Street Cred

Here is the short version of a long story. When Oliver came home for the hospital he only liked to look one way. It didn't matter if the world was ending on the right side of his head, he was only concerned with the happenings to the left. We tried everything to make him look the other way -- moving his car seat, putting him facing the other way in the crib, getting a therapeutic pillow, etc. It didn't work.

So he developed a super sweet flat spot on the side of his head, which pushed the left side of his face and his ear forward. It became clear that the muscles in his neck that he wasn't using were becoming underdeveloped. He was falling behind in his milestone markers and was having problems lifting his head on his tummy and holding his head up when unsupported. It doesn't help that that kid has the world's largest head to begin with.

We've been going to physical therapy twice a week since Nov, and things have gotten better but he's still taking his sweet merry time. He can now look in both directions! Bless his heart! The only way he is going to be able to fix his underdeveloped muscles is to USE them himself in a gentle controlled manner -- so the therapist put her foot down on anything that doesn't support his neck like the Bumbo, exersaucer, high chair, sitting up in my lap, facing forward in the Bjorn, sitting upright in the stroller, etc. I totally disobeyed her orders so I could get a few quick shots of him for this blog!

He needs to be laying on his back -- all the time -- attempting to roll, reach, stretch and raise his head. He can't have tummy time anymore because his muscles are not strong enough to lift up his massive head and it just pulls his muscles instead of strengthening them.

We also had to shave his FANTASTIC curly and wild locks.....

... so he could get this badass helmet. Sorry for the swears but this thing has some serious street cred to it. I'm going to bedazzle it with some stickers as soon as I get the okay from the doctor.

I love these photos of him waiting for his helmet. He's totally digging this bee thing.

He knows he looks good with his new shaved head.

Abby really wanted a helmet too, but instead she got a popsicle.

I'm sure she'll get over the disappointment soon enough!

Abby's Week

What did I do this week? I ate EVERYTHING with two spoons because just using one is uncivilized.

I drove around in this mom-powered diaper box car for hours on end.

And entertained my brother with stickers. He was so excited he drooled all over his pack and play.

Tag Team Puking

You are probably expecting a loving and tender blog post all about missing my man. Sorry, wrong blog. I set up a private one so that we could revel in all the mush and gush that comes with having a loved one away. I thought I would spare you all my whining about missing him so bad I can hardly breathe. You're welcome.

That being said, I hope he'll post some interesting things about what he's doing on this blog for people who would like to follow along on his adventure. If he can't access this website there I will do it for him :)

The flu bug is going around Berlin, so goodness knows it found its way to our house the day after Jeremy left. Both Abby and Oliver were up from 12-4AM tag team puking on everything we own. I literally ran out of blankets and sheets to put on Abby's bed. I solved that problem by putting blankets all over the floor and giving her permission to lean over the railing on her bed and puke directly on the floor. She also got a dose of Tylenol to curb the fever, which caused everything she puked on to be covered in a awesome florescent pink. Sweet mother of pearl -- thank heaven above I was spared and was able to succor one while yelling support to other.

Needless to say, I'm super tired but wanted to upload some fun photos with short captions.

When I asked Oliver to be an overachiever I should have been more specific.

Sometimes life is so hard you just have to put your head down on the Bumbo and cry about it.

Were the heck is all this wind coming from?

Abby's saying, "Is he still looking at me? I don't want to turn my head and make direct contact."

They are both saying, "what kind of mother puts their kids on the stove for a photo op?

Oliver is saying, "Dear magical light switch, please give me a sister kind enough to share her pringles."

Big hugs for everyone!

You are never getting my pringles. Rat me out and I'm going to Thelma and Louise your Bumbo over the edge of the counter top.

What are the chances Abby is going to hit me in the head with that window?

I let Abby play outside the day after the puke off. We ALL needed the fresh air. Oliver had no choice but to kick it in his car seat while we lived it up. At least we moved him around the yard with us!

Abby is obsessed with wearing her church shoes. It was Sunday, so who was I to call it inappropriate.

Nothing like sitting on your brother's head to get the perfect photo.

Man I love these furry cute balls.

Who says you can't find joy in a car seat?

Hate is a Strong Word

Does Oliver like rice cereal? I think this photo speaks for itself:

Now from a different angle:

There is a video of his first feeding, of course. Unfortunately, I had no idea my hand was blocking the view :(

Random Thought Wrap Up

I imagine you are wondering what was on my mind last week. Ponder no further. Random photos with random thoughts can be found below....

