Spring Countryside

I think I've mentioned that we live a ways out of Zurich, such that if you walk two blocks from our house, you're in the Swiss countryside. Previously, we've gone on walks and have thought that the countryside was cute and quaint, which it was, but when spring is added, it's absolutely charming and idyllic. We took about an hour long walk yesterday, and we were astounded by the flowering trees, quaint farms, and majestic mountains in the distance.

Here's our walk in pictures:

There are some flower boxes at the top of our street with some beautiful pansies in them. In fact, there are pansies all over town, and they remind me of my Grandma Ranschau. She loves purple pansies. 

Shortly out of town (we're talking about a quarter mile here), the countryside is green and we noticed that most of the trees were in bloom, which you'll get to see in great detail below because I really think they are beautiful. :)

Carsten was amazing during the walk. Seriously, what a great kid :).

Beautiful tree.

A countryside flower box. This reminds me of my mom. I can't quite say why...

Swiss cow! So this was the only farm we passed that we actually saw the dairy cows. So I had to take a photo!

This was a fairly typical sight. Beautiful flowering tree - check. Beautiful meadow with wildflowers - check.

We started walking down a big hill and were greeted with a wonderful view of the valley and the Alps.

We walked through a horse farm. Yes, I said through. The road we were on, which was paved and slightly bigger than 1 lane, actually went through the middle of every farm in the neighborhood. And when I say middle, I mean the road typically went in between the house and the barn. Which made me feel as though I was intruding because most roads skirt the edge of a property. However, it was fun to view a bunch of different little farms.

One farm had a Swiss flag, which was a perfect photo op. SWISS ALPS! :)

The idyllic countryside.

This was one of the few fields that we saw. Most of the countryside seemed to be pasture, and this brings up a point of confusion for me. What do farms here to do earn money? Because I don't think they do a lot with cultivated fields like they do in Iowa...

At the end of our walk this was the view from our street. Can you tell what it is? It's paragliders! We see them quite frequently, and I imagine the view was amazing on a day like this.

I can honestly say that it was a very fun walk where we mostly just admired the view, and talked about the farms because, let's be honest, this Iowa girl wants to know how these farms work.

More direct communication

This morning Carsten was playing on his playmat and got really excited when he saw me. I acknowledged him, and did not pick him up. Instead, I went into the kitchen briefly and came back. He had rolled out of his playmat and then kept rolling towards me. I sat down on the end of his blanket (maybe 5 feet from where he was) and said to myself 'let's see if it's me he actually wants'. He proceeded to roll quickly directly to me and ignored all the toys he rolled over. This isn't the first time he's rolled to me, but it was the farthest distance, and to me, one of the more direct 'Mommy, I want you so I'll come to you' moments. After he rolled to me, just to check that indeed he wanted me, I sat him up and tried to give him a toy. Instead of taking the toy he turned around and hugged my middle. So, apparently he wanted me. And indeed, he was hungry. We have now established he can get my attention in a way other than vocalizing (i.e., crying or complaining), which is crazy, but fun :).

In other news, I don't understand the theme of this pair of pajamas:

At first you think, jungle animals is the theme, but it isn't. Let me list the 'animals' on the pjs:

-ape
-lion
-turtle
-hippo
-walrus
-brown bear
-brachiosaurus (dinosaur with long neck)

Interesting, right? The list just gets more crazy, especially once you get to the 'extinct' dinosaur.

Carsten is 7 months!

So you've been getting to read a lot about our travels and our life, but what about the life of Carsten? What is he up to? Well, for the most part, he's a very happy boy. And he's 7 months old. Crazy how the time flies.

He's getting to try new foods every few days, and he's mastered carrots, peas, green beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples, avocados, and bananas. He really seems to enjoy eating solid foods and even looks longingly at our food that we eat.

He's also becoming more mobile lately as he puts multiple rolls together (see picture sequence below), has been practicing sitting up which he can do for a few minutes at a time now, and he zooms around the house in his walker.

Starting at the other end of the blanket.

Roll onto back - check!

Roll onto tummy - check!

He reached Mommy at the end of the blanket! He did this all very quickly, and for the record, I think he wanted the camera.

He sits up! And enjoys it a lot. Andy's trying to imitate Carsten's big smile. Love this photo :).

In addition to all of these things, he now will get up on all fours and rock back and forth, which I think means that we could have forward motion soon. For the record, we are not ready for this, but I think he's getting close, so ready or not, here he comes! He also does the plank where only his hands and toes are touching the ground. What a kid! 

This is actually quite difficult if you try it yourself (you have to hold it!).

Crawling position, check!

We also get to see more of his personality every day. He loves being with people and he will smile at anyone across the room, which pretty much melts your heart. He's also started making a lot of different noises ('ma', 'ha', etc.) and he frequently sticks out his tongue. He also recently got his first cold, which I already blogged about. I think he's recently realized that he can interact with the people we skype with, which is pretty fun because he'll smile and look cute.

I'll leave you with some photos that I absolutely love.

Daddy-son moment. 

Happy baby! I just love the way his face lights up when he smiles.

Our baby boy.

The LaughTub

Natalie was putting away a bath toy that Carsten didn't seem interested in, so she squeezed the water out of it. That was when the fun started...

Spring is here!

To be honest, spring has been here for a while, but I've been collecting a few photos over the last couple of weeks of the signs of spring.

1) No winter jackets or hats, instead a sun hat and hoodie!

 2) Spring flowers! These include tulips, daffodils, and others.

 3) Flowering bushes! You can see these yellow bushes everywhere.

 4) Herbs planted in the flower box! Andy planted these on Saturday. I think they are the Italian herb set.

