Karenzpapa

Verknallt

2011-05-27T16:29:00.002+02:00

Florian erklärte mir beim Mittagessen, wer in seiner Klasse zur Zeit in wen verknallt ist. Matthias und Sebastian hörten eine Weile interessiert mit und Matthias meinte dann "Ich bin in den Papa verknallt". Florian erwidert, das geht nicht, ob er denn überhaupt wisse, was das heißt. Matthias meint "Das heißt liebhaben". Basti gibt auch noch seinen Senf ab "Zack, der David is volle in den Thomas reingeknallt".

Religion

2010-12-19T22:39:00.002+01:00

Talked with Florian about religion today, since he got that as subject in primary school now. So I asked him what he thinks goes on in hell. He said that there is the devil. Ok, so what does the devil do, should you go to hell? Florian said he puts you in sauna but you can never get out. Alright, so what's the deal with heaven then? Florian said that God is up there. When I asked him what happens to people who go to heaven he replied that heaven is the opposite of hell, so he assumes God puts people in a fridge :) Given those two choices I guess I'd rather take the sauna...

Washing machine

2010-05-30T19:41:00.002+02:00

Today I heard Heidrun scream in our cellar: "WHO DID THAT?!?!". I rushed down to see what happened. Well, one of our kids (the culprit will remain unknown I assume since obviously all suspects deny responsibility) had thrown a diaper into our laundry and we didn't notice. Now if you think that accicentally washing a handkerchief in the washing machine is bad then the comparison is like this: Washing handkerchief = pub fight, washing diaper = World War II. Those things can take a lot of liquid, but they can't handle a one hour program including a 1200 rpm spin cycle :). Basically it explodes inside and the outcome is NOT pretty. I hope our washing machine still works. After cleaning up the mess I didn't dare starting it up again yet.

Delay reading

2010-05-23T21:27:00.003+02:00

Apart from delaying the ability to speak it's also advisable to delay reading. That's more difficult I suppose since there are institutions called schools that force children to learn this art. You might want to know why that's a good idea? Well go with child who has just learned to read through town. He'll read anything he sees to you and ask you questions. You might think: "Wow that is cute, how cruel that you don't want them to learn reading!". Well when you pass by your local playground that is also frequented by teenagers in their puperty, then you will notice that teenagers like to leave information about each other written with markers or spraycans that are hard to explain to a seven year old. So recently I had to somehow explain to Florian why "Sandra has smelly pubic hair, is a slut and likes to fuck everyone." Also why she would leave her mobile phone number on a swing so that everyone can call her. Anyway I guess the problem is not that Florian can read, but that Sandra can write ...

Präsidentenwa(h)len

2010-05-23T21:21:00.001+02:00

Vor ein paar Wochen war Bundespräsidentenwahl. Es dauerte ziemlich lang Matthias klarzumachen, dass das nichts mit Walen (dh. Walfischen) zu tun hat, va. weil es ja eine Kandidatin der "Blauen" gab, die aber kein Blauwal war. Als endlich alles klar schien, kam der Clou. Am Abend als ich im Internet die Ergebnisse nachsah, fragte Matthias wer gewonnen hat. Als ich ihm sagte "der Fischer" begann die ganze Diskussion wieder von vorn :) "Welchen Wal hat der Fischer gefangen? ..."

Rock, Paper, Scissors

2010-04-15T18:48:00.003+02:00

Today the kids played rock, paper, scissors. Then Florian introduced another variant which is carrot, rabbit, rifle (rabbit eats carrot, carrot stuffs rifle, rifle shoots rabbit). Now that really got Matthias' interest, so he started designing his own game. He called it gun, rabbit, deer. When asked for the rules it got interesting :) First we asked about deer vs gun. That was easy: gun shoots deer. Next was deer vs rabbit. Rabbit wins because it's so small that deer jumps over rabbit and rabbit disappears. Now what about rabbit vs gun? ... Thinking ... Well, then it is a draw. Florian and I both thought that this game actually has some issues since deer wins against no one. Matthias replied that deer wins against elk. Ok, so we added a fourth item to the list and started playing. Who would have thought that we all ended up choosing either gun or rabbit and the game wasn't that much fun after all ... Anyway every game designer started out small I suppose.

I'll be back

2010-04-15T18:39:00.002+02:00

Actually I am back, with one more additional party member. Now we are starrring Florian 7 years old and first year at school (therefore with a language similar to Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet"), Matthias 4 years old and 2nd year in nursery and Sebastian "Basti" 20 months who is normally super glued to mom and therefore needing a little bit of adjustment to the new situation which normally involves crying and me bribing him with chocolate so he stops (I gotta stop this or I'll end up with Basti the Hutt). So instead of relaxing in the office and having manly talks during lunch time I am multi tasking at its best. Need proof that this is more work than your job? I already lost 1kg in two weeks!

Matthias die harte Sau

2009-07-27T21:37:00.003+02:00

Matthias war jetzt schon ein Jahr im Kindergarten und experimentiert jetzt mit den ersten Macho-Gehversuchen. Manchmal ist er ein Räuber, weil Räuber sind echt harte Burschen. Letztens komme ich aus der Arbeit und Matthias drückt mir ein gelbes Spielzeug in die Hand und sagt: "Gib mit das Gelbe oder ich schieße!!!". Das spielen mir einige Zeit, bis mir ein Licht aufgeht und ich ihn auflkläre, dass es eigentlich heißt "Gib mir das Geld oder ich schieße!!". Was soll ein Räuber auch mit dem ganzen gelben Zeugs anfangen?
Außerdem schimpft er wie ein Rohrspatz. Er meinte letztens: "Die Konstanze (Name von der Redaktion geändert) aus meiner Gruppe ist ein Scheißer!". "Aha Matthias, sehr interessant, was ist denn ein Scheißer?" "Das ist ein Arschgesicht, ein Scheißer, das weiß ich". Tja, früh übt sich denke ich mir, bei uns hats das alles im Kindergarten no net gebn :)

Delay speech

2009-07-27T21:30:00.002+02:00

Here's my advice to all parents with babies who can't talk yet. Opposite to what other people might tell you for your own mental sanity do this: Delay your kids ability to talk for as long as possible. I'm not really an expert in the field of linguistics so I'm not certain yet how to achieve this with Sebastian. I assume stopping to talk to him might at least help.

You might ask: "Why, that sounds cruel? You are depriving your children of their right to articulate themselves!" Well, the alternative would be that in a year we have a 7 year old, a 4 year old and a 2 year old asking us the most stupid questions imaginable 24/7. And believe me when you've gone through a car trip where you get hammered in Staccato while trying to concentrate on the route ahead with "Why does the prince marry the princess?", "Why is the princess so pretty?", "Is body slam or body check the stronger Pokemon attack?", "What das Galvatron transform into?", "Are we there yet?" ... then you know that you are not cruel, but only acting in self defense.

Chinese New Year

2009-01-25T10:10:00.000+01:00

We celebrated Chinese New Year with lots of food from my mom. Next day in the morning we had fortune cookies from Heidrun's mom. Matthias ate the cookie at once before we could stop him. This makes him the first person I know who had the whole cookie including the paper inside :)

I want to ride my bicycle

2008-11-04T11:38:00.004+01:00

Matthias hat ein Laufrad zum Geburtstag bekommen. Das Laufrad hat einen Ständer, Florians Fahrrad nicht, was beide sehr beschäftigt. Matthias gibt gerne mit seinem Ständer an, im Kindergarten erzählt er allen: "Ich hab einen Ständer!". Außerdem will er, dass Florian auch einen Ständer bekommt: "Papa du musst dem Bruder auch einen Ständer kaufen. Aber die Länge muss richtig sein, der Ständer muss bis zum Gehsteig glengen. Wenn der Ständer ganz lang ist, dann geht er bis in den Weltraum!" Außerdem hat er entdeckt, dass der Ständer unten einen Gummistoppel hat: "Papa, der Gummi auf meinem Ständer ist schwarz."

Quotes

2008-05-14T21:02:00.004+02:00

We talked about Philipinos the other day and Matthias understood "viele Dinos" (=many dinosaurs) and kept asking where the dinosaurs are.
Florian asked Matthias whether he knows what "Europa" is. Matthias asked "Wo ist der Opa?"

Day 91 - The End

2008-05-03T20:19:00.004+02:00

Played football today with Florian on our local playground. While doing that I ran into a newly installed Volleyball net! I mean, who installs a green net on a lawn? Idiots!!!
Matthias wanted me to play with him and screamed "Papa, come over here!" I had to left the room for the toilet and he said: "I don't have any dad anymore!"
As I've already mentioned Matthias loves holding toys in his hands, even during lunch. Today he wanted me to feed him. I told him that he's perfectly capable of eating himself already. "No, I'm not!!! I haven't got a free hand!"
Played hide and seek with Florian and didn't find him twice. I argued that I didn't find him because he's smaller than me so he could crawl into better hideouts. He replied: "No that's because I'm smarter. You're already old, so your brain is already deteriorating!"
Matthias always asks about Lion King 5 since 5 is his favourite number as you might know by now. Anyway we told him that it hasn't been invented yet. (invent = erfinden ~ "find out") Now he keeps asking where it is hidden :)
Lunch: Leftovers, Dinner: McDonalds
Since today is my last official entry (only some "leftovers" might follow) I want to thank all readers who made it this far. It has been a great time and experience for me to try out being a writer and I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did :)

Day 90 - Sandbox

2008-04-30T21:00:00.003+02:00

Heidrun talked to Florian's nursery teacher today. She said that Florian might be above average intelligent. Well, I guess he is, since he seems a lot better in maths than his peer group. So we should get him tested and see if he is gifted. What I don't know yet is: even if he is, what should we do with that information? Being a parent is full of questions sometimes.
Florian played with two other kids who were visiting us today. They had a lot of fun and were mostly running around barefooted which children really seem to like.
We went to the playground in the afternoon and Matthias was playing in the sandbox. There he did his usual routine: pour water into the sand, create a lot of mud, eat most of it although we tell him not to, then get himself as dirty as possible.
Matthias was too tired too sleep again this evening. That's a really weird thing, when toddlers are tired (as in really tired) they can't sleep and cry a lot because they are too tired. Doesn't make any sense to you? Well, to me neither, but trust me, that's the way it is.
Lunch & Dinner: Chinese chicken and vegetables.

Day 89 - The Force is with Matthias

2008-04-29T20:40:00.004+02:00

Today was the last time for me to go to moms and todds and I had the "honor" of doing the handicraft. So I prepared a book with a Chinese story and an Origami boat on a river with fish in it. You have to teach some Asian culture :)
Matthias was all whiny today which is quite annoying. I wish as an adult you could do that at work :) "You've got a new task. Finish this by tomorrow!" "Waah, I don't want to, cry, cry, cry"
In the afternoon Matthias played with a Han Solo and Emperor figurine. He then used the Emperor to smash a bug in the garden. He actually asked what had happened to the bug because I guess he didn't really intend to kill it. I told him that the Emperor used the Force. That seemed to have confused him a bit.
Then he found a Mario plush toy (you know the Italian plumber) and insisted on it being a Jesus toy. So now we know: Jesus is an Italian plumber with a moustache. "Itsa me, Jesus!"
Florian really loves "Mensch ärgere dich nicht" a German board game. He actually likes it that much that he now plays it against himself sometimes :)
Lunch & Dinner: Chinese style "Schnitzel" and vegetables.

Day 88 - Cars and carts

2008-04-28T19:03:00.005+02:00

Florian lost his key chain Eiffel tower he got in Paris twice(!) today
Matthias fell asleep on a swing(!) at the playground
When we went to the airport yesterday Florian had to pee very urgently on the motorway. We asked him if he could hold out for another 10 minutes and he answered yes. About 10 seconds later he said: "No!!! I can't wait any longer!"
I built a cart thing for our garden hose today. It was quite difficult because while I was working on it, Matthias stole half of the parts and hid them in the garden (for example under freshly cut gras)
Our neighbours bought a convertible BMW. That was very exciting for Florian to watch. He of course also would like me to purchase either a sports car and/or a convertible. I've told him that this wouldn't very practicle with 3 kids, but he still wants one.
Matthias went to his daycare today. He inisted on it, because she also has got a rabbit like in Paris.
Lunch & Dinner: Chicken

Day 81 to 87 - Paris

2008-04-27T22:18:00.003+02:00

We spent the last week on a trip in Paris. There we stayed at a house of friends of ours who also have two kids (two daughters 4 1/2 and 2 years old). It was very nice and relaxing and we all really enjoyed ourselves.
Florian started dealing with negative numbers. Surprisingly he also found out that ordering is reversed. He told me one day that -2 is bigger than -5 because everything is reversed with "minus numbers". Pretty cool, isn't it.
Florian wanted to do two things in Paris: 1) Go up the Eiffel tower, 2) Go to Disneyland.
On our first day we went up the Eiffel tower up to the highest platform. This was very cool since I also haven't been up there yet. Unfortunately the weather wasn't that good so the view was a bit foggy. Florian was very excited since he knows it from Ratatouille :) Anyway there were a LOT of people queueing for it, the tickets are quite expensive and when you go there: do NOT bring your pushchair. Still, it was worth it. Florian was very happy and all four kids got ice cream afterwards.
On our second day we went to "La cite des enfants" a children's museum. Since the session we wanted to go to was already full we booked for the afternoon. While waiting the kids played in an indoor play area at Quick (a French fast food chain) and we had a look at some other exhibits at La Villette. One thing was a submarine. Matthias always said: "Look there is a black plane! When is it going to take off?" Even after explaining it he didn't believe us that it's not a plane. In the end he found a compromise: "A submarine is a plane". The funny thing on a playground in Paris is that there are nearly no 100% caucasian kids as the city is so international. That's very nice.
In Paris the current craze among youngsters it Tektonik, quite similar to Krocha. Mehdi (the father of Meline and Claire, the two girls) taught his daughters how to dance Tektonik. So I guess a) teenagers dress and dance crazily everywhere and b) fathers do stupid things to their children everywhere :)
Nicolas Sarkozy is quite a funny president, at least for outsiders :) He is living a luxury life with a new model wife and swearing at the public. He's even known as "President Bling-Bling" in France.
The room we slept in was one of the girl's room. So the walls and curtains were pink and we had Lion King bedclothes :) Originally the room was intended for Matthias and Florian but Florian said he won't sleep in a pink room. Matthias just remarked on the bed clothes that Lion King 5 doesn't exist because we had characters from Lion King 2 on the sheets. That's actually something that really bothers him: why Lion King stops after the third film, because five is his favourite number.
Third day: Disneyland. Our friends lent us their car to get there and gave us a lot of insider info about where to park and where to buy tickets, which easily saved us an hour of time. Haunted mansion was one of Florian's favourite attractions. He assured me inside that he wasn't scared and only held me tightly because he wanted to cuddle. At Thunder mountain we queued for one hour and when we finally got to the end the "adventure was interrupted due to technical reasons". After 30 more minutes waiting we left because Florian needed to pee and they still hadn't fixed it, so that was the end of the "adventure" :( Matthias was too small for Disneyland. He was scared at nearly every attraction even at the Lion King musical.
Our friends had a plastic lion that immediately turned into Matthias' favourite French animal becaus he carried it around nearly without any interruption for the whole week.
IKEA unites. At the house they had many similar furniture, plates, cups, etc. One particular thing were coloured plastic boxes for storing toys. Matthias recognized a red one where we keep the plastic animals in at home and said: "Look there are animals inside" When I opened it unfortunately they didn't have any in there :)
Meline and Claire got along very well with Florian and Matthias. So even when kids don't speak the same language they can find ways to communicate.
Marie France (the mother of the girls) had bought a rabbit for them. Matthias fell in love with the rabbit and always wanted to hold, feed or carress it. I think we have to buy a rabbit as well now.
Traffic in Paris is a lot worse than in Vienna but then they have more inhabitants in one city than the whole of Austria.
On the last evening we had a barbecue where other couples with kids came over. Funny enough all couples were mixed with one partner being Asian. After dinner we parked all kids in front of the TV watching Lion King. Television really is magic as all of them were quiet and glued to the screen (even ours who didn't understand French, but I guess knew the story well enough).
Today back in Baden we spent a nice afternoon in the garden as the weather was very sunny and hot.

