21 weeks - the bear dance

This week has been all about catching up on sleep... both Tim's and ours. So far so good. He's pretty much back to his normal self. Actually it was pretty amazing how quickly he recovered from the trip. He was very happy to be home and is very happy to be sleeping back in his own bed.

He's been practising rolling from his tummy onto his side a lot. He hasn't managed yet a complete roll over like two weeks ago, but in time. He does hold himself up on his forearms more confidently now. Although after a couple of minutes he really has to take a break (see last photo) :)

We had very nice weather on Thursday and Friday, so Tim and I went to Tiergarten on both days. I took with us a picnic rug and he was very happy to be lying on the grass and looking around at the trees and leaves in the sunshine. He was so happy entertaining himself that I even managed to read a little of my book. I'm reading stories by Dostoevsky at the moment and he's officially my absolutely favourite writer.

One thing I wanted to write about for a while is how nice people in Germany are towards parents with children and children in general. Almost every time we're out there are people smiling at Tim, or commenting how he is a kleine Мäuschen (little mouse - a German endearment for babies). Some of them (especially when we're in the lifts of our building) keep insisting on touching him or trying to tickle him, of which I'm not a big fan of. But pretty much everywhere people open doors for me, or help me with the pram up or down stairs. While on our hiking walks last weekend, in parts where the path was very narrow, people would stop and give us way when they saw that Jack was carrying Tim in the baby carrier. When we were on the train back from Bad Schandau Timmy was getting a bit grumpy so I took him and went to stand in the area at the back of the train. There were some colourful buttons which kept flickering and that kept him amused. So we were standing there for a little while and then a guy (around 30 or so) approached me and asked if I needed a seat - he wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to stand with a child in my arms all the way to Berlin. And I mean it was a very generous offer, because the trip is three hours. So I reassured him that I had a seat and explained that I was standing for child-entertainment purposes only.

I just find this very interesting, because for starters Germany has a negative birth rate... so in some ways people obviously don't' really want to have children. Additionally until recently "child noise" was equivalent to industrial noise, in that it wasn't _allowed_ in certain places and in certain hours of the day. Only recently did the law change to say that children are _allowed_ to be noisy anytime and anywhere. Thus, it's not a particularly child-friendly society. Germans in general are also not the warmest and friendliest of people, especially to strangers. So how come everyone is so nice and caring to children? Not that it's a bad thing by any means and makes me very happy to live here.

Some photos from this week:

And finally the "amazing bear dance":

20 Weeks - first family trip, aka Sächsische Schweiz

Over the previous weekend I took a day off work and we decided to try our luck in our first "family" holiday.

We headed off to the Sächsische Schweiz from Thursday to Sunday evening.

To help with our journey, and as a matter of convenience just getting around the place we bought Tim a car seat. We've had trouble getting taxis with car seats (either they don't turn up or they don't know how to use the car seat they have) so this is a good solution if we need to go anywhere else within Berlin or decide to take a car holiday at some point too. Here's Tim's first fitting - I don't think he's too sure about it.

The train ride there was in the evening, when Tim is usually his most grumpy self - this as it turns out was a logistical planning mistake, in future we'll try travelling in the morning, when he's less tired even if it means taking more leave or having a shorter holiday. We did manage to keep him entertained on the train trip, but it was a lot of effort - at this age he's also very interested in everything so it's much harder for him to fall asleep somewhere new.

The evening in the hotel were a bit of a struggle too, as the new surroundings were quite interesting, so it was harder to help Tim off to sleep, not having a separate room for him meant our bedtimes were brought forward a bit too - although with the walking that wasn't too much of a problem.

We've also bought a baby carrier - to enable us to do some more vigorous / stepped / steep / walking - Tim doesn't mind this too much, but after a few hours I think he's just stick of staring at my chest (understandably). He also provides a great layer of insulation, which means if we're walking together - he and I both end up quite sweaty, so we took a few changes of clothes for us during the day. He did manage to get some sleep while we were walking, but it was a lot less than his normal allocation, so he was a bit more grouchy in the evenings.

The first day we decided to do a walk that we've done before to the Lichtenhainer Wasserfall (a somewhat dodgy automated with German folk music waterfall), but we didn't take into account the flooding earlier this year. We did manage to make it a fair way, even through part of the path that was "closed" with a piece of tape, but eventually ended up at a point where we would have had to either levitate or swim to proceed - at which point we decided it was time for a hot chocolate and a cake, so we legged it back into town.

