Although Lloyd is almost two, in many ways I consider this his first summer. The days of him sitting fixed in a sandbox and sticking foreign objects in his mouth are gone; he’s a full-fledged explorer now. Before and in spite of my eyes, our baby son has transformed into a little boy. He is fascinated by trucks (equally of the digging, emergency and hauling varieties), bugs, balls and roughhousing. But he also loves to cook, to vacuum clean, to play guitar and harmonica, to draw, to dance and sing, to read, to walk or just focus on some distant object for minutes at a time.

And now he loves bikes.

Bike-in-a-box

Bike-out-of-a-box

Bike ready for action

This month Lloyd tried out his new Laufrad (run bike) in our backyard. Inspired by the Flintstones, a Laufrad has no pedals and is instead propelled by pushing your feet directly off the ground. Once Lloyd hopped on it, he never looked back…or ahead…or in whatever direction he happened to be heading. Which is why we added this bell:

Ding-ding…or else!

The more American of you might recognize this mounted alarm device as a “baseball”. I found it at a local shop which displayed a rack of bicycle bells on the sidewalk. Tennis balls, soccer balls, golf balls, basketballs, bowling balls etc. I went into the store and asked for the baseball. The man behind the counter, in his late thirties perhaps, walked out to the rack to get the bell while I waited inside. A minute later he returned with the ball. A golf ball. I looked at the golf ball. “That’s a golf ball,” I said. He looked closely at the golf ball. “It is a golf ball,” he said. He continued looking at the golf ball for a few seconds, then said “Which one is the baseball?”

This brings me to the second reason I got him this particular bell: the bike we bought for Lloyd has to be the most common model on the German market. Three out of every five toddlers seem to be scooting themselves down the street on the very same bike of the same make, size and color. Such a thing can quickly disappear at the playground. To help those of you at home understand this better, imagine trying to find your SUV at a Wal*Mart parking lot or locate your khaki trousers again after coming out of the gym shower. Take your pick. How do you distinguish yourself in Germany amid a sea of uniformity? Easy: slap a baseball somewhere on you. Voilà! Instant sore thumb.

Godspeed, boy. I’m trying to keep up with you.

Lloyd on the loose

March, April and May in Germany seem to offer an endless stream of public holidays. No sooner is Good Friday over than we take a big Easter Break. And before you’ve even made a dent in your Easter basket, the ironically named Labor Day gives us yet another well deserved breather. Clearly never having heard the phrase “too much of a good thing,” the Germans rise once again to the occasion with Ascension Thursday. And just when you’re beginning seriously to wonder if even the kitchen sink gets it’s own holiday in this country, there comes Pentecost Sunday, which, despite its name and for the sake of keeping spring entirely work-free, is also celebrated on a Monday.

Normally on such three-day weekends, families pack up the Skoda or Audi and head for remote (in cozy Europe any destination beyond 20 km) destinations: lakes, forests, grandparents etc. The forecast called for rain from Friday through Monday, however, dousing our own Pentecostal plans of grilling and chilling at the grandfolks, so we had to come up with ways to keep Lloyd entertained.

On Saturday we went to the Dresden Airport:

Off to the airport!

First we took the train.

We weren’t the only parents with this idea.

Our plan’s working!

I’d like this size, please.

Today, Sunday, we took our first trip to the Dresden Zoo.

Giraffe and zebras

Are you sure we’re safe?

Father and son

Zooming through the zoo

Let’s call it a morning.

How can we top that tomorrow?

***Update*** Thanks to Ann in the comments section for confirming that I was never cut out for the Catholic business. Whit Monday is an honest-to-goodness holiday. This only leads me to the question: Is there an inverse correlation between the religiosity of a country and the number of religious bank holidays? And if so, isn’t that a form of freeloading?

One Little Lloyd filling diapers with poo. Along comes another and soon there’ll be two!

As poor a raconteur as I’ve been on this site, I feel obliged to provide those of you who still visit The Typing Chimps from time to time - and she knows who she is - with some hint of how I’ve been spending this winter. There is a short summary and a long summary of this. I’ll begin with the short:

Wiping Lloyd’s nose.

