Ben vs. The Peacocks

A couple weeks ago our friend Ali invited us to the Kaiserslautern Zoo.  It was our first time there.  One of the first displays we came across was this big bird cage.  Ben fell in love immediately.

A birdwatcher just like his daddy.

He saw a peacock walking around outside the cages and made a beeline for it.  Don't worry, that peacock could run.

He escaped into the pen with the chickens & roosters.

In addition to this lion, we saw a sleeping tiger.  Ben did not care about either of them.

Once he figured out he couldn't go IN the cage, he lost interest.

In a different part of the zoo, chasing another peacock.

This was right outside the reptile & monkey house.  He had a great time inside, and an even better time when he discovered this fella.

He really liked the owl exhibits and said "owl" over and over.  There was a petting zoo area with goats.  I bought some food pellets and tried to show Ben how to hold them out in his open palm.  He preferred to hold a single pellet between his fingers and feed it to the goats that way.  He was really tickled by this.

Wildpark

A couple weeks ago (yes, I'm still that far behind) my friend Amy invited me & Ben to go with her & her girls to the Wildpark in Kaiserslautern.  It's a serious of trails in the woods where you can see animals like deer, bison, and even wildcats in large fenced-in fields.

It was a bit of a walk from the parking lot, and Ben insisted on holding the hand of Amy's youngest daughter.  She was a good sport.  Especially when he wanted to be carried.

The first display we came across was this area with a bunch of trees surrounded by wire.  Didn't quite know what to make of it, but we took a picture anyway.  Amy's girls are used to posing for photos, unlike Ben who just wants to run.

We saw a whole bunch of deer running a bit back from the trail, but this little straggler decided to check us out.  This makes for a cute picture until you find out that about a minute later the deer charged the fence where the kids were standing.

Bison.  Ben didn't care one bit about them.

This was toward the end of the trial we were on, right before we turned around to walk allll the way back.  Ben decided he was tired of walking.  All the ladies took turns carrying him because I wouldn't have made it back to the car carrying that large sack of potatoes.

Strasbourg, France

About two weeks ago we drove to Strasbourg, France, just over the German border.  The drive was only about two hours and it was a gorgeous day.  We took the train from a park & ride into the downtown area.  Pretty sure the train was Ben's favorite part of the trip.

There was some kind of agricultural thing going on that day - lots of booths and farm animals.  That's a huge inflatable cow in the background.

Ben actually did okay holding Daddy's hand (for a bit, anyway).

We saw lots of animals: goats, rabbits, chickens, roosters.  Ben didn't stay still long enough at any one spot for me to get a good photo.

Ben seems to find ice cream cones everywhere we go.

Musicians in the middle of a little bazaar.

We only stayed for two or three hours.  It was starting to get hot & Ben was reaching his limit.  We grabbed some delicious sandwiches from a deli before we left.  The bread in Europe is just awesome.

Ben had a great time on the train ride back to the parking lot but screamed and hollered at our stop.  He calmed down on the walk to the car & even turned around and pointed to the train at the station.

May Catch-up

We're halfway through June and I'm just getting around to posting photos from May.  Oops.  This is a view from our kitchen window.  I was trying to show the yellow field in the distance but didn't do it justice.  There were vibrant yellow fields like that all spring.  Now they're back to green.

I got this inexpensive play kitchen at the BX and was afraid Ben wouldn't play with it.  I was wrong.

Mike spent six looooong weeks at NCO Academy (to teach leadership skills to airmen of a certain rank).  Luckily it was a half-hour drive from our house so he was able to commute, but it took up most of his time and energy.  He was in a great class and made some new friends.  This was from their graduation dinner.  He wowed everyone by playing the German national anthem.

Two of Mike's co-workers had a birthday party for their 4-year-old son.  All the kids got a swing at the pinata.  Ben swung at it very gently...

...until the birthday boy's daddy showed Ben how to take a good crack at it!

