Sometimes I wish I could just freeze time and savor the moment. Today she was sleeping beside me and woke up, looking at me with her large eyes. I started stroking her hair, and she fell asleep again with a smile on her face. She almost never falls asleep without nursing or sucking her thumb, but this time she did just from lying close to me, and with me stroking her hair. I wished I could put the memory in a bottle ...

August 16, 2007 --- FIRST WORD! (ok, not really ...)

Today was a very full day. First, Isabella went swimming this time with her Papa! Martin took the afternoon off from work, and I went along to take pictures :).

While I was changing her into her swimming diaper, she took a look at the other mom who was sharing the changing table with me, and then started bawling. Wondering what was wrong, I picked her up and she immediately calmed down. Then I put her down again to continue changing her, she took another look at the woman, and then started bawling again! The other mom said she thinks Isabella's starting to react to strangers. It seems a bit early, though ...

At the end of swimming class, she again looked at the woman, started to cry, but then decided to look away. :)

Later that day, she said her first word. Michi was talking to her and suddenly she said it: "Hallo!" Nothing before it, nothing after, just a clear "Hallo!". We were all so shocked the room was suddenly quite. We then all started looking at each other, asking "Did you hear that?!?! Did she just say hallo?!?!"

August 14, 2007 --- 360 degree rollover!

Today she did it! After a month of rolling over from her back to her tummy and then whining when she got tired, she finally discovered how to get herself back on her back again by herself.

July 26, 2007 --- 100% Rollover, etc.

Today was a loooong day, but long in a very nice way.

We start out by actually having gotten a half-decent night's sleep. Okay, Isabella woke up at 5:42 a.m. read to party, but at least till then she let her mother sleep a bit more than an hour at a time.

At noon we were at our 3rd baby swimming class, and she luuuuved it! It's amazing to watch her slowly have more and more fun each week. Today she even started laughing and cooing, and sticking out her hands to grab the floating toys while I'm holding her. She even smiled at our teacher!

Then, right after class, I was drying myself and Isabella was on the changing table in front of me. And then she did it! She rolled over from her back to her tummy, without help, without rolling back again! After two weeks of watching her get frustrated at not being able to do it, she finally succeeded today! Woohoooo!

Then at home, she poo-ed. Actually, exploded is probably a better word. She didn't poo in the last two days, and I think everything came out at approximately 4:00 p.m. today. It leaked out of her diaper in three different places, went to her shirt, the bed sheet, and the cover under the bed sheet. Since I had just given her a bath after swimming class, I seriously (maybe lazily) considered trying to clean up the mess with wipes. After looking at the damage one more time I realized it's just easier to give her another bath.

Then we went to pick up Martin at work, but not before Isabella cried when I tried to put her in the car seat again. She hates that thing. Then to the grocery, then car seat drama again, and then home.

Later, about an hour after we put her to bed, we hear her whimpering through the baby monitor. Martin went to check on her, and then I suddenly heard him laughing and calling me to come. Isabella had managed to turn herself exactly 90 degrees in her bed --- we put her down "lengthwise", and when we came in she was "crosswise", just barely fitting across her bed. Martin and I started laughing together, and then Isabella started laughing too.

Aaaah. A really long, beautiful day.

July 19, 2007 --- Roll over!

After several days of watching Isabella attempt to roll over from her back to her tummy, she finally did it today! It lasted all off 500 milliseconds! Unfortunately her right arm was stuck under her chest, and since she could't get it out to make herself more stable, she rolled to her back again. I then rushed for the camera and started taking videos, hoping I could catch her second successful attempt. She didn't manage to do it again, so all I caught was her getting frustrated again at not being able to do it. Video to follow!

U4

Today we had our "U4", the 4th mandatory medical exam ("Untersuchung") for children living in Germany. The doctor was very pleased with Isabella's progress. She's way above the average for her age in weight and height. The doctor was also impressed at how well she can control her head, and at how she can already reach for and grab objects.

