For the Super Crosby Fans

The Hausburgschule, Crosby's German/Spanish public European school, made this video that shows and narrates a bit about his school. You'll have to know German to get the full picture. That being said, as a parent who hasn't really been allowed into the building because of Covid, it was nice to see the places he hangs out.  

Eighteen Months of Awesome

If I had to sum Carmen Mae up in one word it would be "tough". She knows what she wants and she won't let a scraped knee or pesky brother stand in her way. Over the last couple weeks I've taken photos that show our little lady in her element.

 We weren't planning on going to the butcher. But little lady walked right in, pointed at the counter, and walked out with a free sausage. 

She likes to feed herself with utensils. This ice cream shop was trying out different styles of ice cream - this is a trial run of "Spaghetti ice". Ice cream shops make vanilla ice cream look like noodles and then put strawberry sauce on top for marinara. The nice gals at Oak and Ice asked if we wanted some free attempts at Spaghetti ice. #yesplease

She loves any kind of water - swimming pools, baby pools, puddles, and even glasses of water. Whenever our neighbor fills up her pool, she'll jump right in. She'll often climb up on our kitchen table our counter to grab a beverage. This is one of my least favorite aspects of parenting at this phase. 

In her perseverance, she is a little rascal. She went in the boys' room, closed the door, and after a minute I went in to find her standing on my laptop on the desk. I don't think she climbs for the joy of climbing or breaking stuff, I think she just goes for water bottles.

She also loves sweets. Here she is eating homemade cookies by our neighbor Val. Carmen is food motivated; but not motivated enough to sit in a chair in a restaurant which is a good transition into things she isn't into:

This girl doesn't like sitting on the potty. She's been punking me by saying peepee and poopoo but when I put her on the potty, she pops back off. In this photo, her brothers are watching a hot wheels video but videos don't really hold her attention either.

When she's sleepy, she doesn't want to keep going. She wants to go to bed. To let us know, she just lays down on the floor wherever she is - even facedown in the sand. This was our Thursday morning where my chain broke on Rammy and we had to leave the bike near school and train back. Hugo was trying to encourage her but nothing will substitute for a snuggle and nap.

This is "put me to bed" in Carmen's body language.

Her favorite toy, as is usually the case with kids, isn't actually a toy. She loves these silicon muffin tins.  She spends hours staking them around the house. Future Mari Kondo?

We have lots of videos, that don't lend themself to blogging, of her doing her greatest love: dancing. Anytime she hears music she will try to get closer to the source - wether that's going over to a group of half-drunk dudes playing techno in the park or breaking into a restaurant when we're waiting for take-out so she can dance in the back. While I could go on and on about Carmen's lovely attributes, she's up from her nap and I turned around to hear her say "uh oh" doing this:

Corona Hair, Unkledunkle Cares

Kids' haircuts have always been an issue. Organizing Crosby's first haircut was mostly an ordeal because most barbers in Portland wouldn't cut a kid under three years old. The barbers that would, charged the same price as an adult cut. After ten phone calls to find something more reasonable, I paid full price at Modern Man about a mile/1.5 Km from our house. Crosby ended up going from this:

Sweet little baby to

Ready for Boot Camp

One of the perks of moving to Berlin, is that hair cuts for men are already pretty cheap, and about 8 Euros / $10 for kids. Paul's cuts have been pretty good but the little boys have had mostly bad results. There have been lots of bad ones for Crosby, but Hugo took the cake on this one: 

Apparently in Turkey, boys under one years old all get buzz cuts. This barber did his first cut right down the middle, so there was no turning back once he started. When I told him Hugo was over two, he was like "oh". Turkish cuts has since changed the name, but we haven't been back. 

Since Corona, the barber shops were closed, open over the summer, and now open if you have a negative corona test within the last 24 hours. The combination of Paul using this as an opportunity to grow out his hair, the hassle of first getting a corona test, and me reading parenting books that talk about building the "bank of good will" by not fretting about hair and clothes - the boys were getting shaggy. However, this photo of the kids eating two pounds of blueberries in one sitting broke the camel's shaggy back...for Uncle Connor.

I mean yes, scraggly, but also happy. Are they related?

Connor's text was about the closest thing to an intervention that you can have half-way across the world. Because the kids lack motivation, I told them that Uncle Connor would pay them each 5 Euros / $7 USD to get their hair cut. I also scheduled an appointment at my trendy Japanese salon to see if haircut quality would improve if we weren't literally under the U-bahn stop by our house.

We did a lot of talking about getting our haircut because I wasn't sure that Hugo would actually get in the chair. Our neighbor Val taught him some important lessons about negotiating, thus a post haircut bubble tea trip got thrown into the deal. In an interesting turn of events, Crosby was the one who put up the biggest fight. It was at this stage of the cut that he threw off his gown and said "I hate my hair. This is stupid."

To be fair, his hair looks even worse than when we started. After a total of 45 minutes, he ended up looking like this:

Paul confirmed that the cut is in fact much better quality. However, Crosby is none too happy with short hair, and we promised we'd never cut it this short again. 

I brought along some cough drops to bribe/keep Hugo happy during his cut (pro-tip: lolly pop + gown + hair = not good)

He spent his 30 minutes in the chair saying his mantra of "haircuts are dumb, my hair looks dumb" while Carmen did this:

This being: put her grubby hands on everything.

Ok, also she was adorable and managed not to break anything.

From my perspective, the haircut was a smashing success. What can you get the man who has everything for his 40th birthday? "Civilized" looking nephews.  Happy Birthday Uncle Connor! We miss you.