Another day

Today shouldn't be too bad but I have to take the kids in for immunizations and hopefully the doctor will take Jenna's blood and send it to Heidelberg and Homburg for the genetic testing and metabolic testing that didn't get done properly when she was hospitalized. I really don't want to take her to those places for them to take the blood, so I hope he can send it to them. But knowing how things work over here, they probably won't.

A few thing here in Germany that I have yet to get used to: no customer service and being inflexible.

Niki has done well since his surgery--no bleeding and he is now fully healed. He has had a cold for the last week and now added a bad cough. I was hoping for a miracle--that he wouldn't get sick after we got the adnoids, tonsils out and tubes in. A few funny things I want to record is that instead of "the garage" he calls it Ba-grage and so I tease him all the time. The other day I opened a carbonated bottle and it exploided all over and he laughed and said "brilliant!" just like a good Brit (guess he watches too much BBC). He loves hot air balloons right now. He has their playhouse be a basket for a hot air balloon. He continues to talk all the time about babies all the time. He asks about himself as a baby and loves to go to babies and see them. I wish I could have other kids because I think he would have been a wonderful big brother. He still gets confused about some very abstract words like honesty, lying etc. If I am confused and say something wrong he tells me I am lying! He also points out if he thinks Jenna or himself are a good example. I know he is learning things. He loves music and loves singing. He nevers stops talking (I think I was like that as a child).

Jenna really loves to be helpful right now. Her most favorite thing in the world is to help cook. But if she can have any job, she is pretty happy. Nevertheless, she is having a very emotional week. I think it might be connected with us pushing the potty thing more. She fights every moring to go potty, despite the rewards we have (and Niki then has to have one because he says he also goes potty), the praise and encouragement. I truly think it may be like her drooling--she doesn't know it is happening. If we put her on the potty and wait, she will go, but she has no idea of when she NEEDS to go. I am still having trouble getting the KiGa to consistantly put her on the toliet. The pull-ups are expensive and we are going through a lot of them. She is getting too big for size 5 diapers and the Germans don't have size 6 (only in pull ups).

I have had a busy week. I really want to get to a major dejunking in the house but have been either tired or busy and haven't started. I a little worried that if I don't get it done soon that the hollidays will be upon us and I won't be able to get to it until next year! My desire is to really go to minimal things--only the things that are used or are beautiful/bring me joy to look at. But I struggle because it is hard to give away things that cost money and are useful but I don't know if I will EVER use them. I keep things and haven't used them for years, so I probably won't. We found that there is an on-line garage sale (something like Craigslist called RamsteinYardSales) around here, and I tried it out but most people that agreed to buy things never showed up. There is a yahoo free group too put I think there is a similar problem. We are all so spread out that people don't want to drive 30 minutes for a good bargain (or even freebees). So I may just advertise in our church email and then take the rest to the thrift store on base.

This weekend we will be meeting friends from Erlangen. I think it will be fun. Oh, that reminds me...Günter made a surprise for me when I was on my holiday. He had Niki record his voice and was able to upload it to our GPS so now I hear Niki telling me where to go. It is a hoot!

Posted by Krista at November 14, 2008 08:35 AM