Dec 13, 2008

The Funniest Joke Ever

There's no telling why David found this so funny, but Michael had him laughing SO hard yesterday I just had to grab the camera. See for yourself! Michael and I keep watching this video ourselves :)

Dec 7, 2008

Our Little Ham

You might have noticed that David likes to ham it up for the camera. (This is especially clear in the last post. He certainly doesn't always make the "oh my! I fell over!" face when he topples.) Well, even when there are no cameras around, he finds a way to get our attention, and he cracks us up! His new favorite game, as of about 2 weeks ago, is to freak himself out for as long as he can take it.

He hates having something over his face, always has. But suddenly, a few weeks ago, he seemed to keep getting either his bib, a burp cloth or his blankets stuck right there--totally covering his whole face. Whenever this happened, he would flap his little arms around and make frantic gasping noises. Just a bit disconcerting for a parent...until we realized that he was doing it intentionally! He would flip his bib up, freak out for a while, and then flip it back and give a big sigh of relief. Here we see him the victim of a burp cloth catastrophe:


He does this all the time, only now it's evolved into a game of peek-a-boo most of the time. (Not always. When he does it at 4am with his little frog-blanket sleep buddy, it's an "I know what will make mom pay attention to me" game. Then it's not so cute.)

Here's the whole peek-a-boo sequence (again, nice and dramatic for the camera):

Of course, there might have been other reasons for which he kept flipping his bib up that night. We had introduced prunes to his diet. He is, as the Germans say, verstopft--say it aloud and you'll probably figure it out, if the prunes didn't give it away. He was not exactly thrilled.


I love this last photo. "No really, mom, I'm good!"

Dec 5, 2008

Adventures in Sitting

On the day David turned 5 months old, November 23, he decided that he could sit on his own. He had shown absolutely no interest in even trying before then, so this was quite the surprise. I was in church, and Michael was in the baby room with David so that I could hear a sermon for a change. After the service, I went in to see them and Michael said "He's practically sitting on his own!" (What he actually said was in German, because he was with some friends of ours, but you get the point.) Sure enough, Michael let go and David just sat there--looking exceedingly proud of himself. He sat for probably 10-15 seconds!

And then he never did it again. Well, not never, but for a while there it was like we had imagined the whole thing. During the past week or so, though, he's back to trying! He can sit for maybe 10 seconds or so, but it's a start :)

Here was this morning's attempt:



Getting started with a little help...



Not completely convinced he's into this "on his own" business...

Steady...




All's well that ends well!

Nov 28, 2008

Catch-up!

Well I did it again. Just dropped completely off the face of the earth. Sorry! Needless to say, David is NOT sleeping all that well--better, but not by much!--and I'm still trying to get this darn dissertation written. I'm going to try try TRY to post more regularly again, because I really love doing it, but who knows how successful I'll be!

So here are the photos I've been planning to use on the blog, just all thrown together! Some of them are getting pretty old, so I'll post them in order:

Fresh out of the bath. I wish I had such a comfy bathrobe!


He loves this little baby aquarium thing

Playing--in PJs and a baseball hat--with Michael and Timo



Baby Crack. We don't really let him watch, but as you can see that means we can't really have it on!




We've started playing ping-pong at a park around the corner from us. David sits in his carseat all bundled up!


He's very into faces these days. It's very sweet, and a little funny.


David's first snow! Two things to note: (1) It really was snowing out, though you can't tell in the photo. (2) He was only out there for about 10 seconds, which explains the lack of hat. (And the lack of German lady yelling at us about said lack of hat.)


And finally, he's been making this face all week. We're not sure why, but he seems to think it means something!

It took about 5 shots for me to get this semi-smile, rather than the face above.

Nov 12, 2008

Giggling!

Sorry I went MIA again! We are in the midst of a little something called the "four month sleep regression," and it is not fun. It seems to be getting better, so here's hoping!

What IS fun is all the giggling that David's been doing. Here is a video of Michael cracking David up. Warning: it contains great silliness on Michael's part, so if you are not sure you want to see him with, say, a sheep on his head, you don't want to watch this video.

