The air zoo part two

A few days ago on Skype, Uncle Jeff mentioned Carsten's visit to the Air Zoo as a conversation starter.  Apparently when Jeff asks his son (just a few weeks old than Carsten) about his visit to the Air Zoo, Zachary says "Went up in an airplane. Went down" and that's the end of it.  This was no the case for Carsten.  For around the next hour, we heard variations on the following theme:

C: "Air Zoo!  Wanna go to the Air Zoo!"

A: "The Air Zoo is too far away. We can't go right now."

C: "Air Zoo too far... (furrowed eyebrows)" or...

C: "Air Zoo in America. Too far."

Natalie tried to distract Carsten by mentioning the fun things we get to do here - visiting the Flughafen, HB, riding the funicular ("the railroad train" to Carsten).  The resulting conversation went something like this:

N: "The Air Zoo is in America, it is too far away to visit. But we get to do lots of fun things here in Switzerland!"

C: "Wanna ride the railroad train!"

A: "It is dark. We aren't going to ride the railroad train tonight. Maybe we can go tomorrow."

C:" Wanna go to the Air Zoo! Air Zoo too far!"

The next day, we tried to talk about this experience on skype in a round about way.  Carsten was playing in the other part of the room, and we said something like: "There is a museum for airborne devices in a town near battle creek.  Jeff mentioned it yesterday and then..." at which point Carsten ran over and said "Air Zoo! Go to the Air Zoo!"  I'm not sure how he knew that is what we were talking about, but he seemed to know.

This morning, we didn't hear as much about the Air Zoo. But whenever Carsten was feeling bored, he would go to the window, look intensely up the hill and say "Air Zoo too far..."  

The sadness of big digger, part two

Last week when the weather was ugly for several days we used my train pass to go the airport. Hey, why not?  Carsten loves to ride the trains, he loves airplanes, and the airport is at least indoors so he could get come exercise.  When we got there, we spent some time looking at airplanes from the observation deck ("An airplane!! Wanna go on it!")

We also found that a "kinderparadies" (sorry for the spelling, German-speaking people) or Kid's Paradise had been set up near the observation deck.  A huge, indoor playground. With diggers. Life just does not get better than this for Carsten.

Too bad we found the playground at 9:45 and it didn't open until 10.  Carsten spent a long time looking inside and saying in a very forlorn voice "playground is closed. Can't go in there. Playground is closed..."  But eventually it opened and we went in.

Interjection: Carsten is currently in his bed talking about "big digger," and "big wheel loader."

Anyway, once we got inside Carsten immediately saw the big tractors, diggers, and firetrucks.  He was in heaven.  We stayed and played for about 45 minutes and had a great time - he was the only kid there from 10 until we left just before 11.  After his nap, we were telling someone on skype about our morning and Carsten went from cuddly to fully alert: "wanna go to the digger airport.  Digger airport. DIGGER AIRPORT!!!" We had already made plans to visit my friend Erika at the hospital, as she had just had a beautiful baby boy.  We told Carsten: "maybe we can go the airport. First we will go the hospital and visit baby Nilas."

Carsten did pretty well on the way to the hospital. He sort of repeated to himself: "go to the hospital. then digger airport."  Once we got to the hospital, we were in the room visiting for about 10 second before Carsten decided we had fulfilled our social obligation and asked "Digger airport please!"  Happily, Andi had an digger app for his ipad that entertained Carsten while we visited with Erika and got to snuggle with Nilas.  What a nice time we had!

Even though we stayed for a long time, we decided to head back to the airport. Carsten wanted to go, and to be honest, so did we -- they playground would let you leave your kid while you went shopping.  So we went back to the airport. Carsten was delighted to go back, and was the last kid there when we came back at exactly 6:00 to grab him. Apparently he spent some time playing with the diggers and tractors, but also got to watch TV (a very rare treat for him).

This was the introduction to our story, and here comes the punchline.  Today, Carsten asked to go to the digger airport.  I had to tell him that the playground was all gone - it was just for Christmastime.  After thinking about it for a minute, he said "Airport digger all gone. It went to America."  Later he repeated his conclusion again to Natalie -- the airport digger went to America.

