One Year in Munich

In some ways it feels like we've been here a lot longer, and in some ways it seems like we're brand new in town, but it's been a year since we arrived at Munich Airport with two carts of suitcases, a stroller with an almost two-year old, and two cats with full bladders.

 We've settled into our new city, my new job, our first apartment, and now our second apartment and neighborhood. As I wrote that opening sentence I was almost surprised to recall that Lily wasn't even two when we moved here, since she's now going to school for six hours a day and babbling on and on about any and all subjects. That definitely makes it seem like a long time ago.

We were pretty sure what we were getting ourselves into coming here, and I don't think we were overly surprised by anything except what we saw on that fateful ultrasound in May. I do recall some frustrations those first few weeks and months about poor customer service (or American expectations) and having to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops. But now that we're past most of that it feels like pretty smooth sailing. We still wish stores were open on Sunday and that we could buy gallons of milk instead of liters, but these are just minor annoyances at this point. And there are big pluses to living here too, again going back to Lily being in school and the fact that the education system is just set up that way to get three year olds involved in learning and socialization. And while it's not free, it's definitely not at all expensive.

 The big curveball of the first year is well known, but it had such a huge impact on the year that it's impossible to understate. The pregnancy was difficult, between bad morning sickness at first and immobility at the end, and it really affected what we did, from vacation to working out to socializing. But in hindsight we also came over with some unrealistic expectations that we would continue to live like we did during our 3-month stint in 2010, as tourists running around to see the cool sights of the city and area. Even without the pregnancy, doing things like getting Lily involved in German-speaking playgroups was important, and that precluded a lot of excursions. All in all it was a tough first year but I don't think either of us would do anything differently.

 Of course at a milestone like this you want to stop and assess the future, but we really promised ourselves that we would wait until the two year mark to make any decisions about where we want to spend the years beyond that. So you're not getting anything juicy out of me this time...

In keeping with the theme, here's a picture of Lily a year ago at the spring festival and earlier this week at the same festival.

Ich hab' ein Roller

Lily has been saying something very proudly over and over again to any stranger giving her eye contact since she started riding her new scooter this week...."I have a new scooter (Ich hab' ein Roller) because I pooped in the potty." Yup, it just happened, we didn't do anything different.  She just finally decided to not say "it's too hard" and give it a darn try and it worked.

April has been a very good month and the main reason why is because of the help I've been getting. My parents connected me with a Catholic Family Care Foundation. A very experienced and warm woman has been coming every week day afternoon since Easter and will continue coming for the rest of April. She enables me to pick up Lily from school alone by bike, tram, or by foot which has been really fun 1:1 time, go grocery shopping either alone or just with Lily, go running alone, go to appointments alone...notice a theme? It's been awesome and it's really given me the chance to find a groove, find some balance, catch up on appointments and paperwork, and find my better cooking ways again; she's made life easier and it's awesome. After April, I have a short list of babysitters that are ready to help. At first my goal was to eliminate the need for help but now I've changed my goal to just lessening my need/desire for help because the help rocks and would love it at some level for a while.

It has felt like a very normal week. Lily had her first playdate with a girl from her Kindergarten, I went out for sushi with a girlfriend, went to a Birthday party as a family of 5 and managed to get a picture of me with the twins outside and not wearing lounge wear for a change, and I'm going swimming tonight with another girlfriend. It's been a good week.


Here we are waiting for our bus to take us home after a Bday party.  This is when the cool factor is at the highest for me living in Munich.  Going to the doctors, dentist, shopping, or just waiting for the bus to take us home are at such beautiful spots in downtown Munich.

Had the chance to take Lily for a haircut and she was such a pro, so proud of her.

Finally a picture of me with the twins not wearing the green sweater I wear all the time.  My mom and Nate will probably burn it happily for me together.

 Lily getting a makeover on her playdate

Signs of (New) Normalcy

It felt like this week we glimpsed what life could be like soon.  We changed strategies with daytime naps and they got better, we both managed to get out for a run, our new place is pretty much together, paperwork got done, Nicole did some great cooking, and Lily did really well in her first week of kindergarten.  We're getting some help during the afternoons that enables a lot of this, but it still feels like things are getting a bit easier.

We had been holding the twins in our arms until they were nodding off for naps, but this week we changed gears to put them down much earlier.  We still wait for a drowsy sign, usually rubbing eyes or a yawn, but then put them down after singing a couple of songs, usually fairly awake.  Most of the time they've been falling asleep with only a few minutes of crying, or sometimes no crying at all.  Yes, most of the naps are still half an hour and yes, Paul bucked the trend today by crying for quite a while for all three of his naps.  But overall we're much happier to be doing a lot less holding.  Still waking up once almost every night, but we can't complain much about that.  Here are Paul and Elise in their night sleep outfits.

Lily got off to a good start at kindergarten.  It was a short week due to Easter Monday, and she hasn't stayed all the way to 2 o'clock yet, but she was well behaved and seemed to enjoy it.  Apparently it's very normal for moms to stay with first-timers nearly the whole first day, but Lily has been used to "going to school" from her playgroups over the past seven months or so.  The teachers were pretty surprised that Nicole essentially dropped her off, but Lily did fine and got picked up around 11.  The rest of the days she stayed through lunch (she's been telling us about how she washes her plate and hands after lunch) and this week she will probably start staying until 2.  Sadly we didn't get a good picture of her first day, but she wore a nice dress and looked very cute with her usual bee backpack.

Lily also went back to the ear doctor for a re-check.  It seemed like her hearing was pretty much, if not all better over the past week or so.  According to the doc, it's now all better in one ear, and up to 90% back to normal in the other ear.  She did really well at the doctor, no fear at all.  It probably helped that there were some fun toys there and she got a couple of gummy bears as a reward, but I'm almost as glad that she was good as I am that her ears are almost back to normal.

