American Food Day

In honor of Memorial Day, we celebrated by having our own 'picnic' foods. Our menu consisted of cheeseburgers (with real cheddar cheese), corn on the cob, snikers salad, coke, grapes, and chips. We had to improvise a bit with the snikers salad, so instead of Cool Whip we had whip cream from a can and instead of granny smith apples we had gala apples. It wasn't as good as normal, but hey, the real reason you eat snikers salad to to justify having a candy bar with supper. All in all, Andy and I both enjoyed our supper and I think we'll have to repeat it for the 4th of July :). Here's some photos of our meal:

Swiss Style Snickers Salad :)

American Day Foods

moderate nap successes

Last week marked a significant breakthrough in Carsten's napping patterns. Up until then he typically took 3-30 min naps throughout the day which typically involved some crying before each nap. I had been trying to do a routine involving eat-play-sleep which encouraged eating to occur after his naps. Last week, through some changes in wake up times, I started feeding him before his naps which started resulting in a consistent 1.5 hr nap. One of these naps alone represented the entire amount of sleep for 3 naps previously, so this was a significant improvement. By the end of the week, we had gotten to a morning and afternoon 1.5-2 hr nap schedule. I didn't write anything about it last week because every time I write something it changes, so as you're probably guessing, it didn't work today, so I thought I'd write about our restful week :). I will say that I think Carsten seems more well-rested and even happier most of the time, which is quite nice. And to all of you lucky parents whose children have always had great naps, I envy you for all those months we've missed already. I think we'll continue to struggle with naps, but for now, I'm employing the eat-sleep-play paradime to see if I can get consistently longer naps. Also, I'm not sure if this is helping, but I've started covering him with a blanket when he's asleep. It's so hard to say what works and what doesn't.

Here's some photos of Carsten playing outside our apartment last week:

just looking around.

The wind was doing cute things to his hair :).

When the wind came up, he kept looking around as if to say 'Where is that coming from?'. It was quite cute :).

If you look closely in this photo you can see his first tooth!

anyone need directions?

I think I must look Swiss, or at least, I look like I know what I'm doing and I appear approachable. On a fairly regular basis, I get asked directions. Most of the time they ask in Swiss-German, and then switch to German. When I ask if they speak English, mostly I get an emphatic 'nein'. I generally try to give what I feel is an apologetic look, and then keep pushing Carsten in the stroller. I really should start keep track of how many times I get asked - I think it's about 1x per week.

Does anyone think I look Finnish? A lady at the gym asked me (in English!) this week if I was from Finland. When I said no, I'm from the states, she said 'you just look so Finnish!'. I then explained the my ancestors came from the Netherlands and Germany, she seemed to understand my blue eyes and blonde locks :). We talked for a while, which was pretty nice. She's apparently been here for a while and is an expat from Finland. Yay for meeting people :).

Carsten stands!

This past week Carsten has been perfecting his standing up skills both in his crib and around the house. He's amazingly good in his crib, which I attribute to the many handholds. Around the house, he's not quite as good because he's still learning what things he needs to grab and how his body needs to be positioned. However, that being said, he's good enough that I cannot leave him alone in the room if my computer is on the coffee table. This means that I need to find a new place for my computer. Hopefully the dining room table will work for a while (you know, until he starts climbing). I should mention that now my dreams are involving Carsten getting out of his crib which results with my dream self feeling fairly disoriented and confused. Hopefully this won't happen for a while yet :). Here's some photos of Carsten standing:

Lately he's also been interacting with us more intentionally. For example, he'll say 'ooo' and wait for Andy to say it, and then he'll try out another sound. It's pretty cute and he'll actually do it for about 5 min at a time, which I think is a pretty good attention span. This morning he yawned while I was changing his diaper on the changing table, so I mimicked him and opened my mouth. He saw me do it, and then opened his mouth. We did this a few times and then he started doing it so I could mimick him. Amazing! This reinforced the 'lead by example' nature of parenting that we'll have to practice for the rest of our lives... :).

