Name Game Addendum

The Germans have conspired to make my parents rest easy and save their poor grandson from his weirdo parents. To wit, you have to get your name approved here. That's right. I actually don't know if they have a separate office of baby names or what, but I guess we will find out when the time comes.

My friend already told me that Voltaire was definitely not allowed. "You crazy Americans! You can't name a kid Voltaire!"

It's (probably) a boy!

Here's the latest ultrasound-- looking more baby-like. Just look at that spine! And the wee pelvis! I haven't felt any moving yet, so I think he is still maxing and relaxing a while longer.

I'm still feeling pretty good, except for the major nasal congestion. I won't detail that any further because it's gross-- I'll just say it's my payback for not having morning sickness. I've also been feeling great in ballet class. Oddly enough, this little guy is helpfully shifting my weight lower and making my dancing more precise with less effort. Score!

Jeremy and I are now in the throes of the baby name game. Our loose criteria:
1. Interesting, but not too weird
2. meaningful culturally or ethnically to us
3. euphonious-- also, either an alliteration or consonance with Lynch

The name that really jumped out at me yesterday was "Elijah Emmanuel Lynch", but I think it might be a teensy bit too religious. Although we could throw Mohammed Vishnu in there for extra protection. Somehow we are both pretty taken with Elijah, not least because you always have to save a seat for him. In Germany they will pronounce it "El-ee-yah" which I can't decide if I like or not.

Don't worry, we are building a big list. It will probably take us the rest of the time to figure out. Unfortunately, our favorite dance and science guys have booooring names. Or too French. We're not going to name the poor thing Jean-Philippe Lynch.

a couple grainy photos

for your viewing pleasure...



Bumpy goes to ballet

(I wish I looked as cool as that Andean Mama Jeremy posted! Later... maybe I should start cultivating my scowl now.)



Almost-finished (needs the border) lap quilty-knitted thing. I have to already fight Heidi for it.

chile chile sauce

So, yeah, I am in Chile. Santiago is a huge city, and I have so far only seen only a little bit, due to my course obligations, and some stronger than expected jetlag. I did manage to go into the center and see some things, and one Sunday we had a free day, and we went white water rafting on the Maipo river. Of course I forgot my camera.

Some impressions in no particular order:

• My extremely limited German is screwing up my non-existent Spanish skills. I know how to say the basic stuff (si, gracias, por favor, beunos dias, etc...) but I can't stop saying ja and danke. Last night a waiter asked if the meal was good (Bien?), and I replied "sehr bien". A shameful display.
• They love sandwiches here. From my experience it is well justified. The best had charcoal grilled steak sliced super thin, topped with a generous dollop of fresh avocado. I guess it is normal to eat these sandwiches with a knife and a fork. At first I thought to myself "C'mon, it's a freakin sandwich, use your hands" (which is also my reaction to Germans who eat Pizza with silverware), but in the end it was impossible, and I had to give in before coated myself in avocado and meat juice.
• They hate the letter "s" here. Go ahead and try to order an Austral (beer) pronouncing all of the consonants in the word---they will look at you like you are crazy, until you point to the menu---"Ohhh "Ott-ral"". Si, I guess.
• The ride to the rafting was cool, once we got out of the city the side of the road was packed with small shacks with their own clay, woodfired ovens cooking empanadas---why couldn't we stop!
• I climbed the St Lucia Hill, I guess Darwin was there on his Beagle voyage, so that was cool, but it's a bit smoggy in Santiago. I also saw a bunch of these sweet lizards:

• I saw this drink being sold on the street, and thought I had to try it:
• 
• It seems to consist of dried peaches, reconstituted in peach nectar, poured over some kind of grain. Interesting, but I think I might have diabetes now.
• Sarah sent me a picture of how her baby belly is coming along, but was too shy to put it up herself, so I will:
• 
• Why does blogging take so long? I guess I will leave it at that.

More stuff for the baby

You all have really inspired me! I was goofing around on the internet looking for a tardigrade pattern or a stuffed toy, and I found this! Those internets have everything.



Weird Bug Lady on Flicker


Weird Bug Lady on Etsy


It is going to be hard not to buy her entire stock... She's on break while taking her finals, though.

It just might be a monkey theme, folks.

It's tough because I was imagining a weird sea-creatures theme based on this:



Prehistoric nautiloids!

and this:



But now a second monkey item has appeared! A little early Christmas fairy has given me a gift certificate to Knitpicks, so the yarn will be waiting for me when I get to my parents' house! (Oh, um, Mom and Dad, I am having some yarn delivered to the house.)



Maybe the theme is evolution!! I should knit something for every Phylum.

The Apartment Hunt

Hello, Faithful Readers!

While Jeremy is in Chile stuffing himself with avocados, rafting (kayaking? canoeing?), and occasionally teaching some people about his special little bugs, I have been racing around Cologne trying to find an apartment for us to share with the little monkey/munchkin/Puppe. You know, maybe an extra bedroom, not so many stairs to climb (currently we are living in a 5th floor walk-up), not such a tiny kitchen, etc. I always remember the giant pain that the actual moving entails-- I hate the packing and the unpacking, the endless cleaning, and here you have to paint as well (well, I don't have to paint. HAHAHAHAHA), but I forgot how terrible looking for the apartment is. All the possiblities, each with their own charm and problems, swimming in front of me. And I can't neccessarily just choose the one I like best. Nooooo, you have to jump through the hoops and be CHOSEN.

Sidenote: just in case you are thinking that I am doing this in English, think again! It's German all the way, baby. I think my hearty American accent even works in our favor to make us stand out as applicants, and I've even learned some new boring words. Well, I can recognize them on the forms. I'm not going to bother to really learn the word for "secured income".

I am now waiting to hear back today or tomorrow from our favorite place. It's in our favorite neighborhood where I also always perform and rehearse. There is a backyard with a terrace! We're not allowed to put in our chicken coop and beehive or turn the whole thing into a tomato patch, but grass is nice, too, I guess. The kitchen is also kind of small, but everything is there already (NOT a given in German apartments!). The rooms are also a little small, and the heating is a weird expensive system, but even with that, it is still very affordable.

My second choice apartment is in the same neighborhood. It only has one bedroom, but the living room is so big that it can be easily split into two rooms, eventually. It is freshly renovated (new wires, new tile, all new bathroom stuff), BUT we would need to put in the floor in most of the rooms and install the kitchen. There is no garden or balcony, but it is right by the big park.

I've also started to get the ol' unsolicited pregnancy advice. First, this crazy guy that I hardly know (I met him through the baroque stuff), was telling me that German should be the baby's Muttersprache (mother tongue-- first language) because if not, it will have such a hard time on the playground and in the kindergarten. Like, no one will play with the poor 2 year-old that doesn't speak German. He thinks that kids can't learn 2 languages at once. And he knows so many immigrants whose kids have so many problems in school. Barf. It's called Muttersprache for a reason, and that reason is that it is the language that I speak. The Mutter.

I know families that are teaching their kids FOUR languages simultaneously! Of course, the baby will have a great opportunity to get a head-start on being bilingual here. It might be hard to keep it up when we move back to America (how many German/English schools are there???), but it's worth a try, anyway. Young children being able to learn languages is such a fact that I was just mostly annoyed that I had to listen to this blabbermouth out of politeness.

Monkey Buttons! Monkey Buttons!

Say that a few times. It's so fun you might not be able to stop.

The ribbon is actually light yellow...

For our soon-to-be little monkey, I present to you Monkey Buttons. This will be the first sweater in a small (because I don't want to be too insane) series. Now I have to figure out what to do with the luscious baby alpaca yarn that Karen gave me when I mentioned 3 years ago that I wanted to have a baby.

Feast on this Thanksgiving photo!

Turkey (brined-- such a good method!), brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, sweet potato fries, rosemary foccacia, and apple-cranberry crumble.

Good evening, Sir. Won't you join me for this fine repast?

More Nice!

We thought we would let you all chew on that last entry for a while. Mmmmm, delicious.

For those of you who are wondering what is happening in my belly, the baby is now 6 cm. I had a doctor's appointment last Monday, and Jeremy and I got to see the little bugger again, but mostly just the head, and then the whole body in a very strange Edvard Munch ultrasound image that did not translate well to a printed version. The doctor was really behind and harried, so I barely got in my question about blutwurst (no) before we had to go. Everything else is going very well, but I swear I want people to STOP ASSUMING that I am throwing up all the time. I'm not. So just drop it.

Anyway, aside from eating up a mess of shellfish and amusing the locals, I spent our 48 hours in Nice Christmas shopping (ooh! and I bought an adorable maternity shirt that says "C'est pour Juin" or "this is for June" over my belly) and taking a pointless train trip. I wanted to see a preserved medieval village that was supposed to be reachable by train. It would be, if you then took a bus to the village that only leaves once an hour. I took a pass and went back to Nice in order to meet Jeremy for another dinner adventure.

On our last morning, we had breakfast at a snotty but delicious cafe (we asked-- badly, I admit-- for more butter, but ended up having to steal it from a table of Japanese tourists as they got up to leave), and took a last stroll along the ocean. I think I was filled to the brim with feel-good pregnancy hormones because I feel like I have never been that relaxed in my life.

But one of the very best parts of the trip was seeing Jeremy "at work", talking to another scientists, answering people's questions, and seeing how his boss really treats him like a colleague. In case you didn't know, his new nickname is Papa Remy Fancy Pants, PhD.


view from the Promenade







In the old town (also, Jeremy likes to take pictures of other people taking pictures...)





This has got to be Venus, right?



View from the train station of the town that turned out not to be a medieval town.



apparently a real office building



Nerds on parade
(I am also a nerd, so I am allowed to say that)



Jeremy and his student, Orhan. They appear to be "pondering" according to Stephanie Lynch's criteria.



Jeremy's boss squeezing out the last drop.

Jeremy demonstrates proper snail technique (**Consider alternate title: Excuse me sir, but there are *snails* on my plate--ed)

The title says it all.

More about Nice in the next few days as I collect my thoughts, upload pictures and attempt to be clever. Consider this a little "amuse-bouche".

We were packed in the restaurant, Grand Café de Turin, like sardines, and the group next to us was very amused by our silly picture-taking and video-making. On our other side was the most fantastic old man. He was on his oyster course when we squeezed in next to him (I was successful in not getting my behind in his dinner), and he continued leisurely to munch as we hemmed and hawed over the menu with our limited knowledge of French. As our plate of craziness arrived,


he ordered his very French dessert: a piece of Roquefort and a circle of cheesecake, and proceeded to eat the cheese with gusto after it had been slathered with butter. At one point, I accidentally tossed a french fry (I was eating the moules frites. No oysters for me. Boo.) in his direction, and he said, "No problem!". Adorable.

(**Update--Sarah forgot to mention the most awesome part--after he managed to settle the bill, the guy stood up and nonchalantly began rebuckling his belt. I guess he was having an early thanksgiving. --ed)
(**Also, notice in the above picture that I was shortchanged one bulot (larger sea snail), and instead got a hermit crab. I didn't have the heart, or indeed the skills, to eat him--ed)

Our other neighbors, the four who were so interested in our picture-taking, encouraged us to pose this shot:








This is called "Le Flottette", I think. A meringue floating in sabayon sauce. My chocolate mousse was better, but Jeremy really went for the spectacular that night.

**I also will add a picture of the complete main course, as well as a more flattering picture of me enjoying the desert--ed

ice-cream scheme

I am probably getting too excited for our little French excursion this weekend, but I have this crazy feeling that we won't be taking so many devil-may-care trips around Europe for a bit. Well, we'll see. I am hoping that we turn into the "drag your kid backpacking in a sling on the night train to Bukarest" kind of parents (all signs indicate this, right?), but you never know.

So, meanwhile, I am scheming which of the 96 ice-cream flavors at Fenocchio in the Place Rosetti I can fit into my 48 hour trip. Maybe 6?

Snaaack! Naaap! Show Tonight! and Nice

A few pregnancy symptoms have decided to come around again to keep me company (and to remind me, yes, you really are pregnant).

1. General sleepiness.
2. Ravenous hunger.
3. Dizziness. Weird. "What to Expect" says that I don't yet have an adequate blood supply for my little vampire.
4. My stomach is "delicate" when dealing with the post nasal drip in the morning. Eeewww.

AND, my tummy is poking out a little bit! It really just looks like I am kind of bloated, but I'll take it.

My show (as yet untitled-- oooh, so modern-arty) with Beate is tonight. I sincerely hope that people will come to see this thing... nothing is worse than performing to 5 people. Even having your pants fall down in a performance is preferable to having no one in the audience. I've grown to love this show, but I must admit that it took a while. Doing a whole show of new choreography (ok, I'll admit half new choreography and half baroque dances that I've already performed) RIGHT AFTER making a show that is my complete favorite was hard. Plus, I just wanted to sit on the couch and knit. But there will be plenty of time for that!

The big, fun news is that Jeremy and I will be in Nice next weekend! Jer has a conference there, and I'll join him for a couple of days of salade niçoise, Pan-bagnat (salade niçoise sandwich!), some kind of chickpea cake called socca, bouilliabaise, and ratatouille. And olives! And French bread! And slightly warmer weather!

I'm trying to decide whether I should stuff a couple of bottles of wine in Jeremy's bag (I cleverly will have only a carry-on) for when I can enjoy it again... We'll be moving apartments in February, and I have been very vigilant about not buying stuff that we will have to move. We'll see. Jeremy can have the thankless job of taste-tester, and if something fabulous surfaces, we may just have to bring it home.

Meow.

Folks, there is really nothing much happening in the baby-baking department. It makes me feel a little weird. Last week, I had a moderately impressive range of symptoms: I was dizzy one day, I had some nausea, and I felt pretty tired. This week.... ummm, I still like to take naps.

