Brothers on the Weekend

Karl took Henri out to his first visit at the science museum. Henri loved it. Especially jamming with Karl in the drum room on the kids' floor. Superbonding-experience. I think I could've left, have coffee and return and they wouldn't have noticed. They also made sure no other kids wanted to stay too long. Right start, brothers. Gotta defend that turf.

Later it was snacktime. Karl loves feeding Henri and brotherly shares his deserts with him. Enough brotherly cutesiness? Well, one has an inner ear infection, the other one a bad stomach. First correct guess, we send you a bag of orginial Haribo gummy bears. We're going into our second month of winter bugs. Can we move to California now? Italy? Brazil? Something like that?

Hello Neighbors Part II

Hello Neighbors Part I

Sweden Down Under

One person that has been making my life a lot easier over the past couple of months is Sofie. Since September she has been babysitting Henri three, four times a week so I could get some work done and get a break from our crazy little boy. Now that he has moved on to daycare she will move on to Australia to take care of three other lucky little kids (that means, you male readers: no point in stopping by unannounced in the hopes of meeting her). You will be missed greatly! I'm sure Henri will forever talk about how his first girlfriend was an older Swedish girl.



Karl reading a book. Duh!

Spidey Feeding The Hungry

Going Nuts

It might be hard to see, but those are walnuts Karl is stuffing into Henri's mouth. And he doesn't seem to mind all that much. Oh, well. If kids only have very few toys, they gotta help themselves with what they find on the kitchen counter.

More of last weeks cabin fever days below.

Nine Months

Um, yes. This is kinda late, I know. But at least he's not ten months old just yet.

Back to Almost Normal

Here's a Kreye Brothers classic - Karl has drafted Fred into reading to him while Henri is kickin' a soccer styled balloon across the room. Funny how personalities form early. So it'll be something brainy for Karl, sports scholarship for Henri.



Things are almost back to normal. At least all temperatures are. Moods are slowly rising. Although when Karl asked just before lights out when he gets to go to the Kindergarten again and I said "you just have to sleep four more times and then...." I kinda thought "four times?!'. Yup. These were the longest Christmas vacations ever. I think when I have shipped both boys to there respective daytime entertainment centers on Monday morning I will briefly return home and Fred and I can light some of those new years' fireworks we completely overslept. Yadayadayada, of course they're both awfully cute and incredibly charming. Afternoon was fun too. While Fred took Henri down to the riverbanks so he gets to fall asleep in fresh air (which he did for like only half of the alotted fresh air time) I took Karl to the Botanical Gardens where they're having a tropical butterfly exhibit. First we had to stop at the Nymphenburg Castle Canal, which in winter is Munich's curling central. Karl got a kick out of watching all those heavily Bavarian characters sliding their curling irons across the ice. He tried to wrap his head around the fact that the body of water where he normally feeds water fowl was now under our feet. Karl loves the tropical green houses at the Botanical Garden. He kinda enjoyed the butterfly exhibit, although I have to admit it was a bit underwhelming having just a few dozen tropical insects fluttering about in one of the ten green houses. He did get a real kick out of the display of carnivorous plants though. They do look pretty mean and very obvious what they're up to. You have be some dimwit insect to fall for them. Unfortunately we didn't see them in action, although Karl suggested taking the butterflies into the special carnivorous herbarium to get our full money's worth. I guess cynicism starts early. Or irony boot camp finally paid off. Still his favorite place there - the Mexico House with the authentic cowboy setting.

Fever Days

Happy new year! Oh that sounds so hollow, if you're nine and a half months old and experience your first fever with highs of 104 F (40 C). So fever's still high, moods rather low on the first day of the new year. Yesterday we hit the full-week-of-fever-in-the-family-mark. So the expression "cabin fever", that used to be such a luxurious state of mind of having to work deadlines and wanting to go out just got a whole new dimension.

Karl is actually fine again. Besides falling asleep while reading one of his favorite books (about knights and castles and gruesome weaponry of the middle ages) to his favorite stuffed animal (Tallulah the Irish lamb) in the afternoon, he was fever free and back to normal.



Henri on the other hand thinks life sucks after all. I guess having you first full on flu feels like the eternal damnation of the young and innocent. So his facial expressions alternately convey "Why?!" (see above) or "Make this all go away, after all your my mother/father as such infallible and I surely do not deserve to suffer this much just for keeping you awake a few nights" (following). Well, if all goes like his brother's flu, he'll be fine by Monday.