Day at the zoo's playground (Sunday, Nov. 1)

Since it was a nice day and there's nothing else open on Sunday we decided to go to the zoo again. But this time one of our main goals was to capture the complete insanity of its playground. It is (I think) the cream of the crop when it comes to dangerous playgrounds and as such will probably be the last in our series while we're here! (I don't see us getting to a lot more playgrounds now that it has gotten colder and we'll have a tiny baby to bring soon too! But you never know, we may be inspired!)

So let's start with an overview. Here's a picture of the park in general. It was a madhouse. Like I said, nothing else to do on Sunday. Also, as an interesting sidenote, there appears to be a competition among German parents to see who can get their child to sweat to death first. This isn't very obvious from the following pictures, but let's just say that on this day it was over 50 degrees and I saw a child in a snow suit. I'm afraid we won't be here long enough to find out what these kids wear when it's actually cold out!





Okay, now for a better look at that slide, or pipe, or tower of terror, call it what you want. Don't stand at the bottom of this one folks, the kids come out of there like bullets! It's unbelievable.



And this is how you get to the top of the slide. It's just like a mess of sticks in that tower!


And next comes the battering ram. Sadly, this piece of "equipment" does not have 20 children on it like the first time we were there, that makes it look especially dangerous. I especially like when kids stand on the sides of it and get knocked to the ground. This day I only managed to capture these two boys practically airborne.

Despite the danger, we did let Gianna have fun at this playground! (This is not the crazy slide, but rather a much smaller, tamer one!) And Doug wishes he was 8 again so he could enjoy it more. In a word, he thinks it's "awesome."

Playing at home

Here are just a few pictures and a video of us, well not me so much, playing around the house.

Coloring is one of Gianna's favorite activities lately and she likes to make her own little seat out of chair cushions. When she sits like this she also pretends that she's writing stories (something she saw on a cartoon), but it's really funny to hear her say, "Let's see, what should I write?"

This is Gianna in a "car" that Daddy made for her on our bed. She likes to steer the green pillow steering wheel. Too cute.

Gianna's puppy dog that we've had since last Christmas just got a name from Gianna's very imaginative mind. He's Max and he is an almost constant companion for Gianna and Daddy's adventures. In this video they're on a "train" and Gianna is tickling him on their way to a castle.

Last weekend (Sat, Oct. 24)

Last weekend we made our last little road trip before Baby Mark arrives. So now I think we've seen everything we wanted to given our short time here and our travel limitations (i.e. always having a toddler with us and now being very pregnant and wanting to stay close to home!).

So we went to the middle of nowhere, a little town called Wies, home of Wieskirche (Wies Church). Why is a church in the middle of nowhere interesting? Well, mostly because it is a place of pilgrimage for Catholics. In the 1700's in a small chapel in Wies, a statue of Jesus cried real tears. The small chapel quickly became overrun with people wanting to see the statue; so many people, in fact, that they had to build a much larger church, Wieskirche.

And, boy did they outdo themselves! As you can see, I hope, it is a gorgeous church. You can see the statue on the altar behind the priest (giving a tour not a homily as we originally suspected!). The detail on all the statues and artwork is just amazing. And, by the way, the original chapel still exists...in the parking lot.

Gianna liked looking at the church, but mostly enjoyed the chickens that were, almost literally, right outside the church doors. She also liked peeking (a new favorite thing to do outside) around the trees in the parking lot. Ah, toddler life.

After visiting the church, we made the short drive to Oberammergau. We'd been there in the summer after visiting one of the castles, but wanted to go back to shop a bit. So we bought a cuckoo clock. I really wanted something to put in our home that will always remind us of our time in Germany. And what says Germany more than a cuckoo clock? Let's see, what else did we do there? Not much, but Gianna liked sitting on this little train.

Nonna and Pop-pop visit!

Doug's parents (Nonna and Pop-pop) were here for almost 2 weeks and left a week and a half ago (I'm SO behind, I know!). They were extremely busy while here, spending time in both Italy and Prague, and eventaking a day trip to Salzburg with us.

Gianna loved having Nonna and Pop-pop to play with. They were kind enough to baby-sit while I had a doctor's appointment so she even got to go to the park with them! Gianna and I did some touring with them around Munich during the week when Doug was at work. And the weekend we spent together was jam-packed with activities.

In Salzburg we met up with Pop-Pop's cousin Joe and his wife Patricia who live in Italy. It was supposed to rain there all day, but we didn't see a drop and enjoyed a lovely afternoon of shopping and lunch with family we don't get to see too much! I'm glad Gianna and I both got to meet them!

