Brotzeit and Oktoberfest

I didn't think the nap would already be a hit or miss with a not even 2.5 year old Lily but I have to accept that she won't nap each time I put her down. At least I get quiet time from her most days.

My belly is growing fast these days. I'm getting close to how I looked at the end with Lily and I still have at least a couple months to go. The babies are each weighing almost 2.5 pounds and they are very active which means they hopefully have quite a bit more room to still grow. The other day I mentioned that my butt bone hurt so Lily decided to run over and kiss my butt booboo to make me feel better. So wrong but pretty cute.

It was fun to hear from one of her teachers on Friday that she spoke her first German word at "school." After the morning song, they have Brotzeit which means bread time or morning snack. Apparently Lily yelled "BROTZEIT!" and ran to the other room where her lunch box was and sat right down to eat. Of course her first word would be associated with food.

There is a book of German songs that my grandparents sung to my parents and my parents sang to me and now I sing to Lily. It has been so cool hearing Lily now sing the songs herself. She doesn't know what most of them mean but she can just flip a page and start singing away.



Today was opening day of Oktoberfest. Before the Fest officially opens, there is a parade through Munich mainly of horses pulling kegs of beer from each of the breweries and the workers drinking beer and waving to the crowd in their dirndls and lederhosen. They all end up at the Fest where the Lord-Mayor taps the first keg and the drinking can begin. You can't help but fall in love with a fest where you feel like the outsider if you're not wearing a dirndl or lederhosen. Living in the neighborhood sure draws a different perspective. Nate passed a carriage full or ladies drinking beer in dirndls at 9am on his way to the grocery store and Lily can't go to a park she goes to a couple times a week because there will be too many passed out drunks and men peeing there. There's a good reason for a good downpour after the Fest.

Here's a pic from the parade

School Daze

Ok, it's not really school, but Lily's started to go to a German play group. Her first day was this past Thursday and she was really excited to go, even if she had no idea what she was getting herself into. Since Nicole is due in about three months and will probably need to slow down as the time comes, we thought it was important to get Lily into some kind of non-parent driven activity a few times a week. There's actually a second play group starting in another couple of weeks too and once that's underway she'll be at the "spiel gruppes" four days a week for three hours a day. Oh, and they're German-speaking, so hopefully she'll be picking up more German in a hurry too. Nicole stayed the whole time on Thursday to ease the transition and left Lily alone with the group for about half the time Friday and apparently she did just fine. So the changes continue around here.

Besides going to "school by myself", Lily keeps on changing too. She definitely challenges us a lot these days, but in general she's a really sweet and fun girl. She loves to go to the pool and ride her balance bike, and is constantly singing. Seriously, I think she sings about half the time she's awake. Over the past couple of months she's actually started carrying a tune too, so that's at least nice for our ears. She's definitely a protective little girl though, always making sure no one is using anything that's hers. Including her house. Most of the time we see someone in our apartment building, and sometimes just when we're out around town, she'll say "no go to my house", as in "I don't want that person to go to my house". Not sure where that one came from. Others are a little more obvious, like at the play group they have a snack time (called "brotzeit" which literally translates to "bread time" which I find hilarious) where the kids take out their little snack boxes and chow down. Lily sits between two other kids who of course are curious about what she has, so she sits with one hand covering her food in the box and the other stuffing it into her mouth. Pretty funny.

Here are some pics and video from our past couple of weeks of swimming adventures. Lily saw some other girls jumping from the starting blocks in the lap pool and decided she wanted to do the same thing, but only if Mommy would hold both her hands. The pictures are from today when we went to a great outdoor pool facility a short bike ride from our place. A great kiddie pool, a big play pool with a big slide and a big 50m lap pool. My favorite Munich pool yet, and the weather was so nice we even had a picnic.

Things are Different this Time Around

I never thought I'd be saying things like "the babies are playing footsie in my belly" or "I can't do the dishes tonight because my hoo-ha hurts" or even "our family might actually be too big to fit in a normal size car." I'm 25 weeks pregnant and feeling probably the best I will for a long time. I'm now busying myself reading books and making lists. So a plus, I'm learning a lot and starting to actually prepare for the craziness. On the other side, those nerves are acting up. I am actually most nervous about keeping these babies in my belly as long as possible based purely on my gut or the fact that I feel so much pressue on my gut and everything else around there. I'm a bit bummed how much extra work there is for us to figure things out because we're in Germany such as what does insurance cover, where to best buy diapers in bulk (read that twins use over 5000 diapers in their first year!), finding a twins support network in town, gosh, just getting random things done in a convenient way that we took for granted in the States.

My identity is soley tied to pregnancy and Lily right now. I really miss playing tennis, taking my urban hikes, being active and my Lompoc girls nights. When will I be able to reclaim myself again? I did experience a sliver of my old self today probably making a silly decision riding my bike on a perfect summer afternoon around Munich. I had to do it. I felt like the old Nicole for a moment. I wish I could exercise as much as I did when I was pregnant with Lily, but the doctors and books really stress taking it easy since twin pregancies are much higher risk.

Here are recent pregnancy pics comparing myself at 24 weeks pregnant now and with Lily. I'm about 6 weeks ahead in terms of size this time around.

Vacation Pics

We just got back from a nice two week vacation, wanted to share a few pictures. We spent our time at two Alpine lakes, one in Slovenia and one in Austria, with a night outside of Salzburg on the way. A great time altogether, we'll probably be looking back fondly on these pictures for a long time.

