Internet=Bad Mommy

They finally sent a tech out yesterday to fix whatever was stopping my internet from working so I'm back online now. Granted when I woke up this morning it was off again and I had to call the help desk and get it fixed so I'm skeptical of how long it will be on this time, maybe I'll have to call the help line every morning to get it turned on. Truth be told, calling the help line is always an interesting situation since my German isn't fantastic (although I've recently been told otherwise....yup that's me patting myself on the back) and it definetly does not cover technical topics. Most the time I get someone who knows enough english that between the two of us we're fine, but other times we have to rely on my German and it's a little touch and go.

Anyways, it's back on now which means that I have a lot of stuff to catch up on and the one who gets to suffer is my poor child. This is the current scene at my house:

That's right, it's one o'clock in the afternoon and Reese is still in her pajamas, asleep in her chair. Granted she's quite content but I still feel a little bad.

Stupid Fat T-Com

So we have no internet at our house and we haven't had any internet at our house for a long time, 3 weeks to be exact, but I came over to the coffee shop to post a couple of pics so you can all see how big my little girl has gotten in the past 3 weeks. She's simply adorable and I promise as soon as our internet is back up I'll regale you with all the amazing stories of the past 3 weeks.

The one short story that I can fit in before the coffee shop closes and kicks me out is of our first somewhat long outing with Reese. We went to Cologne Cathedral last Saturday because Nate's mom was visiting and that was one of the things she wanted to see. So I get up that morning and pack Reese's bag with tons of diapers and wipes and a complete change of clothes and 4 bottles just in case something happens and.....well you get the point that I was trying to be super prepared. So just before we're going to leave I feed her and tell Nate that I'm going to change her diaper right afterward. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked getting things ready and forgot to change her diaper. Anyways, we make the hour and a half journey to Cologne, finally find parking which is a nightmare there in and of itself, and make our way to the cathedral. When we get inside I take Reese out of her carseat to notice that her diaper was leaked and her pants are soaking wet....this is when I remember that I forgot to change her diaper. So Nate and I leave the cathedral to look for a place to change her, the only possible place was a McDonald's on the corner but there was no countertop or changing table or any place other than the bathroom floor to change her so we ended up on a parkbench outside the cathedral trying to discreetly change her diaper and her clothes. Now I stress that we were trying to be discreet because this lady and her 4 year-old come walking over right when we're in the middle of trying to do this just to see Reese. I mean come on folks, when you see me changing my kid, wait til I'm done and then come over to admire the baby. Who walks over to look at your kid when she's naked?!?! Anyways, we got her changed just as it started to rain so we rushed back inside the cathedral. The only damage done for the day was the the adorable outfit I had previously had her in was not in any pictures and instead she's rockin sweats. What can you do? Lesson learned.

Play Time

Reese loves to play on her activity mat. It has a bunch of animals that hang from the bars and then there's a dog whose paws light up and he plays different sing-a-long and classical music songs. She usually gets pretty into kicking and waving her hands around when the musics going and I got a pretty good video of her doing it today. You'll notice that after the music stops she gives me a little bit of time to get it started again but when I don't comply (because I'm too busy recording her) she lets out a noise to notify me that she wants it turned back on again. She's a pretty cute little girl.

My Little Clown

I've already jabbered enough for one day but I just had to post some new pictures of Reese since she seems to be getting bigger by the second. At her two week check up she'd grown to 8lbs 8oz and was 21 inches long. Here's our first family photo with everyone in it. We took it on Father's Day and while we were all kicking it in our Sunday loungewear I think it still turned out pretty cute.
This is my proof that Reese is a genius, she clasped her hands all by herself and held them there for awhile. The book implied that she shouldn't be able to do that yet.
And finally this is just cute because Nate was lying on the couch watching tv and Jaeger was sleeping on his legs like she usually does so I tossed Reese on him for a fun Father's Day moment.

Nana's Gone

The day finally came this past weekend that my mom had to leave us and go back to Sacramento. It was so nice to have her out here to help with Reese and I know that she probably already misses hanging out with us, but she probably doesn't miss our crappy tv selection. We really were lucky to have her out here to help keep my occupied those last few weeks of pregnancy, to keep Jaeger entertained and exercised while I was in the hospital, and to watch Reese for me in the morning so that I could take a nice long shower. I'm not even coming close to mentioning all the things she did for us while she was out here, but Mom if you're reading this know that we appreciated it more than you know.

