Tag Archive | photography

Ben’s review of the German playgrounds

I have invited a guest blogger to contribute to this post, and I will let him introduce himself:

My name is Benjamin. I am 5 years old. We went to Germany this August to see Grandma and Grandad and some of my uncles and aunts and cousins. We did some fun things there. We played in lots of parks and I’m going to tell you about the parks.

* Molly, 2 1/2, also contributed some thoughts.

The first park we went to was close to the river. This is a picture of the climber. All the parks in Germany were made of logs and ropes and chains and tires. I thought that was really cool.

©PicklesINK 2012

This is a picture of me on the log stairs. You had to climb and hold onto the rope to balance.

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This is the rope bridge. We needed to use a rope on this bridge too. After we went on the rope bridge we got to the shaky bridge which I call the “Shake-shake bridge.”

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After you went across the Shake-shake bridge you got to the climber! This is a picture of Molly at the top of the slide.

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There was a swing made out of rope and it looked like a spider web. You could put 3 kids in that swing!

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You could pull the bucket in the sandpit up with the chain. It felt light! If you let go of the chain the bucket would fall down fast!

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There was a stump in the sandpit with little holes you could put sand through.

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Everyone had fun at the park, even my daddy Ian!

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One day we went to a Rodelbahn. We went up a mountain on a chairlift and then we came down on a big slide. At the bottom there was a playground with a ride-on clam-digger. We had to put money into the slot to turn the motor on and then when we pulled the levers it would work. The scoop picked up stones and moved them around and dumped them.

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There was also a helicopter. On the helicopter you also had to put money in the slot and then it would go up. The helicopter’s lever didn’t move but you could push the screw on the top of the lever and it would make sounds.

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There were also trampolines and we had fun jumping on them.

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There was also a slide and a sandbox but we don’t have any pictures of them.

One day, we took a walk in the woods and we found a playground! There were stairs to come down to look at the stream. This is a picture of us playing in the stream. Molly added, “That park we went to. I liked it. We went to see a river and grandad come with us and grandma come with us too.”

©PicklesINK 2012

This is a picture of the shaky bridge, which I call the “Shake-shake bridge” too. This shake-shake bridge goes over the river. I called the river that the shake-shake bridge went over “the Logging Pond.” The bridge was really shaky and really high.

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There was a wooden train. You could only sit on it because it was made of wood and it didn’t make steam because it had a wood funnel but you could pretend you were driving it. Molly says, “And I went on that choo-choo train.”

©PicklesINK 2012

This is a picture of me (Ben) on the climbing tree. I think it was made out of a tree with the leaves taken off and parts of the branches sawed off.

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This is a picture of grandma swinging. I think she is having fun!

We all had a lot of fun playing at that park.

On another day we went on another walk in the woods. There was a xylophone made of wood. I didn’t play a song, I just played it, but Molly played, “It’s a Hard-Knock Life,” and sang.

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This is a picture of me on the see-saw. There was also a jungle gym and a sandbox. To get to the stream you had to go to the other side of the grass. You have to go down the bank to get to the water but you can still see it from the top. You didn’t have to climb down the bank because there were stairs.

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We went wading in the stream. It was cold! We didn’t see any fish. There weren’t fish in any of the streams but there were fish in the lake.

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I think this is a picture Molly and Uncle Martin. I think Uncle Martin was going to lift Molly into the swing. This is the swing set and the climber. The slide is really slippery, especially when you’re wet!

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The last park we went to was on top of a mountain! We took a cable car up the mountain to get to it. When the cable car got to us, so many people got out that I said, “Is this a cable car or a party?”

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We went so high that we went in the cloud so it was misty at the park because we were inside a cloud. This is a picture of the high tower. It was the highest climber that I have ever seen!

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There was a shaky bridge which I called a “Shake-shake bridge” too. It was made out of logs hanging with chains.

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This is a picture of Ian on the zip line. There was a green circle that you had to sit and then you pushed off and went really, really fast, as fast as me!! You would go all the way to the end and then come back.

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This is a picture of Molly and her doll Charlie on the swing. I think the swing was a chair from a chairlift like one at the Rodelbahn. Two people can fit in this swing together.

