Growing skills, growing fears... (Video)

Owen has made leaps in his physical abilities over the past month or so. He can climb a couch...



As parents, this is both exciting and fear inducing. Once Owen can climb higher, it means he can fall harder! Fortunately Owen is also learning protective behaviours, such as coming off the couch feet first. But he's learning how to be more adventurous as well, such as pushing objects around in order to get a leg up for higher targets.

Owen has also managed to take a few unaided steps. These could also be described as falling in a semi-controlled way. Here's the first steps that we've managed to get on video!

Falling asleep while eating (Video)

When we were travelling back to Sydney, we stayed in Toronto for about 1 week (see previous post for details). We also took this video of Owen as he fell asleep eating a hot chip.



This is a bit of an experiment to see how easy it is to put videos on our blog. If it goes well (and if we get lots of email requests for more), we'll try a few more.

One year old (part 2)

After the dreadful computer crash, and with a lot of help, we got back our photos. Yay! The computer still doesn't work though :( Seems like a trip to Germany and back is not as good as a holiday if you're a computer.

So here's the photo of Owen cruising our couch. He's charging towards the camera (to grab it) while Nathan desparately tried to get a shot before he got too close.

And here's the photo of Owen's teeth. It totally changes his face! You can also see his milk moustache. Owen's been completely weaned now, and drinks cows milk from a cup.

One Year Old

Owen is now one year old! Here is a photo of the family at Owen's first birthday party. The theme of the party was Lions (Löwen Owen, if you've been paying close attention to the blog), hence the cake. Owen still growles, but not so much when he's pooing. Now it's when someone (including him) burps or farts. He tries to copy the sound by growling. Owen was particularly happy in this photo - he went psycho with all the attention.

So what's new with Owen? Maybe the question should be what isn't new with Owen. As anyone with children can tell you, they change just so quickly at this age! There's no way to even remember all the major developments, let alone describe them. Here's just a few of them.

As we mentioned last post, Owen is cruising furniture. He's been crawling like a mud crab (only forwards, not sideways) for quite some time, but now he really likes to stand. The one year mark is about the average age for children to take unassisted steps, and Owen tried really hard to meet that deadline! He's been standing up with the assistance of furniture, and then letting go for a few seconds, before falling promptly down. At least he's worked out how to fall without donking his head on the hard floorboards (isn't pain a wonderful teacher?). On his first birthday he still couldn't do it, but it'll come soon. Here's a photo of him cruising the couch (photo coming - missing due to a computer crash).

Owen's gummy grin was very cute, but it's gone now, replaced rapidly with more and more teeth. First the two bottom ones came out (see photo). Then by his first birthday he had three more on the top! (Photo coming - another victim of the computer crash). With teeth has come a much greater ability to eat - even an apple! Not that he needed the encouragement. He's been an eating machine for most of his life, and is getting a little belly! In fact, food motivates him so much, that most of his first words were used to get more of the food he wants, and less of the type he doesn't like.

We mentioned before that he doesn't really play with other children. His main interaction with other kids is trying to steal their toys or maintain possession of his own. That presents a problem when his hands are full and someone else has toys in their hands. Solution? Drop the ones in your own hands to free them for an agressive takeover! Here's Owen stealing from James, a little younger.

Everyone comments on Owen's funky hair style. It's hard to capture it in a photo, but here's a good one. Owen's here with his Grandma and Great grandma, trying for the keys and mobile phone. We still haven't cut his hair, and now that it's a bit longer it doesn't stick up as much :(

Having a mum for a speechie means the pressure is on. What's his first word going to be? Contrary to what most people think, babies rarely have mum or dad as a "real" first word. They do babble "mamamamamam", but that doesn't count if they don't use it with understanding. As mentioned earlier, his first words were used during eating. The very first was "More". Very useful if mum or dad is too slow with the next spoonful! Some other early words were "No" and "car". He's getting much better at copying our words now. Even when he can't say the words, he copies our sign language. Here's an example of "uh oh!". His copying is not only for communication - here's Owen trying to turn on the TV, just like mum and dad.

