Party Time

Lots of fun things have happened here in Berlin since I last updated you all. Vigo's front teeth are growing in nice and straight and he is growing out of his pants, at least lenthwise. I think his waistline has barely budged the past two years! Here's a picture where you can really see how long he's getting. The other person in the picture is Erik's sister Iris.



Lately Vigo is starting to become very interested in swords, catapaults, daggers, shields, armor, and other weapons. He's interested in what the differences are between a Ninja's sword and a medieval knight's sword, for example. A couple weeks ago I took him to check out our local Christmas market and he fell in love with a wooden battle axe there. He went back a week later and bought it with his allowance. He spent over half an hour at this stand studying all of the toy swords, maces, and crossbows.



Vigo has also been talking to me about wanting to visit Paris. He can't remember anything about Paris, but he always tells everyone that this is where he is from. In late November, we had three friends come from Paris for a short visit. It was fun having visitors. We all love when guests come. It also gave us a good excuse to throw our first party. We invited a few people from my German class, a few people with kids from Vigo's school, and a couple other friends we've met here. It ended up being a great party. There was even a little dancing.

One of Vigo's closest school friends, Leander, ended up staying the night. Vigo's first sleepover in Berlin! Leander's mother is French/German and his father is German, but somehow they speak English at home and Leander speaks fluently, though he tends to sound like he just stepped out of a Dickens novel. One of his gems that weekend was said to our friend Pascal, who is a light sleeper: "Are you very fierce if you're awoken?" Here's a picture of the boys in the morning.



The next weekend, Vigo got to have another sleepover. Another good friend of his, Rosa Pearl, stayed here with Vigo and a really great babysitter while Erik and I went out with Rosa Pearl's parents to hear them play at a bar in Kreuzberg. Their band does experimental folk music, a little on the noisy side. Their names are Brian and Maryrose, and they're from New Zealand. Here's a picture of Vigo and RP at dinner time.



Last weekend was a little bit less exciting for Vigo. He was going to go over to Rosa Pearl's for the night, but she got sick and had to cancel. We did manage to squeeze in a park date with his friend Edward on Saturday. Edward and Vigo have a little bit more complicated a relationship than the one he has with Leander or Rosa Pearl. Edward has some rigid ideas about what kinds of clothes are for boys, and they don't include soft pink socks or shirts with glittery monkeys on them. It's caused some conflict and hurt feelings, but it seems like the bond of scatalogical humor, fart jokes, and pointing out penises everywhere is strong enough to hold them together! At the park they spent most of the time walking and talking to each other a mile a minute with lots of laughing. Edward's little brother John Jack was also there and Vigo found him totally charming. Edward finds the little brother understandably less charming. He told me, "He's not my little brother. He's my nightmare."

On Sunday, Vigo and I spent the whole morning making tiny sugar cookie houses for an Advent Party contest. We had to make 15!



Iris's cousin Ingo was hosting the party and the contest. Vigo took the cookie judging very seriously. Unfortunately for us, I didn't realize that there were considerable points being offered for organic and healthy ingredients. If only I had known! There ws also an exchange of junk you want to get rid of around the house which involved rolling dice and trading over several turns. Vigo came home with a flying skull, Erik a Christmas-tree shaped light-up outdoor decoration, and I got a wok cookbook.

For Christmas we're all going to spend a few days with Iris in Dessau. I can't wait! We'll take lots of hikes and bike rides in the woods. Vigo is starting to wonder when ski season is going to start. We're going to have to look into that more soon. I have heard from other parents at the school that the nearest place to ski is 3-4 hours away, which is about how far we were going last year. That's good news!

Vigo has an extensive Christmas wishlist that he has typed out. I expect he'll post it here before Christmas. He also has a very cute new stop-action movie of his math homework doing itself, which is almost finished!

Legoland, Election Night, Soap Bubbles, New Bike, Lost Teeth, and More

One of the most exciting things that has happened to Vigo in the past couple of weeks is that he lost his two front teeth. They were really dangling for a long time before they finally dropped. His nice big teeth are growing in now already.



A couple of weeks ago, Vigo and I took a Sunday excursion to Potsdamer Platz, to Legoland. This is sort of a deluxe indoor playground with a Lego theme.



They have a prety cool play area where you can build and test cars on a big ramp, build towers and test their structural integrity on an earthquake simulator, build elaborate houses, and so on.



They also have a little Miniland version of Berlin. This is a picture of the rock concert in front of the Miniland Reichstag.