I put away Carsten's playmat that he's had and done a great job of playing with up until a few weeks ago. This is a little sad for me because a) it's adorable, b) it's been a fixture in our home (wherever that has been) since Carsten has been born, and c) it means he's growing up... Two things that have taken the place of the playmat are books and the walker. He LOVES both and occasionally I have to hide them so he'll play with his other toys and be a bit less crazy because they get him really, really excited. Here's a photo of Carsten playing in his walker:

We had a great weekend. On Saturday we went to one of Andy's coworker's house to have lunch and hang out with her, her husband, and their 2 year old daughter. They served us rice and curry sauce with hard-boiled eggs in it. It was not my favorite, but better than I thought it would be. We talked, and I think Carsten enjoyed playing with new toys in another environment. He didn't even care when the two year old occupied my lap :). We stayed long enough to put Carsten down for a nap there and he slept in his travel bed (so glad we have this!). All in all, it was a fun time for all of us. Right before we left we walked up a tall observation tower and took some photos:

On Sunday we went to church and spent most of the day relaxing, which was quite nice. We spend our evening making travel plans and finding flights for my family because we get to see my parents and siblings soon since they are all coming to Switzerland! :) This will be our first whole family vacation since Andy and I got married, and it will be a great celebration for my parents 30th anniversary.

Carsten is crawling!

Carsten eats cereal!

Carsten has been trying out a few finger foods lately like rice cakes, banana, cantaloupe, cauliflower, and now, Cheerios! Well, they aren't actually Cheerios, they are actually Nestle multi-grain something or other. But hey, close enough :). He likes playing with the food and eating the food, but as far as I can tell he doesn't yet grasp the concept of feeding himself. For now, he's perfectly content to play with food while I feed him. Hopefully he'll fix this soon. The only negative I have for finger foods is he seems to gag about twice during a snack. I'm pretty sure it's his gag reflex kicking in, but it sure makes me nervous about choking. Also in other good news, since the advent of finger foods he's started drinking small amounts out of the sippy cup without protest. He's even drank a few sips in a row! Woo hoo!

postponed bedtime success

We were invited for supper at Andy's boss's house at 7 pm on Saturday evening. Since Carsten's bathtime/bedtime sequence usually starts around that time, we were a bit nervous to agree to an evening function, but we thought we would give it a try. We fed him his dinner at 5:15 pm (45 min earlier than usual),  gave him a bath, dressed him in pj's, and brushed his gums. We then stuck him in his car seat, which I think he was a bit confused by, but he just went with the flow which was nice. We had rented a community car for the evening to cut our transportation time by half, so instead of a 1.5 hr trip one way by train, we only had a 45 min drive. Andy once again, was a trooper and drove manual. One added benefit to riding in a car again is that if he cries, he's only bothering us instead of the entire train. So we packed up Carsten and all of our other gear (why is it that you always feel like you are moving in when you go someplace?), and got on our way about 6:15 pm.

We made it to the house just after 7 pm after the GPS tried to lead us down what looked to a pedestrian only street in their downtown area. Once we got there Carsten enjoyed being passed around and looked quite cute :). He stole the show! We sat down for dinner a little before 8 pm, and Andy just held Carsten on his lap while I ate so that when the time came, I could put Carsten to bed. The hosts suggested that we let Carsten crawl around, and this turned out to be a bad idea. Within about a minute of being on the floor he bonked his head on their fireplace, which gained him a nice bruise on his forehead. He didn't cry too much (what a guy!), and about 10 minutes later we decided that it was time to put him to bed. We had brought our pop-up travel bed (which everyone was impressed with!) so we put him to bed in one of the bedrooms. He cried for a few minutes, but then fell asleep. Andy and I enjoyed the rest of the dinner, and in fact, didn't even notice the time until about 10:00 pm. We had brats, steak, fish, meat on a stick with yogurt sauce, potatoes, white and green asparagus, and bread on a stick for supper (so yummy!). For dessert Andy had made lemon bars which everyone seemed to like, and our hosts provided quark, which is sort of a sour cream (but not really) dessert with strawberries added in. Everything was delicious, and we even stayed longer than we were intending to, which meant that we had to extend our car reservation.

