Mark Thomas has arrived!

I think everyone knows by now, but let's make it official with a blog post. Mark Thomas DeAngelo arrived (finally) on Friday, November 20 at 4:06 pm local time (that's 10:06 am EST). He weighed 3880 grams (that's 8 lbs, 8 oz) and was 56 cm long (that's 22 inches). So he's a big boy and is continuing to grow fast. On his one week birthday he was already almost 9 pounds!

I'm happy to say that I was able to avoid a second C-section and am extremely grateful to the two midwives and Doug who saw me through labor and delivery...though I am probably more grateful to the anesthesiologist who gave the epidural! It was harder than I expected, but much faster than with Gianna and the fast recovery has been great. It was nice to be able to come home just two days later on Sunday to get back to Gianna and life in general. My mom has made the transition this last week much easier. I hope the transition to not having her on Tuesday goes well...I'm nervous!

So far Mark is a good baby. He doesn't cry much and seems very curious about the world around him...when he's not asleep! Sleeping at night is not his specialty, but it's not horrible and I'm sure that will improve quickly. Although he'll probably figure it out just in time to fly back to the states and adjust to the time change! Bummer! (That's a bouncy seat we borrowed from a friend here in Munich...obviously, their baby was a girl!)

And Gianna is a great big sister! She loves to saw "awww" and "he's so cute." She doesn't always love having him around, but she often likes to tickle him and touch him. It's been nice for her to have Grandma around as a playmate, so I hope she is still good once Grandma is gone.

All in all, life is good. We are very blessed to have another healthy child and look forward to introducing him to everyone back in the US in just two and a half weeks. We can't wait to come home!

Day at the zoo's playground (Sunday, Nov. 1)

Since it was a nice day and there's nothing else open on Sunday we decided to go to the zoo again. But this time one of our main goals was to capture the complete insanity of its playground. It is (I think) the cream of the crop when it comes to dangerous playgrounds and as such will probably be the last in our series while we're here! (I don't see us getting to a lot more playgrounds now that it has gotten colder and we'll have a tiny baby to bring soon too! But you never know, we may be inspired!)

So let's start with an overview. Here's a picture of the park in general. It was a madhouse. Like I said, nothing else to do on Sunday. Also, as an interesting sidenote, there appears to be a competition among German parents to see who can get their child to sweat to death first. This isn't very obvious from the following pictures, but let's just say that on this day it was over 50 degrees and I saw a child in a snow suit. I'm afraid we won't be here long enough to find out what these kids wear when it's actually cold out!





Okay, now for a better look at that slide, or pipe, or tower of terror, call it what you want. Don't stand at the bottom of this one folks, the kids come out of there like bullets! It's unbelievable.



And this is how you get to the top of the slide. It's just like a mess of sticks in that tower!


And next comes the battering ram. Sadly, this piece of "equipment" does not have 20 children on it like the first time we were there, that makes it look especially dangerous. I especially like when kids stand on the sides of it and get knocked to the ground. This day I only managed to capture these two boys practically airborne.

Despite the danger, we did let Gianna have fun at this playground! (This is not the crazy slide, but rather a much smaller, tamer one!) And Doug wishes he was 8 again so he could enjoy it more. In a word, he thinks it's "awesome."