Getting settled

It is my turn today - I, Katrin, finally make it to write something into the blog since I have written daily blogs during the past days – but only in my mind.

Today is Sunke’s first day at work and my first day alone with three kids. Right now they take their nap at noon time and all three kids are sleeping at the same time! Great! It gave me the chance to nap as well, do our laundry, make me a cup of milk coffee and now sit at the computer and actually write.

Sunke’s parents, Jann and Hanna, left about a week ago. They have been such a great help - we don’t know how we would have done everything without them. They took the kids shopping, to the parks, played with them at the beach,…. Jann did all the driving since we ended up having only one rental car. So besides giving us all the rides to view houses and get all the other things done, he did all the major grocery shopping – he loved shopping and quickly figured out where to get what. If you missed Jann, he was shopping, just to buy more things which we needed for our new household or the yard or … And Hanna, besides entertaining the kids, has been cleaning our entire house and started to get our yard into shape!

In between we took some time off to have fun and to discover the surroundings. One day we drove up the Olympic Peninsula, mostly always along the water, but we also got some great views of the mountain range and the valleys. We had delicious fresh smoked salmon and just enjoyed the nature. Last Sunday we went to the Seattle Woodland Park Zoo (except Sunke who stayed home to fight the fleas) – seemed to be a common Sunday family activity, since the Zoo was packed! We experienced some real highlights e.g. a brown bear taking a bath sitting right at the window screen, so you could touch him through the window – and I once again was reminded: bears are really big and I really don’t want to meet them during hiking! Another favourite of mine (and Jonte) was seeing two fish otters playing being in and out the water – that was just fun watching.

So when Jann and Hanna left last Wednesday, it was hard to say Good Bye. Fortunately the kids don’t understand yet what it means to say Good Bye, so they were not sad. They think if we want to see them, we just fly to Germany, since it was fun flying anyway.

Since they left, we have been on our own – and without a car. Sunke has been organizing a lot of stuff taking his bike and it seems like he loves it! The hills are really, really steep, but it is a great challenge. So he managed to apply for his social security number as well as for his American Driver’s license. Both he will receive in about 5 days. He also arranged that Internet and telephone will be installed tomorrow (Wednesday, Sept.2). Hurray! I am looking forward to have new possibilities to be in touch with you, but also to get other things arranged like finding a preschool for Theda and Jonte – one we can actually afford and which has still free places for them or alternatively find classes they can attend like gym, music, etc. At least that is on top of the list of things having to be organized next.

Other than that we tried to have really calm days. Theda, Jonte and Narne seemed to be very overwhelmed by everything. So we tried to get back to a routine they could rely on. We had a lot of playtime and since the weather has been just great, we spent most of the time outside, either in the yard or going for little walks. We discovered a swing hanging from a tree where Theda and Jonte love to go (it is actually private but the owner let us use it). On our way we have come in contact with our neighbors. There are some more kids up the hill (we live at the bottom of the hill) who were introduced to us. It is really easy to get in touch with everybody once you meet them outside which happens rather rarely – we are often the only ones going for walks. But meeting the neighbors and other kids has been fun. Fun is also our view from up the hill: if nice weather you can see the Cascade mountain range on the one side and on the other side you see the mountain range of the Olympic Peninsula! It is absolutely unbelievable. I am still starring at the mountains not being able to grasp it. I really like our neighbourhood – it is green wherever you look. Since most houses have yards, there are a lot of trees, also a lot of really large trees, and bushes and gras. Another nice thing is that most streets actually have sidewalks! – Unfortunately they are quite narrow, so often it is not possible to walk two kids and a stroller next to eachother – ok, I admit perhaps this is too much to ask for, but it makes walking a little bit more difficult.

The past two days we discovered two different playgrounds. Especially the one we found today is great – a big variety of possibilities including nice climbing challenges, different swings, … Theda and Jonte were really happy. Besides playing they always watch and listen to the other kids – of course, they don’t understand much yet. When we get home, they often pretend to speak English – they just make up their own language which is always funny to listen to. And it reminds me how I and my cousin pretended to speak Russian when we were little. Other than that Theda and Jonte are always proud to say Good Bye to people or when leaving a shop. I think they are really desperate to learn more English and I wish they will be soon with other kids playing.

A challenge of the past days has been to satisfy Narne’s desire to eat real food. He has been longing for it for a while, but I denied it in the transition process. I wanted to keep things easy and handy. But once we moved to the house, I started to cook the classical mashed carrot. He likes it – but he would rather have real food. When we eat, he is really unsatisfied trying to grasp everything he can reach with his little fingers – and by now he has developed a strong will! So we (especially Sunke) decided to give him a raw carrot, apple or hard bread to chew on, so that we can have some peace while eating. Other than that he turns on his belly as soon as you put him down. He pushes himself up really high – today he even managed to push up his belly and bottom, with the result of sliding back afterwards – too bad, because he tried so hard to come forward. Another new thing is that he tries to make different sounds and sometimes it even sounds like he is singing a song – it is really cute.

An adventure has been grocery shopping - figuring out prices and what is cheapest in a huge supermarket and under the pressure of having three kids with you. We found food quite expensive, especially food we are used to like milk, yoghurt, cheese, olive oil – so we really try to look carefully what we buy. We figured that often it is cheaper to buy two instead of one. So we now buy two gallons of milk (equals approx. 8 liters) at once – that is the only way to pay a reasonable price for milk. So the challenge is to store these two gallons underneath the stroller among all the other items and push the stroller home!! No wonder that most Americans take their car to go shopping.

But a positive shopping news is that we found Nutella right away and it is affordable – so at least we have a happy Sunke!

Besides that we are enjoying Seattle, the great weather and the excitement of everything being new (for me also the excitement to relive parts of my exchange year).

P.S.: The fleas are almost gone. Once in a while we find one, but let’s hope that we manage to hunt them without using more strong pesticides.