Home sweet home

So, after about one month back in Sydney, we've finally got around to posting about how we're settling in. It's been busy busy busy as we moved back into our old house (almost typed Haus by accident - typing or saying German words happens suprisingly often!), and moved all our stuff from storage.

One of the first things we had to do was Owen Proof the house. Why? Because he's been crawling EVERYWERE. In the last few weeks he's even started cruising furniture! [Cruising is a technical baby term for walking around while holding onto stable objects]. Owen doesn't like the measures we've been taking. Here's a photo of him "in gaol". He's helping the socks to escape - "run away, run away".

Because we're waiting for our shipment to arrive, we've had to give Owen a bath in the full sized tub. Lots of space to play with his bath toys!

But that's nothing compared to Owen's REALLY BIG bath - the local swimming pool. We've started Owen on some swimming lessons - somthing that was just a bit too hard to do in Germany. Not because there weren't any pools or lessons - rather it was organising it all in a foreign language! He doesn't look too distressed in this photo, and actually he's pretty good for his first ever swim. He did cry a bit when his head went under, though!

We left Owen's high chair in Germany, so we bought a new one here. Here it is. The Germans will recognise it as a european style wooden high chair. We couldn't help it, we've turned into Europeans!

Not really, of course. We still love lots of Aussie stuff, not least of all the yummy tropical fruit. This is our first "Real" Mango for 2 years! They have them in Germany, but they are nowhere near as nice.

Now that we are back in our house with a backyard, it's back to gardening for Nathan. Here is the first attempt to clear the veggie patch. Doesn't look like much? You should have seen it before he started. See the bin on the left? That's full of weeds!

We're already missing Germany and all things German. We went to a school fete at the German school to hear the language again and enjoy some of the food. Here's Jo eating a Bratwurst. You can tell it's not Germany because the bread roll is WAY too big. In Leipzig, the bread roll is so small it seems to be just a convenient way to hold the sausage rather than part of the meal. Rather disappointing was that there were no dishes with Quark in them. We met a couple that had spent 14 years overseas, mostly in German speaking countries. They were at the fete for the same reasons as us! Actually, we've heard quite alot of German - mostly tourists, and it's been fun to chat to them a little bit. I think they're quite surprised to see Asians in Australia speaking their mother tongue.

One rather disappointing thing is how quickly we've gotten into watching alot more TV. It makes a difference when you can choose from 5 english speaking channels. Hopefully we won't turn Owen into a couch potato - he's certainly getting the right belly for it. More about that and Owen in general in the next post...

Friends in Auckland

After Toronto we visited our friends Dave and Cindy in Auckland. In writing this post we realised we didn't take ANY photos of them while we were there! Auckland felt familiar straight away. Not only driving on the left side of the road, the look of the streets and the shops, the brands for sale... Although, that said, we did feel a little funny when initially being driven from the airport and going round the round-a-bout from the left side first and doing right hand turns into the left side of the road. Jo was the only one who drove while we were in New Zealand as she was the least tainted in driving on the left side of road, having not driven at all in Germany, USA or Canada and because Nathan had a German driving licence less than a year old.

We didn't do too much in Auckland - we were pretty tired by that stage. We went into the city, crossed the harbour and enjoyed some clear, sunny weather. The weather was very inconsistent, alternating between hot and cold. Here's Jo and Owen with some extinct volcanoes in the background. Almost every hill and mountain is an extinct volcanoe, since that's how much of the land was formed.

We also went to an aquarium called Kelly Tarltons (no idea of the reason for the name). It was small compared to the Sydney Aquarium, but had a really cool freezer room where King penguins were kept. We travelled through the room in a little insulated train to see them up close.

We also went to see a bird colony - we've already forgotten the type of bird. This picture shows the birds at their nests. They are evenly spread out on the rock because if they get too close to their neighbour they get pecked. We saw some of the birds doing a courting dance, which involved rubbing necks and probablly squawking. Probably because the whole colony was squawking a racket anyway.

There were some differences from home, of course. For one, the accent is a bit funny. This is old news for all the Aussies, but for the benefit of the Germans... The New Zealanders pronounce "Bear" and "Beer" the same way. There's a commercial on TV where a customer asks the bartender "I'd like a Beer for the Bear, Bro". It sounds like "I'd like a beer for the beer, bro"

Relatives in Toronto

Toronto, the land of Anne of Green Gables. We stayed with Jo's cousin and family in an old farmhouse out of town. On one of our drives they pointed out a house that looks exactly like the one used in the filming of the original Green Galbes movie.

