3 years

  This is last week, when Macha came to visit.

On May 3rd, it will have been 3 years since we arrived in Germany. After three years, our family is larger and older...and hopefully wiser too. The boys are chatting it up in fluent German.  They don't say everything grammatically correct, especially with the der, die, das, den, dem, articles, but they can rattle off on all kind of subjects.   

Scott's mom noticed on her trip this month that they preferred to play together in German, whereas, on her other trips, they still spoke preferably English together.

Aaron is our spider expert, because he has learned every Friday in his "Vorschulgruppe" about spiders.

He told me this morning that he is afraid to move to America  (and he says /amer- ee-ka/), because there is a "giftige" (poisonous) spider there that can bite you and KILL you.  He has told us all about underwater spiders and special spiders that are "giftig!" and loves to look for spiderwebs along gates and in trees.

Lately he likes to use the word "except" a lot, but he says "Incept." :)  He still mixes English and German a lot, and often says sentences something like: "Incept, I wanted to finish my Schatzkarte before I ate my Gummibärchen, so THAT'S why I can't zieh my clothes on right now."

Both boys have been in speech therapy for the past 9 months.  Aaron has worked on and improved his use of different "S" sounds:  sssss, schhhhh, tsssss, zzzzzz, tschhhhh, as well as tra, which is hard to say in German with the r in the back of the mouth!

Timmy is doing great in the first grade and can read quite well in German.  He has been reading little books with about 4 chapters over a two day period and then taking a quiz on the books' contents on a website called "Antolin."   He has improved a lot in his der, die, das usage and understands a lot of the dative and accusative grammer now.

Cora is standing up by herself and can walk with a finger, but prefers to be carried everywhere.  We've had a rough go of all of us getting sick one after the other over the past 6 weeks, and that hasn't helped.  She has been carried and cottled and coaxed to sleep and drink and travel through it all, and is used to being carried a lot.  She'll be 17 months this week, so now that the weather is nice, we have high hopes that she will start walking soon.

Scott and I have also improved our German a lot, but never as much as we'd like, of course. :)   We've certainly learned a TON and grown a lot in our understanding of many things.  It's been a very enlightening and rewarding experience to live in Germany together as a family.

BACK IN SEPT 2012: 

I wrote the following:

Aaron says...

"I'm a'posed to..."

"Ma'am" instead of Mom.  He screams "MAAAAM!" when we sees me picking him up from school and runs into my arms.

 He always puts his dirty hands on my face and while telling me what happened at school, sticks his fingers into my teeth, and pushes my face together while saying "And mom!  And mom! And mom!" to get my attention

Every day after school he tells me about a time that he got in a fight, or fell down, or a teacher told him a rule.....and it always ends with "And I cried for you, but you wasn't there!"

We have a "family bed" going on right now. Boo-hiss.  50% of the time, we wake up with one or two boys in our bed with us...which means we wake up to a foot in the face, or an arm slapping across the face.

If we don't wake up with someone in the bed, Aaron usually wakes me up by coming and asking me to play or have breakfast.  Usually I can convince him to snuggle with me while I sleep for an extra 1/2 hour before it's time to get up.  He's turned into a cuddly kid, where just over a year ago he was not at all.

Aaron has several friends now in Kindergarten.  Leon, Gabriel, Maximillian......but his favorite right now is Chinonzo.  He has a hard time saying the name "Chinonzo," so he just calls him "my brown friend."  When I picked Aaron up this week, Chinonzo was sharing his chocolate snack with Aaron.  No wonder he likes him best of all!

Aaron has started speaking German.  He mixes English and German together.  For example:

"You have schon"  (You already have some)

"I have noch eine!"  (I have another one)

Timmy says....

Timmy says lots of full sentences in German, and I notice that especially at school he can say quite a lot!  He repeats sentences over and over in German and laughs to himself.  He finds it pretty funny to speak German.  

However, sometimes it's tiring.  A few Sundays ago he said quite exasperated after church "I don't want to hear ANY MORE DEUTSCH!"

Yesterday I asked Timmy who he played with at Kindergarten, and without skipping a beat he exclaimed "Osmann, und Leon!"  Usually he says "I don't know", so I was excited that he knew his friends names.

Today I went hiking with the boys at Kindergarten.  They have a "Waldtag" once a week, and they go hiking for 5 hours!  They take a couple stops to play and eat, but they actually go quite far!  The kids like to slide down the muddy hills...which answered my question about why all the kids wear rainpants, even when it's not raining! 

   

Timmy was really interested in the other kids, and enjoyed making huts out of big sticks with the kids and teachers by going stick hunting and placing the sticks up against the trees.  Even though it started raining for a while, both of the boys didn't mind at all.  Both thought the hike was rather long.  Aaron wanted me to carry him, and Timmy wanted to go home, but in the end they both made it, and had a lot of fun!

From 2011:
I wrote to a friend:
"I'm getting really nervous that I will have a hard time. (when we move)  I think it's inevitable.  Currently, we are looking at moving to Aachen Germany.  We've always wanted to live in Germany for a short time, but even so, I already know that it will be an adventure, in every sense of the word....including the hard parts!"

That ended up all being true, but people were more friendly and outgoing than we expected.  We are really grateful for good friends who have really been open in including us here, and who have been so supportive and fun.  Can't begin to list all the wonderful people we've met!   It really has been a fun adventure!