Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

Testing out a new blog title. These two words together, somehow, fit me in the most perfect way; Plus, isn’t it just a joy to say out loud? I am trying it out to see how it feels. I have become quite attached to Coffee from a Cardboard Cup though.

Having two enthusiastic baby sitters is awesome. Clair is getting really comfortable with her Oma and Opa, and so she has no problem spending lots of time with them, and they are happy to have her. She is at a really fun stage, and Matthias and I take care of the dirty work when we are home with them.

Opa pulled out the old sled on the first day (there was a lot of snow the day we arrived, you know). After I helped convince her it would be fun to sit on the sled, she hoped on and held on for dear life as Opa dragged her around. He took her out for ‘one round’ in the neighborhood after she demonstrated that she could hold on well. I didn’t think to ask exactly how long a round was, so about 20 minutes later, I began to wonder where, exactly, our little munchkin was on this cold, cold day. It turns out that Opa is a lot tougher than we are when it comes to taking long walks in the snow dragging a sled behind him, but after a phone call and a reminder to bring her back, like now, she was shortly back home. I hadn’t expected her to be out so long, so she wasn’t wearing very warm pants or shoes. All in all, she was on her sled for about an hour and held on the whole time! Maybe we underestimate her, though, admittedly, she looked pretty darn happy to see us waiting for her at the door. I think Opa will toughen her up for us. Once her feet thawed out under a blanket with us, we let Opa play with her again with a warning not to take her too far (those Germans are tough when it comes to cold).

Here she is starting out on her journey

Here she is arriving back pointing at me waiting for her on the front step. I wonder what she was thinking. Apparently, she enjoyed seeing all of the sights Opa showed her, and she didn’t seem at all upset to have freezing cold feet or having had to hold on to the sled for an hour. Amazing kid.

Matthias and I picked up an attachment to the sled at the store yesterday. Now, the sled has a back on it so we can buckle her in with her feet out of the snow. Plus, she won’t have to hold herself on the whole time. Next time, we will bundle her up and Opa can drag her out for as many hours as he likes.

Clair figured out how to use her first iPhone function, the photo display. Her daddy couldn’t be prouder.

Sunday morning, we planned on driving up to Matthias’ home town for the holidays. When we woke up in the morning, we both felt like crap as I have been sick for the better part of the month, and Matthias seems to have picked the worst of it up from me this past week. But, once we got up and going, we felt like we could make the five hour drive and then pass Clair on to Oma and Opa so we could rest.

We come to Matthias’ parent’s house a lot these days. We always have a relaxing time and enjoy it, but since Clair has been born, it is the only place we go outside of Regensburg for short trips. As we started our drive, I said to Matthias, “I miss having our little adventures.” We used to do a bit more traveling, camping, exploring, etc. I am getting a bit of cabin fever.

So, we started our drive in the -10 C clear cold of Bavaria wearing sun glasses and enjoying the blue skies. I was driving about an hour later when the weather began to change. The temperature stayed well below freezing as the snow set in. We realized quickly that the anti-freeze wiper fluid in the wind shield was frozen and was of no use. So much for the ‘winter-fest’ condition our car was supposed to be in since we got the winter tires put on! I am going to make Matthias go back there and yell at our Mechanic, and here is why.

At one point, I was over in the left lane just after a car passed us, spraying some water on the windshield. I knew I couldn’t use the wiper fluid to clean it off, but I couldn’t see so well. Matthias suggested I try to just wipe it off with the wipers - TOTAL BLACKOUT!!! - on the autobahn! I think it was the scariest moment I have ever had as a driver. I just kept praying that if the wipers kept going I might get a glimpse of anything more than 5 feet in front of the car! I did get a glimpse (barely) and quickly and carefully got my butt back over to the right lane and off the autobahn as soon as I could.

The next hour or two (time began to blur) was spent stopping at every gas station on the autobahn to see if they had wiper fluid. Unfortunately, all of the other idiots were in the same situation as the -10 C blizzard kept coming. We also had to stop between gas stations, at rest stops, to deice our windshield aver few miles so we could see. This continued until we got on the A7 (for those in the know) and found a station who actually had some fluid that was supposed to stay liquid down to -60 C. Great! We added it to the mix, but of course, since the jest were frozen, this didn’t help us one bit. Finally, we pulled off about 15 km from ‘Pigtown’ (and thought about calling your in-laws, An) and found a small gas station run by a little old man and woman. The man offered to defreeze our sprayers with a heat gun for 15 Euros - we were happy to through money at them. I fed Clair in her car seat in the cold garage as the guy heated the tubes to the sprayers for about 20 minutes.

Finally, we could see out of our windshield, what a quaint idea! We set off again, however, now the speeds on the autobahn had decreased dramatically. You see, the A7 has a lot of hills. Upon seeing the first one in front of us, we were a bit concerned. There were a LOT of hazard lights blinking on the right side of the road! As we got closer, we realized that the left lane was pretty clear and full of slowly moving cars going up the mountain. The two right lanes, however, were a mess of pulled over big-rigs and cars who, apparently, did not have their winter tires yet. It looked a lot worse than it was (for us, anyway), and we got over it slowly. The good part about the second and third big hills on this road was that the big-rigs and ill-prepared cars had been filtered out by the first hill. The poor people coming down the A7 in the other direction weren’t so lucky. It looked as though a big-rig jack-knifed and caused the traffic to back up for miles and miles. I’m sure some people slept on the autobahn that night.

