Out with the Old Part 2

A few weeks ago I shared some pictures of our ongoing patio project. The Garden Goddess continues to work miracles; yesterday she cut the strange shaped stones to fill in the gaps that were still there. Today PJ took advantage of another warm spell and a brand new patio to play football (soccer).

I don't know about you but those last few seconds are a.) proof that this kid is a natural in front of a camera b.) a little astonishing because - hello? - PJ is 16 months old, not 20 and/or c.) by far the most adorable three seconds of film I've ever gotten of him.

What do you think?

xo

St Martin's Parade!

This year was my - cough - I mean, PJ's first Saint Martin's parade. It was totally rad!

It started with a shared dinner with new friends who also happen to live in our same little town. The mom and I met on the playground when we had first moved to Schwetzingen. Meeting her was like taking a nice sip of an excellent wine (her) right after having taking a swig of vinegar wine (the other moms that stopped talking to me when I told them I was 'already' working). Our little guys are about the same age but couldn't be more different.

Her little guy is a quiet watcher. He walks along the outside of the group, checking out the dynamics and options. Only then does he his move towards a toy or a person that interests him. He isn't one for conflicts and tends to hand over or move away from whatever toy another child finds interesting. Lets call him Watcher.

PJ is, um, the opposite. He dives right on in...he may not know what he is diving into, but he is right in the center. And he is the guy who is helping himself to everyone else's toys.

It isn't always easy to be Watcher when PJ is around but over the past couple of months, he has gotten a bit tougher, a bit stronger, and he has even learned to 'schmipf' (scold) with PJ from time to time. Even with all that, buddies they are and I hope buddies they will stay. Cause the mommies and the daddies get along...and how often does that happen?

After dinner, we got all bundled up, grabbed our lanterns, and headed out the door towards the castle. The Watcher was a bit smoother with his paper lantern than PJ who took the more energetic "slam against the ground" method before losing interest.

PJ with his lantern. 

Our new friends!

At the castle hundreds of people gathered together to parade through the castle garden. We were led through the dark by a brass band. From the far back we could watch the dancing lanterns weave and pop through the flowers and the trees towards the castle itself. When we finally caught up, we joined the crowd in a massive, closed circle. In the middle of the circle pranced a large dark horse with a knight - who later became St. Martin - dressed as we imagine a knight from biblical times would be dressed, including a massive cloak. 

All those little lights are lanterns! All the way to the castle (building on the left).

Its a long walk and PJ has little legs.

Apparently there was a bit of a play in which a St. Martin on his horse offered part of his cloak to a poor, cold beggar. I missed all of that because a band was playing and PJ and I were busy dancing in the back.

After the beggar had his cloak and the knight morphed into St. Martin, the crowd slowly meandered towards the castle doors. There each child got a croissant-like thing. I'm not sure what that is suppose to represent but I'm pretty sure PJ thought it was super yummy.

Pickle, PJ, Watcher, and Watcher's Mommy

To close out the night both families went to a temporary ice skating ring set up on the platz in front of the castle and enjoyed a hot wine or beer.

PJ with his buddy.

Then we slowly walked back home, all of us tired but satisfied.

It was an awesome night. I'm looking forward to our second year!




xo

Three Milestones: Dance, Dance

This post marks three milestones: Today PJ is 16 months old. This is the 400th post on Pickles and Onions. And as of today, this blog has been viewed almost 41,000 times.

The only way I know how to celebrate all those together is to turn up the music and get my groove on. Naturally, not alone ... cause, really, who wants to see a video of me dancing? I'm guessing not even my mom would be in for that one.

I'm dancing with PJ of course!

We make a great dance pair, right?

Though I'm guessing I'd get voted off if this was "Dancing with the Steinbachs". In that light and considering it is another month day for PJ, here's another video of just PJ with first his favorite stuffed puppies, then his mommy's giggle, then getting his groove on, and finally jumping onto his papa.


Don't you just want to join in? Go ahead and thanks for joining us on this journey, for celebrating with us, and for sticking around!


xo

Cowboy!