We were at the Legoland place for a few hours. A nice 3-D movie is included in the fairly reasonable price of admission. For an indoor playground, it was fairly un-hell-like. The grown ups there didn't look like they were dying inside. A lot of us were playing legos. I personally spent a long time at the earthquake simulator trying to figure out why the 12-year-old next to me was able to build a gigantic indestructible tower while mine kept crumbling like shanty towns. Vigo, of course, was in heaven.

After a few hours we went out into the nighttime glory of Potsdamer Platz and the Sony Center, which is a really impressive building.





We were thinking about getting something to eat when we noticed that we were just in time to catch the beginning of Wall-E, which I hadn't seen yet. So we got some popcorn and popped into the multiplex before catching the bus home. I always enjoy going to the movies with Vigo. We should really do it more often.

On our way to the bus we noticed this exciting Tubing hill. Maybe we'll go back one day and try it out. Potsdamer Platz is also one of the places where you can still see parts of the Berlin Wall standing.



On election night, we took Vigo to the Democratic election party at the Babylon Theater, not far from our house. We brought along Vigo's sleeping bag and a pillow an found a good spot at the back of the theater, on the floor. The party started at about 9 and Vigo was asleep by about 10. Erik and I took turns hanging out with Vigo while the other one got to go mill around in the crown and talk to the people outside who hadn't been able to get tickets to get in. Because there are no open container laws here, if you have a party that overflows like this one did, you set up a little tent on the sidewalk and sell the overflow crowd beers. They had a big projection screen out there and a pretty nice, mild night.

We woke Vigo up at about 6 to hear the victory speech and then we biked home and had breakfast. I went to the school daycare at 8 am as usual to help supervise the kids, even though I hadn't slept yet. After that Erik went out for some breakfast before a nap. Vigo wasn't too tired Wednesday during the day, but he fell asleep pretty early that night.



Another great event since the last post is that we bought a sofa-bed. Renting a truck to go out and get the bed was a little bit of an adventure all in itself, but Erik pulled it off thanks to finding his French driver's license. Erik and I are not sleeping on the floor anymore, so my mood has greatly improved. Vigo is still in his camping gear, but he isn't complaining. He wants to design and build his own bed/rocket when we finally get into our permanent apartment. Here are a couple pictures of our living space.



Erik and Vigo used some of the packaging materials from the couch to do a little Saturday art project.



Last week, on Tuesday night, we went to an art opening that one of the other parents at Vigo's school was involved in. They were doing a video project with this soap-bubble artists they had met at a cabaret show called, "Soap." The kids were all mesmerized and we had a great time.





A lot of Vigo's classmates turned up for the opening and Erik took some of the kids to a little park around the corner for a little while. Unfortunately, Vigo's bike, which had a joint in the center of the frame, and springs, came apart at that joint while he was at the little park. Erik tried to strap Vigo's bike to his own to get it home, but the weight of Vigo's bike made the frame of Erik's bike twist in an nasty way and he ended up with his derailer in the spokes of his back tire. We ended up attaching the two bikes to a post. The boys took the train home and I met them on my bike.

Erik tried to fix Vigo's bike unsuccessfully and last weekend we got him a new, better bike. It has a great light, and a back rack, and is less generally bouncy.



Vigo is still enjoying school a lot. He's also starting to speak some German and his German teacher says that he understands pretty much everything in class. He's been reluctant to write for a long time now, but he's also starting to get over that some. He's working on a story about a character called Squirmy Wormy. He's been typing it up on the computer and I imagine that he will post it to the blog when he's done with it. He's very interested in blogging and trying to figure out some things in html lately.

The sun is going down pretty early here--at about 4:30 in the afternoon. It's 2:30 now, so Erik and I are going to get a little walk in before it gets really dark!

Little Ninja

Vigo had the great idea of being a gummi bear for Halloween and Erik got pretty excited about making the costume, but then somewhere later in the week, Vigo changed his mind and decided to be a ninja instead.



Erik decided to make the gummi bear costume grown-up size and the three of us went to a Kid Halloween party at my friend Natalia's house. She's from Brazil and is in my German class with me. She has a son who is 9. I was a boring old witch.



Vigo was a little bit shy at first because he doesn't really speak German yet, but eventually he started playing with the other kids and didn't want to leave. I went home at about 10 so I could have a nap before going out dancing with some of my other other classmates. Erik and Vigo got home at about midnight.

Vigo's two weeks of school vacation end this weekend, so Monday morning is back to the old routine. Vigo has been doing a lot of work on stop-action animation with Legos. He's editing one of his videos on the couch next to me right now. Look for something here from him soon!

