As the title already says: The newest member of our family is not there yet. Due date is only 9 days from today and it's getting exhausting. Marlene nearly can't move any more, she's short of breath every time she takes the stairs and everything is hurting. It's almost time for the delivery!
Of yourse we know it won't get any less exhausting, once our boy will be there. But at least the waiting will be over then. Because that's basically what we are currently doing: Waiting for the delivery to start, waiting for my mother in law to arrive next Tuesday, waiting for each day to go by.
Of course Charlotte is not waiting! She knows there's a baby in mommy's belly, but I doubt she knows what that really means. We read a certain book a lot with a family getting their second child. And she also knows that all the new stuff in the house is "for the baby". But of course she has no idea about the change this will mean for her.
Anyway: We have a lot of fun with her, even though she can be stressful sometimes, too, of course.
Marlene started to write down all the words that she can say by now and we come up with about 50 or so. There are also quite a few English words she's talking. Being the whole day in pre-school let's you learn those words really fast: "Clean-up", "all done", "pumpkin" (because of halloween), "spider" (because of an English song) etc.
Sometimes Marlene has to tell me what Charlotte is saying when I hear those words for the first time out of her mouth.
Charlotte now likes pre-school so much that she told Marlene last Thursday that she wanted to go there, although she normally only is there on Mondays and Tuesdays.
She's still watching people a lot, especially people she doesn't know, for example what other children are doing on a playground. But if Marlene and I are telling her about other people and why they are there and what we do with them, she understands immediately and she's getting used to them sometimes within minutes. Here are two examples:
First story is about a colleague of mine. I did a User Interface validation with her here in Palo Alto and she flew in from Germany for a few days. I invited her for dinner one evening and after an hour Charlotte already called her by her name wanting to show her something or to play with her. It was a lot of fun having 3 adults and Charlotte dancing around the sofa :-)
The second story is about last weekend: We did a photoshooting all together. When we met Annie - the photographer - we told Charlotte that Annie would take pictures of us and from then on, Charlotte called her by her name whenever she wanted her to follow us. Of course Annie didn't always want to be right next to us because she wanted to take pictures of us, but Charlotte wanted her close to us :-)
A few pictures of this shooting are published on Annies blog already and we are looking forward to seeing them all shortly.
With that: Think of us in the next week! Next time I write there will be 4 Happels!
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
September 2010
There is so much to tell!
So much happened in the last months! As mentioned in the last post, we moved into our new house. All our furniture arrived unbroken. Except one piece of a puzzle of Charlotte that we are still missing. I don't think we'll ever find it again.
We bought a used car that has enough seats for 2 children and at least 4 adults.
And then we started our shopping tour: We bought a new 46'' LCD TV, a huge BBQ that can take more than 20 burgers (that's the unit they are counting the size of a BBQ here), a sandbox for Charlotte, a new stroller for 2 children, a sleeping sofa for our guests, a shade sale for our yard, a bike trailer (also for 2 children) etc. etc.
Lots of new stuff that you need if you have such a big house and you are about to get a second child.
In parallel I worked hard to earn the money we needed to buy all that ;-)
In July Marlene and Charlotte flew back to Germany for 3 weeks to attend the wedding of a cousin of Marlene and to meet the whole family (great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins and friends,...).
That was the longest time Marlene and me have been departed since we met 6 years ago. So you can imagine how tough that was.
In August my parents visited us! They spent 4 days with us until they started their trip to the best national parks in California. They went hiking a lot and were amazed by the friendliness of the Americans/Californians. At the end they stayed for another 4 days with us in Sunnyvale before they had to leave us again.
For us there was no time to feel lonely because a few days later Jens - a friend of us from Karlsruhe - did his last stop of a 3 months lasting USA tour in our home. It was great having him with us for more or less 2 weeks because for the first time I really went out in the evenings spending some time playing pool or dart, drinking a few beers and talking to a good old friend.
The highlight was definitely the NFL football game we watched in Oakland: Pure American culture!
