Shortly after I learned I was pregnant with my second child while stationed in Germany, we finally got into quarters (aka military housing). This was like suddenly being middle class overnight after years of poverty, in part because the quarters were really nice.
The kitchen was fantastic and the design of the apartment was kind of the best of both worlds from American residential design and German residential design. We had amazingly cool German windows of a sort I have never seen in the US that could be opened up wide like a door or tilted in slightly to let in a breeze over the top of the window while remaining secured and keeping out the weather.
We also had screens to keep out the flies, something German apartments seemed to all lack at that time. Germans routinely sun their feather beds by hanging them out the window, which you can't do if there are screens, but this means opening the window to get a cross breeze when it's warm also lets in flying bugs.
Opening the windows was how you cooled the place. Air conditioning is relatively uncommon in Germany, or was at that time, because you simply don't typically need it. Germany usually isn't hot enough to need AC.
The husband's paycheck stopped including a housing allowance. In exchange, we got to live someplace rent-free, with zero threat of the rent going up and I think free utilities which is part of what helped stretch the budget and helped me feel very suddenly all middle class and comfortable.
I think all we had was a phone bill. Electricity, water and heat were not billed to us.
We were on the third floor of a four-story building (or a three-and-a-half story building -- the apartments one floor up were attic apartments with slanted ceilings). There were no elevators.
There was a playground out back directly behind my apartment. I could look directly down on it, but had to go out the front of the building, down to the end of the building and around to the back. There were no back doors and we were in the middle stairwell of, I think, three stairwells for that building.
We were extremely close to the commissary, which is a military grocery store where only folks with military benefits can shop. You had to flash your military ID to get in.
At that time, Germany was much bigger on recycling than most countries and there was a recycling collection thing near the end of our building on the way to the commissary. So I would try to take out my recycling on my way to the grocery store so I didn't have to run up and down the stairs as much, among other things.
One of those other things being "How to wrangle the kids." It was a hassle to take them with me a zillion times a day for a zillion little tasks. But they were too little to leave alone and the husband wasn't always around for me to let him watch them for a few minutes while I ran downstairs.
While still pregnant, I began developing my routines for how to efficiently handle all those little tasks. This paid dividends after the baby came and life got busier and more complicated.
I almost never used a stroller. With all those stairs, it was too much hassle for the supposed "convenience" it provided, so I used a baby carrier and strapped my infant to my chest.
My second child was nine and a half pounds at birth and he grew like crazy. I spent months telling random strangers "Look How Big He Is!" because it was like you could almost watch him getting bigger from one day to the next.
I think he wore newborn clothes for a week or two and then was in clothes intended for 2-month old babies. By the time he was two years old, he was wearing the same size clothes as his four and a half year old brother and only weighed five pounds less, though he was a head shorter and shorts on him went to the middle of his shin.
So for over a year, my almost daily routine included a trip to the grocery store in the afternoon that began thusly: I would strap my hefty infant to my chest, pick up my purse, my backpack and pre-sorted bags of recycling, wrangle my toddler and head out.
The toddler got to walk to the store but I carried him home on my shoulders when shopping was done.
He got carried home because he had a history of running off to the playground behind the building on the way home when I had been pregnant (because he could outrun me when I was high pregnant). It was less burdensome to carry him home than to deal with his shenanigans.
The commissary was closed on Sundays and major holidays and it was hard to get good quality meat in Germany of a sort I was used to in the states. I typically went shopping six days a week and often bought meat fresh for dinner shortly before starting dinner.
So on my way home, I had a baby strapped to my chest, a toddler on my shoulders, a backpack full of groceries, a large purse on my right side and any lightweight, bulky items I had purchased (like diapers or toilet paper) in my left hand. I was only going maybe a block while on the street, but then I had to climb a bunch of stairs as well.
Not long after I had my second child, I was talking with a relative on the phone and she and I began adding up the weight of all that. At that time, we estimated that it was likely somewhere between fifty and sixty pounds that I was carrying home.
My baby walked late. He didn't start walking until he was fourteen months old.
So he got carried in a baby carrier strapped to my chest until he began walking.
The week that he turned one, I ran into a lady in the commissary who had shared my hospital room. I think her baby was born one day before mine.
At birth, her baby was nine pounds and my baby was nine and a half. At just days shy of their first birthdays, her baby was eighteen pounds and mine was twenty-six and a half pounds.
So her baby had doubled in weight. Mine had almost tripled in weight.
I don't think I ever again added up the weight I was carrying home from the commissary in Germany after that first converstion where we estimated it to between fifty and sixty pounds. But a year after that conversation the amount of weight I was carrying home was quite a bit more than it had been.
