Last But Not Least

She's here, she's here! Tali Amelia is here at last! Our daughter. The Noodle's little sister. Everyone's sister, if you take the broad view. 

Tali arrived in a hurry just before noon on Sunday, the 18th of October. We're not sure what her nickname will be yet, because we still need to get to know her. What we do know is that she is still and alert. She has ten fingers and ten toes. Her belly is pink and smooth. Her belly button remains unknown. She has dark, almond-shaped eyes and black hair. She seems wise and centered (it's all downhill from here, my love). Her skin is warm and smells of cookies and jasmine. 

We love her, we love her, we love her. 

Welcome to the party, tiny one. 

Good grief, we get to have some gorgeous (and definitely related) little girls. 

Nava at 1 day, July 2013

Tali at 1 day, October 2015

Weird News

The Internet is filled with stories about creepy things that little children have said or done. A lot of those stories have to do with kids pointing at dark corners and talking about people they see standing there. Or are about kids "remembering" a previous life. 

This photo has no relation to this post. #TBWhateverday

Today, this happened to us. 

Let me explain about the things that the Noodle thinks are endlessly awesome this week: 
1.) Anything she can "count" (Ooone! Twooo! Fouur!)
2.) Trams ("Choo-choo train")
3.) Busses ("BAAAHS")
4.) Airplanes ("Airpwane!")

Noodle does not care about cars, I guess because there are so many of them. They're background noise, like walls and sidewalks and grass. 

Except this evening. Noodle, Alex and I were walking home from the nearby dim sum place and decided to stop off at the gas station because we needed cat food. Noodle was in her stroller. As we were leaving the gas station she started whooping and hooting about the cars. 

"Anschauen!" she said, pointing wildly. "Anschauen!" (That means to look at something). 

We ignored her and kept walking, but she squirmed out of her stroller. She handed her father her blanket and her pacifier, which is unheard of. She grabbed my hand. "Car. Auto. Anschauen," she said, and led me back into the station. 

I thought we were heading for the modest gold Mercedes that was getting gas. Nope. The Volkswagen? No. The girl was focused. We walked past all the pumps and into the back, where a row of cars were being serviced. 

And walked directly up to the nicest car in the place, which was a family-friendly black Porsche. One like this: 

Noodle marched past the lady in a smock who had been waxing the car, and who had turned around because she thought we needed help. My one year old put her hands on her hips and spent a few moments staring at the car from the front, and then walked around to the side. She was nodding. 

The front doors were open. Noodle had a look at the seats. Finally she pointed. "This is nice," she said. "'Snice, Mommy." 

Her hands went back on her hips. And then she just stood there, nodding, with a little face that said she knows good work when she sees it. And then she cried when I made her leave. 

It was the most absurd thing I've ever seen. Where does she get this stuff from? 

The only explanation, of course, is that she is the reincarnation of a chubby banker who is having a half-hearted mid-life crisis but whose spouse won't let her (see what I did there? 10 points!) get the really cool car. 

I see luxury vehicles. 

The Parents Were Here

Grandma and Puffes Noodle

My parents were here, so of course I have been drinking.  This is not a reaction to them. This is simply the organic result of having free babysitters who are happy as little clams to bounce the baby and stuff her full of pureed carrots. 

They came last Thursday, suitcases bursting with beautiful baby clothes and toys and books and candy (that's for the grownups around here, who apparently are believed to have the dietary preferences of six year-olds raised in an American food desert), to spread merriment and good cheer around our humble abode. Hooray! And then in the wee hours this morning they left. Sorrow.

Luggage McNoodle and her dad

The trip was a great success. On Saturday we drove out to Peilstein to wander around the 7km "Erlebnisweg", but about two kilometers into our walk the sky darkened and it began to drizzle, so we turned around. The last kilometer or so we were walking into a freezing, hurricane-like wind through shards of frozen rain, which was sort of adventurous and magical until the Noodle (understandably) decided she had had quite enough thank-you-very-much and lapsed into a low-level grousing combined with repeatedly smacking her father about the head. 

Granddad in the woods

Weather notwithstanding we managed to gather a big bag of Bärlauch (bear leek, or woods garlic) and before driving home we warmed ourselves up in a Heuriger with beer, diverse pork and knödel, so we can't really complain. 

It's always good to have Noodle's grandparents around. Our baby had the time of her life because she got to be carried around all day long and there was always someone around to play peekaboo and wake up with her at five a.m. (thanks, Dad!). Alex and I could leave the apartment with nothing in our hands (hooray!) and even go on dates with each other, can you imagine, including to the cabaret. I've had three separate low-level hangovers in six days--great success! My mother spent her time campaigning hard for grandparent of the year, reading books, shaking rattles and singing nursery rhymes over and over and over again. Also she has rearranged my pantry in her usual wonderful if totally inscrutable way. 

