packing

Hey all! Sorry for the short and late post. Brenda, Rowan and I have been busy preparing for our upcoming trip to London. We'll be away from our Frankfurt home for over two months and we're trying to leave our place in good shape because we have a friend staying here while we're gone. There should be enough time to get everything done tonight as long as we don't sleep. On second thought, maybe we'll just leave the place messy. I'll try to write another post tomorrow once we're in the U.K. Until then, have a great night!

pianos in the workplace

Hey all! Summer is over (well not technically) and that's fine by me. Our sunny days and hot temps last week (around 90 fahrenheit or 32 celsius) have been replaced by clouds and cooler weather. The heat wasn't really bothering me, but it seemed to be bugging Rowan. We went in search of air conditioning one day, but the best I could do for him was the refrigerated section in a grocery store. I had fun telling him about all the different meats we weren't going to let him eat since we're raising him vegetarian. As with most of our conversations he just listened contentedly and smiled from time to time. (He's always going to react like that when I talk to him, right?) We went to Starbucks afterward, which could have been cooler. Germany has imported our overpriced coffee, but why not our air conditioning?

Brenda has still been hard at work on Lulu. It sounds like she'll be in great shape for rehearsals when they begin in a couple weeks. I think she partly wishes she'd done a role she already knew as her first role after having Rowan (instead of the hardest role I can think of), but I have no doubt that Lulu will be a great role for her and that she'll be very happy with having performed it.

Brenda at the office. 

All offices should have pianos in them.

Brenda just got back from participating in an opera lecture about mad scenes. Netflix and left over Indian food are waiting for us so I'd better get going. I hope you all have a great week and we'll talk to you next Tuesday!

baby teeth imminent

Hey all! It's definitely still summer here in Frankfurt, and we've got the sunshine and heat to prove it. To enjoy the weather Brenda and I have been taking Rowan for walks in his stroller. He's almost as long as his bassinet now, so we decided to switch to the bigger kid attachment. Besides growing, we've noticed some other new developments in Rowan lately. He loves sitting up now and will only tolerate lying down for so long, and he's much stronger. It's also a lot easier to keep him happy, which makes our trips to the store much more relaxing. He'll be six months old soon, so we're going to start giving him solid food. Let the food fights begin!

Brenda is hard at work preparing Lulu for her upcoming gig in London. She's been going to the opera house almost every day to practice while Rowan and I stay home and do guy stuff, like play with stuffed animals and drool. She seems to have mixed feelings about going back to work when she's got this adorable little baby at home, but I think she's going to really enjoy it once she's back at it.

I just remembered that I haven't told you about our reentry into Germany. As you may recall, the border control agent told us in July that Rowan might have some trouble getting back into the country because he didn't have a permanent residence permit (or, in German, Niederlassungserlaubnis). Before flying back to Germany, Brenda and I made a plan just in case we had trouble getting into the country. We were going to tell the border agent that we'd be leaving in less than a month (because we're flying to London), and so Rowan should be admitted to Germany as a tourist. When the time came to reenter Germany and talk to the border agent, what happened? Nothing. He didn't even look at Rowan's passport. He looked at Brenda's and my IDs and then waved us through. We're in the process of getting Rowan the correct ID now so we can avoid any possible future problems with more scrutinizing border agents.

It's getting late over here so I should call it a night. I hope you all have a great week, and we'll talk to you next Tuesday!

back in Germany

Hey all! I wanted to write a brief post to let you know that we made it back to Frankfurt earlier today. Rowan's sixth flight was very good (he slept most of the time), and now we're going to find out how quickly he gets over jet-lag after flying this way. Brenda and I always have a harder time adjusting after flying to Germany, but hopefully it won't bother Rowan too much.

Our time on the East Coast was very nice. We saw family in New Jersey and Connecticut, and we took Rowan into Manhattan one morning to meet Brenda's voice teacher. Rowan even had his first cab ride. I was surprised by how nice everyone was in New York City. Compared to the midwest, I haven't found people in the Big Apple to be quite as friendly. Walk around with a baby in your arms and it's a whole different story. 

We're going to call it a night. I hope you all have a great week, and we'll talk to you next Tuesday!

out east

Greetings from New Jersey! We flew out east earlier today so Brenda could have a few voice lessons before we head back to Germany. My aunt and uncle are kindly allowing us to stay at their place which has an amazing view of Manhattan. In addition to her voice lessons, Brenda and I plan on visiting some family in the area and introducing Rowan to more of his relatives. He will also get to add more states to his growing list of places visited. He's currently at five states and three countries. Not bad for a five month old, although I'm not sure he's fully appreciating the new locales. I pointed out the Empire State Building to him earlier, but he didn't react and just kept on drooling.

The past several days we've been having a wonderful time with Uncle Drew in Minneapolis. We went to the Minneasota State Fair and the Rennaisance Festival. Both were very fun and calorie laden. Some might say a bucket full of chocolate chip cookies is excessive, especially when chased by deep fried nachos, but when in Rome... (Did they have deep fryers in Rome? Is that why the empire fell?)

As I alluded to earlier, the great introductory Rowan trip of 2016 (or "Chendowan does America") is coming to a close. This time next week we'll be back in Germany. I think Brenda's looking forward to getting back to singing, and I'm definitely looking forward to my stay-at-home dad work.

I hope you all have a great week, and we'll talk to you once we're back on the other side of the pond!

up north

Hey all! This belated blog post is coming to you from the Twin Cities. We spent most of the day yesterday in Iowa packing up our surprisingly large amount of stuff (we didn't travel lightly before the baby and he certainly hasn't lessened the load) before hitting the road to Minneapolis to see Uncle Drew. Much like our time in Wisconsin, our stay in Iowa was wonderful and it was hard to leave. Rowan has met many of our friends and family now including his three new cousins who were born in the weeks and months after Rowan arrived. So many babies!

Little Rowan is getting bigger all the time. Even though he's only five months old, he fits perfectly into nine month clothes. He has a very sweet disposition and for the most part only cries when he's either tired or hungry. He's been handling all the traveling really well, which is good because he's going to be doing a lot more of it in the coming weeks.

I hope you all have a great weekend, and we"ll talk to you next week!

going for gold

Well, we're back where we started. We began our vacation in Iowa a month ago and now we're back for more. Even though the Iowa State Fair is going on we're going to skip it and watch the Olympics instead. (I hope I'm not offending anyone here, but my attitude is that if you've seen one butter cow you've seen them all.) We'd also like Rowan to spend some more time with his cousins. We got to hang out with his five-year-old cousin Beatrice yesterday, and the two of them got along great.

Brenda has been preparing for her next gig in which she sings the title role in Berg's Lulu. She made the comment recently that it's probably the hardest piece, both vocally and musically, that she's ever studied. I have no doubt that she's going to be great in the part, probably even worthy of a medal. Hey, where's the opera category in the Olympics?

It's been great to spend so much time with our families this summer. A big downside to living in a foreign country is that we don't get to see our families as much as we'd like, but a huge benefit to Brenda's career is the freedom in between gigs to travel home. (The German government's generous vacation and maternity leave policies are also helpful.) Brenda has quite a bit of work in the U.S. in coming seasons, which will allow us to see family (and for family to see Rowan) more often.

I hope you all have a great week, and we'll talk to you next Tuesday!