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This is the rope climber. It also had those green circles like on the zip line but this time they were for swinging. We could climb all the way up to the top.

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We were so high up and this is a picture of our view from when we looked down from the cable car on the way down.

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I thought that the parks in Germany were a lot different then the ones back in Canada. They were a lot of fun. I loved the clam-digger and I love all the Shake-shake bridges. I really want to back and play on them again one day!

~ Ben

(dictated to mommy)

Giving some old shoes the boot

Aug25

About a year ago I was detoured on my way home because of an accident and drove past a very odd sight: a large tree by the side of the road festooned with hundreds of pairs of shoes.

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I had never seen anything like it before and went home and consulted my friend Google, who also had no idea. Since then, the good people of Wikipedia have been hard at work and there is now an entry that would have answered some of my questions, but at the time I had to muddle on in ignorance.

It has since suffered some damage as we’ve had some pretty severe storms in the last year but the most of the shoes seemed to have come through pretty well…at least you wooden know weather or not they were the worse for the wear.

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A little while ago I showed it to Ben and Molly and ever since Ben has been eager to add a pair of his shoes to it, so we decided that today was the day. We gathered up a hammer and some nails and two pairs of worn out shoes (Ben’s favourite, worn right through the soles, Thomas sneakers, and Molly’s out-grown and well-scuffed “pretty pretty pink shoes”) and drove out to the tree, where Ian handily nailed found some space and nailed them on.

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Ian managed to find room for Ben’s on the trunk

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but for Molly’s he had to go out on a limb.

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You might think we’re barking mad, and perhaps that is the root of the issue… (okay, I think I’m done now. At least I guess it’s time I leaf it alone. Heheheheheh…) Anyway, now Ben and Molly’s shoes have a place in local history along with other footwear both large and small (Hey, if the shoe fits…).

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And Ben and Molly have a fun memory of a family outing to illegally vandalize a natural landmark purely for the sake of entertainment!

But seriously, it was a lot of fun!

©PicklesINK 2012

~ karyn

Have you seen a shoe tree? Do you know anything more about them?

Food glorious food…coma.

Aug19

German food. Very, very yummy. Not a lot of emphasis on green. Or red. Or orange. Unless they’re Smarties and gummy bears sprinkled on ice cream. But definite emphasis on the delicious. Here is the round-up of what we ate:

Every morning started with someone, usually Grandad, venturing to the bakery (or “makery,” as Molly termed it, which makes a sort of sense) with one or two children in tow to pick up fresh rolls (and gummy bears for the kids – breakfast of champions!).

Fresh-baked every morning!
©PicklesINK 2012

These would be served at the breakfast table along with soft-boiled eggs, fresh-churned butter, assorted jams, ham and salami, and local cheeses, most notably the delicious Heumilchkäse and Blumenkäse (literally, hay-milk cheese and flower cheese). The Heumilchkäse has a distinctly barnyard aroma and strong flavour and the Blumenkäse is milder and rolled in dried wildflowers. Heaven for a cheese-lover like myself! Ian wasn’t quite so enthralled and the kids were for the most part indifferent.

Heumilchkäse and Blumenkäse
©PicklesINK 2012

I have to confess to a weakness for Schnitzel und Spätzle so I sampled both as often as I could. My first opportunity was outside of Munich when we went to get the estimate for my (*sniff*) broken stroller (*sniff*) where we stopped at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and I had Schnitzel mit Pfeffer-Sahnesauce und Spätzle (schnitzel with peppercorn cream sauce and spatzle noodles/dumplings). I was so hungry that I ate it all without thinking to take a picture first so unfortunately I have no record except for the memory of its utter deliciousness, but the sauce was creamy and amazing and the spatzle was plump and had been crisped to golden perfection.

We enjoyed a lovely meal al fresco at the Biergarten across from the house where I had Champignon Schnitzel und Spätzle (schnitzel with mushroom cream sauce and spatzle). I realize that I have unfairly painted all of the German chefs with the same brush – as you can see this meal did include some green and orange!

