A few photos, and stories about Clara

Years from now, when we go back to look at pictures of the babies I think we're going to have to rely on background clues to tell if we were in Philly (it's Clara!) or Berlin (it's Oscar!). Check out these two photos:



Tanja is going to make a post about the birth as soon as she's able, so I'm going to restrict myself to saying that it was not at all like I imagined it would be (mostly because it was less than six hours between the first contraction and the three of us being back home together in bed), and Tanja did amazing! The midwife enthused afterwards about how incredibly focused Tanja was, and said that in her situation many women would have been panicked rather than poised.

Tanja and Oscar are both doing well. Oscar unfortunately has very dry, crackly skin, which they say is more common in babies born past their due date. The good news is that it should get soft again in a week or so.

It is unbelievable what a difference there is between our experiences with a five week premature and a "basically term" baby. You can see it in the difference in time-to-announcement-email: three days for Clara and ~15 hours for Oscar. (And even more so in time-to-first-blog-post, 13 days for Clara, next day for Oscar.) Oscar figured out how to eat right away, and he's good at it! He ate lots on the first day, so there's no worry about weight loss and he's nursing on demand -- as opposed to the nightmarish hour-long feedings (wake, try nursing, feed from bottle, pump, set alarm clock) with only 50-60 minutes sleep in between that we had for days and days with Clara (62 feedings in 132 hours - I had to take notes).

So far he's also a very calm baby. This is what he mostly does:


I'm not sure if that's "I was just born, so I'm tired" sleeping, or if he's going to turn out to be calm and easy tempered, like his big sister.

Speaking of big sister, I have some exciting stories to tell!

Clara is doing really well. She's bummed that Tanja is (still) stuck in bed, but who could blame her? She spent two weeks away from her parents on summer vacation, then Tanja was in the hospital for a week, then when we got back to Berlin Tanja couldn't do much (because every time she left the house she got contractions), and now, after all of that, and after the baby brother is here she STILL has to be careful around Mommy and wait for Mommy to recover. Can you blame her if she has a few pouty moments?


But those are only passing moments. For the most part Clara is happy and having a lot of fun! Her Kita group changed after summer vacation, so she's now the oldest. She loves this, and is much more active and talks much more at the Kita. She's now always the first to yell out answers, helps teach the younger kids songs and activities, and talks to caretakers other than the two that are usually with her group. She's also completely out of diapers during the day! There are still a lot of accidents, but she's really grown up a lot over the summer. Check out what she made in Kita today:


Clara seems to have unfortunately inherited my aversion to drawing and painting. Whenever we take out the crayons she's bored within a minute, and they tell us that she doesn't even like finger painting in the kita! (After a minute or so she excuses herself, saying she needs to go wash her hands.) Luckily there's more to art than drawing and painting! Clara loves arranging things (like this, or this, or this), she adores music (good instrumental music makes her sit still, and I think almost cry sometimes), and she enjoys looking at pictures and photos.

Clara continues to make up jokes. The most recent was last night, when she ate a HUGE amount of Tanja's lentil soup that I warmed up from the freezer. I said something like "wow, you really love Mommy's lentil soup, don't you?" and she replied very dramatically and seriously "I NOT love mommy's lentil soup." I looked at her for a moment and had just started to ask "what?" when she concluded with a big grin "I love MY lentil soup!" I wish I had her sense of timing!

Clara says tons of funny things that I end up not remembering long enough to write down (and some things that don't bear public repeating - ask Tanja about the woman in blue at the zoo). The other day we got off the subway, and were walking to the exit when Clara saw the driver standing outside his door, checking that the public doors were clear. Clara yelled at him "Geh mal rein, Du!" which translates to something like "Yo dude! Get in the subway already!"

This morning Clara woke up giggling. At first I thought she was crying, but when I went outside her door I could hear her laughing and laughing and laughing, so I let her be for several minutes. When I finally went in I found out that she'd had a dream that there had been a tap pouring water on her, but that she'd had her clothes on! When I reminded her about it tonight before bed she went into a laughing fit again!

Thanks to everyone for all of your emails! I've read them all, but haven't had time to respond to any. Over the next few weeks I'll try to get back to you.

Guess who?!