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. 

Sick of Sick

Just when we thought things were starting to calm down towards a routine and normal, everything got turned upside down. For the past week all three kids have been fighting off some kind of nasty cold/flu virus which messed up everyone's sleep, kept Lily home from school for a week, and generally brought all of us to the brink of sanity. It started with Lily having a dry cough for a couple of days which evolved into a hacking cough with a low grade fever which lasted a week. Before we knew it the twins developed a cough too and within a day or two they were a miserable mess, coughing up a storm and crying day and night. No real fever for them, but for a few nights they were up every hour or two. And of course a sick Lily is a whiny Lily, and since we were being a bit permissive with her she was taking full advantage.

This all led to the first sick visit to the doctor for all three of them. Pretty amazing that Lily made it this long without a serious sickness, but pretty early for the twins to be fighting something like this. The doctor did a swab on one of the twins for a specific common flu virus and it came back positive. Which of course made us think if we were in the States this wouldn't have happened since we all would have had a flu shot. Also, Nicole and I have not gotten sick at all with this, which just makes me think it's a strain that we already had in years past and had a good level of immunity to. Anyway.

It really felt for a few days like we had gone into some kind of primitive survival mode, back into the cave trying to keep our kids safe from the world and its nasty viruses. This feeling was probably due to our collective lack of sleep which was at least as bad as the first couple of weeks with the twins at home. Especially when we noticed that Lily seemed to have developed some hearing impairment it really hit home that this was serious business yet there wasn't a heck of a lot we could do about it. She seems to have trouble hearing low, soft tones, and from talking to a few doctors it sounds like this is not unheard of but also not that common especially since she hasn't complained of any pain associated with it. And yes, it's real, she's not making it up. She has a toy computer on which she complained that a few of the buttons weren't working... the same buttons that make low, soft noises that we could hear very clearly but she couldn't until she turned up the volume and then exclaimed that they were working again. Our homeopathic doctor who we've lost confidence in recommended a nasal spray to help with this which doesn't seem to be having an effect, and we have an appointment with an ear doctor over the weekend if it doesn't seem back to normal by then.

But we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The twins are generally sleeping better now, a couple of recent nights they only had the single wake up we'd grown accustomed to. All three are still coughing to some degree, but Lily's fever has been gone for a couple of days and our fingers are crossed that her ears will return to normal soon. Through all of this I kept questioning when things were serious enough to go to the doctor, whether our doctor was a quack, whether Lily's fever might just be due to her 3-year molars coming in, whether we would have a deaf child, whether waiting was a horrible decision, and whether we would ever get a decent night's sleep again. The jury is still out on most of these questions, but at least we have enough sleep now to reasonably consider the answers.

Macrodactyly

Since the moment Elise was born, she has been flashing us a very special Peace sign with her toes.  Elise was born with a birth defect called toe macrodactyly.  Her big toe and 2nd toe and a portion of the padding on her foot is much larger than the rest of the foot.  It's incredibly rare and cause is unknown.  Nate and I decided not to think about it until our first appointment with a foot specialist when Elise turns 3 months old.  Nate did a much better job than I did not thinking about it; I did pretty well but I had my moments when I couldn't control the urge to do a google search and let my mind go into a tailspin blaming myself  and wanting so desperately to fix her condition instead of letting it be and truly realize it's out of my control.

So, here we are 3 months later and we have begun the process of figuring out what Elise has and what can be done about it.  Because the condition is so rare, we are trying to cast the net as wide as we can to get the expertise we're hoping for to decide the best course of action.   There is the risk of her condition being tied to an internal syndrome but so far everything checks out ok.  She'll continue to have internal scans for tumors for quite a while.  We are going forward assuming her condition is isolated only to her foot so we can focus on the function and cosmetics of her right foot.

We have started getting some helpful information from friends, thank you.   I also hope this blog post might pop up in a google search of another mom out there trying so desperately to find something to help their child and someone to connect with.  I am one of those mom's right now and hope to connect to other families with this condition too.

Instead of just showing you her toes, I'll leave you with a cute picture of our Elise using Pepe as a pillow.

12 Weeks In

Here we are 12 weeks in as a family of 5 and I'm already reflective.  If I'd been asked to write a list of my top 10 favorite memories during the first 12 weeks with Lily, I would have struggled and probably written down memories I'd rather forget.   Things sure are different this time around and I have a change in perspective and having my Mom here to thank for it.   I love being witness to Oma being such a regular presence in my children's lives.I haven't had this much Mom time since I was 17 years old.  If I didn't have twins, I wouldn't have had the chance to bond with my mom like we are now.  I don't feel lonely like I did with Lily because my Mom is here. When I'm annoyed rocking a crying baby yet again to sleep, my mom is right there rocking the other one or just chatting to pass the time.  If you would have known our relationship back in the day, you would really get a kick out of how far we've come.  My Mom moving to Munich during this time has set the ultimate example on what it means to drop everything showing me there is nothing more important to her than to help her children.  Thanks Oma. And a shout out to Opa who is just as big of a help, just a little bit more behind the scenes.

Funny as I reread the first paragraph, I sound so rosy but another truth is that at this moment, Lily is screaming bloody murder in her crib because of some unreasonable request, Nate has a nasty cold and is rocking (of course standing position) Paul after relieving an exhausted and achy Oma, and Elise is starting to cry AGAIN after I just put her down in her crib when I started this blog. I'm going to bed after I finish this probably at 830pm so I'm game enough for my middle of the night feeding and I'll start again tomorrow probably wearing the same outfit I wore today (yes Sonya, that green sweater).

But I'm good.  I might not have balance in my life but instead I get smiles, o my gosh, so many smiles now from both of them, can't get enough smiles.  I can't remember the last time I woke up feeling refreshed but I do get to wake up in the morning to the stretches, grunts, bubbles and coos of  babies and Lily running in wanting so badly to say good morning and hold them.  Having a quiet family dinner without someone having to get up to walk an upset baby or teach Lily another lesson in good manners is rare but there have been those magical moments looking around the table and seeing 2 babies held in loving arms smiling at me while Lily eats nicely talking probably about the Wizard of Oz. I won't miss the process of swaddling and trying to put a sleepy baby down only to wake up again right away over and over again but I will miss rubbing my nose and cheek against their smooth and warm head.  I won't miss Lily testing us a bit more lately and lashing out at Oma but I will miss how incredibly sweet she is with Paul and Elise.  I have been pleasantly surprised by how interested, gentle, and protective ("Don't look at them! They are mine!") she is.