Guest post by: Emmy

Getting ready for skating lessons 

Emmy and I started this post together a long while back.   She helped me pick out some things to share. She has rather lost interest in helping me with it further, so I'll share some other fun Emmy stories and news.

First time on the ice in new skates! 

Emmy's class started swimming lessons in January, finally! She loves to swim and she has been waiting for this all year. She likes going under water and she says she can now float on her back without her floatie, she has learned how to relax herself. (As of late February, I'm sure there have been a lot more strides since then!)

The primary grades also had three skating lessons. The first time we sent her with money to rent skates at the skating rink, but the skates hurt her feet A LOT. So, off we went to the sporting good store to buy her a pair of skates. They are white with pink and blue and she liked skating a lot better with her own, more comfy skates. They are adjustable, so she can wear them for a couple of years.


Recent school field trips included a trip to the candle making factory, and as a special end of term treat, the movies! The kids movies here are always dubbed, since most small children cannot read, so we don't get to take her to the movies.  The school arranged with one of the cinemas to play The Good Dinosaur in it's original language. It was a fun treat! Emmy says she really liked the movie. They also have been to a Lego exhibition where she saw an 11 meter model of the Titanic and a science exhibit. She really enjoys all the field trips.

Ready for a sleepover (18 Jan.)

Her best pal is Freja, her Danish-American pal. She is about 6 months older than Emmy but a grade ahead. They get to play together during their breaks, and since her mom, Sarah, and I are good friends (and her dad is Charles' Danish soulmate), we spend a lot of time together outside of school, too.  She also enjoys having friends in her class from all over, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania, and China!

Masks her class made for Chinese New Year.

Emmy's dream catcher.

One a recent visit to Emmy's school, her teacher showed me a a project the class had just completed making dream catchers. She pointed out how nicely Emmy had done hers, how she had carefully wrapped the wire. After she was finished, she had helped some of her friends finish theirs. She really does love doing art projects! For her birthday this year, we are having an art birthday party. It is going to be a lot of fun to plan.

Emmy is apparently a rock star speller. It was a bit tough getting used to spelling words each week when that was added to the "schedule" mid-fall, but now she pretty much memorizes all four on Monday and we just review them through the week. It's impressive!

The whole class of completed dream catchers. 

Emmy still loves babies and playing with her dolls. She loves being a big sister, and she really is a wonderful big sister. She and Matthew play together, she shares with him so well. As a parent, it is amazing to watch. I love how much they love each other and I pray that their relation will continue to grow and they become good friends. 

When baby-lover and good big sister meet: baby-wearing her little brother.

Baby wearing duo on the way to supper the last Sunday in February.

Holding our friends' baby girl, Hannah. 

I don't have any pictures to share yet, but Emmy is in a drama class at the barracks this spring, and in June they will be putting on a play, an adaptation of Sleeping Beauty. She seems to be enjoying it very much. In addition to getting ready for the performance they do crafts.  It has been a fun extracurricular activity. Hopefully we'll add in some gymnastics or ballet again, soon, too.

It's hard to believe that in just four weeks this girl will be seven years old. Six has been challenging, but then we did go through a big transition. We're all working on listening more and being patient (and by all of us I mean Charles, Emmy, and me).  She is funny, smart and stubborn always keeps us on our toes!

Matthew is 18 months old!

Matthew is 16, 17, 18 months old!

So, as usual, I began this post weeks ago, preparing to do a nice little update on our little dude. Fast forward, and he turned 18 months old this week!

Adorable bear outside my window one cold January day. 

I love morning snuggles with this boy. They don't happen so often any more now that he is not nursing.
It is a bittersweet end. 

He frequently joins us in the bathroom and sits on the step stool.

He went through a phase in January when he'd learned how to turn the lights switches off and on, so he did it frequently. A friend kept him one evening for me and she said our neighbors must have thought we were trying to communicate through Morse code. 

Dying laughing at his sister. No one can make him laugh quite like she can. 

This captures his personality so well. 

Sick baby snuggles. He brought me the wrap so he could have ups. 

Why yes, that is a bag of dog food he's spilled on the floor. At least he tried to help clean it up? 

Shopping at Castorama. 

He loves the playground at Emmy's school. 

He has been such a good baby and now toddler, but like all kids, he has his grumpy moments.

Being silly with Daddy.

Friday night pizza and movie night. He looked so grow up to me on this night, sitting on the footstool and eating his pizza like a big boy.

Baby-wearing. He's going to be such a great daddy some day! He loves to play in Emmy's room with her dolls.

"Helping" with the laundry. I had brought his hamper downstairs to wash and it was in the hallway and he emptied it and brought his clothes into the living room. He kept putting the clothes on the little footstool and they kept falling off. 

The boy loves a hat. Even fancy pink hats. 

He gets in the the pantry and rearranges things for me. Clearly, it needs some help. 

I found him adding pepper to his snack. 

Then he climbed on up onto the table, of course. 

I adore that I caught this face. 

So silly. 

I rock him to sleep as often
as he will let me. 

It may be cliche and I've said it before, but I'll say it again, I cannot believe how fast they grow up. Maybe it is because he is my last baby, maybe it is partly because of losing Sara Hawley, but I'm extremely emotional about this boy growing up. Plus, he's really sweet and I want him to stay this way FOREVER.

So, at now 18 months, Matthew loves balls, balloons, playing outside and picking up rocks and tiny pinecones.

He loves his red shoes! 

He adores his big sister.

He loves the dog.

He loves his red shoes.

He likes to wear hats, and he wears them well.

He does this adorable little shoulder shimmy shake when he asks to watch Bubble Guppies. 

He loves to read and he will happily sit there while you read to him.

His love of balls shines when he shows off his throwing and kicking skills.

He gives really great hugs.

He loves putting on chapstick and hand lotion.

Bedtime stories with Daddy 26 Feb.

When Charles went away in February, all of the sudden he
became VERY clingy to me. At first I did not realize why, but now I'm pretty sure it was because Charles left for a week, then another week, and then he was gone again in March for a week. It has gotten better, but it was to the point that even when the baby-sitters came (whom he adores) he would not stay in another room and play with them while I did some work. It made getting anything accomplished difficult. Fortunately, it is a lot better now.

He is in LOVE with his DaDa. He always has been happy with either of us, but he seems more enamored with Charles lately.  Whenever we drive onto the Barracks for any reason, he realizes where we are and he immediately says DADA!! When Charles came back from one of his trips, he arrived back at work around midday, so he changed into his uniform and worked until we came to pick Emmy up from the bus. He was so happy to see Charles, and when Charles started to head back into his building to change into civilian clothes to go home, Matthew SCREAMED. He had to go in with Daddy, would not let him out of his sight. Most nights we tag-team bedtime and I read a chapter book with Emmy and he puts Matthew to bed. The other night I decided I wanted some Matty snuggles at bedtime and tried to put him down and after a few minutes, it was obvious that I would not do, Daddy needed to come. He is happy with me all day, he goes down for naps just fine for me, but at night if Daddy is home, he wants only Daddy!


He has been signing for several months, and he signs more, milk, water, please, down (when he wants you to put him down or to go downstairs), bath, sleep, Mama, thank you, book/read, all done and probably a few more I'm forgetting.

He is definitely talking a good bit and repeating things. "Ball" was his first word besides Mama or Dada. Then came balloon, Rags, Emmy (or what sounds kind of like it), more, bottle ("ba-ba"), please,, this. We know says outside, shoes, "Bubbles" for Bubble Guppies, his favorite show, hat, book, eyes, hair, and he repeats things frequently. More and more there is something new that we can distinguish that he says independently. Charles says his Southern roots show when he manages to make one syllable words, like "ball," multi-syllabic.

He also says "tak", which is Polish for "yes", and instead of saying no, he says "naj", which is Danish (sounds like n-eye). Remember, his best pal Claire is Danish! He has also picked up "mere" which is "more" in Danish and "den der" which is "that one".

He has entered that toddler phase of not eating much, or at least not eating consistently. This is super frustrating, but I guess we should not be surprised. He has gotten a little pickier, so we hope this will level back off and not be come as bad as Emmy (who will not eat any vegetables, and rarely wills he voluntarily try something new/ prepared differently than she is used to).

