The last couple of days I have been feverishly working on the new knitting site. I am quite pleased with the layout! That means that I hardly got any knitting done on Michael’s new socks. Oh well.

Michael joined us for gymnastics class today and it didn’t go over very well. Elijah tends to be very clingy when he is around and he pretty much threw a tantrum during the entire class. He wanted to go in the “exit” part of a course or didn’t want to do other things, or didn’t want to wait his turn. I wish Michael could participate more in these things because I think then they will calm down in his presence. Rowan did fine though.

They are talking a lot more. Rowan, especially. Elijah has always been talkative and now he saying things in what seems like sentences, but it’s mostly gibberish. He has the intonation down though. Rowan will say things in the most unlikely times. Like if he sees something that remotely looks like a horse even from far away, he will say “horse”. We have to look around and notice that on a poster on a wall far away there is a horse. Or some stranger will be looking at their watch near us and he will say “watch” and I get confused. Then I see the person that he’s talking about. He is really great about pointing out the things that he knows.

Does this look like Michael?

They are also getting really creative with their playing. They don’t play with legos in the traditional way, they take the people and animals only, maybe a car, and create their own scenes. We have one woman who is “mama” and one man who is “dada”. They will dig to the bottom of the lego bin to find them and hold them up and exclaim “mama”! Then they make them walk all over everything. Elijah also likes to point out things that look like us. If there is a picture of a woman with a child, he will point to her and say “mama”, then point to me and say “mama”. So we found it hilarious when reading the book “Heedley pecked me in the eye” that he thought the worm looked like “dada”. Now that I think about it, the similarity is uncanny.

Our friends Steve and De introduced us to a phenomena called “Sandwich Mountain”. What that is is 2 sandwiches, cut up into square quarters and arranged on a plate like a mountain. I built up a lot of hype for the mountain. They didn’t have any opinion of it, like they weren’t in awe of the mountain (like Steve’s kids), BUT they ATE IT ALL! And they ate it without taking it apart and making a big mess and there were absolutely NO crumbs/crusts/leftovers, and that is a first, out of the hundreds of times I’ve been making them sandwiches. I usually have a handful of leftovers to throw away and messy faces to wipe up. So even though the actual mountain wasn’t very exciting to them, it changed the way they ate it. Thanks Steve and De for that suggestion!

This past Sunday we went over to the Knipples for a big breakfast. It was very yummy, nothing like scrambled eggs and lots of sausages! Elijah wasn’t a big sausage eater that day, but he sure did eat a lot of eggs. Steve and De loaned us this wooden toy that is several “ramps” and these triangular wood blocks go down them. The boys were so fascinated by this, so we took it home. Every day, they play at least for 20 minutes straight watching the pieces go down. I’ll have to get it on video. I’m trying to keep it out of their reach for now so that they don’t get tired of it too quickly. We really enjoy going over to the Knipples’ place to hang out. They are a lot of fun and the boys enjoy playing with all of Logan’s toys. Between all of us, we have a wealth of information about stuff to do in Munich with kids. So much so, that De is creating a great website (hosted by mountainwerks), to be unveiled soon!

My grandpa’s funeral was on the 24th (Saturday). Wish I could’ve been there. It would’ve been nice to see all the cousins, aunties and uncles that I don’t normally see. My mom said that her, my Uncle Milton and Lori did a really nice eulogy. And the picture that they used was from one that was taken in San Antonio with me. I was in the original picture, but they cropped it out so that it showed just him.

On the Kindergarten front, we have an open house coming up this weekend, as well as one on Monday. They are our #1 and #2 choices so I hope they get into either one!