Tag Archives: #Nathancuty

Crazy Family, Crazy Germans, Our cute son

Our Christmas 2016

December 26, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 36 Comments

First of all I hope you all had some nice Christmas days whether you celebrated it or not. For us these few days from the 24th till the 26th of December were the first real “holidays” for a very long time. Not really any customers to deal with, no purchasing to do and of course no packing and with it no trouble with MIL.

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This Christmas was also a bit special as it was the first time in years that both my brother and I were at home for the festivities. During the past 10 year it was always either me who was in Finland or my brother being somewhere else in Germany over Christmas. So this year my father had finally both of his sons home again. This also meant that Nathan had some time again to annoy his big Uncle as big uncle is barely ever here due to his work all around Germany. Let’s just say that Nathan surely enjoyed terrorizing big Uncle.

christ2 — We even stole my brother’s Christmas Pyramid (Weihnachtspyramide)!

As for what we did over the past days: eating, nothing but eating. Oh, of course we exchanged gifts in between the eating but that is about all we did. Originally we had planned to go to the Arche Warder on the 25th but as usual the Northern German weather decided to come around with storms and tons of rain. I think this might have been even the greyest and wettest Christmas for me thus far! As you might imagine staying at home for three days and do nothing but eating is not really the healthiest you can do in your life but as my dad would say “You only live once so you have to enjoy all the food while you still can”, what a wise man.

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So here I am still stuffing myself silly with food while checking the calendar with dread as my goal weight for the end of year seems a bit impossible to achieve within the next 5 days (that is if I do not find my own Room of Spirit and Time from Dragonball).

P.S. it is the first time that I use pictures/ videos from Instagram, hope it works.

So what have you done these past days?

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Crazy Family, Our cute son

Family 4.0 in progress

December 4, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 60 Comments

Next year will be again a special year for us. In previous blog posts I mentioned already that we won’t be going for holidays in 2017 and we got a very certain reason for it. No it is not because our business is taking too much time but something more important. In May of next year #Nathancuty will be a big brother! We wanted already for longer time a second child but always things got in between such me having a very bad health condition for nearly the entire year of 2015 and my wife having lots of dental troubles (no good when being pregnant!).

As you might imagine my dear mother-in-law has been pestering us for a second grandchild ever since Nathan was born. Sometimes she would even ask my wife several times a day something along these lines “You sure that you are not pregnant? You got fatter!”. MIL is also a person who believes all kinds of nonsense, especially when it is some viral message on WeChat, because you know whatever is posted there must be true. Because of that she did not believe even that Nathan would be a boy untill he was born because of some kind of calendar in a WeChat Group stating that the child would be a girl…

possiblebaby — Yes, back in 2010 we did this stupid MorphThing as well…

My wife is now 16 weeks pregnant and we do not know the gender yet as the baby is not really cooperating during the ultra sound check-ups. This also reminds me that the whole pregnancy situation in Germany is very much different from our experience in Finland but more about that in another post in the next months. When my wife told her mother that she is pregnant MIL was immediately like “No no, can’t be a girl according to the calendar”. That’s it, her comment at first was only that the child can’t be a girl, nothing else! Few weeks later she send my wife a message “I have great news, I have this new calendar and it says that the child will be a girl!!”. Really woman? She drives me insane.

nathan2 — Back then Nathan was still so peacefull

I for myself do not really care whether it is a girl or a boy. My wife is a bit different and only wants a girl (aka Chinese perfect Family). MIL, well MIL wants of course also a girl so she can brag about the perfect family in front of her friends and we all know how she loves to brag about stupid things like this. Father-in-law has said nothing regarding this so far but I guess he is busy trying to stay sane as he has to endure his wife every single day. I also have the slight feeling that he won’t comment even after the birth for some long time. When Nathan was born the only time he contacted my wife was to send her some advertisement. Yeah he is not a man of many words.

2014_02_21_14_29_18_753_light — Nathan just few hours old, I still hate myself for not taking that hat with me from the hospital!