Champignon Schnitzel und Spätzle.
©PicklesINK 2012

Ben and Molly each enjoyed a Kinder-Schnitzel und Kartoffel Kroketten (kiddie meal of schnitzel with potato croquettes), to which I had introduced my picky eater before we left to make sure that there was something he would eat in German restaurants…

Kinder-Schnitzel und Kartoffel Kroketten
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And German mall food courts:

Schnitzel und Spätzle (again)
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On another beautiful sunny day out we again had lunch on the patio of another local restaurant where I had (you guessed it!) Jägerschnitzel und Spätzle (schnitzel with mushroom gravy) and a Radler (half Pilsner, half Sprite). Yes, I may have a Spätzle problem.

Jägerschnitzel und Spätzle
©PicklesINK 2012

Ian went off script and had Hähnchen-Cordon-Bleu mit pommes (chicken cordon-bleu with french fries). Once again, I realize that I was unfair to the German chefs as his meal also included a variety of vegetables. Bundled together with a strip of bacon.

Hähnchen-Cordon-Bleu und pommes
©PicklesINK 2012

Sometimes of course we needed a break from the heavy German food. Fortunately there was an excellent take-away pizza restaurant down the road that did European-style thin crust wood-fired pizza with every topping imaginable.

Pizza Hawaii
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Pizza Oliven Salami Peperoni
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For our last night out we ate at an Italian restaurant where I had Tortellini mit Gorgonzola, which was delicious,

Tortellini mit Gorgonzola
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and a bowl of Pfifferlingen Cremesuppe, a cream soup of the locally in season Chanterelle mushrooms.

Pfifferlingen Cremesuppe
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Of course, it wasn’t all savoury dishes. Germans are also very fond of ice cream. In the form of ice cream sundaes:

Haselnuss-Eis
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Banana splits:

Bananen-Eis
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Liquor-spiked chocolate milk with a scoop of ice cream topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings:

Baileys Eisschokolade
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And of course, appropriately small portions of ice cream for the children:

Kinder-Überraschung-Eis
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As comfortingly delicious as it all was, the first thing we did when we got home was head to the grocery store to stock up on a fresh, crisp, brightly-coloured assortment of fruits and vegetables.

Produce, sweet produce!
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I ate half a cantaloupe for dinner yesterday and I may swear off white flour for good.

~ karyn

Tobogganing in summer…does life get any better?

Aug18

Two things that the Bavarian Alps have a-plenty are cable cars and Rodelbahns. Cable cars are pretty self-explanatory. As I Google though I am learning that technically what we have been visiting is known as a Sommerrodelbahn (sommer = summer) and an actual Rodelbahn involves snow, but for simplicity’s sake I will refer to it as the latter. Just don’t blame me if you try to Google it and get very confused.

How do you feel about heights?
©PicklesINK 2012

There are of course many ways to climb the mountains – Many enterprising folks choose to walk (often with Nordic walking sticks, which I don’t begin to understand); some even more energetic types run; and we even saw (from our comfortable perch on the cable car) one person cycle up. He was practically standing still, moving up inch by excruciating (I imagine) inch, until he got to the top, turned around, and with an expression of glee let go and sailed back down.

Now that’s hardcore!
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We, however, chose the leisurely and absolutely safe method of riding up on a single-seat open cable car with a metal “safety bar” about 1 cm in diameter. Imagine a rickety lawn chair dangling from a cable 25 feet off the ground carrying you up the side of a mountain. With the kids on our laps.

What could possibly go wrong?
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Great photo opps though!
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Can you tell that they’re 30 feet in the air?
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From an ultra-protective North American standpoint the blasé attitude towards carrying your 2 year-old up a cable car with no more instruction than a bored teenager barking an instruction in German that essentially amounted to “Hold her forwards!” was both terrifying and refreshing. It was all fun and games until Molly tried to slide out of my lap saying, “I want to bounce on that grass!!” (No.)

