france

we have been trying to take a family vacation since april...it's finally happening in june but that's for another post. troy took a couple days off last week. one day was to frühlingsfest and the other was last friday. we decided to head on over to france for the night and check out a couple of the towns. a friend of mine commented on facebook, that i made it sound like a day trip to tyson's corner (mall in virginia, sniff, sniff...i miss it so much). well, france is a day trip from our house. it's 1 1/2 hours from here. it's actually easier to get to france than most of germany from here.

i have heard many people talk about strausburg and have been bugging...i mean asking...troy to get his international driver's license so we could go and check it out. it's a little ridiculous to be that close to another country and not be able to go. anyhoo, he got it on tuesday and on friday we jumped into the car with one small suitcase and some snacks...at this point it was already my favorite trip - easiest prep ever. we drove the hour and half. we walked around when we first got there and sort of stumbled upon this huge cathedral, which, since we've been back home, troy has googled it and has all sorts of interesting facts but i can't remember anything he said. after lunch in a cafe, we walked around some more and found a huge playground and mayer played for quite a while. i did A LOT of window shopping but only bought a couple little things. the rest of the day was more of the same, walking around, dinner at another cafe, more playground shenanigans. the kids fell asleep pretty quickly that night.

the next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and checked out. we then took our one bag back to the car and checked out the saturday flea market that had just begun. i'm sure i would have found something to buy there had I not heard...."oh no! grayson! what happened?!....jenn!!" grayson popped the top off his sippy cup and had dumped his milk all over himself (we have since stopped using this sippy cup, now that mr. grayson has learned how to pop the top, he does it every time he has this cup). after a quick outfit change in the parking garage, we did one last loop around the town and then headed to the next town.

soufflenheim is another french town, it's claim to fame is it's pottery. i have seen some of it at the bazaars around germany. some of it I love, some of it...not so much. so, when i heard there was a whole town with nothing but pottery shop after pottery shop it was put on the must-see list. we arrived there around 11:15 and i found my favorite shop and bought a few pieces and then stumbled upon another store that was huge. an overly-friendly woman told me i better hurry up since the store closes from noon to 2pm. to which i asked which stores stayed open.

ummm.....yeah, the whole, entire town closes from 12-2pm.

anyone wanna guess what time it was?

11:50. so i quickly picked out a pitcher and filled troy in on the town's awesome hours. i decided that since the town was closed, we should head on home. plus, i was out of money, so the damage was done. i will definitely be heading back to this little town....preferably well before noon and even more preferably, without my children.

all in all, it was an awesome family weekend. everyone had a great time. and did i mention, it all fit in one suitcase? i foresee many more weekend trips in our future.

grayson's first lollipop, ate it like a pro...did you really have any doubts?

mayer taking a break at the playground

2 story carousel...yes please...twice

another photo by mayer. i think i may let him be the photographer on our next trip

this building looked so old, like if you touched it, it would crumble

my attempt at trying to get the whole cathedral in the picture

frühlingsfest

Last week Troy took a day off from work to spend some time at home with the family and we decided to go get our fest on at the Frühlingsfest. It is almost identical to Volksfest/Oktoberfest, it's just a little bit smaller. But a fest is a fest - who cares what we're celebrating, let's fest it up. By-the-way, we're celebrating Spring. And I'm starting to wonder how many times I can say "fest".

Mayer riding a horse, this one wasn't trying to win like last time.

Driving his own bumper car

cutest little pirate

captain troy

troy riding the big boy bumper cars

mayer and t-rex (and yes mayer is wet, 2 times the water ride will do that to you)

grayson and his zebra balloon

And as they say, I saved the best for last....apparently, I come from a long line of carni-pirates. It's the Schultze Pirate Ride. Although, I have to say, this was one of the better rides and the guy running the ride was the only operator dressed to match the ride (that's him on the left, behind the parrot) and he said all sorts of pirate-ery things.

elephants and granola

So a couple weekends ago we went and did a family photo shoot with Micah (who did Grayson's awesome 1year photos). We decided to meet up in Bebenhausen at the monastery. It's just beautiful there and everything was green and the weather was perfect - which I was totally nervous about considering it had been pouring the few days before Saturday.

