And the academy award will one day go to...

It's not clear where she gets her air of drama. Probably her Dad. He's well known in the biomedical engineering world for his histrionics. In any case, here's a video of world's silliest toddler giving her best faces during a dinner. (Note: baby spoon privileges were temporarily suspended due to extreme bananas-ness leading to dogs wearing much of her dinner.)

Homeschool for Mom

Motherhood is a relentless teacher. One of it's biggest lessons is that you have no right to the world as you'd like it to be. Not dissimilar to the "life's not fair" mantra we learned as kids, but I don't like saying that so much because it seems to set up fair and unfair as good versus bad. But, really, it is just about the absence of fairness as a universal rule. It's not bad that life's not fair. It just is. Edie has been showing me from day one that my comfy little bubble is not real. Nevertheless, I still react strongly to life's nuisances - loud neighbors, people not minding my Midwestern personal space - as if they were personal affronts and not just the benign states that they are. My shrieking pee-pants Zen master still has a lot of work to do. Here's our syllabus for this term.

Lesson One: Diapers Are An Illusion. In the Western world, diapers are synonymous with babies. Not so everywhere, and actually we have done some "potty-whispering" with Edie since she was about 4 months old. Diapers, however, have been a constant presence as well. We've turned a corner lately wherein Edie (A) does not want to use the potty. Ok, that helps me rid myself of any involuntary smugness I may have become tainted with from having a baby who does her biz in the toilet at such a young age. Except that (B), she now hates diapers. Hates. Yells about it. Attempts frightening changing table dives to avoid them. And when she gets a chance, she up and takes them off. Now I respect this opinion. I mean, consider what diapers are. Gross and not that comfy. But am I ready to give up the sanctity of not living in a biohazardous zone? E's Answer: Take a deep breath, because it will all change soon enough and furthermore it's not up to me anyways. Now, get to cleaning up the poopy diaper I just removed and hurled on your yoga mat, mother. [Note: this happened.]

Lesson Two: You Are Not What You Eat. If you were what you ate, my daughter would be a potato. With tofu appendages. And lentil soup for brains. Besides the too hot, too salty, or excessively sugary, Edie has been given all manner of food since she started solids. And she was blessed(/cursed) with teeth from an early age, so she's a bit of a chewing prodigy. Yet these days, with 14 chompers present and accounted for and 2 more on the horizon, she has become very picky. Particularly about vegetables. Broccoli now must not only be avoided in food, but it must be plucked out, floret by floret, and then taken away by me as she makes urgent eye contact, and exclaims "uh!?!? eh?!?" That's toddler for "fix this now." I have learned from this new mealtime ritual of making me remove food from her sight line - food that I lovingly planned, cooked, and served - that pleading, reasoning, and burying my head in my hands do not help. The last one feels sort of good though; like a power nap. This will pass, either because she starts eating everything or because she'll get too old for it to be my problem (this is what I did to my own mom, after all). Until then, I'll try to accept it - but in the meantime I will also continue to make green smoothies for her to drink.

Lesson Three: When Life Gives You a Toddler, It also Opens the Washing Machine. My house is now mostly a series of traps to entertain a toddler so that I can get two hours of productive time in while she is awake. That's two hours total over the 10+ hours she is out and about. While two hours is my goal, I try hard not to knock myself when I don't get there, which is fairly often. Baby traps involve creating a world of activities that she thinks she came up with on her own. So leaving the front-loading washing machine ajar so that Edie loads it up with bags of pasta and containers of dried beans. Putting all of her shoes, past future & present, in a box in the hall so she can try on each and every one. Setting out my little basket of nail polish, all schellacked shut from many months of neglect. Knowing how to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider while sauteeing. And that's just some of my bag of tricks. Moreover, I try to remember to drop my cleaning/cooking/web surfing whenever I can and just get down on the floor to play with her.

Happy Mother's Day.... to me...

My second ever Mother's Day as a mother has passed. It included a sparkling kitchen, baked goods, cleaning and feng shui-ing the baby's room, and a picnic dinner at the beer garden. But there was a catch. I had to do all of that myself. You see, Will is in Montreal for an "MRI conference," which is, apparently, what they call secret second families these days. Will "Is that your real name?" Grissom did, however, send me a magnificent bouquet.

Edie and I spent the afternoon with our friends Lara and Linnea, since their husband/dad left this morning for a work trip as well. And if you are thinking this all sounds fishy, then you are paying good attention. But no need to focus on whatever bigamist/money-laundering/cat burglaring schemes the menfolk are up to. It is, after all, Mother's Day. I made the child wear a semi-matching outfit (matching me, that is, not itself). So we both donned Detroit shirts and floral-patterned bottoms and trucked to the local trails to catch some rays, feed some ducks, and yell "woof! woof!" at every dog we saw.

Highlights of the day also include being able to do a full hour of yoga, as after having had the energy flow freed up in her room, Edie took a 2.5 hour nap. This gave me so much time that I even painted my toe nails. Of course, I promptly stubbed 8 of my 10 toes within minutes of finishing this. Still a win, especially if you squint when looking at my feet.

So Happy Mother's Day to me. And Herr Doktor Husband, (who/)whereever you are, we missed you!
Edie giving a kiss to her best buddy, Linnea. These two adore each other.
Standing! And matching mom!

