Two Months Old! (zwei Monate alte!)

Edie was eight weeks last Friday, but as her Amma rightly pointed out to me, today is her two month birthday. Napping is still our main challenge. It is more than a little hear-breaking, but we try to be tough in order to get our kiddo the rest she so desperately needs and yet so fervently does not want to get. Will and I have turned into jiggling, shushing pod-people. (Not two minutes ago, I caught Will shushing lovingly at Edie's monitor. I have been known to shush passing ambulance sirens.)

A lot has changed in two months! Edie is getting more and more little person-like. Smiles, batting at hanging toys, occasionally squawking at the dogs, and a slowly-improving tummy-time regimen are some of her most notable accomplishments of late.

Here are some pics of Magical No Sleep Baby, as her father adoringly refers to her as, on this, her two month b-day.

Life is not a picnic for Schnoodles

It's been a long time since I've written about the dogs. The little beasts used to be the center of our world, but they've been out-done by a big-eyed, bobbly-headed infant. Life is still pretty good for Billy and Sugar. They get long walks most days in the English Gardens, where they run off leash, making friends and getting filthy. Which leads to the one sad part of their life which is far fewer pets. Grimy creatures that they are, one generally does not want to play with them during anytime when you might need to handle the baby, which is basically all the time.

Billy has adjusted better than Sugar. He's gotten very portly somehow, which has led to a decrease in the number of dogs slow enough to play with at the park. Now that the weather is better, there are more people lounging around in the park than before, which make for far easier targets than those danged fast-moving canines. Billy happened upon a casual picnic of 5 or so friends the other day, so he immediately invited himself to that party. Having a baby strapped to my chest, I am a little slower with chasing him and a lot more reluctant to yell at him. Dog-telepathy failed me again (Billllly...read my mind... I will sell you on eBay if you disrupt the picnic... with no reserve price....). So, by the time I got there, he had trampled their card game and commenced sniffing their snacks. Chanting "excuse me" in German, I try to shoo him, which obviously he thought was a game. I told him that he was a massive idiot, and happily the picnickers spoke enough English to get some amusement out of me insulting my dog. And so, Billy is fat, annoying, and quite proud of both. Judgment day will come once Edie is mobile. Mark my words.

Poor little Sugar isn't faring as well. Delicate thing that she is, we make an effort to cuddle her everyday. But it's not enough for her, and so she spends most of her time scuttling underfoot and cowering. When you coo too much at the baby, Sugar begins to wail. And as icing on her hard-knocks life cake, I stepped on her head at 3 am last night when returning to bed after feeding E. Now she suspects a murder plot. It's quite sad. But we love our little fluff-ball, and she has survived worse, Detroit street-dog that she is. Spring has beckoned green grass, which Sug loves to flip over onto and scrub her back upon. So there are upsides to life. And more good times are ahead, small one.

The latest dog-drama is trying to find someone to watch them while we are in the US for a month this summer. When I lived in Detroit, we were incredibly lucky to have a woman watch them whom they loved easily as much as they love me. I just want someone who I like as a person, is good with the dogs, and has that intangible you'd trust them with anything vibe. Sigh. The bar is a little high. (We miss you, Janelle!!)

So there is the Billy & Sug update, as I know they have fans among those who read this blog. They are still very dear to us, though they've slipped in the priority rankings. If we end up having to leave them home alone this summer, they can get back at us with some poodle version of Risky Business.

Spring has Sprung: Another Mini Album

The weather has been sunny and warm here in Munich. Along with the cheerful weather, we've had a rapidly increasing number of cheerful baby smiles. Social smiles, the experts call them, as these are actually in response to external stimuli. Payday is what moms call them, after many weeks of the hardest work you've ever done without any recognition that the little creature cares one way or another.

The sunshine and 60 deg + days have gotten us out of the house a lot just for the fun of being outside. Yesterday got up to almost 65 so Edie & I went out to meet a friend for coffee shop treats and fresh air. Save for being hunted down by two German women who angrily insisted that my baby was too cold, it was a great time. Two separate German women, I might add. Ahh, learning about new cultures: it's only fun sometimes.

So here are a few pictures to show off the sunny weather and sunny baby!

Arrivederci, Red Couch.