Finally I realized the connection to his big digger, and thus to the title of this post.  His big digger in Egg was taken by the movers.  We told him it was going to America.  The digger at the airport was all gone, so I believe he decided that it was going to America too.  I think this meant that to him, America is the far-off country where all things will be set right, the country for which we all long. Poor little buddy.

One last visit to Egg

This morning we went to Egg to get Carsten's medical records from the pediatrician and drop off our tax forms at the Gemeindehaus.  Carsten was incredibly excited to ride the Forchbahn - ever since we moved to Zurich he asks to ride the "red train."

Once we got to Egg, Carsten started pulling me in the direction of our old apartment.  "Go home! Go home, daddy!" I tried to re-direct the situation "We're going to go this way - we have to go to the doctor's office."  Carsten was persistent: "Go home! Big Digger at home!"

I had to tell him that we didn't live there anymore.  Carsten has an amazing sad voice: "We don't live there anymore." Eyebrows furrowed, we walked to the doctor's office.  Carsten did a great job the rest of the morning, and had a great time riding to Forchbahn back to Zurich.  The ride seemed so long - I can't believe I used to do that almost every day!

Stories from a hausmann Huisman

Today, Carsten and I spent the morning together while Natalie was at the doctor's office.  Here's a few little stories from the day:

"I'm hiding!" Carsten went into his room, sat under the desk, and announced "I'm hiding!"  Later in the day, when he was hiding, I said "Where's Carsten?" and got the reply "Not in here!"

"Ultimate wedgie, please!" We don't have a changing station anymore, so all diaper changes happen on the floor.  After a diaper change, I have Carsten stand up and give me a hug while I pull up his pants.  Lately, I have been pulling the pants up a little further than necessary (about 2 feet) and he seems to really enjoy it.  Today after a diaper change, Carsten asked me "ultimate wedgie, please!"  So I picked him up by his belt loops.  He seemed to really enjoy it - we did it several times and he was still asking for more...

"The big one!" We took a walk to the bakery this morning and bought a gipfeli (a.k.a. a croissant anywhere else in the world).  I split it in roughly half and asked him which part he wanted.  As far as I know I have never taught him to say this, but he immediately answered "the big one!"

Moving - Stage 2

Stage 2 of our moving plan consisted of staying at our friends Kai and Vanessa's home for 5 nights while we waited for our temporary housing to become available. In the meantime, we spent some quality time with our friends and Carsten had a ton of fun playing with their daughter Eleanor. We were very thankful to be able to stay with friends during this time. Our other job in this interim period was to clean our apartment in Egg before Monday December 3 when our handover was scheduled. We spent two full days cleaning the apartment to be cleaner than we had ever seen it, but in the end it was not enough for Swiss standards. The lady just went around and pointed to everything and said 'dirty'. She would not explain anything to Andy's German-speaking coworker and in general, was just rude. Even though they will be redoing the floors and walls, they will be charging us a 'cleaning fee' which mostly makes us feel like they will be charging us to clean up their mess after they are done renovating the flat. They are taking us for a ride, but it seems to be standard practice here and it makes me grateful that we didn't move around more here because then every time you leave you get hit with this 'fee'. Really, I feel that it would be more honest to put it into a lease so that way you don't have to stress about the cleaning fees. We're in the middle of still trying to get this resolved, and it was not a good way to end our time in Egg. Silly Switzerland.

Amongst this transition, we still managed to have a bit of fun, so please read on about our adventures :).

During our stay at Kai and Vanessa's, it snowed and was absolutely beautiful, so we got some good photos. Carsten insisted on eating the snow. He would just plant himself in the snow face first and eat the snow with great gusto. Our intent had been to take a walk, but with Carsten planting himself in the snow every couple of feet, it was very slow going :). Vanessa and Eleanor were very understanding, and while Eleanor was happy to watch Carsten, there was no way she was going to join in eating the snow (smart girl!). Here's a few photos:

Vanessa and Eleanor on our walk!

Carsten really enjoyed eating snow :).

So pretty!

Good friends :).

Two cute kiddos :).

This is pretty much what Carsten looked like the whole time.

Eating snow makes your nose run.

Eating snow!

Snow beard!

