As I said in my earlier post, we headed to Bad Durkheim on Sunday afternoon for the "Oktoberfest of wine." We had some incredible luck and ended up with a great parking spot right by the action. Katy didn't care about any drama involving parking spaces, she just wanted out. So, out she got.



I was literally standing at the car when I took this shot. We could have walked up and picked the grapes right off the vines only a few steps away.



Even more exciting was the carnival atmosphere. It was like a big State Fair.



We put Katy in the backpack and headed in. We were all a little transfixed by the atmosphere. There were plenty of carnival rides, games with the normal silly prizes, booths of vendors selling things and lots of food and wine. The sights and smells were intoxicating.

This was Katy's favorite part. She LOVED to watch the swings going around. She clapped and sang to the swing for as long as we would let her watch; and we came back often.



Of course, we also needed to find an open place to play, which is really tough when you're trying to shove an expected one million visitors into a village that normally has 19,000 residents. We finally found an out of the way spot. Katy could still see the rides, so she had to point them out to us, in case we missed them.



She's also very into mimicking and helping right now. Since Ryan squatted down to be with her, she had to squat down too.



Of course, when he points, she needs to as well, even if she's mentally moved on to looking at something else....



Another pretty view.



Katy is quite the ham. People kept stopping to watch her play and giggle in the grass. She kept dropping the pretzel pieces we were feeding her, so Ryan kept throwing them in the bushes to keep her from eating the dirty ones.



Here's where the "helpful" part of her nature kicks in.



She's on her way to throw another (good) piece of pretzel into the bush.





I missed the kiss for being helpful, but it was quite a moment.



I couldn't quite capture how giddy Katy looked the entire time we were there. This place was a perfect amusement for her.



Of course, being able to take "Daddy rides" when you aren't allowed on the big rides goes a long way too....



Here they are running. Katy's almost got the hang of it so it's fun to encourage.





She did a lot of laughing. I wish I could capture it. Katy doesn't laugh a petite little laugh, it's a full out roar that involves her entire body.



Of course, more clapping because everything was so amusing.



Collecting bark. Normally we let Katy collect whatever she wants off the ground (rocks, etc...) but this was a bit more difficult since there were cigarette butts everywhere a quite a bit of broken glass. So, the fact that we actually let her pick something up was a victory in her eyes.



Some Daddy love.



The big ferris wheel. Maybe next year. This year it was transfixing to stand underneath and watch it go around....



This was a water "log" ride. Katy loved it. She and another boy that was slightly older both sat and watched and took turns laughing. They both had the same type of full body laugh so it was hard for anyone around to keep from laughing as well since as soon as one would stop the other would start right up again.









It takes a lot of energy to laugh so hard....



This was the view down the aisle of wine vendors. The tents to either side were PACKED with tables, benches and people. They were quite literally shoulder to shoulder. We didn't stop to partake but I'm sure it was all lovely.



This is another crowd shot. As the afternoon wore on it got crowded and very difficult to navigate and push through.



We needed another break from the crowd so went back to our nice, quite spot.



We actually found a place where Katy could pick things up. Since she loves rocks, gravel covered ground is perfect. She had quite the crowd watching her pick up handfuls of gravel and shove them down her shirt.



Where'd it go?



That bulge at the bottom of her shirt isn't her, she actually managed to load that much gravel in there. Of course, when she stood up she had quite a spray coming out.



We took one final spin through the carnival atmosphere and couldn't resist the balloons. It was fun to be able to ask for a schmetterling (butterfly) in German, even though I couldn't remember how to say "Do you have?" until after we left (it's "Haben zie?" for those that wonder). The carnival atmosphere makes it easy to just point and use one word over the noise without feeling too bad....



Katy loves the butterfly much more than I ever would have imagined. She spent the entire hour drive home looking at it, playing with it, singing to it, telling it jokes and laughing at or with it. I've never seen her enjoy a car trip so much (I didn't enjoy not being able to see out the rear view mirror, but was able to forgive that given how pleasant Katy was). We stopped by base on the way home so she could burn some energy at the playground and I could wash the car and we had to convince her that it was OK to leave the butterfly in the car.

When we got home she and butterfly were inseparable. Normally we have a pretty strict "no toys at the table" policy, but it became obvious very quickly that she wasn't going to eat if butterfly couldn't accompany her.