The not-so-good news: she got two shots today --- immunization shots for seven (!!!) diseases. She cried while the doctor was giving her the shot, but stopped soon after he was done. Such a brave girl; seems she's not the wimp her mother is when it comes to shots.

July 15, 2007 --- First Laugh!

For a while now Isabella's been giggling while asleep, but on Saturday for the first time, she laughed for real! Martin was doing this phbbbbbbt! thingy on her neck, and there it was --- a "he he he". We tried to make her laugh again, but we could only manage to do it a couple more times.

Lately she's also been trying to 1) turn to her stomach and 2) if she already is lying on her stomach, crawl forward. For the latter, she even has a very special technique :D I'll post a video sometime.

On sleeping through

One thing I hate more than people constantly asking me "So is your baby sleeping through the night?" is parents who tell me with great pride "My baby slept through the night when she was X weeks old!" as if it's a sign what wonderful parents they are. Is my baby sleeping through the night? No, and I don't expect her to! Your baby slept through when she was 4 weeks old? Good for you! Too bad for your baby!

Now I know everyone's got their own opinion on this. But here's mine. Evolutionarily (is there such a word?) speaking, it makes perfect sense to me that babies do not sleep through the night and require near constant attention from it's mother. If it didn't, well, mothers would not have thought twice about just leaving the baby somewhere asleep and alone while they went to the all-night party over at the next cave, and the wolves would have had their very own party, wouldn't they? Ok, I just made that one up, but it makes sense to me! If you want an opinion from someone more knowledgeable than I, see
8 Infant Sleep Facts Every Parent Should Know

Memories #2: The First 3 Months

Isabella's sleeping! I'm probably losing half an hour of valuable nap/clean up/"do-something-other-than-take-care-of-Isabella" time by writing this, but I wanted to put it down in writing before I forget everything about my first three months with my little girl. So here's a list of little details I'd like to remember. (Ok, ok, I know it's irritating that I've started each line with the word "how", but I started it, couldn't stop, and am now too lazy to revise.)

. How you once pooed with such force, the poo ended up on the closet across the room.
. How you cried whenever we put you down on your bed. You always wanted to be held! My left arm finally has muscles!!!
. How at a doctor's appointment, you were smiling at your Papa one minute, and then frowning at the doctor the next minute.
. How tense you are during baths.
. How you sneeze almost always at least twice.
. How you sometimes wake up almost every hour at night.
. How you loved it when your Papa does "airplane" with you.
. How wonderful it is to have you sleep on my chest, hear you breathe, and see how content you are.
. How you threw up so much, despite all efforts to make sure you always burped (even in the middle of feedings!), that it almost didn't make sense to change clothes anymore. You were going to throw up again in a couple of hours anyway!
. How your Papa started calling our Stillkissen (breastfeeding pillow) a Spuckkissen (throw-up pillow) after noticing that the pillow cover hardly ever lasted more than one full day before having to be washed again.
. How cheerful and talkative you are in the morning, right after you just woke up.
. How for several days, you were very fussy right before you went to sleep.
. How you hardly ever cried, except when you had gas, or when we misread your cues.
. How hard you bit and chewed on me while breastfeeding, that for 6 weeks I had deep wounds and sometimes had to cry! (I admit, there was one time when I almost gave up ...)
. How everyone said you look just like your father.
. How you squealed in delight whenever we played peek-a-boo with ourselves using a mirror.
. How in the beginning, you smiled when you saw me smiling at you in the mirror. After a few weeks, you smiled when you saw yourself in the mirror!
. How thin your legs were when you were born, despite having weighed 3585 grams!
. How chubby your thighs are now, that they even have folds on them!
. How beautiful, warm, and fragile you felt when I held you for the very first time.
. How your feet were so long when you were born, even the doctor commented on them.
. How you had so much hair (relative to caucasians, apparently) when you were born, that the doctor had trouble putting the pH-level sensor in your scalp during delivery.
. How wonderful it felt to have you sleep on my chest in the hospital, despite the nurses' urgings to let you sleep in the nursery. I did let you sleep in the nursery one night, but after seeing how rough they were with you I never let them have you again.

