Eating in Europe was quite tasty, but our eating schedules were erratic and lots of planning was required to get John to eat anything milk related. (Many restaurants looked at us as if we were crazy if we asked for milk for John. The few that didn't gave us a cup of creamer for coffee.) My solution? Yogurt. Since I know that yogurt is cultured by leaving it at room temperature for 10-24 hours, I figured that leaving yogurt in a backpack all day long wouldn't hurt it.

In Germany, you can buy "Edel-Rahm" or "Sahne" yogurt which is yogurt made from a mixture of cream and whole milk. Since John wasn't too thrilled with some of the new foods and was often exhausted and frustrated by the time restaurant food was served, these high calorie yogurts turned out to be blessings. Whole milk is usually 3.5% fat, heavy cream is 36% fat, and whipping cream is 30% fat. Edel-Rahm yogurt had to be 15% fat and Sahne yogurt was required to be 10% fat. By the end of the trip, eating two of these yogurts per day, John seemed to be gaining weight faster than he was growing vertically. However, in the USA, getting whole milk yogurt is difficult and higher fat yogurt is absolutely impossible. He seems to be back to his normal, slender self, despite my attempts to spike his milk with cream. :-)

Interestingly enough, I give him cod liver oil supplements, which he absolutely ADORES. I have to put the bottle away immediately after giving him his teaspoonful. He won't eat anything else if he can see the CLO bottle but will simply point to it and, in his way, ask for more.

I was in a rush to get out the door this morning, so when John brought his book, "The Napping House", over to me I simply began reciting the story without thinking. "There is a house, a napping house, where everyone is sleeping..." I kept going as I hurridly made the bed and tied my shoes. A minute later, I was at the end and hadn't missed a word. (I thought I had mixed up the description of the cat and the mouse - one is slumbering, the other snoozing - but I hadn't.)

I can do the same with Dr. Seuss's ABCs, which Dan finds funny, so he "tests" me. "What begins with J?" he asks. "Jerry Jordan's jelly jar and jam begin that way," I say, without missing a beat.

I wonder what other books I've memorized without realizing it...

For the women's study at church, we're reading John Piper's "When I don't desire God" which I think is poorly named but I highly recommend. (I think anyone can benefit from reading it, but I think the title makes it sound like it is only appropriate for one going through spiritual depression.) This week's chapter is on the importance of Bible memorization. This morning's easy recitation of "The napping house", a book I never intended to memorize, showed me that if I'm not memorizing scripture (which I'm not), I really don't have an excuse. If I can remember that Y is for a yawning yellow yak and that young Yolanda Yorgenson is yelling on his back without effort, I need to work on filling my mind with things that really matter, too.

Am I nesting?

I don't remember nesting with John. We'd moved less than two months before he was born. My back hurt, I didn't feel comfortable cleaning, and I was exhausted everyday after work. It was the dead of winter, which didn't help, and everything was gray and dreary. (Or so I remember it!)

With this little one, I feel great! My back basically doesn't hurt (except when I throw it out - but now I only wear sneakers and Birks, so hopefully that won't happen again! No high heels for me!), my ankle is mostly better, I have a ton of energy, and I eat better. The weather is great and we go outdoors hours every day.

This time, it appears, I have the energy to nest. Here's what I've done and am doing:

1. I cleaned the kitchen two weeks ago... AND it is still clean! No junk on counters and I put the dishes in the dishwasher immediately after every meal. Last night I hastily made spaghetti (mess of messes!) and had to clean out a drawer that had gotten liquid jello spilled in it. I actually cleaned it all up before goofing off!!!
2. I tidied the bathroom a week ago... AND it is still clean!
3. Halfway through knitting a pink dress I basically started on Monday.
4. Done with patterns for my six slipcovers, 75% done with the first one. (Bought fabric on Monday - finally - kept hurting myself on the way to the fabric store before!)
5. Sorted out the second-hand clothes I have gotten by month; sorted out gender-neutral baby clothes and blankets from when John was born. (Jane - I bought four beautiful designer baby dresses at a rummage sale last week, and only one was pink! The others: white, green, and navy blue.)

Goals:
1. Finish slipcovers and baby dress.
2. Clean the living/dining room like I did the kitchen and bath.
3. Sort out John's summer/winter clothing.

I'd better get busy!

The foot is healing quickly and well and I'm now two weeks overdue for my midwife appointment. I scheduled the appoinment a week late (due to travel), then canceled due to not being able to drive. Today's was canceled due to two women in labor at once... not a very likely given that the midwives only have a small handful of women each month, but that's OK. I feel great and the baby continues to squirm if I'm not walking around.