With all the guests and a few weekends on our own we already saw quite a few places in California such as Sonoma Valley, Monterey Aquarium, Children Museum in San Jose, Venice Beach, Muir Beach, Sausalito, Santa Cruz,... (but still have lots on our to-do lists).
If anybody is interested in what we are doing and where we are going, I highly recommend a few other websites:
My Twitter account:
http://www.twitter.com/happel
My Foursquare account:
http://www.foursquare.com/user/happel
My Gowalla account:
http://www.gowalla.com/happel
And the next guests are coming: End of September a German colleague of me and hi girlfriend will sleep here for 2 nights.
Short summary of this weekend:
After the weekly visit of the local farmers market we've been to the hospital today to take the delivery-room-tour. Now slowly we are getting nervous again, with less then 10 weeks to go. Especially because in the very same delivery room a friend of us got her baby just this morning!
Tomorrow we will visit the Oakland zoo and Charlotte will be able to test all the animal noises she already can do in real-life ;-)
By the way: She already talks quite a few "words". At least we know what she wants to tell us with those sounds. And last week Marlene managed to teach her the first sign in baby-sign-language. She can tell us exactly now if she wants to have "More!".
Apropos teaching (man, this post is becoming chaotic ;-) Charlotte is going to pre-school now twice a week. She still starts crying when mommy is leaving her but she really seems to like it after 3 minutes. I have the feeling that it's really good for her e.g. because she's not so shy anymore: Today in the hospital she just grabbed the hand of another older girl she had never seen before and walked around with her. Amazing!
Next time more about our little darling!!
So much happened in the last months! As mentioned in the last post, we moved into our new house. All our furniture arrived unbroken. Except one piece of a puzzle of Charlotte that we are still missing. I don't think we'll ever find it again.
We bought a used car that has enough seats for 2 children and at least 4 adults.
And then we started our shopping tour: We bought a new 46'' LCD TV, a huge BBQ that can take more than 20 burgers (that's the unit they are counting the size of a BBQ here), a sandbox for Charlotte, a new stroller for 2 children, a sleeping sofa for our guests, a shade sale for our yard, a bike trailer (also for 2 children) etc. etc.
Lots of new stuff that you need if you have such a big house and you are about to get a second child.
In parallel I worked hard to earn the money we needed to buy all that ;-)
In July Marlene and Charlotte flew back to Germany for 3 weeks to attend the wedding of a cousin of Marlene and to meet the whole family (great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins and friends,...).
That was the longest time Marlene and me have been departed since we met 6 years ago. So you can imagine how tough that was.
In August my parents visited us! They spent 4 days with us until they started their trip to the best national parks in California. They went hiking a lot and were amazed by the friendliness of the Americans/Californians. At the end they stayed for another 4 days with us in Sunnyvale before they had to leave us again.
For us there was no time to feel lonely because a few days later Jens - a friend of us from Karlsruhe - did his last stop of a 3 months lasting USA tour in our home. It was great having him with us for more or less 2 weeks because for the first time I really went out in the evenings spending some time playing pool or dart, drinking a few beers and talking to a good old friend.
The highlight was definitely the NFL football game we watched in Oakland: Pure American culture!
With all the guests and a few weekends on our own we already saw quite a few places in California such as Sonoma Valley, Monterey Aquarium, Children Museum in San Jose, Venice Beach, Muir Beach, Sausalito, Santa Cruz,... (but still have lots on our to-do lists).
If anybody is interested in what we are doing and where we are going, I highly recommend a few other websites:
My Twitter account:
http://www.twitter.com/happel
My Foursquare account:
http://www.foursquare.com/user/happel
My Gowalla account:
http://www.gowalla.com/happel
And the next guests are coming: End of September a German colleague of me and hi girlfriend will sleep here for 2 nights.
Short summary of this weekend:
After the weekly visit of the local farmers market we've been to the hospital today to take the delivery-room-tour. Now slowly we are getting nervous again, with less then 10 weeks to go. Especially because in the very same delivery room a friend of us got her baby just this morning!