Recently we started to think about possible names and it is not easy at all. So far we had Zero ideas besides Nataly in case it is a girl but in my opinion it is a bit silly to name the girl Nataly just because her brothers’ name in Nathan. We (I) came up with Nathan back in the day pretty quickly as the name is easy for English speakers and for Germans as well (+ I got the idea for Nathan because Nathan Adrian, an American swimmer, won the 100 freestyle at the 2012 London Olympics). You know any famous mixed Athletes who won recently big competitions? I am kind of out of the loop when it comes to sports as I am even too lazy to watch sports and my wife is absolutely clueless when it comes to sports or famous athletes. All I know is that MIL ain’t allowed to decided the Chinese name for the child. She named too many kids already and they are marked for life (wife’s sister is called ChuChu, Nathan loves to make that noise when he imitates a train).

How did your parents come up with your name? Or in case you are a parent, how did you decided on you child’s name?

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Sunday of the Dead

November 20, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 15 Comments

No this is not the title of some old gore horror movie but a Lutheran holiday in Germany. Totensonntag (Sunday of the Dead) was introduced back in 1816 by the Prussian King Frederick William III of Prussia to make the last Sunday before Advent a general celebration in remembrance of the dead. This holiday is observed in all German states and there are some special rules as well such as no music is allowed to be played in public and dancing is forbidden as well!

This Sunday of the Dead we drove together with my parents to Hamburg to the Ohlsdorf Cemetary, trying to find for the very last time the grave of a dear relative of my Dad (Uncle Kurt). Not that he was a close relative, my father does not even remember anymore how they were related but my dad loved him and even bicycled in his youth all the way to Hamburg from our town to visit him. I don’t have too many memories of dear Uncle Kurt as I was just five years old when he passed away. What I still remember is strangely the layout of his apartment, the smell of the cigar smoke and that we always ate cheese cake there. When he passed away he was buried in Ohlsdorf Cemetery and with this cemetery the trouble starts when trying to find a grave again.

ohlsdorf12 — The grave of dear old Uncle Kurt

Ohlsdorf is a bit special as it is actually the biggest rural cemetery in the World and the fourth-largest cemetery in the world. It is just huge with wide streets for cars to pass through and even bus stops. With an area of 391 hectares (966 acres) you might understand why they need those streets and the bus stops. Only once after the funeral my parents were able to locate the grave and that was back in the 90’s. We had tried several times afterwards but to no avail. This time we really needed to find it as by next year the grave will be most likely be removed. The thing in Germany is that you pay for the grave for 25 years. In case no one pays again for another 25 years the grave will be most likely removed by the cemetery to make space for some new arrivals. However this time we were prepared as I had contacted the cemetery and asked about location of the grave. Though we knew where to search we still had to check several hundred graves till we found the right one. We were probably the only relatives who had ever visited his grave since the funeral and lit for the last time a candle for him and his sister.

ohlsdorf3 — Some Finnish Christmas Decoration

After the cemetery we wanted to have something more fun and visited the Christmas Bazaar in the Finnish Seaman’s Church. You might remember that church from the time I wrote about Nathan’s Baptizing there back in 2014. All the Nordic Seaman’s Churches which are next to each other ( The Swedish, Danish and the Norwegian Church) hold this Christmas Bazaar every year for two weekends in a row. As always it was full there, really full. It kind of felt like going around the streets in China just that it was more quiet and organized. Right in the beginning Nathan attracted the attention of Santa and got some chocolate (which he didn’t share!!!). There was all kind of Finnish Christmas decoration for sale and of course food. We also met some other Finnish people who live in our town and even met one of my old Confirmation pals (Affirmation of Baptism). We only went around the Finnish Seaman’s Church as we had little time left so we could not visited the other Nordic Churches and see what they had to offer. Anyhow it was surprising for us that the Finnish Church even got a little supermarket in the basement with all kind of Finnish (overpriced) goods.

ohlsdorf5 — #Nathancuty eating up all of Mommy’s Blueberry Cake

This Totensonntag was the first I went to a cemetery and it felt a bit strange. I guess it might be also because I know it was the last time I was able to visit Uncle Kurt’s grave and that all things come to an end at some point. Luckily we went to the Christmas Bazaar to lighten up the mood a bit otherwise it would have been a really depressing and rainy Sunday today.