I would say his favorite foods are clementines, peanut butter, spinach (when he's in the right mood, he does love the spinach pizza from our favorite pizza places and spinach pierogis), eggs, beans, mushrooms, jam or jelly, and ketchup. That's not all he eats, mind you, but those are his faves. I think his absolute favorite food is probably ketchup, which should make Aunt Mary Ann proud.

He does not seem to be a big fan of potatoes, so Charles and I are not sure he is really ours. Ha! Matthew's current has reminded us of how much we dislike this age when it comes to eating. I asked Charles what foods Matthew really doesn't like and he looked at me with a blank stare and said "it varies from one bite to the next, you know that."  I laughed, but it's true! The boy will eat something for a few bites, then decide a bite is no good and spit it out, which is so annoying. I do not like the spitting out food phase.

Just hanging around in a fun new t-shirt from Aunt Lisa and Uncle Lucas. 

Oh how this boy has my heart! 

Talking on his new "phone" (it's really a remote control) that Aunt Beth and Uncle Griff sent him. 

Picking up pinecones and handing them to Mama.

He likes to take bottles out of the pantry, then put them back in. 

Fancy hat and necklace are appropriate snack-eating attire.

It's been a delightful 18th months with this boy so far. A piece of our family will always be missing, but Mr. Matthew certainly has filled a huge void and brought us so much joy!

Easter Vacation

Emmy had a nice week-and-a-half long break around Easter (remember, Poland is a VERY Catholic country!), so we took off for Germany! I really wanted to dress my kids up in their new Easter clothes and go to church in English. Some of our friends stationed in Germany said they would be home over Easter weekend and invited us to come see them.  We went to Wofford with Michaele, and then she married Josh, who is in the Air Force.  They were stationed in Kansas for half of our time at Ft. Leavenworth, so we got to know Josh (both are them also are from Greenville) and Emmy and Anabel got to be friends. I don't think I posted a lot during the Kansas year, but they are our friends who offered to keep Emmy when Charles and I flew to Colorado to house hunt.

Matthew had some rockin' hair on day one of our trip. Had to capture
some photographic evidence during a pit stop at, yes, McDonald's. 

Anyways, Emmy was off the Thursday and Friday before Easter, so Charles worked Thursday while the sitter came and I packed, had one more girls lunch with my lunch bunch (one of the five of us is very pregnant  and we thought baby might come while I was gone, but as of today, he is 5 days past his due date and his mama is really ready for him to arrive!), and took the dog to the groomer so she was freshly coiffed for the pet sitter. (Funny side note, everyone calls the groomer the hair dresser for dogs in English, I guess groomer does not translate well to Polish. It makes me giggle every time someone says it, but I guess that's really what it is!)

New friends! 

Old friends! 

Friday morning, we got up early and were on the road before 7:30 This is pretty impressive for us, we are not morning people. Our goal was 6:30, but hey, we were only a little less than an hour off our mark! The kids did well in the car and we made good time. We pulled into our first stop for the night, Ramstein Air Force Base, right at 5 pm. We have old friends from the Army that are stationed in that area, so we stopped there to spend the night and have dinner with them. We have not seen them in I think eight years? When Charles joined the 63rd, his first unit out of Officer Basic Course, he took Jared's place in the Company when Jared moved up to the Battalion staff. They deployed together that first time, then after we were married and I moved there, Lila and I became friends through the FRG. During their second deployment, Lila's fill in labor coach, Angela, (the woman who was our sponsor's wife for our move to Poland!) called Charles' work phone in Kuwait to tell him to get Jared, baby Lina was on the way, so Charles sat with Jared while they listed to her being born. I still remember him telling me this story.

We quickly checked into our room (the family lodging at Ramstein is amazing, we had a 3 bedroom apartment for the night) and then followed Jared to their house in a small village a 20 min or so drive away. It was lots of fun catching up, I really wish we'd had more time. Their girls are now 13 and 11 and Emmy had a good time playing with them. We stayed way too late, Matthew was spinning in circles on the kitchen floor (not upset, just tired and silly) by the time we left, but it was a fun evening.