Incredibly happy with himself. :)

After we finished cleaning on Sunday in Egg, we went to the Christmas market in Egg where we sampled some brats and bread and then watched the Samiclaus parade (there were 5 Santas!). This is one of our favorite things about Egg and we happened to catch it last year, so we were very glad to be able to go again. Somehow the sleepy town is transformed as everyone comes downtown and has fun (normally there's very little to do in town). This was our last official day in Egg as a family, so we let Carsten enjoy playing outside with his diggers for a while since that was his favorite activity. In fact, he rarely used the nice play equipment - he just played with trucks! Of course, he liked us to play trucks with him too so he'd hand us one and say 'Follow you follow you follow you' to indicate that we should play too. Here's a few photos of our last day in Egg:

"Follow me follow me follow me!!!"

Carsten actually did do the slide repeatedly once we figured out that it was icy and he could go REALLY fast :).

Big digger!

Christmas tree in the square in Egg.

Christmas tree in the market in Egg.

No Swiss parade is complete unless it has extremely large cowbells.

How many Samiclaus can you count in this photo?

The Christmas market in Egg was a fun ending to our time in Egg. Goodbye Egg!

Moving - Stage 1

November 28 was our international moving day, which meant that movers were going to come and pack up our stuff for us, but in order for that to go well, we had to have it all organized. Organization was a bit complicated because of all the different places we had to think about for every item:

1) Ship directly to New York via international movers (takes 6-8 weeks and needs to all fit into 6 m^3)
2) Stuff needed for December but would be tossed before we fly back
3) Things needed for December and January that we would fly back with
4) Items to sell in Switzerland
5) Items to dump directly

We had tried our best to simplify and get rid of things that we knew ahead time that we wouldn't need like dishes, rugs, toys, couches, futon, tables, etc, but it still ended up being a large task to get everything ready for our international moving day. Luckily, Andy was able to take time off from work to help out at home since one of us usually needed to monitor Carsten since the house was no longer a 'safe' zone for him to be in. Carsten may have ended up watching WAY more "Bob the Builder" than is good for him - oh well.

We were ready for the movers to come at about 10:30 am, which we considered to be a monumental achievement on our part since they weren't scheduled to arrive until 12 pm (we got done early!). We ended up moving a couple of large expensive items that we bought here like our extremely nice bed, a crib for Carsten, our prep table, our patio table, Carsten's tripp trapp, and a couple of bookshelves. Other than that we shipped back mostly clothes and a few kitchen items that we had originally brought with us.

It added a lot of stress to our day when the movers didn't arrive on schedule, but instead arrived at 6 pm. We had tried to ensure that Carsten would not be disturbed during nap, so we took him to the neighbors across the hall where she let him nap there since it would be quiet the whole time. In our plan Carsten would nap while the movers moved and then we'd be done close to the time when he woke up. Instead, we hung around our empty flat and had to order in a pizza (1st time ever in Switzerland!) since the movers did not come until 6 pm. Our neighbor graciously allowed us the use of her car so Andy could take Carsten to Kai and Vanessa's where we would be staying for the next few nights until our temporary housing in Zurich was available. This revised plan allowed Carsten to get bed on time, although he did not go down easily like normal.

Carsten was definitely traumatized by the day's events since both nap and nighttime were difficult for him. At nap time I ended up rocking him to sleep in my arms because he was incredibly sure that he did not want to go into his travel crib and instead wanted to cuddle me (a very unusual occurrence). At night time for Andy, he did the same thing, but luckily this didn't last and seemed to coincide with just the moving day. He also did not appreciate not being able to play with big digger when the movers arrived; hence our neighbor was a life saver in this way too because she allowed us to remove him from the situation easily using her car.

I stayed with the movers who only took 2.5 hrs to pack up all our stuff which I don't think we could have ever done. I will say that it was pretty well organized and that we had already broken down our furniture to save space, but I was still incredibly impressed with their efficient hard work. We were incredibly relieved when the movers told us all our stuff would fit in the alloted 6 m^3 space that we had reserved and paid for (this had been a major stress point because you really don't know how it will all pack in). Andy came back for me after our movers finished in the apartment and we drove off while watching our movers trying to back up down our incredibly small street (I'm sure they are used to that here). So, all in all, we were relieved to have that day done, but I will say that international moves are SO incredibly complicated. Domestic moves will be SO easy in the future. :)

Here's some photos from our move:

Carsten helped with some of the clean up :).

