The rest of June, July, and a little bit of August: Part 1

The time I posted was a week before I flew to the US for the summer. Since then, I have been intensely busy, traveling all over, spending lots of time with family and friends, and going to bed ready to pass out just about every day! Now I finally have a chance to make up for some lost time.

June
About  ten days before we were going to fly to the US, we met some of my family friends for a day in Freiburg. Never mind packing for a four-month trip, we had people to see! The day was overcast and a little bit humid, but it was still a nice day to be walking around. 

Fabian and I drove the hour and a half to Freiburg in the morning so that we could have some time in the morning to do some sightseeing. The city is quite beautiful and we enjoyed the walk; Emma enjoyed chasing the pigeons—with Papa’s help, of course.

It was so much fun to catch up with Bob and Laura over a potato lunch at the aptly named Kartoffelhaus (potato house) restaurant. I thought it was particularly awesome that they detoured north so that we could visit. :)

After lunch we all walked around together for about an hour, and Emma let us all know who the boss was. At the time, Emma could only walk with help, and she wanted to walk, and she led us all around town.  I mean really, how could we refuse when she looked SO HAPPY?!!

***

With four days until departure, we had one ridiculous day when all hell broke loose. I had been having tooth pain for a few days, which I’d been ignoring, but that morning when I was brushing my teeth, I lost a filling from a different tooth! So now I had to call the dentist and was able to get an emergency appointment 1.5 hours later.

It turns out that the tooth that had been hurting for a few days was just from my gums being slightly inflamed. The dentist gave me some sort of awfully bitter tasting medicine where I had the most pain, then took impressions to replace the old plastic filling with a porcelain filling. Two hours and almost 500€ later, and my teeth were fixed.

When we got home, I was going inside to grab the stack of newspapers to fold so that I could deliver them, and heard this strange noise that sounded like something between static and crackling and after investigating the noise, I discovered that we had water leaking from a random place in the middle of the ceiling. Fabian looked at it, called his dad, his dad drilled a hole into the ceiling to see what was going on, and before you knew it, a big fat chunk of ceiling was on the living room floor and our flat smelled like moldy concrete.

The ceiling had stopped leaking, and the mess was cleaned up, and we just had to realize we weren’t going to deal with it in the few days before we left.

A few weeks after the fact, we learned that the ceiling had been repaired and the wall repainted.  I am curious to see how it all looks when we get back to Germany.

***

It wasn’t the same crazy day, but sometime in that same week we learned that Fabian’s great aunt was diagnosed with cancer. We visited in the last few days before we left just in case we wouldn’t see her again. As of August, she is still around, but not doing well.

***

When I had booked the tickets to go to the US, I made a mistake with the dates and instead of flying together, Fabian and I were flying one day after each other, so I had a nice 10-hour flight alone with Emma to look forward to.

When we were at the airport, one of the airline employees was very excited to tell us that the flight was overbooked, and would we consider volunteering to fly the next day? They offered a 900€ voucher and one night at a hotel—heck yes I’d volunteer. I waited with Emma by the ticket counter until the very last minute, but it didn’t end up working out. If one more person had shown up for the flight, I could have flown the next day. Oh well, I’d already psyched myself up for it, and I was actually relieved that I didn’t have to think about getting ready for the flight all over again. So, Emma and I flew together. (She is such a good traveller!) The only hard part was that I had to keep waking her up to switch planes/get in the car/whatever, and she was so unhappy to be woken up… We crashed at Sarah’s house in Nashville and hung out until Fabian arrived the next day.

***

We had a good time in Nashville. I got to meet my niece for the first time; Emma started walking all by herself; and I had some much needed quality sister time.

Emma was super cute with Kira. Every time Emma poked her cousin, Kira made noises! It was a long game of cause and effect. Emma learned how to say Kira (Kee-a, which has recently been transformed into Kee-ga) and baby, and understood that Kira was littler than she, and was therefore the baby. This was also the time when Emma discovered the dishwasher, and she was excited to “help” me put dishes away in the mornings (which meant that I had to quickly stack dishes as she handed them to me while ensuring nothing went splat on the floor).

Because Emma started walking on her own, we went to buy her a pair of shoes. Oh boy was that a drama! Emma has a harder time with most males who encroach into her personal space (Opa, Grandpa, and uncles included), and of course the man at the shoe store had to measure her feet. One might think he was trying to chop off her foot instead of merely holding it up to the size measurement thing. After getting her calmed down from shrieking and wailing, the woman measured her foot, and we FINALLY knew what size she needed. We tried on one pair of sandals that were adorable, but made Emma walk like a duck (she really looked uncomfortable), and settled on a pair of Stride Rite shoes because she moved well in them. 

I also started to fulfill my promise to myself that I would start doing some yoga to help with depression problems. I squeezed in three yoga sessions into the two weeks I was in Nashville, and felt very good about that.

My mom drove down to Nashville at the end of June to pick us up and take us all back to Chicago.