A weekend of doing nothing

The weekend was perfect.  We had sunny, warm weather - even hot on Sunday with us getting mildly burned.  Both Saturday and Sunday we spent in Prenzlauerberg indulging our Russian tooth.  On Saturday it was lunch/dinner at Chagall with pelmeni and pirogi, followed by a slow walk through the neighbourhood and ending up (again) back where we started in Chagall for another drink.

Sunday we met up with Christine and Finlay in Pasternak for brunch.  So far this has been my favourite brunch place in Berlin.  Although somewhat on the expensive side (12.40 EUR) there was a HUGE variety of food that was generously and regularly replenished.  And they were also making blini and oladushki on the spot, on a little outside stove.  Yum yum! 

Today marks 39 weeks and 3 days (4 days to go!!!)

Ready!

So we're pretty much ready for the baby. We've been on a major shopping spree - stocking up on lots of groceries (especially the heavier stuff like juice and water).

Two nights ago we finished the mobile for the cradle. Polina made and painted the shapes, the curled metal bar is actually an old part of the reinforcement for the walls we ripped out of the flat that I bent into shape - really could have used a blow torch to get it a bit better. Our view and his view.

And last night we went on a cleaning binge turning my workshop, aka the guest room, aka Polina's study into the baby room. This room is now clean:

The sheep is called Sofie

Now we're just waiting...

Almost 3.5kg of pure happiness

Today at the weekly check-up the doctor did an ultrasound to check the baby size and he's _roughly_ 3453 grams. Can't believe that he's actually that big - it's hard to imagine somehow. He's also turned in such a way that both his hands and feet are on my left side and it feels funny when he "tickles" my side from the inside. Any day now...

Urbanhafen

On Sunday we went for breakfast at сafe Atlantic in our favourite part of town - Bergmannstraße in Kreuzberg. The day was wonderful - 20 degrees and sunny.  So we decided to go for a walk afterwards and ended up near the canal at Urbanhafen.  As usual for this time of the year, the benches along the canal were populated with half naked individuals trying to get a tan.  It's amazing how quickly Germans pour out onto the greenery as soon as there is even a slightest hint of warm weather and sunshine :)  In any case we had a wonderful walk, and here are some snaps (belly at 38 weeks and 1 day).

 

Something morbid this way comes

Last week on the way home, just in front of the entry door to our building we saw what was a puddle of blood generously covered with sand, flowers and church candles burning.  Turns out that a woman committed suicide by jumping from the 19th floor.  Apparently she wasn't very well, which is what Jack found out from talking to the Hausmeister (our concierge/handyman/guy who looks after the house equiv.), who just happened to be coming out of the building right when the woman fell (directly in front of him).  So yeah... scary scary stuff.

White Trash Fast Food

This week after all these years we made it to the "it" of Berlin restaurants - White Trash Fast Food. It is probably one of the most famous places here. At some point it used to be a Chinese restaurant, and still has some of the old decor. One thing that really surprised us, was how big it was - spanning over two floors and many rooms. Food wise it's more of a burger, steak, nachos type of place with funny menus, and the food was quite reasonable. It is very Berlin in a sense of being a total mix of different styles. No waiter was free from tattoos or piercings, or wearing something with black horizontal stripes (and actually if you get inspired, there's a tattoo shop on the premises). All in all it's definitely a great place to take visitors to, but it's not really us - it's just not cozy enough. Here are two snaps from the evening - sorry for the interference of the candle...

Cradle, sans cat

Back in March I started building a cradle and a cot, here the sides of the cradle (damn fiddly work cutting and sanding all those little bits of wood) and the base of the cot. You can also see the beginnings of a small set of shelves that will fit behind the drawers under the changing mat area.

It's still not finished - being sick with a cold for a couple of weeks, twice no less, I still haven't finished :-( The cot will probably have to wait until some undefinable "later" (when the child is too big for the cradle), but I've been working on the cradle with Polina's help over the last couple of days, I'll update this post as more gets done.

My new toy - a jigsaw. The design of the fancy bits is Polina's work - I just do structure not decoration ;-) Though cutting it all out did take about 8 hours, and the sanding is taking even longer - note to self, straight lines make life easier...

Over the last days I finished the staining of the "cradle" section with Polina's help. Last night the last coat of varnish went on, and then I put the "cradle" section together. The legs still need to be sanded, stained and varnished. Hopefully all done by the weekend.

Over the weekend, with Polina's help, I managed to get the last of the sanding done on the uprights and was able to stain and varnish them before putting the whole thing together. It's not completely square unfortunately, but it's not so far out as to be a problem. We'll need to get some new wheels too, as the current ones are plastic and they don't grip on our floors, so the whole thing just ends up dragging.

Also managed to get most of the small set of shelves (for under the changing table) done. Just need to sand and paint the actual shelf parts (tonight hopefully).

Random stuff

I've been cleaning out my phone so here's some random photos from the past 18 months or so, enjoy.

Some handy tips on how to work the new family member just arrived - thanks Lads ;)

We went and spent a bit of cash recently, shiny new Canon EOS 50D, 50mm f1.4, 17-85mm f4.5-5.6 and 70-300mm f4.5-5.6. Just gotta work out what all the buttons do now ;-)

Banjo playing shadow puppets, he's convinced his shadow is another cat and keeps trying to reach it.

Do philosophers value function over form?

Who needs a fishing hook, just scoop - these fish seemed to be swimming through each other rather than through water:

Pearl Jam concert last summer - where Gomez was the support act - totally awesome. I have some videos to post when I get around to it too.

Random Berlin:

That's just wrong and so very wrong...

Honest I am neither breaking, nor entering. This is what happens when someone forgets the keys to a secure storage area, mental note - cages should go to the ceiling.

There's cool and then there's disco cool:

That's one dark beverage:

The different faces of Wifey:

Egypt, such a queer place ;-) we used the photo of the ATM keypad to decode the prices in the shops, the boat staff had fun with the towels too:

Azza and Bazza, we miss you guys (BBQ mauerpark, chicken at Henne and Christmas (super)market and in a "The Little Boat That Broke"):

Not staged:

France: small beer, small coffee, small minds?

Paul and Deb: we took him to a rockabilli concert, can you guess what he's looking at? Got bass luv?

Bed fail in a Bad town (travelling with Polina's folks in August)

Anya likes Berlin:

"Mensch ärger dich nicht" (translation Don't have a cow dude) a game in which you are destined to make A. no friends and B. have a cow. (L-R Axel (brother), Olaf (cousin), Emmi (mother), Polina (wife)):