The birthday boy's little brother, who is almost a year younger than Ben.  This is proof that Ben can play with (or at least near) other little kids.

These two go to the same kindergarten and seem to play well with (or near) each other.  I wasn't feeling well that day, and then Ben ended up running a fever and had to leave the party early.  We've been sick so many times in the last year.

Just the guys, hanging out & watching some TV.  Serious business.

Our Good News

Yep, that's Ben's sibling!  This isn't really news for us since I'm now in my second trimester, but we only told people on a need-to-know basis until last week.  So here are the answers to questions we've gotten:

• The due date is November 29th.
• Yes, this was planned.
• Yes, we will be finding out the gender (probably early July).
• I am seeing the OB/GYNs at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (the big Army hospital about half an hour away) and will deliver there also.
• No, I don't know if I'll have to have another c-section.  But this hospital is open to V-BACS, unlike my last hospital.
• No, Ben has no idea what is going on.

Since I had pre-eclampsia  at the end of my last pregnancy, I am considered high risk this time.  I will have more OB appointments and tests than last time.  I've had a bunch of labwork and it's all been fine so far.  With Ben, I started out on meds for high blood pressure and was quickly taken off them when my blood pressure got too low.  It only went back up at the very end.  This time they have put me on a different medicine.  I am hoping they take me off it for a while because my readings have been low and I've really been dragging (don't know if that's the meds).  I have another appointment this week.  So far I'm really happy with the doctors and hospital staff.

All in all I've been feeling okay.  I had more first-trimester nausea this time around.  I hadn't had so much as a cold when I was pregnant with Ben.  But between being in a foreign country and taking Ben to preschool all the time, I've picked up quite a few bugs this time.  And now I have a kid in the Terrible Twos.  So that's a bit of a challenge.

We kept a lot of Ben's baby things and brought them to Germany with us.  I have been putting off transitioning Ben to a toddler bed, but I'll pretty much have to now.  We'll need to buy another dresser and some storage shelves.  Ben's infant car seat and stroller had been used when we got them and weren't worth keeping, so I'll have to do some shopping here.  But what I'm really stuck on is strollers: do I get a double or single stroller?  Right now it's really hard to take Ben out and about without a stroller since he runs and struggles so much if he's not strapped in to something.  I don't know if that will change by the time he's three.  Sometimes I think it's silly for thinking of these things now because I've still got a while to go, but I know the time will fly.

Eye Kwee

A few weeks ago, when the weather was nice, we walked down to the Eis Cafe (like an ice cream parlor) in our village.  Ben calls ice cream "eye kwee."  He says it a lot.

It's very serious business.

He liked the strawberry but also wanted to try the lemon that I got.

It takes him a long time to finally bite the cone.  And when he does, it takes him a long time to finish eating it.

At some point we just started walking home and let him keep eating.

Fast forward two weeks to last week.  It's much colder, and Ben (finally) got a haircut.  Just about every day he asks for ice cream.  Sometimes we give him rainbow sherbet.  On this day Mike took him back to the Eis Cafe and got him cherry.

He's such a cute mess.

Another Park

I'm waaaaayyyy behind with blog posts.  Here's a playground we didn't know about on one of the local bases.  We found it two or three weeks ago.

Every time he picked up this stick, he said "Y."  Then he pointed to the letters on a sign and named them.  He is all about the alphabet.

He also loves the steering wheels that are on so many playgrounds now.

That's Daddy on the other side of the bubble.

This was a manageable slide for Ben.  He was scared to go down the bigger slides by himself.  But even on this one, he stuck out one foot to slow himself down.  I was so afraid he'd break his ankle.

Aaaaand we're back to the yellow bubble.  Someone had taken a marker to the plastic (we were not trying to draw a mustache on his face).

When he likes something, he really likes it.

Don't have any idea what he was looking through, but love the face.

We have way more playground options here than we did in Middle Georgia.  Between the three parks in our village and the ones on all the bases, we always have someplace for Ben to explore.