Day 80 - Wildlife

2008-04-20T22:08:00.002+02:00

Matthias slept until 9.15 today because he hit himself during the night while sleeping and woke up from it and couldn't sleep again for ages.
For lunch we went to Heidrun's parents. Matthias had only soup, Florian had only chips! Then in the afternoon Matthias spent time with grandpa playing with an electrical train which he loves because he can just sit there and watch it :)
I helped my sister in law together with her boyfriend and dad carry down her collection of cactuses from inside to the garden where they stay during summer. She has some really huge ones, and they are mean (as in spikey)!
My sister in law and Alex her boyfriend are going to Africa in May. During lunch she asked what you actually do when you need to pee in the night as you have to leave the tent and there could be potentially dangerous animals (you know lions, scorpions, etc.) outside. As you can imagine Alex and I had a ton of very considerate and useful advice for her :)
Lunch: Chicken with Whiskey sauce, Dinner: Leftovers

Day 79 - Maths

2008-04-19T22:24:00.002+02:00

Florian dressed himself in a shirt and cords today. He entered our room with his shirt only buttoned at the bottom and kind of looked like Brad Pitt but washed too hot so he'd shrunk.
Today when cuddling in the morning the kids were fighting for the "spot at the sun" which was Heidrun's left side for some reason. When she had enought she went downstairs. Matthias cried: "The spot at the sun must stay here!"
Matthias was running around on his high chair during breakfast and throwing toys on the ground. He then asked his brother to pick it up for him. We asked Matthias: "Who threw it on the ground?" "Me" "So who should also pick it up?" "The brother"
Florian was enjoing maths again today. He managed to produce the correct result for 30/2 which is quite impressive. Then Heidrun told him about a standardised test for elderly people where they have to calculate 7+7, then 7+7+7 and so on until the make a fault. Florian didn't really get it and started: "So I have to calculate 7+7+7+7+7+7+7+...?" Then I explained square roots to him which quite fascinated him, even if he didn't really understand the concept I guess. In the evening he asked me: "What's the bone of 10?" "What?, Oh you mean root :)"
Then I completely embarassed myself in the evening when Florian said: "4*4 = 8+8" and I replied "No, it isn't, oh wait, ... it actually is"
Lunch: At my moms place (fish, chicken, duck), Dinner: Chicken, Fish

Day 78 - Antique machinery

2008-04-19T22:18:00.002+02:00

We played in the garden today, Matthias brought a lot of his toys and some of the neighbour chilrden joined in. Now the white horse is MIA! Panick, the white horse was always his favourite animal and we've already replaced it once because he had lost it. He was quite desperate and we could only console him with his goose. Tomorrow we have to buy a new one.
When we watched Ratatouille (again) Ego the restaurant critic is writing on a typewriter. Florian asked what kind of machine this is :) It's kind of funny how many things the kids nowadays won't know anymore. Anyway, Heidrun explained it as an old fashioned PC.
Florian was at a friends birthday party. It was a pirate party and all participating kids were dressed up as pirates. Very cool, he even got his own personalised pirate T-shirt as a gift.
We had a guy come over for our attic windows, since we need some kind of blinds up there as it gets scorching hot in summer. Will be another couple of hundred €uros to spend :(

Day 77 - Tourette

2008-04-17T20:38:00.002+02:00

The white goose definitely is Matthias new favourite animal. This morning he went to his daycare mom holding it in his hand. She told me that he hasn't let go of it the whole morning, so that's about 3 hours!
When I picked up Florian from nursery I noticed that he was wearing two different socks. One got a new hole and he had bruised his knee and added another hole to his trousers. It seems the wild years have started. Well at least he's not skateboarding yet.
Today Heidrun and the kids played travelling to Paris. Florian is very cute because he also packed a suitcase for his brother. Then Florian pretended that he's dad and we are the children. So it was payback time :) "Are we there yet? I'm bored. I'm hungry! I'm thirsty! I need to pee. Why are we going to Paris? ..." After arrival Heidrun explained to Florian what Disneyland looks like. When she reached the part with "It's a small world" she started to sing the song. Florian said: "Shit, stop singing!"
In general I think that Florian actually has a serious disease called Tourette Syndrome since he is swearing a lot and sometimes has seizures. Often he says things like "Fart shit chicken poo" and once he was holding a full cup of milk and suddenly screamed "Waaah" and spilled half of the milk onto table, chair and floor. When I told Heidrun that I suspect that Florian is sick she said "No, that disease is called five year old." Well I guess she should know since she's the doctor in the family.
Our neighbour's daughter today actually disagreed that Heidrun is a doctor because she said: "No, she isn't a doctor, she's pregnant!"
Lunch: Fish, aubergine. Dinner: Asparagus, pork chops.

Day 76 - Garlic

2008-04-16T22:38:00.004+02:00

During breakfast Matthias was feeding a plastic goose he'd put on the table with his porridge :)
At nursery today two girls were wearing the same matching "Hello Kitty" T-shirt/jeans combo. Quite astounding that even at that age children are already fashion conscious.
Had another dance session with Matthias. Today he asked me: "Papa, why do we always dance?" "Well, because it's fun, do you like it?" "Yes!!!". When he asked what music was playing I explaine that it's the Pet Shop Boys. He replied "Ketchup boys?"
Yesterday evening the kids watched the end of "The Beauty and the Beast". Matthias told me about it today: "Then the beast like Belle! And the girl liked the beast!" "Was that nice?" "Yes." "So who do you like?" "Papa!" That's nice :)
When I went shopping I was surprised that all the garlic in the supermarket originated from China. I told Heidrun and she said that she had read that actually 95% of all the garlic eaten worldwide was grown in China!!! That's weird, doesn't it grow anywhere else? At least there is only a very small chance of meeting Vampires in China I guess. EDIT: "Only" about 75% of the world's garlic are grown in China according to Wikipedia.
Lunch: Noodles with cheese and smoked pork. Dinner: McDonalds.

Day 75 - Tank competition

2008-04-15T23:13:00.003+02:00

In the morning we were at playgroup again and Matthias spent one hour there eating buttered bread and nuts!
We played Lego tank comparison today. Each of us builds a tank out of Lego and Heidrun then has to judge which is the coolest tank. Matthias lost, because his tank was just a heap of random Lego parts bolted onto each other. Nice touch though was that Jesus Franz was the tank driver. I came in second with my tank design because I had a watchdog (should anyone approach the tank) and a Lego sheep as regrowing resource of wool for clothing when it got cold and the tank crew needs jumpers. Florians tank won as it could fly had a radar and cannons, lots of cannons.
Somehow today we mentioned the city of Budapest today. Matthias misheard it and kept saying Bruderpest to Florian which is very funny since that means "brother plague" translated to English.
Florian turns into a royal: Today when he wanted to play something alone with Heidrun he told Matthias and me: "They are allowed to leave." "Oh, thanks your highness."
Lunch: Fish, Dinner: Pizza

Day 74 - Nuts

2008-04-14T22:22:00.002+02:00

I've fixed our doorbell today that has been broken for 4 days now. Slowly I'm turning into DIY king.
I've bought some nuts for Matthias today because he really loves nuts. I explained all the different types to him and when I gave him a walnut he said that he likes whale nuts :)
Florian came home with a bruise in his face from nursery but wouldn't tell how he got it.
In the afternoon the grandparents took care of the kids and I had something to do for work in Vienna.
Lunch & Dinner: Chicken with pepper, fried cucumber

Days 71 & 72 & 73 - Children's farm

2008-04-13T20:20:00.005+02:00

I'm not getting lazy, but we've been on a children's farm for a long weekend.
Matthias went to bed with a blue and a black toy car in his hands. In the morning the black one was missing and he immediately asked me to find it. I replied that google toy opens at 9am and therefore I can't help him.
When taking a shower in the morning suddenly Florian came in and asked me to open the milk for him because mom is too weak to open it. So I opened the milk with shampoo on my head and in my eyes.
Then when we all had breakfast Matthias was practicing hip hop again while eating.
The kids each have a toy gecko which is very elastic, when Matthias passed a loose silicone sealing of a shop window on the street he pulled it and excitingly told me: "Look a gecko!"
Matthias now applies "gold" to all colours. He wanted me to look for his golden toy motor bike. Since the kids have a green, a red and a cream/silver one I asked him which one he is looking for - the golden one. So I brought the cream on since he had the red one in his hands - it was the wrong one. "No, no, not this one, it's upstairs next to my bed!" And really there was the green - aka golden - bike.
After we arrived at the farm the kids looked at all the animals (cows, pigs, frogs, rabbits, etc.) Matthias was very excited, Florian not really. Matthias' favourite animals were the pig and the frogs.
On Saturday morning I woke up with Matthias sitting on my face with his full nappies and jumping up and down, Florian practicing Kung Fu next to me in bed, then they played hide and seek and Matthias complained about a hole in his pyjamas (which is why he had undressed before jumping onto my face).
Matthias packed his rubber sword for the farm. When Florian asked where his is, Matthias said: "It's MIA!!"
Florian tried to feed pure chilly powder as candy to Matthias. Luckily we could stop him, before he could give any to his brother.
We did some indoor rock climbing with the kids on Saturday when the weather was bad. Florian really loved that and was actually quite good at it.
For German speakers only: Florian uses "Oida" a lot recently, so I asked him: "Florian, warum redest du wie ein Prolo?" Florian: "Ich red halt wie Han Solo!"
Another German only: Matthias sagt Hünen statt Hühner. Er fragte immer: "Gemma in den Hünenstall, zu den goldenen Hünen?" Heidrun: "Wow, da tät ich auch hingehn" :)
Modern times: In our appartment at the farm the kids had a desk with a chair in their room. Matthias asked why they have a computer chair in their room. I told him that actually in the past those tables were called desks and that not always there was a computer on it. But he's right, because on every desk in our house there actually is a computer on it :)
Today in the morning Florian asked for opposite nouns again. When I tried to convince him that this doesn't make sense with nouns but only with adjectives I asked him: "For example what's the opposite of curtain?" He replied: "Lamp, because a curtain takes light away and a lamp adds it." Ok, I have to admit that he got a point there.
In the afternoon today on our way back we stopped by the Jurassic Island dinosaur park in Traismauer. It's kind of like a theme park except that it's rather boring and a complete rip off, but the kids like it there so I guess it's worth it.
When we asked Florian what he liked most about the short trip he said: "The table football at our hotel" :)
Lunches and dinners: Nothing remarkable except for one very interesting lunch at a Pizzeria after the rock climbing. First of all the Pizza was the worst I've had in my life, but I should've guessed since the owners were Austrian and the whole pub looked more like a typical Austrian "Beisl". Most interesting was the decoration, because not only did they have posters of half naked women on the wall as well as the obligatory sports trophies that all rural Austrian pubs use to decorate their interior with. No, they also had a poster of a completely naked girl spreading her legs and pulling apart her - you know what - with her fingers!

Day 70 - Hulk

2008-04-10T20:29:00.002+02:00

In the morning Matthias, Florian and I played: Ninja, Mother Mary and Mr. Jesus Franz against The Incredible Hulk. That was quite funny. We used small puppets to play that and we substituted Hulk with a frog in a suit, the Ninja was some prince figurine and Mary and Franz were from a nativity manger Matthias got for Christmas (which still is his favourite Christmas present until now). Franz by the way is one of the kings, it's just that he asked me one day what his name is (during his name everything phase) and I replied Franz out of impuls. Now he is convinced that the guy a) is Mr. Jesus and b) is named Franz.
Matthias doesn't say Incredible Hulk but rather Dangerous Hulk :)
Matthias: "Big cars have big tires"
Matthias went to his nursing mom this morning. He goes there every thursday for 3 hours and really likes her. Today he asked why he has to go there and I told him because it's thursday. He doesn't have a clue what thursday is of course but now he always asks when there is another of those thursdays. He took Mary and Franz with him when we went there and wore his new beige shoes. For some reason he says that the beige shoes are stronger and that you can do stronger stuff with them. WTF?!
In the afternoon we had guests over at our house, when they left we asked our kids: "do you want to say bye bye?" Florian: "No" Me: "Oh boy, children are always sooo polite" Florian: "What does polite mean?" Me: "See, that's the problem"
Lunch and Dinner: Noodles in soup

Day 69 - Cinderella

2008-04-10T20:19:00.002+02:00

Florian is experimenting with language, rhyming was a big topic and today it was opposites. Unfortunately he didn't get it that opposites normally don't work well with nouns. So he asked me things like, what's the opposite of house, what's the opposite of chair, what's the opposite of poo?
Florian likes to go through our rubbish. Sometimes he simply opens the bin or recycling paper basket and announces: "I'll have a look at our rubbish." That's quite weird behaviour I assume and it makes things like throwing away old and/or broken toys very hard as you can guess.
Matthias was a royal pain in the a#* the whole morning when outside he wanted to go inside, when inside he wanted to go outside again, ...
In the afternoon we played in the garden since the weather was gorgeous. The neighbour twins were also outside and screaming some random stuff that Matthias always repeated. The best one was: Twins: "Cinderella!!!" Matthias: "A gorilla!!!" Twins: "Cinderella!!!" Matthias: "A gorilla!!!" and so on.
Lunch and Dinner: Beans, asparagus, chicken soup.
Evening entertainment: Ratatouille, during which I fell asleep. First time in a long time that I've slept 12 hours straight.

Day 68 - The trampoline incident

2008-04-08T20:50:00.002+02:00

Matthias peed on and through the trampoline today. (We have a trampoline in our living room which is not very nice to look at for decorative purposes but the children have a lot of fun jumping around on it).
This reminds of another trampoline incident last summer which was more or less the worst poo accident in my history as a father. Matthias was jumping around naked on the trampoline, Heidrun was sleeping upstairs. Then suddenly he stopped jumping and I noticed on his face what was going to happen. So I rushed to get some nappies and tried to hold them up to his butt. Unfortunately some had already dropped onto the trampoline and was slowly starting to diffuse through the net. I couldn't do anything about that because I had to hold up the nappies for the rest. Then when I thought he had finished I ran to the front door to dispose of the nappies and then wipe up the rest from the trampoline and floor. During the run I didn't notice that I had leaked part of the brown stuff on the floor, worse it was in front of the living room door so when I opened it I made a nice, smelly quarter circle on the ground. I closed the nappies quickly and put them into the garden. Running back, Matthias - still not done - was now standing on the carpet and pooing on it. My sister in law who was visiting just arrived and came in through the terrace door and asked me if I need any help, Heidrun came downstairs and asked what the hell was going on. End of story.
Florian and Matthias were really playing with each other nicely in the supermarket in the afternoon. Florian was pushing (or actually racing) his brother through the aisles in the trolley. He bumped into a tower of oil bottles and some flowers, but otherwise there were no major accidents. In the end Florian was so excited that he forgot that he needed the toilet and peed himself which he doesn't like at all so he started crying.
Lunch and Dinner: Noodles.

Day 67 - Fashion

2008-04-07T20:41:00.002+02:00

Kids got up super late again. Oh, I can still remember the times at school when I was the same, getting up was always the hardest. Actually it still is :) I've read in recent news that it's genetically predetermined whether one prefers to get up early or late.
In the afternoon we went clothes and shoes shopping for the kids. That's a good test for patience. Florian needed two jumpers and it took ages until we could find any that were "cool" enough. Matthias needed a new pair of shoes but was not at all interested in that because they had bobby cars in the shoe shop so he was riding around on one all the time and I had to chase him through the whole store so he would try on a pair. Then he didn't want to walk in them but wanted to stay on the car. So I had to force him off the car and run away with it with him running after me crying. After a couple of meters we decided that the pair was ok because he could follow me at a decent speed.
I caught Matthias during the day stuffing toys into his nappies again :) That must be a phase all kids go through, Florian used to put paper clips into his nappies.
Entertainment: Ratatouille
Lunch: Chicken with onions and aubergine, Dinner: Pizza and carrot soup.