After we got through the worst of the traffic, we could go a bit faster again, and we needed to be able to spray off our windshield as a result. We were a little gun shy since the first encounter with an autobahn blackout, so we waited until we could pull into a rest stop before trying it out. And, damn it, the stupid sprayer was frozen again!!! So, we played the game of pulling off to deice again and again until we got to about 50 kms from our destination when the temperature reached a balmy -2 C, and everything thawed.

The entire journey took about 10 action packed hours. I ask for adventure, I get adventure! Thank God we made it safely and that we didn’t have a screaming baby in the backseat the whole time.

Here is the one photo I took from the trip - the old man defrosting our sprayers….

The photo we got today from the daycare folks! I can’t take my eyes off of it! They also gave us a little DVD of a day in the life of Clair! It is amazing how much effort they put into her. I think they are better at this whole parenting thing than we are.

Matthias and I took Clair to town today for a little outing with her group from daycare. She is already getting her own little social life outside of us! They took the kids to the Christmas market for a couple of hours.

It was about 20 degrees this morning, so we packed Clair up so much that she couldn’t get back up if she fell over! We were a little early so Clair chased some pigeons around for a while (her favorite sport).

Once the folks from daycare arrived, we put Clair into a giant wagon that they pull the kids around in. I was hoping we could walk around a bit with them and watch her look around with the other kids. But, if she could see me, she would cry. If I wasn’t in sight, she calmed down, bond with the care-givers, and eventually she started walking along with the group once they started walking around. It was so cute to see the gaggle of little munchkins holding hands and looking at the little kiosks in the market. Clair wasn’t in the gaggle because she didn’t seem to want to stand (probably has something to do with the huge amount of clothes on and her inability to move in them).

One of us (ahem, Matthias) was in no mood to stand out and follow the kids around at a distance, so I missed watching her ride the carousel with the group. They took a bunch of photos to I can’t wait to see them. They are great about taking photos from the exciting activities they do with her. Clair has a little book with her photos, and it will be our when she moves on from the daycare. By the time I went back and met Clair after the visit to the market, she was fast asleep from the activity.

While she was out having her own little social life, Matthias and I headed to Kaminski for breakfast, and Sarah stopped by a little later for coffee. We had a prosecco to top it off, and it was perfect! We always forget how great prosecco is with breakfast.

Today is St. Nikolas day - a holiday I only learned existed after I started dating Matthias. I still don’t know exactly what to do with it, but now that I have Clair, I figure that we better sort out this Nikolas thing so she doesn’t go to school one day and wonder why St. Nikolas came to all of the other kids’ homes and not hers.

We were going to have some friends over to bake today and get into the Christmas spirit, but that ended up falling through for a variety of reasons. The final one came in the form of some kind of intestinal bug that we all picked up recently. I haven’t been in the best shape for the past couple of days. Of course, by the time I was ready to cancel, almost everyone else had already pulled out because of their own issues. Only Cliff and Sarah remained standing - we’ll have to find another time to drink the hot apple cider, Cliff.

So, today, I was not feeling like I wanted to puke (better than the previous two days). We made ourselves get out of the house a bit and walk into town. It was packed, but everyone was in good spirits. We walked around the Christmas markets a bit, had a Gluewein and then sipped coffee in a little American-style coffee shop that overlooks one of the smaller Christmas markets. It had the advantage of being warm while also giving you the chance to watch the people in the market. An extra added bonus was that Clair slept through most of this so we could just chill!

When we got home, we eventually decorated the tree we bought yesterday. I am kind of surprised that Clair is completely uninterested in the tree. I thought she’d be fascinated, but until we put lights on it, she didn’t go near it. Now, she just goes close enough the remind herself what I mean when I am saying ‘hot!’ while she wraps her little fist around the business end of the electric candles we have on the tree.

Matthias just made me a Chai tea, because he is awesome, and we are having a quiet night listening to some Christmas music and a lecture on linear algebra from itunes-U (Matthias idea).

Here is the beginning of the Christmas photos from this year.

This was taken on Friday when Clair got back from Daycare. St. Nick paid them a visit and gave the kids little treats. This was in Clair’s little bag. Unfortunately, we both missed seeing her with St. Nikolas because Matthias had to work and I was feeling like crap and pretty much spending the day in bed.

The best view of the market, from inside of the warm coffee shop.

We met St. Nick in the street giving out Cookies with his assistant, Knechtruprecht. I am really unsure about the whole Knechtruprecht idea. A little girl was dressed up in a Christmas-esq outfit with reindeer antlers on and some brown streaks of paint on her face. She was quite nice and gave out cookies too (actually, she was adorable). I feel like the Germans are slowly fazing out a racist image of St. Nickolas and his ‘dark’ assistant into something that is more current and less offensive, but that just be my American take on it. Most images I have seen of Knechtruprecht in literature wouldn’t fly in the US. I didn’t get a photo of his assistant because she was only about ten, and I didn’t want to put her photo online.

Clair went slightly insane when we pulled out the bulbs from the tree….action series.

Our finished project! (and one of the very rare good photos of me!)

Clair last year and today. She went from a bobble-headed little munchkin in awesome boots to a fake-sneezer (today’s new trick) who cracks herself up.