I wonder why the military would even bother with torture techniques like water boarding. All they need to do is put a terrorist in a car with a screaming baby and a whining toddler for 1o minutes and they will spill every single secret they know to be released.

Abby speaks German for about an hour after she returns from school. Lately she's been singing a lot of words that sound like she's swearing. They're pretty heavy on the "C" and "B" words that just grate at my soul. Jeremy says they're legit, but I'm not sure I'm buying that ditty. I don't know if I should give her a hug for being so smart or wash her mouth out with soap for talking like a sailor.

Oliver doesn't take bottles, but that doesn't stop us from trying them every once and a while just in case he changes his mind. Abby loves to finish off whatever he leaves behind, which just makes me cringe inside. Oliver drinks it all day long and it doesn't bother me. I have no idea why it creeps me out when Abby does. I mixed his baby rice with it and without thinking the other day I tasted his rice. For the record, breast milk and rice could be quite delightful with some cinnamon and shredded apples in it.

Check out this gingerbread Reichstag my friend made for Christmas. Mad skills.

I can't get enough of this photo of the kiddos kicking it with Brother Wong. I wonder if he missed us yet.

Remember the old-school classic Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer? This elf was a misfit because he wanted to be a dentist. I would think he was a misfit because all the other elves were bald and he clearly spent two hours every morning getting the perfect wave in his bangs. Not to mention the fact he waxes his eyebrows until they are 1 cm to short and arched like a rainbow. Maybe it's just me...

Isn't anyone else concerned that Santa looks like he's been purging his holiday snacks?

Germans do NOT tolerate any sort of environmental unfriendliness -- they don't salt their roads, warm/cool their houses, use a lot of trash, or drive huge cars. I do. Yesterday I left my car running while I was waiting for my friend to leave her apartment, which is a HUGE no no. It only took about five minutes for someone to come down and tell me to shut off my car. Keep in mind it is winter here and I have an infant in the car. I was pointing at Oliver while he was pointing at the sky and trees. Needless to say, I shut off the car to make him go away and he watched from his window to make sure it stayed off.

It's amazing to me that Oliver couldn't get this huge piece of paper in his mouth....

These fireworks were awesome, but I couldn't stop thinking that I was in the middle of WW2 the whole time. I have no idea how the kids slept through this!

Oh My Goodness

This Christmas was a surprise-filled display of utter awkwardness. I will do my best to capture all it's goodness but I fear I will fail, so just imagine all the details that I forgot to write.

It all started with a phone call Christmas eve day around 2PM. A 25ish-year-old new member from mainland China studying at a university in Scotland appeared in Berlin and needed a place to stay overnight. The missionaries called the stake president, who called some bishops, looking for a mandarin speaking member who wouldn't mind having him overnight. We got the phone call asking if we could help him out, of course.

I get the irony -- a lonely traveler on Christmas can't find a place at the inn and is looking for a place to stay. I should have immediately opened my home and welcomed him in no questions asked, but I was pretty upset for a variety of reasons: this is our last time as a family together before Jeremy leaves for his deployment, I'm not prepared food/present wise, my house is a mess, I have two small children and I don't know how I feel about a stranger in the house with them, are my dogs going to kill him in the night, will I have to teach English for the next few days, etc. Needless to say, I wouldn't be much of a Christian if I didn't act as Christ would, so we offered up our spare bedroom and frantically began preparing for his arrival.

I wish I could tell you more about who he was or why he was here. For the next three days (yup, they just said he'd be here one night but he loved it so much he extended his trip) he asked me ONE question. The rest of the time I was stuck having to come up with a MILLION questions for our visitor to fill the super awkward silence. He always answered with one word answers so there wasn't much to expand on any topic I was able to come up with.

Day One -- He tagged along to our friends house with us. They managed to figure out that he was hitch hiking with a friend from France, they got into a fight and he ended up in Berlin solo. He was planning to hitch hike from Berlin to Freiberg and needed a place to stay along the way. His goal was to travel around Europe for the next two months (by hitch hiking) and see as many temples as he can. That's how he found us. He was terrified of our dogs, so they spent most of the next three days in their boxes. I had NO food in my house so we ate a lot of what we could find around the house and even dipped into our food storage.

Day Two - Christmas -- I had been planning on playing secret Santa for a lady in our ward so I had a chocolate bar, mini rubik's cube, a pretty journal I bought in India, and an Ensign about temples ready to wrap for our surprise guest. After we opened up gifts, I made him craft some labels and help make the Christmas candy for our neighbors. He didn't speak the WHOLE time. On the way to hand out presents I realized that he hadn't eaten since breakfast, even though I told him to snack on the finger foods I put on the table and showed him where all the snacks/food was. He was starving. My friend Shawna was just about to eat when I stopped by with her present, so I made our visitor a plate of food, which he held on his lap the whole way home and starred at.