Day 66 - Too much food

2008-04-06T20:12:00.003+02:00

Yesterday Matthias was looking quite poorly all day and sometimes trying to scratch something at his bottom. So we thought that he maybe was getting sick. In the evening when we changed his nappies we found the following inside: one plastic gecko, one plastic cat, three plastic stars the size of a two euro coin!!! No wonder he wasn't feeling well, he must have put the stuff inside during the day for whatever reason and then forgot them. After the toys were removed he was all happy again :)
In the morning when Florian came into our bed he headbutted me into my teeth and I got a bleeding lip from that. Life with kids is dangerous, kind of like street fighting!
Today we went for a brunch in a posh hotel for Heidrun's dad's 65th birthday. It was VERY nice and we all ate far too much. Best thing is that they have a playroom there where you can park your children with a nanny!
In the evening we had friends over at our place for dinner, so we went more or less directly from brunch to dinner, kind of like a brunner. Now I'm full, I will never eat food again ...
Brunner: Sushi, nougat dumplings, fish, asparagus, lamb, various dim sum, chicken, aubergine, antipasti, salmon, caviar, cheese, grapes, watermelon, kiwi, jiaozi, etc.

Day 65 - Human table

2008-04-05T17:58:00.004+02:00

More penis follow up: Heidrun told Florian about the baby penis inside her and that once it's born she'll finally be free of male genitals once and for all. Florian simply said: "I'll always have mine." Seems that part is really important for male humans :)
Matthias was looking for a pig in the trees when visiting the grandparents. Don't ask me how he got the idea that he would actually find one up there.
Heidrun belly now is already big enough that she can use it to put stuff on it. Today she proudly put a cup of tea on top of it and announced: "Look now it's big enough!" So she has turned into a human bar finally (When she was pregnant with Florian she used to put a bedside lamp on her belly so she could read because the bedside table was too far).
Matthias peed on the floor again. Heidrun wanted to teach him that he should announce it before, so she asked him: "Did you know that it's going to come?" "Yes." "So what do you say when you know you have to pee?" "Thank you?" "(Laughing), no not that, what do you say?" "Please?" "No, you say 'I need to go to the toilet'!"
Today we passed a girl from Florian's nursery on the street. Heidrun asked him what her name is. He said: "... Didshee ..." "What her name is Didshee?!" "No, did she have a round or a long face?"
Lunch: Soup and smoked ham, Dinner: Schnitzel and chips

Day 64 - Babes and Boobs

2008-04-04T20:43:00.002+02:00

Took another photo in my series "Bab(i)es and Boobs" pt1, pt2.
Matthias: "Papa, that's too loud!!" Me: "What's too loud?" M: "Your mouth!"
Matthias was looking for Heidrun's penis again today. She finally found a solution and told him that currently she actually got one inside her, attached to his future baby brother. Matthias was satisfied and replied: "Well then."
Heidrun changed Matthias' nappies outside the train station today. Matthias asked her: "Why does my willy feel cold now?"
A wheel from one of the kids' toy trucks came off. Matthias tried to repair it with a measure tape, not very effective, but at least a try :)
Continued watching "The Beauty and the Beast". I remembered that we had seen the musical in the past which was nicely done actually.
In the evening Florian came running to me panting with mouth open, tongue hanging out and his toothbrush in his hand because he wanted me to brush his teeth. I asked him if he is a dog. Matthias immediately joined in and shouted: "I am a cat!!"
Lunch: Kebap, Dinner: Strawberries

Day 63 - MIA

2008-04-03T22:54:00.006+02:00

Florian did some more calculataions today and since we never taught him how to write numbers he simply copies them from the printed numbers he has seen. Today he tried to write the number 6 twice and ended up writing a 9 which he thought was very funny. He told me and said that I should write that in my blog! Interesting how children nowadays grow up with words like that, in the future I guess you have to explain what a diary is with "Oh you know it's like an old fashioned blog, but on paper in a book"
Today when I was on the toilet Matthias was looking for me, so I shouted that if he needs anything he could find me on the toilet. Unfortunately he looked in the upstairs bathroom instead of downstairs even though he had seen me leave in that direction and got completely desperate and started crying really badly. When I finally reached him he was completely terrified that I had disappeared, poor little fellow.
We are still looking for the black horse. Today he asked my: "Papa, why is the black horse em eye aye?" I didn't get it in the beginning and asked him what the hell he meant until I got it finally :) - Yesterday when I was quite annoyed by that search I had told Matthias that the horse is simply MIA.
We played hide and seek in the afternoon, in the beginning Florian found me really fast, but then during the fourth round I suddenly stayed in my hiding place for about ten minutes until I finally gave up and came out asking "Where are you? I was not that hard to find?" Florian: "I had to go poo all of a sudden, so I went to the toilet"
Lunch: Schnitzel, Dinner: Spaghetti

Day 62 - Worst case scenario

2008-04-03T22:28:00.006+02:00

What's bad: changing baby nappies after they've pooed. What's worse: changing them when they have diarrhoea. What's worst: having them poo on your arm while you are in the middle of changing when they have diarrhoea. Guess what happened today ...
Matthias is stuffing wood pieces into the rails of our window shutters. Everyday we have to check now before we close them in the evening. Yesterday I forgot and the shutter was screwed up in the morning, they will break eventually I guess.
The kids got up very late at 8.30 in the morning since they haven't adjusted to daylight savings time yet. I wonder how that'll work once they go to school, since it starts at 7.30 here in Baden. That'll be a nightmare, since even at 8.30 I had to kick them out of bed and then had to put up with two super grumpy children during breakfast.
Matthias has infinite confidence in me, he asks a lot of questions as you might have noticed. Today I finally ran out of answers and asked him: "How should I know, do you really think that I know everything in this world?!?!" ... "Yes"
When dealing with toddlers you often have the urge to simply say "shut up!" all the time. E.g. Matthias had a tiny tiny injury on his thumb (basically unnoticeable), "oh it hurts" "oh make it go away" "where?" "here!" "ok, do you want a plaster?" "yes" "this one?" "yes" giving him a yellow plaster "why didn't I get a red plaster?" "you wanted a yellow one" "now I want a red one!" ... "shut up!"
I have the theory that grandparents are visually impaired. Why? Because e.g. my mom, every time she sees the kids she thinks that they have grown. I mean if that were really true in the frequency she mentions it, they'd both be 190cm by now.
I got "The Beauty and the Beast" on DVD from a friend as a present for the kids. So slowly I'm getting some real variety into our evening entertainment program :) When asked where the movie came from I told them that it's from Aurore, the friend from work with dark hair. Matthias immediately replied that this is not possible because Scar from Lion King has dark hair and Mufasa has red hair. I then tried to explain to him that more than one person in this world can have the same hair colour. Florian also got really confused saying: "Oh I remember your colleague with dark red hair" me: "It's brown. You know, just forget about the hair colour."
Lunch: Schnitzel, Dinner: Schnitzel and fried beans

Day 61 - April Fool!

2008-04-02T12:04:00.004+02:00

Florian did a lot of April Fool's jokes today which were mostly half funny (stuff like "Joshua is my friend again - haha, April fool! There is a spider on your shoulder - haha, April fool!"), but at least he got me very often. He also wanted me to make some, but of course that doesn't work that way.
Matthias says gold to the color grey. That's quite funny because he ends up saying things like: "I want to wear my golden tights." "Why does the dinosaur have golden feet?".
Matthias recently keeps asking why Heidrun has no penis. He is really inistent on that topic :) He also asked when God will turn her into a man!
Still looking for the black horse. Horse, horse, where are you? One of Florian's April fool's jokes was actually telling Matthias that a brown cat was actually the black horse :) Best thing is: Matthias believed him for about an hour!
Matthias wanted to paint with wax crayons today. I let him but most of it ended up in his face because he started to paint that instead of the paper I gave him.
Our neighbours have two blond twin daughters who today invited Florian over to play with them, first he said that this is an April fool's joke and that he doesn't believe them. After a while they all came over to our place and one of the girls was complaining that Florian was always spanking her. Now imagine the whole thing 20 years later: getting invited to blond twin neighbours for some spanking action :)
After a while the brother of the twins came over as well so all together five kids ended up in our house. The destructive power reached a similar level to a nuclear explosion.
Matthias started singing along to German hip hop, very funny - he was running around singing: "Was geht, was geht, ich sags dir ganz konkret!"
Went out in the evening to a Thai restaurant and seeing a weird Korean movie.
Lunch: Fried rice, Dinner: Fried cucumber and fried rice, me: Thai noodles

Day 60 - Lost horse

2008-03-31T20:19:00.003+02:00

Matthias was desperately looking for his black plastic horse all day. We haven't found it and I'm pretty sure that he has lost it actually while carrying it around outdoors.
Went horse watching again in the morning.
In a brief period without nappies Matthias peed agains our couch, into a Playmobil plastic airplane and on the floor.
Finished Ratatouille today, ranks as my second favourite Pixar movie after Incredibles.
Matthias was playing outside a lot again today with his stones, Florian was doing more maths. It is really strange, how different children are even though we try to bring them up the same. So much for the theory that people are only defined by their upbringing.
In the evening Matthias appeared naked in the bathroom when it was time to brush his teeth, when asked where his nappies are he looked down and replied: "Oh, I must have lost them".
Bought a bluetooth stick today so I can backup my mobile phone numbers on the PC. Unfortunately the sync software didn't ask what data to sync so now I have about a billion outdated contacts from Outlook on my phone, arggllll!
Lunch: Leftovers, Dinner: Asparagus and chicken.

Day 59 - Spring

2008-03-30T20:51:00.004+02:00

Start of daylight savings time. Good, I like it when it when there is more sun to enjoy in the evening. Also the kids slept until 8 = 9 this morning.
Played more luckalicka in the morning.
Then we did our first bike tour with Florian as it was very warm and sunny today. He was very excited and we cycled for 2 hours with 2 picnic breaks in between, quite a big distance for a five year old. Matthias was in his child seat, so he simply enjoyed the scenery and the food I guess.
In the afternoon we enjoyed the sun in the garden, Matthias was playing mostly by himself all afternoon placing stones on the fence border and making "music" as he called it by banging the stoned against the fence. Florian got a book with primary school first grade exercises and he did calculations in the living room for the whole afternoon instead of playing outside!!! He'll turn into a real nerd one day. But numbers really fascinate him, so we let him do it.
Lunch: Fried rice, Dinner: Asparagus & Chinese pork

Day 58 - Luckalicka

2008-03-29T20:45:00.003+01:00

We played football in the kids' room where the bed was the goal and I was the goalkeeper. After a while we wanted to switch and have Heidrun take over as keeper, but Florian said: "I can't hit the goal now, because mom is so fat!"
Matthias was holding two nuts all day (he always has some objects that are his current favourite objects for the moment, like dice the other day). When he misplaced them he got al panicky "Where are my nuts, where are my nuts?!" That's always good for a laugh :)
In the morning when the kids came into our room we played "wood, wood, wood" and "luckalicka" both games invented by Matthias. Basically you either scream "wood, wood, wood" or "luckalicka" and then jump onto a parent. Then he wanted me to join in, when asked who I should jump on he said I should jump on mom - ouch!
Matthias discovered avocado between the apples. He immediately announced that he likes them "I like the green things between the apples, you need a spoon to eat them, I want some." "They are called avocados" "I like mamocados!"
Evening: Watched Ratatouille, actually a very good movie, I wonder if I'll appreciate it as much when I see it the tenth time in a couple of weeks.
Installed a lamp today. Something I always wonder about is if the people who design lamps actually have ever tried to install them. They should actually be forced to do so 100 times, before the f#*+ing thing goes on sale!!!! I explained to the kids that doing DIY is the only time when it is OK to swear.
Lunch: Fish, scrambled eggs and vegetables, Dinner: Fried rice and leftovers

Day 57 - Fruit discussion

2008-03-29T20:16:00.004+01:00

I'm turning into a real housewife now. Today I sewed the sleeve of my jumper!
Matthias tore Heidrun's necklace apart. She told him off but he immediately replied that I should fix it with a screwdriver.
When I cut a kiwi I wanted to have for dinner Matthias came along and said: "I don't like kiwi!" "That's good, because it's not for you anyway!!!" "I like apples!" "Good, but I'm now cutting the kiwi because I want one" "I've found some apples!" "Great, where did you find them?" "Here!" (pointing to our fruit basket) "Wow Matthias, you are a great adventurer, you could easily survive in the wild" "I want an apple now" "Ok, I give up"
When toddlers throw a tantrum they literally throw themselves on the ground. I really wonder what nature wants to achieve by that. It really doesn't improve their situation at all, they get dirty, concrete in winter is very cold, etc.
Florian can already buy his own stuff in Mc Donalds, he really starts to grow up.
Lunch: Chinese instant noodles (the kids love that stuff), Dinner: Mc Donalds ... very healthy day, I know.

Day 56 - Asians = X-Men

2008-03-28T10:53:00.004+01:00

How to brush children's teeth (a guide by Karenzpapa). The theory: Brush every tooth and make sure it's clean, always brush from red to white to protect and massage the gum. Do this for 3 minutes twice a day. Afterwards make sure the kids rinse their mouth with enough water. The reality: "Matthias open your mouth." "..." "Matthias open your mouth." "Where is my horse?" "Matthias open YOUR MOUTH!!!!!!" Then you start wrestling down the child (we sometimes call him Mike Scofield, because he always flees) that is trying to flee. You catch screaming Mike on his way out of the bathroom and carry him back. You try some new tactics: "Mike what's inside your mouth? Are there any animals?" Then you start looking for his favourite animals in his mouth. That normally works and you can more or less get his teeth cleaned.
On our way to nursery Matthias was carrying his favourite plastic dinosaur. Since the dinosaur also walked there, he stopped every now and then to touch the ground with the dino's feet. You can imagine that this slowed down our "Moonwalk" even more. We were virtually stopping time again. I actually found out now that maybe Matthias is not simply slow but has a genetic mutation that allows him to slow down time. I've seen that in a documentary called "Heroes" where there is an Asian guy called Hiro Nakamura who has the same ability. So maybe we Asians tend to be X-Men since my super power is to get red immediately after drinking alcohol (not very useful to save the world I know).
Matthias noticed the giant dog turd at the building site again. Funny, since he hasn't mentioned it in a while now. At the cat house he also mentioned: "Here's where the cats appear!".
When I cleaned the living room Matthias asked: "Why do you do that?" I explained that kids make a huge mess and turn every room into a pigsty. He replied "No that's not true, children always clean up!" ... "WHAT!!?!?!"
Showed Matthias a remote control car that I've found in the attic. Unfortunately we ran out of battery power after five minutes. But he liked it.
We played with plastic animals most of the day again :( You really have to try that once in your life it's kind of a Zen like spiritual experience. Florian also joined in later on and has learned from me: he picked up two horses, placed them on the floor and announced that one is eating grass and one is sleeping :)
Lunch: Curry chicken (yes I cooked a lot of that), Dinner: Pizza
Night: Went out with colleagues. It's official now that I suck at pool billards.

Day 55 - End of holidays

2008-03-26T20:18:00.003+01:00

Children are genetically programmed to know when holidays are over. The last ten days Florian got up between 6 and 6.30 in the morning. Today it's the first day of nursery after the holidays and I had to kick him out of bed at 8.10 so I could get him into nursery on time.
Every morning I prepare a snack box for Florian. Before the holidays I put apple slices into the box. Naturally he hadn't eaten them and I had forgotten about it. The thing that I found in the box this morning was quite scary. It was green, hairy and had some weird tentacles that stretched across the whole box. I immediately threw it into the bin and I think I heard it screaming a bit when I closed the lid.
Florian was at our neighbours place in the afternoon. When he came back in the evening he didn't close the front door. When we noticed it, the door had already been open for an hour and the temperature in the hallway was below freezing (at least that's what it felt like).
After Easter you have to cook food that requires hard boiled eggs. Luckily a lot of Chinese dishes can be used for that (curry chicken for example).
Lunch & Dinner: Curry chicken.

