A Mini Album

(1) Mom and Edie after Edie's first night at home, and mom's much needed shower

(2) Dad, Edie, and the loyal hund Billy
(3) A very tiny baby
(4) Just a few hours after the birth, upon our arrival home
(4) Will at the birth house, all a glow with his daughter
(5) Jan 27. The last belly shot of this pregnancy.

D-Day: Edith Andrea Grissom has arrived

I write this post on Edie's actual due date, only little Edie is already here with us having arrived just one day early. I'll keep the description of the labor and delivery short and sweet, which is basically the opposite of what it was. But I want to keep this PG-13 and, believing my family and friends to be great people, do not want to have a hand in discouraging procreation among my inner circle.

Regular contractions started at 3:30 am on January 27th. By 8 am, I was confident that these were not going away and so I made an appointment to go to our birth house for a check-up. Will made us some pancakes, and all in all this seemed like it was going to be a real cute day. After a 45 minute cab ride through Munich rush hour, the morning after a minor blizzard (Edie is already a comedian), we got checked up: CTG confirmed contractions, but there was no dilation, so go on home. Okay, I thought; it will be nice to spend a day at home. Fast forward to 6 pm, and by now the "ooopsie - there's one" 3:30 am contractions have morphed into minor earthquakes that are really frightening my dogs. By 10 pm, we are back at the birth house, this time to stay, and I am now nearing hour 20 of it all. To say I was tired does not approach my mental or physical state at the time, but I was about to get a lot, lot, lot more tired. To wrap it up, there followed 8+ more hours of intense labor carved up into 3 to 5 minute increments, and at about 6:15 am, we had our Edie. All 6 pounds, 20 inches of her.

I owe a lot to the midwives who helped me (us) through it all, and of course to Will, who not only attended to me and his future daughter with unparalleled patience and support, but who also tended diligently to the online community by Facebook-ing away on my iPhone. And thank you to my mom, Edie's namesake, for being tireless in her loving help during this time.

I hope some of what I just wrote was in English. And if I were to be even more hopeful, I'd be optimistic that I'd formed a sentence or two above. But I am still pretty delirious. Make that very. And everyone is being so nice to me right now, it's hard to know whether anything I've said or done has made sense in the past two days. So, oogity boo and blah blah blah to you. I can't tell you how happy we are or how overwhelmed we are by all of your love.

Signing off to snuggle a baby,

Rachael

We've only just begun

Hour 12 of contractions! Baby is not imminent, but we'll get there sooner than later. The midwife sent me home for the day until I was further along, leaving me fantasizing about a day of movie marathons, snacking and knitting. Turns out not a one of those activities is terribly fun in 5 minute increments, carved up by significant pain. Nor is blogging. Gotta run; back to my iPhone contraction master app.

More news soon!

Show us what you've got, Sophie

What has four legs but only uses two, spends hours everyday learning but only gets dumber, and loves to sleep but gets no rest? That's right! A still-pregnant Rachael. Three days until the official due date, and, statistically speaking, 11 days until birth.

General updates:

I am in my third week of Deutsch classes, wherein I am ranking right in the middle of the curve. Nothing to be ashamed of there. We have learned a number of practical terms and phrases for day-to-day life. The unfortunate thing is that has made me reasonably good at asking a small number of basic threshold questions, but then leaving me wholly unprepared for the barrage of foreign-tongue that comes after it. Ja or Nein, people; that's all I'm looking for here.

Munich has decided to get very cold and very, very snowy this week. And while I have the activity level of a ceramic garden gnome, Will is spunkier than ever, having just gotten over a cold. Next week, he has Six Sigma training at GE. Watch out, world, here comes Corporate Will!

My mom is doing well. She braves the elements each morning and night to come north to our apartment, and then cleans, sews, organizes, cooks and walks the dogs all day long. I should have a baby more often!

Lastly, we got a Sophie the Giraffe toy for the baby. We got told by a number of people at this point that Sophie is (1) French, and (2) every baby has one. Repetition somehow made this disjointed argument incredibly convincing, and we now own a Sophie. I think this toy company has some sort of hypnotic spell over parents, but I don't have the time to do a thorough investigation so we erred on the side of caution. So far, the doll hasn't told me to do anything evil. But she hasn't exactly been useful either.

Anyhow, thanks for all of your well wishes. We are hanging in there, some of us upside down!

Grandma has arrived

My mom got into Munich last Friday. By now she's pushed through the jet lag* and is now on to making sure that my apartment rivals any of the world's top hospitals in cleanliness.