Laughing babies ...

People say taking care of a baby is really hard, until you see that first smile on their face and you forget everything. I don't know exactly when Isabella first smiled, but I know it was soon after she was born, and that it was for no discernible reason. I also remember thinking, well since I have no idea why she's smiling that doesn't really count. It sure is cute, but it doesn't count!

Well, this last week she finally started smiling while looking at me and her papa, and while it was, once again, really cute and nice and heartwarming, I didn't exactly melt and burst into tears (ok, it didn't really help that she smiled at her father first! ;-)). However I did think to myself, hey, we can't be doing too bad! During the day, when I'm running a little low on patience, those smiles are like first aid kits that put 10 points right back into my health!

Last night tops it, though. It was almost 3 a.m., she and I had already been up for two hours. I had fed her, changed her diaper, fed her again, carried her around to help her fall asleep, but she was still unsatisfied and restless. At one point I gave up and just took her to bed with me even though she was still whining a little, and hoped she wouldn't wake up her father who had to get up to go to work in 3 hours. After 5 minutes of lying on my tummy, she started to calm down. And then I heard it.

She laughed. It lasted all of 2 seconds, and I again have no idea what was going on in her mind. But it was beautiful --- playful, almost mischievous. I smiled and wished she had waken her father up. And then we went to sleep.

(Speaking of laughing babies, check this out:

Mama Shrimp

A few days ago, we decided to have shrimp for lunch. I volunteered to peel the shrimp, something I could do while sitting down. I was glad to be able to do something, especially since Martin's been doing everything in the apartment the last 2 months. So I was happily taking off the head and the skin, when I noticed that some of the shrimp seemed to have some sort of dirt in it. Ugh, I thought, but kept on going. Then I came across one with quite a lot of the stuff. So I looked more closely (I didn't have my contacts on), and realized the dirt looked a lot like eggs.

I think a year ago it would have *maybe* bothered me a little bit, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been bothered enough to stop. But being pregnant, I just couldn't do it. So I kept peeling, but I put aside all the ones I found which had eggs in it. I couldn't look at them, the mama shrimp and her little ones. It just made me sad.

Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Address

I was reading the blog of another of my brother's friends. One post was about Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement address in 2005. I thought it was very interesting, so here's a link:

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

MEEEH-mories #1

Today a good Pinoy friend of my brother is arriving in Germany after spending several years in Chicago. He will be joining his German wife in Munich. This whole affair brings back (one hand holding imaginary microphone) meeeeeemories (was it Barbara Streisand who sang that?) of May 19, 2005, when Martin (also German, more or less) and I (also Pinoy) got onto a Lufthansa plane to go to Stuttgart from Boston. My brother brought us to the airport that day.

I remember the night before. My brother was the only calm person among the three of us. We had been going through all the junk still left in our apartment, stuff we didn't know what to do with anymore. And the next day, on our way out of our building to go to the airport, Martin's bottle of aftershave lotion fell out of our toiletry kit (which I was trying to close while rushing down the stairs), and broke when it hit the floor. There we were, already running late, and we had to stop and clean up broken glass and lotion.

I also remember bits and pieces of the plane ride. We were lucky: on the week we were flying, Lufthansa offered free wireless internet access during the flight, and I could chat a bit with my brother. I remember seeing the snow-capped mountains. I remember thinking I wasn't quite as nervous or excited as I expected. I remember that Martin was more relaxed than I had seen him in weeks. (He had defended his doctoral work a week before, and had handed in the final version of his thesis just 3 days before our flight.)