Remember when Aunt Sally helped the Mr. ride a horse for the first time? That was also the first time he ever grabbed onto electric fencing. I'm pretty sure his favorite part of the story was the horse riding...mine is and remains his face when he got a surprising shock.

Lord, was that funny.

Anyways, PJ isn't going to wait until he is 29 years old - he is already practicing his cowboy skills. On Mommy.

I'm an extremely willing pony, especially when I see that smile at second 14.

xo

Happy Halloween!

PJ went trick-or-treating for the first time this year. Since we live in Germany, where trick-or-treating is just entering into the mainstream, making this night possible bordered on magical for me. I have great memories of trick-or-treating in all the different neighbourhoods we lived in or visited. When we lived in the middle-of-freaking-nowhere my mom would even drive us up to Dayton to enjoy the night.

I guess I wanted PJ to have a taste of that too. Thankful the weather was on our side, although it wasn't warm, it didn't rain and it wasn't windy.

PJ as Eyore, nice and warm.

Friends of ours invited us to their small village for a night of awesome people, easy-going trick-or-treating, good food, and fun music. There were even jack-o-lanterns.

First stop, pumpkin review.

The Steinbach clan. I really did have a costume on - you'll see it later.

As soon as it got a little darker, we took off to trick-or-treat. The older kids ran off with two dads and the rest of us came together in a rag-tag sort of group. PJ was the youngest in our group - the others were seasoned pros. At the first two houses, PJ was confused. But by the third place, he carefully climbed the stairs, scooted through the kids who had already gotten their candy, to confidentially stuck out his open hand. As soon as he had his piece of candy, he'd throw it into his little bag - made by Aunt Sally a year ago - and head off to follow the older kids to the next house.

The 'older' kids setting the pace.

PJ getting his piece of candy.

Heading off to catch up with the others.

After a few hours, little PJ started to get candy picky. Sometimes he even had to be convinced to take a specific piece.

Hum....which one should he take?

This one shall do.

After he got the door part of the trip down, he noticed the other kids were carrying their bags. He got into the game...for a very short period of time. Bags slow ya down, you know?

PJ with his bag of candy. It was a big bag.

 Then we got back to the party, where the dancing recommenced and...

...PJ met fire! We had to hold him back with both arms, the entire time. Who doesn't like fire?

Finally we wrapped up the evening with some yummy salads, which somehow made PJ very excited.  That should make me happy but I'm pretty sure it was still the rush from the trick-or-treating, the dancing, and the fire (!!!).

It was totally the fire. Or the candy. Or my own excitement at sharing something so fundamental to my childhood with my own child that rubbed off on the entire Steinbach clan.

Yeah, it might have been that. 


XO

Out with the Old!

Before we bought our fabulous home, we had an expert come around and check it out. He was satisfied with the status of just about everything in the house - the heating, the windows, the walls, the roof, etc - but there was one aspect of the house that he said "must" change: the patio.

Over the years, the patio had settled unevenly, resulting in loose tiles that made walking on part of the patio a bit adventurous (PJ liked those parts more than the barefoot Mr.) and led to water running towards the house rather than away from it. I don't know about you, but we like when water heads in the other direction.

So, out it had to go.

I thought its be pretty simple: pick out some new tiles and get it done.

I had no idea how many tile options are out there. I'm pretty sure the stack of brochures I collected weighs about as much as I do.

And patio shapes! Why go with square when there are so many other, more natural shapes out there? Curves! Swoops!

And patio sizes! Why stick with the same, cramped patio when we could make it wider and/or longer?

And lights! Why not? Really, why not?

Long story, short: it took three months for us to decide what the "new" patio should look like.It didn't help that we also had some rather out of control vines and bushes around the patio. Did I mention that mosquitoes love exactly those types of vines?

Here is the patio - post one round of rather dramatic vine cutting - in July 2012.

You can see how deeply the patio sunk on the left side.
The mosquito vines are hanging behind me.

