Ex Patria

She lives! But four is too much.

I had my camera at the shop and guess what!  They fixed her.  (Yup, she's female.  That's because in German, "Kamera" demands the female article.)  It cost 136 Euros which is much, much, much cheaper than buying a new one.  I'm very happy.

On less good news, we've been bumped off another proposal - again.  This time we are pretty certain why: the budget was tight and we're just having too many kids which makes us too pricey.

We would have been willing to compromise - forgo the kids' school tuition, for instance.  But it never came to that.  Of course, nobody is coming right out and tells us it's because of the kids (can you spell "discrimination law suit"?) but it was pretty obvious anyhow.

It's a blow.  Because if there is one thing we cannot change about our lives it's the number of children we have.  I mean, without making them more.  Which we won't do either.

In retrospect, maybe we shouldn't have booked that summer vacation in the US.  But now that we are committed (the tickets are non-refundable) we're going to have a wonderful time.  Even with four kids.  Especially with four kids.  Hell, yah.

First birthday

Happy Birthday, sweet girl.  Apart from the moment when you grabbed my coffee cup in an unsupervised moment and took a swig from it, and poured the rest on the table cloth and down your shirt and pants, you've been a stellar one-year-old so far.

I want to wrap you in tissue paper and keep you like you are.  Time seems to go much too fast and you're growing up so quickly.  Every day is a delight with you but sometimes I just wished we could slow down a bit.  Just a bit, sometimes.

Error 99

My camera died.

I had taken a few pictures of Leah on her first birthday today (we're getting to that in a separate post) when suddenly the camera just froze.  Like a bad Windows screen, nothing worked anymore.  I couldn't take pictures, I couldn't view the content of the SD card, nothing.

The battery symbol had indicated low battery so I went ahead and charged the battery, not wasting too much thought on it.  But when the battery was charged and powered the camera up, I took one picture and the little menu screen on the back of the camera flashed irritably.  The flashing wouldn't stop even when I turned the camera off. So I ejected the battery and tried again - same result.  I tried again, then I had an "Error 99" message and the camera got warm.  It had never ever done that before and it sounds very bad to me.  Gahh!

I googled "Error 99" and got about three gazillion hits - and five and a half gazillion answers.  It's basically a generic error code that means nothing and everything. 

We're flying out in 10 days.  The next repair shop is 40 minutes away in Schweinfurt and I have the very bad feeling they would just tell me to send the camera to Canon.  Which would take forever even if they managed to fix the camera.  Of course, the shop might also be able to repair the camera, for not much money and within a day or two.  Sure.

But somehow, I see this result: The camera might/might not get repaired, but not before we leave and maybe not even before we come back.  I have to shoot a wedding the weekend we come back -- but I would need a camera for that.  Camera repairs are usually quite pricey. 

Sigh. I am mentally saying good-bye to the Rebel.  It's been good to me.

Then this afternoon, my MIL called and told us she and her husband (who is not well) are considering coming up to Virginia to see us when we're there.  That's great news and we're very happy about that.  But as I said, my father-in-law is not well, so she asked us if we could stay at the hotel while she and her husband stayed at my sister-in-laws.  Of course we said yes - what a question! I want her to be as comfortable as possible and I am very, very happy that my in-laws are coming to see us in Virginia at all.  It's a great stress factor on them.  I want to do everything I can to make this easy for them.

But... that's another $600+ for the hotel. (I know, Natalie, and thank you.  But we need to stay close and be available at all times, at least for the days when my in-laws are there.)  Doug is making good money when he's got work but he doesn't have another assignment lined up for the fall just yet.  Which makes us very hesitant about spending money.  A new camera is just not in the budget right now.

This is making me more miserable than I want to admit to myself.  Photography has become a big, important part of my life.  And now I'm without a camera - any camera.  My little Point-and-Shoot is broken ever since Alan took it apart two years ago.  We won't have any pictures of our vacation.  I will not be able to do the wedding.  (It's "only" my cousin's wedding, not a paid job - but they asked me to shoot it because they love my pictures.  I thought this might be a first step into a good direction.)