Breastfeeding a baby on a hiking track also presented it's interesting challenges, the seating was not always comfortable, and there were too many interesting things for Tim to look at, which meant he wasn't so concerned with actually eating. Luckily there weren't as many tourists around as on other years, so it was easier to find a bit of a quiet spot on the cliffs above the river...

In one of the cute little "cottage garden" settlements we found a weather station that proves that Germans have some, even if it's a little bit skewed, sense of humour.

It's a rock on a chain, the sign reads "Weather Station"

• Stone casts a shadow - Sunny
• Stone wet - Rain
• Stone white - Snow
• Stone swinging - Windy
• Stone missing - Stollen
• Stone stationary - Not Windy
  

Tim's also been very grabby this past week, as I found much to the peril of my lower lip - he also has a good strong grip

The weather was cloudy and cool, not so bad for walking, with a few showers, but that did mean we got a nice rainbow.

Random Pics

Overall - it was good to get out of Berlin for a while, Tim did very well on the walks considering he was in the carrier for fairly long stretches at a time, but at this age travel was not so well received (or was too interesting) so I think we might be waiting a bit longer before we go our next trip.

Luggage wise there's a bit more to carry too - about 3 times the weight of child - and that's just for him ;-)

You can see some more photos here.

Hedgehogs and rain

Well Tim hasn't managed to roll over today again yet, but I did take some photos of him holding himself up on the forearms.

The rain has stopped somewhat today, so Tim and I are going for a walk after his daytime nap. I'm sick of being indoors, but it's been so miserable outside that I can't bring myself to go out in pouring rain. Even though we did it once already. I carried Tim in a sling and had a big umbrella over us. *sigh* I even wish for snow, as long as it's not raining every day.

Anyhoo, since we're off to Sächsische Schweiz tomorrow, I won't be able to post my regular post with Tim's 20 weeks on Saturday, but here are some photos from the week so far. Thanks to Vika and Tim for the cool stripy shirt, and to Julia for the hedgehog hand puppet - at the moment it's our favourite evening entertainment.

Rolling!

Tim rolled over from his tummy onto his back today :)

19 weeks - grabby little monster

Tim has started grabbing everything. Pretty much anything that comes in contact with his hands ends up being taken and put (immediately) into the mouth and slobbered on. When there's nothing that he can hold, then he munches on his sleeves or fingers or hands (although he still has trouble putting the whole hand into his mouth). This is all well and good, except that it makes feeding him a real job now as it is very hard to try and position him, unbutton my shirt without him trying to hold onto one side of it, and then actually try and feed him without him also trying to stick his fingers into his mouth, etc etc etc

It's very good though, because now he can entertain himself a bit more on his own by holding and playing with his toys in the playpen. This week he nearly managed to roll over from his tummy onto his back, but not yet. He can roll from his back onto his right side very well now, but everything else is still a bit hard. Although he can pick up his shoulders a lot better now when lying on his stomach.

This week my Babycenter newsletter also said that apparently babies of this age really like soap bubbles, and indeed they do. Tim watches them with fascination and so does Unix. In fact Unix, who is normally the most lethargic creature that walked this earth becomes rather active and even makes attempts at chasing the bubbles and a few ended up popping on his nose, which was most amusing to watch.

Our baby carrier arrived this week, which is good because we're off to our first family trip in the coming week. We're going to our beloved Sächsische Schweiz to attempt doing some hiking. We'll have to see. Jack carried Tim in it yesterday when we were at the shops and both of them got very sweaty, so we'll have to make sure to take enough spare t-shirts with us.

Some more photos from this week...

Boys keep marriages together?

anInteresting article... Do Daughters Cause Divorce?

Need to read more on the topic to be able to actually form an opinion, but if the statistic is true (parents of 3 girls and 10% more likely to divorce, than parents of 3 boys)... it would be interesting to know why.

18 weeks - teething

Today is not a good day for Timmy... I have a suspicion that he's teething. He's very grumpy, crying a lot and keeps holding his hands close to his mouth. He doesn't have a temperature and otherwise seems fine, so teething is the only possible option I can think of. Hopefully this won't last too long.

Aside from that I couldn't resist and bought him an autumn 'bear' suit. Autumn seems to have kicked in straight away on the 1st of Sept. It's rainy, cold and windy. And in this suit we can still go for walks without being scared of the weather. In it Jack calls him Ewok :)

Some more photos from this week...