Tomorrow we will visit the Oakland zoo and Charlotte will be able to test all the animal noises she already can do in real-life ;-)
By the way: She already talks quite a few "words". At least we know what she wants to tell us with those sounds. And last week Marlene managed to teach her the first sign in baby-sign-language. She can tell us exactly now if she wants to have "More!".
Apropos teaching (man, this post is becoming chaotic ;-) Charlotte is going to pre-school now twice a week. She still starts crying when mommy is leaving her but she really seems to like it after 3 minutes. I have the feeling that it's really good for her e.g. because she's not so shy anymore: Today in the hospital she just grabbed the hand of another older girl she had never seen before and walked around with her. Amazing!
Next time more about our little darling!!
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
First 2 weeks in the US
We are finally here. Since about 2 weeks we live in the United States, in the so called Bay-Area near San Francisco. We are of course still not really settled. But we managed already a few things during these first days here.
But let's begin earlier:
After all our stuff was packed and put into a container in Mannheim, we had nothing more than 4 bags, a stroller and a baby car seat but still a week to live in Germany. So we left our apartment and moved to relatives of Marlene in Darmstadt for that week. I worked for another 1 or 2 days, we had 2 "goodbye-parties" (one with our friends, one with around a hundred colleagues at SAP) and we managed everything else that needs to be managed if you are leaving the country for a while.
A day before our flight we got informed that we will have to move into another apartment here in the US as originally planned and when we left Darmstadt we still had not received any information on how to get into that apartment. In the end we just went to the leasing office of that apartment and asked for it. So, that was not a problem after all.
The flight was pretty good: Charlotte slept during take-off and landing and she didn't cry a lot in between. Nevertheless she was tired the most when we arrived here. For her it was obviously in the middle of the night, even if the sun was still shining brightly. Her feeling also didn't change for the next 3-5 days:
For us the jetlag was not too bad: We could have been in the new time zone already after 2 or 3 days. But because Charlotte wasn't we were also not allowed to. So we went to bed when Charlotte did and we got up when she did. Everyday we tried to push her for another 30 minutes and by this we managed her jetlag pretty good as well.
Just one more story about this: The first morning Charlotte was awake at 2AM and after a little bit of playing with her, having breakfast etc., it was still just 5AM. So we went to the supermarket at 5AM, something that we couldn't do in Germany as the supermarket is not open 24/7 there. We were the only people there and we had a close look at everything we didn't know yet or were missing from Germany. Some things we haven't found until now yet.
Now, what else did we manage beside the jetlag? The most important thing: We found a house to lease in Sunnyvale! It's bigger than expected and - after the first 4 houses we saw - also cheaper than expected. Now we are only waiting for our furniture and then we can move in beginning of June. By the way: If you want to you can track our furniture online.
Just search for the name of the ship "London Express" on this website:
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/search.phtml
Currently it's in the middle of the carribean sea.
Secondly we opened a bank account here in the US. This is normally not so easy as a non-US-resident because we don't have any credit history, nor do we have a social security number so far. But as an SAP employee, some things are easier.
Last but not least we had our appointment at the social security administration yesterday to apply for a social security number. There were no problems at all and next Tuesday I can go there and ask for it already.
For all those who don't know in detail yet: The social security number is so important because only with that we will be able to get a credit card and my monthly salary. Or to put it in other words: You won't get any money without this number.
The next thing will therefore be to get our credit cards, then a car and afterwards the driver's license.
One funny thing about that: If you enter the US as non-tourist (as we did) you need to get your driver's license within 10 days after arrival. But you need a social security number for it. But because the transfer of the immigration data to the social security administration takes a few days, you are not allowed to ask for your number within the first 10 days. So, how to deal with that? Any ideas?
As a highlight at the end of this post I publish 3 pictures:
The first one shows the container in Mannheim, fully packed:
But let's begin earlier:
After all our stuff was packed and put into a container in Mannheim, we had nothing more than 4 bags, a stroller and a baby car seat but still a week to live in Germany. So we left our apartment and moved to relatives of Marlene in Darmstadt for that week. I worked for another 1 or 2 days, we had 2 "goodbye-parties" (one with our friends, one with around a hundred colleagues at SAP) and we managed everything else that needs to be managed if you are leaving the country for a while.
