Honeymoon Re-do

Paul’s and my three-week honeymoon was a bit of a bust. It was the first time I’d paid for a travel planner. The company we used likely wasn’t a scam; I think they just weren’t good at their jobs. Let’s just say I was already dissatisfied well before Paul and I were stopped at gun point in our “private transfer van” with ten locals.

This 18 “moment” meal for under $100 USD including drinks helped me manage my disappointment. 

However, I learned a valuable lesson. When I pay a bunch of money for something, I have high expectations. Accordingly, my expectations were relatively low when paying 220 Euros/260 USD (essentially a 10 Euro/day co-pay) for three weeks of room, meals, childcare, and a therapy plan. Success was defined as being able to sleep at night, opt out of therapy that doesn't serve me (like seminars on basic nutrition), and to convince Hugo to go to the Farm School. Very gratefully, my expectations were wildly exceeded. 

First of all, Baden-Württenburg is just so nice. The scenery is pretty, the people are friendly, and being able to ride for hours without a single stop light is just deluxe. 

Just don't trust google maps. Riding through this grass was the recommended route.

Ba-wü, as the cool kids call it, was just the place to reignite the spark with Hugo. Is there a more perfect day than riding 11 km/ 7 miles to this bike parkour...

...drinking an iced coffee

...and then going back for more laps?

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from our time together is that both Hugo and I need more exercise. If there was a drug that would give me calm focus, I would take it. I started my third attempt at finding a medication that works a couple weeks before the Kur. After six weeks, Strattera just made me tired instead of focused. And so I'm back to exercise as medication.* 

*Baby dose of 4-6 hour acting Ritalin helps me focus on boring tasks - like clearing off my desk. One morning a week when kids aren't around will be Ritalin morning. When the kids are around I just get irritated that they can't stay on task now that I can. ha! 

Just getting exercise in the morning isn’t enough. During the week I’ll do strength training with Paul in the morning. In the afternoon, I’ll be spending more time on my analog bike thanks to my most recent eBay score.

I'll be mounting this made in Eugene, OR Burley Piccolo for single kid school/kita pick-ups.

I also have a letter of medical necessity for a trampoline on our terrace in my hot little hand. No property manager wants a trampoline on property. But you know what I don’t want on site? The crazies.

This honeymoon was of course missing sex, I mean Paul. But I did finish this book with Hugo. I tried to read What's the Big Deal? with Crosby last year, and it created too much conflict. He already “knew” a lot of the material and thus viewed me reading the book aloud to him as a form of torture. As Hugo is on the younger end of target audience, he was still resistant but curious. The deal was he could do his second-dinner routine, but he would have to listen to me read while eating.  

He couldn’t help but ask 4,000 questions especially when I redacted the more conservative parts of the book. (ie “My hope for you is that you love Jesus; who you love romantically is not the big picture conversation.”) I told him he’s likely the only eight year-old with a basic understanding of the mechanics of homosexual sex. As such, please do like we do with Santa and keep it to yourself. If your kid suddenly has this knowledge it came from me, sorry not sorry. I’ll let and you take the conversation from there. 

There were a couple chapters with new topics for Crosby that I’ll be reading with him soon. We have ongoing conversations about appropriate touch and unethical adult behavior (thanks Epstein files). However, I haven’t broken down some of the more relevant information around sexual abuse and pornography. Smart kids are safe(r) kids.  

Hugo rekindled his love of swimming at the Kur. I tried to embed a photo of him doing a front summersault into the pool next to a no cannon ball photo, but blogger would not comply. We went to the pool most days and managed not to break the sauna despite putting water on it the first couple days before figuring out it was electric. 

Just like me figuring out that not everybody is an extrovert, I also noted there are a lot of people for whom Kurs aren't a great fit. A Kur is out if your kids won't willingly go to childcare/school with people whom they just met. You'll be stuck in the middle of nowhere with bread and coldcuts for breakfast and dinner. 

Side note: The food was perhaps a bit worse than the last Kur. However, my pre-Kur trip to the Mexican and Asian stores in Berlin supplemented the dirge of protein. Naturally, I also brought my handy silicone containers to package any extras from lunch. 

The real win was renting the communal fire pit for two nights. The first grill night I bought pizza dough, put some refried beans in, and called them "Mexican Empanadas". I also got s'mores ingredients because I'm not a monster. Other families joined in and brought delicious items.  

Also, I got the pro-tip from one mom that instead of making Stock Brot "stick bread" dough, just buy frozen pretzels and wrap that dough around.

The second grill night I did my morning Nordic walking to the butcher to buy sausages. Then, I created one of my most daring culinary feats yet - grilled cheese cloud ie bread/egg/cheese casserole. Long story short, I was bequeathed eggs by a Kur friend who left early and I was determined to use them.  There were a lot of skeptics, but it was so good that I'm bringing some home on the train as I type.

As we were packing, Hugo asked why we didn't extend our stay. To stay longer you have to have some real tangible goals like loosing more baby weight or recovering another week or two if you are a single parent. While we've had a rough go the last couple years, we weren't close to some of the challenges that other parents face. 

Perhaps because of that, we benefited much more than other Kur-goers. For the most part, we already knew what we needed to be doing - more movement, more calm - but we needed a place to make it happen. Parents who came here looking for real next-steps for ADHD, autism, etc did not find it. The seminars were just too basic. When I got my schedule every Sunday, I would go to the reception, tell them the books I've read about each topic, and have them take the seminars off my calendar. I then used this time to blog, find a trailer on eBay, continue reading this book.

I've been reading it on-and-off for months now. It started out really strong introducing us to our family theme song. 

I think it was safe to say, we were the happiest people there. We were also the only one parent + one kid - two kids at home with the other parent. I tried to at least keep my general joy in-check so as to not be a total jerk. The other people that were generally more satisfied were those who came with a spouse or solo with children who don't fight with each other. Maybe Paul goes next time?

These children? Fight? Nahh.

Kurs are not for everybody, but they certainly work for us.