We took apart the prep table and tripp trapp (Carsten was a bit distressed that his high chair was broken).

See the stool in the corner with a lamp on it? Yep, that's the light for the entire living space since we had sold our light fixtures (they do not come with the apartments here).

Stuff for shipping!

We broke down our bed, Carsten's crib, and bookshelves.

loneliest patio table ever.

The most organized our cupboards ever were.

Items to ship!

Carsten with our neighbor Dorothee who let him nap in her flat for the afternoon :). So nice!

One of our movers.

Got carried away with my labeling :).

First pizza we ordered out! You should not that it was 42 CHF (~$44) for two thin pizzas that we demolished.

All done!

Bye bye Egg!

The sadness of Big Digger

When we got back to our empty flat in Egg, Carsten immediately asked for big digger.  We told him it wasn't there. When Natalie went downstairs to do the laundry, Carsten looked up and said "Go get big digger please!" After that we explained that it was on a boat to New York, and Carsten was beyond sad - we had to use Bob the Builder to help him feel better.


Actual conversation from earlier tonight:
Carsten: "Uncle Kai?"
Natalie: "Uncle Kai went on a trip to Germany."
Carsten: "Uncle Kai in Germany."
Natalie: "That's right, and we're staying in Switzerland."
Carsten (sadly): "Big digger on [a] boat to New York"


We're still waiting for the following sequence:
Carsten "Big digger?"
Natalie: "Big digger is on a boat to New York."
Carsten: "New York Please!"

A date!!

Our friend Ann, who lives in Egg and is from Nebraska, watched Carsten for us on Saturday afternoon so Andy and I could go on a date to Zurich and watch the new James Bond movie. This was such a special treat for us because it's very rare for us to find someone to watch Carsten here. We appreciated her gift of time and it was very special for us because actual dates 'on the town' are quite rare. Carsten also loves playing with Ann, so it was nice to leave him in such capable hands. Andy and I took in the Christmas market in Zurich at Bellevue and had a berliner (jelly donut/pastry) and gluwien (hot, spiced wine) before we headed in to the movie. The movie was quite good and we even treated ourselves to popcorn :). I loved having the opportunity to spend time with just Andy and it was fun to spend some time in Zurich Carsten-free. Also on a side note, I met Andy for the first time 10 years ago approximately to this date - who knew that I'd marry him and move to Switzerland within 10 years! :) Here's a photo of Andy at the Christmas market:

My handsome hubby :).

Thanksgiving

Last week in Egg we celebrated our own family Thanksgiving. It's the first 'Thanksgiving' meal that I've prepared, and I say Thanksgiving in quotes because there was no turkey. Turkey is SUPER expensive here, so we had pork chops instead :). Since I had just come from the US, I brought some American treats such as pumpkin pie filling (difficult to find here), jello, and stuffing for our Thanksgiving celebration. I spent most of the afternoon cooking our modest Thanksgiving dinner, and Andy made it home early to help out with Carsten and have some special family time. Our menu was: pork chops, stuffing, jello, butternut squash, and fresh bread. Carsten and I made some pumpkin pie cupcakes for dessert, which were actually very good even though I didn't have the correct spices. We definitely missed seeing our families for Thanksgiving - we'll see about next year! :) Here's some photos of our Thanksgiving celebration:

American treats!!! 

The meal. :)

My boys. Please note our awesome patio table Thanksgiving here :).

Pumpkin pie cupcakes!

A couple of days after our family Thanksgiving, we also celebrated Thanksgiving with our good friends Kai and Vanessa. We had an amazing time hanging out with our friends and Carsten loved playing with their daughter, Eleanor. As a special treat, our meal was catered to give the pregnant ladies a break :). The food was great and the company was amazing - definitely a must for Thanksgiving :). Thanks for such a great Thanksgiving celebration Kai and Vanessa! Here's a couple of photos:

Kai is getting the food ready!

Andy is reading the kiddos a story in German. Eleanor may have been correcting him occasionally :).

The amazing food.

Wonderful friends :).

It's a.....

BOY!