Fountain of youth

Still curious? Here’s the long version.

After finishing the six-week translation project in mid-November, I was happy to begin focusing on the teaching job I’d recently got at a local college. Working as a freelancer the last eight years had suited my disliking of nine-to-five jobs quite well. Ironically I often work longer hours for less pay, but the illusion of autonomy has always seemed a fair exchange. Even during Lloyd’s first year, when I was perhaps too eager to accept any paying reason to get me out of diaper duty, and our son’s highest demand was to have something colorful rattled above him, I never considered seeking - and here I have to suppress a shudder - permanent employment.

Amid all the baby-related advice I’ve received, I don’t recall anyone ever telling me that Lloyd would become a sentient being as early as his first birthday. Up until then I’d begun to feel my role as father largely consisted of operating the toys: shaking, sliding, swinging, pushing, pulling, spinning, tossing and rolling them. This sounds easy enough, but the challenge comes in finding the precise combination of these actions to elicit maximum smileage. And there are risks: one false move in the sequence can send an infant into a screaming-fit tailspin. But something happened around his 365th day that made him suddenly seem more … human - the way he looked at us, the way he acted, reacted and interacted. It’s difficult to explain, but these pictures might help illustrate:

Lloyd at 11 months 2 days: So lifelike.	Lloyd at just over 1 year - and fully sentient!

Now, playing with Lloyd means playing with Lloyd. When I show him things, I see he is interested. He’s developing distinct habits. And he tests us - oh, how he tests us! He is learning and changing faster than we can perceive - and I don’t want to miss too much.

When I started teaching English at the college this fall, I secretly hoped it would lead to full-time employment afterward, giving me the family time I’m looking for. I hate hope. Hope is the flirt at the bar that gets you to buy her another drink even when your brain is wildly waving the ‘No Chance’ flag. Hope is the good cop who’s just softening you up for the bad cop. If hope ever comes knocking at your door, turn off the porch light and draw the shades; maybe it’ll go away. Just before the Christmas break I got an e-mail from the head of the language department informing me that since the woman I wasn’t aware I had been replacing during her maternity leave was returning, they had no classes for me to teach in the spring. Thank you. You see? There’s Hope with me in the interrogation room, offering me cigarettes and coffee while his bruiser partner, Harsh Reality, is behind the two-way mirror, prepping the water board. So my search for stability and predictability continue.

I wasn’t going to let this misfortune sour my Christmas mood; that’s what in-laws are for. But I jest. Christmas with Katrin’s parents is the highlight of my year. Gabi, my mother-in-law, is the hardest working woman in Christmasland. Not only does she manage to prepare enough food to feed 9 people over 3 days, keep the house clean and still grace us with her presence, but you don’t even know she’s doing it. There are some people out there - me, for example - who perform a task and then make sure the world knows of their accomplishment:

Me: [Heavy sigh.]

Katrin: [Nothing].

Me: [Even heavier sigh.]

Katrin: [eyes rolling] Okay, what is it, Chris?

Me: Hm? Oh, nothing. Just…

Katrin: Yes?

Me: Well, it’s no big deal, really. But I just took out the trash, that’s all.

Katrin: Okay.

Me: Yeah, and it’s cold out. And raining, too.

Katrin: Yes, I can see that.

Me: And you didn’t even ask me to do it. And look! I’ve even put in a new garbage bag.

Katrin: Wow, all by yourself.

Me: [blushing] Aw, shucks. T’weren’t nothin’.

The big excitement this Christmas was Lloyd’s first haircut:

Hippie Lloyd	Bright-future Lloyd

Opa (grandpa) performed the ceremony in his basement workshop with clippers and a comb. To everyone’s surprise, he didn’t protest a bit - Lloyd, not Opa; nevertheless, he still made things difficult for Opa by trying to follow the movement of the comb. When the last locks had fallen to the floor, we were surprised by the change; he looked older, more mature. Then the air filled with a telltale stench: someone needed a new diaper - again, Lloyd.

