12 weeks

This week Berlin has finally cooled off and Tim is back sleeping around 7-8 hours, which makes parents (especially Mum) very happy. We also moved his schedule back to 10pm bath (from 9pm) and supper and he seems to be happier with that. So now he falls asleep around 10:30-10:45pm and sleeps 'till about 6am when I feed him and then falls asleep again until about 10am. This last morning sleep is usually not that good because he squirms around a lot, but it still gives us some extra time in bed.

One night this week at the dinner table Tim proved his true male nature and got very curious about Daddy's beer bottle. He kept staring at it, smiling at it and talking to it, providing much amusement for the rest of us. Some proof of this:

He is also getting much better at controlling his hands. Before they'd fly around randomly smacking things (and himself), but now he is getting better at actually making them do what he wants. When he is playing with his hanging toys, he aims with his tiny fist by putting it close to his face, and then he throws a punch and gets it right almost every time. He is also getting better at sticking the dummy back in his mouth. When it falls out he tries to put it back in with his forearms and succeeds probably 50% of the time. And once this week while out on a walk he actually took it out of his mouth by holding it with his thumb and forefinger. This was more accidental than deliberate but also means that his dexterity is getting better. Some photos from this week:

Being a Russian protects me from depression?

Interesting and somewhat surprising read: Brooding Russians: Less Distressed Than Americans

Apparently Russians can distance themselves better from negative feelings, even though they brood more over their problems. Hmmm... I wonder how true this really is...

Berlin in the heat wave or 11 weeks

Last week was still very hot here in Berlin. The temperature hasn't been lower than 30 degrees for the last three weeks (apart from may be 1-2 days). The flat doesn't really cool down during the night because the whole building stays very warm. Humans are simply walking sacks of sweat, and Unix (who is normally very lethargic anyway) spends his time now entirely flat in a coolest part of the floor and gets up only to go to his food bowl every couple of hours and to the litter tray. In the evenings we open completely our windows and the feline makes various attempts to escape. So far we've managed to catch him every time, but he's getting more and more insistent. On Wed night he actually displayed an amazing feat of sportsmanship and almost galloped towards the windowsill, but Jack thankfully managed to stop him in time. Intelligence is not one of his strong points, so we wouldn't put it past him jumping off the balcony, mistakenly thinking that the ground is very close by.

Tim is back to sleeping 6 hours at a stretch, which is not as great as what we had before the heat wave, but better than him waking up at random times in the night and crying. On Thursday we weighted him on our bathroom scales, and it seems that he is now 6kgs. The scales are not very accurate though, so we'll have to wait until our next appointment with the paediatrician to find out exactly.

He is talking a lot more these days. Each day now we have numerous conversations and the range of his sounds is getting larger. He can be quite loud sometimes, too. The muscles in his neck are getting stronger and we don't really have to support his head anymore when he's sitting up on our laps. We've been trying to put him on his belly at least once a day, and he's also getting better at picking up his head by himself, but still doesn't really like it all that much.

Courtney and Karl were here visiting from Melbourne. They arrived on Sunday night in time enough to watch the final of the World Cup. I still can't believe that Spain won - it was SO close, and I was going for the Netherlands! Anyhoo... we've been catching up with the guys almost every night and on Wed Courtney and I even escaped out for a coffee at Quchnia. It was pretty much like the good old times at IBM, when coffees were escapisms and brought us much joy. And I'm happy to report that they still do.

It is now two weeks that Jack has been back at work. The change has been pretty dramatic for all of us. We miss having "Daddy" around all the time, and he misses us. Somehow the evenings and weekends are just not enough. So we're still slowly adjusting. It is good having Mum around though, because she is a lot of help, aside from being great for Timmy.

Tuesday was an important milestone day for me - I made it to the gym for the first time in about 10 months. I went a couple of times when I was still pregnant, but couldn't really do very much then so I went to yoga classes instead. But now I feel so unfit and really want to get back into (some sort of reasonable) shape. I am hoping to start going at least three times a week, while Mum goes for a walk with Tim, but we'll see. I am trying to take it slowly because postnatal recovery hasn't been all that easy, so I don't want to pull anything that doesn't need pulling. Last week I also managed to fit into my normal pants for the first time since giving birth. Although they're still a bit tight, at least they're not pregnancy pants - yey!