Kindergarten Eve

Lots of activity these days making our new house feel like home which includes meeting the neighbors.  So far we've met a family from Seattle and an Italian/American couple (she's from Chicago).  Pretty cool.  What's even cooler is this small world story - see if you can follow along.  When I was at a Kindergarten open house registering Lily, I overheard a father speaking English to his daughter.  I asked him his opinion of the school and did some light chit chat.  Last week, I met up with a friend who introduced me to a group of her friends....one of them being the same man from the Kindergarten a month ago.  Then....after talking to him...he works closely with the husband of the Seattle family that lives above us....now that is crazy...because Munich is big and I barely know anyone here.

Anyway, this post is meant to be about Lily even though I'm staring at 2 smiling babies right now who are now 4 months old and grabbing everything in sight.

Tomorrow is a big milestone for all of us.  Lily is starting Kindergarten.  The vast majority of children here go to all day Kindergarten starting at age 3 for 3 years.  This would be called preschool in America but keep in mind, it's totally normal for kids to go to school all day every day starting at age 3.  Of the dozen or so schools I registered Lily for, Lily got into 1 school, phew, about a mile away.  It's operated by a church and receives some funding from the state.  Her school has 80 kids divided into 4 groups.  Each group ends at a different time, Lily's group ending the earliest at 2pm.  She is also in the group with the smallest amount of children (15) and most teachers (3).  It is this way because 3 of the kids in her group are developmentally disabled.  This worked out well for us because I wasn't ready for her to be gone from 8-4, small class size will help her with the language barrier, and hopefully introduce empathy and understanding for all kinds of kids.  She was accepted to start in September but then we were recently asked whether we'd be interested in Lily starting already tomorrow because another child moved away on short notice. Heck yea!  This will definitely lighten the load for me not having 3 kids with me every day until September.  And what's extra cool, the Kindergeld (children's money) we get from the government, about 180 Euros per kid per month, easily pays for her school. 

Here are a few pics of our big Lil' before she embarks on the new world of Kindergarten.  

A rare mommy/daughter restaurant adventure

One of Lily's playgroups she went to a couple times a week from 9-12 near our old home for the last 7 months.  This was her last day.

Lily always demands to hold the umbrella.

Lily in mommy's boots while we try to unpack boxes.

Changes

Lots of changes over the past week. Tied for #1 we have our big move across town and Oma heading back home to Leimen after almost five(!) months. The move happened Monday, and at this point we have some boxes still around but pretty much everything is in place and feeling like home except for pictures on the wall and decent lights in the ceiling. Nicole's post from a month or so ago covered the location, about two miles North of our old place and on the other side of the Isar, the city's main river. I've already enjoyed the fact that it cuts about 10 minutes off of my drive to work, though taking the train is a bit more difficult from here. No garage parking, but that hasn't been a major pain yet. Reminiscent of our place on Irving really... if you're there around rush hour there's enough turnover to find a space, otherwise you look for 5 minutes or so.

The apartment itself is pretty good so far. It's old construction - altbau - but nicely refurbished as of a couple of years ago. But they kept some old touches like cool crown molding, different in each room, and etched glass panes in the bedroom doors. 

It definitely has some downsides - radiator heat, a drafty front door. A big downside for the moment is the fact that there's no dishwasher. But we'll be getting one installed as soon as our favorite installer guy has an opening in his schedule. One interesting point is that we now officially own a kitchen. You might remember from a post about moving here that pre-built/installed kitchens are not common in German apartments, so we bought the kitchen - cabinets, counters, tiling, fridge - from the previous tenant. Lily has a huge bedroom, and our bedroom is much bigger too, or at least more useful space after our previous strangely shaped room. And I no longer have to take phone meetings from the bathroom, I have a proper office. One last thing for PDX'ers, our storage space really looks like something you'd see on the Shanghai Tunnel tour...

The second big change is Oma heading home after helping us in every way possible for the past five months. She really did everything, from taking Lily to school (even doing parent duty at school when Lily was out sick), tons of shopping, cooking great meals, and taking Lily to mass. But the biggest thing she did was to help with Elise and Paul, doing the dirty work like changing diapers and mopping up spit up but also the seemingly never-ending baby holding. Most of the pictures of Oma from the past months are holding a baby, and it's not because she just happened to pick one up and pose. She's definitely going home with some strong arms as well as our eternal gratitude for truly taking one for the team. Can you imagine leaving your home, all of your friends, your routine, your normal life for five months? What a sacrifice.

Beyond the big changes, a few smaller ones that are keeping things interesting. Paul and Elise are no longer swaddled at night, and we're doing a better job of putting them down drowsy, not asleep for night time, and doing cry it out for night time as well. Nap time is next. Hopefully this leads to less baby holding, which is critical as we wean ourselves from Oma and transition to outside help (more on that in another post).

Lily's hearing issue, which I mentioned in the last post, has been diagnosed as mucus in the middle ear after a visit to a very nice ear doctor. This is related to the sickness all the kids had, and should resolve itself in the course of the next month or two. If it's not better in a couple of months the doctor recommended a minor operation to drain it so that she doesn't end up with pronunciation issues. Hard to tell if it's getting better or not, but it's definitely not back to normal yet.


Ok, that's enough change for now.  Here are a few pictures from the past week or so.  

Lily at the Easter egg hunt at one of her playgroups and earlier today across the street from our place, you can see the Friedensengel (Angel of Peace) in the background.

Paul and Elise in cute outfits from Aunt Sonya.  And they've discovered their hands.