Day 54 - Bicycle repair main Pt. 2

2008-03-26T20:07:00.004+01:00

Florian is a very slow eater. When he was two years old sometimes we'd spend two hours per meal until he had finished. Matthias is a VERY fast eater. You can never give him e.g. one whole slice of ham because he'd immediately try to stuff the whole thing into his mouth. So we have the rule now that we feed him pieces and he has to show us that his mouth is empty before he's allowed to continue. Otherwise he'd choke to death I guess.
Florian discovered rhyming. That's quite funny because he invents some really bad and ridiculous rhymes. Like "Ich sag rot und du bist tot" (= I say red and you are dead).
When going to the supermarket Matthias fell asleep on his tricycle. That's quite an accomplishement because it's so uncomfortable. But he managed to put his head onto the handle bar and then shut his eyes.
Matthias asked about numbers of things again today. During dinner he wanted to know the numbers of rice and a chicken leg.
Matthias today noticed that there is no bear hunt in Lion King. That's definitely true! There aren't even any bears in the whole movie.
Florian's bike has a flat tire AGAIN. So wheel off, fix it, wheel back on. I wonder how he managed to poke the tube twice within a month. Getting the tire off is the tricky part. Maybe there is some nice and elegant way to achieve that, for me at least brute force and a lot of swearing did the trick eventually.
I turned my kids into "Krocha". Only Viennese will understand that, but in the evening they were both running around shouting "Bam Bam OIDA!".
Matthias didn't want to go to bed. He cried and shouted: "I want to throw my pajamas into the toilet!!"
Lunch: Smoked pork, Dinner: Curry chicken legs.

Day 53 - The day after

2008-03-24T19:59:00.003+01:00

Florian and Matthias had a lot of chocolate today. The aftermath of Easter.
For lunch to celebrate Easter we had Asian takeaway (Sushi and Thai curry, both were excellent). The restaurant is run by Chinese and is named "Willi" :)
Matthias today got a book from grandma containing the stories of Jungle Book and Lion King :) So today Heidrun read the book to the kids and in the evening I watched Lion King on DVD with them. Disney definitely is successful with children.
Two year old's really throw a lot of tantrums. One problem is that they notice that they have their own will which in many cases is complete nonsense (like wearing their boots on the sofa) so you can't allow what they want. Second is that they often overestimate their own abilities and then get frustrated (e.g. trying to run faster than their brother).
One difficulty with Christmas and Easter is that relatives also want to give the kids presents but often later than the actual event. So for example yesterday when they got some more Easter presents from Heidrun's sister we told them that maybe the Easter bunny has come again or they haven't found everything. Same with Christmas child at Christmas. So it seems that they've all got Alzheimers.
X-Files: During the day Matthias managed to shit on his right lower leg inside his trousers. We still don't know how he did that because the rest of his legs and trousers were clean so we didn't notice when changing nappies. Only in the evening Heidrun smelled something awkward during dinner, touched Matthias leg and exclaimed: "You got poo in your trousers!"
Lunch and Dinner: Takeaway

Day 52 - Easter

2008-03-23T21:23:00.002+01:00

Today was Easter sunday. The kids were so excited that we got up at 6 AM to look for the presents the Easter Bunny has hidden. Heidrun got up at 5:45 to hide the stuff, when Florian got up she was still out there so I told him that she was in church. Easter is a lot more fun with kids. We/the bunny gave them lots of sweets and a book and DVD each.
Dads to crazier stuff than moms. While we were brushing the kids teeth I discovered that you can slide really well with slippers on our wooden floor into the bathroom where the floor is tiled. Florian was laughing a lot when he saw that. So to impress him I had another go with high speed. Unfortunately I couldn't stop and fell head over into the bathtub which was actually quite painful :) But Florian couldn't stopped laughing anymore, haven't seen him like this in a long time, so it was definitely worth it. I couldn't find one slipper which had actually landed in the tub as well during the crash. Heidrun only shook her head and noticed that she actually has three and soon four kids at home.
After his nap Matthias today threw a tantrum that was unbelievable. He just couldn't stop crying because he wanted to wear his boots in the lounge. It was so funny that I filmed it on video.
Watched parts of "Die wilden Kerle" and "Ratatouille" today.
We are more and more happy with our house that we've actually bought over the internet. Since we both didn't really have a clue about houses we are only now finding out that for a terraced house our's is a lot more spacious than the other's that are currently being built.
Lunch & Dinner: Fried noodles

Day 51 - Statistics

2008-03-22T21:15:00.004+01:00

Matthias question session while playing with toy cars: "Why are the big cars big?" "Because the manufacturer made them big." "Why are the small ones small?" "Same reason." "Why did the make them big?" "Because!!!!"
When putting on lotion for Matthias chickenpox I was wondering if there are some statistics about parents. Because I guess during an average parents live you'll have changes a couple of thousand nappies, brushed more kids teeth than your own, clipped a million finger and toe nails, wiped many many arses, put on about a ton of lotion for various skin diseases, fed about 200 chicken 50 whole pigs 500 apples and maybe one carrot, changed clothes to fill a whole H&M store, read stories from children books the amount of 50 copies of "War and Peace", answered more questions than Wikipedia, walked 3 times worth the earth cirumference to nursery/school and back in slow motion, ... and many many more things. All that would cost about one third of your lifetime, I wonder what people without children do during that time?
Matthias loves to play with plastic animals. Unfortunately he always wants you to join him. This is definitely the pinnacle of boredom, honestly there is nothing more boring than that, I assume even watching paint dry is more exciting as at least there is some sense of accomplishment when it's finally dry :) Normally I simply put up 3 random animals and then announce that my animals are now eating gras, end of story.
Sometimes when Matthias cries and you try to comfort him, he actually doesn't want to be comforted. He then cries even more "But I want to cry now!!!"
Lunch: Chicken from yesterday, smoked pork, Dinner: Smoked pork, aubergine, rice, carrot soup, smoked salmon

Day 50 - Music in the house

2008-03-22T21:03:00.003+01:00

What I've always wanted is a stylish appartment/house like in "About a boy", well that's not really possible when you have kids, because apart from everything being littered with toys and food you also always have some kind of decoration at home. This starts in November when you put up Christmas decoration then continues after Christmas with Mardi Gras stuff that then directly combos into Easter decoration.
Had a dance session with Matthias in the morning. He really likes those and wanted to hear the music very loud. So today we tested out how much volume the neighbours can take. Seems the walls are really soundproof because in the end it was nearly as loud as in a club and still no one complained (or we just couldn't hear the door bell anymore :)).
Played Singstar today for Matthias' entertainment because I started to run out of ideas what to do with him. After my brilliant performance of a couple of songs I asked him if he liked it. Well I got a definitie NO! So I guess that's it for my singing career.
Florian came back from grandma's place. He and his brother were immediately back to fighting mode. Some things never change!
Evening: Went to cinema and watched "No country for old men", very good movie with some hilarious dialogue.
Lunch: Leftovers, Dinner: Chicken with onions and egg

Day 49 - Poorly

2008-03-20T20:46:00.003+01:00

Matthias felt very poorly all day, has been crying a lot and woke up completely panicking during a nap. Poor little fellow, in the evening he's been better, so I hope he'll get well soon.
In the morning he spilled some water on his tights. Since I couldn't be bothered to change them we blow dried them while he still wore them. That was quite exciting for him, because I guess Heidrun normally would just change them :)
My mom was over, so I could take a nap as well, last night was a bit rough, because Matthias was so annoyed by the itch of the chickenpox.
Matthias today suddenly said: "Jungle book Peter is so funny." I guess that's a compliment.
Today I removed a gigantic bogy from Matthias' EAR! I didn't even know an ear could produce something like that.
Matthias starts to understand what's going on in movies. Recently when watching Lion King he always gets quite desperate when Mufasa dies saying: "The one with the red hair shouldn't die". I always console him that he's only sleeping. Luckily Simba later on looks exactly the same so currently he still believes me. (It doesn't help that Florian keeps telling his brother that he's dead.)
Lunch: fish, Dinner: fried noodles

Why I don't drink alcohol

2008-03-19T22:14:00.006+01:00

Cause I've been asked a LOT of times in my life already why I drink nearly no alcohol :) Here it is for the interested: Today I've found the article on Wikipedia about that condition. It's interesting that not only the tolerance for alcohol seems to be a lot lower, but also the risk of getting cancer is a lot higher, doh! Funny thing is that the gene is dominant and since there's so many of us Asians I guess we'll breed alcoholism out of this world, cause eventually you know we're gonna get you :), no need for prohibition.

Day 48 - Reappearing stuff

2008-03-19T19:59:00.004+01:00

In the morning Florian called from grandma's place and asked how his brother is. That's quite thoughtful considering that normally they try to kill each other.
Florian likes to play Battleships recently which is called "Schiffe versenken" in German. Matthias always calls the game "Kinder versenden" which translates to "mailing children" :) That would be a cool game, I always tell him "We'd ship you two off to Honolulu".
Matthias was looking for James (a train from Thomas the tank engine) for a couple of weeks, today we found it in his toy toolbox in the space where the driller goes. He was quite excited.
Florian stole a carrot from me four days ago when I was cooking and hid it behind a pile of puzzles. Today Matthias found it and thank god in time, so it wasn't mouldy yet. At first I didn't get it when he announced: "Here's a carrot! Here's a carrot!"
Oliver (a friend of mine) has lent me a book. Today Matthias tore a page out of it. Sorry Oliver, I'll buy you a new copy :)
Here's a good trick if you want to get your child to take a nap in the afternoon: Push him around in the pushchair facing the sun. It's so bright, that he has to close his eyes and will eventually fall asleep.
I bought Wasabi coated peanuts today. Matthias wanted some. We told him that they are really hot and he wouldn't like them. He still wanted some. We told him again ... he ate one ... it was hot ... he spit it out ... he cried ... for 2 minutes ... we've told him so.
Lunch: Pizza, Dinner: Mozarella and tomatoes, fried vegetables.

Day 47 - Chickenpox redux

2008-03-18T20:54:00.004+01:00

We went to Vienna today to visit my work, go to McDonalds and then hand Florian over to his grandparents where he'll stay for 2 nights.
At work Charlie, a nice colleague, built a boomerang for the kids. Designed by him and good flying performance, the kids were quite impressed (well, Florian was, Matthias didn't really get it, I think).
We took the subway line 6 which is brown on the map, so I told Matthias that we take the brown train. That was a BIG mistake, he was devastated that the actual train was red and kept asking for the next half hour when the brown train would arrive. Obviously he couldn't be talked out of that. "Only the line is brown, not the train, do you understand that?" "No, because that's stupid!"
At McDonalds they now have started to introduce free refill in Austria! We still have to pay for ketchup though (and it's the only country I know where you have to do that)!
Matthias has chickenpox as well now, doh! I managed to get both kids with chickenpox during my paternity leave ...
Lunch: McDonalds, Dinner: Leftovers

Day 46 - Star Wars

2008-03-17T21:10:00.004+01:00

Florian invented a joke today: "Two men play chess, one says 'UNO'!". Well not very funny, but you can start to see the basics of humour developing in his brain.
Do you know rainsticks? Do you know what a "washing slide" is ? (I'm not sure what the correct English word is, but basically it's a big pipe connecting our bathroom to the cellar, where the washing machine is, where you throw in the dirty clothes so you don't have to walk the stairs). Florian today took a full box of marbles and poured them down the slide! That was very cool, because it sounded like a gigantic rainstick, more like a typhoon actually.
I have a couple of miniature comic Star Wars figures. One of them is Han Solo in carbonite. When you wind him up he shakes himself out of the carbonite. Florian asked me today what the black stuff is. I told him that's carbonite. He answered: "Oh yes, I know that, Superman is weak against that!" "No, that's cryptonite!"
One other figure is Boba Fett. I explained the kids who that is and that his father is Jango Fett. Florian immediately wanted to know who his mother is. "Well, there is no mother he is a clone." "What is a clone?" ... long explanation about cloning follows. "But still he needs a mother because who gave birth?"... long explanation about scifi and breeding units. Matthias asks: "Who is Han Solo's mother?" ... I shouldn't have started the whole topic!!
Most respected jobs for kids (more specific: boys) a father can have: binman, firefighter, policeman, builder, lorry driver, race driver. Least respected jobs: investment banker, lawyer, accountant, controller, quality assurance for binders. Game developer is at least OK.
Lunch: Pizza, Dinner: Vegetables and rice.

Day 45 - Dice Dice Baby

2008-03-17T16:02:00.005+01:00

Heidrun found the black dice!
We were invited for lunch at Dani's (a friend of ours) place. Matthias managed to gather 4 dice from various games and carried them around the whole afternoon.
Dani's boyfriend asked him: "Hey Matthias, wanna roll some dice? What did you get? Five, cool!" He is a very nice guy.
Florian = Gauss: In the afternoon Florian suddenly told me that there are 21 dots on a dice. I replied "Great, and how did you calculate that?", assuming that he simply summed them up. He answered that this is three times seven!!!! That's my son, I'm very proud!!!
After the invite I went for a walk with the kids. A toddler's life is brilliant: Matthias had a nap in the pushchair. When he woke up he realised that meanwhile I had bought a chocolate cake and immediately demanded some. So still wearing all his clothes he got 2 pieces of cake. I want that life!
On saturday we were invited at another friend's place and when asked, Heidrun had no clue how I take my coffee, so I guess I have to return my green card :)
Lunch: Tomatoe soup, lemon chicken plus vegetables, Dinner: Spaghetti

Day 44 - Red and Green

2008-03-15T19:41:00.003+01:00

Florian decorated a wall with stickers. Generally when you have kids your walls get quite a grungy look, but that's ok, that's what walls are for anyway and gives your home a bohemian vibe :)
Matthias spilled a full cup of water, I actually do that a lot as well at the office, but with more sophisticated fluids like coffee or tea. My colleagues use to make fun of me but now I have the proof that it is genetic and inheritable!
The weather was brilliant today and we spent a lot of time in the morning just lying in the sun in our garden. With children having a garden is a very convenient and nice thing and definitely outweighs the inconvenience of living a bit further from Vienna.
Matthias ate wax today. It was red and wrapped around some cheese so I guess it looked edible.
At dinner we talked about Green Lantern because Florian is quite into super heroes now. Suddenly Matthias started singing "Rabimmel, rabammel, rabum" (to all non German speakers here's why).
Lunch: McDonalds, Dinner: Bread, cheese, sausages

Day 43 - Dice

2008-03-15T19:32:00.004+01:00

Matthias lost his black dice. He got an orange and black dice from two different games and for some strange reason he really likes them. Also he is always rolling a 5, because that for the time being is his favourite number. He carries the two dice everywhere and roles them every now and then and is happy and content that he rolled a 5. Now he has lost the black one and is VERY desperate, always asking where it is. We've looked for it everywhere and still can't find it.
We coloured eggs for easter today. During that process I also coloured three fingers which are now completely red. The colour doesn't get off.
In the afternoon we went to Farbie's the indoor play area again. I got some time on the trampoline! Yessss, trampolines rock.
Lunch: Curry chicken, Dinner: noodles and leftovers
I went out in the evening to a party at a colleague's appartement, it was a nice party, but I left quite early, still being tired from the day at Heathrow.

Day 42 - Eeengelaaand

2008-03-14T12:32:00.002+01:00

Went to London today with a colleague to attend a developer conference. It was tiring, but still a nice change from the daily routine. The conference itself was also quite interesting. Airport hotels suck. They are in the middle of nowhere and there's nothing you can do nearby.

Day 41 - Gourmet

2008-03-14T12:26:00.003+01:00

Picked up Florian, Monika and Veronika from nursery. Half way home Veronika noticed that she hadn't changed from slippers to her boots. Great, so we went all the way back, receiving lots of grins from my fellow mothers :), changed shoes and then went off again.
The kids were very slow walking home, my mom had announced she'd arrive in five minutes so I tried the old trick of starting a race: "Who's first at the front door?". That always works, all three started running!
I bought some smoked salmon in the supermarket and the kids nearly ate it all. Both really love seafood, mostly salmon, surimi and caviar. Mental note: have to find cheaper stuff for them to like (e.g. salted bread).
Florian visited David a friend in the afternoon. They had been fighting apparently and Florian also tore his trousers :) Anyway he said that he fights a lot better than David, because he knows how to fight like a Ninja!!
Lunch: salmon, Dinner: curry chicken

Day 40 - Bicycle repair man

2008-03-12T11:32:00.002+01:00

Florian's bike had a flat rear tire. So nice dad that I am, I fixed it. This was a very exciting experience for Florian as we had to get the tire & tube off the bike, find the hole, drive to a shopping center, find a sports store, and buy the repair kit then get back home, fix the tube and then reassemble the bike again. Since I haven't done that in the last 20 years or so, it was also quite exciting for me. Things learned: take a picture of anything you disassemble in its original state, that helped a lot when putting it back together again. Second: no one actually fixes tubes anymore the salesman at the store said, because the kit for repairing the tube cost only one euro less than a whole new tube, but Florian still wanted to fix it because that's more adventerous :)
Afterwards I went to do the cycling/jogging combo with Florian again. I noticed that running actually improves my neck pain, I guess I'm starting to really get old :)
Heidrun made the kids run circles around the couch again, Children are really easy to entertain.
Matthias today said: "I don't know what I should say now, Papa". Me: "Well, that's good then just be silent, you don't have to talk all the time!"
Lunch: Noodles, Dinner: Fried vegetables and noodles&rice
At bedtime Matthias wanted to sleep on top of his brother and they REALLY fell asleep with Matthias lying on top of Florian's back!