The butterfly also gave us one of those "eureka" moments with Katy. It was so incredible that both Ryan and I were wiping away tears afterwards. You have to remember that our struggle with Katy and language has been more than her not speaking. She also doesn't seem to understand us. As the evening progressed she joined us in the living room. One of us asked her where her butterfly balloon was. She stopped and you could just see the wheels spinning: "Where is my butterfly balloon?" The fact that she obviously understood what we were asking was reward enough. But, then I pointed out to her that it was in the kitchen and that she should go get it. And she did! It was incredible to see that she's finally starting to understand what we're saying.

Plus, now I know that if she doesn't respond she's ignoring me intentionally. That's an improvement, right?

A few random pictures to clear off my camera....

I turned around the other day to this. Katy's figured out how to take toys to make them into a step stool.



She looks a little wild but was having a good time dancing on the coffee table.



Ryan and Katy went to the aquarium yesterday and had a really good time. They did have a slight scare. To enter the aquarium you have to stand in a room and listen to some instructions before entering. Since the instructions were in German and he didn't understand Ryan set Katy down to play while they waited. Unfortunately, part of the instructions were probably to stay clear of the doors. The metal doors went flying back and almost crushed Katy. Ryan was on the wrong side and all he could manage to do was to grab the door and hold it with all of his strength. Katy was knocked over and started to scream. All of the men in the room came to Ryan's aid and grabbed the door while Ryan scooped up Katy. She was unscathed but they were both very scared.

Of course, Ryan got her calmed down and looking at the fish. One of the tanks was barely over her head height so she reached her hands in. It must have been close to feeding time because about 20 little mouths came after those fingers and upset her all over again (they were harmless). After those two incidents they ended up having a lovely day. I had a lovely day too, all by myself.

This morning while Ryan slept in (he deserved it for letting me have a "day off!") we came up with a new dress up game involving having a pinned on cape. Of course, Katy wanted to be a cyber-superhero and get into the forbidden computer.





Some mornings we have to get dressed in stages. When I came down from my shower Ryan was trying to catch up on reading the blog via the laptop (he can't check the blog from work). Katy thought that was fun too.



It's especially fun if you use your feet to type!



We headed off to Bad Durkheim for the afternoon. It has a HUGE wine-fest ever year and expects one million visitors over the course of about 14 days. I read something that described it as the wine equivalent of Oktoberfest. We weren't disappointed. I'll put up a separate entry to get these photos out of the way.

She's "just" sick.

Having a chronically ill child has left Ryan and I without some basic skills. Kids get sick, we understand that. Katy gets sick frequently. Since she's had 13 ear infections and a bout of pneumonia in less than a year, we know about sick (we also know that the best way to get antibiotics into a resistant child is to mix them with chocolate syrup). The interesting thing is, she rarely gets a fever, and when she does, we know it's BAD.

So, Katy's been clingy and whiny for the past few days. Fine. I had chalked it up to teething. My "medical opinion" is that now that her body is done fighting with her adenoids she's going to grow three inches and sprout all of her teeth at once. She's taller and skinnier already and we can actually see the teeth coming; they're coming so fast that you can actually track the change daily. This morning she woke up with a monster fever. Of course, that scares me into thinking that I've been wrong about the teething causing her pain. So, I call and get in at the Saturday clinic they have first thing. It's all a fun logistical nightmare. Ryan went for a long run this morning (he's running the Frankfurt marathon in October again), so I had to wait for him to get back because our oil tank is being refilled between 8 and noon, so one of us had to be here for that (it would probably be good to have heat this winter since it already got down to 39 the other night!).

Katy and I race to the clinic. She's miserable and moping. My great explorer won't bear for me to put her down and she just slumped in my lap and sat there. Her fever was down by the time we got there and the doctor saw us quickly (even though it was a different hospital and clinic entirely it turned out that our regular pediatrician was on duty). He checked her out and, as kindly as possible, told me that "she's just sick. She could have a fever for a few days." Oh. Hmmm, we just didn't know what "just sick" looks like as we've been primed over the past year to jump at the slightest sign.

Of course, by the time we got home and got the Motrin to kick in you'd never know that she'd been sick at all.

So, we have a lot of "learning" to do as Katy gets better.

She's just sick.

Ryan and "just sick" are off at the aquarium. Mommy is "just tired" and needed a break.

I've seen this a bunch of times but it never fails to amuse me. The "number" below is for me. There are fewer than 1,000 for Katy and about 1,500 for Ryan.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 3,936 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I don't want everyone to wake up, read the news, and panic.

Yes, there were terror arrests related to Ramstein AB.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20596911/

No, we aren't scared. So you shouldn't be either. The fact that there were arrests means that the German police (and the US military police and the FBI and whoever else is involved in things like that) were doing their job and watching out for us.

Life goes one for us, just like usual.

