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: