familial entropy

morning procedure

Posted on 13. May 2015 by erdhummel

6:45 – I can hear a loud “mama! hello mama! …..oooh, ball! Baby ball!!” from the little one’s room (this night, she insisted on taking a ball to her bed, that’s why).

6:50 – the little one joins us in our big bed and starts cuddling with her daddy

6:50:30 – the little one is done cuddling with daddy and starts cuddling with me. Which lasts at least a minute longer

6:52 – I am still trying to snooze a little bit while the little one is busy climbing over my legs, my belly and over my head

7:10 – finally time to get up and to carry out the demands for a wee milk bottle

7:15 – the little one has already finished her milk bottle while I am still waiting for the coffee machine to warm up

7:16 – the little one is wearing rubber boots over her pyjama and carrying her garden bag while trying to unlock the door

7:20 – Karsten convinces her to use the potty first

7:21 – the little one decides that the potty session is done (unsuccessfully)

7:23 – the little one tries to unlock the front door again – this time just wearing diapers and rubber boots (and, of course, carrying her garden bag)

7:25 – I tell her that I would like to drink my coffee first and then we can go to the garden after I had a shower and got dressed (the “get dressed” part applies for her as well!). She switches on music so that I can enjoy my coffee while listening to the camel song (the camel that dances chachacha…nothing is better for waking up than the chachacha camel, especially when you haven’t finished your coffee…she is, indeed, a smart little kid!)

7:30 – I dress the little one. She immediately starts to put on her rubber boots again in order to go to the garden

7:35 – I distract her with biscuits while I am having a quick shower

7:36 – I can’t hear her anymore. Bad sign, as she is able to unlock the front door by herself and she also doesn’t hesitate to walk downstairs on her own (as my mother recently experienecd while she was in the restroom for just a second)

7:37 – the little one joins me in the bathroom after I desperately called for her while trying to shower of the soap as quick as possible (needless to say what she is wearing)

7:45 – I am dressed and I had my coffee – and can you guess what we’ll do now?

7:45:30 – off to the garden….breakfast can wait!

Posted in Garden, the little one | Tagged Children, garden | 2 Comments

one perfect sunday

Posted on 10. May 2015 by erdhummel

It has been one of these days again. One of these early summer weekend-days with blue sky and sunshine, where everything just flows and where you wallow from one relaxed moment to another. It started with a coffee brought to me by the little one and Karsten while I was still lying in bed – it’s Mothers Day today, hooray 🙂 Followed by a beautiful painting from the little one and chocolate truffles from my husband.

For breakfast, we were blessed by our own personal bread-delivery-service (as Germans we are, admittedly, very picky regarding bread. We have lived in several countries by now and the one thing we always crave for is “proper” bread! Luckily, we have friends who decided to take things into their own hands and bake their own bread. Delicious bread which we quite often benefit from). Our friend joined us for a relaxed and good breakfast, we reminisced about the weekend one year ago and then went outside to have some garden fun.

After lunch, we made biscotti and then all of us took advantage of a quick nap (I was granted a rather long one), followed by iced coffee on our balcony. Later this afternoon, we were invited at my friend’s place for a four-course Japanese Dinner (a late wedding gift) which was absolutely delicious.

And now we just arrived home, put the little one to bed and will probably end the evening on a cozy note on our balcony.

Oh, blessed lazy, sunny Sundays!! Happy Mothers Day!

Posted in culinary bits and pieces, Family, the little one | Tagged bread, food, garden, Mothers Day, Muttertag, Sunday | Leave a comment

start of the garden season

Posted on 4. May 2015 by erdhummel

Since early February the little one and myself have been lurking around the garden to check whether it’s already worth gardening again. And I am happy to finally announce: the gardening season has started again!!

Spring automatically means getting rid of a lot of weed, clearing the flower beds and starting to grow seedlings on the window bench. Which always confronts me with the problem that we actually don’t have proper window benches. But in a household full of books there will always be a solution how to provide seedlings with enough sunshine…..

intellectual growth….

By now, the garden is almost ready for vegetables and flowers. Which is mainly thanks to my mother who is visiting us right now and who has, with her years and years of gardening experience, an incredible efficient way of weeding. It’s amazing, really.

It is also thanks to the enthusiasm of the little one. I am not sure how long this enthusiasm will last, but I do hope that we’ll benefit from it a little longer. There is such a cuteness in watching a toddler watering plants, pulling out weeds and digging the flower beds. I never thought that we might need a flower bed for an under-two year old, but here we are…the litttle one is growing her own salad and her own flowers (it is just 50 centimeters long, but hey!).

