Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I don't have time to respond individually at the moment. Johannes is walking around outside with the kids, and Melanie is cranky so I have to hurry. Next time, I will take my bike and go alone to the internet cafe and then maybe I will have more time.

Our first few days here were cold and wet, but the weather is nice and hot now. The kids love the beach. Anna wants to go all the time. Last night, she put her swimsuit on instead of her pajamas and asked to go to the beach. She didn't go because it was raining and Johannes and I didn't want to take her.

My birthday was a fun day. My mother in law decided to decorate our trailer with balloons while Melanie and I were still sleeping. It was windy, and the wind started popping them and the noise woke us up. I thought they were firecrackers for July the 14th, but they weren't. Anna thought this was hilarious and was sitting on the ground watching them pop. We all went out to lunch as well, and it was really good. I ate lots of fish. I still don't know what kind, because the word wasn't in my dictionary. Johannes is going to buy me a ticket for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when we get back´to Germany. (Anyone want to go with me? Johannes has to babysit Melanie, so he can't come with me). I'm looking forward to the new Harry Potter book. It's being shipped to me here in France.

Ok, time to go. Melanie is cranky and we still have to grocery shop.

We're leaving for France today. We'll be gone until at least July 28, back August 12th at the latest. Johannes has to come back to Germany for a few days sometime in the middle of the vacation to work, and then he'll finish taking his vacation after that. The kids and I are going to stay in France with my inlaws while he does that.

If anyone wants to send mail, the address is:
l
Allison Martin
chez Jeannot
Camping de St. Pierre
Locmariaquer, 56740
France

We'll have a cell phone, but it's out of range at the campground we are staying, so the best thing to do is send a text message. I can call back because there is a payphone there and we have a cheap phone card. I'll be checking email ocasionally as well at an internet cafe.

cell number: 49 163 4814522 (put a 011 before this if you're in north america, 00 if you're in france.

I just noticed that I haven't updated in a while. I don't get much computer time these days, even less where I have both hands free to type. Johannes has Melanie right now, so I have a few minutes. The two and a half months since Melanie was born have gone really fast. Anna really likes Melanie, and is constantly trying to play with her. She has started trying to pick her up this week, and will climb aall over her if I leave her on the floor, so I really have to watch her carefully. If I put Melanie down on her tummy, then Anna immediately gets on hers too. It's really cute. Anna is very protective of Melanie too. The kids at playgroup are still not allowed to look at her. Anna says My Melanie and pushes them away. One of them touched Melanie's hand today and Anna had a meltdown. Anna also takes away all of Melanie's toys and plays with them herself and takes all the bedding out of the crib while I change Melanie's diaper. Melanie is smiling and just starting to grab things. She holds on the side of the bassinet quite often now. Anna loves to jump. She's also starting to make up strange things. She keeps telling me there is a sheep in the kitchen, usually when she is trying to aavoid going to bed. She ran around with her toy helicopter today and was yelling look click and after the third time she did that, I figure out it was supposed to be a camera.

I'm doing fine. I didn't do schoolwork for the first 6 weeks after Melanie was born, so I'm trying to make up for that now. I'm still behind, but hope to be caught up by my next course weekend in January. Hannah has gotten me addicted to Gilmore Girls, so whenever I'm too tired to do schoolwork, I watch that. Unfortunately, I'm almost caught up to the current season, so I'm going to run out of episodes to watch soon. Johannes just installed his laptop in the living room, so I can now use the internet from the living room which means I can use it while Anna plays. He has actually attached the laptop to the top of the tv caabinet so Anna doesn't break it. Any bets on how long it will take Anna to break it and/or detach it? I do like not having to wait until Anna is asleep to use the computer.

I think I will have a shower now before Johannes goes to bed and gives Melanie back to me.

BTW, is there anyone else that has Facebook besides Hannah and Leanna?

We're finally home from the hospital. Anna is very excited that Melanie is here, but she always wants to be on my lap whenever Melanie is. It was challenging to eat dinner tonight. I'll put up some pictures tomorrow when I'm not so tired.