Six years ago, shortly after our wedding, Will and I rented a car, and drove past Chicago to Schaumberg, IL. We checked into a La Quinta Inn and went over our battle plan. The next day, we woke up early, traded the rental car for a U-Haul, and made our way to IKEA. This was the first of many harrowing IKEA trips we would make in our lives, and it was also the most extreme. We furnished 90% of our house from that trip, including a dining table and chairs, bed frame, office furniture, book shelves, and a couch. That couch, the cheapest IKEA has to offer in that regard, was not meant to be our forever couch. But over half a decade later, it remains.

It's been spruced up by a snazzy slip cover, and loved as much as you can love a couch that does not provide the comfort necessary for naps and moves back a few inches if you sit too quickly on it due to its feather-weight craftsmanship. It has provided a measure for our growing family; Will and I fit all right on it together, but over the years it has been made to fit one and then two poodles, and now baby makes five.

Tomorrow our new couch gets delivered. A non-IKEA couch. (Will claims we are on a path to replacing all IKEA furniture with "real" stuff. At this rate, we'll be IKEA-free in 2065.) It is nine feet long, has a chaise on one side, and we got to choose the upholstery. Not slip cover. Upholstery. Growing up feels goooooood today.

Little E Approves of Thai Food; not of Thai Restaurant Bathroom

Here we (baby, mom and Jennifer) are at our first outing to a sit-down restaurant! We dined at the luxurious Yum2Take, a Thai joint near Munich's humongous farmer's market, Viktualienmarkt. Spring has sprung and it was a lovely trip there. Ms. E was an angel during the meal (as angelic as 6 week olds get, anyhow). She gained many admirers. Wise little baby that she is, she did not want me to get spoiled and attached to the notion that such ventures would always be easy. And so we ended our dining experience by E requiring a full wardrobe change in the tiniest (and of course no changing table) bathroom I've ever seen. Small one was none too pleased after this. But I enjoyed some Pad Thai up until then!

First Product Review: The Bubble Roome

Every winter I suffer from really dry hands. Painful, cracking, bleeding hands. And so I'm always looking for a cream that will help. Now with Edie around, my hands are in water much more often to clean off poodle before I touch the baby and to clean off baby before I touch anything. As a result, my hands were so dry that I don't think I had fingerprints up until earlier this week.

My friend Jen brought me a jar of The Bubble Roome's 3 Butter Cream as a gift. I had used it at her house before and loved the smell, and she swears by it. I can say that after three days of regular use, the texture of my skin has totally changed. I have never experienced a hand cream that penetrates so deeply and works so fast. This stuff is phenomenal! And no chemicals or preservatives in it, in case that floats your boat (it surely floats mine). While committing the perfect crime will now be more difficult (fingerprints are back) I am loving the comfort.

This jar was purchased at Shine in downtown Royal Oak - a wonderful, independent store, if you've never been. Otherwise, check out this site for a location near you! http://www.thebubbleroome.com/info/wheretobuy.htm

Six Weeks and Counting

Little baby is six weeks and some change now, and we are starting to get a groove going. A groove that involves fewer blood curdling screams and heart-breaking baby tears and more smiles every day. I don't mean to wish time away, but I am thankful that by now some of the fog of the first few weeks has lifted. I look forward to regaining even more use of my brain, the loss of which has resulted in me buying an absurd amount of poppy seeds not once but twice (turns out, you don't use that many poppy seeds in a single recipe. Not many at all). I also need to figure out how and why my dog Billy has become obscenely overweight.

Here are some six weeks baby pics. Whadda big kid!

Life Rehabilitation

My friend Jennifer is in town for a week to explore a bit of Munich, meet the baby, and to help me take some forward steps toward my re-independence. Both moving around with baby and without baby. Last night we attended a yoga class, which marked my longest stretch away from E in her yet brief existence: three hours. It was great. Though decidedly frightening. And decidedly not my most physically fit display to date. The instructor joked to Jennifer afterward that she should return to class to be a model for the other students. To me, with eyes lowered, he quietly commented that women's bodies are far less capable of many yoga postures after childbirth.

Today, we battle grocery shopping. I've been to stores nearby and just for a couple items with Edie, but have not yet made the trek out to some of my favorite specialty stores. Bavaria has decided to accumulate a good three inches of snow over night just to keep us on our toes. If all goes well, we will be dining on homemade pad thai tonight.

