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.