Frühlingserwachen - spring finally seems to have arrived in Germany and Austria...

[LinzerTorte]

... or at least I hope so.

For everyone in Germany and Austria, and anyone else who would like to chat!

Morning all, Dd been sick all weekend, threw up once on Saturday when we stopped at a restaurant for food and had fevers off and on since...thought she was over it last night, but this morning she's still refusing all food :( she's not eaten anything for 3 days...tho she is drinking juice and peeing still so not too worried yet. (and she did take some ice cream yesterday)
Need to do a major store run tho because I sent dh to store on Saturday and he didn't get any basics (like I told him to) and so we've no bread, milk, juice,cheese, cooking oil, butter, or eggs... but we do have chips, refried beans, coke and curry powder ??? (men are weird)

Hope everyone else is over the sickness in their houses... and had lovely weekends
x

Morning, sorry to hear about all the sickness going around. Bebe, I think as long as you're getting fluids into your dd she should be OK. Even if it's just small drinks but often.Hope she recovers soon.

Our heating went off on Sunday. Some people have just fixed it now. It's mild outside thank goodness but the dc were cold this morning when they got up - infact they were both up really early, before my alarm and left to warm up by the school heating.

Spoiled my day too because I saw our Hausmeister when they came to fix the heating. He's a cheeky con man and always turns up with his fat mate, like a couple of Diebe. I know they aren't but - the hausmeister needs a lesson in being polite to his elders. Lol, how old does that make me sound! Haven't got any PG Tips left so I'll have to go and have a double tea-bag cup of German tea now to calm down.

Oh dear, Ernest it doesn't sound as if you had such a good time? What happened? I bet you're really looking forward to getting home and having your boys back too.

Lovely and sunny here this morning so I've just put the washing outside to dry, which I haven't been able to do for ages. The baker's has now put a couple of tables outside so spring must be here!

DH left for Brussels at 5 am this morning and will be away until Wednesday night, so I'm looking forward to a couple of evenings pottering around on my own! I always stay up far too late when he's away so will have to make a real effort to get to bed at a decent hour tonight.

Ernest You sound like me after I've been at my parents' a few days. Somehow, though, I seem to forget what it's like when I'm back in Austria.

bebe Hope your DD is feeling better today. I always make sure I send DH shopping with a detailed list, but he's usually pretty good about sticking to it.

admylin Hope the tea has helped you to calm down now. I get really annoyed and upset about people being rude too; I wish I was less sensitive.

It's still abit cold to sit outside but I guess the beer gardens will be up and running soon too. It's the main hobby of my dh and dc to visit beer gardens in summer infact dd wanted to go to one yesterday! We went for a meal instead in the evening.

There must be a way to get de-sensitised to rudeness but the Hausmeister makes my blood boil.

Dh found out yesterday that next Friday his brother is getting engaged in India. He obviously can't go but over there the engagemnet party is almost as big as the wedding party.

admylin - do you know when the wedding will be? Will you be going?

ernest - sorry your visit hasn´t been as great as you´d hoped. Have you decided what you´re going to do about the flat.

Psammead - welcome, where abouts are you?

Linzer - I love having the evenings to myself when dh is away.

bebe - hope your dd is feeling better today.
Ds got over his sickness bug really quickly and so far the rest of us have avoided it, although it´s probably tempting fate just typing that.

managed to get to store, but dd insisted on the pushchair not the wagon, so couldn't get everything.She's obviously still very sick as she only got out for 5min to play at park and is now squirming, but wanting me to hold her. :( She did just eat a little granola bar (which I called cake to get her to eat) but now she's burping loads .... waiting for the throw up...

Hello from a Spring in Vienna...hurrah! Sorry to hear about illnesses, rudeness, mothers and mothers in law that drive one mad.

hello to psammead (craving chocolate digestives now and not even pregnant so can´t get them on prescription!) and 2and1ontheway. Your description of life in a village made me feel bad for having children cooped up in a flat in the middle of Vienna.

C4ro, - sorry not much help on the British food (I have a Spanish stomach) but I shall check out the normal shop shelves and report back. Hope your dd feels better soon.

Linzer-did you go to the Prater? We live about 30 mins walk from there. But dh works on Saturdays so I have sorted out swimming classes for the dds and while they swim ds and I muck about in the water. It´s a real chore which I am trying to learn to love. Enjoy your evenings, I also stay up far too late when dh is away. He came back from Germany on Sat and was having trouble yesterday adjusting to family life ("are they always like this?!")- all back in place today!

admylin - would you go to the wedding? Hard to be far away at those times. Remembering back to something you wrote -when does your niece arrive? It´s so great that she got a grant to study - she must be very bright. How is her German?

So, first ever for me, I had a positive experience with paperwork and bureucracy today. The admission woman at the University accepted my MA and Phd as enough proof to be considered for the course (still have to sit 2 tests). I said I was glad I did not have to find my A level certifcates from over 20 years ago and she said it was clear that I had done a lot and "they did not want to make things difficult for people". The words "that is a first in Austrian buraucracy" nearly stumbled out my mouth but I managed to stop myself just in time.

ernest - are you home? how did the flat business go?

I think I should preview before I post...sorry

Yes, we went to the Prater on Saturday - the DC (esp. DS) loved the Riesenrad and we also had a wander round the Prater, went for a ride on the fairytale train and kept well away from any scary looking rides (most of them!). We went swimming at the weekend too (tried out the pool in Klosterneuburg), but the water - as usual - was far too cold for me. Where are you doing the swimming course bananas? The DDs did one in Perchtoldsdorf, which is quite a trek but there are no decent courses nearer to us (I gave up on the VHS course after 20 lessons).

DD1 is just about to start a swimming course at school and she wants me to go and help out (they need parents to accompany them plus more parents to help dry the children's hair, etc.) but I've told her that teaching English once a week (it will be twice this week, in fact) is enough for me!

So much for my plans for a nice relaxing evening - I have a letter to translate by first thing tomorrow, so will probably have to spend most of the evening working. Oh well, there are still another two evenings before DH gets back!

Dh just informed me starting tomorrow he's not going to be eating dairy or grains....I suppose this means my oreos should be safe from now on...
But somehow I feel so disheartened by this because I really do not see it working as we always have pasta or Mexican food (tortillas, rice)...it means likely 2 suppers being cooked a night....and far more meat being cooked when we were previously trying to cut out meat...
And on Saturday or Sunday we always had donuts or pancakes or French Toast...

That sounds tricky, is it for health reasons? I gave up dairy products for a while as our paediatrician thought they might not be agreeing with DD1, and found it very difficult (it didn't make any difference in the end, either). I'd find it hard to cut out pasta too, although you can probably get egg-free pasta at the health store.

it's the flour in the pastas thus the no breads etc. no simple sugars
Eggs are apparently going to be ok...

it's not for health reasons per se; he wants to lose some weight with the idea of getting fitter/cycling better...he doesn't enter into things lightly, but I just think it's not sustainable unless we ALL do it...and I'm really not capable. (Hell I cannot even make my own food most of the time tbh, how's he going to cope with the temptations when I need him to make food for me or Moo because I'm too ill to do it myself?)

Struggling to keep up with who is who, as a newbe to the thread, so please forgive me!

Ernst you have my sympathy on the staying with mother in the UK theme - I wish I could afford to just rent a holiday cottage for a few weeks when we go back, rather than stay with my parents! It just never works out the way I hope and a I definitely don't feel "at home" there, not that she did anything awful during my childhood or anything, we just wind each other up and have done for as long as I remember, yet when I stay with friends for parts of our trips to the UK she takes offence - I honestly think she worries mainly about what her friends and acquaintances will think if her daughter and grandchildren are not staying with her!

Admylin tea is the one thing I cannot find a substitute for out here - even double tea bag "black tea" or alleged "English breakfast tea" just doesn't quite hit the spot the way PG tips or Yorkshire tea does! DH now orders me kilogram bags of PG tips through an ebay seller: stores.ebay.de/Asia-Food-Center/_i.html?_nkw=pg+tips&submit=Finden&_sid=198546177

Linzer I am another one who enjoys the occassional evenings to myself, not to mention the whole double bed to stretch out in (no snoring!) Hope your work didn't take as long as you expected (is translation what you do for a living?)

bananas I am sure there is loads for kids to do in Vienna, and it depends on the age of the kids - tiny villages with a playground and lots of kids are great for when they are really small, but I am under no illusions about country life being idyllic for older children and teens - there is no public transport (apart from school buses) through our village, so if we are still here when they are old enough to want to go clothes shopping or to the cinema, bowling or whatever without me I am going to have to get used to being an on-demand taxi or to having restless and dissatisfied pre and early teens! There are loads of downsides to small village life - I would rather live somewhere bigger myself, at least somewhere with a train station, but I would love to live in Munich (I have never been to Vienna but am sure it is wonderful!). My kids already love museums but going to Munich is a full day commitment, so it is something that only happens once per school holiday on average and everyone is tired on the way home!

bebe that sounds very hard work if he doesn't actually have a food intolerance, especially doing both grains and dairy at once, could he not wait with this fitness drive until you are feeling better (or preferably until baby number 2 has arrived, started to sleep through, finished weaning etc. ) My DH is not the most helpful with anything child or house related, but on the plus side he is relatively undemanding, as long as I feed him he rarely complains about what he is fed! Hope your little girl is on the mend by now, I agree with you and everyone else that as long as she is drinking and weeing she will be fine, but it doesn't make handling the illness any nicer, especially when you don't feel great yourself!

