26 weeks - sitting up

Our little man has been sitting up more and more. Although he still tumbles to the side (or front, or back) if unsupported after a couple of seconds, his balance is getting better and he's been enjoying viewing the world from this new perspective.

In honour of this achievement we bought a second hand highchair on eBay, which Jack sanded, stained and varnished to be now occupied by the smallest member of our family. Tim is pretty excited to sit _at_ the table, and not _on_ the table in his bouncy chair as has been traditional up 'till now. His new favourite food has been red and green apples, although still nothing beats cucumbers!

Halloween is making a bigger appearance every year in Berlin, and this year there are even carved pumpkins outside of our building :)

On Thursday we caught up with Christine and Finlay and went to the west zoo and aquarium. Timmy absolutely loved all the different fish, especially some of the large stingrays that swam right past the glass. Definitely need to go there more often while our yearly pass hasn't expired.

Today we ventured out to Gärten der Welt (Gardens of the World) - a large park in the outer east of Berlin, which has a collection of themed gardens from all over the world. They have a Japanese garden, Korean, Chinese, Italian, oriental and a couple of others. They're all very well maintained and quite pretty. There was even a little hedge maze that we walked through. The weather was perfect - warm, sunny and basically made for a very enjoyable outing. Thus, we're trying to get the most out of the last couple of days of this beautiful autumn.

Tomorrow grandma Emmi is departing and we will be missing her very much. Tim lights up every time he sees her in the mornings and it will be an adjustment to be so far away again. But I guess that's life in our modern global world, and as they say - each goodbye means that you get to say hello sooner :)

25 weeks - a very quick swimming lesson

Today while Emmi was wonderful and looked after Timmy for a day, Jack and I were at the first aids course for kids. We got to learn a whole bunch of acronyms that didn't make a lot of sense and overall the whole things was pretty useless. Mainly it involved the instructor woman talking really slowly about the literal meaning of the words "first aid" for about the first four hours and what to do if a child has gotten into quick sand, or whether one should revive a person who had a motorcycle accident and has a note on them saying "do not resuscitate". Unfortunately she only spent a small fraction of the time on actual (in my mind) useful household scenarios with the main message being - call an ambulance. There was, however, a very heated discussion as to whether one would jump in the water to try and save their child if they fell in, or (what the instructor was saying) call an ambulance and let qualified people deal with it. On the upside I did very briefly get to refresh my CPR skills on a child and baby dummy, and got the phone number for the poisons hotline. I think I'll just find lots and lots of bubble wrap and keep Tim in it until he's 18!

In other news, on Thursday we took Timmy for a trial baby swimming class. Unfortunately it didn't go quite as well as we hoped. The pool (read large bathtub) was about 3 x 4 meters and full of roughly 10 parents with their children (who were a fair bit older than Tim, which was a. surprising as it was meant to be a swimming class for _babies_, and b. crappy - because they were very loud and splashing around a lot which made him scared). At first Timmy really liked the water, and although unsure of it, he was enjoying himself. But then he got grabbed by the teacher (your classic short haired lesbian - sorry, but she really was) and swished around rather violently, which he didn't really enjoy and was very happy to go back to me. She showed me some moves to do with him and so we were trying to find a less splashy corner of the pool to practice. We were doing ok until she came again and started moving him fairly strongly from side to side and laughing in his face (she had pretty big teeth and even I was a little apprehensive). He became afraid and started crying. So instead of handing him over to me, or trying to calm him down she started fake crying back at him pretty loudly... which (surprise surprise) didn't help. So I took him off her hands and tried to calm him down, but he was too upset, so we had to finish our lesson early, only after about 10 mins in the water. He was happy immediately afterwards, so hopefully no long lasting psychological damage. But yeah - this particular swimming school is definitely out.

We signed up for a course at a different pool, where they're supposed to have only babies 4-9 months in the water and a larger pool area. The course is also on Sundays, which means that Jack and I can go together and then one person can stay dry and then dry Tim after the lesson. This was tricky with me being wet and drying Tim, then taking him (on my wet self) to the womens changing room to change myself... realising that he got wet again from me, trying to keep him warm in the meantime while changing like a person on fire, and then changing him again... bleah - too complicated, thus another (dry) adult is of much convenience.

We have been enjoying this autumn by taking many nice walks this week. On one of them we stumbled across the Stauffenberg memorial and saw the actual site where he was shot. This just adds another piece of colourful history onto the map of this city for us. The festival of lights is on again in Berlin, but somehow this year it's a bit disappointing - all the lights seem somehow a little dull or just uninteresting. Here's a selection of random photos from this week.

23 & 24 weeks - a visit from Grandma

Emmi is here from Melbourne and Tim has been very excited to see her. Sometimes when we're sitting around the table and he gets grumpy, only she can make him happy :) He especially likes the strings on her shirt, because they are very very tasty!

On Friday Jack and I spent two and a half hours at the Russian embassy filling out various bits of paper for Timmy to get Russian citizenship. FINALLY it's all done and now we're just waiting for an answer from them, and if it's positive (which is the most likely scenario), then we can get him a passport, too. I can probably write almost a novel about how these guys could improve their processes and in general be friendlier and more efficient. But I'm just glad that at least this first frustrating part is behind us now - yey!

Jack has discovered a trick with blowing bubbles (get your mind out of the Michael Jackson gutter!), which the rest of us have adopted. By catching them onto the bubble-blowing-stick and letting Timmy pop them - this provides many minutes of giggles and amusement for our little man.

We've had some beautiful autumnly weather and Tierpark is just gorgeous at this time of the year...

And cucumbers - still a big favourite at the dinner table :)

Random photos from the last two weeks: