The twins are here!

Okay, so they are now about a month or so old now, but they are here and they are cute! Here are some pictures:

I'm pretty sure the one on the left is Laurenz and the one on the right is Leander.

They hold hands surprisingly often.

They are both boys, we are still not sure if they are identical - they are most likely fraternal, but there is still a chance they could be identical and so far they are extremely hard to tell apart.

They were both right around 3200 grams when they were born (which is roughly 7 lbs. apiece) and while that is on the healthy-but-still-relatively-small side for a baby, it is pretty much outrageously huge for twins. That's 14 lbs. of baby to be carrying around! Leander spent a night in the NICU since he came first and had to be helped out a bit, but really there were no problems with the births - Sabine didn't even have to have a C-Section which everyone was mostly expecting. They also didn't come a bit early. She had to be induced since they seemed happy to stay inside forever.

They spent their first 3 weeks in this world sleeping so much they would fall asleep right in the middle of eating and never eat enough. So the only scare we had is that they wouldn't gain any weigh, but that didn't last long. They are now voraciously hungry all the time and even occasionally wake up and cry for no apparent reason .

They are super cute, but are keeping mommy and daddy very busy and very sleepy.

Berlin - The Place to Be

    I have been working on this one for a long time. These were my observations from week #1 with the family.

Sometimes you just know.

    After my airplane landed, it took a very long time to get through the line, get my passport stamped, and find my bags. There were a lot of people on my flight. I was tired and slightly delirious from so little sleep, I couldn't find a bathroom to freshen up in and I didn't know where to go. But as soon as I stepped through the baggage claim doors, there was Sabine. She gave me a hug and told me she was so glad I was here, and that Jasper and Hinrich had just gone off a little ways into the airport and would be back in a moment. From that moment, I knew for sure this was exactly where I should be.

Hinrich, Sabine, Jasper and the Twins

    At least for now, we are all staying together in their small apartment in the middle of Berlin and I feel a little like Anne in Persuasion when she goes to stay with the Musgroves - everyone is happy I am here but for different reasons.

    Hinrich and Sabine (and the twins) - Hinrich (pronounced somewhere between Hin-rick and Hin-rich) is a very interesting guy. He is a self-employed concert pianist. He and Sabine met in New York at Juilliard and even though they are both from Germany, they come from very different backgrounds. They both grew up outside of small towns in the German countryside, but Hinrich was an only child while Sabine was one of 7 girls. He began playing music when he was very young and is really passionate about many things. We have talked many nights about American politics, education, and social interaction in our world today. He seems to enjoy having me around as someone who will listen intently to what he has to say and engage in conversation. He loves Alfred Hitchcock movies.

    Sabine (pronounced sort of like Tsabina or Zabina) is a concert cellist and teacher. She is also VERY pregnant. She aparently always has large babies. When Hinrich first told me how big jasper was when he was born, I thought at first that he told me Jasper was almost 8 kilos (which would be about 17 lbs.), but Birgit told me he was only 5 kilos which is still about 11 pounds. The twins now weigh almost 3 kilos each! So together they both weigh as much as Jasper did. But they will each be between 6 and 7 pounds when they are born which is quite large for twins. They are both boys, but they won't be sure if they are identical or fraternal until they are born. They also seem to be very content and not in a big hurry to come out. They are getting so big that the doctors are ready to induce her on Monday and if she doesn't have them by Wednesday, they will do a c-section. She seems very independent and has a strong personality, but she also seems really happy that I'm here. I think she needs more help than she usually asks for, so she's happy to have someone around ready to help even if there hasn't been too much for me to do yet. She only sees her family a few times a year and is happy to be on her own with her family, but Hinrich's mother comes around to help with Jasper a lot. She just retired and has been here most of the time I have.

    Birgit - Birgit is Hinrich's mother. Since she retired last week, she really doesn't have too much to do besides split her time between her only son and grandson and her husband. She is very kind to me and has taken me to see the places that Jasper likes to go on the weekends (the zoo, the park, the Natural History museum, etc.). She has also taught me how to use the bus and always buys me food and wants to make sure that I am very comfortable. She stays at the other apartment when she is here, but spends most of her time here taking Jasper to his daycare, picking him up, going to the store, playing with Jasper and putting him to bed.

    Jasper - Jasper (pronounced yaspar, but sometimes they call him Jasper when we are speaking English) is currently the king of the apartment.

