It took us a while to realize that Arianna is saying “Nein, nein” when shaking her head no at us…
Archive for 2010-06
9h9d
2010-06-26 20:51Traffic Analysis
2010-06-21 20:12The Switzerland-Chile World Cup game ended an hour or so ago. By the lack of continuous honking in the streets, I’m going to assume, without checking (the rest of) the internet, that Switzerland did not win.
Kids Update
2010-06-20 22:06- Dina and I entertaining 7 under-5 year olds that mostly didn’t speak English for Alex’s 4th birthday party was orders of magnitude better than I thought it would be. Pictures coming soon. All in all it was a lot of fun.
- Alex has Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Kart. He’s started complaining that, since he’s four, he should have four Mario games and is lamenting the fact that Bowser, the villain in the Mario games, stole his “Mario with the hearts” game (Super Paper Mario). We hid it from him last year since the 2D-3D flipping was confusing for him and there’s too much text to read for him to be able to play it himself.
- It anticipation of our upcoming vacation… and because he’s four, we’re putting our feet down and toilet training him. 2 days, 3 pee accidents, 1 poop accident. Ugh.
- Arianna is intent on keeping up with her brother. She’s walking really well. She started later than Alex did, but is much sturdier. Dina thinks it’s because she has to resist getting tackled by her big brother all the time.
Dear God, why am I going to fall backwards again? From London, June 2010 - While she doesn’t sign as much as Alex did (we spend less time teaching her), she definitely lets us know what she wants. At supper she demanded a fork and then proceeded to eat with it. We’re screwed.
Pretty
2010-06-20 12:01Bought a cut out Italian Euro piece (with Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man) while in München. He had some other very pretty cut-outs that were tempting including the ones from Kanada, Ägypten, and der Schweiz.
Represent
2010-06-13 21:20In a lot of our touristing pictures, Alex is wearing a New England Patriots cap and a Roots hoodie.
Travels
2010-06-13 20:36We went to London last weekend for a 4-day weekend to visit Hannah, David, Kiaya, and Alma. Alex and Dina got to see Hampton Court Palace for the first time. Alex was looking forward to it as he had a Paddington Bear book where Paddington visits the palace. London was a good weekend city trip for us as we’re very familiar with it. Gave us confidence that we can do the same type of trip for other cities. Mind you, London is very different with kids.
This weekend we drove to München (Munich) with my cousin Austin and his friend Sarah. Very pretty city. Germany tends to be much more beautiful than I anticipate.
All that said, I still feel that we don’t travel enough… odd.
Good Vacation
2010-06-13 19:36You know you picked a good weekend to go away when:
- It’s raining when you leave home.
- It’s beautiful when you arrive at your destination.
- It’s still raining when you get back home.
Supper… Elevenses
2010-06-11 23:33- After supper: Grappa. Chocolate. Espresso. Church bells. Sun. Family.
- Elevenses: Scotch. Cool night air. Stars. Solitude.
Social Networking Overload–
2010-06-10 08:49I finally deleted my LiveJournal account.
Reading 101
2010-06-08 21:15… and then you can go swimming!
Alex, “reading” the safety instructions on the plane.
Zombies
2010-06-03 11:06The marathon that I referenced previously is now back on… but staffed by zombies… this is just plain weird. Guess I’m going to need stamina.
I was in The Netherlands on Tuesday and Wednesday. One nice thing about trips is that I get to cuddle up with a good book… mainly on the plane rides and late at night at the hotel. As usual, reading helps me come to realizations. Mind you, this time a lot of my good thinking happened cruising down the Autobahn at 160km/h. Anyway, this time, I just realized that life is cyclic… sometimes it’s scary… sometimes it’s fun… sometimes it’s bad… but it’s all been done… and will all be done again. The best thing to do is sit back, relax, and enjoy it as best one can.
My friend notes that we’re going through the 5 stages of grief.
- Denial: Yup… we went through that.
- Anger: Yes. That passed quickly… no time for that if you want to get things done… need to channel it.
- Bargaining: Yup. Doing that now.
- Depression: I think that happened before bargaining for me… like Anger, that also passed quickly… or… I channelled the Anger to get rid of the Depression.
- Acceptance: No way… uh… does that mean I’m back to Denial? Darn-it!