I'm very, very unhappy.

Friday morning surgery

It's hot, hot, hot in Germany right now.  With the weather as whimsical as it was lately, this means nothing.  Tomorrow, we might need to pull the sweaters out again.  But today is blue skies, bright sunshine and kids running around with watermelon slices, jumping into the kiddie pool in the yard.  Oh, and also playing robot wars with Legos.  That is actually weather independent.

So, I sat on the couch this morning, checking my email. The shutters were all down on the eastern side of the house (for those of you who know our house, that's the side facing the garden).  It was lovely cool and dark in the room.  Leah stood at the couch, happily chomping on a piece of apple.  She loves apple slices - to eat and to smear with. 

All of a sudden, she dropped her piece of apple, and as I looked at her, her face got white and then red, her eyes got really wide and then she screamed.  And screamed and screamed.  First, I thought she'd bitten her tongue but I couldn't calm her down.  Then I spotted the ripped up body of a bee on her shirt.  And when I looked closer, I could see the sting still stuck in her tongue, complete with the poison sack.

Have you ever tried to hold an almost-one-year-old still, with her mouth open, while your husband tries to retrieve a sting from her tongue with a pair of tweezers?  No?  Lucky you.  I remember the first time one of my kids (David, incidentally) had to be given an intravenous shunt.  You can't be squeamish and you can't lose your nerve, even though you really want to. I mean - a bee just stung your little girl in the tongue!  'nuff said.

She was in pain afterwards and we gave her some Motrin for that.  She was distressed, mostly because the pacifier was not calming her down - she tried sucking on it and then spit it out again, appalled that her one beloved comforter made things worse instead of better.  We fed her some cool yoghurt for breakfast and monitored her for two hours.  She's fine.  But it sure wasn't pleasant.

Upside down pants

Here's an important lesson:  You cut your fabrics correctly and you want to sew the sides up like described in the instructions but they don't fit.  You try the paper pattern and you check the cutting and you see that the pattern is actually not symmetrical.  You ignore this all and plow ahead and you have to futz around and cut some fabric off to make it all work...  in the end, the pants look nice and adorable although you wonder why they didn't give you a guide for the top hem but instead for the bottom...  then you might want to consider that you had the pattern upside down! D'uh.

I'd bought this really cute pattern from Farbenmix.  It contains several pieces - a jacket, a T-shirt, a pair of normal pants, a pair of comfy pants.  I have hesitated making anything because the pattern mainly calls for jersey fabrics and jersey and I, we are not friends. But yesterday, I looked at this pretty jersey I had bought ages ago and thought, I should do something with this.  Also, the kids were playing quietly, Leah was not clinging to me (anymore) like a barnacle, so what to do with all that spare time?

I cut the paper pattern while chatting to my cousin on the phone.  Bad mistake.  She can tell you that I said to her, "I probably shouldn't cut the fabric while having one ear on the phone", and when I tried to line the sides up and said, "Huh, that's funny, those sides don't match!" and then, "That's even weirder, the original paper pattern doesn't match up either."

Well, no, they didn't.  What I tried to match up as the inside seam of the legs was really the front and back seams of the lap part.  But instead of slowing down and rethinking the entire venture, I went ahead and futzed.  Out came this:

It's cute if somewhat... shapeless.  It wasn't until I decided to make a second pair from a different piece of fabric that I had the idea to check the website of Farbenmix.  Conveniently (I forgot), they have step-by-step photo instructions on their site.  Then it dawned on me...

The second pair fits much better although the first one works well, too.  In those sizes, such a mistake isn't too horrible, plus I learned to sew jersey.  Then I went ahead and made the shirt too, just because.  I don't really love the fabric pattern (those stripes are very... I don't know.  They remind me of something but I can't quite say of what).  But the sewing was easy and the outcome very satisfying.

I also finally finished the dress for Leah's first birthday:

And I got all those cloth napkins sewn that I had started, oh so long ago.  Now everybody has a cloth napkin and now we'll save money and resources on paper towels and paper napkins, yay!  I just better not forget to wash them regularly...