August 2011 Family Trip - Austria and Slovenia

Emma Hermine Elisabeth Brocks Biegansky

I have heard quite a few stories about my grandma (Oma) Emma Brocks (my Dad's mom) like when she stood in the wrong line at the German border looking for her POW husband and ended up in a prison camp for about a year while her 6 children lived on a farm during war time practically fending for themselves. My Oma had 6 children during the 1930's which actually isn't true, she had 7. My Dad's older sister had a twin brother who died at 6 months of age. My Dad didn't share this with me until after I told them I was having twins which initially completely blew me away. I can't blame him for not remembering or not thinking to tell me. He was born 6 years after the little baby boy Elmar died and it was war time. One of my Dad's earliest memories was running to a bunker during a bomb raid. I can't even imagine how his parents survived those times. Keeping lots of stories, photos, and keepsakes of the twin probably just wasn't a priority like staying alive was.

I am having a boy and girl as well just like my Oma. I never got to have a relationship with her. I lived far away and she died when I was still young. On one hand, I really wish she was here to share this twins experience with her but on the other hand, I already feel so much closer to her just knowing I am the one who will keep the twins tradition alive in the Biegansky family, hopefully with more success this time thanks to the time we live in. I find it so odd that of all the grandkids, I'm the only one pregnant with twins. My Dad has passed on a lot more than interesting stories to me, also the twins gene. With all the fear I have about not only having twins but being a mom to 3 kids, I do find comfort when I think about how special it is that I share something quite rare with my grandma.

Here is a picture of my grandma and the whole family. My dad is on the far right and you can guess who my grandma is.

The Elaine

Last weekend already feels so long ago but definitely not forgotten. My spa getaway was wonderful, felt almost unreal how beautiful it all was and how spoiled I felt. I feel the need to give a shout out just in case any of you might ever get the chance to go here. It's the Kranzbach hotel right by Garmisch. It's a modern spa hotel plus a castle for lodging surrounded by the Alps - yes the weekend was too short.

This past week was nice and low key. Sure seems like Germany closes up shop in August. My 2 playgroups and one movement class closed up shop this week until September. Good thing we'll be very German-like and take a nice long 2 week vacation (more on that in a future post).

I have a big appointment tomorrow with the twins specialist center to make sure all is ok. We also find out the sexes, woohoo! I've been more nervous lately because of how I feel and just the fact that I have officially cracked open the books and started reading about being pregnant with twins. I feel A LOT of pressure down you know where and I'm not that big yet. I also feel a lot of pain, especially in the evening, which I assume is just everything stretching but still, it scares me. My level of fatigue still is abnormally high even though this is when I should feel best. What I've read so far is about the importance of gaining a lot of weight and taking it extra easy to best ensure the babies stay inside me for as long as possible. My main takeaway from the books so far is that I have to be extra careful because carrying two is risky and not natural for our bodies. I was hoping to read more reassuring statements instead of warnings but maybe I just started with the wrong couple books.

Anyway, looking forward to finding out the sexes and hopefully not getting any kind of scary news about the twins or the doctor telling me to go on bedrest.

Here's a picture from this morning going out for Breakfast. I also included a short video of Lily dancing today at the train station by our place. Our station plays classical music and Lily does the Elaine dance from Seinfeld to it. Maybe I shouldn't sign her up for a dance competition.

Disaster Averted

Well, it finally happened. It took so long it's almost embarrasing. It had been rumored to be happening soon for a long time, and the time finally arrived. Nicole spent a night away from Lily. In fact, two. And I know it's amazing, but everyone survived.

Nicole had intended to do a weekend getaway with a girlfriend or two quite a while ago before we left Oregon, but it just never happened for no particular reason. And with the chaos that will arrive in a few months, it was really now or never. So Friday afternoon she packed a bag and set off with her old high school friend for a spa getaway near the Alps south of the city.

Let me just say it really could have been a horrible, horrible weekend. About an hour after Nicole left, Lily was playing but kind of laying around and mentioned that her tummy hurt. I didn't really pay it much attention and we went for a little bike ride. But during dinner she was obviously not herself, not really eating and acting really tired. And after more laying around and acting very sleepy, as we were heading up to her room she puked all over. Uh oh. The only other time this happened, Lily was puking for hours and it was a miserable night with all of us getting sick. She had a fever so I gave her some medicine and decided to proceed with bedtime as normal. After that I prepared for the worst, taking a preventative dose of Advil and taking care of everything that might need doing in the next 24 hours in case we were a complete mess. I decided that night not to tell Nicole about our little mishap unless we ended up in the ER or something, I didn't want her to worry. I went to sleep early fully expecting to wake up within a couple of hours with either or both of us grossly ill.

But lo and behold, I woke up as usual, with Lily calling from her crib at a normal hour. Her fever was gone and mine never arrived. We played it safe that day and just went for a couple of short bike rides to the center of town to see the "tower dolls", but everything was fine. Crisis averted.

Anyway, besides that whole misadventure, the weekend went really well. We had fun together and did things that we don't usually do with Mommy, like eat Döner. I think my takeaway from the weekend was twofold, I'm ready to do it again whenever (at least until the twins arrive), and I have a little better insight into the realities of the routine we're pretty rigid about: there are a few hours after breakfast and before nap time to go do something fun, there's nap time (at least in theory there's napping going on, probably a subject for another blog), there's time after the nap for a small outing or combine it with dinner out, and then it's time for bed. There's not a whole lot of room there for getting creative, especially without a car. When Nicole's around, we're ping-ponging between us with errands and getting out for exercise, but when it's just one of us it's like we are very much locked into the routine.

And of course now I realize I didn't take a single picture the whole weekend. Oh well, hopefully Nicole can have another getaway while she's still feeling pretty good.