Day 39 - Stuff you don't want to hear

2008-03-10T20:14:00.003+01:00

Florian asked why kings are more likely to have daughters than sons? When I asked him why he thinks that is the case he replied that in fairy tales there are more princesses than princes.
Matthias smashed my glasses onto the floor out of fury. Fortunately they didn't break.
Something you never want to hear: Florian came back from the toilet and said: "You know what's funny, after I pooed I flushed twice and the paper and poo still isn't gone." I had a look and Florian had managed to jam the drain.
Something else you never want to hear: I changed Matthias' nappies, he asked again if I had brown fingers, which I denied. Then he said: "But I have something brown on my jumper!". I panicked, but it turned out to be some chocolate porridge from breakfast.
When you are a dad you turn into toy repair man. Everyday something breaks and slowly I am getting really good at fixing all kinds of stuff.
Matthias today said: "Who's first to have golden hair, ME!!" Heidrun simply replied: "Golden? Don't exaggerate, it's more like poo brown" :)
I found out you can remote control toddlers when they throw a tantrum. When I noticed that Matthias was angry again I told him: "Well, smash yourself on the ground, I don't care." He looked at me and smashed himself on the ground and I didn't care :) Then I said: "When you're done you can get up again." After sulking for another minute he got up again.
Matthias today wanted to zip Heidrun's cardigan, but couldn't do it because she's already to fat due to her pregnancy which she explained to him. This made Matthias really furious and he shouted: "Get the baby out I want to close the cardigan". Then he started squashing her breasts to see if this would reduce the volume enough but he still didn't succeed. More tears ...
Lunch: Chinese pork, Dinner: pork & beans & scrambled eggs with pepper.

Day 37 & 38 - Vacation

2008-03-10T14:36:00.002+01:00

Heidrun and I were off to Salzburg for the weekend ... without(!!!!!) kids. My sister in law and her boyfriend Alex took care of them. It was our first trip without children ever and it was very nice and relaxing. In the meantime Florian and Alex built a Lego tower that reaches our ceiling at home! And I guess we have decreased our children's chances of every getting any cousins :)

Day 36 - Fast

2008-03-07T20:24:00.003+01:00

A friend of mine taught his child to breathe like Darth Vader when he was two. So I'm quite proud that both Florian and Matthias now can make the sound of Imperial Probe Droids :) - I know, it's very nerdy.
Matthias today wanted to wear underpants instead of nappies. I carefully instructed him in their use, that he must promise me to tell when he needs the toilet. He was quite proud running around in panties and Florian remarked that Matthias looks dorky and called him "underpants man". Two hours later Matthias obviously had forgotten all the instructions and peed himself.
Matthias had diarrhoea today and we had to bathe him twice because of the smell.
Matthias now is obsessed with being first or fastest at everything. So he often runs around shouting: "I am fastest, I am fastest". Then Florian overtakes him just to annoy his brother and Matthias starts crying.
Matthias today said: "Who is first having black hair? My dad!". That's quite true and since I was the only 100% Chinese in the room there was no one who could have overtaken me :)
Florian often opens the fridge and just has a look what he could eat next. Heidrun being an environmentalist told him that this is not good because it wastes energy and thus burns fuel which would kill the dinosaurs (we've told him that fuel is made of dead dinosaurs). Florian noted that they are already extinct, so she corrected it to polar bears. Florian then asked: "why do we need polar bears anyway?"
Lunch & Dinner: Curry chicken.

Day 35 - Customer service = morons

2008-03-06T19:17:00.006+01:00

Today I managed to phone my old British car insurance (official phone calls with 2 kids in a room are quite a pain). I need a letter from them stating that I was insured for 2 years with 6 years no claim, so I can get a discount from my Austrian car insurance. I had already told them all that already a month ago and they had assured me the letter would be here within the next 2 weeks. Anyway this morning I called to inquire why the letter hasn't arrived yet, all that with the kids screaming in the background. The woman from customer services said that the letter wasn't sent, because Tesco Insurance does NOT sent letters outside of Europe!! Well I replied, that this must be my lucky day then, because Austria happens to be WITHIN Europe!!!!! I guess being sarcastic was not the right approach :( because she immediately corrected(!) herself and said that they don't send letters outside the UK! When I asked her why last time they had me spell my entire address and assured me of the delivery of the letter she simply answered that she had checked with her team leader and there are definitely no letters being sent outside of the UK! My conclusion is: people working in customer services are either robots with bad AI or simply mentally challenged by even the simplest tasks.
Matthias played with his snow globe today which is one of his favourite things. I told him ten times to be really careful when walking around with it and not to drop it. He assured me that he would be really careful and won't drop it. He dropped it. He cried. I had to clear away the shards and snow. I have to buy a new one.
More UNO :(
More Guitar Hero, still same song :(
Lunch: scrambled eggs with onions and ham. Dinner: Vegetable soup, aubergine, eggs & tomatoes.

Day 34 - Chickenpox

2008-03-05T20:19:00.003+01:00

This morning we had snow. Weird weather, two days ago you can go outside with only a T-shirt and now it's freezing cold again. When Matthias saw the snow in the morning he shouted: "Birds, birds, there are lots of birds!". Florian: "No, it's snow, not birds" M: "No, they are birds, snow is red!" F: "No, snow is white!" M: "Snow is red!" F: "Shut up!" Matthias hits Florian with a toy car. He hits him again. I tell Matthias: "If you hit your brother he'll hit back." Matthias hits Florian with a toy car. Florian hits back. Matthias cries. "I told you so!"
Florian got chickenpox. We noticed the spots in the morning. Quite funny as yesterday in playgroup I went on that everytime someone gets chickenpox in nursery Florian doesn't. Fortunately he only got the spots but no other symptoms.
Today when changing Matthias' nappies I got some poo on my hand. Matthias immediately asked: "Why have you got brown fingers?" Me: "Good question, guess!!"
Seems that Florian also starts to get fed up with his brothers constant questioning. I was in some other room today and overheard the following. M: "When does Papa come back?" Me: "I'll be back soon, I've got something to do" M: "When does Papa come back?" Me: "Give me five more minutes!" M: "When does Papa come back?" F: "He comes back when you stop talking!"
Lunch & Dinner: Noodles with Maggi!

Day 33 - UNO

2008-03-04T20:01:00.003+01:00

In the afternoon I played 3(!!!) hours UNO with Florian. He's got his special rules, first only the special cards (+4, +2, stop, ...) are allowed, second we build our deck from the special cards of two normal UNO decks. I can tell you that this leads to some really weird games and requires completely different tactics. Sometimes you get an immediate winner hand (Florian had it twice) which consists only of stop cards and one other card :) I am not yet sure if the new rules are more fun than the original ones, but he refuses to play with the standard rules.
Florian today announced that he wants to become a Maserati salesman when he grows up. Since they are so expensive he figured that this would be the ideal way to get rich fast. Why haven't I thought of that earlier?!
Children often quote things totally out of context. I picked up juggling again and today Matthias watched me for a while in the morning. I had three white and one red ball. The red one is normally used for bounce juggling and thus bounces very well. When Florian came back home Matthias told him "The red one bounces everywhere!". Florian's look on his face expressed simply: "WTF?!"
During playgroup in the morning we always do some handicraft with the children. Today a daughter cut of part of her mother's finger! There was quite a lot of blood, so always remember: handicraft is dangerous.
Evening program: Portal which Florian refers to as "The puzzle game".
Lunch: Lionheads, Dinner: Leftovers & fruit.

Day 32 - Race

2008-03-04T19:51:00.003+01:00

On the building site on the way to nursery there's a lot of action now, seems they are digging out a car park for the apartment house. So there are lots of diggers and lorries now. Everyday we have to stop in front of it and watch it for a while. When your kids are young the coolest imaginable job their dad could have I guess is digger driver (with binman coming as a close second).
In the afternoon my mom came buy and played with Matthias so I spent two hours cycling with Florian. First hour on foot and then I switched to my own bike - try racing a five year old on a bike while running for an hour then you'll know why I was totally wrecked afterwards.
We also met a boy from Florian's nursery who is older than him who was learning to cycle with his dad and still fell over a lot. Florian immediately cycled up to him and asked: "What, you are going to school next year and can't even cycle yet!?!?!" Children are not known to be tacful.
Evening program was Guitar Hero once again. Still couldn't finish Crossroads!
Lunch: Chinese fried rice. Dinner: Fried rice, eggs with tomatoes.

Day 31 - Chinese = party people (pt 3)

2008-03-02T12:07:00.003+01:00

Yesterday night I went to the "Flieger" party in the "Fledermaus" club where they play mainly German New Wave music. I went there with a friend from high school, and another one joined us later. It was a lot of fun although my limit of "99 red ballons" style music was reached after 3 hours.
The bizarre thing was that there was a group of about 12 Chinese at the club. I guess they were all bananas like me (you know yellow on the outside and white inside and quite common - more so than eggs). We were all jumping around to German music from the 1980s. I'm quite sure they didn't celebrate their 2358th character learned at school as they must've all been older than school children (but I'm not 100% sure as Asians, you know, they all look the same to me and their age is quite hard to guess). So my guess is they were the Chinese mafia.
My friend Oliver mentioned why it's better to go to a club now that we are over 35. First you don't have to be cool anymore, second you don't need to chat up any women, third you don't get embarassed anymore when jumping around like an idiot. Very true!
This morning I remembered why it's not a good idea to come back home from a club at 4am now that I am 35. You feel tired and exhausted much longer because you can't sleep until 2pm, can't hear properly for a day and have a headache.
In the morning we had our train station breakfast again where we buy something from the bakery at the station and then sit in the waiting hall watching trains pass by. It's still one of the best ways to pass a Sunday morning.
Then we had a skype video conference with Florian's Paul in Hong Kong. Conclusion: Video conferencing is still a very immature technology! Constant loss of audio, video, both, connection, lag, bad image quality, kids turning off the PC in the middle of the conversation, etc.
In the afternoon we had friends over for lunch and then we went to Farbie's together. On Sunday there are a LOT of children in there. It's very noisy and not ideal for a 35 year old banana geezer who has been clubbing the day before. A kid rode over my toes on a Bobbycar - ouch!
Lunch: Starter: smoked salmon, then Jiaozi. Dinner: Leftovers.

Day 30 - Hospital

2008-03-01T19:32:00.006+01:00

In the morning we went to the hospital Heidrun is working at. It was open day and they showed the public how things work in a hospital. For the kids it was quite exciting as they could see where mom is working and Florian could fish for gummy bears using an endoscope. Also for adults it was interesting as a surgeon explained to me how a knee prosthesis surgery is performed, which nowadays works kind of like a Wii game - Trauma Center :) (I am actually quite sure that the Wii got quite a lot of its technology from surgery).
Matthias peed on the carpet again while I was changing his nappies, so he also peed on his trousers and socks.
Crossroads on Expert in Guitar Hero is very very very hard.
Chinese is a funny language as pronounciation changes the meaning of a word completely. Instead of tractor Matthias always says Coke-chicken :)
Lunch: Cake, biscuits, etc. at the hospital. Dinner: Chinese chicken with peppers, aubergine.

Day 29 - Greek Tea

2008-03-01T19:22:00.005+01:00

Heidrun offered to make me some tea in the morning. Unfortunately she'd only boiled enough water for her own cup, so she added some more water into the kettle when I noticed. After a couple of minutes I went back into the kitchen and poured the water which was cold as she'd forgotten to turn the kettle on :) I decided to make my own tea, I think pregnancy makes sure blood circulation is optimal for the baby and therefore less ideal for the mother.
In the morning I was invited to another mom's place and Matthias and her son Michael played with each other, ..., well at least they were in the same room. It was very nice and Monika and I had a good chat.
Then in the afternoon we had two kids over again one for Matthias (his Paul!) and Konstantin who is one of Florian's friends. I did a "Schnitzeljagd" (=scavenger hunt?) for Konstantin and Florian. One of the hints had a drawing of our couch on it. Konsti was standing IN FRONT of the couch shouting at full volume: "I recognize it, it's a couch, where's the couch, Florian where do you have a couch in your house?!"
In the evening we watched jungle book again after quite a long abstinence. This time with a twist though as Florian wanted to watch it in Greek! (Well he didn't know it's Greek but he wanted the last language in the list on the DVD).
Lunch: Trout & rice, Dinner: Pizza.

Day 28 - Hardcore

2008-02-28T10:09:00.006+01:00

Kids got up at 6.30 this morning. Hah, and my colleagues moan about core hours starting at 10.00. At least they've got flexitime instead of HARDcore hours!
On our way to nursery we pass a building site. When Matthias saw it he got very ecstatic (kind of like the baby version of an orgasm I imagine). I first didn't understand because he's seen quite a lot of them already but then he said "Giant dog turd!". Wow, that would've been a really hardcore dog.
In the afternoon we had a friend of Florian over at our place. With two kids the same age it's actually easier than with only one since they do play together (with the occasional fighting in between). In the late afternoon we went to our local playground where we met even more children of Florian's nursery. Baden is more a village than a city :)
After dinner I went to the nursery where they've organised a parent evening about the topic that reading with/to your children improves their linguistic and reading/writing abilities later on. It lastet 90 minutes! Whatever happened to efficiency I wonder. Listening to the talk definitely decreased my attention span.
When I returned home Heidrun was lying on the couch, looked at me like a kitten and asked me if I could cook her some Chinese instant noodles. "What about the Pizza, rice and Schnitzel?!? It's all still there." I asked, I mean it's not that we didn't have anything prepared for dinner. She rather fancied Chinese noodles. Oh boy, pregnancy. Vasectomy is looking that much more attractive already and the third one isn't even here yet :)
My next job: cook and/or waiter.
Lunch: Rice and Schnitzel and Chinese moon cake. Dinner: Rice and Schnitzel and Pizza AND Chinese noodles!

