Get the nest ready!

Whenever you decide is time to trade the sweetness of your hedonistic but gratifying DINK (Double Income No Kids) life for the sweetness of a baby smile, or to put it another way, when you decide it is about time to start growing your pension plan, all the clever pinky books say you should get the nest ready.

It is not a good idea, apparently, to move flat or change job. It is probably not a great idea to change partner either, even if the book doesn't say so. Your hormones should give you an uncontrollable urge to mop the floor and organize your DVDs alphabetically, so having to get your living room out of cardboard boxes could turn the fussy pregnant lady into the psycho pregnant lady.

Well, in the last months we did change flat... twice, and we did change jobs, and country, and language, and we didn't change partners, but we will need to marry because of taxes so I will lose my boyfriend and be given a husband. Luckily, I do not have to change surname, although everybody here insists on calling me Frau Knyr... and then laugh.

In the period that goes from eight months of pregnancy to two months of baby we changed everything we could possibly change and hey! It turned out ok! I mean, I don't feel the urge to shoot strangers, keep them in the fridge and make meatballs out of their brains (although the family would save a lot of money, given the prices of stuff in Germany, I can tell you that).

The baby seems ok as well. He travelled three countries before he was able to acknowledge the existence of his own hands and he is still all happy and cute and unaware. I guess we will only know when he is about five and he finally talks and his first words are "Mutti, grandma was right. I really don't know in which language to address you people, you are the Spanish one?"