Father's Day

Today was father's day. This was the first time Desi and i were able to put together something special for Maik to show him how much we appriciate all he does for us all year long. We made a pretty card and t-shirt with Desi's handprints all over it. We still have to figure out how to seal the paint as we used finger paint that washes off. Oh well it is the thought that counts...right? hehe.

breakfast in bed.

wake up sleepy papa!

Papa opening his present.

Desi was so proud!

Desi and his papa

Later on we went to Strawberry festival that was taking place across the street from our house. It was nice, except for one of the bouncy houses where desi was told he could not jump because he had glasses. I don't understand that at all. we have a personal (very large) bouncy house at home and desi's glasses have never been a problem. i was a bit ticked and desi was very hurt, but we moved on.

Desi climbing the tower. he was afraid to go any higher even though he did really well!

Bouncy house land!

Desi bounced to his hearts content.

wait a minute!

awww i just want a picture!

yay! hi desi!

i am still learning with my camera. it felt the net was more important.

maik coming down the huge slide.

Maik and desi had so much fun playing!

This last picture is us walking home. the rain came out of nowhere!

Needless to say by the time we were home, we were all soaked through. It was fun though. That evening we grilled and just hung around. it was nice to have some down time and just be the three of us.

Happy Father's Day Maik!

lot's of love,

amy

Desi's Birthday Book

Wow have i been busy lately. It is really hard to change my routine over from school and being mom and just doing enough to get by to being just mom and really working hard for my family. in short everything is crazy.


So i have been working on a project. I call it Desi's birthday book. I just cannot throw away a birthday card or any card for that matter and have sooooo much stuff from desi's birthdays so i though this would be a good idea.



I started with a binder that i didn't really find pretty.





Then i used my digi scrapbooking stuff (the kit i used for this is Swing on a Star from Ziggle and PPD from Scraporchard).



I printed everything out and taped it all down. Then i covered it with clear packing tape. It looks laminated onto binder. Here is the finished cover.







The inside is a bit more interesting. I just can't throw away cards and that is where the idea came from. I really wanted a way for desi to look back and see how much fun his birthdays were and see all the cards people wrote. When blogger decides to quit wrecking my colors on the pages then i will add those too. update later.

A boy and his bike

In germany an important mode od transportation is the bicycle. This is my bike. I love it and i usually take it to and from school and well anywhere near except grocery shopping. i think my basket is a bit small.

my bike

Naturally Desi would need to learn to ride a bike. So we started working on leaning. Here he is at two with his first bike.

That was fun, but not really helping him so we went on to this. In german it is called a Laufrad, but i have seen them called Likeabike in the USA. These are awsome. They teach balance and coordintation. oh and they can be used to scare the crap out of moms!

Desi as he zoomed past me

Due to the Laufrad when it came time for Desi to get a real bike and learn to ride. The moment he tried out to ride the two wheel bike at the store he was able to. Here he is about 5 months after he got his bike on our ride home from kindergarten. This was take 3 after i crashed, then desi and i crashed into each other. talk about trick i was trying to film, ride, and watch for cars. hence the no breath! hehe.

yep my little boy is all grown up and riding a two wheel bike! I can't believe it.

A couple of days ago it was so nice outside. Desi told me that his bike was very dirty and he wanted to wash it. How responsible!

The finished product. He was so proud! He really does love his bike.

lots of love,

amy

Fasching!

That is the german word for carnival. Desi's Kindergarten celebrated it today. The theme was "what I have always wanted come to kindergarten as". Desi was of course Captian Hook. He was so excited about it.

Here is the over excited pirate eating his breakfast of choice: Ceral with soy milk!

This is the big area in the middle of Desi's kindergarten. More kids in costumes!

Desi's classroom had a huge pirate ship much to desi's delight!

I think this picture is so sweet. This is desi and a little girl from his class named Sogand. She is so cute and so sweet, but you think this looks like a really old and bad wedding picture! lol.

Desi and his best friend Jannis were the pirates of the day!

One of Desi's teacher was also a pirate!

Desi's friend Tobi. His dog even had a matching costume.

Random view of the parents being kicked out. look at all those kids. wow.

Happy Fasching to everybody!

Glasses

ok so this is not the post that i just wrote. I just wrote the one about the snow, but blogger does not like me and killed my post. I will just do that one then next week when i have more time.





Desi just got his glasses today. He really likes them! yay! He is farsighted and has astigmatism in one eye. He had a ball picking out the frames. Here is what he chose! Enjoy:

Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. I will definantly be using the advice and most likely be rereading those wonderful comments often because I have a feeling this is going to be a battle for a long time. I will update everyone on the situation after we see a speech therapist probably next month sometime after our lives quiet down a little bit.

<3>

I need some advice...

I have held off on posting this week (well last week) because I didn't want to turn my blog into a complaining place.

