Baby Life Begins

Nearly three weeks have gone by in a sweet, molasses-like moment. Already my dear mother has left us again 8come baaaack!!) and we have settled into something resembling a routine. Or rather, we are better able to predict which bits of the day are going to be total chaos, and brace ourselves. 

I feel great though I look like I've been beaten over the head with a jumbo pack of diapers and probably will for the rest of my life. 

Alex is a rock star. I love him.

Most importantly, our beloved second born is thriving--by which I mean she is steadily gaining weight and has so far been (knock on wood) just a laid back, groovy baby. 


When she's awake her dark eyes are bright and alert. She keeps very still and looks steadily at one thing after another. This is the case for about 20 minutes a day. The rest of our sweet caterpillar's day is evenly divided between sleep and breastfeeding, with breaks for elaborate newborn poops, the noisy exuberance of which I had forgotten. 

Being a round-the-clock milk cow is a minor drag, but I must say that the entire newborn-having experience is much more pleasant the second time around. 

Turns out that when you are not sidetracked by existential angst or the terror of accidentally breaking your offspring, hanging out with a cream-and-crystal infant all day is pretty enjoyable. You just have to resign yourself to not accomplishing anything on a schedule. 

The best part, of course, is watching Noodle love her little sister. Even at moments that are obviously hard, like when I can't put the baby down for three hours straight in the evening because it's the witching hour and I am in full dairy mode, Noodle takes deep breaths and pats her sister's hand and tells her not to worry and gives her little kisses. 

Okay, sometimes she also goes into gremlin mode and screams until I think her head might actually explode into angry toddler confetti, but hey. We're working on it.  And I just spent several months in gremlin mode myself, so I can relate. 

And in any case, our family of four is still brand new. Things are falling into a new groove. Everyone is figuring out how they can spend enough time with everyone else, and by themselves. That last one is pretty important. Finally, as of a couple days ago there's enough time between feedings for me to put on clothes -- and update this blog. Hallelujah. 

Baby life, here we go! 

Our 50th Percentile Baby

Ten thirty a.m., we're at the doctor's office for a routine check-up and meningitis vaccine. 

The nurse and I put the Noodle on the scale. She's 9.1 kg (that's 20 lbs). The nurse measured her from top to toe (74 cm), and all around her head (47 cm). 

Our conversation, though we held it in German, went more or less like this: 

"Okay, that's it." the nurse said, after she'd entered the last measurement into the computer. "The doctor will be right in." She got up to leave. 

"So, she's normal?" I asked. 

"Hm? Oh yes. Everything's fine," the nurse said. 

"But is she normal but kind of big? Or normal but kind of small?" I asked. 

"She's perfectly healthy. Everything's fine," said the nurse. She took a step toward the door. 

Alles im grünen Bereich.
(Danke Mary fürs Foto :))

"Like, healthy but a little big, or okay but kind of small?" I asked. 

"Totally healthy," she said with a warm smile. 

"Oh, that's good," I said. "Thank you."

The nurse turned to go.

"So she's perfectly normal?" I can only wonder what my stupid face looked like. 

Without rolling her eyes even once, the nurse went back to the computer. "Okay," she said. She sat down. She did not sigh. She put on her glasses and peered into the screen. "Your daughter's weight is in the 40th percentile for her age," said the nurse."Her height is in the 50th percentile. So. Pretty average."

"Wow," said I. "It really doesn't get averager than that." 

The nurse stood up and smiled warmly. Again. "Well then, do you have any more questions?" She didn't even flinch when I started talking again. 

"Um. It's just that I'm kind of big, and my husband's really tall, so do you think that maybe she's too small considering? I mean, I know it's probably nothing, but I'm not feeding her wrong or anything, right? Did she grow enough since last time? She was born so big. Is it normal for her to be so average now?" I asked. 

"It really can be very different every time," she said. "Babies all grow at different paces. And don't worry about her diet. I'm sure if she was hungry she would let you know! The babies won't let you forget to feed them!" She laughed, to let me laugh. 

"Ha ha," I said. "Of course. Ha...So she's not too little. Or too big." 

"Not at all," said the nurse. "She's just right." And then she ran away. 

