Esther's sister and her family went home this morning after breakfast. We had a late breakfast because everyone was taking advantage of the opportunity to sleep in, and Olaf bought a ton of mett which made me very happy. It was fun having them here, and I hope that it's not too long before we visit with them again.

Having Marlene here was especially good for Gustav. Since he’s the oldest child, he doesn’t really have any one else to learn from. With Marlene here, Gustav was watching her intently and wanted to spend every moment possible with her so that he could copy what she did. If Marlene wanted a piece of bread with butter, Gustav wanted a piece of bread with butter. The most important thing, though, is that Gustav decided that he wanted to get himself dressed, since Marlene dresses herself in the morning. It was kind of crazy, because yesterday morning Gustav had decided that he wanted to wear a diaper, not only at home while they were playing but also when they went out to spend the day in Weiden. Not only did he wear the diaper, but he used it as well, which is different than simply wearing it. But then last night Gustav watched Marlene change from her clothes into her pajamas and decided that it was something he could and wanted to do, too. Last night he put his pajamas on and this morning he got dressed all by himself, for the first time ever. This is huge, because he gives us (and by us I really mean Esther) the most trouble when it’s time to get him dressed or ready for bed. Now that he’s shown us he can do it on his own, hopefully she won’t have to fight with him anymore because he doesn’t need our help anyway. As far as his English goes, he mostly says yes instead of ja, and he can count to 2 (because that’s how many scoops of chocolate he’s allowed to put in his cocoa). Lately he’s been leaning his head on my arm and cuddling with me at the dinner table, and the other day he grabbed my hand and held it while he was eating his ice cream. He’s just learning how to draw faces, so his pictures are starting to look a little more like drawings and not just scribbles. He drew a picture today and then handed it to me and said “Das ist fuer deine Mama.” So, Mom, you have a picture from Gustav. He’s precious.


Unlike Gustav, Pauline has turned into a little monster. It's no big surprise, just the typical "Terrible Twos" but she's awful right now. Everything is hers, and even if it's something like your toothbrush, which is completely worthless to her, or your grandmother's antique china, which she knows she's not allowed to have, she insist that you give it to her now and let her keep it until she's done, or it's broken. She throws a huge fit because we won’t let her have olive pits (she doesn’t care about the olive, only the pit) but then when you give her an olive because she’s agreed not to swallow it, she immediately swallows it. If she attempts to do anything and it doesn’t work exactly the way she wants it to her immediate reaction is to scream and yell and be angry with you for not helping, even though she just yelled at you for trying to help. She’s stopped using words to express frustration or anger; she just screams and cries for everything. Now she’s in the habit of not going to sleep at night. She sits in her bed for at least an hour, singing and yelling and crying and pounding on the walls. It’s gotten to the point where I had to go into her room and tell her to knock it off because she was keeping me awake. And then yesterday, within a period of about 2 seconds, she pulled my hair, tried to bite my nose, and stabbed me in the eye with her thumb because she didn’t want me to change her diaper. I could probably go on forever about Pauline right now, but like I said, it’s just typical behavior for her age and it’s really no big surprise. When she’s not being an absolute terror she’s still the cutest thing in the world.

Amelie still continues to follow me around the house. Esther told me the other night that the priorities in Amelie’s life are Olaf, then me, then everyone else. She also said that before I got here Amelie never used to be as concerned about affection as she is now. Not that she was ever ignored or denied affection, just that she was perfectly content to sit in her little bed and hang out. She’s very independent (especially for a dog) and it wasn’t that important to her to sit with her people or cuddle or anything. Now, she follows me around the house, cuddles with me on the floor, puts her face up next to mine on the bed to give me kisses, sits with her head in my lap during dinner, all kinds of sweet little signs of affection.

I forgot to mentionthat last week I had my first full conversation in German with a stranger. Normally when I go places that I have to deal with an issue or people, at some point we end up having to speak in English because I just get lost on certain things. But when I was in Cologne on the 23rd to visit the Christmas markets one last time I needed to go into the bank because I wasn't able to use my cash card. When I say I couldn't use it, I literally mean that it wouldn't even go in the ATM or any other bank machine for that matter. So I had to go into the bank and try to explain what was happening with the card. It actually went really well. I was able to tell him what was wrong, that I had tried to use it in 5 different machines and none of them worked, and I was able to answer all of his questions. The only problem I had was when he asked me for my passport. As important and basic as that is, for some reason I always get confused when someone asks me for my passport. But even then, all he had to do was say passport instead of Pass (I know, there's no reason not to get that one) and everything was fine. It was kinda fun and I was proud of myself. I'm really looking forward to being in a harder language course next time. I just bought myself a German thesaurus to help with my vocabulary, too. I refuse to leave her without feeling comfortable having a conversation with a stranger in German.