Stuff Evey Can Do----Jan 2013

Miss E is a pretty smart cookie and I was just realizing that she's got a couple new things she can do and interests that have caught her attention even in the couple weeks since we've been in Germany. So I thought every once in a while (I'm not organized enough to say how often) I could do a summary on all the cool stuff going on with her. Some of these she's been able to do for a couple months (like her colors) and come are newer (like shapes)

Colors
-She can identify all the standard rainbow colors plus pink and brown. If we have a bunch of colorful things and ask her to pick or point to a certain colored one she can. She can also verbally identify most all of the colors. Orange is still hard for her to say. If I ask her what color something is she can tell me.

Letters
-She can point to and identify about 3/4 of the alphabet (i.e. I'll ask 'Where's the S' and she points). She can tell me what a lot of letters are and their sounds: A, B, D, T, S, W, M, and a bunch more I can't think of.

Numbers
- She can point to and identify numbers 1-9. She likes to count things when I ask how many, but she only counts to 2. If there are more than two of something she just keeps repeating "One two one two one!"  and sometimes will throw in a number 9, "One, two....NINE!"

I tried to get a video of her counting, but her attention was completely on Brave, our cartoon of choice that morning.

Shapes
-She can identify the following: circle, square, rectangle, star, triangle, diamond. She tries to say them but the only one she is really good at is "STAR"

Dress Up
-This girl is also in a huge tutu phase! Everyday she asks to wear a tutu, which results in some awesome fashion statements of wearing tutus over jeans and jammies. Her favorite thing to do in  her tutu is to 'twirl'. This kid has some awesome dance moves.

Favorite Toys
-She loves her baby doll she got from Santa. Her babies will cry (she'll be doing something else and will make a 'wah, wah, waaaaah' sound) which usually means her baby needs a snack or to be rocked. She also loves to color and play with her Little People.

Favorite Shows
- Brave is a new one she likes (and we've watched a couple days in a row) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is always good (thanks to her Auntie for giving her a Mickey DVD for Christmas). Elmo is now a big deal and Blue's Clues was a hit as well.

She also has a new found love of escalators. There is one at the KMCC (the ginormous BX here) and she and her Daddy rode it 11 times roundtrip before she was done. She got so good that she could even step on and off herself.

House Hunting: Ramstein Style

House hunting around the base here is like a competitive sport. We could have gotten housing on base, which would have been a two bedroom stairwell unit on a base that is actually like 15 minutes away from Ramstein where Guy will be working. By going off base we were able to find something we liked a lot better, with more space and with a shorter commute for the hubs. 

So we started looking, driving around for a couple days was a great way to get more familiar with the area. We looked in bigger towns and small ones, houses and apartments. While we were looking for our new home so were bunches of other Americans. Twice in a row we showed up for an appointment to view a property only to be told that it had just been rented to the people before us. Luckily for us we got here in the off season for PCSing, I've heard that in the summer time it is even crazier to try and find a place. 

Our new home is in Obermohr, which is just west of the base. It took us 8 minutes to get to the gate. It is newly remodeled 3 bedroom 1.5 bathroom. The landlords are a super sweet older German couple that live next door  They have 6 grand kids so were pretty excited to have Evelyn as their neighbor. We will move in on the 22nd, which was the earliest date the office on base could deliver our temporary furniture. 

Here are a bunch of pics of our sweet new home.

The kitchen

Evelyn's Bedroom

Her wardrobe was her favorite part- hiding spot!

1st Bathroom

Entry Area

to the left is the spare bedroom, in front is our bedroom and to the right is the rest of everything

Our Bedroom

The 3rd Bedroom

I realized I'm lacking pictures of the family room and 2nd bathroom. We have a video that gives a better feel of the whole place, but blogger wouldn't upload it so I'll just stick in on facebook. But we love this place and can picture our family living here. I'll leave you with this, which is the view of our town from the balcony off of the family room: (click it to see it nice and big)

International Travel with my Toddler

Evey and I did the trip over here just us girls, since her daddy had to be here earlier than us for his job stuff. I was *slightly* terrified of doing an international flight with my toddler and totally terrified of having to do it by myself. But terrified or not, it was going to happen!
The traveling itself wasn't so bad. Guy's mom took us to the airport and got a pass to help me to the gate. The help through security was wonderful.

What I had with me and didn't check was:

• My backpack (crammed with diapers and sippy cups and snacks and military paperwork)
• The carseat (the lil hobbit had her own seat, so even though it was a pain to lug around, the carseat was lovely to have her sit in during the flight)
• Her backpack (her Grandma got her an itty bitty pink backpack that I put some fun new toys in for her)
• The stroller (which I used to cart all this crap around on or I would have been found dead on one of those floor escalator things in the Chicago airport)

We had a three hour flight to Chicago, a couple hours layover, and then our big flight to Frankfurt. My favorite thing that day was the tablet. I loaded it up with toddler apps and episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. It was worth its weight in gold! I had even ordered Evey her own pair of headphones so the other passengers wouldn't have to listen to Mickey doing the hot dog dance. When we were in Chicago and I found our next gate I let the munchkin run around like a wild woman. She was having a blast and the other passengers were very sweet to her. 

It was when we were checked in to our Frankfurt flight that it sank in that we were leaving the country. Signs for our airline were listed in German first, with English underneath. People around me were having conversations I couldn't understand. I'm pretty sure Vernon Dursley has a German brother and that he was on my flight. This man was huge with a magnificent mustache and thick accent. He was outraged when he was informed that his carry-on was too large and would be checked at the gate. His face even got purple like Vernon's, I'm convinced they are related. 

Evey fell asleep not ten minutes before we were supposed to board out flight. She was in her carseat and with the help of an airline employee we managed to get her on the plane and buckled in her seat without waking her up! It was miraculous! She even slept through the safety announcements (both the German and English versions). I thought for sure she would be out for a couple hours, she hadn't napped all day and was TIRED. Then the woman seated in front of her fully reclined her seat 45 minutes into the flight which squished Evelyn's feet, waking her up and destroying my hope of a break. Looking back now the flight is a blur of weird airline food, cartoons and rocking/cuddling my baby trying to convince her to go back to sleep. 

There was a child who screamed "Nein, nein, NEIN" at his mother for about 6 hours of the flight (not exaggerating) It was awful, but I'm just glad the tantrum thrower wasn't my kid.

I got lots of help from some very kind strangers and I survived flying to Germany with my toddler. I even survived the Frankfurt airport pushing a cart loaded with our 5 suitcases with one hand while pulling the stroller with the other. We found the USO and caught a shuttle to Ramstein where the husband was eagerly awaiting our arrival. The End (whew, even just thinking back about that day is exhausting...)

Willkommen in Deutschland

I am a terrible blogger. I am going to change that (hopefully, maybe...) Why would I change now when being a terrible blogger seems to work so well for me? We moved to Germany and this would be a great way to fill in our loved ones on all our adventures without having to figure out the time difference for a phone call.

So to get the stragglers up to speed:

• We have an awesome kid, her name is Evey and being her mom totally rocks
• The husband is now enlisted in the U.S. Air Force
• We (as of a few weeks ago) live in the gorgeous country of Germany