The symbolism of being in Strasbourg

The regional mascot of Strasbourg and Alsace in general, is the stork.  There are stork statues everywhere.  You can get stork postcards.  Stork stuffed animals.  All things stork can begotten in this city.  The birds themselves have become an endangered species but if you are lucky, you can spot them nesting in the trees and chimneys. 

The birds are also mascots of new babies.  In Alsace, it is tradition that if your child wanted a new sibling, they would leave a cube of sugar on their windowsill and a stork would come and take it and bring back a baby in its place.  

Well, coincidentally, this is the perfect time in our lives to bring on the stork.  I assumed we were keeping it on the downlow and only telling our families for now...until I saw that in Axel's first blog entry, he spilled the beans.  And he also told everyone in his new class. Because there was actually someone in the class who knows a really good friend of mine in Montreal (so cool how small the world is), I figured that today was the day we told everyone else in case they heard through the grapevine.  

It's still pretty early to really plan for anything but some details in case you are curious:

1)  I am currently 11.5 weeks along.  This means that it is the size of a piece of large california roll.

2)  The approximate due date is March 22.  However, being lunar-centric and knowing the historical trends of when babies actually decide to come out, the full moon of March is most likely when it will happen...which is March 11th, coincidentally Axel's dad's birthday.

3)  We found out about the little alien when it was technically the size of a blueberry.  Hence the name Blueberry Bergman.  Or blue for short.  Hopefully this will not stick.  I was hoping for Dartanian Vader (it's french so it should be ok'ed by everyone) but I have a feeling I will get vetoed.  So any name suggestions are welcome.  Anytime.  I think we need help.

4)  I am not so secretly hoping that I will give birth to triplets : twins and a dog.  I think it would be cool to get it all over with in one shot, and have a little puppy that resembles the other two just so people know they are from the same family.

5)  Not sick.  Not anything actually.  Just incubating an alien that has taken over my body.

Axel has had a lot of trouble keeping anything fun from any of our friends.  In fact, when we got married last Leap Day, we decided not to tell anyone until after since it was only immediate family, however he "secretly" told a few people which resulted in everyone I worked with finding out in a very echoey loud but claustrophobic auditorium, not through me.  Anyway, I figured that if we were away from people we knew, the information would have less chance of getting leaked.  The blog, however, was our security breach!