One funny thing about David's sense of humor: he has extremely high standards for a tiny baby. Lots of things that make almost all babies laugh--like blowing bubbles on their tummies--do absolutely nothing for this kid. Things that DO make him laugh tend to make him laugh once. And only once. (Unless you wait a day or so before trying again; that sometimes works.) Basically, you wrack your brain for the goofiest thing you can think of, get a few belly laughs out of David, try again, and get a look that says "Yes, that's nice, but what else you got?"

Like I said, high standards. Anyway, here's the video!

Nov 4, 2008

Best Friends

We've posted a number of pictures of David & Emmanuel already, but today I just have to post another. This morning, and our play group, Emmanuel and David were very happy to see each other. We had them face to face on a blanket, on their bellies, and they were smiling at each other and babbling a little bit. Emmanuel kept touching David's head and face--really gently, it was very sweet. (He did occasionally get close to the eyes, but Anja was like a ninja preventing him from actually getting them :)

After a few minutes of this, Emmanuel scooted towards David, leaned over, and planted a big, wet kiss right on the top of his head! It was so, so cute, and of course neither Anja nor I had our cameras with us. Still, I have to put some pictures up of the two of them. These are from the other day, when the whole Koch family stopped by for a fun surprise visit.



Nov 1, 2008

Favorite Toys

All of a sudden, David is incredibly playful. He's always had a great disposition, and we love watching him babble and chat with his toys (or the plug in the wall over the changing table, his other favorite conversation partner), but this week he's just been a ton of fun! It's very weird how quickly he grows, and how much more he can do than he could just 2 or 3 weeks ago.

Our favorite new development is definitely his giggle. He used to giggle on very rare occasions, and only when we tickled him. He would giggle, then give me a look like "What was that all about? Seriously, what's your problem?" So I didn't tickle him all that often. This week, he giggles for all sorts of things, and doesn't give us dirty looks afterwards, either!

So here are pictures of him with 2 of his favorite toys. One is a baby lamb that my parents had sent to the hospital when he was born. It's his little Clover, for those of you that remember Clover.



The other we call his "Froggy friend." It's one of those mini-blankets with a stuffed animal in the middle, and it was a gift from Michael's mom just last week. Terry thought he might like the soft texture, and boy was she right!

(Note how impossible it is to get a candid shot of this boy. I tried, and tried, and tried and finally got ONE. No matter what he's doing, he sees the camera and just has to look at it :)

Oct 30, 2008

Jet Lagged Baby--Part Two

Well, it turns out some of you didn't love seeing David looking so sad. (Grandmothers can be so sensitive!) So, I thought I'd share a few more photos of the happier times spent keeping David awake last night! The sad picture was taken a few minutes before we put him to bed. Before that, there was frolicking, gallivanting, cuddling, and--of course--Scrabble playing. (David is getting a little too good at grabbing the tiles now, though, so that will only continue to get more difficult :)

Here's Michael's newest game with David. It's called "Palm the Baby." Two members of the household think it's great.One member of the household has a heart-attack every time the game is played. I'll leave it to you to figure out who is who.



And, finally, one more happy David picture...to counteract the sad David picture from yesterday :)

He must have REALLY missed Michael. He was so happy to see him at the train station, when he was not in an otherwise good mood, and now when Michael's around, he can't take his eyes off him! It's very funny, but it's making it a lot harder to feed David when Michael's here :)

Oct 29, 2008

Back in Jena!

David and I are back from our whirlwind US adventure! We spent a week in NY and 4 days in Atlanta, and returned Sunday-Monday of this week. David is an amazingly easy-going baby, and did not seem to mind the flights at all. He also didn't mind the 3 hour train ride to Frankfurt, so after a perfect 9 1/2 hour flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt, I was expecting a pleasant--if sleepy-- train ride home. Here's what happened:

I got on the train with plenty of time to spare, and found a nice seat. Thinking "ahh...3 hours until we change trains at Weimar, then 15 minutes to Jena!" I got out my nursing cover, my beverage, and my Time magazine and settled in to feed David. Just as he started to eat, the train stopped and the conductor said something about the last stop, and everyone having to get off. Not a good sign. I scrambled to get my stuff together, checked my ticket (bright idea--should obviously have done so sooner) and saw that there were, in fact, TWO transfers.

