Zurich Times, Inc.

Christmas is upon us again and we've finally managed to publish our greetings card here. This year we commissioned Kenneth to design our card. He drew Santa (Samichlaus in Switzerland) and a house, church, or possibly a minaret for those following the latest political news in Switzerland. Kenneth claims there is no political message in his card.

Our biggest news of this year is that we became dual US-Swiss citizens at the end of November. In fact, we actually had the chance to vote in the last popular referendum. We were impressed at how efficient our new adoptive country was in sending us voting papers just three days after notifying us of our new Swiss citizenship.

In addition to Kenneth's artwork, we've included a more recent family photo which was taken during the Kim family reunion in Minnesota this summer. Currently, we are in the mountains, in the dinky town of Sedrun, enjoying our Christmas holidays with a family reunion on the Michels side. Zurichtimes has been a bit dormant this year, but we hope to update you with more news and photos in 2010. We wish you and yours a blessed Christmas holiday and a Happy New Year.

Love, Kevin, Nina, Kenneth, and Elise

Kenneth isn't afraid of much, except sometimes the dark and that particular breed of monsters which likes to scare little kids in the dark. So, it was a big surprise to come face-to-face with Scully, his arch-nemesis, in real life and in broad daylight. Fortunately, Scully (the big blue guy in the picture) turned out to be pretty tame. Kenneth even shook hands with him, before scampering away from this photo op. Elise, meanwhile, hung back at a safe distance.

We decided to try out Smilebox for making our holiday newsletter this year. It was very easy to do but quite slow and limited in formatting. To placate the relatives in far away locations, we added a lot of pictures of the kids, contributing to how slow it is to open. Thanks for your patience when viewing! Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Come visit us in Switzerland.
Love, Kevin, Nina, Kenneth, and Elise

According to Wikipedia, "A monarchy is a form of government in which supreme power is actually or nominally lodged in an individual, who is the head of state, often for life or until abdication, and "is wholly set apart from all other members of the state." The person who heads a monarchy is called a monarch".

Here we have Kenneth and Elise assuming supreme power jointly. The serfs, formerly known as parents, are left to look on in awe.

King Kenneth couldn't get enough of the throne and posed separately here.

Like most little kids, Kenneth can't wait till he is a "big person". No one has yet informed him that growing up is highly over-rated. So, this morning he rattled off a list of things he intends to do once he joins the Big People Club:

1. Drive your car (I can only assume he means his dad's car when he says "your")
2. Go to the office
3. Make money (Its all my fault that he is so materialistic. He once asked me what I do at the office and the obvious answer was simply "make mullah, kiddo".)
4. Shop at the supermarket by himself
5. Use the computer whenever he wants
6. And the number 1 thing to do when grown-up: drink juice straight from the bottle.

Imagine a crowded pediatrician’s office full of sick or injured patients. Then, you’re finally called by the receptionist to see the doctor. The doctor asks you what the problem is. You answer "stomach ache". He then puts his stethoscope on your stomach and then suddenly stabs you in the stomach with a shot (actually a toy thermometer but Kenneth wants it to be a shot…). Then the doctor suddenly shouts, “next patient!” You ask the doctor meekly, “Can I go home now?” The doctor shouts “No! Next!” Puzzled, you ask again, “But do I really have to stay here?” The doctor impatiently shouts, “Yes! Next stuffed animal!”

This pediatrician hell, with a never-ending line of patients, is now Kenneth’s favorite make-believe activity. The dialogue above is exactly how each patient visit goes, except the dialogue is usually in Japanese or English, depending on who the patient is. Right now Kenneth is really into doctors, body parts, illnesses, wounds, dying, heaven, etc. I don’t really know why (except that he really loves it when I read a Japanese book that I got him about children getting their vaccinations) but the things he says and does regarding these topics are pretty hilarious! One thing is clear -- he definitely wants to be a doctor for this Halloween.

Unlike her brother who is always on the go, Elise seems to be content with taking life as it comes. The first remark that everyone always makes about Elise is “now this little one is so happy/easy/quiet/good/etc…” The second remark is that she looks very non-Asian with her lighter hair color. Due to her size and still bluish eyes, a lot of people say she looks like her Grandpa Michels. Of course we love her easy-going temperament, but we were slowly starting to worry whether we had taken her for granted and hadn't given her enough time on the floor to practice being mobile (since she didn’t complain, we always just kept her in baby seats, loving arms, etc.). Since Kenneth was crawling all over the place by eight months, we cautiously started to let Elise have more floor time over the past two months. It’s worked! After turning ten months old in early June, she started to get a lot more mobile. Just like her brother, she started by rolling herself around the room. Sometime during the 2nd and 3rd week of June she started embarking on real crawling and now there’s no stopping her!

We may have been subconsciously holding Elise back to prolong babyhood of our precious and most likely last child. I realized this again when friends from the Japanese play group asked me today how many teeth Elise has now. I answered, “one and a half.” Puzzled, they asked me, “One and a half? Don’t you mean two?” “No, it’s not two, it’s only one and a half,” I responded emphatically. Anyway, thanks to these two veteran mothers I also realized that I need to start feeding her more normal (finger) foods now instead of baby mush…it’s sort of sad, but will definitely be more convenient than making sure that I always carry along the appropriate jar of Hipp Bio baby food.

Food, by the way, is something that is very important for Elise (this is a widely known trait of Kim family males). People are amazed at the quantities she eats and at her size (especially in comparison with her skinny brother!). Although they share practically the same birthweight, since then Elise has consistently weighed at least a half a kilo more then Kenneth was at the same stages. To the delight of the parents, both kids are not picky eaters and will eat almost anything. The difference is that Elise will just sit still and eat forever, whereas with Kenneth, it was sometimes hard to get him to sit down long enough to eat a huge meal since he never wants to miss any action. We have learned one thing about Elise -- even though she is easy-going and good natured most of the time, if you get between her and her dinner, you will have a very angry baby on your hands!