Much better

Leah finally woke up fever-free.  She's still a bit cranky but sometimes also happy - the latter we've not seen much in the past three days.  She's awfully skinny - she lost about 3 lbs, the poor mite.  But her appetite is returning and we keep feeding her with choice morsels.  A good time to introduce chocolate, I wonder?

Anyway.  Better, and that's good. Take that, stupid flu!

Summer break

Friday was the last day of school.  David's kindergarten had closed its doors the day before for all but the soon-to-be first graders.  It's a little tradition that those kids who leave the nursery/Kindergarten for school (which in Germany begins with the first grade) have a big sleepover at the school with all their teachers, complete with scavenger hunt through the town, pizza dinner and a big fire and ghost stories.  The next morning, the parents join in a potluck breakfast and bring their tired and worn-out kids home, complete with all their paraphernalia - house shoes, towels, photos, a big ring binder full of their work, another one with all their art work, a final present, more pictures...  we had to go back and forth twice and still forgot some items which one of the teachers dropped off at our house.

Alan had a great report card (which does mention his tendency to drift off into dreamworlds) and everybody was looking forward to three weeks of tumbling around and then our three-week trip to the US.

That Friday night, Alan had a violent vomity attack.  He had to be showered, the bed had to be completely stripped, the mattress cleaned and flipped -- all in all we were working for about half an hour before we got him medicated and back to bed.

Saturday morning, Jacob woke up with watery diarrhea and general malaise.  Leah woke up with a fever, raging up to 104 F before we got it down with Infant's Motrin.  David was the only cheerful and healthy one.

During the day, things started to calm down somewhat.  Leah's fever subsided, no more diarrhea was reported, Alan ate normally and was fine.  We went on a walk with all of them and everybody had a great time.

Saturday night, both Leah and Jacob woke up crying, with high fevers.  Both got medicated but while Jacob drifted off to sleep quickly, Leah fussed and cried and buried her flushed little face on my chest, her fists grabbing me tightly, refusing to be held by anybody (read: her Dad) than me.  She didn't really fall back asleep until 5 am, and then woke up crying, again with high fever, at 7 am.  Both she and Jacob were listless and feverish throughout the day.  Both are cycling through fevers but we can't really tell what they have -- while Leah has a bit of a runny nose and coughs a bit, Jacob has nothing but the fever.  If Leah has not improved by tomorrow, I'll bring her in to see her pediatrician.

I try to console myself that it's better happening now, as we are at home and at ease, than during school time or during our trip.  But sick and achy little kids do touch your heart so.

Leah, doing really well on the walk yesterday.
(And luckily, both she and Jacob are easy to keep hydrated!)

Basalt

The Rhön is of volcanic descent - it's all basalt and rocks and stones and more basalt.  The coolest formations are made up of columnar basalt. There is a famous site at the Gangolfsberg near my Dad's hunting lease and I have to confess, I've never ever been there.  So today, in between the misery that is multiple sick kids and adults, we picked ourselves up for a short outing of an hour or two to visit the site.

It was really worth it - it instantly became a favorite place.  Rocks to climb, soft forest paths to run, cool formations to look at -- what's not to like?  And all of this only 10 minutes from our house!  It was a good break from lounging on various sofas and beds, and improved moods all around.  I'd call that a success.

If you ever find yourself in the Rhön, drive past the Schweinfurter Haus, and park up the street in the woods.  Then the "Teaching Path" will lead you directly to the basalt columns.  It's a cool path with lots of wood carvings sprinkled about (a shoe, an owl, a hare, a mushroom, etc.) and informative panels about the trees in the area.  It's really nicely done.  The path is great for walking.

Right until the end where you have to be somewhat nimble to climb up the steep steps to the basalt columns:

And then you see this:

And this:

Probably not this one because we took him home with us:

Great climbing rocks!

Sick little girl.

Feeling much better after the outing - fresh air is a wonderful curative.

A bit down from the colums is the "Teufelskeller" (Devil's Cellar) which is a giant rock with a tiny cave underneath it.  The boys were both spooked and intrigued.

And now, early bedtimes all around.