During the last two years, I also remember ignoring people who said I wouldn't last more than a year in Germany. Well, here I am, almost two years later. It wasn't easy, but hey, I never said I expected it to be. I've survived "Swabian hospitality", office chauvinist pigs, and 8-hour days sitting around twiddling my thumbs (even the 16-hour days at MIT were better than that!). I managed to complain at a store in slightly broken German about an extremely unfriendly employee (Hey that's not at all easy; YOU try getting mad in a foreign language. I really did it too, my brother's my witness!), and spent a bundle trying every decent-looking Asian restaurant we could find, hoping one of them would come close to Roddee or Penang (droooool). We finally found a small Chinese take-out place (a la Roddee) run by a really nice Chinese couple; it's a far cry from Roddee, but it'll do for now.

In two years, Martin and I have gotten married (again), found stable jobs, made a few good friends, and are now expecting the arrival of our little baby in a couple of months. Life's falling into place, and I'm content. Now if only I could find some decent pad kra pao.

Things I recently watched on the tube (YouTube, that is)

Bush impersonation by Frank Calliendo of MAD TV. Cracks me up every time!



The Lord of the Rings: How it should have ended. (Oh, and check out HowItShouldHaveEnded.com too!)



And now the last one. (Hey, I'm stuck in bed, no TV, ya gotta let me get my entertainment somewhere!)

Brown Bear, Brown Bear ...

No, I'm not referring to the classic children's book.

In December, on one of my last trips to the outside world which lasted longer than 10 minutes, I bought a cross-stitch pattern of a teddy bear with a red bow around its neck. I meant to finish it before the baby is born, and in addition sew the baby's name and date of birth on the bottom. Then I was told to stay on bedrest, and I thought "Great! I can sew the little teddy bear!". Yeah, right.

Fast forward two months later, and "little teddy bear" isn't so little anymore, and I am getting *really* sick of brown. All shades of brown. Light beige, beige, light brown, middle brown, dark brown, and yes, very dark brown.

But I'm not conceding defeat yet.

All shopped out

Countdown: 55 days to estimated due date (EDD)!

Now that I'm resigned to the fact that I have to stay in bed for the next few weeks, I've resumed preparations for the arrival of our little girl. Today I started looking on the internet for things we still need. Martin plans to take a day off on Friday to pick up the car seat, baby carriage, crib, mattress, and closet we ordered from a baby outlet store. We have a coupon for a 10% discount on a single purchase, so we had gone to the store several times, chose and ordered the larger items (some of which took more than 2 months to be delivered!), and had planned to pay for everything at one time to maximize the discount. We had been putting off all the more minor purchases for when we went back one last time to pick everything up. Of course, we didn't expect that I'd be put on bedrest before we could go back.

This means that Martin will have to go to the store by himself, look for the gazillion tiny things we still need, and choose which brand, material, color, size, etc. to buy. Pacifiers. Burp cloths. Diaper Pail. Nail scissors. If you know my husband at all, then you know why I'm currently thinking "Oh dear. Poor Martin."

Which is why I've been surfing and researching on the internet the entire day, trying to choose things in advance. Pacifiers: silicone, not rubber. Burp cloths and nail scissors we're buying on ebay unless they're cheaper at the store. And so on. I'm all shopped out, and I never even left the apartment, haha!

More YouTube!

Father Guido Sarducci!

Time to Unpimp ze Auto

Here's another of my favorites. There's more on YouTube; just search for VW.

Rob Paravonian on Pachelbel's Canon in D

I think it's funny. Enjoy!

Tadaaaaah!

I'm recycling my old blog (thanks for the tip, Kaskasero!) because I realized:
- I'd like to post things which have nothing to do with "Baby Grepl"
- in two months the real "Baby Grepl" will have a real name, and I don't want to keep calling her "Baby Grepl"

I originally wanted a title which had the number 3 in it: Baby Grepl makes 3, we'd like to teach her 3 languages, and this is my 3rd continent. But then what do I do when Baby Grepl #2 makes 4?

It probably won't really matter. In a year's time I'll be reading stuff I wrote here, cringe, and want to start over again. Maybe I should just get it out of the way. So here goes ...

Yuck.
Someone hide me!
Ouch.
Eeeeew.
I can't believe I said that!
Someone get her a Thesaurus.
This is just embarrassing.

There. Don't say I didn't warn you.