(photo of Rachael & Jen, pre-Edie, in San Francisco March 2010)

Baby Clothes!!

Edie's wardrobe has seriously out-cuted any outfit I could possibly assemble for myself. Even when she accessorizes with spit-up. I rarely stray from my hoodie/yoga pants ensemble these days anyhow, so I take even more joy in dressing the little baby. She's increasingly less little, incidentally - over nine pounds now!

Here are some pictures of the cutest of the cute: an angel wings/monkey onesie and a baby kimono. Come on, folks - say it with me: AWWWWW!!!

(Thanks to the Travalinis and Boivins for these fancy tops!)

Things I Thought Before Baby vs. What I Now Believe

1. THEN: Babies need to get used to sleeping through daytime noise. NOW: If. you. wake. the baby. there. will be. Consequences.

2. THEN: I will spend some of my days breastfeeding. NOW: My resume now lists breastfeeding as an occupation, hobby, and community activity.

3. THEN: One requires some degree of comfort in order to sleep. NOW: I can be found sleeping with my head parallel to my shoulder, shoved up against the headboard, with an infant lying on my chest and intermittently whacking me with her head, half-covered in burp clothes, most any day around 6 am.

4. THEN: If you go long enough without sleep, you will lose your mind. NOW: This one still seems to be true.

5. THEN: Time flies. NOW: It really, really does.

Me 'n' my Moby

Edie is going through a something right now that causes her not to tolerate being put down for more than 20 minutes at a time. Lest she get very, very angry. "Going through" is operative: my mantra is that this shall pass. Snuggling her is the best thing in the world, but the flip side is a day punctuated by blood curdling screams every twenty minutes and total incapacitation. Enter: Moby Wrap (tm). It is essentially a very long piece of thick but slightly stretchy fabric and this thing is awesome. Very comfortable for mom, and after an initial few minutes of fussing, Edie will sleep up to two hours in it. No screaming, and about 50 - 60 % mobility. You cannot really lean forward in the Moby without disturbing La Jefa Mas Pequena. So I am working on my deep squats and lunges. Yesterday I dusted our living room half time on my feet, and half time shuffling around on my kneecaps. We're making it work.

Life is changing fast. Today, Edie made it over the nine pound mark and she can now reliably locate her hand. Thanks Moby Wrap for helping us enjoy this tiny baby time while it lasts.

So Long, Amma

Big Edie headed back to the U.S. this morning. She was going to stay longer, but other family members need her, too. She came during the bleakest time of year to help us out, weathering blizzards, ice and a shoe box apartment so that she could take care of our house and teach me as much mothering wisdom as I could absorb in five weeks.

Mom took off for the airport in the cab Will called her last night. The cab driver apparently called her William throughout the trip. He probably figured that a woman from a country that allows babies to be named Moon Unit and Pilot Inspektor would have no problem with a lady named William. In Germany, incidentally, your child's name must be contained in the government's master name list. If it's not, you have to prove that the name you've picked is legit. Our relocation agent named her daughter Alanis, which is not on the list. So she had to get a letter from the Canadian consulate office to affirm that Alanis Morisette is a real person with a proper first name. I met an ex-pat who named her Munich-borne daughter Molly, which was accomplished by a print out of Molly Ringwald's imdb.com page. Luckily for us, Edith is a "good German name" so we shouldn't have any trouble once we begin our mountain of paperwork to make the baby real. Right now, little Edie doesn't exist in the eyes of any government.

Back to my departing mom, we will miss her very much. I am and always have been a mama's girl, and even now with my own daughter here, I hate to see my her go. Bon Voyage, Big E! Come back soon!

The Water is Fine. Just Don't Eat the Grapes.

Will and I have regained some of our mobility of late, thanks in large part to necessity and baby carriers. The weather has been improving, which is almost as liberating as an extra hour of sleep. Being home-bound for almost a month has left me a little dazzled by the sights and sounds of the street. A few days ago I got hypnotized by some gorgeous green grapes sold by one of the small produce stands near the subway station. So I batted my eyes and asked Will if he'd shell out some of his hard earned GE cash for my treat. We unfortunately committed to the purchase before we discovered that this tidy bunch of grapes cost about ten USD. Oopsie daisy. They were really delicious, though.

(Will pictured with Edie in Marienplatz, in front of the Rathaus-Glockenspiel)