Carsten is going to have a little brother around April 2, and we're very excited to welcome another little boy into our lives. I started feeling kicks from him around 16 weeks which is about two weeks earlier than Carsten if I remember correctly. We had our 20 week ultrasound last week (we're already halfway?!) where we found out that we have a healthy, normal baby boy. I feel great except I could swear that I am getting bigger every day. Oh, and sleep is starting to get difficult, but it's just training for when our sweet boy arrives :). He's also seems like a very active boy from the amount of good kicks I get from him, which is similar to Carsten as well. So everything is good news on the baby front! Here is an ultrasound photo of the newest Swiss Huisman:

This is his face head on. We couldn't get a good profile shot because of the way he was laying.

Last flight to Zurich

Well, this was our last planned flight to Zurich for a while, and to be honest, it went really well. Carsten slept for 3 hrs on the flight (a new record!) and we had a non-stop from Chicago to Zurich which made the trip go much quicker than normal (we usually have to change planes on the East Coast). The only annoyance on the flight was that the guy in front of Carsten cranked his seat back the ENTIRE trip. Since this meant that there was less than an inch between his seat and Carsten's feet, I had to just let Carsten do whatever he wanted since there was no way I'd be able to prevent him from kicking or grabbing the guy's seat (usually I try to prevent this when there's a normal distance between the seats). I'm sure he was not a fan of us, but seriously, there was nothing I could do. Oh well :). Carsten did great though, and since Andy met us at the airport with our friend's car, it really couldn't have gone much smoother. Well, except for that 2 hr traffic jam in Chicago from downtown to O'Hare. But hey, we can't win 'em all. :)

Carsten recovered from jet-lag much faster than he has before as it only took about 3 nights to fully sleep through the night. In fact, I usually had to wake him up in the mornings so he wouldn't sleep in too much. Here's a photo of my sleepy buddy:

I woke him up about an hour after I took this photo. He was still in the same position :).

Chicago

Grandma and Grandpa Hoogeveen graciously took us to the Sioux City airport on Monday, November 5. We were able to eat lunch with them and then they helped me drop off my checked bags at the airport. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa! Carsten had a great time running around in the tiny airport, and once security opened it's ONE line we zipped right into the two-gate terminal. Yes, it's small :). Carsten did great on the flight and slept for part of the flight in his car seat. Once we got to O'Hare I retrieved our bags and had to break down a pay $4 (really?!) for a luggage cart to get all our gear to the bus for the rental car. Sigh. The nice man on the rental car bus handled all my luggage and helped me get into the car rental place. Yay for nice people! We got our Nissan Altima rental car after about 30 min, and I was very happy with how it drove. Now I have to just insert that Chicago and I will never be friends. Every time I went anywhere it was in a traffic jam (to the hotel, from the hotel to the aquarium, and from the aquarium to O'Hare). I despise traffic jams. I despise taking 2-3xs longer to get to my destination.

Anyway, once Carsten got to the hotel we brought our stuff into the room and then got some Panera Bread for supper (YUM!). We got to see Nicky and her boys for a few minutes before I had to send Carsten to bed, but we got to spend a lot more time with them in the morning at the hotel since we were all up before 6:30 am. Nicky and I got to chat while the boys watched 'Bob the Builder' (yay for friend time!). Once I got packed up again, we rounded up our boys and headed to the Shedd Aquarium for the day. We were not aware that it was a community day (so IL residents get in free) so it was BUSY, but we still enjoyed ourselves a lot. I think Carsten, Colin, and Connor all had a lot of fun seeing the different fish, but I'm guessing the highlight for all of them was the play area level where they could play in water, do some slides and climbing, and play in a pretend submarine. I know that Carsten especially loved the submarine since it had a 'digger' arm in the front that you could move with levers. We actually ended up going there twice in the afternoon because he did such a good job of playing. My good friends Corrie and Maureen arrived during lunch and I got to talk with them during the afternoon as well as meet Corrie's new son, Clive, who is quite the cutie pie. I appreciated getting to see and catch up with all these lovely ladies (and boys!) - thanks to everyone for meeting me at Shedd! Here's photos from the day:

Carsten, Connor, and Colin watching 'Bob the Builder'

Carsten and Connor being cute :).

The 4D movie of Ice Age was way too scary for Carsten - we had to leave. Poor kiddo.

Nicky and her boys were able to watch though :).

Maureen!!!

Cutie Clive.

Corrie!!!!!!

Playing in water.

Playing in the submarine.