What happened to the days when I could say: "It's my birthday today, I don't feel like doing anything but sitting around?"

I posed that question to Ryan this evening and he laughed so hard that it took him a while to compose himself again. I guess that ship sailed about 19 months ago....

Actually, I've had a lovely, if uneventful, birthday weekend. Ryan asked what I wanted and I didn't have any exciting ideas so we headed to the BX to go shopping.I couldn't find anything that I truly couldn't live without, so I "traded in" my birthday present and instead we got Katy the following:



Of course, her new "toy" was so large that we decided that we needed to "redecorate." Katy just needs more room to play; so the dining room was sacrificed to the cause. We decided to move the book case upstairs and push the table against the wall to give more floor space. This meant TOOLS. Katy loved sitting on the floor and helping her Daddy take things apart.



We spent the rest of the morning playing and rearranging. Katy finally almost got the hang of blowing kisses. She just prefers to give them in person.....

We held off as long as we could, but we needed to escape the house. Eight days of no outside contact is pretty tough to do. So, we loaded up and went to IKEA because that's what I wanted to do for my birthday, darn it. Katy actually had a really good time and was very good, so I had a good time. We ate lunch there, which I, oddly, always enjoy. So, I got to "go out to eat" for my birthday too! They have small chairs that were perfect Katy size. We sat her up on one and she actually sat still and ate. Ryan and I both looked at each other at one point and simultaneously wondered when our baby turned into a little girl. She was SO good today.

After that we headed to the Kinderspiel nearby. How could we not reward such a good little girl? I mostly left the camera alone and enjoyed playing along.



It's hard to tell here but this is another "she's all grown up" moment. She's actually climbing the stairs pretty well by herself.



The spinning disk was a hit, as usual.





The only problem was that she wanted to scoot to the edge and ride with her feet hanging off!



There was a little "swing" ride. They only run it on the hour but Katy wanted up in it before then. She had the best time chatting to the ride, herself, and steering.



Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture the moment here. This is a "dance area" complete with a disco ball. Katy had so much fun. She just danced and danced. Actually, we all danced. Of course, she had to rest a bit and check out the lights flitting around.



We thought this part was too "big" for Katy. She didn't agree. These contraptions have a chamber to drop a soft ball (not to be confused with a softball) and you push a button and it shoots pressurized air and the ball out. Katy needed to participate. She spent a lot of time chasing the balls around, bringing them back, and putting them in the chute. She especially liked it when Daddy picked her up and helped her shoot the balls out.



I had a GREAT birthday. I had a lot of time to reflect and be thankful for all that I have. Two years ago on my birthday (and it was a big one) I had just sent Ryan to Iraq, I drove up to my parents house for the weekend and watched New Orleans flood on TV and I had just been told that there was something terribly wrong with our baby and had to wait a week to get to the specialist to find out what it was. Of course, all of those things turned out fine, but it made for a pretty rough birthday weekend. Ryan came home safely, and, dare I say it, even had a good time on his tour to Iraq, Katy came out healthy and happy and New Orleans is slowly recovering. I have a wonderful family (both with me and extended) and am living in Europe. What more could I ask for?

It's good to be 29, again.

Yesterday I escaped to the grocery store. I actually felt like cooking; which required me to have better ingredients on hand than bananas and chicken nuggets (see what happens when I stay home a few days in a row? I get so stir crazy that I actually cook dinner!). While I was gone Ryan decided to clean out the fridge. Have I ever told you that I'm married to the greatest guy in the world? Who ever feels like cleaning out the fridge without being forced to? Of course, since Katy's in exile still she had to stay home with Daddy to "help."



Ryan snapped these pictures. I bought Katy a small thing of "play food" the other day and apparently she thought that the orange pepper was another piece of her play food that had been put away in the wrong place. She was thrilled to liberate it back to its rightful place.



Is this not the look of a happy child?



Dinner turned out fine, by the way. I think the recipe sounded better than it actually ended up. Something about asparagus and goat cheese over fettuccine. Good in concept, a little bitter in actuality. The asparagus was good though....

This morning I caught Katy on film doing one of her favorite things. We don't know how she came up with this game, but it's played pretty commonly in our house on weekends. She takes any object that she can put in her mouth (socks, balls, just about anything) and "offers" it to one of us. We're expected to take the object in OUR mouth from her (no hands allowed). She then beams and leans back in to take it back, runs to the other parent and repeats the process again. This gets pretty disgusting pretty fast as the object ends up soaked, but she thinks it's the greatest game ever.



You HAVE to accessorize your pajamas....



The dress up game in full force. We REALLY need to get out some this week....