Ramblings of a mommy/housewife/domestic engineering goddess...

Today was super boring-- we (and when I say we here, it means Andrew) took the pups to the kennel and I cleaned the house (which Andrew has already made a mess in... it's a guy thing) so we wouldn't come back to a mess (again, in theory). Abbie was pretty good though-- she's still on a sleeping kick I don't really understand, but I guess it's comming to an end. For the last week it has been pure bliss with that child's sleeping habits. She has gone to bed at 9:30 (her normal time) and I have been waking her up around noon (and since she wasn't getting up, that gives you a pretty good idea of what time I have been getting up--hence the blogging at 1am). She then had her milk and "breakfast", aka a handfull of cereal-- more like an appatizer for her lunch a half hour later. Then 1 o'clock rolls around and it's naptime... well, ok, more like 2 o'clock (I can't possibly put her back in bed after only an hour up!) for what turns into a 3 hour nap. Up again at 5, snack, dinner, then playtime with daddy (assuming he got home from work at a semi-normal hour), bath, and bed again at 9:30. I can tell you, I unfortunatly have lacked the motivation to be productive during her major siestas (which is why I had to clean the house today!) and spent most of the time hanging out with my neighbors or searching for and downloading the ER season finale (last season-- yes, we are that far behind on tv) that Andrew taped over by mistake. We (and again, I mean Andrew) still had to wake her up at 11 today, but that's a little closer to her 10:30 wakeup we usually get. I can't complain, I have a baby that loves to sleep as much as I do :-).

I guess that means her sleeping was from a growth spurt... AGAIN. The child is already in clothes made for 3 year olds... how much taller can she get before she is even 18 months???

I just finished reassembling her stroller in preparation for our trip to Berlin tomorrow-- I finally got around to figuring out how to take off the cover so I could wash it. Not to mention the laundry I had to do for kiddo too, since she is rapidly running out of clothes that fit. You would really think though, that it would be much less complicated to put a cover back on a stroller seat than building a space shuttle and successfully launching it into space (without anything falling off)... but it isn't.

The sad thing is, the most exciting part of my day was discovering that the new dual chamber spray n' wash with oxy laundry stain remover works wonders on white high chair straps that have been covered in orange babyfood (that stains everything it touches), spaghetti sauce, and lord knows what else for the last 6 months-- it came out looking brand new, only to go into storage for next time around. My baby is so grown up that she wants nothing to do with the high chair-- I'm lucky she still thinks her booster seat is really "coooool" (aka cool in Abbie language) and I can still strap her down so she doesn't take every meal "to go".
This is why we need all the good stain removers we can get.
At least she is naked for the really messy stuff.


I hope the high chair doesn't stay in the storage room long. We are both ready for another baby, this one is growing up way too fast. She is so much fun to watch and play with-- it is completely amazing to watch her personality emerge... and let me tell you, it is one heck of a personality! We are just ready to make Abbie a big sister, before she realizes she has us all to herself.

I still have my moments where our miscarriage in March really gets to me, especially with my neighbor expecting-- she was originally due 5 days after me (her date got pushed to November). Every time I see her it is a reminder of how our life was supposed to be right now. People have long since moved into the 3 bedroom apartment in our building that we were supposed to have once I would've passed 12 weeks, and they aren't even very nice :-(. And, they will not be moving out any time soon, so if we do have another one, while we could still move to a 3 bedroom (Army actually follows the extra bedroom for an extra kid thing) we won't leave our friendships behind in this buiding--I love having my best friends here across the hall or down the stairs. As much as I try to say I am over it, I don't think it's something you can ever get over. There will always be an empty spot where that baby should have been. I am terrified to have another baby over here though-- not so much because I will be alone for the really tough parts of pregnancy and the sleepless nights (Andrew in theory, according to the Army, would be able to be at the birth), but because of the German medical system. Giessen is very small and because it has been closed once and is scheduled to close again in 2007, it has been fogotten by the Army. We have 1 clinic with 3 doctors, in a town 20 minutes away, and they don't do OB unless you want to drive 1.5 hours (or waaaaaay more if you hit a stau aka traffic jam on the autobahn) to a bigger post-- leaving us to rely on the German medical system that is still stuck in the M*A*S*H field hospital days. When I had to to go Lich for prenatal appointments, where was my blood drawn? In a lab room? No. In an exam room? No. At someones desk, with a sandwich sitting open that I can only assume belonged to the nurse with gloveless hands drawing my blood. Creepy. Just plain creepy. This is one of the same nurses, who during my "routine" appointment took a call on her phone and left me to sit there looking at the unmoving baby on the screen realizing in slow motion what has happened, only to hang up what seemed like forever later and continue ignoring me and my questions about whether the baby was ok to jibber with the other nurse in the room in German, like I wasn't even there. When she finally did answer me, she said "no, the baby is not ok" and instructed me to get up. The same nurse who sent me back to the waiting room with all of the enormously pregnant women to wait for them to come and get me to schedule surgery the next morning to "take care of it". She even had the audacity to look at me like I was stupid when I said I was ducking into the bathroom to call my husband so none of the American wives that were there for OB appointments (whose husbands are in Andrew's unit) would see me in that state. I wanted to hide from everyone, and she wanted to put me on display for some sick, unknown (and probably German) reason. How anyone can be so callus about such an event in someone's life is beyond me. For my surgery the next day, they even made me share a room with a girl having an abortion that made out with her boyfriend the whole time Andrew and I were grieving for the baby we lost. That baby was wanted and planned (the timing would have been perfect, Andrew would have gotten to know his second child before it learned how to crawl, and been guarunteed to be there for the delivery), and now I am afraid the German doc messed something up while he was in there. Both times I got pregnant was the first month of the pill... I have been off the pill again for 3 months, and still no luck. If there is another one, you can bet I will be driving the hour and a half to the real doctors at the American hospital in Heidelburg for the next one. Where all of them speak english.

Probably more info than anyone wanted, but it's where my thoughts went.

Anyhoo, on a happier note, we are going to Berlin tomorrow. We are taking the train (Abbie + carseat + 5 hour drive = misery for everyone involved) and staying at a Marriott (at least the American chains have a/c and normal sized beds). We figure since our train arrives around 2pm, we will do the "tourist stuff"; ie the wall, checkpoint charlie, and various other spots; shop, and eat. Sunday we are spending the day at the zoo and aquarium, rumored to be the best in Europe. I know Abbie will love it, and it's the part of the trip I am looking forward to most-- watching her light up at seeing everything for the first time. She is amazing; she really is.

Until later...