ANDREAS is 110% boy. The kid is obsessed with dinosaurs, planes, trains, boats, and cars. He adores pushing/flying/driving his little toys around the house.

He frequently latches onto one or another of them in an obsessive manner, meaning that a particular item travels EVERYWHERE with him for a day (or two or three). Interest in that specific object will then wane as a new one replaces it, but you have to be on your toes. A previous “must-have” toy can unexpectedly return to “cannot-live-without-it” status without any notice, and if it is not easily accessible (read: you don’t know where he last put it), panic will ensue. And so, Caleb has received many a mid-day phone call from Nancy asking, “Do you happen to know where ‘Gruenes Flugzeug’ (green airplane) is right now?” or “My life will be markedly improved if you could tell me where the VW is. . . please?!?”

He has recently also begun showing a bit of an interest in arts and crafts. His attention span is growing increasingly longer, so if we put some children’s stories or music on the radio and give him a dinosaur coloring book, we can occasionally buy ourselves a few minutes of (relative) calm. (Warning: he may still knock over an empty chair, color on his sister or Lord-knows-what else, or come up with some other mischief, so this is not a free pass to leave him unsupervised!) He had a lot of fun with fingerpaint recently.

Andreas is going through some typical 3-year-old “mean” stuff: hitting, pinching, teasing, jumping on, and otherwise aggravating his big and little sisters. He comes up with some hilarious but not appropriate insults, so Simona often comes running up to us to report, “Andreas hat mich eben stinkig doof Kuh genannt!” (Andreas just called me stinky dumb cow!). Not sure where he gets these, but I sometimes have to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. We are trying to work on this behavior.

Physically, he continues to be relatively small. He had his 3-year well-child visit in January and weighed in around 31 pounds, which put him in the 50th percentile for weight. I don’t remember how tall he is, but I think it was around 95 centimeters (about 37 inches). Whatever it was, he is in the 20th percentile for height. He also had a bad haircut (I take full responsibility for the unfortunate mishap with the clippers!) in December, so he has spent January regrowing his hair. (These are before and after pictures from December. . . he looks much better now!)

He also had a sore nose (from a late-December cold) that he kept picking at, so it grew into a bigger and bigger scab. We had to enforce wearing a band aid on his upper lip and then had to resort to socks over his hands to allow it to finally heal up, but it’s pretty well healed now.

Despite his wild-man ways, Andreas does have a tender little heart and will sometimes crawl into your lap for a hug or a story- preferably about a train, plane, dinosaur, car, boat. . . He definitely idolizes his Papa right now, which is really cute to see. His laugh is contagious, and he is a sweet boy. He brings so much fun and energy into our lives.

We are so glad that Maria is a part of our family and can’t get enough of that seven-toothed grin and those slobbery kisses. Though we occasionally feel a twinge of nostalgia for the warmth and frailty of brand new life, we also relish the excitement of watching her discover her world and become her own person. I’m sure before we know it, she’ll be dancing in her big sister’s footsteps, but for now, we’re happy she’s just who she is: A bald, sweet little ONE year old.

Happy Birthday, Missy Miss. Alles Gute. Wir lieben Dich!

What? Sweet Simona, kicked out of school within the first month?

Yes. Back in early September, we received a letter from the city school board that three of her immunizations were not up to date and that she would need to be fully vaccinated by September 12 in order to continue attending school. We thought she current on all shots, but the school office insisted she was not.
So we quickly found a doctor and scheduled appointments for her and Maria (9 month check up). Fortunately, the doctor and the nurse both confirmed that she was fully compliant with all CDC-recommended immunization schedules and didn’t charge us for the visit. (Glad Maria had an appointment, too, so it was not a total waste of time!) The nurse also offered to upload the records to a system that can be accessed by city agencies, including the City Schools.
After two more trips to the school front office, I was told that that should take care of it.

And then I got home after a long morning of wrangling three children at the dentist’s office, complete with the bad news of cavities, only to find a message telling me that Simona was out of compliance and that, for the sake of her and the other students’ health and safety, she would need to be expelled. After a few frantic phone calls to the school and to her doctor (and to Caleb, in tears!), we finally found out what the problem was.

The school had incorrectly entered her date of birth to show that she was born on 12/06/06 instead of 06/12/06. Meaning that she would not have been born yet when she received several of the vaccines. (Also meaning that she would not be old enough to be in Kindergarten yet, I might add. . .) The computer was generating an automatic “non-compliant” message. After reassuring the secretary that I was sure Simona was born in June and that yes, I do have the birth certificate to prove it, she believed me and corrected the date, oh-so-graciously not requiring me to bring in the birth certificate (which they already have on file anyway!). Problem instantly solved.

