This morning in bed I was thinking about Manja and Steve's holiday visit. It was great seeing them but what was especially cool was their kids -- Lukas and Lieselotte. Although that saying about not liking anyone's kids but your own is essentially true, I'd amend it to say I don't like anyone's kids but mine and those of my friends.

After going to see street performers this summer, Martha and Cy started mimicking some whose gag was stuffing entire apples and bananas in their mouths. "Dad!" they say. "Do you think I can fit this WHOLE spoon of cereal in my mouth?" It's pretty funny. Lukas, 3, thought it was pretty funny too and began his own performances but is still uncertain on some properties of physics.

"Andrew! Andrew!" he said one day as I came up the stairs. "Watch this!" He then upended an entire glass of milk into his mouth thinking it would all flow in there no problem. It was so cute and sincere and wonderful -- and the shock on his face so real as the milk flowed in his mouth, around his mouth, down his front and onto the floor. I think during quiet moments he still wonders what went wrong with that trick.

He also really dug the pile of firecrackers I amassed for New Year's (note to unGermans: New Year's here is basically an aural reenactment of the Allied bombing of Berlin in 1945). When I asked rhetorically if we should all go out and start setting off fireworks, he knew the answer: "Let's do it!" So we did.

His sister was a total, charming babe as well and smiled and smiled and smiled. She's missed.

One day while Lukas was climbing all over the playground known as Marie, and Liese Otte was trying to find the words to tell her dad she was starving to death, Cy and Martha made these snowmen (Martha likes to point out that she didn't make a snowman, she made a snowBEAR):