I talked to the doctors today, and Melanie won't be able to come home before Tuesday. She finishes her second antibiotic that day, and then she is allowed home. Tuesday is a stat here, and it will probably be quite difficult to get her released that day, but we'll try. Otherwise, she'll come home on Wednesday. All her blood test results are good, and they're really happy with the amount she's eating. I don't have to weigh her any more before and after meals, which means I can nurse her whenever I want and I don't have to find anyone to disconnect her from the monitor every time I want to feed her. That should make things a lot easier.

I will post pictures when Melanie is home. I keep forgetting to bring the camera home with me.

I'm not exactly sure who Johannes sent the email with Melanie's birth announcement to, so I better announce it here as well. Melanie was born on September 25 at 1:07pm. She weighs around 9 pounds, and is 52 cm, I don't know what that is in inches at the moment. The hospital measured her with a measuring tape and said she was 55cm, but that isn't right. Labour was really fast, and for the first 4 hours of contractions, I thought they were just Braxton Hicks contractions. Then, Anna started emptying shampoo bottles in the bathroom and I had to wait until the contraction ended to stop her and I realized it probably was labour and decided to time the contractions. They were 5 minutes apart, so I called Johannes and then my inlaws to pick me up. We got to the hospital shortly before 11, and Melanie was born at 1:07. I was in a small room that usually isn't used as a delivery room because there were 7 other women there ahead of me and it was really full.

My inlaws brought Anna to meet Melanie a few hours later. Anna was fascinated with her and kept saying baby sleep and staring at her. Then she tried to climb in the bassinet with her, which didn't work too well. Melanie and I had to stay in the hospital overnight because of the possibility of a strep B infection. On Tuesday at lunchtime, she got a blood test to check for infection, and at 3:30 the doctor came in and told me she had an infection and it wasn't serious but that she had to be transferred to the children's hospital and treated with antibiotics because infections can become serious very fast in newborns. About half an hour after that, they took her over to the other hospital and Johannes came and found a doctor so I could get released from the hospital so I could go and stay with Melanie at the other hospital. The doctor didn't want to release me yet, he wanted me to pump milk and have it sent over to Melanie but I thought that wouldn't work too well since it had only been 24 hours and there wasn't much of anything to pump yet. We agreed that I could go for the night, but that I should check into hospital Melanie was in the next day. Then we drove to see Melanie and talk to the doctors. They didn't want me to spend the night there because of the strep B but since I couldn't get a bed in the other building, they let me. The next day, it turned out that I couldn't get into the other hospital, so I'm staying at the hospital with Melanie. She'll be there 5 to 7 days, which means she will come home probably on Monday or Wednesday. She's doing fine, she has no symptoms of an infection at all. I spend most of the day with her, but I come home for a couple hours to shower since there aren't any at the hospital and to see Anna. Johannes brings Anna to visit too. She's not allowed on the ward where Melanie is, but Melanie is allowed outside, so we go for a walk or to the playground.

I'm really looking forward to bringing Melanie home. The nurses are driving me crazy. They are convinced I shouldn't breastfeed more than every four hours and they don't wake me up at night when she cries most of the time. Forunately I can hear her pretty well from where I am sleeping, and have only missed hearing her a couple times. Only a few more days, and then everyone will be at home. It's a really good thing that Johannes is taking time off from work.

Today was fun. We went a secondhand kids sale this morning. I found a really cute baby outfit, but no clothes for Anna. There's another sale next week near where Helga lives, so we'll go there if I'm not busy giving birth. The baby is pretty unlikely to actually come on my due date though. There were lots of good toys though. I bought Anna some wooden cars and a helipcopter and a train. Johannes found a plastic lawnmower for her since she is always stealing the one from the neighbours. I found a few English books as well, and a baby toy.

I speent most of the day organizing stuff around the house. All of a sudden, I felt like it and since I almost never feel like it, I took advantage of it. I found the receiving blankets, which I have been looking for for ages, but I still can't find the bassinet sheets. I think I may have lent them to my sister-in-law, and she told me she gave them to her sister, who had a baby a month ago. So I need to get some more.

I didn't get any schoolwork done today, so I'll have to work hard tomorrow. Ludger and Brigitte were here tonight, and we played the board game they gave me for my birthday, which is one of the expansions for the Settler of Catan. It's really fun and really complicated. It also takes forever to play. We stopped halfway through, because we were all tired.

