The Missing Piece

It is 4:30am in the morning, and our 2 1/2 year old, Maxi has been sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our bedroom while Maggie learns to sleep through the night. I immediately wake up, even the slightest whimper of one of my children is picked up by the mother antennae. Max wakes up coughing and crying. He climbs over to the edge of our bed.

He whimpers "Ma-Ma, Maxi hurts, Maxi wakes up."

"I know baby, you're sick, do you want to sleep with us?"

"Yes," he whimpers, and I scoop him up in a hug and pull him over my body in-between Paul and I.

This is unusual because Max has not slept in our bed since he started sleeping through the night. Even when he is ill, and I climb into his bed to comfort him, he'll respond with "Mommy, GO!" So, I savor this rare moment, his little body curled up against mine.

I hold on tight because I realize in the still of the morning, that times like these are fleeting. It will not be long before I will no longer be the center of his universe. Marni Jackson says it best in Double Lives, "[H]aving children transforms you. It keeps on transforming you. And the hardest thing to prepare for is this constant change."

My first born opened up my heart; I never knew that I was capable of loving someone so completely. Admittedly, I was worried about the second child, how could I possibly love someone as much as I loved Max? However, with Maggie I learned that there was even more room in my heart, and this astounded me. With my children I have found a completeness that I never realized I was missing.

Life before children dulls in comparison. Watching them grow and develop has colored my world. I marvel as my baby's brow furrows in concentration when she is mastering the art of picking up Cheerios with her thumb and forefinger . My heart swells the first time my son starts referring to himself as "I" instead of "Maxi," and when he climbs up next to me, slides his arm around my neck and whispers into my ear"I love you Mama," my heart just about bursts.

My children have taught me to appreciate the small things again. The smallest things give them joy like how Maggie's face lights up simply because I walk into the room. Or how Max thrills at the sight of a snowball. Their laughter and their smiles are contagious. I can't help, but be happy when they are, which is why discipline can be so difficult sometimes.

Nothing is impossible for them, and they are not scared of failure. At one time getting from one side of the room to the other once seemed impossible, but now Maggie can do it at lightning speed. Their determined spirits have rekindled mine. My children have taught me to live again. They've inspired me to pursue my dream of writing, and to stop worrying about failure.

I have not lost my self, I have simply transformed.

Phone Conversation Between Paul and I Over the Christmas Holidays

ME: Maggie has been saying "Da-Da" all day.
PAUL: Her first word!
ME: No, it doesn't count unless she connects the meaning to it.

about a week later...

ME: I changed my mind, "Da-Da" was her first word.
PAUL: Why?
ME: Because she started saying "Ma-Ma" today.

Passports

Last week, Paul and I went to the U.S. Consulate to report Maggie’s birth and apply for her passport. With Max, we applied for his straight away when he was two weeks old because we had no idea how long it would take for him to receive it, and we needed it to return home to the United States.

Since I know you are wondering if she has dual citizenship, no, she doesn’t. Neither of our children have dual citizenship. In Germany, you only qualify for citizenship by blood. Or, if you have lived here for seven years, you can apply for citizenship. A funny little quirk on that rule is that a friend of mine who lived here for seven years was able to get dual citizenship for her child when he was born, though neither she nor her husband have German citizenship. Once our children are here for seven years, we can apply for citizenship for them, but I believe they would have to choose between the two countries as adults.

I’m getting off point however, so back to passports. We had to get the kid’s photos for their passports, which are good for five years. Because everyone knows that an infant is very representative of what they are going to look like a year later, much less five. The photos couldn’t be just any old photo of their face; oh no they have to be biometric photos with mouth closed, no smile, eyes wide open, and no obstructions.

A two week old baby only keeps their eyes open for a few minutes a day, so I originally tried to take the photos myself. Here are examples of my first attempt at photographing Max for his passport photo.

I thought I did a pretty good job at meeting the biometric requirements, and I even had them sized right for the biometric requirements, but we couldn’t get them to print out to the right size on the do-it-yourself photo printer at the photo studio. So we finally took him into a photo studio to have them done.

Max adamantly slept the entire time we were trying to get his photo taken. He slept through fire truck sirens on the street; he slept through my mother and I undressing him. We tried turning him upside down, everything. Nothing woke this kid up. Of course the whole time I was wondering why wouldn’t he sleep like this at home?

Finally, we had to leave the studio and come back when he was awake. Of course a two week old baby is usually only awake when they are hungry and want to eat. And, if you don’t feed them right away, screaming usually follows, which doesn’t work out so well for the biometric photo either. Finally I was able to feed Max back to calm, and we got the photo which will represent him for five years.

And just for kicks, this is what Max looks like now, two years later.

With Maggie, I wasn’t going to mess around. I took her straight to the photo studio, and got her photos taken and printed out. Only I forgot they needed to be a different size than the standard German passport photo, so I spent 16€ on photos that are too small, which of course I didn’t realize until the night before our consulate interview. However, now we have six perfectly darling biometric photos of Maggie.