When it came time to leave (~11 pm) we transfered Carsten to the carseat without waking him (yay!), and then followed Andy's coworker back to the highway since our GPS battery was low. Once on the highway, we almost immediately got stuck on stopped traffic due to construction on a tunnel. Andy was amazing and drove the manual in stop and go traffic like a champ! Because of this 15+ min delay we had to extend our reservation by another 30 minutes, but since Carsten was still sleeping, we didn't mind too much. Once we arrived in Egg, Andy dropped Carsten and I off at the house and then returned the car and walked home. We then transferred Carsten back to his bed, and here's the best part: he didn't wake up! In fact, he snored while we transferred him. What a kid! He slept until 4 am and then fell back asleep until 7:30 am after eating, which is a later wake up time than usual. For our part we had a ton of fun and were impressed by Carsten's ability to adapt and keep sleeping. We also discovered that a 12:30ish bedtime completely wipes us out. Apparently we are not as young as we used to be :). We spent most of Sunday trying to catch a couple of naps. So all in all, we know that every once in a while we can have Carsten out, and things will likely go well. And in the end, we feel lucky that we have such a great baby!

Carsten is standing!

I feel that Carsten's progression through physical feats right now is astounding. Today for the first time we saw him stand up by himself using the walker (which moves!) and in his crib. Life is going to change even more!

May Showers

Last night was the first real thunderstorm we had, and from a girl who grew up in the Midwestern plains, I can say that it made me feel right at home. It was a brief storm filled with massive amounts of thunder and lightening with a short downpour. It lasted all of about 30 minutes, and then we were back to blue skies. This does not happen in Iowa thunderstorms, so that was a bit weird, but fun too :). One nice perk about our current apartment is that we have windows onto our covered balcony, which means that if we want to, we can still leave a window open for air! This is quite nice since we don't have AC or any way of moving air around in the house (we miss ceiling fans!).

Since my update on Carsten on Sunday, he's mastered sitting up on his own (first in his crib and now during play time) and clapping on his own. It's quite fun to see him sit up and then clap by himself. Yesterday when we were walking home from the gym, he was cooing and clapping to himself the whole way home - what joy! Yesterday during one of his naps I peeked in on him and he was sitting up by himself in the corner of his crib. He then proceeded to pass out and completely bonked his head on the crib where he landed with his head on his toes. It was quite cute and totally amazing because he's just that flexible. Most of us cannot do that no matter what we do (myself included). I've included videos of his nap sitting up and clapping in his walker. Enjoy!

Additionally, we've seen some success with the sippy cup. He actually drank an ounce of milk out of it last night after his supper was done. YAY! And he also had a bit this morning. We'll see if the trend continues...

Month 3

Alps from our house!

Andy went on a run last night after Carsten went to bed, and he mentioned that he really enjoyed the run because the sunset made the Alps beautifully pink. I looked out the window of our living room and discovered that we could see the Alps! They were indeed pretty pink, and even though we can't see very much of them due to trees and another apartment, we could still see them! Needless to say, I'm excited about this fact :). Here's a photo!

Carsten 8 months - he crawls!

It's a special day to as it's my birthday, my first Mother's Day, Carsten's 8 month birthday, and my brother's graduation from Hope! What a day :). We'll commemorate it with a Carsten update.

Happy 8 month birthday to Carsten, happy birthday to me, happy Mother's day to me, and happy graduation to my borther Luke. It's a special day!

Carsten ~8 months!