And if that wonderful nurse breathed a sigh of relief when she left the room, I didn't hear it. What a hero. May she get a raise every six months forever. 

P.S. The Noodle hasn't been to the doctor's since April but amazingly seems to remember that he pokes her with needles whenever she sees him and reacted accordingly, i.e. with deep suspicion and horror. You should have seen her little face wrinkle up when he came at her with a stethoscope. It was adorable. Who knew she has that kind of memory span already? 

P.P.S. Obviously, she's totally fine. And normal. Abnormally normal, I tell you. And of course, we are deeply grateful for our healthy baby and I am grateful for our extraordinarily patient nurse. 

P.P.P.S. Still no teeth - but we can see 'em. THISCLOSE. 

Beached Noodle: Bubble's First Seaside Adventure

Lignano, like any really popular tourist destination, is in many ways just awful. Located in very northern Italy, Lignano has Austria's closest beach. As a result, the place both feeds on and is totally ruined by hordes and hordes of pink, German-speaking mountain people seeking a plunge in the sea.

Sand mouse.

It is filled with gaggles of drunk teenagers on spring-break type trips. The beach is packed with endless rows and depressingly deep columns of umbrellas and deckchairs, all of which are strewn with low-maintenance holiday-makers and their noisy offspring (like us). Long-suffering immigrants march the beach doing the hard sell on shitty trinkets. Miles and miles and miles of beachfront property are filled with medium-sized hotels that range from soulless to cheesy. 

From the neck up, baby.

But the good outweighs the bad: you can always find a room and an umbrella, there are arcades and amusement parks (never been myself, but Gulliverlandia sounds intriguing), they sell ice cream and sunscreen every ten feet, and you have to walk about 100 meters from the tideline into the placid sea before the water gets up to your waist. It's like going to the pool, only safer. The beach is soft and sandy and devoid of all life besides the very occasional mollusk, bait-size fish or crab. And despite the fact that it's 90% Austrians roaming about, you are actually in Italy, and so the fruit and veg, restaurants and coffee are all great. 

I've been there with friends several times over the last ten years or so, and have usually stayed in the same hotel, where you have bring your own sheets and towels and toilet paper and pay extra if you're not going to personally scrub the room clean afterwards (which I'm not, thanks). The mattresses and pillows are salty and lumpy. But every room has a kitchen and a balcony with a table and plenty of chairs, and it's directly on the shore, and in general feels like a home. I kind of love it.

Destruction.

On this trip I asked Clemens, who is responsible for making arrangements (because he speaks Italian and his family have been staying in this hotel since time immemorial) what the rooms would cost if we used booking.com. He looked at me like I was insane. 

"Have you seen Frau Kohlrabi's book?," he asked. (Everyone calls her Mrs Turnip. Apparently her actual name sounds a bit like "Kohlrabi," and she looks like one, too.) He explained that paying up involves a ten-minute wait while the Turnip licks her fingers and flips back and forth through the pages, making notes and erasing numbers with a stubby pencil. "I have no idea what she's doing in there," said Clemens. "Maybe she's just acting important." 

Bubbles helping to dismantle a castle.

We spent the evenings with our friends, drinking vino on a balcony next to the baby monitor. Ten years ago we'd be up all night at one of the truly terrible discos and would sleep it off on the beach. Now we pushed the sleeping baby down past the bars at nine p.m., shaking our heads at the sight of shirtless boys and glittery girls drinking vodka out of hollow watermelons. They were hopping around to commercial techno, showing off their boring tattoos and their very nice bodies, getting it on with randoms, and ultimately vomiting on everything nice. It's actually quite heart-warming. There is nothing more feral and human than a bunch of drunk youths. 

In the early morning Alex, the Noodle and I would go stroll around the mostly-empty main strip. A smashed watermelon, lost hair decorations, broken glass. In some cases you could almost picture exactly what had happened where. 

I should never have let her taste ice cream. She's a machine.

For instance, I tried to withdraw some money from an ATM and realized only after several minutes of pushing diverse buttons (I speak zero Italian) that it was empty and wasn't going to work. Then I noticed that the wall and floor all around the cash machine were covered in big, wet stains. Elementary, my dear Watson, I deduced. The machine must have stopped working some time last night. And then I thought, I should probably wash my hands. 