This is fantastic because I am working on another show with Beate for Nov. 14th. It's just the two of us, and she'll be playing medieval, renaissance (while I do contemporary dancing) and baroque music (baroque dancing). So, she will be going forward in time while I go backward! Now I just have to figure out how to add in the Four Humors and we will be set to go. I'm also working on a Renaissance only show for Nov. 29th in Frankfurt. It's been a hard slog reading all those treatises again, but now I think I am starting to get the hang of it...

Heidi is a total weirdo. Check it out:

Drumroll, please...

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls,

Jeremy and I have a Big Announcement to make.

Are you ready? Sitting down? I imagine that you are because not many people read blogs while standing up...

We are having a baby!

Here's a sneak preview of our adorable plum-sized blob:




I am about 10 weeks along, and I've been feeling mostly pretty good. This weekend is a bit of a nausea-spectacular, but I think either I have an actual cold or all the morning sickness that I haven't really been experiencing the first two months is catching up with me all at once. It had better be gone by tomorrow, though, because being sick is booooring.

The due date is June 4th!

So what was Jeremy doing in Belgium?

While I was eating up all the cream in Cambridge, Jeremy was in Belgium (in the south, near Liège) mentoring students and walking around in caves. The countryside is beautiful, and, as per our standard request, there is not a cloud in sight.

Oooh.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter...

Ok, you can hope again now.

But just watch out for the Killer Cat.

Cambridge

I took a very quick trip to Cambridge this weekend in order to drum up a little more business for my baroque dance enterprise. There is a fantastic chamber group (recorder, harpsichord, double bass, and drums) that mixes baroque music and jazz, and I had a meeting with the recorder player to discuss new projects. I arrived Saturday night, and most of Sunday was spent in blissful project-dreaming nerdiness.

On Monday, however, the recorder player hit the town with me. First stop, scones with clotted cream. Second stop, punting on the river (see pictures above). The bucolic views of the university are best from this vantage point, especially given that most of the colleges now don't allow tourists to walk through their campus. And by bucolic, I mean that they have rare breed cows on one of the pastures in order to tend to the grass. After that, delicious ramen noodles (ok, so everything wasn't totally English), cake at tea-time, and Marks and Spencers. I high-tailed it home early Tuesday morning.

I can't believe that I waited so long to go to England. I guess it just didn't seem exotic enough.

The pictures are a little fuzzy because I took them with the cell phone... Jeremy had our camera in Belgium.

Varieté Wrap-up

Hi Everyone!

The Varieté 1770 went very well! It was truly a vision of a punk-rococo-circus circus show that could have possibly been performed in the late 18th c. in the boulevard theaters of Paris or in the pantomime palaces of London. We were SO LUCKY to find our juggling acrobat/actor/dancer at the last minute. He really made the show!

We had everything-- puppet-like music box dances that announced each new section, a snotty minuet, a sexy follia d'espana, juggling with clubs, harlequin, an insane pantomime in which I kind of do a handstand on stage, a Turkish dance with a feather for a sword, a real martial arts sword dance, Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty, or Give me Death" speech, and finally, the French National Anthem played faster and faster so that in the end I am stumbling around-- ending with---- you guessed it--- blackout and the sound of a guillotine.

Whee!! We are so going to try to take this madness on the road. Or at least do it again in Cologne next September.

The audience was not bad, but we were up against a LOT of other shows in Cologne that night. Plus it is fall vacation, so many people are out of town. We actually had some journalists there as well as someone from the Cultural Office in Cologne (they give money... hopefully to us!!) and a baroque dance guy. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and the director of the theater was very pleased with our new work.

I'll be working on the video in the next few weeks, so hopefully I can post something soon!

Gummibärchen!

We are now taking orders for Gummi Bears from the new and oddly comprehensive Gummi Bear store in the central train station. Heartily recommended are the ginger-chili bears!

Luxembourg Pictures with Bonus Fox Hunt

Before I went on my trip to Luxembourg, Jeremy and I took advantage of the last bit of picnic weather in Cologne, only to find our idyll in the middle of a fox hunt. With horses and everything, weird.

And here, as promised, are the pictures from Dudelange and Luxembourg the city. The city has a pretty amazing layout. There are huge, sheer cliffs that divide he city into two layers. The top layer seems to have most of the businesses and government buildings (including the Duke's palace where the scarily photogenic royal family still lives), while the lower layer seems to have a giant park and some residential buildings. The bridges that cut across the chasms are on the UNSECO world heritage list, I think.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get good pictures inside the church where we performed. It was pretty stunning. One day I will have to learn how to use the camera properly.

Here is the Dudelange city hall, the front of our church, and the best of my inside the church shots.

And here is the lovely city of Luxembourg!