The crib is put together, and Anna is fascinated with it. She can climb in, so we've been trying to teach her to stay out of it. We haven't had much success yet. Our bedroom is overflowiing with baby stuff, and it's driving me crazy because there's so much stuff in there. Only two more weeks and then I can put it all in the room the tenant is moving out of.

Time to sleep now.

We found a newspaper ad for a crib, wardrobe, shelf, and change table for a pretty good price and Johannes went and looked and it today, and it was nice and in good shape so he bought it. It's really nice. It's made out of pine. It's in pieces at the moment, but I'm going to put the crib together this afternoon and put in our room. After the tenant moves out in two weeks, we'll set up the other stuff and get rid of the old, falling apart furniture that's in the room now. I like the crib because it has two removeable bars, and it converts to a toddler bed. The change table also converts to a shelf. We might leave it like that since we don't really need another change table.

Anna and I went to our La Leche League meeting this morning. I haven't been in 6 months, so it was nice to go and see everybody. Anna had a great time playing with the other kids. She kept trying to sneak outside and go to the playground though. Six months ago, she couldn't open the door yet.

The baby still isn't here. I've had lots of contractions this week, but they always stop. I had a couple that hurt on Wednesday night, but they stopped too. Only three weeks at the most until the baby is here. The doctor might not let me go a full two weeks past my due date though, because Anna's amniotic fluid was a little green, which means she was in there to long. So, maybe only two weeks to wait.

I helped at Anna's playgroup today, and it wasn't so bad. There were two other parents there most of the time, so I didn't have to change any diapers or anything that involved lifting up the kids. I still had to run around a lot though, and my back was pretty sore this afternoon. Johannes took Anna to his parents, so I decided to have a bath and now my back feels a lot better. I really should have used the time to study, but I can do that when Anna is asleep, if I stay awake long enough. I'm pretty tired today.

One of the mothers from playgroup was due to have her baby a week before I am. She had her baby on the 7th- two weeks early. I haven't seen her yet, but I talked to her husband for awhile today. Her older daughter is 6 months older than Anna. I think they will be playing together a lot once both babies are here.

My sister-in-law called today and asked if she could keep the crib we lent her. We were supposed to pick it up this weekend. Now we have to find a new crib fast. I probably won't use it that much anyway, but I do want it for naps. At night, the baby will be in bed with us anyway. If she had told us she wanted to keep it a couple months ago, then we could have probably transitioned Anna out of hers, but it's too late now. She also has a matress on the floor, but she still rolls off that sometimes, so it's probably better to leave her in the crib a little longer. It has 2 removeable bars, so she can get in and out herself but she doesn't roll out. We do have a bed rail, but it's going in our bed since we don't have a headboard and I don't want the baby to fall off the bed. Johannes is going to get the paper so we can see if there are any good used cribs in there. If not, I have a ton of baby catalogues or we could go to Ikea this weekend. I don't want to spend too much money on it though, because we won't use it that much. Anna was barely in hers at all before she was about 14 months old. The one my sister-in-law is keeping was given to us for free, and I didn't like it that much anyways.

I got my Germany permanent residence permit today. The picture is horrible, even worse than my passport picture. I think I look like a vampire in it because my skin is so pale and my lips are really red. The dumb thing about it is that it's in my passport, so every time I get a new passport I will have to go down to the office and get a new one. It should really be on a card or something.

The baby is still not here yet. I had contractions yesterday for about 9 hours straight, and they didn't hurt much but they were pretty regular so I was hoping they would eventually turn into real labour contractions, but they stopped during the night sometime and I have hardly had any today.

Irmlind and Erwin were so concerned that I was going to go into labour today that they wanted to drive me downtown, but I talked them out of it because I had to go to the grocery store afterwards and because I wanted to get some reading for school done on the bus. Anna stayed with Irmlind since it was close to her naptime, and she's still there sleeping now. Irmlind will bring her home when she wakes up.

I have to help at Anna's playgroup tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it because it will involve a lot of chasing after kids and I'm too pregnant to do that comfortably. I wanted to pick an day earlier in the month, but there were none left. After tomorrow, I'm taking a few months off from helping. I'll send either Johannes or Irmlind to do it. Johannes is switching to working 32 hours a week after the baby comes, so he willl be home one day during the week. He will also get 2 weeks off when the baby is born.

Time to do schoolwork now.