It's a small world

Today the postie came by with various parcels. He is our regular one and has been bringing us post for a while. One of the parcels today was covered in many many stamps from Mum with Russian books for Timmy. As the postie was handing me the parcel he said that it was a very interesting one from Russia, so I replied that it was from my Mum with books for the baby. He then asked me whether I spoke Russian, so I replied that I do. He then started talking to me in Russian and turns out that he is also from Novosibirsk. Well technically from Berdsk - a town not far from Novosibirsk. So then we laughed at the fact that this is one very small world indeed. This guy has been bringing our post for many years now and I would never have picked him to be Russian, let alone from the same town as me!

41 weeks

Last week Anya came to stay with us. We went for quite a few walks and relaxed in the evenings watching movies. On Saturday I managed to take her to a Russian cinema to watch what happened to be an all in German doco about nature and animals of Russia. There wasn't much dialogue, so it wasn't so bad and the film itself is definitely recommended.

On one of our walks we came across a frozen lake in Tiergarten. Naturally Anya and I had to poke the ice and see what we could break off.

On Sunday was our last baby swimming class. This time Tim got to wear floaties again and could hold himself on the water fairly well without Jack supporting him too much. We're going to start the next course in May and hopefully Tim will remember some of the stuff he learned in this one.

Right now we're trying to organise everything for our trip to Australia. We leave on Thursday afternoon and on Friday late we should arrive in Melbourne. Berlin is getting colder, so it'll be good time to be somewhere warmer - yey!

Kita

Last week we finally found a spot at a German/Russian kindergarten called 'Golden Key' (a name out of Russian version of Penocchio). Annoyingly they only had a spot starting immediately from Feb, even though we only needed one from April. So it means that we have to pay for two extra months without Tim going there. But we have a spot! The kindergarten is not directly close to us, but it is on our way to my uni and to Jack's work, making it at a fairly reasonable location. In summer when we get a baby seat for my bike Tim and I might even ride rather than go on the metro.

On Thursday this week Anya, Tim and myself went there for an hour or so just to see what it's like... mainly we spent time talking to one of the German teachers about the introductory period (where I get to go with Tim in the beginning for a couple of weeks to make sure that he's ok there). We walked from there to the city and it didn't take very long so I think the bike ride will only take about 20-30 minutes.

Hopefully he'll like going there and then all will be well.

40 weeks - first flight

On Thursday last week we took Tim on his first flight. We flew to Frankfurt to visit Jack's uncle Bernhard and family for his birthday. Overall everything was very good and we actually had a very nice relaxing weekend. It was very nice to see Tim with his relies. He also got to sit in an antique highchair that was used first by Jack's auntie (you can see it on the second last photo). Tim flew without problems and even managed to sleep a little on the plane before the pilot decided it was a good idea to talk loudly about arrival times and service on board. Timmy only started to get grumpy when descending mainly I think because he had to be strapped in to me for the last 30 minutes and that's pretty damn boring. We took the fast train on the way back, which actually arrived on time - an amazing achievement for Deutsche Bahn, and that was fine, too. Again - towards the end of the journey Tim started to get grumpy, but that was very manageable. Now we're mentally preparing ourselves for our _somewhat_ longer flight to Melbourne next week.

Upon our arrival last night from Frankfurt Unix decided to show his disapproval for our travels by peeing into our half unpacked suitcase. Well we were pleased to inform him that during our Aus trip he'll be looked after by our lovely neighbours and hopefully won't be so lonely.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago Tim was scheduled to go for his development check this morning. We were a little surprised when we arrived at the doctor's office, as the woman who greeted us wasn't our normal paediatrician. She was actually a development therapist and has her own little office out the back of the doctors clinic. There were matts on the floor and the whole thing probably took about 40 minutes. She was very thorough and checked a whole bunch of different things and all in all we're very happy to say that Tim is completely fine. Some things he can actually do now that he is not even supposed to... so needless to say that we were very very relieved and happy.

And speaking more about Tim's development - he now waves when people wave goodbye to him! :)

Some photos from last week (on the first picture Tim is wearing a knitted suit that was once mine)...