During the last days it has been raining. It has been raining all day long. Still, we made sure to go to the garden at least once a day, simply because the little one gets cabin fever after a morning at home. Latest at lunchtime she will pack her little basket, look for her rain boots and open the door with the statement: “So! Garden!”. No chance to say no. Though weeding isn’t particularly fun when the soil sticks to your gardening gloves and soaks them within seconds.

I know the so-called Ice Saints are not yet over. I am still tempted to put all the seedlings outside now. It feels like there should finally be vegetables and flowers in the beds….I planned courgettes, pumpkins, various salads, mangetouts (a first!), corn, turnips, beetroot, fennel, potatoes, curly cale (another first) and and and. And, of course, many, many flowers! The strawberries are already flowering and it looks like we’ll have plenty of berries, given that they’ll survive the dreaded berry raiders. So I think I will simply ignore the fact that it is recommended to wait until the middle of May and just bed the last seedlings out. Let the gardening begin!

(There is, of course, some serious gardening going on on our balcony as well. But I think that’ll be another blog post!)

Posted in Garden, the little one | Tagged garden year, gardening, spring, weeding | Leave a comment

swiss technicians

Posted on 3. May 2015 by erdhummel

A few weeks ago, our fridge broke. No matter what we did, we always had a thick layer of ice on the walls and half of our food was freezing. When the repairman came, the problem was diagnosed as irreparable. Since the fridge and the freezer are connected, it was quite a big kitchen item that hence needed to be replaced.

Last week, two technicians were supposed to deliver and install the new fridge and freezer. Now, as you might remember, there is construction work going on around our buildings. A lot of construction work. Actually, there is no direction where you don’t see diggers, front-end loaders, circular saws, hills of digged-out soil or big piles of stones. Since two weeks, the way from our door to the street was being worked on and there was no possibility to get to the street without climbing hills of soil or carrying the stroller over deposed gravel. And, to make it even more fun, it has been raining for the last days.

(before the rain started)

So when our fridge-freezer arrived, the technicians called me and asked (slightly worried) how they were supposed to manage the way from the street to our door. I was worried too: on that particular day it did indeed look like a hopeless undertaking to get a 2 meter high fridge/freezer to our doorstep. I halfheartedly suggested to ask the construction workers to help them carry it over the construction side or, alternatively, carry it all the way over the muddy grass/garden.

The answer was a very Swiss one:

“Oh, there won’t be any problem carrying the fridge. That we’ll manage easily. The problem is that we will carry dirt into your flat!!”

(My response that it shouldn’t be a problem since I could easily clean the three meters that lead from our door to the kitchen didn’t impress them. Instead they were wearing blue plastic bags on their shoes when they rang. And they were not wearing them in the flat, like I would have done, but they were wearing them outside to make sure that their shoes stayed absolutely clean)

Posted in small but significant differences, Switzerland | Tagged Switzerland | Leave a comment

this moment

Posted on 30. April 2015 by erdhummel

A single photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama.

It’s so much more fun with three kids in the bathtub 🙂

Posted in this moment | Tagged bath tub, Children | 5 Comments

oh these people!

Posted on 29. April 2015 by erdhummel

Do you know the feeling when the world around you seems to include too many unfriendly, annoying people? When so many people seem to feel the need to make unnecessary comments, gestures or bigger problems?

I have had that feeling for months now (in fact, when I come to think about it, maybe years!). Oh dear, I am currently annoyed by so many people!

By the youngsters that need to listen to loud (and bad) music on their phone. By the bus driver who needs to make an unfriendly comment when I ask him to wait a second for my friend who is pushing a stroller, carrying a baby and dragging a suitcase behind. By the guy who needs to state that the little one is recalcitrant although she obviously has a bloody bandage around her head. By the whole unfriendly team of the food court at Munich train station that wouldn’t allow me to sit down at one of their tables with the little one although I purchased food there. By the woman that tells me not to bring the stroller into the ice-cream shop when buying ice cream. By everyone who blows cigarette smoke into my face. By everyone who doesn’t stop at the crosswalks. By the unfriendly people at the toll stations along the border. By my colleague who invites friends over for prosecco although she knows that I am meeting her on her demand after 8pm at her place in order to plan an event. By the guy in the car who almost ran over us on the sidewalk because he was racing a friend. By our building committee who consists of actually very nice and friendly people but somehow things are always implemented differently than discussed. By the people in the supermarket who think they can queue-jump without even asking. By the guy in the car who makes aggressive gestures because I am walking on the street in a construction zone although I had no other choice to walk there as the pedestrian diversion simply ended 20 meters before the sidewalk started again. By the people trying to sell health insurances on the phone who would get incredibly impudent when being told to stop calling. And by my colleague again who doesn’t get back to me although I specifically asked her to answer as soon as possible.

