What we've been up to over the past week...

Random happenings this week seen through pictures:

I tried another new soup recipe last week, Southwestern Chicken Soup, that turned out really well. I added zucchini to the recipe, as I think that BK and I need to eat more veggies. Cheese toast, not so healthy, but good for dipping.

I had my biggest day ever on Fitbit, with 27,530 steps last Tuesday. If I recall correctly, I was pretty tired at the end of the day. Funny thing is, I can't remember doing anything out of the ordinary to reach this. I obviously just walked more than normal.

For some reason the urge to make scones hit me on Wednesday, so I made these Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Scones. I took half of them to BK's team on my way to visit one of Baby K's potential schools and have eaten the other half for breakfast and snacks throughout the week. They were not BK's favorite, but I liked them.

I mentioned in a previous post that I have started practicing walking the dogs with the stroller. One of our neighbors saw me outside and assumed that we had already had Baby K. BK and I came home one night to flowers and a card at our door. I texted the neighbors to tell them thank you for thinking of us, only to find out they thought Baby K had already made her arrival. I assured them we would let them know when it happened, and that I was just practicing for when she did get here.

The weather has been really nice, and surprisingly mild for February here. I've tried to be outside when I can and have the doors and windows open in our apartment as much as possible. Last Friday it rained a little bit, but then this rainbow appeared afterward on my walk to the grocery store. Something you don't see all the time.

Saturday morning BK and I got up at a decent time and took the boys for a walk that was nearly an hour and a half. We covered lots of ground in Klein Basel (our side of the river), including this market in a church square and some people watching along the river. When the sun comes out the Swiss come out, so there were lots of people out and about with us.

Sunday brought us to our last day of Planning for Parenthood class (more on that later). Sunday night I suggested we get away from the typical food here and look for a new Mexican restaurant. Now, don't get me wrong, it will never be Tex-Mex but we did find a pretty good place that we liked better than any other we've tried here. BK even said their margaritas were good!

Monday we had great weather, sunny and around 60 degrees! I jumped on the opportunity and took the boys to Lange Erlan, a park where they can be off the leash and run around a bit.

The boys did great off the leash and enjoyed an hour of fetching a squeaky ball up and down the river. Tobs even took the chance to get in and out of the river a number of times. It's the simple things, right?

Baby K goes to school!

Obviously it's not quite time yet, but I spent part of last week touring nursery schools around Basel. BK and I have talked quite a bit about the fact that we want her to go to some sort of nursery school pretty early on. We're big believers in the benefits of socialization for her, but outside of that, BK mentioned early on that he assumed I would want some adult time during the week as well. I'm glad we were on the same page on that one! She'll only go two days a week, but I still think it will be really good for her (and me).

Last week I visited four different nursery schools. They are all relatively close to our apartment, with the furthest one away being about a 12-minute bus ride to the main train station- not too bad. The most convenient one is just outside of BK's work campus, pretty much right behind his building. I thought this one would be good so that dad and Baby K could have some time together in the mornings for drop off…unfortunately I wasn't a big fan of the place. My favorite one is right down the street from BK's campus though, so that will still work well for us.

Overall I was very impressed with most of the schools. Day cares/nursery schools in Switzerland all seem to be highly regulated and are overseen by the Department of Education, regardless of what, if any, subsidies they receive. BK's company does run five different day cares for their employees, but both parents have to be working to qualify to use those, so it's not an option for us.

Here are some of the things I learned and observed while visiting:

• The monthly cost is about double what it costs in the US;
• Most are open from 7:30am to 6:30pm;
• All of the nurseries I looked at were German/English bilingual;
• Staff to child ratio is about one to four;
• Typically there is a two week acclimation period for Baby K to get used to the place, meaning that myself or BK would go with her for increasing periods of time, then start to leave her for longer periods of time so that the transition into school is easier on everyone;
• All of the schools provide all diapers, wipes, toiletries, and any food outside of formula and/or breast milk;
• Most have a cook on site to prepare all of the meals with fresh food;
• All schools follow the baby's schedule, so you can dictate how you want their day to go;
• All schools take the children (even babies) outside every day, regardless of weather- all of them said that they believe it helps the children sleep better, play better, pretty much function better if they can spend some unstructured time outside each day.

It was all pretty interesting, and I would be happy with almost any of them. I may look more this week to see if there are any others I should look at. For example, there's one that's just at the end of our block, but I'm not sure if they speak English or not, so I don't know if it's an option. She won't go to school until September or the beginning of October, when she'll be nearly six months old, but we need to apply and let schools know that we want a place relatively soon.

As a side note, I know I've been posting a lot about Baby K, but we're quickly approaching her arrival date and finishing up some of the things that need to be done before she gets here. We're contemplating one last weekend away before she gets here, but we'll have to ask the doctor when we go on Wednesday to see what she thinks.

Happy Monday to all!

Our child is stealing my brain power

It's official. I'm having an "off day" today. It started early this morning (or late last night) when I couldn't sleep because of unbearable indigestion. Ick…and sorry if that's too much information for you. I don't even think I had heartburn that bad in the first trimester when it was a fairly common occurrence for me.

So as BK slept like a rock in our room, I moved to the couch and tried to get comfortable, dozing off and on until it was time to get up. Both Tanner and Toby came in and joined me at some point; they needed to check things out since something different was happening. Tanner nearly fell off the couch a couple of times, as he doesn't seem to realize that there's not quite as much room for him to snuggle up these days.

I'm sure I had a few more mishaps while getting ready and leaving the apartment to walk BK to work. We made it out the door, dropped him off at work, then continued on our walk. This all works up to the point where I cannot find my phone anywhere, as in, I have no clue where I could have possibly put it.

I realized I didn't have it on our walk when I wanted to text my sisters something. Oops…this is not the first time I've forgotten my phone on one of our walks recently. When I realize that I don't have it, my first thought is that BK is going to worry if I'm out somewhere and he can't get a hold of me, wondering if something has happened. In case something did happen, I typically go into how I would borrow someone else's phone and tell them what was happening- all in German. Awesome.

When I get home, I email BK to see if he has accidentally picked it up. He hasn't. He then proceeds to call it numerous times, at which time I realize the ringer is on silent. Great. People in the US tend to continue to text throughout the night, and so that I don't wake up every time a text comes in, it's on vibrate. I typically forget to turn it back on until I realize that I haven't really communicated with anyone yet today, and oops, it's on silent, which may explain that.

I then proceed to attempt to FaceTime myself numerous times, walking around the apartment straining to hear the vibrating phone…which I can't. I look through the kitchen, unmake the bed, look under the bed, check in the laundry (I just feel like you never know at this point), go through various coat pockets, look under blankets and in between couch cushions, all with no luck.

It finally dawns on me to use the Find my iPhone feature. If you ever find yourself in this situation, don't bother searching high and low, just use this feature on your phone. We have about seven apple devices, all of which were immediately located in our apartment. Luckily the app has a feature where it will make your phone make a sound even if it's on silent. Soon after, I was wandering around the apartment, following the sound to find my phone.

Ultimately, I found the phone in my robe pocket…the obvious place for it. Hopefully my day starts to look up from here. I definitely see a nap in my future.