Phew. Education and future preserved; expulsion from Kindergarten avoided.

She also took swimming lessons in Germany (with the same swim instructor who taught me to swim!) and is now a certified competent breast-stroker. She passed the “Seepferdchen” (Little Seahorse) test, which is a nationally standardized swim test requiring the swimmer to a) jump into the pool, b) swim 25 meters without stopping / holding onto the sides, and c) retrieve a ring from the bottom of the pool (in relatively shallow water).

*Technically, second, but the first was not exactly “lost.” (See December 2009 if you need a refresher!)

Andreas is a busy, busy little guy.

Maria changes constantly and quickly!

Overall, these three kiddos keep me BUSY! I have been spoiled with plenty of help from family during these weeks of transition, but we are looking forward to settling into a new routine in Baltimore, too. No telling what antics these three will come up with . . . stay tuned!

Instead, we have replaced that with angst about how our decisions impact our kids. I say that half-jokingly, since we believe that their little lives are shaped much more by who we are as parents than by where or how we live. But, the truth remains that “what’s next” for us does have a major impact on what their lives will look like for the next few years. And for Simona, who soon will be leaving behind early childhood for the elementary years, SCHOOLS are becoming an issue.

Though it’s impossible to know for sure where we’ll live after May, the nature of Caleb’s career makes a large city more likely than a smaller town. And for a variety of reasons, we prefer urban living to suburban life. Which makes schools something to “figure out” rather than just “attend.”

Here in Atlanta, we happen to have moved into the district of a new, highly touted public elementary school. We like the neighborhood for other reasons, too, and would be happy to stay in this area. Enrolling in a great school would mean filling out a few forms, and that would be it.

Should we return to Washington, D.C., matters would be a bit more complicated. The District also has some high-achieving public schools, but we would not be able to afford to live in-bounds for one of those schools. Fortunately, the DC public schools “out of bounds” lottery allows residents to apply to up to six OOB schools, and all public charter schools admit students by lottery, too. Which means that, despite our Mennonite connections, we’ve been hedging our bets and rolling the dice, so to speak.

The results of the OOB lottery were published last week, and Simona “won.” She’s been admitted to one school and is in the top 3 on the waitlists of three other schools. Of course, we still have to figure out whether we’ll be moving back to the District or not; whether she is accepted to any of the charters; where Caleb’s job would be; and where we can afford to live without being terribly far from schools or work. Minor details.

All of this planning and applying and pondering may, in fact, turn out to be wasted time, since we may end up moving to a totally different city. In which case we’d be back to square one, trying to figure out school options all over again.

Yes, it’s not like it used to be, folks. Gone are the days when Grandpa walked eight miles, uphill both ways, through the snow to get to school. Somehow, though, that doesn’t seem so bad after all. . .

Flashback: Andreas pre-surgery, in April 2009.

Pre-op at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

In the recovery room at CNMC.

The day after surgery, April 2009.

Within a few months of his surgery, he began to develop “bumps” on his left eyelid. They were diagnosed as “granulomas,” which are basically just tissue that can form around the site of incisions or stitches. For some reason, his body didn’t really “like” the sling. However, removing these essentially harmless tissues would require another surgery, and since they weren’t interfering with his vision, our doctors advised us to ignore them.

We were happy to follow this advice until this summer. They began occasionally leaking some pus and, by mid-summer, seemed to be bothering Andreas. Other people began commenting on them more frequently, confirming our suspicions that they were, in fact, growing larger and more noticeable. We made an appointment with a highly recommended pediatric ophthalmologist, but the earliest date we could get was for late September.

Finally, during our road trip in August, one of the granulomas seemed to have conquered his entire eyelid. Andreas also began to tell us that it bothered him (as well as a 20-month-old can communicate!). Intervention was definitely necessary. During the final two days of the trip, it began draining both blood and pus. Fortunately, upon our return home, we were able to get an appointment for late August. Our physician consulted with his colleagues, and all agreed that the granulomas should be surgically removed and that the sling in the left lid should be removed as soon as possible. This introduced the possibility that the lid would drop again, but it was also possible that it wouldn’t.

The massive granuloma.

So, as luck would have it, we were scheduled for surgery on my thirtieth birthday. Andreas was a champ, and the surgery couldn’t have gone better! He was extremely chipper pre-op, despite being woken up and taken to the surgery center at 5:30 in the morning. Post-op, he was fighting mad until we got him discharged, fed, and home. He spent the rest of the day eating and sleeping, even eating plenty of birthday cake that evening.

Andreas waiting for surgery at the Scottish Rite outpatient surgery center in Atlanta, GA.