Last week, I sat down on the couch and an idea popped into my mind. How about finding a house far away from everyone else? Somewhere at the seaside or in the mountains. With a big garden so we could almost be self-sufficient? And more importantly, self-determined! And it would only be us! Just our little universe. We’d find a job that could be done via home office. No annoying co-workers, no annoying bureaucracy and we ourselves could decide who to meet! In the evening, we would sit in the garden and we could talk, about god and the world, without thinking of other people to overhear our conversations. And Karsten could listen to his music as loud as he’d love to. It sounded awfully tempting!!

But then I thought of the birthday bbq. Of our numerous friends. Of the little one’s friends. Of her running around with her friends, laughing and giggling her way through the day. Of countless game nights and dinners. Of the nice guy in the Asia market this week who gave the little one her first fortune cookie. Of my director who’d leave an Easter gift on my desk. Of our neighbours who would always help out.

And then friends from Finland visited us last weekend. We had a full house and it was such a great time!

And I decided that it’s not too bad after all to have people around you. Actually it’s pretty awesome!

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged friends, friendship, people | 4 Comments

birthday bbq

Posted on 22. April 2015 by erdhummel

Beautiful spring weather, good food, good company….what else do you want for a birthday? (And I think it has been the most elaborate birthday cake I have made for Karsten so far…)

And don’t forget to post a comment if you want to win a signed copy of “A Sting in the Tale” by Dave Goulson for the International Book Day!!

Posted in Family | Tagged bbq, birthday, Children, lanterns, spring, strawberry cake | 2 Comments

How to win a signed edition of “A Sting in the Tale”

Posted on 18. April 2015 by erdhummel

Well, with the international day of the book now being less than a week away, from now on you have the chance to participate in the competition which might win you a hand signed version of “A Sting in the Tale” by Dave Goulson, as announced before (At this point I would like to thank Prof. Goulson once again for contributing a signed copy of his book!).

The book is just brilliantly written, so it will be of interest not only to friends of bumblebees, but presumably to everyone who loves a great story, which simultaneously teaches you things in a way that you are craving for more! And who knows, even if you never considered bumblebees, biodiversity, nature conservation or any of these issues important, you might be surprised to find yourself planting flowers for bumblebees, seeing the mouse holes in your garden as potential nesting sites rather than a disturbance in your lawn or just being happy seeing a bumblebee and wondering what she might be up to now – or even what kind of bumblebee it is… And if you begin being thrilled, you might want to consider supporting one of your local bumblebee conservation trusts, which work for an increased compatibility between urban and agricultural spaces with nature!

So as you will be asking yourself now, how to participate:

You have to write something small in the comment section und Sunday, the 26th of April 2015, mentioning your name and a sentence/text of any length, fulfilling one of the following criteria:

Either write a short limerick about any insect or just anything small of your choice, which you consider noteworthy, interesting, important etc. despite its small size. (If you do not like writing limericks, you can alternatively write your favorite quote or tell a brief anecdote about an insect or anything small in size.

The name of the winner will be drawn randomly on the 27th of April and announced on this website, as well as being informed via email!

To give a good example, I (Karsten) have written myself a small limerick about the bumblebee:

“Once there was a bumblebee,

with pollen right down to her knee

who thought, how shall I lift my rear

with all this load, and just one gear

She once was told, she could not fly

But never got the reason why!

So thanks to vortices in the air,

she now flies home without a care”

(For explanation: Bumblebees are in public opinion often considered to be defying the laws of physics with flying but that never kept them from flying – independent what we think of what they should be able to do)

With that I wish all of you the best of luck and I am looking forward to your contributions!

P.S. People from all over the world can contribute, we will send the book anywhere!

P.P.S. Die Kommentare können auch auf Deutsch gepostet werden!

