7 MONTHS

On Sunday Tim's swimming lessons started. After our previous bad experience we were a bit apprehensive, but we're really glad to have enrolled. The course is great - the teacher is nice, the pool is nice, there's only small babies there, so it's not too loud or splashy and Tim loves it. Jack went into the water with him and the two of them seem to have had quite a bit of fun. In the 'getting to know other babies' part of the course Tim even managed to pinch another baby and make him cry... so our little boy has already become a bully! The course consists of 10 lessons and apparently towards the end of it babies should be able to dive under water, which I'm looking forward to. Apparently they're going to get a photographer with an underwater camera to make photos of that - cool!

Jack is working on a larger bed for Tim and hopefully our son will be able to relocate before new years. Here's a pic of work in progress...

Winter is officially here and snow has been lying on the roofs for about a week now. It's about -2 or so outside, and the air is nice and crisp when we venture out for walks.

Some photos of the 7 month old boy.

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In other unrelated Berlin news - according to Al Qaeda Germany is the target of some terrorist attacks that were going to happen in the end of November. We're into December now and all seems quiet on the western front so far. Still - all around the centre there are now more police and many of them are walking around with pretty big machine guns. Even though the threat is now gone in theory, they're leaving the heightened security arrangements until end of this year and possibly into next year. There's already been talk of imposing censorship and cutting down on freedom of press, after Der Spiegel published information that Reichstag was a target. All this seems like we're back in 2001 after 9/11 in the USA. Either way - it makes me feel pretty unsafe walking around, mainly 'cos the police keep staring at me and I feel that they think I'm going to recreate a scene out of that (can't remember the name of it) movie where a person is slowly and suspiciously pushing a pram and then suddenly takes out a huge machine gun out of it and starts shooting everyone... is that from the Godfather? Either way - it's all silly over here.