What has not changed over the years is my deep affection for building sand castles. If Alex and I have one thing in common, it's the fact that we can both really get into crafting something tedious. This year we had the added benefit of the Noodle, who was our personal Godzilla. Her presence also seemed to justify buying all the fancy plastic tools we wanted. Well, her and the fact that we no longer calculate the opportunity cost of beach toys in terms of vodka-filled melons. 



This year, with six of us working to pile sand, hold passers-by at bay and keep each other well-moistened with light white wine spritzers, we managed to do quite the project--a larger-than-life sand mermaid lying around on the beach. Lots of little kids and their parents came by to take pictures and help donate seaweed, shells and blobs of sand. (You know you're in Europe when no one gives a hoot that you've built sand hooters.) 

Noodle, for her part, had a blast at the beach. She was either laughing hysterically at the waves, the sand, the muck and the algae, or she was fast asleep. Needless to say, this was also awesome for her parents. 

First baby beach trip was a great success. Can we go back yet? 

Family selfie!

The youthful hordes I was talking about? They liked the mermaid too.

Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair!

Six Months and Counting!

A candid photo of me and baby blue eyes. That's a filthy lie.
My arms were breaking and it was all we could do to get a smile
 in a pic that wasn't blurry. You're welcome.

Well, that went quickly. Our babe is six months old. To be more specific, according to this handy calculator, she's precisely 184 days, 6 hours, 45 minutes and 57 seconds old. Fifty eight. Fifty nine. It is terrifying and beautiful how time goes flying by. 

Mine never came out like this, but feel
free to try it yourself.http://www.vat19.com/dvds/magic-christmas-tree.cfm 

It's strange to watch a baby go older, because they change so quickly you can almost watch them grow. 

Did you ever have those crystal gardens, the ones where you stick a chemical-soaked piece of paper in a solution and it gets shaggy with technicolor crystals within hours? Babies are like that, except the opposite, because those things are dusty and inevitably disappointing whereas babies are infinitely and infinitesimally wondrous. Equally messy, though. But I digress.

Six months old...

It's strange to watch babies get older, because they change so quickly but you hardly notice the cumulative effect of all that growing until you wake up one morning and realise six months have passed and the floppy, sleepy little thing that you first met is suddenly so much more solid, so much more a real person, awake and working hard to become herself. 

...and cute as a button. In my totally
unbiased opinion. 

She can sit. She can roll over. She can laugh out loud. She eats carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, pears, broccoli, zucchini, oats, rice, avocado and bananas. She loves the water. She hates her snowsuit. She can say "gah," "bah," and "amah," not to mention "bzrp" and "boob." She can hold her toes and fall asleep on her own and put things from one hand into her other hand and into her mouth. 

Indeed she now can do a thousand small things that we take utterly for granted when we do them ourselves, but that she worked on for hours and days to get just right. 

And she's just getting started. What an exhausting thought. What a privilege to help her along with all the rest. 

We love this kid and always will. 

One Month!

Last Monday young Nava turned one month old. I wanted to write this then, but life. Also still no computer of my own. Anyway. She has not been eaten by the cats and the only injuries she has sustained were self-inflicted and nonlethal (various punches to the noggin near meal times, a couple scratches courtesy of the fastest growing mini fingernails in the world), and she continues to grow and gain weight. Hooray us! 

She is certainly doing better than our worthless, worthless cats, who now do lavish pees and poos anywhere they please at all times of the night or day. If Nava's first word is m******f***** it's not my fault. 

My mom can make me wear anything and I am totally defenseless. It makes me want to punch my own adorable little face!

Anyway, for the record, here are some of Nava's major achievements so far: 

1. Crusty umbilical cord replaced by 100% cute belly button.
2. Very smallest onesies officially outgrown, and the next size diaper is waiting in the wings
3. Can bring fist/fingers to mouth within three tries
4. Poops without weeping most of the time
5. Almost never crosses her eyes
6. Occasionally unclenches fists and uses those tweeny little starfish to grab things
7. To my dismay, sometimes she keeps her legs straightened even when sleeping. Less and less froggy. 

Her goals for next month include losing the black fuzz on her ears and learning not to eat while crying or cry while eating!