David and Franz

As the weather has (finally) improved, David has been having so much fun out in our backyard. It's a shared yard, surrounded by buildings for the most part, but it's really quite pretty. (OK, so the one right outside our door is kind of ugly, but past the hedge-wall it's beautiful :)

One of the neighbors with whom we share this yard is Franz.

Franz is David's new best bud, and they play together the way toddlers play together. When David sees Franz, he either shrieks at him and tries to kick him, or he runs at him to play with him. If he shrieks, and Franz runs away, David gets upset and tries to find him.

When Franz sees David, he either runs at him to snuggle, or he runs away. If he tries to snuggle, and David runs away, he follows David crying, trying even harder to snuggle with David. He will literally throw himself in front of David's feet so that David has to either trip over him or snuggle him.

Half the time, "playing together" for Franz and David means wandering around at the same time, crossing paths just often enough to make clear that it isn't accidental.

Like I said, they play together the way toddlers play together.

So, here's Franz--coming to see if David can come out to play:

And here's David roaming around the yard:

And here they are together, after a long hard day of playing outside:

Let's get a closer look at that...

Finally, if you'd like to see a video of the two meandering around the yard "together," click here! (It just takes absolutely forever to upload videos to this site, and then the quality is crummy.)

What a Weekend (or, the Longest Post Ever)

I will do my best not to write much today, because I have about a zillion photos to share. Brevity is not really my strong suit, though, so we'll just have to see.

On Friday, we had our second family bike trip of the season! I forgot the camera on the first one, so here are some shots from Friday. It was wonderful!

We biked to our nearby biergarten, where David enjoyed his first beer:

Well, Ok so it was an apfelschorle, but doesn't it look like a beer? At least a little? :)

Then David asked to take a picture with Michael and I. He's into this lately, and I think it's super cute.

I just love this shot:

OK, flash forward to Saturday! Our great friends, Thomas and Anja (and Immanuel) welcomed a new little boy into their family almost two weeks ago now. Little Artur Koch was born on Tuesday, March 23--right on his due date, just like his brother!--and the family had a welcome party for him on Saturday. We had a blast!

Here David DID get to drink something new...orange soda! We forgot his sippy of milk, and he was downright giddy about the soda.

But mostly he just played with his best bud.

This morning was, of course, Easter! Against my better judgment--swayed, I think, by the abundance of German chocolate that we will soon have to leave--I made David an Easter basket.

He was pretty excited about the chocolate, but more excited about the Sesamstrasse DVD... and even MORE excited about the road-map-jigsaw-puzzle-with-cars thing that I grabbed at Aldi and decided to include in the Easter package. (Note to our future children who may one day stumble upon this blog: We do not intend to continue the tradition of giving toys and presents other than candy at Easter. Do not. This was a fluke.)

At church, more play time with Immanuel:

And after church, and after a much-needed nap, dying Easter eggs!

Sadly, the whisk-trick didn't work for long. I think David's fingers might be blue for weeks to come.

But here they are:

In addition to the basket from us, David also got a special chocolate bunny from our friend Claudia! Unlike us, she splurged on the Kinder Chocolate bunny...

It's delicious. (I'm not telling how I know.)

Finally, Anja, Thomas, Immanuel and Artur came over and we had an easter egg hunt in the yard. It was the perfect afternoon, really.

At the end, though, David was pretty spent. Totally spent, actually. He walked inside, grabbed Eeyore, then came back out and wandered off to go sit and snuggle with him. Our neighbor's cat, who tries harder and harder each day to make himself David's cat, rushed to join him.

A Serious Belly Laugh!

I just had to share this video. I hope to write another real post one of these days, but for now I really had to share this!

Spring is here! (And it had better stick around...)

The weather has just been great for the past week or so. I had to buy sunglasses for David! Sunglasses! We have been outside as often as possible, for as long as possible, and it has been wonderful.