Day Three -- We went to one of our friend's house for a boxing day party. Our visitor sat in the corner for most of the party, even though I asked him four or five times to come closer and join in the conversations. Jeremy had given up trying to socialize with him (or socialize him, however you want to think of it) and left me to keep going over to check up on him. Near the end he sat at the kids' table and helped build a gingerbread house. That evening we drove him into the city to catch a train; although I am pretty sure we walked back out to the road after we left and tried to hitch hike.

So... ummmm... not much more I can say about that. Total awkward balloons for all involved. I'm expecting HUGE blessings. HUGE.

And as a side note, I found a ton of Otter Pop wrappers in the garbage in his room. I guess he was eating the warm liquid freezies from the cupboard thinking they were some kind of fancy drink. I guess he wasn't THAT hungry.

Overall, I'm glad that our visitor got to spend the holidays with fellow members. I hope that he felt comfortable and loved, even though you could cut the awkwardness with a knife. It was a good experience for us as a family to realize that acts of charity don't come when you are always prepared. It forced us to get out and make the most of the holiday because we had someone counting on us make it special. It's certainly was a Christmas we won't forget anytime soon.

I didn't get many photos on Christmas day. That bummed me out, but I had other things on my mind.

Love this video of Abby happy (mad?) that Santa came. She wasn't fazed at all that we had a guest Christmas morning. Although she did make a pile behind her of all her gifts just in case the strange man got an inkling to play with any of her goodness.

Christmas OCD

Abby goes to a German school, so it's only fitting they speak only German. This causes quite the 'Lost in Translation'-type moments when it comes to things like field trips or special activity days that I am to participate in. It happened again just last week, when I thought I was invited to a special breakfast WITH the children. It turns out it was a special breakfast FOR the children and I was only supposed to drop off my food and leave. Cue 15 minutes of pure awkwardness, standing around, holding Oliver, dressed to the nines, wondering why there wasn't a place for me to sit and where the other parents where. They must have thought I was on crack. Ugh -- crazy foreigners!

Two things stuck out to me as I was standing around looking like an idiot: Germans don't care about peanut allergies because they give the kids big bowls of shelled peanuts as a snack every day -- rebel yell -- AND Abby most definitely got my OCD.

Just look at the awesome snowman she made below. It's the one up front. The other kids made their snowmen all crazy style with mismatching eye colors, crooked buttons with varying sizes, hat pompoms that don't go all the way across -- I could go on forever! **Shudder** Perhaps they would have performed better if they had parents were so invested in their academic careers they would even go uninvited to the special Christmas breakfast :P

That evening I was getting gas and backed into the gas pump. I was super glad we didn't explode in a fiery ball of flames and was pleased that there was no damage on that side of the car. Unfortunately, the bump knocked snow off the other side of the car and I was bummed to find out that someone had crashed into the back of our car and didn't bother to tell us.

I'd be super petty to be peeved over something so small when we've been so super blessed this year. I guess a vehicle is not really yours until you've -- or someone else -- has smashed it around a few times. I'm not going to bother to fix it; I think it gives the large beast some street cred.

Speaking of blessed... this year we were invited to have a traditional Christmas with a wonderful German/Swiss family in our ward. It was fabulous. Oalf and Antje are some of the most honest and humble people that I have ever met in my life, and it is truly a blessing to count them as some of our closest friends here. Oalf served his mission in Toronto, which makes him nearly a Canadian, right?

The Lewis missionaries are also fantastic. The Lewis' are serving as Abby's primary teachers, and she just adores having them around to cuddle and play with her. They have grandchildren nearly the same age as Abby and Ollie, and our children are a reminder of what wonderful little miracles await their return home next year.

We had a traditional feast of cold meats, cheeses, vegetables, eggs, and homemade breads.

Jeremy REALLY wanted to decorate our tree with real candles this year. Yup, not going to happen. Antje also gave in and used fake candles.

Antje had some little figurines that she got from her grandmother when she was very young. She let Abby play with them until she told us how precious they were. Jeremy and I were pushing each other out of the way to pry them out of Abby's hands. Some people are just too trusting.

I took this video of Abby without her knowing. She was in charge of sitting still for 2 minutes while we sang a song. She did.... well... see for yourself.

This is a random video of Oliver 'talking.' He makes these awesome high pitch sounds that do NOT sound like they come from a baby. He really freaks people out when he does them in public.