Owen enjoyed playing with his second cousin. Actually, it was more playing next to his second cousin - he's not quite old enough to interact with other kids except to try and steal their toys.

At the farmhouse, Owen enjoyed his first (and last??) fireside bath. Even mum and dad haven't had one of those!


This rocking horse was a hit with Owen.

In this branch of our relatives there are 3 sons and 6 grandsons. With Owen, we had 7 boys running around and causing havoc. Here they all are. Owen just woke up, which is why he isn't so happy.

Jo's cousin called Canada "The land where you buy things in bulk", and we found this to be quite true! For example we could only find a packet of nappies with twice as many as normal - which was a problem because we didn't want to fill our luggage with spare nappies. On one trip to a shopping centre there was quite a stir when crowds of shoppers pushed and shoved to get hold of a bulk special. The product? Toilet paper.

Wedding in Philadelphia

So, we went on our way to Philadelphia, where Jo's brother was getting married. It was a bit of an ordeal getter there, though. We flew Leipzig -> Frankfurt -> Philadelphia. When changing planes in Frankfurt to go to Philadelphia we had a 1 hour to changeover. That's normally no problem, but the systems of Lufthansa and US Airways were not sufficiently integrated and we weren't given a boarding pass in Leipzig for the Fra -> Phil leg. As a result we had to get the boarding pass in Frankfurt. Step 1 - find the US Airways checkin counter. No problem, but it took 15 minutes Step 2 - get boarding pass. Problem - the counter was still open, but the security staff for checkin had alreay left, since there was only a short time before boarding time. After a bit of confusion we were told to go through security to the gate to get our boarding pass there. Step 3 - go through security. Problem, they wouldn't let us through security unless we had a boarding pass! Time was ticking away. We managed to convince them to let us through finally. Security took ages, and one of the airline staff pushed in front of us with an elderly couple. "Sorry to do this, they might miss their plane", she said. When we asked which flight and found out it was the same flight as ours, we were a bit upset! The actual security check was very thorough. We had to remove shoes, belt, etc and were frisked. Even owen had to take his soft leather baby shoes off and the soles of his feet scanned! Step 4 - immigration (German). Problem. Owen didn't have a German visa. We had a bit of an argument with the immigration officer (in both German and English) about whether Owen needed a visa, since he was born in Germany. Nathan was tempted to say "OK, so why don't you force him to leave the country?", but thought better of it. In the end, he let us through when we pointed out our plane was about to leave. Step 5 go to gate and get boarding pass. Fine, except that we were interviewed by a panel of 3 regarding our travel plans, etc. Nathan had to show his business card to prove he had been working in Germany. And they wanted to know where Auckland was (maybe they were making sure we weren't visiting some dangerous terrorist state). Fortunately the plane was late to depart, otherwise we would have missed it.

Here's Owen's first experience of a porter - although surprisingly enough, the porter was Dad. Usually in the US, the porters are very quick to take your bags because they earn a tip, but not this time. We were quick enough to get past the porter unassisted. That's one thing we found very different in the US - tipping! Germany and Australia have similar tipping rules - 10% means you're pretty happy with everything. But there, 10% means you weren't happy, 15% is the norm and often the tip is automatcially included (at a rate of 18%). You even need to tip when you have a haircut!

Owen took it on himself to ease the tension of the groom by giving him a massage. Maybe we should have called him Sven.
The actual wedding was a bit much for Owen, and he slept for quite alot of the ceremony and the reception.

Here you can see his wedding outfit a bit better.

And here are the relaxed newlyweds the next day.

We did do a bit of sightseeing while we were there. Here is the Liberty Bell - a famous symbol of freedom (which we never knew about). To see it, we had to go through as much security as if we were going onto a plane. Owen slept through this one, too.