Grayson had done so well at his One Year photo session, that I wasn't even worried about him. Mayer, on the other hand, I told before we left house, he was to do whatever Micah asked him to do and if he listened to her there would be ice cream and wii in his future. And yes, bribing is completely necessary in a situation like this. I scheduled this appointment back in January and Micah and her family are heading back to the states this summer, so I booked one of the last Saturdays in her books and there was no rescheduling.....bribing was essential!

Back to the photos....we started off strong. Everyone was all smiles and being fantastic. After we decided to change spots all hell broke loose. Grayson began screaming and continued screaming until the last 30 minutes of our 2 hour session. And Mayer decided he was "done being in this picture" and would just run off to play with the cannons or the rocks or the flowers. All I needed was for a butterfly to go by and he would have been gone after that. Finally, I just let Grayson work out his issues and he cried for a few minutes and I gave him a granola bar and he was good. The bad part was that no one could take the granola bar away from him. I won't tell you which pictures feature him and the granola bar but they're there. Some pictures, that didn't make the cut, feature him holding a elephant puppet and the granola bar. And just in case this morning wasn't a challenge enough, Mayer decided to slide into a patch of weeds as we were walking back to the car....little did we know he is highly allergic to the weeds and broke out in hives within minutes of touching the stuff.

Kudos to Micah for getting some really great pictures of us....she earned her sitting fee on that day.

Here is the link to the pictures, you may have to register with your email to access it: http://www.pictage.com/1039764 

I think next year will just be the boys....after they have had a snack and a nap!

plugged what?!

tear ducts, plugged tear ducts. Grayson had a minor procedure to unplug his tear ducts. Almost all babies have plugged tear ducts when they are born and almost all of those little plugged ducts normally pop all on their own. Let a baby have a really good cry or massage the corners of their eyes and they'll pop no problem.

Well....sometimes they don't pop no matter how much you massage or let them cry. The solution is rather simple, stick a very sharp, thin needle in the duct and unplug them. We've know from about 4 months of age that Grayson would be having surgery if his tear ducts failed to pop on their own by the time he turned 1. At his 12 month well baby appointment, the first thing his pediatrician said was, "what are we going to do about his eyes?" Troy and I were pretty use to Grayson's funky eyes. Everyone commented that either he had just been crying (since his eyes were constantly tearing because they had no where to drain) or he was sick (since his tears couldn't drain, neither could the bacteria so he had funky goopy eye yuck - and yes, that's the medical term).

Since we only have a clinic on the base, there is no full hospital, everything beyond a cold gets referred out to the German economy. The insurance office actually takes care of the paperwork and schedules the appointments for you. It was super easy. The complicated part was 1) finding the hospital 2) finding the parking garage for the hospital (fyi - it's on the other side of the street, underground, behind the gas station) 3) finding the doctor's office

After finding the doctor's office we were asked if we have private insurance and since we have tricare it's considered private. We were whisked away from the massive waiting room with all the really unhappy looking people to another waiting room, that was much smaller and nicer and even had snacks and water out for the patients. When it was Grayson's turn with the doctor, he looked at Grayson for about 2 seconds and declared he had plugged tear ducts. To which I said, "Yes, yes he does." He suggested Grayson have surgery. I agreed. I spent another 30 minutes completing paperwork and Grayson was all set for April 27th at 8am.