This is not actually Jasper

He has 4 adults around most of the time just waiting to help him and he knows it. He is so big! He wasn't just a big baby, he is growing fast. He is taller and heavier than the 4-year-old girl at his day care and he is only 2 years old and that just barely - his birthday is in January.

This is Jasper

 He also eats as much as an adult most of the time. Sabine tries to make sure he doesn't eat too much between meals because his doctor is apparently concerned that he eats way too much for his age. He is already wearing the largest size in diapers so I don't know what they are going to do once he grows out of them. Potty train him, probably...

    Besides being a great playmate, he is the best German teacher I have. He says simple things over and over and has picture books with simple words that I like to read. Also, people speak very simply to him so I can usually understand what adults say to him.

    I have already learned many important words including "alle alle" which means "all gone", "Igel" which means "hedgehog" and "dinosaurier" which means "dinosaur". 

    Jasper LOVES music - he sings all the time, makes noises, plays the piano and listens quietly when his father plays the piano for him or when someone is singing. He also loves to draw and he loves water more than anything. He would sit and play in the bathtub all day long if we would let him.

All Things In Wisdom and/or Order

Okay, so I always get caught up trying to report things in order, but now I'm so behind! So instead you are going to get a variety of smaller posts (excepting the first one) that are as in order as I can make them. You'll have to hear about New York later though... There's too much going on here.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner!

    Well sort of. I'm not a jelly doughnut (which incidentally appears to be something of a misconception...), but I am living in Berlin – or rather I will be by this time next week. This might be coming as a surprise to most of you since I've been worse than usual at keeping in touch.

    So I can hear you all thinking “What have you been doing with your life lately, Courtney?”

    And to that I would reply:

    In December I finished up all the things at BYU and I now have an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts – Ceramics, and a Utah Art Education teaching certificate. My last year and a half of school was more crazy than I bargained for. I made a lot of ceramic sculpture and put together my final show (which you can check out here). The next semester I took a lot of classes that ended up being much more work than expected including my curriculum class which was totally awesome, but I wish I could have spent the whole semester on just that class... I finished up with a bang by doing my student teaching in Washington, DC which was awesome! I loved teaching in the inner city. I'm more excited than ever to be a teacher, however, that last semester finishing my Teacher Work Sample, planning lessons, and living in a new place when I was already pretty burnt out, left me feeling like this:  

    The moral of this story (and by moral I mean conclusion) is that my parents had to come mop me up off the floor at the end of the semester, squeeze me out into a small container, and carefully transport me to the mission home in Virginia where I have spent my time recovering and trying to figure out what I should do now that I am a collage graduate, grown-up type.
    The highlights of my time here have been Christmas with the WHOLE family (even Joseph who was pretty much home from his mission just in time to come open presents), teaching my mom and sisters how to throw pots (that means this:

not this:

although the second option is a lot of fun), eating ice cream from Brusters (which I've been missing since I lived next door to one on my mission in Indiana), and - despite being mostly anti-social and a short-time resident -making a handful of friends I'm really going to miss .

    So as I contemplated the universe here with my family, I was trying to decide where to move and what to do, and the only conclusion I came to was that I couldn't dive right back in to something crazy (read: grown-up; see also, responsible). Then one day my mother told me about a post on my aunt's Facebook wall saying that she had a friend in Germany whose wife is going to have twins soon and they are looking for someone to help them out with their 3 year-old son and 2 new born babies.

    One thing lead to another and here I am, getting ready to board an airplane in New York on Saturday. Sometimes I wish I was actually ready to settle down and be grown-up, but usually I'm just excited to be going on an adventure to a far away country where I don't speak the language and I get to play with/slave over 3 cute babies - don't ask me how that's less crazy than getting a job, it just seems right.

Dr. Seuss once said (wrote):

“You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

…

You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.

About some you will say, 'I don't choose to go there.'

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,

you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any

you'll want to go down.

In that case, of course,

you'll head straight out of town.”

~Oh the Places You'll Go

    So the actual moral of this story is that if growing up is hard, just put it off one more year and go on an adventure to Germany.

Communicating With Me In Germany:

    Just to make it clear, I won't be taking my phone with me, so you will have to contact me for the time being through E-mail & Google Hangouts (CPerry17@gmail.com), Facebook, and/or Skype (you should be able to look me up with my e-mail address). I will give out a phone number if I ever have one and/or my snail-mail address for any interested parties.

    I will try to do much better at keeping in touch in the future and I'll even try to update this blog with all my awesome German adventures!

    And so my quest starts here for just the right street for my head full of brains and my shoes full of feet.