On the other hand I would like to get this off my chest.

I went to Desi's very first parent teacher conference this past monday. It was scheduled so I knew that he was not in trouble or anything, but I was most definantly not prepared for what I heard.

It strated off well. Desi can cut very precisly with scissors. He is the only 4-year-old in his class that can write his name (kindergarten classes are usually a mix of kids ages 3-7. Kids usually go for 3 years kind of like a preschool setting). He has lots of friends. His shyness is much less now. He works very precisly and concetrated when building or the like. He is very inteseted in technical things. On and on. She did say that during group time Desi tends to not pay attention, but to be honest I remember when I got in trouble for that in the 2nd grade. I still zone out during class for no reason.

The next point was the bad one. She said that Desi's German is not very good. He makes more grammatical mistakes than normal for his age group and she has to repeat instructions several times before he seems to understand them leading her to also think that he does not understand German that well.

This was like nail to my heart. I really didn't know what to say to her.

I think for this to make sense I should back track a little bit. Desi is not Maik's biological son. Come on look at the pictures. For us this is not a big deal. Maik has been in Desi's life since he was 6 months old. Desi was born in the USA. For the first year (and i mean exactuly 5 days after his first birthday we left) Desi heard only English. Maik only spoke English to him, because he did not want to confuse him (that is another story). Anyway after we got here Desi began be BILINGUALLY raised. I only speak English to him and Maik only speaks German. The Germany influence in his life is HUGE. I don't have any English speaking friends here and apart from speaking English to me and watching some English dvd's, Desi's English influence is very small.

So back to this conference. The teacher (who speaks VERY little English) thinks that Desi's English is much better than his German and that the English influence in his life is too much and that I (who can not even pass German at school) should stop speaking English (to my own child) and only speak German to him (so that i can no longer communicate and did i mention that grammar is awful!?!?) so that his German improves.

I still don't know how to respond to this. I read everything I can find on the topic of bilingualism. I read through all the methods, the different types of bilingualism, the effects, the problems, and what good can come of it. In our life it is nessacery that Desi (and all following children) be bilingual. My family cannot speak German, nor Maik's family English. Aside from that Desi is bilingual in the very sense of he has two native languages. From what I have read at this point it would most likely harm him more to take him out of the bilingual enviornment.

My main question is: did I do something wrong? I mean Desi's problem seems to be that the minority language (English) is better that the enviornment language (German). That is not common. I don't know why this is. I would like to point out though: I waited over 2 years to hear my child's first word. I had to wait almost another year to hear his first sentance. Yes Desi did not start to talk until he was 3. I think that what he learned speech wise in the past one and half years is increadable. On the other hand I really cannot say anything about his German. I really don't know if it is that bad, but i can say that his English needs work. He makes a lot of grammar mistakes that I know are from German and I can imagine vice versa.

We plan in March to (once all our testing is done) take him to a speech therapist and have his speech and all that jazz evaluated. Other than this I am at a loss. I could really use some advice. I don't think raising him bilingually is a bad thing, nor do think we should stop what we are doing. I just don't know how to explain that to anyone.

If you read this far, thank you. I would really value your imput. I promise next post will have pictures of fun in this snow!

lots of love,
amy

Christmas eve

Christmas eve is usually filled with german traditions for us. We walk to our church to watch the christmas story preformed by the children at our church. While we are gone Maik's mother decorates the tree and the "Weinachtsmann" or german santa comes to visit. We come home and have christmas cake and coffe. After that we open presents and put together toys (lol). We then have a traditional german christmas eve dinner: Brockwurst (sausages) and potato salad.

Those are a normal traditions. That is not what happened this year. Christmas eve this year was not fun. THIS YEAR was different. We tried hard to make it fun and wonderful at our house, but Maik's parents fight was a major downer. Luckly Desi and Hannah did not notice.

This is our christmas tree on christmas eve

and desi with his present from us.

Here is Desi opening the last box on his advent calendar.

Desi opening his gift from mama and Papa.The expression is so funny. He really loved it though. The top pictures are of Desi in front of our tree and with his present from Oma Pille. The bottom pictures are of Maik opening his present from Desi and me.

Hannah opening her presents and being cute as usual! She got a Marble maze (marbles everywhere!) and a baby bag.

These are some pictures of the family. If you look close you can see our living room. The top picture shows where we hang our stockings. On the window!

Here is my new nephew Ben. It was his first Christmas this year. He got a few cool presents like a tiger that vibrates.

Desi opening some more of his presents. These are his legos and his new favorite book.

Desi opening more presents. He really got some things that he wanted. Just the look on his face shows how happy he was.

Desi doing our tradition of leaving hot chocolate, cookies and a note for Santa. Desi really got into it this year.

He is what Santa left. the empty cookie plate, filled stockings and the presents under the tree.