We took John to the zoo in Munich. I'd taken him to a zoo once before, in May, when he was 15 months old, and he really didn't get it. (I think he might have noticed the sea lions who were swimming immediately in front of him, but his reaction could also have been due to gas.) As he's grown, he's become more and more delighted with anything moving. He loves bees and giggles whenever he sees them (wait til his first sting!), anything in the backyard, butterflies, and, of course, dogs, cats, cows, etc. Munich claims to have the largest zoo in Europe and it certainly was impressive. John was beside himself with delight: whether in regard to ducks or bison, monkeys or lions, he thought it was great. When an animal would catch his eye (and, for the first two hours, it was a rare animal that didn't catch his eye), he would start bouncing, point, and say, "dadadadadada". In the petting zoo (we looked, didn't pet), John didn't know whether to be thrilled or scared when a cow mooed 6" from his face. John reacted by grinning from ear to ear while pushing back as far away from the cow as he could in his stroller.

The German word for "bite" sounds like the English "bison." I know German, but not well enough to tell John all the animal names in German. (And we're working on English, anyways!) A little boy overheard me telling John, "BISON. BISON." A minute later I heard him frantically asking his mom if he would get bitten. Oops.

There were a lot of kids at the zoo. That was a pretty rare sight!

Another note: they still know how to build really cool playgrounds in Europe! It appears German playground designers try to build things children will delight in. At the zoo, the playground had a sign warning that, "Parents are responsible for their children." (Novel thought.) The playground also had, among other things, a 30 foot high climbing structure. If it hadn't been totally swarmed, my brother and father would have climbed it themselves. There also was an American-style playground, labeled "For Handicapped People."

Dogs

Dan and I think John will be asking for a dog soon. He doesn't talk yet, but he points out *every* dog he sees, whether in print or on the street. He prefers books with pictures of dogs and his (current) favorite book involves a young boy, his dog, and a frog. He literally spends 15+ minutes each day looking through the boy and dog book to point out what the dog is doing in each picture. Did a dog bark a few blocks away? He'll point out the window in its direction. We've firmly decided we won't get a dog before he asks for one, but as his fascination with dogs grows, the idea that we'll someday get a dog becomes more and more normal to me.

Before we left on our trip, I looked into raising a guide dog puppy because I have no idea how to raise a dog and having the help of an organization would be good. Once I got to Prague, though, the idea of having a dog became a lot more reasonable because I was exposed to pleasant dogs. People in Prague raise really good dogs. In ten minutes on the Munich subway, I got barked at more than in two weeks in Prague, yet there were about 5-10 times as many dogs in Prague compared with Munich. In Prague, people rarely use leashes, the dogs walk by their owners instead and do not even sniff at strangers, much less bark. (John did get sniffed at once, but that was after I spent five minutes talking with the dog's owners.)

The best illustration of how well-behaved Prague dogs are happened on my sixth or so day in the city. I had just gone to the grocery store and needed to wait for a tram across the street from it. Before I left the store, a woman had leashed up her dog to one side of the grocery store door. Though I strugged getting the stroller out through the door, directly next to the dog, the dog totally ignored me. I walked across the street to wait for the tram (which I just missed - so I had a 10 minute wait for the next one) and spent the time watching the dog. Not a single bark, sniff, or pant in the direction of an exiting or entering customer. Coming out of the store right before the tram arrived, the dog's owner took the leash off, put it in her purse, and the two walked away together.

I think could handle a dog like that.

Home again, home again.

We're back home after a great trip. Dan met the people he hoped to meet and has a lot of work to do on his thesis. We enjoyed spending time with my parents and brother, saw a lot of new things, enjoyed great food, got to know central Prague well enough to not get lost, and had a great time. Maybe I'll blog on some specifics in the coming week or two; there won't be any pictures from us, though, as the camera was lost on the way there by the airline.

A few fun notes:

1. Mommas in Europe have huge strollers! When I brought my Graco, I thought I'd have the biggest stroller in sight and stick out like a sore thumb. Nope! I did stick out - because my stroller was so small. Later, I stuck out because my stroller lost the front left wheels and the Graco became three-wheeled stroller with a right-triangular wheel arangement. It still worked fairly well. I'm glad I read the travel websites which recommended taking a full-sized stroller so that it could double as bed for naps and as a high chair.

2. We don't normally co-sleep, so there was a bit of a learning curve. Thankfully, the beds we stayed in were all fairly low to the ground. One night, John started out at the head of the bed between me and Dan. By the end of the night, he had managed to fall off the foot of the bed twice. We are pros by now, though.

We walked about five miles every day and I was careful to eat a ton. I only had sneakers with me and wore them everywhere. Today, on the way out the door to the grocery store, wearing slides as a change from sneakers, I fell while carrying John down the front porch stairs and sprained my ankle. Thankfully I fell well (something I learned as a junior high school high-jumper) and fell on the diaper bag side instead of on John. A cloth-diaperer's bag can sure be soft! So much for today's list of to-dos.