Also, as a bit of explanation why our Army friends live near an Air Base, this area actually has something like 5 or 6 installations clustered fairly close together, some Army, some Air Force. Ramstein is the largest, Landstuhl is probably the one most of you have heard of since it has the big hospital where Soldiers (and Airmen and Marines) are usually air lifted if they have been seriously injured during a deployment. Jared actually works at a small Army post a little farther drive from where they live, but they chose to live where they do for the school.  Even as an Army spouse, and knowing lots of people stationed in Germany at different times, I did not fully realize how many installations there sometimes are in one area. I also don't fully understand why, but I'm sure there were reason when all of these installations were established after WWII.  When we go down to Grafenwoehr, there is another installation about 25 minutes away, and the two are connected by a tank trail. Our friends that are there now are actually stationed at Vilseck, but their boys attend the DoD school on Graf.  Usually one of the installations has more services, or you don't have the same services on each post or base. It all makes us actually quite grateful we are not stationed at a US installation. Yes, it is hard not to have access to medical services, a post office, PX, Commissary, etc, and I wish there was one a bit closer (like 2 hours away instead of 5+) BUT because we are in a bigger city, we actually have a lot more things at our finger tips. Most of the U.S. installations are in more remote areas, with smaller German towns nearby. In order to get to some of the things we have easy access to, they have to drive. It's a trade off for sure.

We slept in the next morning and went over to the Base Exchange for breakfast. That place is like a mall, I have never seen a PX/BX like it. There was a German bakery inside where we were able to have a yummy German breakfast (breads, butter, jams, honey, cold cuts, cheese, and in this case a boiled egg). We ran back to check out, then went to the post office to mail a few things, to the commissary, and back to the BX for shopping and lunch. We spent way too much money (things are often more expensive on the overseas posts/bases than in the US because they have to ship everything in) but it was nice to get a few things we wanted/needed without having to order them. After lunch in the food court, we headed out again.

After a short hour and a half drive, we arrived in Gindorf and Michaele and Josh's. They actually bought a house, a 200 year old house, in the tiny town near the base where they are stationed. It was so cute and full of character. They have a big horse barn next to it that they plan to renovate and add a small apartment to. There is a neat pond in the backyard and a nice yard for the kids to play.  We had a good time meeting their youngest two daughters and introducing them to Matthew. She was newly pregnant with Eliana when we left KS (and I was newly pregnant with Sara Hawley), and she is 2 1/2, and then Emalyn is a couple of months younger than Matthew. So we had five kids 6 and under together! Michaele cooked us some delicious enchiladas for supper and Charles made margaritas. The kids had a great time playing.

Finding where the EB hid baskets, and inspecting what he brought.

The next morning after the kids woke up to hunt Easter baskets. After breakfast, we headed to church on base, and after church we enjoyed a big Easter brunch spread at the Officers' Club. The Easter Bunny even stopped by during the event for a photo up. Fun!

Pre-church photo in their new Easter duds.

Matthew liked his new hat. 

Sweet friends after church.

A bowtie and suspenders, it's too much! I love dressing this boy up.

Family photo before lunch. 

Anabel, Emmy, and Eliana with the Easter Bunny. (Matthew was sleeping on Charles' shoulder, this is naptime for him!)

After naps, some other friends of theirs came over for an egg hunt and supper. They have four children, so it was a big fun crowd! The kids played, the adults enjoyed chatting, and Michaele cooked a yummy supper and her friend Lisa brought delicious desserts. It was a different Easter, being away from home, but it was definitely enjoyable.

The back of their gorgeous house and old horse barn.

Happy girl. 

Happy boy had so much fun! 

Matthew LOVED picking up eggs.

Check out this photo, I even got all the children looking at the camera! (Except for Eliana who was taking an EPIC nap, I thought my children were good sleepers, theirs are even more amazing).

The next morning we said our good-byes (it was not Easter break for Anabel, so she had to be off to the bus at 7:30) and headed on to the next part of our journey...Bruges!