Day 28 - Hardcore

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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)

• 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

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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?!

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

• 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

• 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).