Disembarking safely:
Ie. hold on tight and jump!
©PicklesINK 2012

But we made it up unscathed and arrived at our reward: The Rodelbahn. Essentially, this is a metal track that snakes down the side of the mountain that you rocket down on a plastic sled holding onto a joystick that controls your speed (forwards = faster, backwards = brake). At every curve there’s a sign that says “bremsen” (brake). Yeah, right!! About halfway down there is a speedometer that displays your speed for all to see; You wouldn’t have a hope of being the winner if you were braking safely like a sucker to avoid overturning on all of the corners!! The top recorded speed for us was my sister-in-law’s 38 km/hour. Ben and Molly alternated yelling, “Whee! Super-fast!!” and looking bored all the way down.

It was a great morning out and we actually went back a second time because the ~~adults~~ kids really wanted to ~~have a rematch~~ do it again. Unfortunately (for the kids, who were really interested) the speedometer was broken that time but I think deep down we all knew that I won.

~ karyn

A Kur for what ails ye

Aug13

One of Ben and Molly’s favourite discoveries in town so far is the Kurpark (essentially “spa park”). Many German towns have these and they can be more or less elaborate, incorporating gardens and multiple pools with various types of mineralized (or simply COLD) waters. The Kurpark Ben and Molly have been enjoying is on the smaller side but plenty of fun for two kids. It has been beautifully sunny so the water, which is usually painfully cold, is actually quite comfortable for wading.

There are lovely gardens (if you peer closely at the pictures, Where’s Waldo? style, you may be able to pick out Ian practicing his macrophotography on the flowers), a wading pool, and a basin.

There is a sign explaining how to properly use the Kurpark in order to get all of the health benefits.

According to Google Translate unfortunately we are doing it completely wrong, as we seldom remember that “the most important principle in using cold water is a pre-heated body active” and thus do not warm up first by “moving through brisk gymnastics or running.” We also frequently use the arm and foot baths in quick succession rather than allowing 2 hours to elapse between even though the sign cautions us that this is physiologically wrong and counteracts both uses. I can assure you however that bathing your arms in the basin and then walking through the pool with proper “stork walk” form (lifting each foot completely out of the water with each step) does, as advised, result in a “strong cold stimulus.”

The only trouble is that the Kurpark is actually intended for adults to quietly and contemplatively wade and those who come for that purpose are not always impressed to find my very active 2 and 5 year-old splashing around!

It’s a only 2 minute skip across the road from us so I’m sure we’ll be spending plenty of sunny afternoons there!

~ karyn

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

Jul19

Let’s be honest – I don’t set a particularly conventional example for my kids when it comes to hair.

Which is how we’ve wound up with pictures like this:

And this:

So a little over a year ago when Ben said, “I wish I was a girl so I could have ponytails,” what else could I have said but, “Boy, have I got news for you!”

Around the same time as Ben and I were having this conversation, there was some media coverage of a family who were reported to be raising a genderless baby. The story ignited a “Storm” of controversy with a frankly shocking number of people suggesting that refusing to reveal the child’s biological sex to the world amounted to child abuse and that the children should be apprehended and the parents arrested(!). From the original article and the follow-up by the mother, we learn that the family consists of mom, dad, an older son who keeps his hair long and often wears dresses, a middle son about whom we don’t know very much, and gender-free baby Storm. A year ago I remember thinking, “Oh, look at those non-conformist, ultra-liberal parents encouraging their son to ignore the teasing of his peers and continue to push the gender envelope – what are they going to say when he finally has had too much and wants to cut his hair?”

Well, here I am now on the other side of that fence, and it’s not as easy as I thought! I’m finding myself amazed at what trumps what in this gender game, and Long Hair = Girl seems to top them all – which means that, dressed entirely in sports-type, blue attire (including hat and glasses), wearing dirty Thomas sneakers, and standing beside his pink-dress-bedecked sister with her hair in braids, Ben is now being taken for a girl more often than for a boy.