I was in bed with a stomach bug yesterday - hit me really hard, I had almost 7 hours sleep (average here) and got up with the kids (I have my once a week lie in on Saturdays) at 6am but felt shivery and as if I'd been dragged out of bed after only an hour's sleep and was very irritable with the kids - stomach bug kicked in an hour later and I knew why! DH got up at 8 and I went back to bed and slept most of the day and all night (til DS got up at 5.45am this morning) and feel a lot better than yesterday, but am getting cramps every time I exert myself even slightly - not sure if they are strong Braxton Hicks or just stomach bugs cramps (I am almost 33 weeks pregnant) - they go away when I sit still for half an hour so I am not worried they are early labour, but it is meaning I can't get anything done! I broke out in a sweat just doing the KiGa run, and it is not that warm yet, and I had to stop and bend double when walking across the playground to retrieve DS's football from the stream this afternoon! I heard DS (who is 3) laughingly telling his little friend that his mummy can't walk very fast and can't run at all because she has a baby in her tummy (to which his friend replied that his mummy can't run at all but she doesn't have a baby in her tummy, which amused me )

Glad to hear you're feeling better now 2and1; stomach bugs are horrible. Hope the cramps clear up soon. Lol at your DS's friend's comment - that's something that the DC would be quite likely to say about me!

bebe That does sound like quite a drastic diet; I agree with 2and1 that it might be a good idea for your DH to wait until you're feeling better (if you can persuade him!) as you really have enough on your plate at the moment.

I've just finished the translation (yes, I'm a freelance translator and proofreader) so am off to bed now as I'm struggling to keep my eyes open. Am keeping my fingers crossed that no work will arrive tomorrow (or if it does, that I can get it done during the day) so that I can enjoy a nice lazy evening then instead.

Hello, can I join in here please? I currently live in America but lived in Munich for a while and Dresden for a couple of years. I also teach German to adults in the local college's community learning programme. I have dd(5), ds1(3) and ds2(5 weeks). I really miss living in Germany and feel like my German is getting worse, the longer I'm not there. Would love to chat.

Hi jenny and welcome to the thread - of course you can join! It would be lovely to chat on here now that our overseas thread has finished (I can't keep up with the threadkillers).

I was up at 5 am again this morning as DS was wet - he went back to sleep after I'd changed him, but I didn't. I think he might have had a lot to drink at the party yesterday. The mother of the birthday girl is Irish, so I asked him whether he'd spoken English or German to her - he couldn't quite remember, but thought he'd spoken German the whole time (and informed that his friend's mother can understand German too).

No I don't have a clue either and spend way too much time reading back through, fun as those ladies are!

Sorry you're up so early. I'm just about to go to bed. We're only 8 hours behind you at the mo, so still quite late but dh is away and I am rubbish at going to bed without him. Will probably spend a lot of the night feeding ds 2 who seems to be going through a growth spurt. They don't weigh very frequently here, so I'm not actually sure what he weighs!

Hope you manage to get some sleep! DH is away at the moment too and I always have to force myself to go to bed when he's not here. I finally managed to put my book down at 11 pm last night, which is a late night for me and so am feeling quite tired this morning (DS waking up at 5 didn't help, of course). It's nothing compared to being awake most of the night feeding a newborn though, I know!

Morning all. I'm up an dressed and going to be organised today! (hahahhahahaha)

Morning all.

2and1ontheway hope you feel fully recovered soon. Have you got someone coming to help after the baby is born? I remember trips into town being so tiring and a major outing too. One of the worst things wa sregistering the birth of dd. I had ds aged 16 months already and the double pram hadn't arrived so I had to strap new born dd in a sling and push ds then got into town to find the old Rathaus didn't have a lift to the floor where births were registered. It was one of my first trips out after giving birth and so exhausting. Can't remember why dh couldn't do it but think because we weren't married back then.
I've ordered tea before on the food from home website which is in Germany so postage not too much but I can buy it at the asian stores - just have to get out there.

Bananas , wow that is very non beureaucratic behaviour but good news for you atleast! When are you starting? I'd love to study something here but I will never start anything until we know we are staying put or moving on again.

Bebe , if your dh is prepared to sort his food out and he knows when you aren't able to that he'll have to cook two different meals then it's up to him! When you and moo are having french toast he'll have to have plain eggs. It doesn't sound like the kind of diet that he will be able to do long-tem either.

Hi tadjennyp , where are you in America? Dh is constantly applying for jobs all over America (and some in Canada) but I'll admit to being scared of the climate - it's either freezing cold or tropical heat in parts!

