Mason's 4th Birthday

The latest biggest day of Mason's life has come and passed. He turned four years old. On the morning of his birthday, Mason sat at the breakfast table looking dejected. He said to me, "Daddy, my feet don't touch the floor!" Apparantly Mason thought that turning 4 also came with an overnight growth spurt of about two feet. He was pretty disappointed.

The weekend before, he had his big 4th birthday party with his friends. One of his other friends, Christina, was also turning 4 around the same time, and so the two shared the same birthday party at a place called Planet Jeux. Christina wanted all the girls to come dressed as princesses, and not surprisingly all 9 girls in attendance came in complete princess dresses and tiaras (I think I will buy some Disney stock). Going along with the theme, Mason asked all the boys to also come to the party in a costume. Much to my pleasure, Mason decided to go to the party dressed as his favorite MN Vikings player, Adrian Peterson. While we were a little nervous about how sharing a birthday party might go, everything went very well, and Mason and Christina were both willing to share the spotlight for the day.

Earlier this year, when we asked Mason what he wanted to do for his birthday, he said, "I want to go skiing!" We had made plans to go back to Zermatt, as it is the only sure-fire place to be open in late November. As it turned out that weekend, Zermatt was going to be hit by a blizzard. 60 mph winds and heavy snow at 12000 feet did not seem like a good idea. So, we canceled. Luckily, we also received early snow nearby, so Mason and I went skiing that weekend anyway. After a great first season, Mason seemed to forget that he knew how to ski. He stood at the top of the hill and said, "How do I get down from here again?" The first run took about 45 painful minutes, but after a snack-break, Mason wanted to get back out on the mountain and try it again. Two more runs and he was almost back to last-season form. If only his dad could do the same...

Désalpes - Bringing Down the Cows

This weekend, we decided to partake in an age-old Swiss tradition: the descent from the alps of the cows for the winter - known as the Désalpes. We hopped in the car and started to make our way to the mountain village of Charmey. About half-way there, we ran into some stopped traffic and sat in the car for about 30 minutes. Finally, we heard the bells start ringing, and shortly afterwards a parade of cows, decorated with their best bells and bouquets of flowers began to stream by. Apparantly, we didn't get to the village in time to miss the first herd coming down the mountain. Mason and Nicole jumped out of the car to get a better look at the colorful, incredibly smelly parade. The cows seemed to like watching Mason as much as he liked watching them (as you can see in the picture). After the first herd passed us, we made our way up the mountains to Charmey, dodging cow-pies all over the road.
The village of Charmey was packed with people, many dressed in their traditional swiss costumes, and most of them consuming beer, wine and sausages pretty freely, while the smell of fresh cow-pies filled the air. Nicole felt like she was back in Wisconsin. An MC gave information over loudspeakers about which herd was coming next, where they were from, and where they were headed.
George watched the cows passing nervously from his perch in the backpack carrier. I think he was a little scared of how big the cows were and how loud their bells were as they marched past us. Towards the end of the last herd we saw, I was standing a bit too close to a passing cow, who decided to whip his tail in my direction, sending a nice spray of you-know-what landing on my jacket and forehead. Nicole was nice enough to grab the baby-wipes to help me clean-up, but not before she continued to casually take some more pictures. I guess after watching the cows move at their glacial pace, Nicole decided to take it nice and slow as well. Lucky me.
For more pictures and some video of the Désalpes, check out the pictures and video links to the right.

Look Who's Walking

Yes, yes, I know I start every post these days with, "I know we haven't posted anything in awhile", so I will not start this post the same way this time. So, anyway, since our last posting, George has reached quite a few milestones. First teeth, first birthday, first temper tantrum, and now, his first steps.
If you haven't see his first birthday pictures, please follow the "Our Pictures" link to the right to our Shutterfly website where you can see the latest pictures. I admit I am doing a much better job keeping the pictures updated on Shutterfly than keeping this blog going, but I promise things are going to change. We have a lot of action coming up in the next few months, so I think we will have some good blogging material to work with.
So you can see how George's walking has progressed in the last month, you can follow the "Our Videos" link to our YouTube page and watch some video of the little guy waddling around. Notice that George is also taking on some of Mason's finer personality traits already, as he is probably the loudest 1-year old on the planet. I guess when you have to compete with Mason, you adapt quickly to survive in this household. Mason is also teaching George the finer points of ripping toys out of other kids hands, which George is already starting to do at playgroups. On his own, George is also keeping us extremely busy as he opens every cupboard and every drawer in his reach and emtpies all contents. While we are busy cleaning up from one cupboard, he moves quickly to the next one and starts emptying those contents. We can't seem to find any good child-proofing locks in Switzerland that will not ruin our cupboards, so we just deal with it. Now you know why we never post on the blog anymore...