 5) Beautiful purple flowering trees right outside our windows. There are many bees visiting these trees.

 6) Short sleeves inside, and occasionally just a diaper! Carsten is sitting up by himself here.

 6) Picnics at Lake Zurich after church. And they've even turned on the fountain in the lake.

We love springtime! It's also nice for Carsten and I because it's easier to go outside since there aren't as many layers to put on. And it's also fun to be outside and take walks when it's so pretty.

Also, Carsten is still stuffy, but seems to be on the mend. He only woke up once last night. So, hooray! :)

Carsten's first cold :(

It's finally here. His first cold. His first fever.

We've been trying hard to avoid colds with washing hands and hand sanitizer, especially when he was younger and then while we were traveling at Christmas so that way he'd be healthy for our overseas move. Since we've been here, he's had very little exposure to other children, and I still maintained my washing hands routine. So, we've been fortunate that it's taken almost 7 months for him to get sick - what a blessing for a healthy baby for that long. I've started going to the gym where they have babysitting for children under 9, which means that now he has a clear route to germs. However, I'm not sure he got it from there as I had a cold last week, so it's likely that he got my cold. Which means the poor guy started out with a sore throat and will end with a runny nose.

Carsten started getting a stuffy nose Monday night, which made for a rough night. We did not have a humidifier, and the air is pretty dry right now, so I'm pretty sure that didn't help. Tuesday was a good day despite his stuffy nose, and I actually went to the gym in the morning because he really seemed just fine except for the runny noses (runny noses are ok at daycare). However, I started noticing that he has a real lack of appetite for solid foods, but he still seems to be eating breastmilk just fine, which is a blessing. In the evening, after supper we noticed that he was very flushed and we measured a temperature of 99.7 F under his armpit. So, hence the first fever. At least it's a low-grade fever, so we just gave him tylenol and a tepid bath, and put him to bed. I should also mention that Andy came home about 30 min early so we could go to the store and pick out a humidifier. They didn't have a large selection this time of year, so we ended up going with a travel model that uses a plastic water bottle as its reservoir. So we put this in his room at bedtime, and it seems to really have helped. He was only up twice and we didn't hear him waking up and falling back to sleep as often. In fact, he's still sleeping right now, and it's almost 9 am, which is quite late for him. Hopefully he's sleeping off his cold, and since he's such a happy kid, I'm sure today will be a good day.

We usually go to moms and tots at church today, but since he had a fever last night and is sick, we will not be going. So thus begins the first thing I will miss because he's sick, but I'm not really sad about this because I just want to see him healthy again. So, we have a relaxing day at home planned.

Paris - Day 5

Today was the day we headed back home to Egg. We felt like we got to see Paris, at least, the things we wanted to see, and I think all of us were ready to have Carsten back in his own room. Our flight left at 12:45 pm, which meant that after we woke up at 8 am (thanks Carsten!), we got ready for the day & packed. Andy and Carsten went out to the bakery to retrieve our final pastry breakfast while I packed, which worked quite nicely. On the way to Paris, we checked one large bag and kept a carry-on suitcase with us just in case our baggage got lost. Since we didn't really care if it got lost in transit (hey - maybe they can wash the dirty laundry!) when we were headed back to Zurich, we decided to check both bags, which meant that packing used the throw-it-all-in-there method.

After we got packed up, we checked out of our dodgy hotel, and headed into the train station to find our train back to the airport. We got lucky and actually found a direct train with no stops to the airport. Carsten was in need of a nap at this point, so I spent most of the train ride trying to put him to sleep, which eventually happened. Once we reached the end of the line at the airport, we hopped off and found that once again, our plane was to depart from the tiniest and most remote terminal. This meant that we had to take a bus out to our terminal, which added 30-45 minutes onto our transit time. This meant that our travel time from our hotel (right on a major train station) to the security checkpoint was about 1.5 hours, which is a bit ridiculous if you ask me. Anyway, we were lucky that we had left ourselves plenty of time and hadn't tried to see anything in Paris that morning, otherwise we probably would not have made our flight.

So, once we checked in and got inside, we got sandwiches and fed Carsten solid food, and then headed to our gate where we were given preferential treatment (go infants and strollers) as we walked onto our plane. Our taxi time was quite long - probably about 30 min, but the flight was short - 1 hr, so it wasn't ideal, but ok. We also realized that the airport times run different here. In the US, a flight time of 12:45 means that the doors close at 12:45, however, in Europe, this means that you board at 12:45 - at least as far as we can tell this is what happened on both of our flight legs. And then they basically add in 30 min to your actual flight time to account for boarding; for example, our flight time was 1 hour, but our listed flight time was 1.5 hrs. Very interesting. Anyway, there were two infants on the plane, Carsten and another little girl who looked to be just a couple of months old. We've noticed that they seem to intentionally group children together, so the other baby was sitting right in front of us. I'm not sure why they do that because children can feed off of one another, but I guess maybe they're trying to make only the people in a close proximity miserable. Which, for the record, neither Carsten or the other infant really cried, so that was quite nice. In fact, Carsten actually slept the entire flight (hooray for Carsten!). I'm coming to realize that the airplane noise is quite good for Carsten, and honestly, as soon as they fire up the engines for take-off he seems to nod off, which makes things easy for Andy and I (at least for short trips).

Anyway, we made it safely back without a hitch and while we spent another 1.5 hrs traveling back to our house (because we missed a train connection), we still felt that we had a good trip and that we enjoy traveling with Carsten. All in all, we loved our trip to Paris, and we are excited about more adventures coming our way!

(No pictures this day - sorry!)