Day 27 - Rent-A-Dad

2008-02-27T13:45:00.004+01:00

I picked up four children today from nursery: Florian, the two neighbour's daughters and a friend of Florian. So today I was really the nursery hero, walking home with 5 children including Matthias! Another mom asked me if I'm a rent-a-dad! Do I look like I enjoy having children around THAT much :)?
The mother who asked me about being a rent-a-dad has a daughter called Chiara in the same group as Florian. She was over at our place a while ago for Florian's birthday and apparently Chiara really enjoyed the party (I had to entertain all kids while the moms were chatting). Anyway in the nursery the kids can grind coffee beans to powder for their parents (it's hand operated, so the main reason is to keep them busy I guess). Today Chiara ground some coffee for ME!! I was really touched, seems like kids like me. I guess I should actually start a business as rent-a-dad ;)
When you get bored during the day something that defnitely helps to improve your mood (at least mine): Turn up some music of your teenage years really loud and dance around with your kids. Today I was jumping around our living room with Matthias to "Tainted Love", "Sweet Dreams" and alike (yes I'm that old!). I got inspired to do that because a friend asked me to join him to the "Flieger" on saturday, which is a new wave music party in Vienna.
Went out in the evening and met a friend where I got this for free(!) and afterwards to a pub with some colleagues. It's always nice to get some conversation with adults :)
Lunch: Spaghetti, Dinner: Schnitzel

Day 26 - fArt

2008-02-26T13:46:00.007+01:00

Kids are art factories. Their output at the age of five peaks at about 3 drawings or handicrafts per day. While the quantity is likely to match Warhol the art style is more similar to Kandinsky or even more acurate Klee.
Something every respectable father should do: Make fart sounds by blowing on your baby's skin (most suitable are belly, leg or arm). First of all baby skin is still in the ideal flabby condition to provide the best acoustic result. The second reason is that they really love it and laugh a lot when you do that. And third (and maybe most important) is that later on when they are five they try to make the same on their mother's skin, which annoys the hell out of them :)
There is one more reason why eating with children is a really slow procedure: You have to get up every 5th nanosecond to mop up some spilled drink, soup, yoghurt, etc.
This morning Florian got hold of my mobile phone and took a picture of my bum while I was emptying the dish washer. The astonishing thing is that I never really told him how to use the phone camera. Children are really intuitive when dealing with technology. So next time you see a video on youtube of your favourite Chinese you know who has uploaded it :)
Florian was swimming today with a friend all day, so I could spend time with Matthias alone. We went to a shopping centre in the morning where he watched some fish for quite a while swimming around in a fish tank. He asked me what they were doing, I answered that they are swimming around. Not satisfied, he asked the fish himself: "Fish, what are you doing? Fish what are you doing?! FISH WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!!".
Another example that toddlers confuse not answering a question with hard of hearing: Matthias asked me at McDonalds: "When do I eat all?" Since I didn't know what the heck he's talking about I didn't reply. So he repeated the same question with incREASIIINNGGG volume until I replied "tomorrow". That was apparently the correct answer because then he shut up.
In the shopping centre I did some clothes shopping. Something you get really good at when being a parent is shopping under extreme time pressure. It took me about 10 minutes to buy trousers and a shirt (and that's with constant intervention from Matthias): Go into H&M, grab the first two things that look half decent (no time to pick the nicest thing anymore with children), wheel Matthias in his pushchair into the dressing room, while carrying the clothes, change while answering all sorts of philosophical questions, OK it fits, get out, pay.
At a comic/manga store Matthias was pointing somewhere asking me: "Is that an Ogre?" And believe it or not it actually was a Shrek action figure!
Matthias was riding around on his kid car this afternoon. He was constantly asking: "Am I driving too fast?". "Well you do about one yard per hour, so no you're definitely within all known speed limits".
Lunch: McDonalds, Dinner: Spaghetti

Day 25 - Language

2008-02-25T21:04:00.004+01:00

More language hell: Florian today asked me: "What is a nigger?" I explained it to him and mentioned that it is definitely not a nice word to say. He didn't understand why since kids obviously have not notion of political correctness or racism.
Matthias is experimenting with words as well. Today he used "überhaupt" ("actually") all the time. So he said stuff like "I like cows actually" or "I actually want some water" and so on.
When we walked to nursery this morning we again found a lot of dog shit. This time Florian noticed his little brother's obscure research topic and said: "Matthias, why are you so interested in dog poo? Are you a dog yourself, because only dogs are interested in their faeces?" (well he didn't exactly use the word "faeces").
Today when we went shopping Matthias wanted to race against me. BUT he was sitting in his pushchair. I tried to explain to him that I can't possibly race him when he is not running. He wanted to race anyway. So I ran and pushed. Having no real chance to overtake him as he was always in front he obviously won the race and was very happy about his victory.
When I pick up Florian from nursery I'm the local hero because a) I am a man on paternity and b) I pick up Florian and the neighbour's two daughters, so I am walking home with four(!) children. Try that if you want to know what multitasking means.
I found some Lego today in a lampshade which is at about 1,8m height. Always puzzles me where toys can end up.
I discovered something cool to do with children today. Dress up with stupid props and then take pictures (example).
Lunch & Dinner: Chinese "slippery egg meat" (hua dan rou).

Day 24 - Sunday entertainment

2008-02-24T19:08:00.002+01:00

We went swimming with the kids this morning which was very nice. My current main task is to teach Florian how to swim without water wings (or any other flotation devices). I am still not quite sure how to go about that because I have absolutely no clue how I actually learned to swim. Today I simply had him play around and jump into the water with me catching him. He liked to be without the water wings, so I guess that's a good start.
In the afternoon friends passed by our place and we invited them in. The weather was fantastic (very sunny and warm) so the kids could play in the garden. Florian played prison again (basically you have to imprison him and he breaks out), Matthias and Katharina (our friend's daughter) played hide and seek. When two toddlers play hide and seek, the result only barely resembles the original rules but is very funny to watch. Any hidden kid when asked where they are steps out of the hiding place and shouts "HERE!".
We asked Matthias why he did somehing yesterday and he simply answered: "Because!"
Matthias was shaking a small cupboard in our bathroom where we keep all different kinds of cosmetic and bathing stuff. I told him to stop it, of course he continued. I told him again to stop it, and so on. He got so angry that he gave the cupboard a really sudden jolt so that a hand mirror fell down on his head and he started crying (I told him so!). Remember: Toddlers are stronger than you think and telling them off is not enough.
Lunch: Cordon Bleu and chips at the swimming pool, Dinner: Spaghetti.

Day 23 - Violence

2008-02-23T18:58:00.004+01:00

We stayed at my in laws place over night. In the morning Heidrun was in her room with the kids and I overheard the following conversation: "Ouch! Waaaah!" "Don't hit Matthias on the head with the tennis racket!!" "But he started!" "Matthias don't hit your brother with the signal horn!" (it turned out to be a signal horn from Heidrun's old bicycle).
Florian today said: "Ich bin cool und du bist schwul" to me (which means "I'm cool and you are gay" and it rhymes in German). I asked him whether he knows what gay means which he didn't. Kids pick up a lot of vocabulary from nursery already nowadays.
More on nostalgia: Heidrun also found a box of old letters at her old room. Quite a lot of them were old wedding invitations, some of the couples having already divorced ...
On the way back home both kids fell asleep in the car. When we arrived back home we let them sleep and stayed in the car to relax and enjoy the calmness. When you are a parent your standards for joy get quite low :)
Lunch: Roast fish. Dinner: Leftovers

Day 22 - Chinese = party people (pt 2)

2008-02-23T11:38:00.009+01:00

Went out this evening (again!!) to a birthday party of one of Heidrun's friends. We met a lot of nice people and had a good time. The kids stayed over at my in laws place. Now that they are 5 and 2 everything gets easier and I'm feeling like a normal adult again. It's not like we are soon going to have another baby ... oh, wait a second ... DOH!!!
Another quote from Florian when I asked him why he prefers to play with boys instead of girls: "Girls stink and dress ugly!" :) I'll ask him again when he is 16 and see what answer I get then.
Matthias came to me today with a ball pen in his hand and said: "Daddy, I've drawn a picture". So I replied: "Cool, show me, where?" Matthias: "On the couch." ... oh my god, must remember not to leave drawing utensils lying around. Luckily the couch is dark brown, so it's not very visible.
Florian noticed that Heidrun has been sick quite often recently because of her pregnancy. He gave her some advice today: "When I have to puke, then I simply swallow the vomit. That's more convenient than spitting it out." Hm, I don't think that would actually work well.
Kids manage to even miss the obvious. Florian was eating a slice of bread, I gave him a plate and he still put the bread on the table, right BESIDE the plate! When I asked him why, he replied, that he hadn't noticed the plate.
Lunch: Curry chicken, Dinner: Sausages at in laws place, then snacks at birthday party.

Day 21 - Joke

2008-02-22T09:10:00.002+01:00

Off Topic: Went out tonight, so no time to write. As a filler just a nice joke I've heard recently. Nice because it starts out as a sexist joke and then does a 180.

A man has a headache and goes to see a neurologist. The doctor says that he's got a tumor and needs a brain transplant. After the initial shock the man asks what his options for donor organs are. "Well you can have a man's brain or a woman's brain". He asks what the differences are. Doctor replies that the price is different. The man's brain costs 100.000 and the woman's brain costs 50.000. "Wow, that's a huge difference, how come that it's so big, is the male brain so much better?" "No, it's because the female brain has been used".

Day 20 - Waiting

2008-02-20T20:34:00.004+01:00

Matthias stating the obvious again: "I'm walking with both feet." .... aaalllrrighhht.
When you eat with children then you spend most of your time waiting. And yes I refer to both meanings of the word :)
First you have to wait the table. As soon as you sit down one of the two needs something: water, a fork instead of the spoon, a different coloured cup, apple juice instead of the water you just brought, still a different coloured cup because now it contains juice instead of water, more rice, less rice, and so on. Luckily our dinner table is right next to the kitchen.
Second when you feed Matthias then after each bite you have to wait for him to finish chewing, swallowing it all down, wait for him to finish playing with whatever he could find on the table, then answer all 384 questions he managed to come up with while chewing the last bite and then finally wait for him to remember the purpose of him sitting at the table in front of a plate full of food which is "OPEN YOUR MOUTH!"
At the playground today Matthias broke the world record for two year olds on a swing I guess. He managed to stay on the swing for ... excitement ... ONE HOUR! Afterwards he was a bit wobbly when walking :)
Today Matthias also found one of Heidrun's sanitary towels. He asked me what they are used for and I replied that they are nappies for mum. Unfortunately she had already told him before that they are used to clean your nose :) So which explanation sounds more reasonable?
Lunch: Noodles, Dinner: Football Pizza and goulash.

Day 19 - Have a nice day

2008-02-19T19:37:00.003+01:00

Today was a very enjoyable day with the kids. In the morning I went to playgroup again, all the mums were very nice and Matthias had a good time (especially while eating tons of buttered bread - where he only had the middle and I had to eat the crust). It's nice that he also really sticks to me for some reason and wants to be cuddled all the time.
Florian starts to pick up slang in nursery. Today he said: "Oida, im Batmobil sind ja zwei Puffn!" (meaning "there are two guns in the batmobil" but in bad Viennese slang. If anyone could translate that please tell me).
In the afternoon Florian had a friend from nursery over. He asked why our TV is such a strange shape (we have an old CRT TV) because their's is flat and hangs on the wall. Florian replied that we have a cinema because we've got a projector. His friend simply answered that we can't possible have a cinema because there's no place to buy popcorn :) Children always spot the important difference.
At five they also start competing with each other. His friend said that he has seen Pokemon today on TV. Florian replied: "I don't care, I've seen Power Rangers on the weekend" not mentioning that I've turned it off after five minutes because it's far too violent.
Lunch: Chinese beef, Dinner: Vegetarian(!!) Chinese fried noodles

Day 18 - Women are giraffes

2008-02-18T20:26:00.004+01:00

It's quite surprising that children don't really get the difference between genders. When you ask Florian, what the difference between boys and girls is, you get:
1. Girls have longer hair
2. Girls cry more
3. Girls like pink, boys don't
4. Girls have a longer neck!
Even when showing him pictures in a children's book of a naked(!) boy and girl he didn't produce the (biological) correct answers. Only after educating him for some time he acknowledged that women have a bigger chest and men have a willy (whereas Matthias apparently is still in a state of denial).
The European Football Cup will be held in Austria and Switzerland in June this year. (To the Americans: Yes football is soccer!) Florian likes football so he is very excited. We even had football pizza for dinner (it's a special edition they've released where the Salami is cut in a shape so the pizza looks like a football).
Florian today asked me: "What's cooler, football or Batman?" So what do you think?
Matthias got a shot at the pediatrician today. He was very brave or maybe he just didn't get it, because he didn't react at all when he was poked with the needle.
Heidrun came home early and I fell asleep on the couch in the afternoon.

Day 17 - Willy

2008-02-17T19:42:00.004+01:00

Question: Who is clean then goes through a cleaning process and afterwards is dirty? Answer: Me after taking a bath with Matthias :) The simple reason is that he still doesn't really have control over the fluids (and other stuff) leaving his body. That's also why we will postpone potty training to summer when it's warm enough to run around naked in the garden. I've recently asked him whether he knows when he needs to pee. He said "yes, when my pants are wet".
Matthias discovered his willy and plays around with it (and unfortunately squeezes the ones of people who happen to occupy the same bathtub with him). He also asks questions about it. For example he was most interested in my wife's one :)
Matthias: "What's this?" Heidrun: "Your willy." M: "It hurts." H: "Then don't pull it!" M: "Where's yours?" H: "I don't have one" M: "Where's yours?" H: "Nowhere, I don't have one." M: "Is it in your trousers?" H: "No" M: "Is it in the front?" H: "No" M: "Where's yours?" H: "Nowhere!" M: "On the bottom?" H: "No, I DON'T HAVE ONE, but I have breasts, which you don't have". M: "I have a stomach"
Even five years olds are not very good at judging their bladder yet. Florian is rocking back and forth while playing Lego. I ask him if he needs to go to the toilet. "No, I'm just fidgety, there's no reason". Five minutes later: "I need the toilet, it's super urgent!!". Which brings us back to the universal truth: "I've told you so".
When you take care of kids you improve at multitasking. Today I had to cook dinner, fill the bath tub, change nappies and answer the door at the same time!
Another task finished: Florian learned how to wipe his - you know what - after going to the toilet to - well, you know what.
Lunch at my in laws place: lots of different kinds of Schnitzel. Dinner: "Schinkenfleckerl" (Austrian noodles with smoked ham and cheese), fried lady fingers.

Day 16 - Nostalgia

2008-02-16T20:31:00.005+01:00

Taught Florian how to ride standing up on the bicycle today. Another trick to motivate children is telling them it took you one week to learn that. He was very proud that he managed within a couple of tries.
Florian often listens to a "Maya the Bee" CD he got as a present. A big coincidence is that when I was a kid I had exactly the same stories on a vinyl LP. Listening to the same stories again gave me a strange feeling of nostalgia. Even though the stories are not very exciting by adult standards, when listening to them I could still vividly remember the emotions I had as a six year old as well as the old apartment we lived in, and I could recognise the parts where I didn't understand what was going on at that time, which now were plain obvious. I guess my grandchildren will listen to the same stories again, then maybe through some neuro interface :)
For lunch we visited my mum and celebrated her birthday in the same restaurant as last time. No incidents today except for Matthias running full speed into a table leg (little bleeding from the front teeth, nothing major), Florian getting a lollipop, breaking it while unwrapping, big tears, gets a new one, half way through, breaks it again, big tears.
At my mum's place I found something very cool which made me feel nostalgic again. 1995/96 I studied in Strasbourg, France for a year. I've kept all the letters I got during that time in a box and have stored it in my old room, so I've completely forgotten about it until I rediscovered the box today. I read through a couple of the letters, most from people I haven't seen in ages. It reminded me of the timecapsules you sometimes see in some US movies. The weird thing is that nowadays something like that box wouldn't be possible anymore, since everyone spending a year as an exchange student abroad will communicate with his friends via email, instant messanging, skype, SMS, etc. None of those conversations are kept these days. That's kind of sad and makes me happy that I was lucky enough to spend a year abroad before the communication overkill started.
Something else I noticed again when reading through the old letters is that the younger you are the more you think that you know how life works. When you are a teenager you think you are already really mature even though you are super insecure, later in your twenties you know you've got it all figured out. While right now I know that actually I don't know anything and just let everything happen and let life surprise me.
Toddlers also think they've got life figured out and that's very funny. For example when I'm going cycling with Florian now I push Matthias on his tricycle (which has got a handle) and he's always shouting "I'm also a super cool cyclist". Normally I answer: "Yeah, right, your feet don't reach the pedals yet, you don't hold the handle bar, you simply sit around like Jabba the Hutt and are being pushed!". He then replies: "I'm also a super cool cyclist!!". There's tons of more examples when Matthias thinks he already has mastered everything in life, stuff like "I've got two feet", "Poo is from the bum, pee from the front", "I just carressed the carrot" (he's very nice to vegetables, doesn't even eat them). I'll give more quotes when I can remember.
Lunch: nice Chinese restaurant food, Dinner: Spaghetti Bolognese

Day 15 - The Shining

2008-02-15T20:47:00.007+01:00

It's 7:30 AM in the morning. Out of bed, need a coffee to wake up. The sky is cloudy, everything is grey. Snow is falling, I'm thinking about what to write this evening, the snowfall gets heavier. I got writer's block, can't think of anything. Matthias is really stubborn, wants me to carry him up and down the stairs all the time, never climbs them himself. I try to educate him, carry him to the last stair and tell him he has to take only this single one, no way, he starts screaming and rather goes all the stairs back down than climbing this last one! We go outside to clear some snow from the garden, finally. One second I look away, only one second, and Florian takes the opportunity to throw a full shovel of snow into Matthias' face. I tell him off, must control the anger and aggression, the dark side of the Force are they. We play hide and seek in the attic. "Come out, come out, where ever you are. Heeere's Papa!" More tantrums from Matthias, aaah the noise, can't stand the noise, Oh my God. I must be losing my mind. Kids. Can't live with them, can't live without them. Afternoon, we go to Farbie's again, Matthias falls asleep, I have another coffee, the noise, the caffeine, I'm feeling on the edge. I miss work. Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill? Florian wants a muffin at Farbie's. "What flavor muffin do you want?" "Chocolate." "Then chocolate it shall be." Back home, Florian falls asleep in the car, I carry him into the house, Matthias wants me to carry him too, I can't, he throws another tantrum that lasts twenty minutes, then questions, aaargh all those questions, "it's name is Karl, number is 10, number is 5, name is Otto, yes poo is brown, yes brown poo is big, birthday was yesterday, number is 2, number is 7, Florian own's it, name is Mike, I own it, his Paul lives in Siberia, ..." redrum, Redrum, REDRUM! "Gottfried, I'm home!" 6:45 PM. Thank god, day is over.