Those cracks in the patio? Not suppose to be there.
Like those vines behind the grill? So do those mosquitoes.

We started in August to cut the vines back even further and I took out one of the bushes. I guess when the mosquitoes got starved out, the peacocks from the castle decided our patio wasn't so bad.

What our patio looked like on Friday, October 19, 2012.

When we finally had a plan and I finally ordered the materials - we could finally start directly working on our project. Yesterday the real work began: tearing up the patio tiles, removing the underlying sand, and digging the hole for the patio extension. Considering we aren't the handy-iest of people and aren't in the best of shape and frankly don't quite know what we are doing...we kicked ass.

The tiles are up, the offensive vine is gone.

The other offensive vine is also gone, as is an impressive amount of earth, and a complete bush.

Next weekend, we put down the new foundational materials. Then our lovely friend, The Garden Goddess, will lay down the tiles.

And then, because we've crossed off all the big projects from our list, something will go wrong - cause that's how home owning works, I've been told. Right?



xo

Dear Driver of The Big Shiny Car

Dear driver of the very nice, very fast car with the license plate PF US XXX,


I will be praying for you and your family. Lord knows someone was out there praying for me and mine this morning. Otherwise I just can't explain how you failed to total our cars and kill one or both of us.


We both have families with little ones. In fact, they spend their days just across the road from each other: yours at the school and mine at the day care. I think seeing you with your child and carrying mine in my heart always, your behavior this morning is especially bizarre to me. Maybe you were just in a hurry, running late like I was this morning too. Or maybe you have a new car - it is a really nice looking car - and you are still enjoying its powerful pick-up. Or maybe you are a thrill seeker and seek out opportunities for a rush. I don't know why you almost ran me into incoming traffic by coming up so hard and fast on my right side in a zipper formation in the center of Schwetzingen.

Or maybe you are American and you don't know how to drive in a zipper or that passing on the right is all sorts of illegal in Germany? And that the speed limit is a pretty tight 50 kilometers an hour within German towns?

Whatever the reason might have been, we were both lucky (blessed?) that my grandfather rammed defensive driving into me between the ages of 16 and 28. Each time he rode with me, he drove me crazy with his reminders to pay attention - know what and who is on the left, the right, headed towards me and always repeating "its better to be alive, than to be right." 

For example this morning, did you see the massive construction vehicle headed towards us? Well, actually headed towards me before you whipped past me, partially cutting me off and mostly pushing me into the left lane. Have you ever driven a vehicle that large? I haven't but I did drive a tractor more than a couple times and I took physics in college. Maybe you don't realize that a vehicle that massive cannot stop as quickly as, say, your very nice car. Even if that driver had been the best driver in the entire world, he or she couldn't have really done a whole lot if I hadn't first seen you coming, aggressively, on my right and slammed onto my breaks hard and long.

Did you hear the screech of my tires? Those of the cars behind us? Did you hear the horns of other drivers, shocked and angry? Did you see the driver of the construction vehicle hit the breaks hard too? Did you see how close it got?

Did you see me survive?

Or were you already too far ahead, too focused on your own world, too ignorant to realize what you had just done?

I don't know. I just know that I am so thankful that someone was praying for me and my family. I am thankful that my grandfather drove me nuts. I am so thankful that I was in our very nice, big Mercedes this morning and not in our little, sweet VW.

Tonight, when I see my family, I am going to hug them hard. I hope you will to. We are so lucky to enjoy our families, to watch our little ones grow, and to be their parents. I don't know about you, but I want a lot more time with my child and my husband. I want many more mornings, afternoons, evenings, and, yes, even crazy, interrupted nights.

So, please, the next time you are behind the wheel of your fancy car, could you please remember your family? I assume that they love you, that they want more time with you, and that they are particularly happy to see you in normal clothes, rather than a prison uniform, and sitting in your living room, rather than laying in a casket.

And please, please, please also remember that your fellow drivers have families too and none of us want to host a funeral for a young mommy, especially for one who dies for absolutely no reason at all.

All the best,       Pickle