Things are changing rapidly in the life of Carsten right now, which means that things are changing quickly for me too. I think my Dutch nature must be getting the better of me because I often feel resistant to these changes... or maybe I just don't want my baby to grow up too fast... Here is how Carsten is changing:

- Carsten now crawls! Yes, seriously. It's still in the army crawling stages, but boy, he can move. He started really crawling on April 26, the day Mom and Dad Huisman left and coincidentally, Luke's birthday :). So, it's been a little over a week with my crawling kid, and let me tell you - it's a little strange to find him nowhere near where I set him down. He's been rolling for quite sometime, but he didn't usually change rooms when I wasn't looking. Now, I'll find him in the hallway doing his best to eat the laundry basket while I was trying to get the kitched cleaned up. It's now the time for us to ask: is our house really that babyproofed, and what rooms do we let him in? We've set up our house with Carsten in mind so when we got book cases and such, we secured them to the wall. However, now I need to get comfortable letting him roam, which is a wierd transition. I think it's also a bit wierd because when you're in one room of the house, you can't see anywhere else since the apartment is in 'circle' shape. So, when I'm cleaning up the kitchen, the only place I can see is the dining room table, which means that I can never see Carsten. So, to solve this issues for now, I usually put Carsten in his doorway bouncer while I do dishes. Then I know he's having fun and not getting into trouble, and I can get some work done. I'm sure I'll get to the point where I'm comfortable not keeping an eye on him every moment, but I'm not quite there yet. One nice thing about crawling that I didn't expect but should have is the loving feeling I get when he crawls to me. Sometimes it's because we're playing and I'm enticing him with a toy, but other times, he just finds me and wants cuddles or food. He's also becoming more insistent on some occasions as well: when I start getting ready to go out of the house (i.e., putting on shoes, getting a diaper bag ready), he seems very alarmed that I might leave without him so he'll fuss and crawl to me as if to say 'Don't forget me!'. I wonder when he'll realize that unless someone else is home, it's not an issue :). I should also mention in this section that he's very good at manuevering in his walker, and recently I've taken to 'planting' items (like books and toys) for him to find around the house so he has interesting things to do in his walker. Andy will be posting a new video soon with some clips of him crawling.

expert army-crawler

Carsten likes his doorway bouncer!

- sitting up. He's been doing this for over a month now, but he's super steady now and can sit up playing for quite some time if he chooses. He typically doesn't stay in one spot for too long, so it's not usually that long, but the point is that he now could sit up for a while if he chose. We've also found him sitting up when we didn't put him in that position (April 25 and May 3), and here I suspect the use of the walker to pull himself up to the sitting position which is impressive because the walker moves. So again, we're making progress here! He's also taken to wrestling our play mat, which is pretty fun for him and pretty cute, so here's a picture of him sitting up, and then a picture of him after he's turned the play mat upside down (yes, he does this all by himself!).

sitting up with the playmat.

wrestling the playmat.

-sickness :( . Month 7 of Carsten's life has been marked by two colds, both of which took him a while to get over. The first one was mostly just a stuffed up kid, and the second one (which occurred two weeks ago) was a coughing/sneezing/running nose cold which really didn't allow him to sleep well with all the coughing the poor guy was having to do. We definitely had a rough couple of days and nights when he wasn't feeling too well. One upside is during the second cold, I actually had a snuggly boy. Carsten is usually too on the move to spend a lot of time snuggling, but when he was feeling poorly, all he wanted to do was snuggle :). So we spent a lot of time reading books and he actually cuddled and allowed me to read (most of the time he's reaching for the book with his hands and feet in an attempt to eat it). I would rather have Carsten not get sick at all, but if he does have to get sick, getting a cuddly baby for a few days is ok with me.