My Own Mardi Gras

I'm not sure how it happened but June seemed to be starting off well for me but then took an evil turn. Nate and I celebrated our second anniversary on the third by going out to dinner at this nice restaurant next to the Bitburg brewery. We had a lovely meal with a huge fruit bowl for dessert while my mom watched Reese back at home for us. The next day I had my follow up appointment with Dr.Jerono where he said that everything looked good but if I got a fever I was to immediately come to the hospital because it was a sign of an infection. Sure enough Friday afternoon I had the chills and a fever so that evening Nate and I went to the hospital assuming that I would be given some antibiotics and sent on my way. We checked in with the midwife and she said she would call the doctor and have her check me out. Two hours later I went to speak with the midwife again since we still had not been seen and she told me once again that she would call the doctor to come see me. The doctor finally came and took one look at my chest and said that I would need to be admitted into the hospital for an infection. I argued with them for a while to try and get them to just send me home with penicillin but they said I needed to be on an IV to get rid of the infection faster. So I was sent home to retrieve Reese, who would be staying in the hospital with me, and whatever things we would need for our stay. When we got back we were checked in to the maternity ward where they started me on an IV and then much to my surprise told me to feed Reese so that they could start me on the quark. I had no clue what quark was but soon found out that it was a type of German cheese similar to cream cheese that they rub on the infection to pull it out. So there I was in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm and cream cheese on my boobs, and I was not happy about it. Around 5am they came down and moved me up to "Station 11" which is a private patient floor, because there was an influx of babies and they needed the space. Luckily I got a really nice American roommate who was 34 weeks pregnant and had started to go into premature labor so she was on bedrest in the hospital for the weekend while they kept an eye on her. She got quite a kick out of my cheesy situation and made sure to mock me whenever they brought the quark in, which mind you was about 6 times a day. That's why this post is labeled "My Own Mardi Gras" because if it had been the real Mardi Gras I would have had beads galore for all the times I had to show my chest to various hospital employees. Luckily, the quark and the penicillin worked and I left the hospital Monday evening with my bottle of penicillin to finish off and a story about Mastitis that could only happen to me.

A Week and a Half

Reese is 10 days old now and is as cute as ever, I don't think we realized just how entertaining watching a baby sleep was until that baby was our own. She makes all these crazy faces and smiles all the time. The other day I asked her for a kiss and put her to my lips to give her one and she she had puckered her lips too, I know it was just a coincidence but it melted my heart. She's a really good sleeper and has only been waking up once during the night, the other night she actually slept all the way through. Nate and I definetly consider ourselves lucky for getting as much sleep as we do.

Introducing Reese Aspen Crandall

Reese was born May 22nd at 11:20pm, weighing in at 7lbs 12oz and 19.7 in. long, and it was quite an ordeal getting her here. My due date was the 20th and I had decided that if she hadn’t come by then I was going to go ahead and be induced, which ended up being the death of my sanity. I guess Nate and I didn’t quite understand the process when the doctor described it to us because we were expecting that when we went into the hospital at 8am Wednesday morning that we would have our little girl by the evening, instead all we had was a twin hospital bed to sleep in for the night. Anyways, let me tell you how it all went down…..Like I said we got to the hospital at 8am on the 21st and got ourselves all checked in and ready to go. The doctor had told us that I would have to drink this cocktail first and hopefully it would naturally bring on the contractions. So we sat in the delivery room playing cards while I drank this horrible liquid upon completion of which they moved us to my room where I would be after I delivered. They had us come back down every three hours to check my contractions and my progress, but after 12 hours of taking long walks around Bitburg and waiting around in the room I was only dilated to a lousy 1cm and told we’d just be waiting it out still. The next morning we went back over to delivery to find out I was 2cm, so 24 hours in the hospital and hardly any progress. The doctor then gave us an oxytocin nasal spray and told us to go for a walk promising us that we would have our daughter that day but that she had until midnight to get her here. The spray brought on some strong, fast contractions, but I was still progressing rather slowly. Finally around 4pm I was 4cm and beginning to progress more quickly. They brought the anesthesiologist in and he gave me an epidural, or as I call it “the gift from the gods.” After that we just hung out in the delivery room waiting for the next 6cm to pass. I took a few naps, read some magazines and just watched the clock tick by. Finally about 9:45pm I was 10cm and they said at any moment I would start feeling the pressure to push. In the meantime another woman had come in and was quite loud about her impending birth, the doctor and midwife had to go to her so we were put on the backburner while they dealt with her. Finally the need to push was getting stronger so Nate stepped out in the hall to get the doctor and when they came in it only took about 10 or 15 minutes of pushing and all of the sudden Reese was thrown up onto my chest. In Germany they just hand you the baby right after it comes out and they don’t clean them up until after they’ve done everything else, so it was pretty cool to have her right when she came out. All in all it was a really good experience and Nate and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.
We left the hospital Saturday afternoon and though our first night at home was a little tiring we have since gotten Reese on a schedule and are finding home life quite pleasant. We love everything about her and I just can’t seem to put her down, she was actually awake for a whole hour at once today so I was able to just look at her beautiful eyes and watch her make faces at me. Nate and I haven’t determined which one of us she looks like other than that she has Nate’s mouth, and she has both of our big feet and long toes. The neighbors can’t get over how much hair she has and it’s kind of crazy because it looks like it’s brown with blond highlights. Anyways, enjoy the pictures, I’m sure I’ve added too many but they’re all so cute, I just can't get over how amazing it is that this girl actually fit inside of my stomach. Not only that, but that she's mine.....how crazy is that!