Both kids had grown but my infant son had really grown a whole lot. I was likely carrying home somewhere between seventy and ninety pounds on any given day at that point.
The kitchen was fantastic and the design of the apartment was kind of the best of both worlds from American residential design and German residential design. We had amazingly cool German windows of a sort I have never seen in the US that could be opened up wide like a door or tilted in slightly to let in a breeze over the top of the window while remaining secured and keeping out the weather.
We also had screens to keep out the flies, something German apartments seemed to all lack at that time. Germans routinely sun their feather beds by hanging them out the window, which you can't do if there are screens, but this means opening the window to get a cross breeze when it's warm also lets in flying bugs.
Opening the windows was how you cooled the place. Air conditioning is relatively uncommon in Germany, or was at that time, because you simply don't typically need it. Germany usually isn't hot enough to need AC.
The husband's paycheck stopped including a housing allowance. In exchange, we got to live someplace rent-free, with zero threat of the rent going up and I think free utilities which is part of what helped stretch the budget and helped me feel very suddenly all middle class and comfortable.
I think all we had was a phone bill. Electricity, water and heat were not billed to us.
We were on the third floor of a four-story building (or a three-and-a-half story building -- the apartments one floor up were attic apartments with slanted ceilings). There were no elevators.
There was a playground out back directly behind my apartment. I could look directly down on it, but had to go out the front of the building, down to the end of the building and around to the back. There were no back doors and we were in the middle stairwell of, I think, three stairwells for that building.
We were extremely close to the commissary, which is a military grocery store where only folks with military benefits can shop. You had to flash your military ID to get in.
At that time, Germany was much bigger on recycling than most countries and there was a recycling collection thing near the end of our building on the way to the commissary. So I would try to take out my recycling on my way to the grocery store so I didn't have to run up and down the stairs as much, among other things.
One of those other things being "How to wrangle the kids." It was a hassle to take them with me a zillion times a day for a zillion little tasks. But they were too little to leave alone and the husband wasn't always around for me to let him watch them for a few minutes while I ran downstairs.
While still pregnant, I began developing my routines for how to efficiently handle all those little tasks. This paid dividends after the baby came and life got busier and more complicated.
I almost never used a stroller. With all those stairs, it was too much hassle for the supposed "convenience" it provided, so I used a baby carrier and strapped my infant to my chest.
My second child was nine and a half pounds at birth and he grew like crazy. I spent months telling random strangers "Look How Big He Is!" because it was like you could almost watch him getting bigger from one day to the next.
I think he wore newborn clothes for a week or two and then was in clothes intended for 2-month old babies. By the time he was two years old, he was wearing the same size clothes as his four and a half year old brother and only weighed five pounds less, though he was a head shorter and shorts on him went to the middle of his shin.
So for over a year, my almost daily routine included a trip to the grocery store in the afternoon that began thusly: I would strap my hefty infant to my chest, pick up my purse, my backpack and pre-sorted bags of recycling, wrangle my toddler and head out.
The toddler got to walk to the store but I carried him home on my shoulders when shopping was done.
He got carried home because he had a history of running off to the playground behind the building on the way home when I had been pregnant (because he could outrun me when I was high pregnant). It was less burdensome to carry him home than to deal with his shenanigans.
The commissary was closed on Sundays and major holidays and it was hard to get good quality meat in Germany of a sort I was used to in the states. I typically went shopping six days a week and often bought meat fresh for dinner shortly before starting dinner.
So on my way home, I had a baby strapped to my chest, a toddler on my shoulders, a backpack full of groceries, a large purse on my right side and any lightweight, bulky items I had purchased (like diapers or toilet paper) in my left hand. I was only going maybe a block while on the street, but then I had to climb a bunch of stairs as well.
Not long after I had my second child, I was talking with a relative on the phone and she and I began adding up the weight of all that. At that time, we estimated that it was likely somewhere between fifty and sixty pounds that I was carrying home.
My baby walked late. He didn't start walking until he was fourteen months old.
So he got carried in a baby carrier strapped to my chest until he began walking.
The week that he turned one, I ran into a lady in the commissary who had shared my hospital room. I think her baby was born one day before mine.
At birth, her baby was nine pounds and my baby was nine and a half. At just days shy of their first birthdays, her baby was eighteen pounds and mine was twenty-six and a half pounds.
So her baby had doubled in weight. Mine had almost tripled in weight.
I don't think I ever again added up the weight I was carrying home from the commissary in Germany after that first converstion where we estimated it to between fifty and sixty pounds. But a year after that conversation the amount of weight I was carrying home was quite a bit more than it had been.
Both kids had grown but my infant son had really grown a whole lot. I was likely carrying home somewhere between seventy and ninety pounds on any given day at that point.