- 1st tooth! Carsten was extremely fussy last weekend, and since he was still getting over his cold, we just kept attributing it to that. However, it wasn't fun for him or for us and sometimes it resulted with him getting stuck in his crib to try to nap when we couldn't figure out what else could possibly be wrong. On Monday though (May 2) I finally figured out that he has a tooth coming in! It's on the bottom, and hasn't poked through yet, but I'm sure it will soon. Once I figured this out, I could understand why he was fussy and then give him baby Tylenol and teethers to help with the tooth. I must admit that I love his toothless baby grin, so I'm going to miss that. However, I'm sure I'll love his grin with teeth too.

bye bye toothless smile :)

- Food! We've been feeding Carsten solid foods for 3 months now, and he's got a pretty good range of foods that he eats. He generally enjoys his food (not always though!) and eats a pretty good amount. I've noticed that if mealtime gets pushed back too far, he gets pretty cranky, which means that he's getting used to having foods at certain times. This is important for me to know because it means I need to have food on hand when we go to places over meal times (such as our church which goes from 11:30 am - 1:00 pm on Sundays). We'll be starting fingerfoods soon, which is fun and we did manage to find some multi-grain cheerioes in our online grocery store - hooray! We've been observing some funny faces from Carsten when he eats food, but he's added a new one in which I think means that he's getting to be done. Here's a video because it's so cute :):

Eating food on the go :).

- Drink: We've been offering Carsten a sippy cup at meals now for over 2 months, and over that time we've had very little progress. And yes, we've tried 3 different kinds of sippy cups too, with only a slight preference towards one of the cups. We've also given him different liquids such as water, breast milk, apple juice, carrot juice, and apple/banana juice, with again, little to no progress. In fact, the only progress we've made is that he loves to drink out of real cups and water bottles. This isn't ideal as he also hits the cup as he's drinking it, which is messy, and it makes for a 4 hand operation (2 of his and 2 of ours). I think Andy and I are both getting pretty frustrated with his lack of progress in this respect, so we're trying to stay patient and encouraging. Hopefully we make more progress with sippy cups soon! Here's Carsten drinking out of a waterbottle:

- Sleep. Nighttime sleeping goes anywhere from sleeping all night to 7 or 8 in the morning to waking up 3 times starting at 12:30 am. This has been a little rough for Andy and I (and I'm sure Carsten too) since we don't have any sort of consistent sleeping pattern. I blame this partly on his colds. I'm going to make a concerted effort this next month to get him to sleep through the night on a all the time basis because it's time :), so we'll see how that goes. Daytime sleeping usually goes pretty well, but while Andy's parents were here I started noticing that Carsten was crying at every nap, which he previously was not doing. I wasn't sure what the cause was, but I think I'm not starting to suspect that it was because I was putting him down too early based on his previous napping schedule which was: wake up, go back down about 1.5 hrs after waking up, and then every 2 hrs after he woke up I put him down again. This nap schedule usually resulted in 3-4 naps a day since he takes about 30-45 naps. This last week I've tried to stretch out the time in between naps, which occasionally results in a longer nap (1-1.5 hrs) and we've had less crying and a quicker go to sleep time. This is a welcome change, and we'll see if we can get any sort of consistent pattern where longer naps are the norm (oh please oh please!). Occasionally, we still find him in interesting positions in his crib:

- Disposition. Carsten is a happy kid. This is a blessing for me since he's my 24/7 companian, and it's fun to see all the smiles that he has. He's very interested in his surroundings, which usually results in him exploring textures (like the wicker baskets and rugs) and things that move (like the futon cover, curtains, and exercise ball). I try to facilitate his explorations and have a lot of fun watching him discover his environment. I think this interest in his surroundings is also one reason he does so well when we're traveling or walking around Egg; he just likes watching, learning, and when he can, exploring. He's also very active and loves to crawl and play, so I try to make sure he gets plenty of that in his day. He loves his doorway bouncer and his walker, which both allow him to exercise and explore different surroundings. All in all, he's an energetic, fun-loving baby which makes being his mom that much more exciting :).

- Traveler: Now that Carsten is ~8 months old, he's been to Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Switzerland, France, and Germany. We'll keep adding to this list, but so far he's been a great traveler! I think one of our next adventures will be attempting a nearby hike to see how we do. Carsten is a usually pretty fun to travel with, and as I mentioned above, he seems to really enjoy it, so it should be fun :).