So in desperation, since there are no 24-hour photo studios here, I did the only thing available to me, I tried to do the photos myself. This time I had a photo printer, granted it is a cheap photo printer, not commercial quality, but I would be able to get the photos the right size this time. Anyone, who has tried to photograph a two month old, knows how difficult it is to get them to smile for the camera. Of course, when you are trying to photograph them not smiling, they seem to do nothing else but ham it up for the camera.

We weren’t sure if the consulate would take a home-printed photo, but they were quite happy with them, so, this photo is going to her passport photo for the next five years.

On a side note, the passport application also asks for their weight, height, eye color and hair color…hmmmm.

Quick Update

On Paul: He went to see an orthopedic about his broken clavicle, and found out he has to wear the figure eight sling another 3-5 weeks. He was also very sternly lectured about not using that arm at all. It's very hard for him not to be able to hold his children. Once the bone has healed, he'll have to rehabilitate the muscles in his left arm. Then he'll be able resume holding Maggie and Max with both arms, and I'll be able to walk Asia again.

On Max: Potty training has pretty much fallen to the wayside, as Max has lost interest. He still uses the toilet about once a day in efforts to procure M&Ms. The process has added a whole new array of amusing vocabulary combinations to Max's repertoire, like "a big poop coming," which of course he never tells me in time to get him to the potty. When Max is perfecting a new word he practices combining it with all the important people in his life. His latest, "Maxi's butt, Da-Da's butt, Maggie's butt, Oma's butt, Opa's butt, Asia's butt, Ma-Ma's BIG butt." Thanks kid.

On Maggie: She's eating, pooping, drooling, crying, cooing and smiling. She's also getting Ma-Ma's BIG butt back in to shape, by forcing her to dance her to sleep twenty times a day. Since we never invested in a rocking chair, this has been both of our children's preferred methods of going to sleep in infancy. I consider it my exercise routine, and I recently added squats to my impressive dance routine. It's a good thing we live on the top floor.

On Asia: Poor dog hasn't gotten much exercise lately, since I can't take her for hour long evening walks anymore. She's been a champ about it though, and is pretty much doing the same as Maggie, eating, pooping and drooling.

On Me: Read above, as my life revolves around these three people and our crazy pooch.

Secret Smiles

My mother and I are both convinced that Maggie has been smiling since she was just a couple weeks old. My pediatrician thinks I’m mad, which might be true, but has nothing to do with whether or not Maggie is an early smile-er. Of course Maggie refused to smile during her U3, the German well baby one month check-up. However, can you blame her, she was being poked and prodded, hung by one leg than the other and flipped this way and that at a time of day when she is usually sleeping.

Most people explain those early baby smiles as gas, but gas has certainly never made me smile. Maggie’s smiles are becoming more frequent and more obviously a reflection of how she is feeling. When Max leans down to her and whispers “Hi baby,” tickling her with his blonde fringe, a big toothless grin lights up her face. When I speak dinosaur talk, the rolling lips, the clicking of the tongue or the popping of lips, she looks at me, gives me her silent baby laugh and coos.

Those easy un-conscious smiles are one of the best gifts my children can give me. When everything else seems to be falling apart, and I’m not sure I can take it anymore, just one precious smile from one of my children, and I can go on. This time is fleeting, and one day their smiles will be forced if the photographer can coax one out of them. So please don’t take away my babies’ early smiles, they are my little nuggest of gold, the moments I will hold on to when they reach those teenage years, when the smiles become rare and few in-between.

Something you never want to hear over the baby monitor

Your cell phone ringing...

Stroller Poor

When I purchased our fourth stroller, I thought it would be our last. I had no idea that I was already pregnant with my second child. We weren't trying to get pregnant at the time, and we thought by the time baby number two would come along, that Max would no longer need to ride in a stroller. So when we found out that Maggie was on her way, we started to explore how we could avoid getting a fifth stroller.

Our first attempt was to get the Buggy Board, a little board attached to the stroller where the older child can stand. Max did really well on the first test run. He seemed to really enjoy riding the stroller this way, until we reached a familiar path, and Max decided he would prefer to walk on his own. This made it enormously more difficult since Max likes to wander around taking his time picking up rocks and inspecting the bugs.

Paul decided we needed to "train" him to stay on the buggy board. That weekend we took Max shopping. He did great getting there, though it took all four hands to pop him on the bus, followed by the stroller, parking the stroller and getting him seated. Still, something I would be able to manage by myself with practice. Then we go to DM (a kind of CVS) where we needed to pick up a few things. As soon as we entered, Max popped off the buggy board. We tried to convince him to stay on the buggy board, but half way through the store he was too distracted to cooperate anymore. So, our next solution was to try him on the child size shopping carts. Max bounced around the store like a pin ball. Watching him run at full speed pushing the shopping cart through everyone and everything in his way was entertaining, but not practical.

