We are so terribly behind in posting — I apologize to our reader(s?).
When we last left our fearless family of three, we had just moved to Hamburg, a city said to be reminiscent of London — but mostly because of the weather and not the chance to run into Wills and Kate.
A funny thing happened upon our move, though. Just as with our first move to Munich, I got pregnant immediately upon setting foot in our new location. (Things they don’t teach you in sex ed…)
While I was gestating, Micah celebrated his first birthday, his first Fasching, his first spring day in Hamburg and his first younger brother (we’re keeping it open).
Photos of all of the above in our gallery. Login and password the same as before.
The photos below are from our last vacation before… tada … we moved to Hamburg so I could … tadee… start a new job. I’m working in corporate communications — in English, of course — and am quite happy to be able to wear heels everyday.
We found a great apartment in the St. Georg neighborhood of the city, on the Lange Reihe — a block full of restaurants (even sushi! that’s not so horrible!), fancy paper stores and farmers markets — that reminds us of Brooklyn. Micah started at day care conveniently located directly across the street from our house, and now his German is better than mine. We’ve only been here a couple of months, but we already have a good feeling about this place.
As is required by EU Constitutional Convention Article 43, para. 3, line 27, we vacated our German premises in August to take to a two week vacation at the Italian coast.
We stayed in a rental cottage in a little seaside town in the Cilento region of Italy, about 2 hours south of Naples. The view from our patio was amazing. Micah liked to help in the kitchen. Patrick and I were also there.
We have a lot more photos in our gallery, just ask us for the login and password.
Rome was at the top of our “must see cities” list, and we were finally able to go the first long weekend in June. The Pope was not at home, but we still saw a lot of other old sh!t — all on foot, and all in basically one day. (It was one very long day).
We didn’t mean to be turbo tourists, but we only had three full days for sight-seeing, and the one sight we definitely wanted to see by the end of our whirlwind tour was the lounge by the hotel pool.
Micah slept through the foundations of democracy, but that didn’t stop every Italian — male and and female, young and old — from tickling, hugging and basically taking him directly out of our arms.
Not that any of us minded — as soon as we sat down for dinner the first night, our waiter begged us to take Micah into the kitchen to show him off. For the rest of the night, he called Micah his “assistant.”
We returned to horrible weather in Munich (I bought a new summer fleece) and are already planning our summer vacation. To Italy.
More photos from Rome in our photo gallery — ask us for the login and password.
Micah is getting so big. He’s sitting up (sort of) and crawling (sort of), but mostly just exploring the world — and by “world” I mean his room and whatever floor he can escape to when we’re not looking. He’s perfected the army-stomach-slitther and can scoot around pretty fast for someone who just figured out how his limbs work.
For about a week, he could only move backwards, which led him tusch first under his crib with no way out. But now, he’s moving all over the place, and is no longer interested in his (well-appointed-and-expensive-to-furnish) *boring* ole room. (As a side note, we’ve discovered that he has the nicest furniture in the entire house. For him to spit up on?)
As for us, we’re just waiting for the rain to end and spring to arrive (unless this is it, in which case … booooooo.) Micah went for a visit to his little cousin Amelie, and one of the Schultz boys really like playing with Amelie’s Leggos. Can you guess which one? Hint: not the one who gets stuck under his own crib.
We’re going to Rome for a long weekend next week, so we’ll bring the good weather (and food and fashion) back to dreary Munich.
P.S. I know I have a horrible haircut in these photos. It’s a little more rut-ro than retro.
Winter turned into spring, and our little lump of infant turned into a squirming, laughing, wriggling, *almost* crawling baby. He even added solid food to his liquid diet — “solid” in this case meaning “pureed and pulverized”. So far he likes carrots, parsnips and rice cereal – although we had to put the cereal aside for Passover. He didn’t seem to mind though.
You can see in the photos that he looks just like Patrick — although in the right light, if you squint, during a full moon, when you’re not wearing your glasses and after a few beers, he may, at times, have a tendency to almost look like me. Or, as our friend Jessi B-C said: “Who photoshopped Patrick’s face onto that baby?”
Our last entry claimed that we were going to be in the U.S. for a couple of months earlier this year. Psyche! Patrick’s project ended earlier than he thought, so instead of Micah and I spending 6 weeks in frozen Minneapolis in February (darn!), he came back to Munich instead. The best part – aside from having him back with us – is that we were able to go on our already-scheduled vacation to the Canary Islands.
Real Europeans may know this already, but it was news for Euros-in-Training like me, that the Canary Islands are like the Bahamas of Europe. More specifically, they are the sunny coastal fishing village Germany never had, but always wanted, as long as you can still eat various wursts and heavily fried schnitzels. On an island. In the sun. Belonging to Spain. There was nary a tapa to be found. On the bright side, since the vast majority of our resort were extremely retired Germans, I didn’t feel bad about wearing my bikini at the pool. (Note to self: keep the competition to 85-year-old women in full length sarongs).
Okay, I lied a little when I said we’d be updating this site more frequently — I was sort of on a roll, but then got side-tracked with this whole first-born-son thing.
But we’re back, baby, and better than we were before — we are new and improved with the addition of Micah the Mäusle-Bär four months ago (time, flying, etc. etc.) And scientific tests prove that he is the winner of Lifetime Achievement Best All-Around Baby Award (it’s true — Patrick is a scientist and our claim is peer-reviewed).
I’ve been home with Micah so far, and will probably continue to do so while we’re still in Germany. But don’t pin any motherhood awards on me just yet — I still can’t find a real job and the government is paying me to stay home for one year. I never thought I’d be a stay-at-home-mom, but here I am. The jury is still out on whether this is the toughest job I’ll ever love — mostly its just kind of boring, punctuated with giggles and poop.
Patrick has been working his little tail off, as usual, and is about to start a long project in the States. We’re going to join him as soon as Micah gets his American passport. He already has a German one, but needs both to travel to and fro either country.
Other than that, it’s same old, same old (isn’t it always?). It’s cold and rainy here, but not much snow this winter. We’re getting rid of our car soon, since I walk everywhere during the week and we rarely ever use it on the weekends. We’re looking forward to taking our very first real vacation (outside of our honeymoon in 2006) this spring and introducing Micah to the ocean.
What’s on your agenda for 2010?
Patrick whisked me away to the ski spot of rich-and-famous: Kitzbuhl, Austria …. which in August is the pretty alpine getaway for the not-at-all rich and the and-you-are? It is quite bucolic and milk-maidy, and the view is very Sound of Music. Our hiking was curtailed a bit by my belly, although I did make it up as far as the mountain top bar. On the way down from the mountain, we walked through town where — obviously in our honor — trachten-wearing locals came marching by.
We had hotdogs and cold beer along the Isar that quickly devolved into rootin’ tootin’ July 4th karaoke fest. Yee haw!
Patrick’s officially — officially — a doctor now. His defense last November and “Dr.” emblazoned business cards aren’t really official without the cap and gown ceremony that generally precedes them, but, eh, not in this case. Patrick received his doctoral hood June 1 in a smaller ceremony for the Ph.Ds. and then walked with the entire Princeton graduating class (roughly 2000 students including all the undergrads and masters’ students) on June 2. Patrick’s parents and I had great seats — only a few rows from the front, just behind the press (speaking of press: I ran into a girl I went to Medill with, who is now the spokeswoman for Princeton) — and Patrick managed to finagle himself a front-row center seat after leading in all the students. How’s that for leadership qualities? Oh, and Meryl Streep was also there!
