Reflections. OH! And, we finally have an oven!

Emma just had her seven month birthday, and I cannot believe how quickly she’s grown!

Two days ago, she was laying down and holding a toy over face. It reminded me of when she was four months old and was really excited about the toys hanging over her play mat. I've also noticed  how clean she is when she eats real food. When she was first eating solids, it was a good day when we didn’t have to give her a full bath immediately after a meal. Now, she only gets a messy chin and hands. She’s also changed what noises she makes. First we had the chicken noises, then the babbling, the grunting, the constant whining, the spitting, and now we’re back to sort-of babbling. She has gone from propped up sitting, to sitting on her own and catching herself to save her head when she topples. Her biggest achievement to date is pulling herself up on the furniture. She can crawl (well,it’s not quite “crawling,” but she is on the move!), and lately I declare victory if I can leave the room for 30 seconds and come back to find her in the same place!

She’s really a fantastic kid.

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We moved into the flat in July, and we finally have an oven and counter space!  So. This first picture is the sink/refrigerator/stove unit we’ve been using for the past few months. I’m really excited that we FINALLY have a proper place to dry the dishes (we can be lazy again, and let them air dry even if we want to cook. NOVELTY!).



Next, if you are standing next to the sink and looking toward the living room, this is what you see:



And finally (the prize!), the oven and counter! We have bona fide WORKSPACE!!



Eventually we’re going to put a washing machine in that empty space. We’re waiting for the time/motivation to carry over the old washing machine from Fabian’s brother. I think that spot will be empty for a while.

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So, I am going to try going back to bed now. It is about 2:00a, and I haven’t learned that I can’t sleep until 10:00a and have coffee after 4:00p in the same day…

A jumping/bouncing baby Emma

One of Emma’s newest favorite tricks is to bounce. She pulls this routine for 30-40 minutes at a time, usually when she is SO OVERTIRED and ready for bed, but still too excited to sleep. :) Welcome to my world!

Bouncing Emma from Erica Wilfong on Vimeo.

6 months and (almost) crawling!

Happy 6-month birthday (a little bit late), Emma! My little darling has gotten SO big, and I’m so excited!



Even though you can’t see them in the picture, she already has her first two teeth (bottom), and I dreamt that her next tooth broke the gum line… Maybe I should check when she wakes up. ;) She babbles (la, la, la, ba, ba, ba), which is AWESOME, but it makes her sound even more sad and pathetic when she cries and wails “ma, ma, ma, ma, ma!” And, she is almost crawling! She has the butt-high part figured out, and can sometimes get her entire torso off the floor.



She moves all over the place. When she’s at the edge of the bed, she will try climbing on the night table, and when she isn’t successful, changes directions to hang over the edge of the bed, at which point we grab her and either help her to the floor, or pull her back to the middle of the bed. Even though I love that she is getting mobile, I really miss knowing I could run to the bathroom without worrying that she was going to be into some mischief when I got back.

I’ve been keeping extremely busy. I took on two new freelancing projects, and I reel like I work full-time. The only time I get to work is when a) Fabian is home and can watch Emma, or b) when Emma is napping. Since Fabian is in grad school, he also has a ton of work to do. And, Emma decided that the world is a wonderful and exciting place, and won’t sleep for a long time during the day. Not only is it exhausting, but it means that I am working at every single moment that I am off of baby duty—for an hour or two throughout the day until 11:30p or midnight. (Now do I get a pass for neglecting my blog?)

My German is coming along, and when I took the placement test last week I placed into Deutsch 5 (B1,1) essentially skipping an entire level of classes! I surprised myself testing into B1; I was convinced I’d be in A2,2, but I guess it makes a big difference when you’re exposed to the language all the time. I start German class on October 9th.

My good test results inspired me to make phone calls to make the appointment for Emma’s next check-up (success!), and a dentist appointment for me (failure! The dentist’s receptionist gave up on me when she didn’t understand my name and just said “Ok, bye bye!” so I don’t know if I actually have a dentist' appointment on October 15.).

Lastly, I've been giving serious thought to what I want to do in the next few years. Because we have Emma, and we need to establish ourselves, we don’t have the option to experiment with different jobs/studies to see what we like best. I’ve been toying around with a bunch of ideas, all of which involve some form of higher education in Germany, thus needing me to get to B2 level German really quickly. So far, I am most excited about switching gears completely and entering the medical field. I’ll keep you posted when I decide something.

Carrots, my oh my!

Today’s headline: Emma eats real food, and has a tooth! And almost a second tooth! Woohoooooo!!

The first time Emma had carrots, she was really confused, and not at all convinced that carrots were delicious. However, the second time, she was nothing but enthusiasm!

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Backtracking to a week before she had carrots, our friend Mari visited, and Emma got to meet another Erasmus Auntie!



Mari was here for a few days, then the Würzburg crew came and hung out. It was ridiculously warm, and we had a barbeque. Emma was absolutely hilarious and attempted to eat Fabian’s sunglasses.

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In the real world (opposed to my Emma centered universe), I’m struggling to accept being almost friendless, very bored, and constantly stuck in the house. Fabian officially started his Masters in History at the Universität Mannheim, and when he’s gone I play super mom and get an overdose of baby talk, cooing back at Emma, and waiting for naptime when I can get some real work in.