A day before our flight we got informed that we will have to move into another apartment here in the US as originally planned and when we left Darmstadt we still had not received any information on how to get into that apartment. In the end we just went to the leasing office of that apartment and asked for it. So, that was not a problem after all.
The flight was pretty good: Charlotte slept during take-off and landing and she didn't cry a lot in between. Nevertheless she was tired the most when we arrived here. For her it was obviously in the middle of the night, even if the sun was still shining brightly. Her feeling also didn't change for the next 3-5 days:
For us the jetlag was not too bad: We could have been in the new time zone already after 2 or 3 days. But because Charlotte wasn't we were also not allowed to. So we went to bed when Charlotte did and we got up when she did. Everyday we tried to push her for another 30 minutes and by this we managed her jetlag pretty good as well.
Just one more story about this: The first morning Charlotte was awake at 2AM and after a little bit of playing with her, having breakfast etc., it was still just 5AM. So we went to the supermarket at 5AM, something that we couldn't do in Germany as the supermarket is not open 24/7 there. We were the only people there and we had a close look at everything we didn't know yet or were missing from Germany. Some things we haven't found until now yet.
Now, what else did we manage beside the jetlag? The most important thing: We found a house to lease in Sunnyvale! It's bigger than expected and - after the first 4 houses we saw - also cheaper than expected. Now we are only waiting for our furniture and then we can move in beginning of June. By the way: If you want to you can track our furniture online.
Just search for the name of the ship "London Express" on this website:
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/search.phtml
Currently it's in the middle of the carribean sea.
Secondly we opened a bank account here in the US. This is normally not so easy as a non-US-resident because we don't have any credit history, nor do we have a social security number so far. But as an SAP employee, some things are easier.
Last but not least we had our appointment at the social security administration yesterday to apply for a social security number. There were no problems at all and next Tuesday I can go there and ask for it already.
For all those who don't know in detail yet: The social security number is so important because only with that we will be able to get a credit card and my monthly salary. Or to put it in other words: You won't get any money without this number.
The next thing will therefore be to get our credit cards, then a car and afterwards the driver's license.
One funny thing about that: If you enter the US as non-tourist (as we did) you need to get your driver's license within 10 days after arrival. But you need a social security number for it. But because the transfer of the immigration data to the social security administration takes a few days, you are not allowed to ask for your number within the first 10 days. So, how to deal with that? Any ideas?
As a highlight at the end of this post I publish 3 pictures:
The first one shows the container in Mannheim, fully packed:
The second one of the car we leased on the first day to get all our luggage from the airport to the apartment:
And the last one shows our future home (but not our car):
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Preparing to move to San Francisco
The biggest news about Charlotte really shortly because I have to write a lot more today as the title already says:
Charlotte just starts to walk on her own. She still can’t really drive her Bobbycar because her feet hardly reach the floor, but walking is a lot of fun to her.
It’s amazing to see how she begins to remember things like her nose, her ears and so forth. And we also think that we understand the first words she’s using.
Now there’s also a lot to write about our upcoming move to San Francisco.
Already shortly before Christmas we got the approval to move there. But the whole contract and package negotiation took nearly 3 months. Therefore we just started the whole organizational process about 3 weeks ago. But then – suddenly – everything went pretty fast.
First there was a phone call with an agent who coordinates our whole move. That means that she triggered all other external companies to contact us and she will also be responsible for other things like rental car booking, accommodation booking and the reimbursement of all the costs we will have.
After this first call I nearly had a phone call every evening with someone else:
There’s someone who will help us with starting our life in the US: They will show us the supermarket, the public swimming pool, the different neighborhoods, they help us getting our social security number, passing our US drivers’ license and so on and so forth.
Another company will help me with my tax declaration this year in Germany as well as in the US.