The advantage of having dogs with baby

As I've said, there aren't a lot of advantages to dog + baby, especially when you are minus yard. The ticks, the grooming, the occasional vomit, but mostly the additional responsibility to animate creatures when your human creature already keeps you on a very demanding schedule can become the straws that break your back. I'm sure it's my change in perspective, but Billy and Sugar seem even more onerous lately. First, there is a man who lives in a tent in an adjacent park. Well, he lives there sometimes. That's why we call him the Drifter. Billy runs up and inspects the tent regularly, much to my horror, but I suppose the day he gets Drifter-punched, he'll learn. Sugar recently happened upon the Drifter's toilet. Hint: no indoor plumbing ... or doors. I am not going to go into any further details but know that she didn't only take notes. Then Billy, besides irking tent-dwellers, has long been known to get amorous with a pillow now and again. Five years into his life, however, he's gotten ... skilled at this particular forbidden love. I did not realize what a prude I was until Rondoodle Jeremy (as we now call him) put on his last performance.

I love dogs. I even love my dogs. But they are taking a lot and not giving much. You see, we'd had dreams of dogs that were baby-tolerant. But they run away at every turn, hardly submitting to a pet. It's frustrating but there's not much to be done. Obviously running away is allowed, but is it so much to ask that they put up with a little baby abuse in exchange for cleaning up their biohazard selves, paying muchos euros to keep their furs trimmed, and even access to the occasional batter bowl? To that end, here is Billy, earning his keep for once, getting jousted by a happy baby and her Swiffer stick.

Mini Hofbrauhaus

[Edie was skeptical about this trip at first ("dogs at dinner? why can't we just be civilized for once?") but we won her over.]

Our go-to-many-many-beer-gardens enthusiasm has not yet waned in the week since we decided on this goal. And that is something. This time, we went to the Mini Hofbrauhaus, which is a small beer garden in the English Gartens. It is known for being dog-friendly, so we brought along Billy and Sugar for a change. It is hard to imagine what constitutes being dog-friendly here in Germany, since dogs are allowed in most everywhere except grocery stores. They are on the trains, in restaurants and cafes, taking themselves for walks, and generally being treated not at all like creatures who eat poop and then try to give you a kiss. Which they all are. Even when they wear Loius Vuitton collars, like the beagle at the park who out-classed my mangy mutts.

What made this beer garden dog-friendly then, when there are dogs at every beer garden? Off leash mayhem and extra-tolerant humans. Billy dealt well with his freedom, bounding off to meet and greet and then rushing back to pick up Edie's refuse. Sugar, on the other hand, was a bit overwhelmed. The whole experience seemed to short circuit her tiny and ineffectual brain, causing her to forget who her people are and instead snuggle in between two people she'd never met and on several occasions to walk quickly in an inexplicable direction away from our group. So she ended up tied to a stroller.

Beers, fizzy apple juice, and guacamole were consumed in large quantities. Edie forewent tortilla chips entirely, using them only as guac transport devices. Toward the end she regaled us with her new skill of standing. And, not one to rely on others for congratulations, gave herself some great big cheers for it. Hooray for standing! Hooray for beer gardens! Meh for bringing the dogs out to dinner.

The Aumeister Challenge

Dad trying to get baby to look at the camera

I know I'm not the most photogenic person out there, but Will really outdoes himself with terrible pictures of me....

Homemade smokey miso tofu with avocado sammies. Mmmmmmmm.

Well, it's T-3.5 months for our time left in Munich. So this is when the rose colored glasses come out and everything wonderful about a place beckons you never to go. And there are a lot of wonderful things about Munich. One of the best: beer gardens. They're not just for lushes and Lederhosen, either. Not by a long shot. Beer gardens are the most family-friendly places imaginable in that they've got something for everyone in an incredibly relaxed setting. I know that it is not surprising that Germans are responsible for inventing and popularizing such carefree and casual past-time (zing! it actually is suprising!). Most beer gardens have playgrounds, and all have room to run around, self-service food and drinks, and allow you to bring your own grub as well. The one very near to our flat is called Aumeister and it is fabulous. Imagine: first, we take a walk through the English Gartens, one of the largest parks in Europe, filled with streams, rivers, forest, duck ponds, open fields, and all of it is off-leash friendly for the dogs. Then, on the way out, stop at Aumeister beer garden for giant soft pretzels, beer for pops and fizzy apple juice for momma. Squirmy baby gets to crawl around, meet other kids, and maybe even go down a slide. Divine. (Can you hear Sarah MacLachlan's I Will Remember You in the background, or what?)

So, with this in mind, we are trying to go to lots of beer gardens before we go. Or at least go to the beer garden a lot. It's not in our nature to drive too hard in the venturing department, so it may just be a lot of going to Aumeister. Today is Good Friday, so Will has the day off. And Monday is Easter Monday (or Super Good Monday, as I call it), and he has that day off too. So many beer gardens are on our agenda. Oh Munich, Stay Cool and Have a Great Summer. LYLAS.

The Big 3-0

My 30th birthday has now come and gone. And it came in with a bang. The night before, I got the Munich Flu, or whatever GE disease Will brought into our home. I got very, very sick. Many, many times. There was a bucket involved. And a baby who was just getting over her own illness, and so was nursing more than usual, thus draining any scraps of my life force. I also learned that if you try to lie on a couch near a toddler who likes you, she will try to climb on your stomach and face, and this is not at all pleasant when stricken with influenza.

Happily, I recovered awfully fast. In time for Will's surprise of asking some friends along to dinner on Saturday. Edie got to cuddle with her good pal Jack, who is moving back to Australia in a few days. And I got to eat too much, which was fine, on account of my viral crash diet.