After a break last year, I resumed my role as Santa:

Eat, Santa. Eat!

I want to like playing Santa in Germany, but I don’t. Aside from lacking the required, uh, corpulence, my cultural understanding of the traditional German Weihnachtsmann is sorely wanting. I don’t know the translation for ho-ho-ho, or the right way to ask a child if he or she’s been good. The Weihnachtsmann doesn’t have elves or reindeer to make small talk about, and he doesn’t come down chimneys (most people don’t even live in houses). I’m not even sure if there’s a Mrs. Weihnachtsmann or if Santa’s just living with his girlfriend, as is more common over here in ol’ librul Europe.

And, like too many other things in this country, Christmas in Germany is undergoing an antic transformation heavily influenced by American pop culture, misconceptions and stereotypes. Not even the Weihnachtsmann could escape this context-free ‘modernization’. Now he too appears more frequently as the fat, red-clad St. Nick (and if I hear one more native try to lecture me on Santa’s Coke origins, I’m gonna…) while the traditional German version disappears to Squaresville. Fortunately for me, Lloyd was the only toddler to witness my butchery of this holiday custom, and not even he looked too amused:

Just put the present down and back away slowly, weirdo.

To add to her already impressive résumé of atmosphere-enhancing skills, Gabi also entertained us with several Christmas carols on the piano:

I’m convinced she has a couple of body doubles cooking the goose, making coffee, telling stories, washing dishes, playing with grandkids and replacing candle stubs; otherwise, I’d have offered to help her out on occasion.

Next up was New Year’s Eve. With the exception of an unforgettable trip to Sweden for the new millennium, Katrin and I normally find ourselves in more subdued party environments on December 31^st, sometimes even intentionally. This year we rented an apartment with friends and friends of friends in nearby Bad Schandau on the Czech border.

Not bad, Schandau.

The final count was 12 adults and six children - a mere two-to-one ratio. We were hardly any match against our puerile adversaries, who had us fetching their toys, reading them books, singing them songs, dancing for them, spoon feeding them and wiping their asses at their beck and call. It’s not easy celebrating New Year’s Eve with children, but Katrin and I shared the burden:

He’s not heavy …	… He’s our son!

While Lloyd sat back and enjoyed the ride.

After a long-fought battle on the evening of December 31^st, the children retreated to their rooms and sought cover in their warm beds. Many of the parents were worn from the day’s skirmishes, barely able to stay up until midnight. Some didn’t make it at all. But Katrin, I and a few other hearty souls danced into the New Year, though things looked dubious at first; our self-appointed DJ never developed his musical taste past his second year in college and so subjected us to one &%$!@*# reggae tune after another. If there’s one thing I hate more than hope, it’s reggae; both crush your spirit with their relentless monotony until you either submit and stop thinking or resist and dig up that mix CD you stuffed in the diaper bag at the last minute.

Saved.

I hope wish you all a prosperous, peaceful, reggae-free New Year.

Boo!

A number of things have been haunting me this month.

