he also cries/grunts if you're not holding him so he can see everything that's going on around him. He used to ride in his little mei-tei facing in and usually he would just go to sleep. Now he insists on riding facing outward and keeping his eyes open until the last possible second that the toothpicks he sticks in there will hold them. He's also recently been requiring near constant snuggling at night, which is a little tiring. Still, he's so so sweet I can't believe how lucky we are everyday.

at last- another visit from family- yeah!

My aunt Emily and cousin Lindy were here for a few days en route to Scotland, where Lindy will be doing a year of study abroad. You may not think that Frankfurt is on the way to Scotland, but it turns out that, if you are beginning the trip with a whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe, it is. This is good for us because it meant we got a short visit and Ellis got lots of extra snuggles. For Aunt Emily's benefit, I will mention that he's been inconsolable since they left this morning (well, okay, his grief took the form of a 4 hour nap, but you can just tell he misses her).


It's been feeling rather like fall here and Lindy showed her true California girl colors by promptly complaining about the cold and then piling on pretty much every article of clothing she'd brought. As you see, Trey and Ellis agreed it was "sweatshirt weather," but insisted that Lindy remove her long underwear (aka "spankies") and she did ultimately brave the cold without them. Good luck in Edinburgh, Lindy.

We had a pretty relaxed visit and mostly just did some catching up. Major forms of entertainment including walking around our village and watching Ellis smile, sneeze and study his surroundings. Quite the party, as you can imagine. Aunt Emily and Lindy brought us some sweet little baby clothes that looked SO big, but I'm sure Ellis will be in them before we know it. We've been unable to procure a cribbage board over here, so they also generously tucked one of those in their luggage, too. Trey introduced Lindy to the game one evening while I was wrestling Ellis to bed. Lindy must've been an excellent pupil and/or put her beginner's luck to full use because she was putting Trey to shame by the time I returned.

The Liggett ladies should be in Budapest by now; we hope we'll get to read all about their adventures over Lindy's blog in a few weeks. She has a new one, "lindy in scotland", which I just read and to my horror discovered she cried while waiting for me at the train station! Oh Rachel, you terrible hostess AND terrible cousin :( If I had known about this I would've fed her much more German chocolate while she was here. Although, I cried everyday for a week when I first got to Germany, so maybe it is just something about the soil.