Corona Safe Halloween

Halloween in Berlin is actually a thing. The main differences is that kids don't go door to door, they go business to business. We had a blast last year with our friends from Hungary. Sigh...

Mommy was a little late to the costume game, so we recycled that mummy idea and divided it by three. The boys went to a birthday party earlier in the day with face-paint so they were Sonic and Tails mummies. 

This year we banded with our neighbors to do an avoid the crowd version - going to four apartments. The first stop was actually the door that opens to the hallway from the boys' bedroom. Our neighbor Matt played the part. The kids thought it was hilarious.

The penultimate stop was our neighbors we call the Doodim (Uncles in Hebrew). It was kind of a trick because we left Carmen with them for an hour. They love her, and Hugo loves when we pay more attention to him. They got fancy chocolates for the kids, amazing.

Trick or treating ended at our neighbors - Matt, Emily, and Mari. The original plan was a cookie bake extravaganza but our baker in residence, Val, escaped to the Canary Islands last minute to avoid our second lock-down starting on Monday. You might know Val from these creations:

-A word on the lockdown - school is still in session (phew). But, restaurants are just take-out, gyms are closed, and gatherings are limited to just two households. We'll be zooming into church to minimize contact.-

Anywho, the last Halloween stop converted from cookie decorating to art making. Emily arranged a cool art project. Crosby is so creative; it's so fun to see what he does.

Then Hugo did this, which is a little creepy and thus thematic. (The box doesn't fully close, he can breath.)

Happy Halloween!

Mornings with Hugo

 Mornings with Hugo are always a surprise. Yesterday he was up at 5:30 in snuggle mode. Today he came down the stairs at 7:30 looking like this:

Headphones - check

Toy for Carmen - check (swoon)

Orange hanger he pretends is a gun - check (sigh)

Green sunglasses - check...until they fell off his head in the toilet while he was peeing

Most mornings we have to drag Crosby out of bed at 7 to get the boys to school before 7:55. I pack them something to eat for their first breakfast on the bike on the way.  The kids eat breakfast at their school/kita at 9 am. Because Hugo slept in, Carmen, Hugo and I had breakfast together while Paul braved the rain to take Crosby to school. (We can drop off Hugo anywhere between 8-9 and 9:30-10. He can be there for 5-7 hours. Oh, did I mention we only pay $100 a month and that includes organic vegetarian meals. I digress...)

This was today's breakfast:

Yes, he transitioned to a Batman/Catboy hybrid. Also, he is eating a romaine, avocado, lentil salad. This mommy is serious about reducing food waste and not serious about breakfasts being traditional. 

Just so you don't think I'm the weirdest mom ever, he does get a choice (bakery or supermarket) on the off mornings I take him to school and want to kill a little time to make pick-up timing more ideal (based on the maximum 7 hours he can be at Kita, the snack black-out hours, and picking up Crosby at 3:45). Here is Safety Catboy eating the fusion of his two loves - chocolate and croissants. Pan Au Chocolat.

 

Meet Longie, Chao Fatty

I should probably do marketing, or at least a referral fee for Rad Power Bikes. We've bought two and I convinced my bestie to also buy one. The affordability just can't be beat.

In Germany, the maximum motor output that does not require a drivers' license or registration is 250 Watts. At the time we decided to turn in our public transportation passes and go all e-bike only fatty was available in the 250 Watt model. The idea for Fatty was to be Paul's bike that he used to take the boys to school in the morning and then go to work. Ha...working outside of home office, who knows when that will happen again.

We gave it a good go for a year, but as you can see it was a bit crowded.

In September 2020, Longie became available in a 250 W version. We sold Fatty to our friend Captain Maciej and Longie became part of the family. I mean look at all this room:

My original thought is we could get all three on there when Carmen can sit-up, but I think we'll be hitting the weight limit here before long. Hopefully we'll get more than a year out of this one before we have to trade again. In the mean time, it is Hugo nap approved. 

This was the start of his nap. Then I put my backpack in front of him and he spent the next hour like this.

 

"Soy Grande" Hugo Beckley Biggs, Age 3

GG is in lockdown at her retirement home in Seattle. While she's not able to meet with family and friends, my goal is to produce some good content here. I'll print out the posts and send. The pictures will mostly be from Instagram, but I'll try and give a little more description. 

This first post comes from Mr "I'm too big to nap" "Soy Grande". Almost every day, Hugo falls asleep on the way to pick up Crosby. It's a mile to Kita (preschool), 3 miles to Crosby's school, and then 2ish miles home. The whole loop takes about an hour and fifteen minutes with about 45 minutes of riding. Paul takes the loop in the morning and I do the pick-up loop.  I've started sending these photos to another amazing Grandma, Paul's mom, to keep her spirits up. Enjoy. 

This is the most comfortable of options - the back kid seat with a pillow that keeps his head in place. But Hugo being Hugo, he does what he wants.

It might be hard to understand what's happening here, but his head is sticking out of the bike, hanging over the wheel. I took this photo at a stop light before rearranging him.

Diapers for the win.

You can see from these two photos that Hugo hit his preschool Halloween party really hard. He slept like this in the bike until I woke hime up for dinner.