April 27th rolled around. I don't think Troy and I slept much the night before. The procedure was very simple but they had to put Grayson out with full anesthesia. We got up bright and early to get Mayer to a friend's house for the morning and to get Grayson to the hospital by 745. After we got there and checked in, the kept Grayson with us until the last possible second. Once they took him back, we couldn't go with him. So instead, the anesthesiologist came out to us to give Grayson his happy medicine. And a nurse came out to give him some eye drops. The anesthesiologist said he would come back in 20 minutes to get Grayson and take him back. Grayson was hysterical when the drugs kicked in. He had a toy in his mouth like a dog bone and kept looking at Troy upside-down and poking him. He tried to stand and couldn't even stand up straight. They came out and got him and said they would bring him out in 45 minutes and then we could go down to the recovery room with him. The doctor came out about 45 minutes later to say everything went well and he ran some other tests. He was concerned that Grayson might also have glaucoma. Well, he said everything was normal, Grayson just has beautiful eyes. I'm glad I'm not the only one who can't figure out the color of my kid's eyes and the doctor is the head of the Ophthalmology Department. The clinic is named after the man for crying out loud. Anyway, back to seriousness, a few minutes after the doctor spoke with us, the anesthesiologist came out with Grayson in a little baby gurney. Grayson was freaking out....and that is putting it mildly. He couldn't hold his head up but he wouldn't lay down. He kept trying to lean over. So they let me hold him and he was flopping all over the place. I must have looked panicked, for both of the professionals told me it was all normal and he would be fine in a little bit. So we went into the recovery room and I stayed with his since only one of us could stay with him. Grayson proceeded to cry...I mean scream like I was killing him for an hour straight. The nurse gave him some pain meds to see if it would help, which it did a little bit.He finally fell asleep from such insane crying.  I am pretty sure we were discharged the first second she was allowed to let us leave. He had his procedure at 8:30am and he was discharged at 10:40am. We left with a prescription for some antibiotic eyedrops and that was it.

Looking at him, you would never know he had anything done, except for the fact that his eyes are no longer watery and goopy. The day of his surgery, after he woke up from his nap in the recovery room, he was totally fine. After all was said and done, it was a very good experience with an excellent outcome. Grayson is tough little boy who bounces back very quickly.

mayer

i know....it's been a while since i have updated you all on the exciting lives of the uhlmans and i'm sure you have all been checking here every day since the last post...

i realized i haven't talked too much about mayer. so today is all about mr. mayer.

 to start off a couple quotes he's come up with in the last few weeks...
     mayer: "mom, remember at my soccer game? did you think i was a lobster pushing everyone out of my way with my big tail?"
     me (trying really hard not to die laughing since i was on the autobahn): "no, i didn't think you were a lobster"
     mayer: "why not? at my next game can you pretend i'm a lobster?"
yes, mayer. i will most definitely pretend you are a lobster, because now that is all i can think of when i see you playing soccer.

and another quote, that i'm not too sure how i feel about but it's funny none-the-less....
mayer: "god died so he could use his super powers to kill all the dinosaurs"

and this isn't really a quote but for crying out loud it was funny. we were on the way to soccer practice and all of sudden, mayer starts crying. so i asked why he was crying and upset. he said, he was just thinking about how when he's 11 he has to get more shots and they are really, really going to hurt. so i replied that 11 was very far away and when he was 11 they wouldn't hurt that much. he said, "i'm already 5 and then i'll be 6, then 7, then 8, then 9, then 10, then 11. see...that's not very far away".

so now that you have had a little chuckle, here's the latest on mr. funny. he's playing soccer (insert pic of lobster) and he's doing fantastic! he loves it and actually pays attention to the coach and pays attention during the game - HUGE improvement from basketball.

mayer is in preschool at our local german kindergarten. he's doing well there and is learning german much faster and better than troy and me. he has a couple friends and looks forward to going each morning. i look forward to literally walking across the street and walking 5 minutes to take him to school. we have a parent-teacher conference next week so we'll see what's been going on.

i had a bittersweet moment last thursday when i registered him for kindergarten in the fall at the base. the bus comes here at 7am and brings him home at 3pm each day. i'm nervous for him to be gone all day and to take the bus, but all of this is going to happen at some point. i was looking forward to registering him and then when the lady said "welcome to patch elementary!" i said thank you, started crying, grabbed the school supply list and ran away. i'm such a dork. i know he will do really well at school, i'm just amazed the day has finally arrived for him to start elementary school. and speaking of the school supply list....what 5 year old needs 24 glue sticks?

mayer has become an excellent big brother. there are definitely days when i hear "mooooooommmmm, grayson took my _________ (fill in the blank)" about every 2 seconds. but most days, he's very patient with grayson and is more than willing to share just about everything. the other morning while i was getting ready, grayson kept jumping from behind mayer's door while waving and saying hi to mayer. and every single time grayson did that, mayer would stop playing with his legos, wave and say hi back to grayson. it was very sweet and made me smile. i think/hope they will be great friends one day.

more on mayer soon...