Relaxation day with Mom and Dad Huisman

After Munich, we planned one whole day with everyone at the house so that way Andy could enjoy relaxation time with everyone in Egg. So what did we do? Well, we played with Carsten, then played games while Carsten was sleeping, took a wonderful walk, and Mom and Dad packed. For our walk Andy and I decided to try out our fancy hiking child carrier, which was a great success. The backpack was quite comfortable for me, and Carsten really enjoyed being in it, especially when he figured out he could grab my hair :). Here's some photographs from our walk!

outside our apartment

Mom and Dad with Swiss cows

Us with Egg!

Carsten checking out the lilacs :)

beautiful pansies that Mom loved (this even made her background on her computer which is generally reserved for family photos! :) )

The next day Carsten and I said goodbye to Mom and Dad from our apartment, and Andy took them back to the airport. It was a very quiet day... solution: we need more visitors! :) So come on over...

Thanks for coming Mom and Dad! We loved having you :).

Munich - Day 4

Day 4 was Easter Sunday and our return date to Zurich. We had originally inteneted to go to an English speaking church on Sunday morning, but we couldn't find a time that would work with our 12:30ish departure. So instead we had a relaxing morning since Carsten slept in until 8 am (hooray!), and we took our time packing up, checking out, and making our way back to the main trainstation. We were pretty early at the train station, so we decided to get some pastries from one of the shops. Here's some photos of the pastries and the shop - YUM! :)

YUM.

After enjoying our yummy pastries, we boarded the train early, which was nice because we had time to get all of our bags in and there weren't very many other people on yet. Here's us with our train and bags:

This train ride was not as pleasant as the ride to Munich. Carsten took only 1 short nap at the begginning of trip (instead of two spaced out later), and so we spent most of the time trying to get him to take another nap amongst the noises of the train (i.e., newspapers, 4 20-something guys drinking beer and playing cards in the aisle, a 1 year old directly behind me who screamed if his mother was out of sight, and the general heat of the train). However, we did make it back and even though Carsten really didn't nap hardly at all during the day, he slept well in the evening, so that was a relief. One of the things we tried to occupy him with was an apple, and he enjoyed sucking on it (see photo below).

Well, that's our trip to Munich! We had a lot of fun seeing a new place with Mom and Dad Huisman, and it was doubly nice for us to have some help with Carsten while we traveled :). All in all, I think Andy and I both enjoyed the city of Munich better than Paris, but perhaps that's because we feel some affinity for the German language (even though we don't speak it - it just sounds familiar now).

Munich - Day 3

I forgot to mention that since Day 2 was Good Friday, nearly everything was closed, so we had to get our breakfast at a nearby gas station. Similarly, everything was going to be closed on Easter Sunday, so we made sure to get enough food for Sunday's breakfast on Saturday. Switzerland basically closes down for holidays too, and it's somewhat disconcerting for us as things are almost always open in the States. It requires you to plan and do your shopping ahead of time, which admittedly, I'm not always the best at.

Our third day in Munich was spent primarily at Marienplatz and the Englisher Gardens. We first went to Marienplatz, which is a pedestrian only shopping area of downtown, where we saw several churches: Frauenkirche, Heiliggeistkirche, and Peterskirche. From what I understand Frauenkirche is the most famous church in Munich; it has two beautiful towers, but unfortunately one was under extensive work, so we only got to see one (picture below). The church was actually in the midst of a service when we went inside on Saturday morning, but we still got to observe the inside where the only real color was in the front of the sanctuary (no ceiling paintings like some of the other churches).

The next church we went to was Heiliggeistkirche, which was a smaller church just off the square. This church had beautiful paintings on the ceiling (photo below) and interestingly, a display of Jesus' tomb with his body in it. We assume that his body disappeared on Easter Sunday when he rose (photo below).