Day 14 - Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T20:19:00.007+01:00

I just noticed that some words that have a certain meaning in conjunction with mothers or fathers completely change their meaning when mixed with other beings. Ok, I know that doesn't make sense, so here's an example: maternity and paternity are similar whereas fraternity is a student organisation. What's even more surprising is motherhood, fatherhood and Robin Hood. I mean what's being a parent got to do with a thief in green tights?!
We have a ritual at home: in the morning when Heidrun gets up and I'm still in bed, sometimes I hear puking noises from the bathroom which is the signal for me to run downstairs, get something to eat, run back upstairs and give the food to her. (I told you pregnancy is a very ridiculous thing). Today I nearly chopped off my finger when I slipped off the bread with the knife.
Today's Valentine's Day or should I rather say Florist's and Hallmark Day? So well behaved husband that I am I bought Heidrun flowers and prepared a Chicken Korma for dinner as she loves Indian food.
The kids and I, we played "bed catching" all morning. It's a game Florian has invented. These are the rules: He runs around on the big double bed and I am circling it on the ground. Then I have to suddenly jump into the bed and try to catch him WWE style. If I manage to catch him I get half a point, if not then I have to lie still while he jumps onto my back and screams "ugha ugha ugha" while hopping around on me. When I manage to get a whole point then I have to "tickle attack" him which means that I tickle him until he says stop. Sounds like a weird game? It is, but it's fun!
Update on yesterday's "Knife, Fork, Scissor's ..." rule. Florian asked whether bombs are for children which I denied. Later in the day I heard him telling Matthias that he thinks that smoke grenades definitely are for kids (reminder: have to stop playing Ninja Gaiden)!
Matthias now has a phase where everything has to have a name and a number. I didn't understand where he got that from until he mentioned Thomas the Tank Engine. Then I suddenly understood, as every train there has a name and a number. That's pretty annoying sometimes when you read a book to Matthias and there is a picture of a crowd and you have to go: "His name is Hansi, his number is 5, his name is Burli, his number is 17, ...". (It's good to memorise a list of standard names you can throw at him)
Florian also has a fixation: He wants to know the birthday of everyone/thing. Together this led to the following conversation while changing Matthias' nappies: "What's in my nappies?" "It's poo." "What's it like?" "It's big, brown and smells bad" "What's its name?" "Hansi" "What's it's number?" "15" "Who owns it?" "You!" "What's it's birthday?" "Well, I guess today Florian, because it was born a couple of minutes ago ...".
We noticed today that Farfalle look like a bat. So officially since Florian likes everything super hero, they are now called Batnoodles - To the Batcave!
Lunch: More Austrian fried Batnoodles. Dinner: ginger & carrot soup, chicken korma with rice, fried cucumber.

Day 13 - Ninjas

2008-02-13T20:31:00.006+01:00

Today Florian asked me what other weapons Ninjas use, so I mentioned nunchakus, wooden sticks and scythes. He didn't know what a scythe is so Heidrun explained it as an old fashioned lawn mower. So current status is: Ninjas are forest keepers fighting with lawn mowers and NOT mean Japanese killer machines!
In the afternoon we went to Farbie's World, an indoor play area for kids quite near to our place. Trying to impress Florian with my Ninja skills I attempted to wall run on the outside wall of a bouncy castle ... bad idea, my wrists still hurt. Starting a wall run is actually quite easy, but when the wall is very soft you can't push off to get back on the floor, you simply fall off like a sack of potatoes and have lots of other parents and kids start laughing at you.
Florian also does a lot of wall running now. He even switches off the light by wall running (sort of) and hitting the switch.
In Farbie's there is also a huge inflatable slide which Florian also doesn't slide down normally anymore as no self respecting Ninja would do that. Instead he wall runs up to it and then jumps onto the slide from the top so he starts the actually sliding after two meters of free fall!
Today Matthias was playing with a knife which I confiscated when I saw it. Then I told him "Messer, Schere, Gabel, Licht sind für kleine Kinder nicht!" (translation is something like: "Knife, fork, scissors and light for little kids are not quite right!"). Matthias simply answered: "Cannons are also not for little kids". I had to agree with that, so remember: never give a cannon to your children - especially you Americans :).
Bathing time: Finished another task on my education checklist: Florian is now able to complete the whole bathing cycle. I.e. get in there, wash himself including shampooing his hair, get out, dry with towel, put clothes back on.
Florian enjoys farting under water which admittedly I also do. It feels good, is funny and makes nice bubbles. Men are just primitive, I know, and I'm not saying this because I'm officially now a woman.
More on sibling rivalry: A friend our ours told us that her two year old son has carved a "picture" into the lid of his 14 year old brother's laptop PC with some sharp tool. I have to check whether the little one is still alive.
Lunch: left overs. Dinner: Austrian style fried noodles with ham and eggs.
Evening: Ninjas.

Day 12 - Torture

2008-02-12T19:56:00.000+01:00

Every morning when the kids get up, we lie together in bed and cuddle, sort of. This sounds nice, doesn't it? Well most of the time it is. Except sometimes it's also Matthias' opportunity for trying out some new CTU interrogation techniques. Today he tried to force my eyeballs out of their sockets. I tried to explain to him that the optical nerve attaches them to my skull so it won't work, but he didn't listen (or knew better). I've still got my balls (the ones I'm seeing with) and some scratches on my eyelids. Some other torture methods he applies are more conventional such as pulling your hair as hard as he can when you least expect it - ouch!
Siblings also tend to experiment with torture between each other. Yesterday Matthias said: "I want to hit my brother." We told him not to. "I want to hit him". "That is not a good idea, he'll hit back". "I want to hit him". "But he WILL hit back". He hits him. Brother hits back. Matthias falls on his head and cries. We say: "We've told you so!" (which by the way is the most universal truth and at the same time most useful sentence when raising your offspring).
Today it was Florian's turn. He really annoyed Matthias by doing all the things to him he really hates. Matthias "reads" a book, Florian suddenly takes it away and throws it across the room. Matthias cries, I send Florian to his room and tell him to come back in five minutes. Florian is back, first thing he does is suddenly rip Matthias' sock from his foot and throw it across the room. Matthias cries, I send Florian to his room and tell him to come back in five minutes. Florian is back, I ask him whether he will behave now, which he answers in the affirmative. First thing he does is walk over to Matthias who is drinking water from a cup and push his hands, Matthias pours all the water onto his clothes and is soaked. He cries, I send Florian to his room and tell him to come back in TEN minutes.
After that episode they eventually started playing with each other for twenty minutes. I couldn't believe it as I've always thought that this behaviour is unnatural for brothers and is only an urban myth that surely must have originated from some science fiction novel. I stood there mouth gaping and observed the scene.
In the afternoon we went to "Zoom" (a kid's museum in Vienna). That is a really nice place and I can highly recommend it to all parents in Vienna as it has suitable activities for children of all ages (it's in the MQ).
At the same time we were at "Zoom" the wife of Egypt's president was also there! (Apparently she wanted to see it to get some inspiration for building a similar museum in Kairo). That was really cool as there were big limousines outside as well as police and a LOT of bodyguards in suits (basically lots of Matrix style agents). That's quite fitting for a kid's museum because with children your time passes in constant bullet time anyway, at least that's what it at times feels like :)
Evening: no jungle book today, but third end boss of Ninja Gaiden.
Lunch: Chinese pork + rice + mango + pudding. Dinner: Chinese chicken + rice + fried Chinese cabbage.

Day 11 - Success

2008-02-11T21:09:00.000+01:00

Finished the following task today: Teach Florian to ride a bicycle (without stabiliser wheels)! I taught him how to start riding the bike by himself without the initial push. Now officially he can start, ride and stop the bike by himself. That's cool, it's the first REALLY useful thing I've taught anyone :)
When we started bike training yesterday he was not motivated at all. So here are some tipps how to motivate children:
1. Play dumb (waiting for stupid remark), no I mean even dumber than normally. Kids like that. What I did is run next to him and pretend that I assume that he'd stop to let me rest, of course he didn't. In the end that made him cycle for 40 minutes. Afterwards I was totally exhausted.
2. Dare them. We have a big empty parking lot 5 minutes walk from our place. I said that he'd never manage more than 2 rounds on that parking lot. He did 18 in the end! Again the hamster theme. Kids love running, cycling, swimming rounds and counting them.
More success: Florian loves Ninjas. I've been playing Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox the last couple of days (a great game by the way). He watched me and now we play Ninjas with rubber swords in the garden all the time. For some reason he says "Rangers" instead of "Ninjas" though. I tried to explain that there is a profound difference. Rangers are nice people taking care of forests and the others are mean Japanese killer machines. He still prefers the word Ranger.
Even more success: I've been cooking nearly every day for the kids. Today for lunch Matthias (without me asking) suddenly said: "This tastes very good". I was quite proud of that compliment.
Matthias has been exploring the concept of ownership recently. Everything he sees, he needs to know who the owner is. M: "Who's frying pan is this?" Gottfried: "Ours, all the pans and pots belong to us." M: "Is it mum's pan?" G: "Ok, yes it's hers" M: "Where is yours?" G (random pointing to another pan): "This one" ... later ... M: "Who's banana is this?" G: "No one's banana it's just there, eat it if you want." M: "Who's banana is this?" Florian: "It's mine." M: "Where was it yesterday?" G: "What?!"
The concept of ownership also extends to people. Matthias has a friend called Paul, Florian as well, but his lives in Hong Kong right now. M: "Where does Paul live?" Heidrun: "Who, yours or Florian's?" M: "Where does my Paul live?" H: "In Baden" M: "Where does brother's Paul live?" H: "In Hong Kong" M: "Where does dad's Paul live?" G: "I don't have a Paul, oh no wait I know a Paul in England" M: "Where does mum's Paul live?" ... So remember: Everyone needs a friend called Paul.
When you stay at home with the kids then you turn into a search engine as kids are always looking for that one specific toy. So officially now I'm "google House"! And believe me a good google House is thousand times more useful than google Maps, Groups, Finance, etc. Heidrun actually is even better than me so I guess that makes her google and me Yahoo!

Day 10 - Sunday, sunny Sunday

2008-02-10T20:27:00.000+01:00

Heidrun went to church this morning with Matthias. Something really funny happened there: The three year old son of a friend of ours managed to pull out the nail from the feet of a big jesus statue and played with it for a while until someone noticed. His dad was really embarrassed. (I thought that this was kind of nice of the kid - must hurt with a nail in your feet).
While they were in church, Florian built a big shopping mall out of Matthias' and his Lego. After they came back my wife wanted to teach Florian the advantages of having a sibling. She: "How good that you have a brother and how good that he's got Lego as well and how good that you could use it to build that mall." Florian: "Yes and how good that he was at church!".
We went to the bakery at the train station afterwards to buy some bread. Then we sat at a bench in the sun each of us eating some pastry. That was really nice, kind of like the best part of a skiing trip. Afterwards Heidrun couldn't get up because of her back pain which apparently pregnant women develop (it was amusing because she looked like an 80 year old woman, but of course I was very supportive).
I do think that pregnancy is a really dumb way to procreate. That evolution developed something like this puzzles me. You feel sick and tired for 9 months, throw up every day, have horrible back pains, eat weird stuff and then at the end of it you try to squeeze something the size of a watermelon through a hole the size of a nut. Now, that sounds like a good plan to me. I'm so happy it's not men that have to go through this, even though all women tell me that it is the most joyful experience in their life - yeah, sure and I am Santa Claus.
Florian played "rocket" with an open bottle of soy sauce today. I'm pretty sure you can imagine the results ...
We played "Guitar Hero" again today. I was at 87% of a song I haven't managed to finish for months. Then suddenly Matthias leapt in front of the TV and stared into it from 10 inches distance so I couldn't see anything. I shouted: "Aaarghl, please get out of the way!!" Florian pulled him away from the TV and Matthias fell on his bum. He didn't wear any nappies and started crying and peed on the carpet. (This carpet is slowly turning into a toilet.)
In the evening we went to McDonalds for dinner as kids do like that stuff. On the way home in the car we had another nice conversation.
Matthias: "What does the horse say?" Parents: "Nothing" M: "The horse says 'hello mum'" P: "That's nice" M:"The horse says: 'hello dad'" P: "That's nice" M: "What does the horse say?" Florian: "The horse says: 'Matthias shut up!!'".

Chinese = party people?!

2008-02-10T20:16:00.001+01:00

Yesterday at lunch we were talking about kids of friends who were already at primary school. Seems a lot has changed since I attended. Now the children celebrate each letter at school that they've learned. So there's an "A" day and a "B" day and so on. So I thought: Ok, an average Chinese kid needs to learn 26 letters in the first two weeks of primary school so it can start learning characters, now you need about 4000 characters to be able to read a newspaper. That makes 4026 parties in primary school in contrast to 26 in a Western school. Wow, that's a lot of partying!

Day 9 - Day off

2008-02-09T20:04:00.000+01:00

Today nothing major really happened. In the morning Matthias and Florian were running around naked in our living room screaming. Mattias peed on the floor. When my wife told him that pee shouldn't go onto the wooden floor and asked him where it actually should go he answered "cleaning rag" which obviously is NOT the right answer. Anyway she still got the rag and mopped the floor.
Then Matthias played with some of his toys and when we checked on him again after a couple of minutes there was a brown lump next to him on the carpet. Since he was still naked we panicked a bit, but it turned out to be brown Play-Doh that he got as a present yesterday evening :)
The tidying of yesterday didn't last long. Our house is pretty much in its old shape. One of the up sides of having so much random clutter on the floor is that you get a free burglar alarm. No burglar could possibly enter our house and make it across any room without waking us. He'd need to be levitating and I'm not even sure if that would work as a lot of stuff simply hangs from the ceiling, lamps or cupboards. Sometimes I play a game at home and try to make 3 steps through our living room with the lights out withouth stepping on any toy, normally I fail.
At noon we dropped the kids at Heidrun's parents and had lunch with friends at a Japanese restaurant. Ah the taste of freedom!

