Our Good News

Yep, that's Ben's sibling!  This isn't really news for us since I'm now in my second trimester, but we only told people on a need-to-know basis until last week.  So here are the answers to questions we've gotten:

• The due date is November 29th.
• Yes, this was planned.
• Yes, we will be finding out the gender (probably early July).
• I am seeing the OB/GYNs at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (the big Army hospital about half an hour away) and will deliver there also.
• No, I don't know if I'll have to have another c-section.  But this hospital is open to V-BACS, unlike my last hospital.
• No, Ben has no idea what is going on.

Since I had pre-eclampsia  at the end of my last pregnancy, I am considered high risk this time.  I will have more OB appointments and tests than last time.  I've had a bunch of labwork and it's all been fine so far.  With Ben, I started out on meds for high blood pressure and was quickly taken off them when my blood pressure got too low.  It only went back up at the very end.  This time they have put me on a different medicine.  I am hoping they take me off it for a while because my readings have been low and I've really been dragging (don't know if that's the meds).  I have another appointment this week.  So far I'm really happy with the doctors and hospital staff.

All in all I've been feeling okay.  I had more first-trimester nausea this time around.  I hadn't had so much as a cold when I was pregnant with Ben.  But between being in a foreign country and taking Ben to preschool all the time, I've picked up quite a few bugs this time.  And now I have a kid in the Terrible Twos.  So that's a bit of a challenge.

We kept a lot of Ben's baby things and brought them to Germany with us.  I have been putting off transitioning Ben to a toddler bed, but I'll pretty much have to now.  We'll need to buy another dresser and some storage shelves.  Ben's infant car seat and stroller had been used when we got them and weren't worth keeping, so I'll have to do some shopping here.  But what I'm really stuck on is strollers: do I get a double or single stroller?  Right now it's really hard to take Ben out and about without a stroller since he runs and struggles so much if he's not strapped in to something.  I don't know if that will change by the time he's three.  Sometimes I think it's silly for thinking of these things now because I've still got a while to go, but I know the time will fly.

Eye Kwee

A few weeks ago, when the weather was nice, we walked down to the Eis Cafe (like an ice cream parlor) in our village.  Ben calls ice cream "eye kwee."  He says it a lot.

It's very serious business.

He liked the strawberry but also wanted to try the lemon that I got.

It takes him a long time to finally bite the cone.  And when he does, it takes him a long time to finish eating it.

At some point we just started walking home and let him keep eating.

Fast forward two weeks to last week.  It's much colder, and Ben (finally) got a haircut.  Just about every day he asks for ice cream.  Sometimes we give him rainbow sherbet.  On this day Mike took him back to the Eis Cafe and got him cherry.

He's such a cute mess.

Another Park

I'm waaaaayyyy behind with blog posts.  Here's a playground we didn't know about on one of the local bases.  We found it two or three weeks ago.

Every time he picked up this stick, he said "Y."  Then he pointed to the letters on a sign and named them.  He is all about the alphabet.

He also loves the steering wheels that are on so many playgrounds now.

That's Daddy on the other side of the bubble.

This was a manageable slide for Ben.  He was scared to go down the bigger slides by himself.  But even on this one, he stuck out one foot to slow himself down.  I was so afraid he'd break his ankle.

Aaaaand we're back to the yellow bubble.  Someone had taken a marker to the plastic (we were not trying to draw a mustache on his face).

When he likes something, he really likes it.

Don't have any idea what he was looking through, but love the face.

We have way more playground options here than we did in Middle Georgia.  Between the three parks in our village and the ones on all the bases, we always have someplace for Ben to explore.