Saas Fee, Switzerland

Since Mason's first disastrous ski lesson in early January, he has come a long way. After figuring out how to snowplow (or "make pizza" as he calls it), he has improved steadily, and is now chasing mom and dad down the slopes (or, often, we are chasing after him). Learning to ski has helped with his concept of time, as he now understands weekends as the days we can go skiing. With his new-found passion, we decided to skip a warm-weather vacation this year and go on a ski-holiday.

We found a hotel in Saas Fee, Switzerland (pronounced "sauce fey") that offered on-site child-care for George, a spa for Nicole, kids dinners every night and ski runs up to 12,000 feet for guaranteed March snow. The village of Saas Fee is car-free, with only small electric cars allowed inside. Upon arrival, the hotel bellhop came to the parking ramp to pick us up in the electric taxi. Mason was very excited, as he had been reading one of his books called the "Snowy Vacation" where a bellhop picks up the family in a funny car, so Mason thought it was the coolest thing ever. The hotel was great (Mason walked in the lobby and said "ooooh, fancy!") and they upgraded our room to a two-room suite, so Mason had his own bedroom. Nicole declared that this would be just like a second-honeymoon. And then reality set in...

First, Mason had no interest in attending the kids dinners, instead preferring to torture mom and dad and the rest of the hotel guests in the main dining room. Then, George came down with a high fever on the third day, rendering the child-care useless for the last few days. Also, Mason's overall behavior for the first few days had us looking into whether it would still be legal to put him up for adoption. Luckily for us (and him), his behaviour improved the last few days, and for the last two nights he actually agreed to go to the kid's dinner, so we were able to eat our dinners in the relative peace and quiet of a 7-month old.

As for the skiing, it snowed non-stop for the first two days, with high winds, making visibility very poor, but the snow was excellent. We were definitely the only ones dragging our three-year old along to ski for the first few days, and I think we were a bit self-conscious as everyone stared at us on the trams up the mountain. However, Mason skied the runs very well, only getting tired coming down the runs from the very top of the mountain (I think the altitude at 12,000 feet was a bit much for the little guy), and a few intermediate runs we needed to take to get from one side of the mountain to the other. He preferred to bomb down the easy runs, despite our constant pleas to practice his turns. "No, Daddy, I need to make my french fries and go really, REALLY fast." "French fries" is the term we use for making your skis parallel. The weather cleared the last few days, and along with all the fresh snow, it made for great conditions. With George sick, Mason and I tamed the mountain on the last day, with Mason making really nice turns on the last few runs. Amazing how fast little kids can pick it up. Next season Mason will probably be a better skier than me, not that that is saying much.

Start 'em young

So it has been about 4 months since our last posting. Since the arrival of George, our lives have been pretty boring, and we have been suffering from major lack of sleep, so I didn't think anything we were doing was interesting enough to blog about. (Nicole's edit: Our lives are definitely not boring, we love our little bundle of joy. We're just not as mobile.) I suppose our trip home over the holidays qualifies as interesting, if you are into reading about torture. Some solid advice for everyone out there: never take two jet-lagged kids on a two-week, 7-stop driving tour of the midwest. Actually, it was better than it sounds, we had a great time visiting family, but still about the most exhausting two-weeks of my life. It actually feels relaxing to be back at work in comparison.

Anyway, so now that we are back in Switzerland, and ski season is in full swing again, it was time to introduce Mason to the joy of skiing. Basically everyone in Switzerland starts skiing at the age of 3, so we thought we would join in the tradition as well. It started on Saturday with a private lesson in the nearby ski-resort in Villars. This lesson can only be described as a total disaster. Mason's instructor was a total jerk, and within 5 minutes, Mason was crying inconsolably and I finally had to intervene to settle him down. For the rest of the lesson, I had to do the teaching to Mason, because if the instructor even looked at Mason, he broke down crying again. That was a nice waste of money. It wasn't completely for naught, however. At the end of the "lesson", Mason was skiing a bit on his own and was starting to get into it. That night, Mason commented that he wanted a "mommy teacher" for skiing, and not a "daddy teacher."

On Sunday, we formed a group with 3 of Mason's little girlfriends. This time it was much better. The instructor (despite being a "daddy teacher") was very nice and made the kids feel very comfortable right away. This time we stayed away from the lesson, at the request of the instructor, and only watched from a far distance. Mason seemed to really enjoy this lesson. The instructor would go down the bunny hill with one kid and then go back up to get the next one and come down. At the end of the lesson, Mason couldn't be patient any longer. As the instructor took one girl down, I saw Mason start waddling towards the incline, and as he reached the slope, he just took off and bombed the hill by himself and needed to be stopped by a passerby to avoid sailing out of the bunny area. That's my boy!