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October

I have really let a lot of time go by since my last update. I lost my weekly rhythm when we took a trip to Dessau to stay with Iris. We had so much fun that I mostly forgot to take pictures. We brought our bikes and Sam with us on the train. Iris took us around Dessau and through the woods. We managed to scrounge a few chestnuts at the park and then Iris took us to a long road lined with apple trees. I hoisted Vigo up into the trees and he shook branches and picked the prettiest apples for us. Delicious apples! At one place along the road, there were a bunch of sheep who were extremely interested in what we were doing. Dan happened to be playing Parsifal with the opera in Dessau the night we were there, so Erik got the great treat of a free show.

Here we are at the train station. Our first train trip since we got to Europe.



While we were there we got to meet one of Iris's good friends and we borrowed a game called Carcassonne: Die Burg which we've been loving. I recommend it to anyone. In English it's called "Carcassonne: The Castle."



The next weekend was the Berlin Kids International School Open House. Erik volunteered to help people sign up for the mailing list in the office, Vigo was offering guided tours of the school, and I had volunteered to be the grillmeisterin with another parent. We had such a hard time getting our stupid coals lighted! It took five people over an hour to finally get the coals lighted, but in the end we succeeded and managed to feed the hordes of hungry people.

We've been going out pretty regularly to art gallery openings, which all of us really enjoy. Vigo's favorite piece at the last outing was a video made by drilling a hole in a crate and installing a camera in there to film the shipping. It had a great sneaky spy feel to it.



Vigo is on his first school vacation right now. It started a week ago. He was sick again for the last two days before vacation, but he's doing fine now. He's been able to catch up on all the math homework he got behind on while he was out. The parents voted to amend the no-homework policy to have kids bring home over weekends any math work they didn't finish in school. The teacher says the kids should be able to finish the work at school, but if they don't, then they'll bring it home for the weekend. He also has his weekly book report to do. He's been getting a lot better at writing, which was a real hang up for him for a long time.

Vigo has been enjoying hanging out at home during his vacation. He's been reading and doing some stop-action lego movie experiments. I think there should be a finished film to watch within the next week. Right now he's reading The Golden Compass. He just started it last night. He just finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl and really loved them. He and I read The Hobbit together over the past few weeks, too. Vigo says that The Hobbit is the best book he's ever read so far.

Vigo lost one of his top front teeth last week and the other one is barely hanging on. He looks like a Jack O'Lantern.



School is still going pretty well for Vigo, but he is having some trouble with his friend Edward and told me that he and Edward have not been playing together so much anymore. The problem with Edward is that he's got a pretty narrow and rigid idea of what kinds of colors, clothes, shoes, socks, ideas, and activities are for boys and which ones are for girls. Edward has been teasing Vigo for wearing fuzzy socks, having yellow shoes, liking books that have girls as main characters, and so on and so on. Generally the kids at this school are more rigid in their ideas of who can wear what than at Vigo's old school in Somerville. I think also the Somerville kids knew Vigo for years and were used to his occasional dash of pink.

The new pressure to conform is cramping his style a little bit, but Vigo's settled into a compromise of wearing his sparkliest duds on weekends. His current favorite shirt is shiny black with a glimmering light-reflecting dragon across the front. Vigo's not giving himself completely over to the navy-blue-and-khaki pressure, though. We went to the thrift store for some winter clothes and he completely rejected all of the adorable dark blue sweaters I suggested he try on, saying, "Dark colors are not my thing. I like bright colors only."

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Long Week!

We had a bit of a hard week this week. We started up by getting up at 5:30 AM on Monday morning to got the the Auslandersbehorde to try to get our residency papers sorted out. You see, there is a strike. Consequently, the next appointment is two months from now. BUT, if you come at 6 AM and get in line, you can also be seen without an appointment. Unfortunately, we did not have all the papers we needed, so we had to come back.

We were planning to go back the very next day, but Vigo woke up at 2:30 in the morning screaming in pain from an ear ache. We took him to a doctor on Tuesday morning. She immediately signed him out of school for a week and put him on antibiotics. We ignored the school note after Wednesday. He was already feeling much better, and was definitely fine to go to school. We took him back in today for a follow up and his ears are still a little clogged. This has been affecting his bike riding because his balance is off and has caused him to shout and say, "What? What?" a lot more often than normal. The doctor today gave him an interesting therapeutic tool. It's a little bulb with a balloon on it. He's supposed to inflate the balloon with his nostril (first one and then the other) several times a day to help force the fluid that is blocking his ears out.

So Vigo spent Tuesday and Wednesday home from school.

We went back again to try to get our papers early this morning, but we were told that they aren't seeing anyone who doesn't have an appointment today. Ugh!

We had a pretty nice weekend, mostly roaming around town on our bikes. The latest pictures are all on Flickr.