Day 8 - Virtual Chaos

2008-02-09T19:22:00.000+01:00

On Friday we had friends over to celebrate Chinese New Year. With kids that's not such an easy task as to achieve a minimal state of tidyness, so you can actually invite people, is nearly impossible. Sisyphus - you know the bloke from Greek mythology who supposedly had this enormous task of rolling some boulder up a hill - well that guy had a part time job in comparison. You don't believe me my dear reader? Well, this time it's easy to actually participate in living the experience of having childeren, if you don't have any. Here are some simple steps you can can follow that should give you a rough approximation of the real thing:
1. Take a big cardboard box (the bigger the room, the bigger the box).
2. Buy toys, lots of toys (any toys will do, but for boys it'd be good to have Lego, cars, dinosaurs, marbles, trains, ... for girls I'm not so sure as I don't have any, but I assume anything pink should suffice). Now stuff the toys into the box.
3. Add food, for realisms sake you should add Pizza, noodles, meat, apple juice, some fruit. Be sure to leave out any vegetables, that would not be really authentic.
4. Now add some kids clothes (they don't need to be washed), socks, trousers, t-shirts,...
5. More stuff to put in: childrens' books, some paintings where you don't really recognise what's on (no not Dali, I mean kids' paintings), nappies (empty or full, doesn't matter).
6. That should be more or less it for the ingredients of the box, could be that I've left out something minor but we don't want to go OTT.
7. Now last but not least add some explosives: grenades would be good but I guess outside of the U.S. a bit hard to come by, so fireworks might also do the job.
8. Light the explosives and leave the room. After the detonation, reenter and observe the result.
The authenticity of the experiment can be easily verified: Nearly the whole room should be covered with bits of the box's ingredients. Is there still any room to walk on the floor? YES!? Well then a) you didn't put enough stuff into the box or b) you might need grenades (or even better weapons-grade C-4) after all - contact jbauer@ctu.gov for any supplies. Now you might say that this experiment can't possibly reflect reality as most of the toys, crayons, etc have been at least partially destroyed. Well :) that was intentional ... trust me! Now try to clean this up WHILE someone else is blowing up more boxes while you are tidying. That's about how it feels in real life.
After cleaning the house our friends arrived and it was a really nice evening where we had lots of jiaozi. Actually I bought 250 as I counted on 25 per person. In the end that were far too many. Funny Big Noses, they can eat 10 "Krapfen" (Austrian version of doughnuts) but think 25 jaozi is too much :)
When it was jungle book time I convinced Florian to ask Peter, a friend of mine, to watch it with him and Matthias! What a cool move, so Peter (who they now call jungle book Peter) had the honour of being the Disney VJ for that evening.
Matthias is fascinated by facial and body hair. He constantly pulled John's (another friend) beard and Peter's arm hair. Since Chinese have very little body hair that was a completely new experience for him.

Day 7 - Love

2008-02-07T11:33:00.000+01:00

We passed the garden with the cat again. It wasn't there. Thank god. There was only a brief questioning about its whereabouts but no further elaborate debate about the feeding habits of Baden's indigenous wildlife.
I am now certain that there are two different kinds of love between human beings. Love between adults is based on romance, passion and friendship. Whereas love for your children and that of children for their parents MUST be something completely different because on the contrary to adult love, it is unconditional. Reading the entry about "love" in Wikipedia unfortunately didn't really bring any more insight, so I will give an example to illustrate my theory. Take a standard situation between a mother and a little baby boy and transfer it into an adult setting:
Two people, a male and a female. You see him sitting round naked in the living room playing around with his willy, suddenly he poops onto the carpet. She shouts at him: "Oh bad boy! You are naughty, naughty, NAUGHTY!". He starts crying and crawls towards her while she tells him off. That wouldn't be a scene from a normal relationship, would it? (Ok, ..., so maybe there are some couples that do even weirder stuff, but that isn't the point!)
So the relationship with children is really strange and I do ask myself sometimes how that works. It must be some weird pheromone, hormone, whatevermone thing by mother nature that even though your kids sometimes drive you CRAZY and you sometimes shout at them a bit too much, we still love each other. That is a nice thing when you think about it (and if it wouldn't work that way then I guess mankind would have become extinct a long time ago). On the other hand if your boy-, girlfriend, husband or wife would even partially treat you in a similar fashion as your kids sometimes do (and vice versa), there would be no way you'd still love them.
Matthias fell asleep at noon again while lying on me and so I fell asleep as well. Most important hint to any future parents: Gather sleep wherever and whenever you can. There is nothing more important than that - no really, nothing is more important, not hobbies, sex, blogging, etc.
Florian was very rebellious today. I have to come up with methods to handle conflicts in a better way. "The war has just begun!"
Lunch: bread and sausages. Dinner: aubergine & Chinese beef.
I am quite exhausted today but had no coffee!
And before I totally forget: Happy New Year of the Mouse! I actually thought that it would be on Saturday and the Year of the Ox, so I guess I'm already starting to show signs of Alzheimer's. Anyway, my mum reminded me yesterday and this year will be a good year since I'm a mouse!

Day 6 - The quintABsence of communication

2008-02-06T20:14:00.000+01:00

Today in the morning when returning home from dropping Florian off at nursery we passed a garden near our home. There was a cat sitting on the grass which for Matthias (and any toddler I assume) is the pinnacle of excitement. I didn't even notice it at first as it was only visible from his angle behind the hedge. So we started talking:
Him: "Where's the cat?" Me: "What cat?" H: "That cat!". So we walked back and I had a look and really there was a cat lying outside. H: "What's it eating?" M: "It's not eating anything" H: "What's it eating?" M: "Nothing, It's just lying there!" H: "What's it eating?" M: "Ok, it's eating a mouse." H: "What mouse?" M: "Just a mouse" H: "What mouse?" M: "No mouse!!" H: "And the dog?" M: "What dog?" H: "What's the dog eating?" M: "What dog?" H: "What's the dog eating?" M: "There is no f#*%&ing dog!!!!" H: "The cat should go home." M: "It is at home" H: "The cat should go home." M: "But it is at home, that's his garden!" H: "It should go to the other garden" M: "No it won't it is at home." H: "The cat should go home" ... Eventually I just dragged him off. Lesson learned: Do NOT ever try reasoning with small children, you can only lose.
Then after playing a bit at home we had to go to the eye doctor for a routine eyesight test. It turned out that at his age this is more of an IQ test than anything else. In preparation for the test I had to practice with Matthias for a month(!) to name four symbols: a square (which he names "carpet"), a circle (which he names "sky"), an apple and a house - not quite right but at least consistent. The doctor doing the test is quite an attractive young lady so obviously I wanted to impress her with my training skills. So here's how it went: She told me to put Matthias on my lap and started to show him some symbols. She: "Matthias, what's that?" Him: "..." S: "What is this little Matthias? H: "..." S: "Ok, try something else, what is this?" H: "...". So that continued for five minutes then she said to me: "He's looking at me like an autobus, can he actually talk?". Being too proud to give up I took over the symbol pointing, ... still nothing. Then in a final attempt they succeeded: S: "Matthias, can you talk?" H: "yes" S: "Can you say house?" H: "yes" S: "Will you say it?" H: "yes" S: "Say it!!" H: "... house". Ah there we go, good boy, after that the spell was broken and it turned out that his eyes are just fine.
Matthias has two pairs of shoes, one blue and one brown. In the afternoon my wife took him to a friend wearing the brown ones. Problem: When it was time to go back home in the evening he wanted to wear the blue ones, which ended in quite a severe tantrum!! So what do we learn from that: always bring the spare shoes, NOT!! (Never spoil your child).
In the evening as Matthias was so tired he was put to sleep early and I stayed in our lounge with Florian. He wanted to watch TV. I told him that's not possible because the sound would wake Matthias up. We ended up watching ... drums rolling, excitement ... jungle book, this time - without sound (how low can you go?) which is a very meditative (aka boring) experience. The amazing thing is that Florian could realtime dub most scenes. I hate home cinema (other movie buy I must, "Ratatouille" mention Florian did).
Lunch: chicken filet ("Schnitzel"), rice, apple. Dinner: Chinese style beef.
I was quite tired all day, had to up my caffeeine dosage to two.

Day 5 - Men's dream

2008-02-05T22:23:00.000+01:00

Here's what happened this morning: After dropping Florian at nursery I went to this place I was invited to. Basically it was quite a big room, dimly lit, lots of seats and some comfy mattresses on the floor. They served drinks and some snacks. When I entered I was the only man in a room full of women dressed in kinky costumes. There were witches, doctors and nurses. Some were taking pictures of each other, some others were playing with toys, not all of which I could identify. I swallowed, sweated and was quite nervous as it was my first time in such an establishment. But that's what paternity is like I thought, ... my first time at our local moms and todds and it was children's Mardi Gras. Fortunately all the other mums were very nice and gave me a warm welcome, so officially I'm now a mum as well I guess. Matthias felt poorly, so he didn't leave me even an inch all morning and he didn't like his costume (a clown's hat) at all, but we still had a good time. Originally I wanted to dress as a monster (and yes, I would have needed a mask for that!), but since all the kids were aged two or less I decided for a less scary costume - a simple moustache - which then fell off after 10 minutes. The noise level with so many toddlers is also rather high, which I guess is the original reason why decibels are measured logarithmically as it would be impossible to fit that loudness into a linear scale.
Florian also had a fancy dress party at his nursery. If you are five years old then costume choice is very easy. Basically if you are a girl then you join "The Pink Cloud" which is quite similar to the Borg collective from Star Trek except that its style is pink instead of grey, dark cyberpunk and consists of fairies and princesses. But the rest, you know the whole "we will assimilate you" or "resistance is futile" stuff, is pretty much the same. Since Florian is a boy he dressed as Batman and joined the Justice League.
Matthias has invented a new way to torture people: He tries to force his fingernails under yours (i.e. between your finger and the nail). I'm not sure but I think that's quite similar to what the Viet Cong did, except they used bamboo.
In the evening I got time off and went to Vienna to play some billiards with a friend.

Day 4 - Toddlers are slow

2008-02-04T20:24:00.000+01:00

This morning I went "horse watching" with Matthias as we live about 500 metres (~500 yards) from a horse racing track. Now that sounds pretty near, but Matthias walks very slowly, which is actually a euphemism. He stands very fast would be a more accurate description. "Slow" would imply a certain velocity which by definition is a physical value consisting of speed AND direction whereas his method of movement possesses neither of those properties. I have a theory that if you put enough toddlers into a room and tell them to go to the nearest grocery store they'd actually break the space time continuum and move backwards in time, unfortunately I've got only one specimen at my disposal so I cannot verify this conjecture. We eventually did arrive at the racing track after 35 minutes and he had a good time watching the horses. When we discovered some horse dung on the ground he asked what it was and when I explained it to him he was rather disappointed ... that there wasn't any dog turd. After watching the horses he paraded past all of them again shouting "bye bye horse" and waving to each of them. Going back home I decided to speed up the journey and carried him back on my shoulders. The downside to that was that he loves to play with your ear lobes while he is up there. Worst is that he also sticks his fingers into your ears as far as he can which felt like getting endoscopic brain surgery (in stereo). I am grateful his fingers are still quite short!
In the afternoon the three of us took the train to Vienna and we went to the Museum of Natural History to check out some dinosaur skeletons. This was the first time I've been there since I was a kid and while Florian and Matthias both enjoyed the exhibits I found the whole experience quite creepy. The halls are very big, quite dark, rather empty (as it was during the week) and full with weird stuffed animals, skeletons and similar objects. So if you ever want to dare someone, try staying one night alone in there.
Then we went to the Naschmarkt to buy some Jiaozi for Chinese New Year which'll be this Saturday! That was a cool experience since the number of Chinese people has gone up a lot since last time I was there. The supermarket we were in, had only Asian customers, everyone speaking Chinese and wishing each other a Happy New Year. We might finally get a little Chinatown here in Vienna.
I don't miss work (yet).
Lunch: leftovers, Dinner: Mc Donalds.

Day 3 - Haute cuisine

2008-02-03T17:15:00.000+01:00

We visited my mom today. She invited us to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. As she is really Chinese she didn't look at the menu at all but just asked the waitress to bring us any four dishes with meat, fish, tofu and vegetables. The food was very good.
Here's how a normal meal at a restaurant with kids goes: Matthias took his shoes off and was jumping up and down on the settee while Florian was crawling around under the table. Then Matthias managed to bite off parts of his water glass (again!, as he had already done that in summer). So there was a short panic - quickly getting all shards out of his mouth - then try to reassemble the puzzle to see if we got all of them - and then stop any bleeding - this time there wasn't any and the glass was complete - phew. After the meal I went to the toilet with Florian, where as usual he suddenly turned around and told me something really important while peeing, so he managed to urinate across the whole wall, seat and the toilet brush and I had to mop it up with tons of paper towels. To sum it up - it was quite a successful lunch with nothing out of the ordinary this time.
In the evening I did the hamster thing with the kids which means letting them run rounds around our sofa while counting how many laps they can manage. That's a good and proven method to keep them occupied as well as making them tired. Florian clocked in at 120 rounds!!!! Matthias managed about 50.
After that we watched the animated DVD menu of jungle book because Florian enjoys the animated background and music. Watching the main menu of a DVD for 20 minutes gives a whole new meaning to the term "home entertainment".

Casino Royale

2008-02-03T10:54:00.000+01:00

Here's how it went. We got Casino dinner vouchers from friends as birthday presents. Heidrun's sister Elke was babysitting so we could go out. I had bought a new blazer so I looked really sharp in a Chinese James Bond kind of way. Luckily Elke noticed that I still got a "Modern Fit" label attached to the sleeve which she removed :) (I mean why do clothes have labels anyway, who cares if e.g. your jeans were made by Levis Strauss original, established 1835, loose fit, street wear, boot cut, etc.? Imagine your job is sitting around all day coming up with some stupid text to be printed onto a T-shirt or jeans).
When we arrived at the Casino Heidrun felt sick due to her pregnancy, so she threw up into the flowers planted in front of the entrance, which was kind of funny! The dinner itself was very fancy and nice. After that the gambling was also quite fun, although we didn't really get rich but ended up with 80€ plus, hurray.

Day 2 - Games

2008-02-02T16:02:00.000+01:00

I played "connect 4" with Matthias this morning. So how do you play that with a 2 year old you might ask? So here's the deal: He chooses a colour for you (I got red and he got black). Then each of us picks some stones regardeless of the colours he picked. We then start filling up the slots with any colour until everything is full. In between you sometimes get told off if you are using the wrong colour (so it seems only he is allowed to do that). Now repeat the whole procedure about 30 times. Does it sound boring? Well it kinda is, but Matthias really likes it, so it makes him happy which makes me happy.
After that I played "Guitar Hero" with Florian and Matthias, all still in our pyjamas (Matthias with a picture of a dog on his, Florian with air planes and santa claus on his and me with Mickey Mouse, ... don't ask). Anyway one side of our lounge is nearly all glass as we have 3 big doors to the terrace, and while I was playing, our neighbour who is a judge walked by watching the three of us in pyjamas jumping around like lunatics and me playing with a plastic guitar! I am a good dad :)
Lunch: leftovers from yesterday, Dinner: Lionheads (not literally but the Chinese dish). I forgot how to cook it so I had my mom explain it to me over the phone in 30 seconds!
After lunch Matthias fell asleep on my shoulder when I read a book to him. There is nothing more relaxing and peaceful in life than having a baby falling asleep on you. I then fell asleep as well.
In the evening we go to the Casino. I'll be rich by tomorrow and will never have to work in my life again!!!

Day 1 - 3, 2, 1, we have a lift off

2008-02-01T17:20:00.000+01:00

Matthias and I went looking for dog shit up and down the road we live on - for one hour(!). He loves that stuff for some reason (he even ate some a couple of months ago which was quite disgusting ... and resulted in my wife throwing up when she told me over the phone which was quite funny). We found a lot because of all the melted snow so he was happy. Good start!
Something related: Changed Matthias' nappies, his poo was very dry and round - like a collection of small spheres - so they rolled out of the nappies and onto the carpet. Fortunately it was so dry that I could quickly collect them back and everything stayed clean - yessss.
Then he wanted to clear snow from our garden. Problem is: there isn't any and I told him that. He suggested that I should make some more snow and didn't really get it that this isn't so easy (otherwise I'd already be making a fortune in Austria's ski resorts).
Other mothers at Florian's nursery are very nice and supportive and laughed at me that a) Florian put on his baseball cap which he didn't bring in the morning and I didn't know how it appeared and b) I couldn't find any scarf for the kids so they were quite underdressed for the cold weather. Then they asked me whether I'm overburdened which I obviously denied :)
Florian weaved a bag at nursery. It's very nice looking.
Watched jungle book on DVD in the evening for the 5129th time (at least).
Lunch: Pizza and noodles, Dinner: Chinese fried chicken meat with beans and rice.
I was tired all day since I went out yesterday evening to celebrate my last day of freedom. Then Florian got up first time at 4.30 am. Number of coffees today: only one!
The kids fight a LOT. No major injuries (yet).