Fasching

Today kids at the Kita were celebrating Fasching - a German version of the Carnival. They got a show from a clown and as usual plenty of yummy treats. Everybody including all of the teachers had to wear a costume. Since I didn't manage to make Tim into a wizard for their Yolka celebrations in December, I reused the idea for this occasion. The costume turned out better than I expected (except from a certain angle the wizard's hat looks more like that of a pope, but that's just picking at details!) and Jack assisted in making him a wizard staff out of paper covered with aluminium foil. This part of the costume excited Tim the most as he immediately proceed beating it violently around any surface and the thing didn't survive very long. I think it was him doing special "letting out all my accumulated aggression" magic...

6 years

Yep, it's that blog post again. Today is exactly 6 years since we came to Berlin. Who would've thought that we'd stay here so long! We have now spent more than half of our marriage together in this city. After putting Timmy to bed, Jack and I just sat around with some nibbles reminiscing about the 6 years and especially last year. The end of 2011 was hard for all of us with Jack working very long hours, but January has already been better.

I think these days we feel more at home here than at any point previously - in fact that feeling increases the more we stay here or may be it reached some sort of a plateau after Timmy was born. Jack has his job with its regular ups and downs, but it provides more than amply for the three of us. Timmy goes to kindergarten where he seems to be pretty happy and with which we are pretty happy, too. I have my masters course, which is pretty damn interesting. And Unix... well Unix has his windowsills and our occasional cuddles (we should give our cat more love!!!). Either way - we all have each other.

As every year I have to say that Berlin has been good to us. It provides us with all the things above and more. Over the past year we made a few good friends here, which makes our existence in this now not-all-completely-foreign land better. But that makes us miss our family and friends from Australia, Russia and the rest of the world in no way less. Thanks for reading and commenting - it always makes us feel a little closer to all of you! Cheers!

Legoland

After Timmy got Duplo for Christmas he's been playing with it quite a bit, which made us think that Legoland might be something he'd enjoy. For those who are unaware of what it is - it's basically a lego-themed attraction, where they have various things you can do out of Lego, rides, sculptures, etc etc etc. A little sidenote - we had friends stay with us who went there and raved about it... at the time (this was in our pre-Tim days) we thought something along the lines of "yeah, Legoland - whatever... that's for kids!!!". Well, Jack and I had so much fun that we got ourselves yearly passes and decided that since Tim gets overexcited so quickly and after about two hours he was running around screaming "AAAAA" we should just get a babysitter to look after him at home while the two of us go and spend a day there! :) I don't think we even saw all of it, but the coolest thing for me was a car construction centre where you could build your own car with a huge choice of wheels and parts and things, and then test it on a few different race tracks (last photo) - so much fun!!!

Immigration more risky for small children?

Apparently latest research claims that immigration at a young age is associated with an increased risk of psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia. Furthermore, "those who immigrated when under the age of five had a twofold higher risk than those who immigrated at age 10-14 years, and a threefold higher risk than those who immigrated as adults." Pretty interesting finding. I always thought that the younger one is, the better he/she adapts... but I suppose adaptation and mental health are not identical things. Hmmm... something to ponder on.

A bit of national pride

Read yesterday that Russian Transaero Airlines is actually one of the 20 safest airlines in the world. It's even safer than easyJet, which has 19th place, compared to Transaero that's 15th. Aeroflot and S7 (Sibir) I imagine are nowhere close up there, but at least both Lufthansa and AirBerlin are.

Can you do better?

This is my entry card to uni. It's by far the coolest one I've ever had. Even the IBM entry cards were just pure boring white. Can anyone say that they have a better one?

Booyah!

0 unanswered emails in my Inbox. That's what I call dealing with one's new year resolutions! I think this is the first time since a very very very long time... may be years? Now I just need to keep it up :)

Festive season in Berlin

So what did we do over Christmas and New Year?

A week before Christmas Jack's cousin Olaf was in Berlin for a visit from Frankfurt. Together we paid a visit to one of the chirstmas markets and then were playing silly at home.

Over Christmas itself we were in Frankfurt to visit Jack's relies. As usual it was very nice to be there - we were very well fed, got to sing Christmas carols and got lots of pressies. Tim got Duplo and can now stack the pieces pretty well.