The last church we went to in Munich was Peterskirche, which was a beautiful red roof and clock tower (see photo below). It was very pretty and one interesting thing that we noted at this church were gravestones and I assume graves of some people that were located on the side of the building. I assume that there was no room for a cemetery, so perhaps they instead chose to be buried in the church walls. Very interesting. This church was also quite beautiful inside (no photos), and this church also had the tomb display as well as a decorated skeleton of a martyr.

After we toured the churches, we waited for the Glockenspiel to go at 11:00 am. The Glockenspiel was on a beautiful building and was much, much larger than I had expected. It also had two different displays: the top half showed two knights jousting with the Bavarian knight winning and the bottom half showed a dance which is apparently reenacted every 7 years (the next one is 2012 and I think we should go :) ). The whole display lasted ~10 minutes and unfortunately for me, Carsten was sleeping before it started and was getting woken up by the music of the glockenspiel, so I had to go around the corner and bounce him back to sleep in order for him to continue his nap. Fortunately, my wonderful husband got the recorded the whole display, so I can relive it whenever I'd like. I included one of my favorite photos from the trip of Carsten sleeping at the Glockenspiel.

Top half

bottom half

Andy is such a great photographer :).

Next on the agenda was to eat lunch at the Chinese Pagoda in the Englisher Gardens, which was a bit of a hike away. Since Carsten was napping and does a great job of napping when I'm walking around, Andy and I chose to walk to the Pagoda and we sent Mom and Dad Huisman on a rickshaw ride through the Gardens to the Pagoda where they scoped out the lunch options and secured us a table. Here's a photo of Mom and Dad with their rickshaw driver:

We expected the Gardens to be quite nice, but were pleasantly surprised when our expectations were exceeded. It was a beautiful mix of open green spaces and forest (photos below).

One thing that the Englisher Garden is famous for is it's nude beaches. Now, we didn't know exactly where those were, but it was our intention to avoid all nudity. We thought we had succeeded in this goal until I looked back through our photos. We took another photo of the open area in the above photo that was slightly more zoomed in to get the pretty building, and when I got home, I noticed that right in the center is a naked man. Don't worry, there's nothing really to see especially as I did not include the zoomed in photo, but can you imagine just walking naked through this grassy area with all those people? I cannot, and I have trouble understanding people who would feel that this is ok. Also, inadvertent pictures from tourists must be a concern as well... :)

Once we reached the Chinese Pagoda (pictured above), Carsten woke up and we found Mom and Dad Huisman at one of the beer garden tables. We were pleasantly surprised to find a live big band jazz, which played a lot of our favorite American jazz tunes. The band was enthusiastic and entertaining, and as a bonus, did not bother Carsten at all. We got some food (I had currywurst, which was advertised all over Munich and really was not that good) and Andy and I got a beer to share. I must say that I'm typically not a fan of beer, but I did enjoy the beer we had at the garden. Carsten also wanted to get in on the action (picture below).

We fed Carsten some carrots and he was in tears by the end of the meal, which I think we later determined was due to a dumpy diaper. However, I took the moment to capture a slightly unhappy baby:

We decided to relocate to a grassy area where we could still hear the band so Carsten could get some wiggle time in while we enjoyed the music. Here's a cute photo of Carsten's playtime:

After about 20 minutes of this we decided that we had better move on, and as we had achieved all our sightseeing goals for the day and Carsten was in need of a nap, we made our way back to the hotel where Carsten took his afternoon nap. After he woke up, Mom and Dad watched him for us and Andy and I went to a grocery store to see if we could find some items that we could not find easily in Switzerland. Our search resulted in finding vanilla extract, white beans, and red lentils, which we had been unable to find in Switzerland so far - so hooray! Yes, we were very excited about these finds :). We mostly just relaxed for the rest of the evening after buying our supper and breakfast items for Sunday morning. All in all, it was a great day and we had quite a bit of fun :).