Fortunately, Ben navigates this world like an anthropologist studying a previously unknown civilization. When the lady at the farmer’s market says, “What a smart little girl you are!” Ben replies neutrally, “I’m not a girl; I’m a boy. Why did she say I was a girl, mommy?” (Field note: The natives frequently attribute the female gender to me. Further study will be required to determine why this is. Consultation with Dr. Mommy could be enlightening.) There was a great moment last year when a repairman (in the true, 1950s sense of the word) came to fix the dishwasher – Ben was playing with a pink toy mixer and the guy said, “What are you doing playing with that? That’s women’s tools! That’s for them to use to cook us dinner with!” Ben shot him a very confused look and said, “But I’m pretending it’s a vacuum.” (Field note: This guy’s a doofus.)

On the other hand, I am really struggling with it, and I can’t really figure out WHY. People aren’t making fun of him; they’re just assuming that he is something that he is not, and I can’t figure out why that bothers me. (Field note: Maybe I need to take a page out of Ben’s book and just chill about it.) I have far more respect for baby Storm’s parents now, having had the smallest taste of what they go through every day with the non-gender-conforming oldest child. On a practical level, the hair is also a real pain in the neck (in this case, literally) because he screams bloody murder when I brush it, so there’s a part of me that really hopes he does get tired of being mistaken for a girl and decides to cut it soon.

Ben, whose opinion is really the one that counts here though, is enjoying his ponytail and will cut his hair when he gets tired of it. And informs me that if people laugh at it, he will just ignore them. And tomorrow would like to wear a hairband like Queenie McBear in The Berenstain Bears book The In-Crowd.

Addendum – July 21, 2012

…and then there are those days when you just can’t blame folks:

A stroll down memory lane – 2009

Jul17

Edited July 21,2012: My apologies for the redo – I just figured out how to get Facebook to give my all my statuses (statii?) instead just what it deems the “highlights.” But to sweeten the deal I added pictures.

And now for a little walk down memory lane – some Ben moments from 2009 (before Molly, when I just had one completely nutty kid to post about)!

June 2009

Daddy – “Ben, there is no jumping on the bed.” Ben, resignedly –“Only monkeys.”

August 2009

Some people have normal kids who have normal nightmares about normal things like monsters. I have a kid who wakes up in the middle of the night sobbing, “Mommy take keys out!” Clearly he’s either a creative nut or a genius; I’m not sure which. The other night it was, “Ben sleep in OTHER bed!!” and I have no idea to which other bed he was referring.

September 2009

I am listening to Ben on the baby monitor singing the death metal version of “Twinkle Twinkle”– “TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STTTAAAAARR!!! HOW I WONDER WHAT YOU AAAARRRE!”

This morning Ben had his whole outfit chosen. I switched the pants when he wasn’t looking for the ones I wanted him to wear. He said, “Mommy, Ben picked Ben’s red shirt! And Ben’s blue socks! And Ben’s green sweater! And…not those pants, mommy. Ben picked Ben’s BROWN pants…Ben wear brown pants, mommy,” and switched the pants back. I’m not going to argue with that!

This morning is not going so well. Ben is in his room until he decides that he is ready to get dressed, since the pyjama shirt and bandana wrapped around his legs like a skirt option has been deemed not acceptable by me.

October 2009

Ben – “Ben drank too much water at drandad’s house.” Me – “Yes, Ben did drink lots of water!” Ben – “YES! Ben had THREE much water at drandad’s house!”

November 2009

I took Ben to the Remembrance Day ceremony at the cenotaph, where Ben spent the better part of an hour saying, “Now it’s time to be quiet! Now I’m being quiet! I’m going to be quiet over THERE, mommy! This is being quiet!” at the top of his lungs.

December 2009

I went upstairs this evening in response to yells and was greeted (again) by a naked toddler who smiled and said, “Mommy! Where is my poo??” Naturally, I replied, “Um, I don’t know…where is your poo?” Ben grinned and pointed at the floor and said, “There it is!!” and there, indeed, it was.

Ben just ran upstairs with his tape measure to measure his baby. It seems it’s baby’s birthday today and he wants to know how old he is.

This year’s least successful Christmas present: A whistle-operated keychain finder that responds to the frequency of a toddler yelling. Right now it is hanging on a hook in the kitchen and all morning we’ve listened to, “NOOO!!!” *BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP* “I don’t WANT to put my socks on!” *BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*

~ karyn