Caleb got to go into the OR until Andreas was asleep; hence, the goofy gown & cap.

In the recovery room.

After both surgeries, he has been mad as a hornet as he’s woken up from the anesthesia.

We could not have asked for a better outcome– a definite answer to prayer. The lid looks great and has NOT dropped again, meaning that his vision is not currently endangered and that no subsequent surgeries are on the horizon. We will have one more post-op visit in October and then will (hopefully!) be able to go to twice-a-year check ups for now.

Three days after surgery.

Many thanks to those who have been praying for our little guy. We’re thankful for access to top-notch medical treatment and for a healthy little boy.

When we chose our kids’ names, we never paid much attention to the “meanings” of their names. Andreas Karl was simply a first name we liked that works well in English and German and isn’t overly popular (at least, in the US!) paired with a family name (my grandfather was Karl). Thus, it wasn’t until a while after his birth that we realized that “Andreas” comes from the Greek for “man” or “manly.” Karl is an Old Germanic name meaning either “free man” or “man.” Ever since, he has been “manly man” to some of our friends, and sometimes to us, too.

Well, Andreas does his darndest to live up to that nickname. He seems to know instinctively what a boy “should” do or like, ranging from climbing EVERYTHING to picking up large rocks and stones to obsessing over “Autos” and “Flugzeuge” (cars & airplanes).

For as much as it is amusing to stereotype him, though, in truth he is a sweet little guy who is “comfortable enough with his manhood” to drink out of pink sippy cups, play with his sister’s dolls & strollers, and cuddle with his Mama or Papa (sometimes).

He loves water and swimming almost as much as his sister does, and he is currently obsessed with fish. I joke that I could drop him off at the Georgia Aquarium and pick him up three hours later without him even noticing my absence. His swimming trunks and sun hat have fish on them, making them a clothing item with a sky-high entertainment value.

Watching his personality grow and express itself is a neat part of parenting an 18 month old, and his exploding vocabulary allows him to tell us more and more of what he wants, likes and needs. He is still into EVERYTHING, taking every opportunity to throw toys into the toilet, empty a cabinet or dresser drawer, or “help” us with laundry or dishes. We look forward to seeing how he continues to change in the coming months.

The big news for our big girl is that Simona turned FOUR years old in June. We can hardly believe that we only have one more year before she has to go to school full-time.
Her celebration was somewhat muted as compared to last year, when we had a “family” party in Iowa on her actual birthday and a joint “friends” party with Caed, a neighbor & classmate whose birthday is the same week.

This year, we began the day in German fashion, with a table decorated with fresh flowers and a special breakfast. Her choice was to make pancakes with her Papa, and we enjoyed them with blueberries, applesauce, and mango juice.

Afterwards, we piled into the car for the drive to Peachtree City, where we spent the day watching World Cup Soccer, swimming, and celebrating her birthday again with more family. Her great-grandma, great aunt & uncle, and grandparents were all too happy to share in the party, complete with the “blueberry & vanilla, green-pink-and-purple” cake she requested. She opened plenty of gifts and cards and overall had a great day. (Thanks to all who made her feel special with calls, cards, and packages!)

Another recent Simona milestone was her second-ever haircut. Because she took the first two years of life to grow a full head of hair, it’s taken quite a while to grow her hair long, which is how she wants it. This was a 3 inch trim, again performed in “Salon Mama.” It turned out pretty well, but we forgot to take an “after” picture!

The other major highlight for Simona this summer has been SWIMMING. The girl spends so much time in the water, she may soon grow flippers! Between the pool at our apartment complex, the pool at my parents’ house, swimming lessons at a public pool, and the lake at my parents’ lakehouse in Alabama, she spends HOURS every week in the water. Her group lessons have been a fun chance to interact with other kids, and she has learned a fair amount; however, I think she won’t quite be a fully proficient swimmer by the time the end next week. No fear, though- it won’t take long before she’s fully morphed into the Little Mermaid she would love to be. A few pictures of her water adventures:

Swimming with Papa:

Kicking at swim lessons:

Swimming at the lake:

On the jet ski with her Opa:

Overall, Simona is a funny, smart, caring girl. She loves to take care of her little brother, adores being told stories, and chews gum any chance she gets. She is a girly girl, accessorizing her outfits, asking for make-up, choosing to wear dresses, etc., but she also enjoys running and climbing at the playground, riding her bike, and watching herself do a silly dance or make a silly face in front of a mirror.
Life is not only roses with a four-year-old at home, as she understands EVERYTHING and can no longer easily be redirected or distracted. We can see our own parenting flaws when she mirrors our poor behavior, challenging us to be more patient, gracious, and loving in our interactions with her and with others. She is discovering more of the world every day and constantly asks not only “why?” questions, but also “what if. . .?” questions. We are amazed and privileged to be witnesses and number one fans to our sweet Simona.

