September peanuts

• Good: If you had told me when I started playing the first Starcraft that my son would play the sequel with me, that would have really been weird. Actually, it's still kind of weird. But, cool that Matthew can play big boy games now.
  
• Bad: now that he's finished the campaign he wants to play online with me. Which will require buying a second copy.
  
• Melissa: "I can see through your hair! But you can't see through my hair; ladies are not supposed to have hair you can see through." Later: "Daddy's not bald. He has hair on his chin."
  
• Me: "The cheeseburger Doritos aren't that bad. Isaac really likes them." Rachel: "Isaac eats crayons and play-doh."
  
• I kind of miss the corrugated steel roofs we had in the Philippines: it's a good feeling to hear the rain come down and know you're inside and dry (which, as missionaries, was not a feeling we had very often. Here, I have to look out the window to tell if it's raining unless it's _really_ coming down
  
• Isaac charged into my legs at the park and ... pulled my pants. That's a new one on me. Yes, there were lots of other people there, mostly moms. (I had omitted a belt to avoid the airport security hassle later.)
  
• Matthew: "I think my favorite part of bread is the middle." Rachel: "Me, too." Matthew: "Then why do you make it with a crust?"
  
• Matt Pfeil: "I get along better with developers than with normal people."
  
• American dude to French dude at lunch [on site with a client]: "It's hard to understand you and Matthieu speaking French, but it's easy to understand Jonathan. He speaks much slower."
  
• Hiring in Europe is insane. Both the French and the Swedish men have to give 3 months notice.
  
• Matt Pfeil: "Skip the t-shirt. These guys [at customer X] dress up for work." Me: "The time to tell me what to pack was yesterday." Matt: "Go buy a button down." Thus it was that I bought my own clothes possibly for the first time since I was married. In other news, man clothes are supposed to be labeled in actual measurements; I had to try on the "L" shirt to make sure it would fit.
  
• Watched the French version of Disney's Aristocats with Isaac. The geese were dubbed with an English accent.
  

The astronaut tree

Me: "Nice tree!"
Melissa: "It's not a tree! It's an astronaut tree!"
Me: "An astronaut tree? Do astronauts grow on it?"
Melissa: "No, silly! Astronauts go in rockets! It's a tree rocket!"

Isaac making his rounds

Isaac making his rounds
Originally uploaded by jbellis

When Isaac is bored he goes through the house pulling things off the shelf and generally making a mess.

Isaac is bored several times a day.

Isaac Speaks

Our little pumpkin head is talking more and more lately. The trick is understanding him!

Just a few days ago we realized he was saying "bath" very insistently, we just didn't catch it initially. "Bah bah!" Who knows how long he's been using certain words?

Currently we can hear:

cookie
dog
kitty
shoe
"there it is!"
outside
bath
shoo! (when waving away bees)
up
go!
NO! (very well enunciated and very frequent!)
uh oh
thank you
mama
dada
Matthew
sticky
stinky
Mmm!
more
ow
ball
"where is it?"
bye bye
amen!
hooray!
pizza
happy birthday (he says this in a sing-song voice)
"bless you!" (when he or anyone else sneezes)

He makes various car noises and other sound effects when he is playing. Isaac chatters with us all day long, so we think he is trying to say other things that we aren't picking up on yet. Perhaps he will need speech therapy like big brother did... Guess we'll see. :)

Isaac can open "isaac-proof" latches now

Isaac can open "isaac-proof" latched now
Originally uploaded by jbellis

Apologies for the blurry photo; I had time for exactly one try before putting a stop to the carnage.

Yes, we have a lot of board games.

Matthew's birthday party

Rachel found a place that does artistic birthday parties. Lots of kids have pizza parties at Peter Piper or Chuck E Cheese, and lots of kids have parties at Inflatable Wonderland, but this is the first Art Workshop party I've seen. They had lots of clever activities, and everyone had a great time.
And if you want to know what kind of markers can handle dozens of kids a week who leave caps off and mistreat them, the answer is "Mr Sketch."

A haircut for Melissa

We were half an hour early to set up for Matthew's birthday party and there was a kids salon next door. Rachel and I were both tired of fighting Melissa over hair combing in the morning, so I took her in. Maybe the stylist sensed some of the spur-of-the-moment, because before she started she asked, "You do have mom's permission, right?"





Isaac got to go for a drive, too.

Two boys on a bike

This is probably Isaac's favorite thing in the world. Matthew is a good sport.

Reading with Mommy

Reading with Mommy
Originally uploaded by jbellis

One more Munich Airport picture

IMAG0123
Originally uploaded by jbellis

I wasn't the only one who spent the night at the airport. But while I napped in a quiet hall on the floor by the chapel, the experts mostly hung out here. I'd passed it a couple times but it looked like hard and uncomfortable plastic of a sort of abstract art nature. Turned out to be quite comfortably padded, but by then all the spots were taken.

Happy birthday to me

Happy birthday to me
Originally uploaded by jbellis

Grant and Lisa sent me six bags of Herr's potato chips, aka the only thing I miss from New Jersey. That's love there, in a crinkly plastic bag.