Linzer , hope your dd enjoys the swimming lessons. Took my 2 ages but once they'd got their Seepferdchen badge they were so proud.

OK, our heating is off again. Cheeky Hausmeister didn't fix it after all. Getting cold now but am off to another test with dd for her dyslexia and then we'll go shoping I think. HOpefully by the time we get back someone else will have reported the problem and had it fixed.

Hope your DD's appointment went well admylin and that the heating was finally fixed by the time you got back. It's lovely and sunny again here today (it was 20° yesterday) but I still needed to put the heating on yesterday evening.

DD1 is very excited about the swimming course; she can already swim quite well, but it will be good for her to have a few more lessons. I'd like DD2 and DS to do a course in the summer (we just don't have time during the week, as it's a 30 minute drive to the pool where the DDs did their last course), so will have to see if we can fit one in. We'll be away for about five weeks altogether and have plans for another two weeks, so that only leaves a couple of weeks free at most.

Have just printed out about 60 handouts for DD2's English class tomorrow, but still have some flash cards to laminate. I'll be teaching DD1's class straight afterwards too as their lesson last week was cancelled.

Must get back to my proofreading - for once, I'm proofreading something written in decent English (despite the fact that it was written by a non-native speaker), which makes a nice change.

Morning Everyone! I am sitting at the kitchen table while my kids are at Kindergarten, supposedly preparing material for the evening course I teach on a Tuesday night (the only work I'm doing atm, as I've finished my little one day a week job at a tiny Gründschule now for maternity leave) - I am a terrible procrastinator though and somehow opened my web browser instead...

Linzer hope you get your lazy evening tonight and are not too tired to stay up and enjoy it! My DS is dry at night but gets up at 5am most days to go to the loo, so you can't win! I feel bad about the swimming with my 2 - my DD did her seeferdchen last year but I have been negligent about taking her swimming regularly enough since and she has lost skills or confidence and now won't swim more than a few meters, despite doing 25 meters to get the badge - I really have to take her more often but the only pool open to the public in winter is a very unattractive school swimming pool, open to the public in the afternoons and weekends, and generally populated by older ladies who know each other, swimming up and down chatting, and I feel in the way and tutted at when I take the kids there! The "normal" indoor pool/ leisure complexes are a motorway drive away and I feel so unmotivated to get there and put my whale like self into a swimming costume at the moment!

Jenny welcome to the thread!

bebe good luck with your positive attitude today! Is the weather bright and sunny with you? Hope you can get outdoors a bit with your little one, that always helps the mood I find!

admylin DH is taking a month paternity leave as I am have to have a planned c-section, so I will be absolutely fine. My dad talked me into having my mum over to stay "to help" after my 2nd child was born - never again! I'd honestly rather look after newborn triplets and several preschoolers alone - all she wanted to do was hold my baby son all day, so I could make her cups of tea, cook the meals, look after my 2 year old, and she could nag me to "get on with the housework while you've got me here to help with baby" - I had just had a c-section so I am sure I should have been the one sitting down , plus anyway I was breast feeding and using a sling so she was about as much use as a bouncy chair with attitude! This time when she asked when she should come over I said she and my dad are welcome to book a flight to come and meet the baby some time in June (baby is due just after Easter) People say "take all the help you can get" when you have a new baby but I think that advice needs a generous pinch of salt added to it! With DH taking a month off I have more than a lot of people anyway I know, I was shocked to hear on the radio that only 1 in 5 fathers here take any paternity leave, despite the very generous amounts available!

I am also procrastinating this morning and getting far too easily distracted. Have done five minutes proofreading and somehow find myself back on MN again (I'm better at keeping away from the computer when I'm not actually working).

It sounds like you've got everything sorted out for after the baby's birth 2and1; I must admit I was quite happy just to have DH around afterwards and would have found it quite stressful having my parents to stay. He got a whole day of paternity leave, but took a couple of weeks' holiday - one to look after the girls while I was in hospital and one after I'd come home. We could have shared parental leave, but it would have been very tricky in his job and also not really feasible with me not earning much (I have the feeling he would have had to have taken at least six months' leave). I doubt many fathers take paternity leave here, either; I can only think of two who've done so.

2and1, are you expecting your third? I had my third just over a month ago and I think it's doable without help. Neither dps or ILs have been out to meet him and dd and ds1 are at home bar 8 hours of the week. I'm lucky that I didn't have a caesarian (dread to think how much that would have cost over here!) but dh took 3 days holiday and we seem to have managed so far. Ds1 said the other day that he thought we didn't love him any more. He's only 3 1/2 and he veers from being really proud of his baby brother to being jealous. Best of luck.

I'm in Central Oregon which is indeed very warm in the summer and very cold in the winter. More snow forecast tonight. [fed up with crap weather, want to get out with the baby emoticon] Where does everyone else live?