His first cake was fun all around. I enjoyed making it, though I must say that it didn’t turn out quite as I had envisioned! He ended up with a round, snow-ball looking creation (chocolate cake & coconut icing), while the rest of us enjoyed similar-looking cupcakes. (Hey- I never claimed to be Betty Crocker!)

Simona got to blow out the candle and lick the icing off of the #1. She also decided to bite off a bit and quickly learned that candles look prettier than they taste!

Andreas, for his part, started off skeptical, dipping his finger into the icing and cautiously licking. He quickly progressed from handfuls of icing to diving in face first, fulfilling his obligation to show enormous enthusiasm for his first birthday cake. Guess the funny looking snowball cake still tasted good!

A is crawling FAST, climbing and pulling up on everything, and starting to vocalize much more. (He even took his first few steps on January 2! But because he’s such a good crawler, he much prefers that mode of transportation.) He loves looking at books and pictures, making lots of little cooing noises while pointing at various pictures. I’m pretty sure he knows what the word “Katze” means (cat), and he definitely can identify various people. I whistle to him while I change his diapers, and he usually tries to whistle back at me, pursing his little lips and making sweet noises. His big sister can make him laugh at the drop of a hat and is by far his favorite person to watch. He loves baths, being chased, banging on things, and fruit. He hates vegetables, being scolded, and being strapped into his car seat. We are working on his sleeping habits- he take short naps because he’s such a light sleeper, and he STILL wakes up in the night pretty frequently. This is a huge contrast to Simona, who literally has slept through A stepping on her face.

His eyes are doing very well, though he still has three little granulomas (the bumps visible on his left eyelid) that lead to plenty of questions from strangers. He will need an additional surgery in a couple of years, at which time the granulomas can be removed. More important, though, is that his December ophthalmology check up went very well; he was right on track for visual development for a one-year-old. His ophthalmologist noted that he had made at note in the chart at his first appointment (at one month old) that Andreas would likely need glasses by his first birthday. We’re fortunate that’s not the case.

Hard to believe a whole year has gone by already. Your little dimples light up our house, and your laughter is contagious. We are lucky to have you in our family. Happy Birthday, Andreas!

Between S & A’s childbirths, I read and researched the topic extensively out of a mixture of curiosity and self interest.  Some of what I read included the books Pushed, by Jennifer Block; Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born, by Tina Cassidy; and Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin.  I also watched The Business of Being Born, visited a few websites discussing and debating childbirth and maternal medical care, and even researched some public health statistics on childbirth.

My research and personal experiences have lead me to two conclusions.  First, I believe that the process of childbirth matters.  The techniques and procedures used by medical professionals who attend deliveries are of life-and-death consequence for mother and child.  And statistics bear out the fact that, though childbirth in the United States is much safer than in countries without advanced medical technology, it is not nearly as safe as it could or should be.  Better birth matters because those statistics are not just numbers.  They are actual lives of actual mothers and babies who matter and who deserve the best possible chance at health and life.

My second conclusion is that the discourse surrounding childbirth rapidly deteriorates into a pointless debate between the “natural birth” and “medical intervention” camps, to the detriment of women and babies’ health.  In the fight for access to improved health care, women seem to have lost the forest for the trees.  The insistence on a certain “birth experience” for the sake of ensuring the safest, least painful outcome for mother and baby is worthwhile.  The quest to make childbirth a homey, comfortable experience, though, is not only futile but can also be extremely risky.

I would argue that improved maternal/fetal care is not only desirable but also attainable.  Both the “interventionists” and the “naturalists” are doing what they believe is optimal and that both desire the best possible outcome for mother and baby.  I acknowledge that other factors can cloud medical professionals’ judgements: profit, convenience, fear of lawsuits, etc.  But I seriously doubt that any person who works in labor and delivery does not care when a mother or child dies or is seriously injured.  Both “camps” can learn from one another.  This requires humility on both sides, along with an acknowledgement that childbirth is and likely always will remain a dangerous prospect.

Finally, I would urge a healthy dose of perspective.  One of the dear friends mentioned above did not have the happy, healthy outcome we all desperately desire.  Though her loss was not caused by her daughter’s birth experience, it did offer the poignant reminder that anyone whose pregnancy outcome is a heatlhy mother and child have first and foremost an obligation to be grateful and secondmost a reason to do all possible to ensure that other mothers have access to that same outcome.