On our train trip "Down Town", we couldn't help thinking how backwards some things were. For all of the achievements and advancements of the USA, some things weren't very good at all. The trains were quite old, there wasn't a loudspeaker (the conductors shouted the next stop through the carriage) and the ticket system involved the conductor hole punching about 15 holes in your ticket to mark the date and type of ticket. The bits of paper punched out were allowed to fall onto the ground so that the cleaner had to come by later to clean them up!

Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei (Everything has an end, only the sausage has two)

This is a German way of saying "all good things must come to an end". In case you didn't realise, the sausage is quite an important part of German culture. Here are another two German Wurst sayings with their literal translation. You might like to guess their meaning, which we've put at the end of the post.

Das ist mir Wurst = (lit) It's like a sausage to me
Es geht um die Wurst = (lit) It's all about the sausage

We have reached the end of our time in Germany now. In less than two weeks we fly to the USA (Jo's brother, Richard, is getting married there), then to Canada (Jo's cousins are there), New Zealand to see some friends, and finally back to Sydney.

How does it feel at the end of our Wochenende in Germany? It's both happy and sad. We're glad to be on our way home, but sad to leave our new friends and some of the cool things you can find in Germany.

What will we miss? In no particular order:
1) German bread rolls.
2) German beer.
3) Being able to say "The day after tomorrow" in one word (übermorgen).
4) Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas Market)
5) Making progress with learning German
6) Herbst (Autumn for the leaves and colours)
7) Meeting with other christians at Leipzig English Church
8) The morning after a snowfall
9) Fantastic heating
10) The easy and efficient transport system
11) Living within walking distance of the city centre
12) German hospitality
13) Watching people skate on a frozen pond
14) Apple Cake
15) Walking past the Eis Cafes and knowing that you can get all sorts of ice cream desserts
16) The cobble stone streets
17) The German style windows - they open by tilting inwards and also like a door (like a 2-in-1)

What won't we miss? Also in no particular order:
1) Having to stand uncomfortably close to the person in front of us in a queue to avoid someone pushing in.
2) Sprechen Sie bitte langsam, mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut.
3) The length of the German winter.
4) That the verb always at the end is.
5) The lack of non-smoking areas in restaurants.
6) Most milk products having the "long life" taste.
7) Being around people who smoke walking anywhere in Leipzig.
8) Having to see a paediatrician for a mere routine checkup eg. Owen's weight and height.
9) Having to wait 2 and a half hours for the paediatrician for Owen's routine checkup.
10) Our bar-fridge sized fridge.
11) Having to shop every day or second day because we have a bar-fridge sized fridge.
12) Entschuldigung, ich verstehe das nicht..
13) Sharing the trams and shops with dogs (really...dogs are allowed in shops and on public transport)
14) Separating out the organic rubbish - opening the organic rubbish bin lid...oh how all the flies fly out at once....!
15) Carrying a dictionary around with us everywhere
16) The general lack of customer service
17) People smoking everywhere
18) Eating so much potato

In packing everything up, we've learnt more about the German way of doing things. One in particular sticks out. When you rent an apartment in Sydney, you usually have to give 2 or 3 weeks notice. Not in Germany - it's 3 MONTHS notice! And you can't do sensible things like give notice 3 months before the end of your lease period... you have to give notice AFTER your lease period has ended. Thus a 1 year lease actually is a 1 year and 3 month lease. To make matters worse, you can't cancel in the middle of a month. Instead, you have to cancel at the beginning of the month. If you're a few days too late, you end up paying for a month extra.

This 3 month thing isn't restricted to renting an apartment. It also applies to contracts for internet, transport, etc.
This post is a bit lacking in photos, but we don't have much time right now. Totally unrelated to the theme of this post, but who cares? Owen having a shampoo.

Those sausage sayings?
Das ist mir Wurst = It's all the same to me. Reason: If you slice up a sausage, every bit is the same as the next.
Es geht um die Wurst = It's now or never. Reason: In the past, competitions would often have a sausage as the prize. If you reach the final and are in it to win it, then it's all about the sausage!

Urlaub 4 - Wien (Vienna) and Salzburg

Continuing our holiday posts...we went to Austria for a week! The land of "The Sound of Music" and Mozart. Can you hear it now..."The hills are alive...."?

Now before we go on, here's an interesting collection of signs we found in Austria. What do you think they mean? In the spirit of German driving tests, at least one of the following answers is correct, however up to all may be correct. Answer at the end of the post.
a) No smoking
b) No vehicles.
c) No dogs
d) No cyclists.
e) Bicycles may not be left unattended

So what do you do when you are in Vienna? Eat Vienna Schnitzel - of course!







The other thing to do is eat cakes. There are cake shops everywhere (called Konditorei), where we sampled a fine selection of Austrian desserts - at least 15 cakes over 7 days! Owen enjoyed helping select them, but wasn't allowed to share in eating them!

Of course you can't visit a European city and not see a church. Here is a very impressive one in the centre of the city - Stephanplatz

We did a few bus tours, though for one of them we all had a long nap. There's so many monuments, statues, historic buildings, etc that it all just washes over you and becomes a bit passe. Let's see, shall we see XYZ, or have another cake?

Vienna has been the centre of music for a long time, and it was interesting to go on a walking tour on the life of Mozart, as well as to visit the House of Music - a museum with interactive displays for the kids. One thing that they kept drumming into us - don't believe the movie Amadaus - it's got lots of historical inaccuracies.

Schonbrunn schloss is towards the edge of Vienna. A beautiful castle on huge grounds, and with a guided tour of most of the rooms - which have been set up as a museum

Salzburg, the home of the Sound of Music. This is the closest we got to a sound of music tour, thank goodness!

We visited the Salzburg fortress, which has a great view over the city. This fortress was never taken by force, and has several layers of walls built up over the years.

We also saw one of Jo's school friends Natalie, who is a musician in Salzburg.

Oh, and did you know that there are no kangaroos in Austria?

But there are digeridoos!

Despite Austria being a German speaking country, we found some strange words - mostly when we were reading the menus. The one we found most amusing was Erdapfel. Literally this means earth apple, but it's actually potato.

Answer: b, c and d. The strange thing about European traffic signs is that a red circle is the same as a red circle with a red line through it. ie not allowed. Another is that a completely empty red circle means no vehicles allowed. This can be quite confusing!

Urlaub 3 - Church weekend away, Jena, Eisenach and Wittenberg

Very briefly, some of the weekend trips we've made:

1) Church Weekend Away

This was in June, but it was still quite cold at that stage. The topic of the weekend was "In Christ", and we learnt from Philippians 3 and 4. It was good to be reminded that in Christ, we shouldn't put our confidence in the "flesh", ie in what good things we can do. Rather we should put our confidence in Jesus - who gives us his own goodness (righteousness) through his death and resurrection.

The weekend had an Australian flavour, because there were 9 aussies there - in previous years there have been none. As a result, we were teaching the children how to play touch footy (we called it touch rugby to avoid confusion) and handball.

And on of the evenings we had an aussie bush dance. We had a bit of an injury toll, though. Nathan sprained his ankle playing touch, and one of the Germans sprained her ankle during the bush dance. Just reinforced for the Germans that Australia is a really dangerous place!

2) Jena and Eisenach

In July we made another trip to Thuringer - the same state as Weimar and Erfurt (Urlaub 1).

Jena is quite famous for optical instruments, and we went to the optical museum there. Here's a photo of some old glasses.

We also happened to be there while they had some lifesized dinosaur replicas in one of the shopping centres. Owen wasn't scared at all...

Eisenach has a famous castle - Wartburg. Luther stayed in this castle when he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and it was there that he made his first translation of the Bible into German. It sounds ordinary now, but at the time it was quite revolutionary, because many believed that only the priests should read the Bible and that others could only learn from it through the priests. We saw some museums with some really old bibles, which was pretty cool.

Bach was also at Eisenach, and we went to a Bach museum that had lots of old instruments of his time. Here is a photo of someone filling the bellows of a really old pipe organ.

3) Wittenberg

We made a day trip to Wittenberg when Jon visited us. It's only 1 hour away by train or car, and is famous for being the place where Luther posted his "95 thesis" against indulgences which sparked the reformation. The original church door is gone - the church was destroyed by something (fire or war, can't remember now), and was replaced with this one. It's got the 95 thesis engraved in it.