Posted in Allgemein | Tagged a Sting in the Tale, Blogger schenken Lesefreude, bumblebees, Dave Goulson, Hummeln, International Book Day, limerick | 10 Comments

you know you are in Switzerland when…

Posted on 18. April 2015 by erdhummel

…you go for a walk and suddenly meet an old guy playing alphorn in the middle of the forest.

Posted in small but significant differences, Switzerland | Tagged Alphorn, Switzerland | Leave a comment

Hello there, emergency unit! Hope our relationship will be a scarce one!

Posted on 17. April 2015 by erdhummel

Well, it had to happen one day, didn’t it?

So far, we’d gone through the last 22 months without any major injuries and I am very grateful for it. Until today, our only emergency visit at a hospital with the little one was during our second night home (she was five days old) when she cried for eight solid hours and we didn’t know what else to do (for the record: she fell asleep during the cab ride at 4 am and I arrived at the hospital stating “my baby just wont stop crying” while holding a peacefully sleeping newborn…).

Today she was jumping around on a big mattress after our singing class when she slipped and fell right onto some kind of thin steel stut. It took a second, but then the whole situation got quite bloody and I knew that she’ll need stitches (this was, by the way, one of the rare moments when I really regret neither having a car nor a smart phone! Both of them would have been quite handy, but I was lucky enough that our music teacher offered to drive us to the nearest hospital).

So, we went to the nearest hospital with a bleeding and crying little one. We arrived at the emergency unit where we were told that, unfortunately, they can’t help us because we’ll need a pediatrician. So we went back to the car and went to the city where we were told about an emergency unit for children (note: even the teaching hospital where the little one was born apparently can’t help in such a case). We arrived at the second emergency unit where the nurse took a look at the little one, tried to clean the wound a bit (a three centimeter long cut right down her forehead which gaped open) – without major success. I was told that the doctor will be there soon, so I sat down with the little one and started to browse through books while occasionally whipping of the blood that was running down her face….

After about 45 minutes the doctor arrived. He tried to clean the wound (without major success) and tried to take a picture which took several minutes because the little one was crying and trying to get off my lap (I really didn’t see the point of the picture, I just hoped they’d start the stitches soon). The doctor left in order to talk to his colleague and came back 15 minutes later, telling me that the little one indeed needs stitches. They would try to do it, but they only have laughing gas there – so in case it doesn’t work we would have to drive to the children’s clinic. Mh. Alright. Let’s try the laughing gas.

Fine, the doctor said, we’ll start in about 45 minutes. (note: it was already way after lunch time, the little one was hungry but wasn’t allowed to eat and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast either). I asked for some chocolate because I was feeling slightly hypoglycemic, but apparently they didn’t have any.

After a while, another nurse came and explained the laughing gas. She had three different pens which smelled like chocolate, vanilla or strawberry and she “painted” the mask with the strawberry smell which the little one seemed to like most. And now the only fun part of the day started: the nurse warned me that most of the children cry a lot at the beginning, but the little one was absolutely keen on getting the laughing gas mask. After a few deep breaths, she started to smile and to giggle and to fool around – really quite fascinating. I was sitting next to her, holding the mask, while the doctor was trying to stitch, and my girl was just really foolish (“hahaha…au au, mama, au au…hahaha!!). At one point, I tried to distract her with a colourful caterpillar made out of wobbly, soft plastic and she started giggling, pointed at the caterpillar and laughed “PAPA!!!”. (Is this how it’ll be when she’ll come home one day after having her first drinks??) Well, there was also the point when she tried to grab a toy and the mask got detached from the laughing gas. The doctor stopped working, the nurse tried to get the gas back on and I stared at the little one because the doctor had left the needle sticking right out of her forehead…

All in all, she was extremely brave! She even got chocolate afterwards (turns out they had chocolate after all!). And is now wearing a blue bandage around her head.

The only moment where I lost my temper was actually on our way home. When we entered the train, the little one was tired, hungry and in pain (and obviously having blood in her face) and started crying a bit. Which caused a guy to lean over to say in a very disapproving voice “Well, well, are you one recalcitrant child!”. Which caused me to loudly state the facts of the last hours. Which luckily caused him to shut up (seriously, what’s wrong with the people??).

So, well, that’s our first laceration. Let’s hope the little one will be as accident-free as I was as a child (and not such a regular emergency unit visitor as her father…).

Posted in Children, the little one | Tagged emergency unit, laceration, toddler | 5 Comments