After the lesson, Mason told me, "I didn't cry today! I went really fast down the big, big, BIG hill!" I think we have the makings of a ski bum.

The Running of the Cows

Last weekend we took advantage of a friend's offer to use a chalet in the mountains, and we escaped from our tiny apartment for a few days. The chalet is in a town called Chateau d'Oex, which is a pretty sleepy town, but in a beautiful mountain valley near the ski-town of Gstaad. On Saturday, we took a short, panaromic train from Chateau d'Oex to Gstaad and spent a few hours walking around the super ritzy village. Even though there is probably only about 2,000 people in Gstaad, the main drag features stores like Prada, Burberry, Hermes and Cartier. Nicole's drooling problem became an issue at this point, so we left quickly before our savings vanished.

After a very early night, Mason and I decided to take a gondola to the top of a nearby peak to do some hiking. Exercising my typical lack of good judgment, I decided we should hike back down from the top of the mountain. All was going well at first, and Mason was really enjoying our descent. I tried to teach Mason to spot and avoid cow-pies along the way, but despite this, Mason still ended up stepping up to his ankle in a huge, fresh cow-pie about half-way down the mountain.

Shortly after this, we encountered a large group of cows grazing in what appeared to be a fenced off field. As we approached, the cows noticed us and began making their way over to the fence to see us. I also noticed that some of them were walking past us and down the fenceline, where I finally noticed that the gate was open. I decided Mason and I should keep walking and try to get past the cows before they got through the gate. The cows noticed we were on the move, and a few of them let out a blood-curdling "MOOOOOO" (I'm not kidding - it sounded like the cows were rabid or something), and the cows actually began to run after us. I never realized before this that when cows want to, they can actually run pretty fast. I grabbed Mason's hand and we started to run. I was laughing as we ran, but Mason started screaming - "Cows coming, Daddy!" We got past the gate and kept going. I looked back and the cows were all streaming through the open gate and still coming after us, the sound of the cow bells around their necks was almost deafening as they lumbered towards us. We started running and Mason was screaming at the top of his lungs at this point. Visions flashed through my mind of us being the first tourists in Switzerland to be killed by cows. We reached a grate on the pathway that the cows couldn't cross. Seconds after we crossed, the herd reached the grate, stopped and began mooing furiously at us. Mason and I caught our breath and looked back at the cows all lined up staring at us. I guess I will never know what they wanted - perhaps they thought we were there to feed them, but I wasn't taking any chances with stampeding one-ton animals with horns.

A little while later on the trail, we came across another herd of cows grazing on both sides of the trail. This time, no fences, and no where to go but right between them all. Luckily for us, these cows were more of the variety I am used to. This herd barely noticed us as we walked past. Mason watched them cautiously as we went through, asking me occasionally, "Are they coming, Daddy?"

When we arrived back at the chalet, Mason couldn't wait to tell mommy all about the cows chasing us, and the big cow-pie he stepped in. At least he didn't seem too traumatized by the whole event. As for his father...I can still hear the cow bells ringing every night since.

George comes home

On Thursday Nicole and George were released from the hospital and came home for the first night. Our first major experience with Swiss health care was really positive overall. I think the 5-day stay makes a lot of sense, because at that point the baby is already gaining back weight, and the mom is more fully recovered and ready to come home. Also, I really enjoyed the champagne dinner they served Nicole and me during the stay. That's health care.
So, the first night at home was prettty rough on everyone. The worst part was, it wasn't George who was up doing all the crying - it was Mason. I think reality set in pretty quickly once George came home, and Mason spent half the night crying in his bed. Everyone warned us that Mason would probably regress somewhat once the baby came home. They were correct. If he continues regressing at this pace, he should be a zygote again by sometime late tomorrow.
Night number two was much better. Mason was so tired he had no choice but to crash all night, and George slept for two four-hour stretches. We are all still living on caffeine for the time being, but hopefully things are more like last night going forward.
As for George, he is a very hungry, very strong baby. I wouldn't call him a "happy baby" so far - he seems perpetually upset that he cannot drink milk 24 hours a day. I think the picture above captured George in his happiest moment to date, if that gives you any idea of his general demeanor (kidding, of course - he does seem to get really happy for about 30 minutes everyday, usually at 2 a.m.). However, with all his eating, he is growing fast and is really strong. Mason better start working out, because if George keeps up at this pace, he will not be the little brother for long.