I'll start by pointing out that Christina also wrote today; if you tend to only look at the front page, you might miss that.

There hasn't been anything actually happening with Olive, recently, beyond a whole lot of healthiness and growth. Of course this is good news, but the thing about good news is that it doesn't give a whole lot to write about very often.

Really, the only thing that qualifies as news right now is that there's been a phase transition: the worst-case scenario, if Olive or Christina were to become seriously ill, is no longer miscarriage. Instead, even if there needed to be an emergency c-section today, there'd be excellent chances for survival with modern neonatal care. It's not really news, in that there has been no indication that anything like this will become necessary. Still, it's at least a comforting thought in the back of our minds.

In statistics: Olive is now about a kilogram, and is sitting upright most of the time. This is a breech position, and we'll want her to rotate by July, but for now there's plenty of time to get her swung around. She's very often active in there; one thing that infallibly brings a grin to my face these days is to see Christina suddenly jump in reaction to an unexpected prod from our girl.

One thing that's been a real bonding experience for Christina and I has been baby shopping together. It was one thing to go to the baby flea market a few weekends ago and pick up some cute outfits; we got a dozen pairs of infant socks for €1 from a lady who was thrilled to finally get rid of them. That was cute, but it was fundamentally clothes shopping; we were in and out of the place in 30 minutes because it would be too tedious to do otherwise.

Going to a real baby store, on the other hand, turned out to be quite a lot of fun. In theory, we were only there to pick up a bib or something as a baby gift; Christina's cousin gave birth a few days ago. In practice, we ended up browsing for like two hours, looking at the dozens of options and items and discovering the points at which our child-care instincts agreed, and where they didn't. There were many more of the former than the latter, but it was very interesting to find out that there were a few points that neither of us had thought much about—just assuming that our instinct was the only real option—where those instinctual opinions were wildly divergent. For example: does a baby who'll spend her nights in a sidecar sleeper need a separate downstairs crib for the day? I thought no, of course not; what baby needs two cribs in one house? Christina thought yes, of course, we can't just leave her in the sidecar without an adult in that whole floor of the apartment. We haven't made any final decisions on that topic yet, but just learning what the questions are is pretty fun.

In other news, car shopping is hard. Going to dealerships and getting quotes for Jahreswagens is turning out to be surprisingly challenging; the ones nearby simply don't have any vehicles kitted out in the configurations we want. After doing all our test drives, we've more or less ruled out the Opel; it's as expensive as the Golf GTI, and it's simply not as nice a car. It does have the best infotainment system of the three, but that's not the point of a car like this.

We've gone online and found some near-ideal Jahreswagen GTIs, in a great price and the configuration I want, but the closest is an hour's drive away. I may end up needing to just take a day, drive all over Germany, and get in some test drives. We got a really nice offer from the Mazda dealer, but we're keeping that as a backup for now. The Golf GTI is, quite simply, a nicer car, and if I can get one of those distant offers, I'll be pretty satisfied. I just need to see about getting the time to try them out and make sure there's no damage or anything weird which somehow didn't make it into the photos. I really don't want to purchase a car before at least seeing it in person.