Our next thought was to teach him to walk next to us while we pushed the stroller, holding his hand. Trying to convince a two year old to stay with you when there are so many tantalizing things on the shelves is harder than convincing U.S. Congressmen to impose term limits in Congress. Our next thought was to give him something to occupy his hands, so we picked the biggest item from our shopping bag, and gave that to him to carry. This actually worked several times, and it seemed we had a solution to shopping with our two-year-old on the loose.

Several times Paul and I ventured out with Max, strollerless. Usually our trips ended with Paul carrying Max home on his shoulders or asleep in his arms. Still we kept our heads in the sand, convinced that we would be able to get Max used to the buggy board or walking along side us.

Then Maggie was born. I could carry Maggie in a sling, and push Max in the stroller. This worked the first couple times, until I tried to go down the escalator at the train station. When I would bend over to hold the stroller, I had to use one of my hands to keep the baby from falling out of the sling. Max's safety now depended on my other hand holding the precariously perched stroller on the escalator. On shorter shopping trips I put Max on the buggy board and Maggie in the stroller. Max's first time off the buggy board, I gave him a giant bottle of water to keep his hands occupied. Shortly afterwards he had managed to pick up a Snickers bar and would have fit a few other items under his chin given more time.

The last straw was on the way home, when in typical two-year-old fashion, Max kicked and screamed in my arms the whole way home, while my mother pushed the baby stroller. This was the last straw. My mother wasn’t going to be in Germany forever to help me. I needed a double stroller with all the features I described here, and it needed to seat two children. There isn't a single double stroller that fits into our elevator, so I would have to enter the building via the garage and leave the stroller in the bike room. Still there were features we couldn’t live without, like big wheels for getting on and off the bus and trains. All the inexpensive tandems out there didn't have big wheels, and few of them are designed to balance on the back wheels long enough to ride down the escalator.

There was one stroller, the Phil and Ted's stroller that is ingeniously designed, with an sibling seat that fits under the stroller, but after seeing one in person, and its design flaws, I didn't feel like it was worth the money, 800€ after adding all necessary accessories. We didn’t want to pay that price when we hopefully won't be using the stroller for more than a year-and-a-half.

So it we started looking at side-by-side strollers with necessary feature, like the TFK, Urban Jungle or Easy Walker, but those prices were still sky-high. We looked at E-Bay and visited a family selling their double stroller. Even second hand, we were looking at spending at least 6oo€ for something we wouldn't use for very long.

We briefly considered buying Chariot’s bike trailer that doubles as a buggy. 1000€ doesn’t seem so bad, when a bike trailer can hold the children up until they are about six-years-old, and afterwards can be used to lug around groceries or any number of items you might want to take along with you on a bike ride. This we would be getting a lot more mileage for our money, but it was still a lot of cash, when we are trying to save for a car.

So back to the drawing board and after a full days search online, I found a little known stroller company, which makes the Crown. It still doesn't fit into the elevator, but it had all the desirable features plus some extra perks, and with all the accessories and shipping cost only 350€. The only thing I would change about the stroller is to make a larger storage compartment and to go back to one of their older models where they have two front wheels, not just one. Two wheels makes it much more stable when going up escalators or getting on to buses.

Now if only Pasing Bahnhof would finish the construction on their escalators and elevator, I’d be set.

Update: Within 3 months of purchasing this stroller, it started to fall apart, and I regret not buying a more expensive stroller.

The Origins of "Ba-Ba-Boon"

Max, Maggie, Oma (Grandma), Opa (Grandpa) and I spent all Wednesday at the Zoo. Maggie's experience was less memorable considering she slept the whole time.

Max had a very memorable experience. First glance of the polar bear exhibit is a bit dismal. If the exhibit in Berlin is Paradise, this one looked like a trailer park on the wrong side of town complete with floating debris in dirty water. However, timing is everything with the polar bear exhibit, and after my fourth visit to the Zoo, I finally had an "Ah-Ha "moment, and the reason behind the floating debris came clear.

After watching the playful Pavians on Baboon Island, Max perfected the word "Ba-Ba-Boon" because it so much more fun to say with the extra syllable.

Saying"Ba-Ba-Boon" lost some of its charm when the Mandrill intimidated Max.

Luckily the memory didn't last long, and Max has been saying "Ba-Ba-Boon" ever since.

The "Ba-Ba-Boon" might replace the "La-La" (Gorilla) as his favorite primate, as long as the Mandrill doesn't give him nightmares. Hmmm, maybe we should rent Lion King so he can see the Mandrill isn't such a bad guy.

P.S. If you are reading this on Facebook, you can get a fuller experience from viewing my blog where you can watch the videos.

Introducing...

Maggie Ruth

May 21, 2009 8:11am

3450 g (7 lbs 10 oz)

53 cm (21 inches)