After we got back we spent Boxing Day decorating our christmas tree at home. This year Timmy could actually help and was very excited about it :)

For New Years we had a very cozy celebration with a few good friends. We organised a very Russian table with Oliv'e and Herring Under Fur Coat salads. People also brought lots of stuff, so the table was almost bending with all the food and we are still eating leftovers. And like last year I baked a goose, who we decided was a direct relative of last year's goose Fedya. This one was also Fedya, and we decided that he was a polish (since he was actually from Poland) buddhist, given his reincarnation from last year. Either way, cooked to the now tried and tested French recipe of Julia Child he was tasty.

The night culminated as usual with Berlin fireworks all over the city. Unfortunately that resulted in Jack receiving third degree burns on one of his thumbs, which my poor husband is now nursing at the doctors every day this week to change the dressings. Aside from that it was a very good night and Tim slept for 12.5 hours straight without a squeak, even though the fireworks banging outside was pretty damn loud!

What 2012 has in store for us

Happy New Year everyone! We hope you entered 2012 with a good feeling. I know I did. From about September 2011 Jack has had a bit of a mad schedule at work, working up to 90 hour weeks. This meant that we hardly saw him. There would be days in a row, where Tim wouldn't see him at all and there were also some days like that for me. Jack would get home around 1am, when I was already asleep in bed and would get up at 5am to go back to work without me seeing him. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and just hope that the person lying in the dark next to me is actually Jack and not just some random person, 'cos it really could've been anyone! :)

Either way the first part of his big project is now done and we hope to be able to spend more time together. I also hope now that I'll be less of a single parent and will have more time to study, which I very much neglected towards the end of last year. So yeah - we are all looking forward to spending more time together as a family and that's really something very good to look forward to.

Our travel plans for 2012 involve us going to Novosibirsk in March to celebrate Mum's 60th, and then the same for Dad in October. We might squeeze in a few small trips in between depending on Jack's leave situation.

We also hope to be a little more consistent with the blog and emailing. Even though we wish that in the beginning of every year, who knows - may be this year it'll be better :) I realised that in 2011 we wrote the least amount of posts since starting this blog in 2005.

In any case - we wish all of you also a very good, happy and healthy 2012!!!

20 months

Timmy is 20 months now. He is walking very well - even running pretty well. He also started talking a lot more. Right now his absolute favourite word is 'hat' in Russian. It is pronounced шапка (shapka), but he says it as _ к_апка (kapka), which sounds very cute. In fact he is so excited about this word that he manages to make conversations about it even when they seem like a very odd topic to talk about. For example he'd be sitting at the dinner table and suddenly will put both hands on his head and ask questioningly "Hat?!"... and so then we'd talk about how he doesn't have a hat on right now, but that he would wear one when we go outside. He also turned into a bit of a hat police. If for some reason I take off my beanie outside he'd stop walking and keep saying 'hat' until I put it back on. He also yells 'hat' at other random people on the street who walk around hatless :)

He is also fond of similar sounding words like 'porridge' (кашка) or 'slippers' (тапки). He says да (yes) very well, and uses the German nein for negation. Another cute thing he says is Daddy, because he makes a tiny pause between 'Da' and 'dy'... actually I think we find anything he says cute, so that's probably just our fate as parents.

For new years our little man got play doh and needless to say he is very excited about it. We've been playing with it together and it made me realise that I actually really like playing with it, too. So I made a christmas tree and a blue cat :)

A few months back we got Tim a little toy kitchen courtesy of eBay. Judging from his love for it, he might just end up being a professional chef when he grows up. He just loves "cooking" on it and especially loves little pots and pans. While we have the christmas tree up, we're continuing a childhood tradition of mine, where kids get a little present from Ded Moroz every morning put under the tree while it's standing. So Timmy has been getting heaps of toy cutlery and various food-related toy items.

Latest photos...

This is a link to a video of Tim with his friend Ilja playing peekaboo.

And one more video of a day Tim got up on the coffee table and started dancing :)

I'll leave you with this photo of Tim that somehow to me resembles the guy from A Clockwork Orange :)