The dogs could not be happier to have her around. She gives them more treats than me, doesn't humiliate them by waddling on walks like I do of late, and generally makes the place more lively and homey. We couldn't be happier or more appreciative either; we'd given up on domestic perfection in December and then resigned ourselves to acceptance of domestic chaos about two weeks ago.

It is fun and difficult to see her adjust to life here. She's my mom, and so I want to spare her from any discomfort, awkwardness and otherwise difficulty that comes from moving alone to a new city in a foreign country. On the other hand, I know that after all of the baby and household help, she's got many adventures ahead of her during her three month stay.

Mom has gotten a head start on her adventures by renting an apartment in the heart of Munich in a neighborhood far, far hipper than where we live. So far, she's conquered her local grocery store and a take-out restaurant that serves Oriental Chicken salad. Not exactly master of her domain, but you've got to walk before you run and for being two days into German life, I'd say knowing where you can get a tasty dinner is solid progress. I decided to spice things up even more by staging an elaborate ruse on her first day here by losing my wallet, having a minor meltdown over this fact, and then having the day saved by miraculously tracking the wallet down to a drugstore I'd stopped at earlier that afternoon. She may tell you that I am merely forgetful, but that was pure showmanship, baby.

She's at her home-away-from-home right now, resting in her itty-bitty bachelorette pad. Which is a good thing, because tomorrow, she conquers the subway line transfer.

(*photo of Mom taking the Day 1 powernap with Sugar at her side for moral support)

Breakthrough: I understood!

Today, after my first German language exam, my class went out to get a late lunch together. I had to leave early, however, because my little dog Sugar was due to be picked up at the groomer - a very fancy place that we picked because they advertised in English ("Where are you going?" the instructor asked "Der Hundsalon." I replied. And then had to add "No, seriously."). Just by way of background, I'd like to mention that a grooming appointment in the U.S. lasts anywhere from three to six hours and is over whenever they call you. Here, Sugar was promised to be complete 90 minutes after her drop-off and, like clockwork, the German groomer delivered. Not before skewering me for letting Sugar get so matted, but I digress.

So then, as I waited on the subway platform carrying my toy poodle (she refused to be put down near the train), a woman approached me and asked in German whether I had just come from the hairdresser. After a stunned moment, I realized that I got the gist of what she was saying, and then she added that my dog looked very beautiful, so I said "Danke" about four times too many. I have breached the language divide, if only for a moment, and it felt great! Did I get a little creative with verb conjugation on today's exam? Perhaps. But I'm progressing where it counts.

Tomorrow afternoon, because I have a very serious and important life, I will be picking up the other dog from the same place, as they could not be scheduled together. New German best friend, if you're out there, I'll be ready and waiting by the U6 line to listen to you and just say "Danke."

Munich Finances

Will and I are working hard at coming up with a budget, so en route we have created a projected budget with guesses on what things cost to then gauge against what we actually spend. This activity has highlighted our befuddlement with the extra costs and unexpected savings that we've encountered.

First, drinking beer and herbal tea is penny-pincher's dream. Will's beer costs less than a bottle of any other potable liquid you can find. The pictured 20 pack of 1/2 liter bottles was 13 euros. With bottle deposit. While I break the bank with my new found Apfelschorle addiction (apple juice made with mineral water...mmmm....) at 1.50 euro a bottle, it turns out that my midwife can provide me with fresh bags of delightful herbal tea to help me sleep or just wet my whistle, and my medical insurance will pay for that.

Next, there is a tax on everything you enjoy. A television tax. A radio tax. A computer tax. And dog taxes.

But if you have the nerve and a touch of an evil streak, you can make that all up by never paying to ride the subway, ordering a houseful of IKEA furniture and then hijacking the delivery truck, and selling cloth diapers. The subway system here is based on 99% honor code with a 1% of having your ticket randomly checked. There are no turnstiles or the like. I've been riding an average of 3 trains a day for about 2 months and have never been checked. As for IKEA, we discovered that when you order online, you just tell them what you want, pay nothing and in fact give no payment information whatsoever, and then they will show up at any time during a specified week with your items, at which time you are supposed to pay. And then yesterday I emailed a cloth diaper service saying that I'd like to use their company, and today they showed up with hundreds of diapers, a bin, and many other starter accessories, asking only that I come by the store this weekend to sign a contract and that I pay the deposit whenever I get an invoice in the mail.

And of course, the food. You'll pay 7 euros (roughly $10) for a fist-full of pine nuts. Yet you can get a jar of mustard for 39 cents.

This Excel spreadsheet is going to be wild.