We need to juggle our schedules so that I can take the next German class, which is five days a week in the mornings or evenings. Since Fabian has classes five days a week in both the mornings and evenings, we haven’t figured out how it will work yet. I’m also (still) working on mastering driving stick, and getting my German license is still on the to do list. 

I’m pretty desperate to meet other people and create a network in Germany. Later today we’re going to the “Eltern Kind Café” meeting today for student parents where Fabian studies. Maybe I can make another friend?

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Back in Emma-land, she can almost sit on her own, and can balance herself using the arches over the play mat. 

When she fell over, she discovered she could eat the mirror…

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It’s cooling off here, and we started getting Emma ready for the fall. Fabian’s been pretty awesome at finding hats for Emma, and the trend continues with this one!



I’ve decided we must make a trend of amazing hats. And that Emma looks strangely like my sister Adrienne in that picture.

Beach holiday

We went to the beach with Fabian’s family today. It was the first time Emma was at the beach, and she was so stinkin’ cute! She slept in the car on the way to Heddesheim, and when we got there she insisted on riding “explorer style” in her kinderwagen (she’s too big for the bassinet thing, but not quite big enough for the sportwagen thing where she can sit, so we put the sun shield all the way down so she can ride facing forward on her elbows).



Once everyone was settled, I took her over to the water. First, she stood on the wet sand, then tentatively stuck her foot into the water.



The water was a little bit cold, but she giggled and started kicking and splashing.



Then, Fabian came over and took a turn holding her in the water. Fabian adventured with her and stuck her in calf-high! She was less convinced that it was fun, but she was still a happy girl.



When her feet felt a bit too cold, we went back to the shade to play, and Emma entertained us all!





It’s so cool to see Emma experience all these new things for the first time, and I absolutely love it!

Today, I learned that I’m a terrible rower. Fabian’s brother Paul has a raft boat, and I went on the lake with his sister, Lilly. We were beached, and when I finally got us out, I could only successfully paddle in circles… Hilarious!

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In other news, I’m working on our curtains! I promise to post pictures when they’re finished.

An afternoon in Ladenburg

We went on an afternoon jaunt to Ladenburg this weekend. My birthday is tomorrow, and since we won’t have time to do a whole lot on my actual birthday, we went on the weekend instead.

To get to Ladenburg, we had to take a hilarious river ferry, which cost us 1,20€ each way, and each trip took all of 6 minutes. While we were waiting for the ferry on the way to Ladenburg, we watched a family encouraging a well dressed older woman to get into a canoe and row down the river. Just before the ferry arrived, there was a great big commotion, and we realized that the canoe tipped and the woman fell in! Everyone in her family (well, I don’t actually know if they were her family, but I can assume…) jumped to help, and the disgruntled lady climbed out of the river. I have to say, this woman must have quite a sense of adventure. I quite enjoyed being an onlooker. :)

Ladenburg is a pretty town from the late Middle Ages with history dating to Roman times. We walked around for a few hours, and when we finally decided to sit down for an afternoon coffee and cake, the café was out of cake! I was sorely disappointed, and we ended up at a weird Italian restaurant/ice cream bar and had traditional German “Eiskaffee” (a coffee and vanilla ice cream drink, topped with whipped cream).

It was a nice afternoon, and a fun excursion for my birthday weekend.

Busy, busy!!

So I’ve been  really busy, and neglected my blog. I missed Emma’s 3 and 4 month birthdays, and I finished the chairs and the table. Here’s an update!

Emma at 3 months:



Emma at 4 months:

Her favorite trick is rolling over (back to front), then wiggling her butt and kicking her feet—she’s trying so hard to crawl! She wakes up in the middle of the night to practice rolling over and holding her head high, but she usually gets pretty upset because she’d rather be sleeping; I’d prefer that too since I’m not a fan of waking up six times every night!!

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Next, we finally have a place of our own, even if it’s in the basement of Fabian’s grandma’s house. We now live in a 2 room (1 bedroom) apartment. We spent a bit of time cleaning and painting, and I must give Fabian’s dad a bunch of credit because he was a total champion to help us get things done. (And by help us I mean he took it upon himself to do most of everything…) We did do some painting though, really! I even had a super duper painting outfit. :)



I really wanted to help paint since Fabian’s family has already done so much to help us. So, I was put in charge of painting the edges in between the wall and ceiling.



Fabian helped when I had to stop to feed Emma. He got wicked frustrated!! (I thought it was hilarious, even if that’s not terribly nice of me…)

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I finished the chairs (they all have nice comfy cushions) and I refinished the table! To do the seat cushions, I took some foam, and cut it to the same size as the original seats. Next, I got really handsy with a staple gun, and pulled the fabric nice and tight to create a nice, rounded cushion on top.



Next, I cut the excess fabric to make it look nice on the bottom, and so that you couldn’t see the mess hanging down if you looked at the chair from the front.



And, ta-da! I think it looks pretty damn awesome…



Next, the table: This nice, old table from Fabian’s grandma needed some love. This is what it looked like (sans drawer) when we got it.



And, this is how it looked at the end:



After sanding the table, Fabian’s dad helped me replace the linoleum table top (a thing with old German tables) with extra linoleum he had from a previous table project. If we’d bought our own linoleum we would have chosen a different color, but since it was free, we took it.

I think it looks pretty cool with our chairs. :)

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The first morning we were in the new flat, Fabian made me an amazing pancake breakfast!



I promise, as soon as we’ve finished unpacking and have a presentable space, I’ll share pictures with you.

Till next time!