Canada Day for all us canucks out there. It’s one thing I miss a lot. Canada Day was always a crazy and fun day for me growing up. It’s no fun when you don’t live there any more. All that energy is missing in the air.

Lesbian Family Camping was okay on the weekend. Very rainy, wet and damp. Nicholas still had fun in the lake swimming.

We were around 20 families with their kids. Which at times was a bit too overwhelming for me. I am not the chit-chat/tell me your life story type in a group. It was weird at times. I felt, very out of place.

I did meet some interesting people tho. A family that lives only 20 minutes from us with a 5 year old boy who loooooooved our dog Mia. In fact he went to bed kissing the dog goodnight and the first thing he did in the morning was go to Mia and say hello.

Nicholas was still a little too young to hang out with the other kids. He prefered throwing rocks in the lake and pond and making mud pies with two little girls on the beach. He had a very hard time falling asleep at night and it made him even more less enjoyable as the weekend progressed.

BB was completely not happy. She hates being wet and cold and damp all the time. And as the sun came out on Sunday morning as we packed, all she wanted to do was go home.

Despite the wet experience, we actually want to go again next year. Only if the weather is a bit better tho.

You know when something goes terribly wrong, and you spend the couple of days afterwards thinking about it and trying to digest what happened?

Well, that was my past weekend. I was so close to tears a couple of times. Frustration, disappointment, fear, anger and ashamed were only a few of the strong feelings I had to deal with on the weekend.

I am trying to put it all behind me, knock it off as a learning experience. But it’s hard.

I am so glad to be going away this weekend with BB and Nicholas. Doing something totally different and hopefully fun. Together as a family.

I have done something that I never thought was possible. I made BB buy a tent. And not just a fun little kids tent for the boy (he already has two) but an actual real tent in which you sleep in overnight in the open.

I should say that BB is NOT a camper. In fact, I have no idea why she actually even agreed to this. But believe it or not, it was her idea.

So in two weeks, we are going to pack up our car, with kid, dog, tent and other things and drive to Lake Constance and camp with a bunch of other gay families (or ones that are on the way to becoming one).

Nicholas is all excited. He loves camping. I think he will have a blast being next to the water this time and I know we will have a good time. Although I am rather nervous about all the other people. But I am actually looking forward to all this.

And BB, will have fun too. She still can’t believe we are going to do this, but if it turns out well, we might just do it again! And I would absolutely love that!

Today as Nicholas and I were taking Mia for a stroll through the vineyards, we walked up to our favourite spot. It is a small little piece of land in the middle of a sea of wine grapes, it has 6 large cherry trees on it. The cherry season is in full bloom and you can walk right up to the branches that are heavy with fruit and pick them straight from the tree. Nicholas and I love the really dark cherries, they have a sweeter taste and are absolutely to die for when they are still warm from the sun.

The funny thing is, before I lived in Germany, I have never seen cherries on a tree before. And the only cherry I ever had was the one out of my canned fruit cup. I never was a fan of them. Alone that canned colour was totally unnatural.

But today, as we took a break from the summer sun baking us on our walk, I watched Nicholas walk around the trees picking the cherries and eating them, trying to spit the stone as far as he could…I smiled. And I came to the conclusion that I really like cherries. And so does Nicholas.

That memory of today……his cherry dripping lips, the sun splashing spots of sun and leaf shadows on his face, him trying to pick the best cherry using only two fingers to pluck them as gently as he could, my own feeling of pure bliss and happiness…..I burnt that on to my brain. In 20, 40, 60 years I want to remember that moment. Because sometimes life shows you love in little places, like under cherry trees.

Well, I used to. A long time ago when time was there and thoughts were blog-able.

I have a few things I would like to say, but can’t. Things I would like to share but won’t and that makes it all hard to blog about anything else.

The past few months have required my attention, but I hoping to win back a little of my time again.

Lately things have been going good, but chaotic.

Nicholas and I went camping with my scouts last week.  Nicholas did great and would have done so much better if that heat wave hadn’t knocked us all out.

We spent last weekend in the Netherlands meeting up with our KD and some other half-siblings and their mothers.  I found it interesting that none of the children looked anything like Nicholas at all. Only one little girl had the same hair colour and texture  (the whispy, thin, taking forever to grow in stuff that Nicholas has).  It was a good visit and was very interesting. I will definitely go again.

I am looking forward to all my scout work slowing down over the course of the next 2 months.  I have been waaaay too wrapped up in my scouting stuff lately and I hardly have any energy for anything else. I don’t like feeling and it has to stop.