Burg Eltz

My mom arrived here in Germany last week so as a Mother's day gift to her we headed over towards Koblenz on Saturday to go to Burg Eltz. This castle is a little different than most because it is in a valley where most castles are up on a hill, so when we got to the parking area that was on top of a hill we had to hike down to the castle. There was a van that could have taken us down to the castle but I decided I was up for the challenge and besides the view was better on foot then it would have been in the van. So we hiked down the hill, which as you can see from the pictures was actually really really steep, Nate and my friend Sarah were making fun of me since I had to lean back pretty far in order to account for my center of gravity being off because of the whole baby in my belly thing, but we made it down without falling and rolling and with only mildly aggravating my still very broken toe.

The tour of the castle was pretty interesting, you only get to go in a few rooms because the family actually still lives in most of the castle, but we got to see a medieval kitchen, bedroom and some cool weapons so it was worth it. My mom especially enjoyed it because this is only the second castle she's seen where as Nate and I have seen more than our fair share of medieval German castles.

Now I'm going to interrupt this blog about the castle to tell you that I don't think German people have ever seen a pregnant person before. Now I'm as surprised as you are seeing as Germans are humans who have to carry babies the same way we Americans do, yet for some reason I had people staring at me, not looking at me and then looking away which would be normal, but full on following me with their eyes until I was no longer in sight. I don't think I'm that odd looking that one needs to stare at me that intentely but whatever. Case in point, when I was standing in line to go to the bathroom at the castle the woman in front of me turned around and was staring at me, I looked to the right for awhile, then turned and looked to the left and she was still staring at me. Finally after, and I'm not exaggerating here, a full minute had passed I made eye contact with her and she turned back around. When I exited the bathroom and told Nate and Sarah about this they said that a group was staring at me through the bathroom window while I was in there as well. How creepy is that?

Anyways, back to my story. When we went to leave the castle we were going to take the van back up to the top because it truly was a very very very steep hill, but I decided I wanted to hike back up in the hopes that it would cause me to go into labor and then I could finally have my baby. Well I made it to the top with a few stops on the way but still no baby. Oh well, my mom enjoyed the castle and we had a good time.

I'm 39 weeks, only one week left til my due date.........Kincher and I are now racing to see who can have their baby first since we have the same due date, I urge you all to join my team, also known as the winning team.

Broken Toe Woes

I had this grand plan to start walking miles upon miles a day starting May 1st as a way to help the whole pregnancy thing along but my plan was thwarted the day before it started when I broke my toe. Ya, that's right I broke the pinky toe on my right foot and it hurt like hell. I was walking out of the kitchen after going in to make myself a second personal pizza because the first one didn't quite fill me up the way it used to, and as I was walking out I caught my toe on the door frame and snapped it. I just stood there biting my hand to keep from screaming and staring out the window because I was afraid if I looked down I'd see the spot where my toe used to be and find my toe lying back in the kitchen. After a minute I got the courage to look down and found that my toe was still there as was the pain. Now this isn't the first toe I've broken, in fact it's the fourth, apparently I enjoy breaking toes, but all the other ones I've broken have been the tips and there has been nothing a doctor can do for them so I called the advice nurse to see if I should go in since this one was broken down at the base. I explained to her what happened and this woman actually had the audacity to ask me if it was an accident! I calmly replied that it was but on the inside I was wanting to be very rude and sarcastic with her, I mean WHO BREAKS A TOE ON PURPOSE?!?!?! Anyways, I've had to stay off my feet for the past few days and ice it but other than that it's just supposed to heal on it's own, so there went my plot to evict my child from my uterus.

Today the toe was feeling good enough to walk on so Nate and I took Jaeger for a walk in the field by our house and took the camera so that we could take some fun pictures in the fields of dandelions. I'm 38 weeks pregnant and other than looking like I'm trying to steal a basketball from a sporting goods store I think I look mighty good. I've been really lucky to have such an easy pregnancy and while I'm beginning to get a little uncomfortable when it comes to sleeping and stuff like that I'm only eager to get her out so that I can finally see her and see what her personality is like outside of my belly. I'm so scared and excited and I can't wait to post pictures of her here for all of you to see, but for now you'll just have to enjoy more pictures of me being pregnant.