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.

The Sun is Shining

It's almost May and the sun has finally begun to shine here in Germany. Jaeger and I have been trying to soak up as much of it as possible for fear that it will go back into hiding soon enough. We just got done spending a good portion of the afternoon lying in the grass and playing fetch, my legs actually look like they might be getting some color back. Unfortunately that slim period of time between when it gets warm and when the ants start to take over seems to be up. I had to pick a couple off my legs and then do a check over both of us to make sure we didn't bring any in the house. Nate's going to go out this weekend and see if we can beat the ants this year by putting something on the grass to kill them. It wouldn't be so bad but the ants are huge to begin with and in a few weeks there will be these flying ants that are super annoying. I swear they go to war with us; they land in the grass and pick up one of the big ants and put it on their backs and then fly off and when the flying ant lands on you the other ant gets off and begins crawling all over you. I'm sure you all think I'm making this up but I swear I'm not, the ants here are vicious.

I reached 36 weeks on Sunday and we took some new pictures to show that I have in fact gotten noticeably larger. People finally ask me when I'm due and what I'm having, which always catches me off guard since no one ever asked me during the first 33 or so weeks of my pregnancy. The sad thing is that I'll have to take some new pictures soon because when I was at the store yesterday I caught a glimpse of myself in the dressing room mirror and realized that in the past 4 days I'd gotten even bigger. Reese better come in the next couple weeks because I'm running out of clothes that fit. She's dropping so there isn't a single pair of non-maternity pants that will fit over my now protruding pelvis, and to make matters worse 99% of my shirts stop just at the end of my stomach without touching my pants. My former Albertsons co-workers may remember that really fat guy whose shirt did that so you could kind of see his stomach hanging out of his shirt because the shirt wouldn't tuck in and wouldn't touch the pants, that's who I always think of when I put on one of the shirts and find out it does that. Anyways, moral of the story, I'm fat but can't complain because every other pregnant woman around here is at least twice as fat as me and not nearly as far along, oh and still no stretch marks :)

Alright I'm off to rejoin the sun before it ducks back behind the clouds again. Don't mock my Euro-whiteness in the pictures, I swear I'm still a California girl at heart.

32 Weeks Fat

Here I am at 32 weeks and we're doing pretty well. I've put on about 27 lbs as of right now and luckily none of it has landed on my thighs so I'm feeling pretty good about that, plus I don't have any stretch marks so if I can make it 8 more weeks without that happening I'll be super stoked. The only thing is that the scar on my side has really stretched out, I'm thinking that I'll have to start telling people that I was axed instead of knifed. The doctor isn't as worried about me going into early labor anymore so that's a bit of a relief. He says there's still a threat but Reese seems to be content inside despite my small size and is growing well so we should make it pretty close to my due date. Since he said it was okay I went back to work which has proved to be very entertaining, I didn't realize how much I had missed my students. One student told me I needed to make sure I didn't go into labor during class because he didn't want to have to deliver my baby, we agreed that he would drive me to the hospital instead if anything should happen.

After three attempts at getting 3D pics we ended up with two, one of her foot and one of her eye and nose. The doctor tried his best to get some good ones but no matter what we tried he just couldn't get a shot, so we have our two pictures and I myself think they're quite cute. Luckily we only have like 8 more weeks before we get to see her, I'm starting to get scared.