As a result of my scouting overload, I have been neglecting other things or procrastinating and I don’t like that either.

Here’s to trying to kick my own ass a bit and take control over my own life again

While taking a walk with Mommy and the dog yesterday, Nicholas fell down on the sidewalk. I was a few steps ahead and didn’t see the fall itself, but I heard him stumble and turned around to see him laying face down on the sidewalk.

A two and a half year old stumbling is nothing new. So my first words to him where, “oops, you fell. Okay up you go”. But he didn’t move and I took the 3 steps to him and just as I wanted to tell him to get up, I saw his hand and one finger dripping blood on the sidewalk.

I stood him up, grabbed hold of the dog’s leash and fished my pockets for a tissues to cover his finger tip. He had fallen, I don’t know how, and managed to rip 3/4 of his fingernail off his right hand. By this time he is screaming in my ear and I grab my cell phone out of my pocket and dial BB. In 10 seconds I tell her to come home NOW, Nicholas fell and we have to take him to the doctor.

I throw my phone in my pocket, untangle the dog’s leash which had in the meantime weaved around us a few times in the chaos, picked up a full out crying Nicholas and walked as fast as I could home.

At home I managed to get him into the bathroom and rinsed his finger off with water. It looked horrible. I tried offering him treats to calm him down, but this was not something that was going to go away so easily with silly Mommy tricks. Instead I put some gauze lightly around his finger, taped it so it wouldn’t fall off, and sat him on my lap and rocked him back and forth.

His crying quieted a bit, and exhausted from everything, he fell asleep in the matter of 2 minutes on me with his hand up by my face.

7 minutes later, BB was home and we drove to the doctor. She cut off the rest of the nail, and his finger tip which was only hanging on by a bit anyway. He was very brave and didn’t cry at all. I guess the worst was over for him. His finger got bandaged up and his pinky finger need a bit of a snip on the nail too because that one got a but ripped off as well.

On friday he goes back for a new bandage and to make sure there is no infection.  And even after we got home and he was totally back to normal again it still took me a while to calm down again.

How the hell a kid can rip off his nail while falling on the sidewalk still puzzles me. It was very scary.

Meet Mia. Our brand new family member. She is a 7 month old Mini-Schnauzer/Terrier mix. She is super sweet and full of energy. Nicholas loves her and so do we.

PS. She isn’t as small as she looks

On Saturday night I came back from my Wood Badge Course. I wanted to write sooner but I caught a bad head cold the last day I was there and I have been suffering ever since.

My course was long, intense and left me with lots to think about. It is hard for me to put into words the entire process that went on. It was hard, tiring, exhausting, came to points where I was in tears or my brain just couldn’t take it anymore….but it was worth every second. The course itself did not make me a new person, but it definitely made me change the way I think, and about being a better leader for my kids.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I highly recommend.The hardest part was missing BB and Nicholas so much.

Even tho now that I am back, I am still trying to digest everything. And of course trying to get rid of this head cold.

I hope all is well out there.

This week has gone by in a flash. I leave tomorrow morning for my Wood Badge. I don’t know how BB and Nicholas are going to survive without me for 9 days, and vice versa.

It feels weird. I have been waiting forever to do this course. Going to some house in the middle of the woods and learning how to be a better leader. Not only of Scouts or teens, but in general. Sounds okay right?

I guess I am ready to challenge myself and bring out the real leader in me. Hopefully she is a good one!

Talk to you all when I get back.

It happened a lot later than I wanted, but a lot earlier than I expected.

Nicholas’ last lulli, which is the Alemannic word for soother, got thrown in the garbage because he bit a whole in it. And that was it. We told him the last time we had to throw one out that he only had one more, and then he would have to say goodbye to his beloved lulli.

Last night was the first night. It took him almost an hour to fall asleep. He kept asking for it, and we went in and told him his lulli was broken, and they were all gone now and we had no more. I even showed him his empty lulli spot in the wardrobe (he only got his lulli to go to sleep, the rest of the time, it slept on a shelf). We gave him bears, even a lamp to go to sleep with. And eventually, he passed out.

He woke up a few times in the night. But he never asked for his lulli. In the morning, he told me right away as soon as he got up that he was sad his lulli was broken. But he seemed to deal with it well.

Even as he wanted to have a nap today, he asked for it, but I reminded him that it was broken and we had to throw it in the garbage. And after a little bit of talking to himself and to his bears, he fell asleep.

And tonight, he went to bed totally normal. He didn’t even ask for it. I guess we will see how his night is, but I think it is safe to say, lulli is gone forever and he mastered it with flying colours.

Goodbye lulli, hello big boy.