• Suck it up. I hurt my knee mighty fine last month while working at this year’s grape harvest. But [heroic look toward the horizon] they needed me, so I pushed on. Now my knee isn’t hurting me anymore - it’s freakin’ killin’ me! I’ve called a doctor, but the appointment is still a way off. The worst part is I didn’t even get a lousy medal or nothing for ‘bravery in the face of adversity.’ I mean, sheesh!
• Child-care centers are simply over-sized petri dishes for developing the latest in childhood sicknesses. Since Lloyd started going full-time on October first, he has spent more days at home than with his co-toddlers. Some boys collect rocks. Others collect bugs. Ours collects viruses.
• So-called ‘childhood’ illnesses are nothing more than illnesses you’ve never had because you haven’t hung out with 16 other babies lately. Now that Lloyd shares pre-slobbered toys at the childhood-disease-petri-dish-care-center on a daily basis and then comes home and sneezes on us, Katrin and I have become unwilling participants in his immune-system-strengthening regimen. Colds, ear infections, fevers, 24-hour flus, frazzled nerves - our doctor has written so many sick notes for our family, his wife is beginning to suspect an affair. Why am I getting all these childhood sicknesses over again anyway? Didn’t I learn anything the first time?
• Friend-discounts are bad business. A year ago a German friend of ours asked me to translate his published book into English. I made him a decent offer, but he replied his independent publisher couldn’t possibly afford that. Aw, shucks, what’s several thousand euros between friends, right? The original plan was to do the job over the three winter months - at a time when I had few other jobs and was desperate to escape a screaming newborn. His publisher hemmed. His publisher hawed. By July I was writing e-mails warning that if they procrastinated much more, I’d have to bail. September is my most lucrative month, and this project was cramping my style. They called my bluff, and I flinched. Heck, I couldn’t say no to a friend. Now here comes the part where you toss up your hands and walk out of the cinema because that would never happen in real life: When they finally sent me the file to translate just recently, it was accompanied by an e-mail informing me they were on a very tight schedule and needed it next month. Tell ‘em to bite it! you implore me? Make ‘em squirm! Say it’s too late! Look out, the monster’s behind you! I signed the contract. I should have my provides-goods-and-services-in-exchange-for-money license permanently revoked.
• Every silver lining has its cloud. A month ago I applied for an English teaching position at a local college that I really wanted. I got the job. Whoopee. Now, on top of having to translate a 200-page book in less time than it would take me to read it, I have to prepare for, teach and grade about 20 teaching hours a week. Maybe I can plan lessons while laid up in bed with one of Lloyd’s take-home biohazards.
• Democracy. While it hasn’t kept me out of finer restaurants or relegated me to the backs of buses, the burden of sharing our current president’s surname these eight long years has certainly made me an easy and frequent target of the handful of witless wisecracks one would expect to find in any hobby comedian’s uninspired repertoire. And just when I thought I - not to mention the Office of President - couldn’t suffer any more insulting a humiliation than to be associated with that ignoramus, McCain chooses as his Number 2 (and she does stink) the most anti-intellectual blather-bag this side of, well … Bush. And those two could actually win! Why? ‘Socialism.’ Suddenly, people who could sooner tell you how many Cheesecake Factories are in the tri-state area than how many members make up the US Senate are experts on the inherent evils of a staggeringly complex economic and social theory.

Boo!

You don’t need a calendar in Germany to know when fall begins. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call any doctor, business, house of worship or government office, and if someone answers, then that holiest of German holidays, summer, must be over. This year Katrin and I have another sign that autumn has fallen upon us: Lloyd will begin daycare full-time tomorrow.

It’s all over; Katrin’s one-year maternity leave WITH 67% pay comes to an end today and with it the ability to see our one-year old son anytime she wants. To prepare Lloyd - and us - for the day when he’d be spending more of his waking time among other diaper soilers than with his parents, we began “acclimatizing” him to his new surroundings last month. The first week we stayed in the room with him for half an hour. The next week we left the room. The week after we went and got coffee. And by the fourth week we were taking last-minute jaunts to Prague and Paris. Lloyd seemed comfortable there from the first day as did we after meeting the caregivers - three middle-age women whose down-to-earth attitude and relaxed demeanor amid so much toddler-induced chaos made me feel I was leaving our son with three trusted aunts. During my brief career as a child rearer, I’ve learned that, as in politics and religion, parenting is strongly influenced by special interests and idealism. Finding a daycare center without a rigorous agenda based on organic food, anthroposophy, spiritual development, a germ-free life or learning Cantonese was somewhat trickier than I imagined. Before we started looking, my criteria for acceptable accommodations for Lloyd included qualified personnel who provided him three square a day and made sure he played nicely with others. Try finding that without a requisite hour of Yoga for Youngsters! When we finally did, we were both relieved and downhearted. Lloyd’s world just got a little bit bigger. And we won’t always be in it.