Today, thanks to a very productive couple of weeks and a foreboding weather report for the weekend, Michael decided to take a day off and to work a longer day on Saturday instead. It was just perfect. We had a lazy morning together, then wandered downtown to get a new bike helmet for David. (We thought we might get him a bike too--a balance bike--but he was totally opposed to the idea. Bummer.)

We spent the morning downtown, mostly outside and, for a while at least, eating ice cream. Just a great way to start the day.

The plan was to go for a bike ride after David's nap. Unfortunately, and I think probably because I told David the plan, there was no nap. Just a non-nap followed by a bike-ride.

The good news is, David still loves his bike seat! Maybe even more than last year. He's finally old enough to really get into the things we see as we go along, like a passing train or a waterfall, and he gets really excited when we do things with all three of us. (He loves is, and says things like: "Mama bike! Daddy bike! David bike!" over and over again. It's very cute.)

So we rode our typical short ride, about 7 miles to a nearby beer garden that sits on the river. Michael and I each had a beer, David had an apfel-schorle (apple juice with bubbly water), and we all got a great dose of fresh-air and sun. David perfected jumping off of this little wall, and was just exceedingly proud of himself.

When we got home, we were all pretty zonked. The bike ride itself wasn't tough, but I don't think our bodies are used to being in the sun--direct sun!--for so many hours in one day! We ended up ordering pizza, and a great deal of silliness ensued. Which brings us to the video.

Somehow, we started playing hide and seek with the pizza box. David started to laugh about as hard as I've ever seen him laugh, so naturally I had to run and grab the camera. I had to hide the camera, though, so as not to stop the hilarious laughter, so as videos go it's not very good...but the audio is well worth sharing!

What a Month!

If there's anyone out there still checking this blog...my apologies. I'm not sure it even counts as a blog anymore, given how rarely I manage to update it!

In any case, we've had quite a month!

A few weeks ago, Michael was accepted a position at the University of South Florida, in Tampa. This is fantastic news. It's a great position in a great department, and it happens to be located near the beach...and the sun shines there!

As in, the sun regularly makes an appearance, and when it does there is no reason to drop everything and rush outside to try to see it, because you can be certain it will be there for a while. This is, as I said, fantastic news.

About a week after Michael got the job, I sent off my dissertation to my advisor. The final chapter is new, so it's possible there will be some revisions, but I'm really hoping it's finished. It is, at the very least, very nearly finished. So it looks like I will manage to get this phd one of these days, which will be awesome.

Here's a funny story: A few months ago, back in November or December, I decided to submit a paper to a graduate student conference that sounded interesting. I never submit papers to conferences, since they tend to happen in the US and I'm here, but I liked the topic and I went ahead and sent in a paper. When we got back in January, I heard that it had been accepted. Then I saw where it was taking place: USF. When I sent it in, I had no idea that Michael had applied there. When I accepted, and said I'd attend the conference, I knew only that Michael was in the running for the job, but that he might very well not get it. I accepted thinking "This will either be the best weekend ever, or the most depressing conference of all time."

So David and I went to Tampa! The conference was great, I even met a like-minded philosopher who works at U. of Miami, and I got to see the area! (And I got to hear people talk about how great Michael is, and how glad they are that he's coming, and that was nice:) It all felt pretty providential to me.

So that's that. Most of you (are there any of you?) probably knew all this already, but it seemed weird not to acknowledge Michael's awesome new job on the blog, so there you have it.

Now for the photos!

Here are some from yesterday. Emmanuel, David's buddy, is now 2! This happened altogether too quickly, but the party was a lot of fun.

Here's David playing with our present for Emmanuel, who was kind enough not to knock David over and take it back.

The boys played together really well. They crack each other up!

David was playing with these little animal magnets, so I put them in his pocket for him. He was inordinately proud to have them there.

And, after taking them out, tried to put them back in...

Here's my favorite shot from the day:

That's all for now!