Slightly manic mama and her indignant, pink-cheeked offspring
dry off after walking through the driving rain.

My poor father, however, did not leave Vienna unscathed. He went out on an innocent 9 a.m. hunt for sausages on Monday morning and ended up getting punched in the face by a flying street sign, which had been dislodged by a tremendous gust of wind. Sadly for all of us scroungers at home he didn't file a complaint or otherwise extort the responsible shopkeeper. Such a nice man. As of yesterday the bleeding had stopped and the swelling has gone down, so that's good. He has refused all offers of ice but has been eating copious amounts of ibuprofen and appears to be recovering well. He is a beacon of manly suck it up-ness. Stiff upper lip and all that...get it? GET IT?  

Battle scars.

Come again soon, Mom and Dad! We miss you already.

Quickly blog faster! About women

Holy beans, I have access to a computer and the baby is sleeping. Quickly blog faster! I only have a few minutes so I'll keep this post narrow: Women are insane. To be more specific (and, like, fair), what I mean is that some women really lose it around babies.

I've really noticed it walking through the wilds of Gumpendorfer Strasse with the Mouse.
Complete strangers will surreptitiously cross traffic so that they can walk near the baby and peep at her feet. Old ladies rise from their bus seats like Lazarus to peer into the carriage, and young girls come bounding out of the shops where they work to coo and sigh. 

There is much squealing.  It goes like this. Someone will come up and say, "Mei das Putzi ist ja GANZ ein neues, so ein KLEINES *indecipherable cooing*" Still smiling like madonna, they ask, "Und? Wie alt?" (Loose translation: "What a wittle snooky wooky wookems woo. How old is she?")

And I say: "Fast ein Monat." (A month, or whatever). And they squee and clutch their hearts. When I told one woman on the bus that Nava was only six days old the woman actually shrieked and had to clap her hands over her mouth and sit down. Other times real tears come into these ladies' eyes. 

One person I have only met once for five minutes walked right up to us in the street, apologised briefly ("Sorry, ich muss das jetzt sehen -- so SÜSS!"), pulled the child's sock off and then just stood there holding her foot. Another girl was gazing into the carriage when, with no forewarning, she reached in, pulled the sleeping baby's dress up and placed a single finger on her teeny weeny belly button. Then she literally stood there until it started to rain. 

Ickle wickle baby toesies!

It's insane. Worse, I'm almost certain that I'm going to become these women - I, too, am grievously addicted to the smell of fresh baby and the sight of wittle pink toes. 

However. Despite the crazy, its exactly those hormones that make us ladies into sensitive fertility goddesses. 

Now, I'm not saying breeding is our best feature. Women don't need to have kids. Even if they do have kids I suspect that raising those kids is a whole lot more challenging than just bringing them into the world. There are many parts of women that are brilliantly designed to do all kinds of other things, like sneezing and calculus. And we should do them. It is great news for the world that ever more women are shaping religion, politics, science, engineering and other fields previously monopolized by the boys (who did a lovely job most of the time, but also brought us, respectively, holy war, regular war, social darwinism and the bomb). 

Our worthy minds aside, though, girls' bodies are amazing on an esoteric level, and that is especially obvious when it comes to perpetuating the species. Not to brag or anything, but my body isn't just some abstract temple: it's a serious, life-building factory. My magic womb knit an entire person together while the rest of me ate Ben & Jerry's and sobbed at vapid Dove commercials. (By the by, pregnancy really solidified my belief that any person who thinks I shouldn't be the boss of my body can go hump a scroll.) 

Every part of the female organism is linked to every other part, and to the baby, like that jellyfish tree in Avatar. The baby bleats once and you're awake; if you think about the way she smells your breasts leak. When she nurses, your uterus contracts ever closer to its pre-pregnancy size. Many aspects of childbirth and care would physically hurt more but you're flooded with love chemicals. I imagine there is a mixing board in our wombs and before it sits a great mother DJ with her incantations and ivory chopsticks, tweaking our cycles and sleep, our blood and milk. 

The whole system is enough to make you believe in rain dances. Women are fucking awesome. 

So, you know, I guess its okay that strangers come and try to smell my kid's head. It's a side effect of their feminine awesomeness. And anyway, they can usually be scared off with that other essential womanly skill: bitchy resting face.