Last week someone from the freight forwarder visited our apartment to check all the goods that we will take with us. He’s currently calculated if that fits in the container we will have.
A last provider helped us preparing all application forms for the visa. And that’s so far the most complicated thing:
You need a lot of things for getting your visa:
- All applicants (including my wife and my 1 year old child!) need to fill out a separate online-form DS-160. It took me 3 hours to do so just for me. And the link to take over data from the first form into the next one is only available on the last “Thank you” page. So, don’t close it before clicking the link. And save into a local file latest after each filled page! By the way: Hey mom, hey dad, I had to mention you in the questionnaire as well. So don’t be surprised if the US homeland security knocks at your door
- At least in Germany you need to pay a first fee via a special provider before even getting an appointment at the embassy or consulate.
- In parallel I filled out another huge online questionnaire from the service provider who used all the information to print out a letter and a lot of documents for the consulate to prove that I need to be in the US to be able to do the job my company wants me to do. The documents just arrived yesterday and there’s a lot of information about my company, their IFRS statements etc.
- Then we also need of course some special pictures. Charlotte made the perfect face for this picture: No smiling, just staring into the camera ;-)
- I have to take all certificate with me proving my educational background, especially for the area of expertise I am working in at the moment.
- If you have all of that together you can make an appointment at the consulate. Of course this has to be done online as well. And it takes again about 30 to 60 minutes to do so.
Now, next week there’s our appointment at the consulate in Frankfurt. So, cross the fingers!
Charlotte just starts to walk on her own. She still can’t really drive her Bobbycar because her feet hardly reach the floor, but walking is a lot of fun to her.
It’s amazing to see how she begins to remember things like her nose, her ears and so forth. And we also think that we understand the first words she’s using.
Now there’s also a lot to write about our upcoming move to San Francisco.
Already shortly before Christmas we got the approval to move there. But the whole contract and package negotiation took nearly 3 months. Therefore we just started the whole organizational process about 3 weeks ago. But then – suddenly – everything went pretty fast.
First there was a phone call with an agent who coordinates our whole move. That means that she triggered all other external companies to contact us and she will also be responsible for other things like rental car booking, accommodation booking and the reimbursement of all the costs we will have.
After this first call I nearly had a phone call every evening with someone else:
There’s someone who will help us with starting our life in the US: They will show us the supermarket, the public swimming pool, the different neighborhoods, they help us getting our social security number, passing our US drivers’ license and so on and so forth.
Another company will help me with my tax declaration this year in Germany as well as in the US.
Last week someone from the freight forwarder visited our apartment to check all the goods that we will take with us. He’s currently calculated if that fits in the container we will have.
A last provider helped us preparing all application forms for the visa. And that’s so far the most complicated thing:
You need a lot of things for getting your visa:
- All applicants (including my wife and my 1 year old child!) need to fill out a separate online-form DS-160. It took me 3 hours to do so just for me. And the link to take over data from the first form into the next one is only available on the last “Thank you” page. So, don’t close it before clicking the link. And save into a local file latest after each filled page! By the way: Hey mom, hey dad, I had to mention you in the questionnaire as well. So don’t be surprised if the US homeland security knocks at your door
- At least in Germany you need to pay a first fee via a special provider before even getting an appointment at the embassy or consulate.
- In parallel I filled out another huge online questionnaire from the service provider who used all the information to print out a letter and a lot of documents for the consulate to prove that I need to be in the US to be able to do the job my company wants me to do. The documents just arrived yesterday and there’s a lot of information about my company, their IFRS statements etc.
- Then we also need of course some special pictures. Charlotte made the perfect face for this picture: No smiling, just staring into the camera ;-)
- I have to take all certificate with me proving my educational background, especially for the area of expertise I am working in at the moment.
- If you have all of that together you can make an appointment at the consulate. Of course this has to be done online as well. And it takes again about 30 to 60 minutes to do so.
Now, next week there’s our appointment at the consulate in Frankfurt. So, cross the fingers!
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