So off we ran to the platform, where I heard an announcement about a 10 minute delay. I waited, and waited, and then a train came that was not my train, so I waited some more. I finally asked a conductor, who explained that my train was long gone. There was a platform change, and I hadn't heard it.

Pleading poor-German listening comprehension skills, I got them to stamp my ticket so that it would work on the next train, which left in about 2 hours. I called Michael, and spent almost 2 hours feeding David and trying to find a bathroom with a changing table! Finally, the next train was set to leave, so I headed for the platform...only to see a sign saying that this train had been canceled. Not delayed, mind you, just canceled! I nearly burst into tears. Instead, I wandered aimlessly muttering to myself and to God--aloud, I fear. Fortunately, I stumbled past another platform that claimed to be an "Ersatzzug" (replacement train) for my train! Would have been nice to have put that sign on OUR platform, but what can you do.

So in the end, we rode back on a very, very slow train with very few seats...it must have been ages since this train was in regular rotation. The passengers were all so grumpy, that nobody even offered me a seat--despite David strapped to my chest in the Ergo. (This is atypical. I'm telling you, we were a surly bunch.) I had a funny fold down seat, perpendicular to the others, but it was rather awkward.

AND I hadn't had a chance to call Michael! So I was an hour late, and he was worried, but in the end we got home safely. I can't blame him at all, but David was not a very pleasant traveling companion for the last hour or so of the trip :)

So that was our adventure!!! I should add, the trip itself was absolutely wonderful. I will write more about it, and post pictures of David meeting his cousins and playing with his many aunts and uncles, but for now I thought I'd just share our unfortunate last leg of the trip. Not sure why, come to think of it, but there it is.

One more thing: David is terribly jet-lagged. Last night was a total disaster--by far the worst night we've had since he was born--so tonight we tried to keep him up as late as possible. The plan was 11:30. We made it to 9pm. Here's how David felt about it:

It's not very nice to take pictures of your own child as he cries, and begs to just be put to bed, but his little face is just so cute I couldn't help it!

To be fair, there were some fun times too:

That's it for now! I have a new plan, and I hope to stick with it. Henceforth I will try to write a SHORT post every day or two. The longer I go between posts, the more compelled I feel to post a million photos. Instead, I will now aim for short anecdotes with one or two pictures. Here's hoping!

Oct 16, 2008

Correction!

Wow, I was very tired when I wrote that last post, and it looks like it was a little confusing. I'm not giving up on the blog itself, just trying to find "eurolife day..." numbers for each post!

So please keep checking :)

Oct 15, 2008

We're Giving up on the Eurolife Day Business...

...for a few reasons. First, we realized that after a year we were about 10 days off. So it turns out we weren't very good about the whole counting thing. Second, as you may have noticed, we're not exactly writing every day anymore. (Some of us--ahem--are not exactly writing anymore at all!)

I was just thinking about how fun it was when I would really write posts for this blog! I have had so many ideas lately, including a post about the new shop in the Goethe Gallery (our mall). It's called "Mister*Lady", but despite what you might think, it's not for those of the cross-dressing persuasion. Just another funny use of the English language. And then there was the stove we saw at a friend's house...it was called "Competence." I had to work at not laughing there. I could just see the commercials now: "Want an oven that is able to get the job done? Maybe not particularly well--this oven is not going to stand-out in any way, but, you know, it meets the basic requirements of ovenhood? Have we got the oven for you!"

But, alas, time is short! So, again, I bring you pictures with captions. One of these days I'll be a blogger again :)


We love this hat! (Not my finest hour, but he looks pretty cute :)


Playing with Frog & Turtle:


Bath time! (He loves it)


Tummy Time on his AWESOME blanket--made by his aunt Rachel!


Daddy time--interrupted by the camera


Hanging out with Emmanuel, his best (only?) friend:



And finally...our little studious boy:


For a closer look...

Sep 29, 2008

EuroLIfe: Day 357

I should REALLY be sleeping, but these photos are just too cute. Michael is away until late Thursday night, and I will surely regret the fact that I am still up in no time at all. Anyway, here are some shots more of our little guy...Hopefully I'll come back and write some captions :)