On Sunday, we went to the Chinese Tower biergarten in the Englischer Garden for lunch. Since the band plays on Sundays, Gianna was thrilled! She was finally reunited with her tuba after a long separation. After chickens, wursts, beers, and fried dough, we were stuffed!

On Monday we said goodbye. We were so happy to have visitors! Gianna still talks about the things she did with them while they were here: "crazy driving" in the stroller with Pop-pop and playing with "Nonna's things."

One of Gianna's new "Nonna's things" favorites...we may need to get some of these to tame that mop!

Oct. 8, 30 years old and 34 weeks pregnant

I had a hard time remembering that it was my birthday. So 30 came and went without too much excitement. But I had a great day (despite Gianna's less than stellar mood). I made myself a birthday cake. A much more successful venture this time since my mother-in-law brought me a Pillsbury Funfetti cake from the states. It was absolutely delicious! (Thanks Nonna/Judi!) Doug and Gianna and I went out for a Mexican dinner that was very good with unusually fast service, which is always appreciated with a 2-year-old at the table. After Gianna went to bed my in-laws returned from their trip to Prague and celebrated with me with cake and presents. Doug got me a set of 4 wine glasses that are very German in style. My grandmother had some and I'd never seen them anywhere besides her house, but here they're everywhere and I love them. I can't wait to bring them home and use them. Here are a few pictures to mark the occassion and the belly-size.

October 3, A day at the petting/feeding zoo

I'm way behind on my blogging! Last weekend, while Doug's parents (Nonna and Pop-pop) were in Italy for the weekend, we decided to visit Berg Tierpark, a petting zoo of sorts. It was quite an interesting place. Part of it was like a big (scary) playground and the rest had all sorts of animals that you could feed and/or pet like chickens, bunnies, goats, sheep, and deer. Most animals were caged or fenced, but you could walk among the deer which was kind of neat. Gianna liked the idea of feeding them, but didn't want to get too close. In the video she says, "Go away" to the deer quite a few times, but she wasn't overly scared. I don't know if she was intimidated by the big white stag, but I was a little and the other deer definitely were! We've never seen anything like him before.

Gianna probably liked the little ferret things (see video) the most. They weren't interested in our food, but she enjoyed having long "conversations" with them, though the video doesn't really capture that.

We didn't do much of the playground stuff except play in the sand because it was definitely geared toward older kids. I can see a 5-year-old really loving it there. Doug decided to check out the slide. In this case, though, "slide" was more like a euphemism for "free-fall in a pipe"! Unfortunately there are no pictures because the slide went through the ground like a tunnel, but Doug says the descent was nearly vertical. Good thing they provide rugs so that kids can go faster on them! Yowsers!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Gianna!

On Tuesday Gianna turned 2! We can't believe it! She had such a fun day. It started with the arrival of her Tweety Bird balloon. She loved throwing it up in the air and dragging it around. Then we spent the early afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa at Oktoberfest where her every whim was indulged. She was too scared to ride the kiddie rides, but she enjoyed watching them and she really loved her ice cream cone, cookie necklace, giant pretzel, and doing "cheers" with Grandma and Grandpa.

The big celebration came in the evening, but it began with some major excitement when the Tweety balloon blew out the window!! We live on the 6th floor and I thought we'd lost it for sure. But it's a weighted balloon so it floated down to the street where a man caught it and was happy to hand it over to Daddy who had run out to rescue Tweety. Daddy, you're our hero! Then we had one of her favorite dinners: Nurnberger wursts and potato chips, followed by gifts, and birthday cake (Gianna was only interested in the sugar butterflies on top...thank goodness I included them!).

The birthday cake was quite an accomplishment. Turns out they don't sell traditional cake mixes here. So I found a cupcake mix marketed for little kids and decided to make a cake out of it. Well, this box only made 12 small cupcakes (like the size of mini muffins) so the batter didn't exactly fill the cake pan. So basically I made a thick pancake. Then my attempt at icing. I followed a recipe we had, but I guess German cream cheese is different than ours because the icing turned out really runny. So I had to take the cake picture fast before the words slid right off!

The above picture deserves an explanation. This is her new knight hat. She doesn't always like it and she got very upset when Daddy and Grandpa kept lifting up the visor to look at her. So we call this photo "The Sad Knight."

Sorry there are so many pictures. They're all so cute I just couldn't narrow it down. And here are some bonus pics of some of the more insane adult rides at Oktoberfest. I guess adult rides are like the children's playgrounds: dangerous! Those swings go like 10 stories in the air and are one of the few rides that doesn't go upside down!


And for your viewing pleasure, here are two videos. One of Gianna playing with Tweety and another enjoying her new animal keyboard.