Some photos from last week:

10 weeks - visit from grandma Nina

Last Saturday Timmy's grandmother Nina arrived from Novosibirsk. The two of them are very much enjoying each other's company. Since Mum got here, she already noticed Timmy growing. Jack measured his length this morning and thinks it's at least 60cm. Here is some evidence of the grandma and grandson at play:

This week it's hot again and Tim's schedule got completely stuffed up. He slept really badly on Thursday night - probably the worse night since June. I felt really underslept and grumpy. Last night he slept much better already, although not great. Poor thing - I think it's too hot for him and he gets thirsty a lot quicker than normal. The weather forecast doesn't look great - it's above 30 degrees for the rest of next week, too.

Denis and Vika are also here this week for a visit from Kiev. And we also got to briefly catch up with Julia who was here for work.

Germans are also back to their regular sombre selves after their team lost to Spain in the semi-finals. The German flags are still everywhere to be seen, but the excitement is pretty much gone. It's actually a little sad, because people really do become noticeably happier and chattier when there is a sports event involving their countrymen. Ah well... may be in four years...

Some generic photos from last week:

Two Months or Nine Weeks

On Thursday Timmy turned 2 months! To celebrate we took him for his first vaccinations. Poor baby - he got a jab in each upper thigh and then on top of that a syrup to drink. He did really well though. He calmed down pretty quickly after the injections and was pretty happy afterwards. The doctor put two bandaids shaped like soccer balls on the injection sites (see pic below) ... very cute. This was also time for his fourth checkup. In Germany kids get altogether nine checkups (ger. Untersuchung) up to the age of 5, and they call them U1, U2, ... 'till U9. So yeah - Timmy just had his U4. He's developing well for his age and the official weight on Thurs was 5250gr.

and a closeup

To make things a little better for him we went to a baby massage course. A little while back I decided that it might be nice to "do" something with him, and out of various options (like PEKIP and baby swimming and, and and...) I picked out baby massage, 'cos it seemed the most fun and relaxed. There were about 8 women with babies in the group. Babies ranged from 7 weeks to 5 months. I gotta say - Timmy was by far the cutest. Of course, I'm a little biased :) The massage itself was fine, but the teacher I didn't like so much. She started off by giving a sheet of fairly detailed instructions that teach me (as a mother) how to ask my child permission to give him a massage. The instructions were very specific about how to do it and involved a little song that all mothers then had to sing prior to massaging their babies. It went on something like:

Klein klein Kindchen
Klein klein Kindchen
Darf ich dich massieren?
Ja oder nein? Ja oder nein?
Erlaubst du es mir?

roughly translates to English:

Little little baby
Little little baby
Can I massage you?
Yes or no? Yes or no?
Am I allowed to do it?

The teacher then went on for a little while that the importance of asking a child permission for doing something is a way to prevent sexual assault later in life. Apparently because this way "they learn that they're allowed to say 'no' to adults". Phoa! Really? I mean it's gotta be a really polite rapist (like in that anecdote...) who's going to ask permission. Anyhoo.... thus, unlike Timmy, from that point onwards I wasn't _as_ excited about the whole thing. But he was _REALLY_ excited. He kept looking around at all the other babies and was very very curious about the goings on. I don't think he actually noticed me massaging him very much, 'cos his attention was completely elsewhere. He was very well behaved, even when all the other babies started crying at some point (kind of one after another, as if it was contagious) he just wanted his dummy, and continued looking around.

In the evening unfortunately he got a little temperature (38.3) because of the vaccinations and we had to give him a 'Zäpfchen' (suppository). For some reason Germans are really big on giving medication to children into the rectum. I've never heard of anything like this either in Russia or in Australia, but here it is the absolute done thing. I think it comes from the whole thing that doctors here don't really trust parents to do the right thing (which requires a complete separate rant). That was late at night before his bedtime, and thankfully at his first early morning feed he was fine again.

Today is also 9 weeks. Record sleep from this week (and so far) is 8.5 hours at one stretch. In general he sleeps now anywhere between 5 and 7 hours, which is great for us - parents. Up until now we've been giving him his bath at 9:45pm, and then he'd get his last feed for the day and asleep by about 10:30-10:45. Now that he's sleeping longer, we're going to try and move the bath time to 8:45pm and see how that goes. Some photos from the last couple of days:

Looking at his mobile...

Being curious with Daddy...

With his teddy bears - courtesy of Tim's godfather Tim D and wonderful Michelle...

Yesterday auntie Marlies came by for a quick visit passing by on her way home, and tonight Grandma Nina is arriving from Russia. Thus Timmy is getting to see his first set of relatives.

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And here are some photos of the sunsets and sunrises that Jack has been making. Now that the days are the longest, we're seeing some very pretty skies.