Saturday, March 24, 2012

nearly 2 years old

In one week Tim will be turning 23 months. One of his favourite words to say now is "Topee", which means Top Gear. Thanks to Jack, Tim has become a complete Top Gear addict. Sometimes he requests it first thing in the morning at breakfast, and pretty much whenever anyone is on the computer... which is reasonably often :)

Other words that he says can be divided mainly into items of clothing, food stuffs, animal noises and people. The funniest thing he began saying in Novosibirsk was the name of his uncle Gleb. Tim calls him "Plep", and uses the same word to say 'bread', which is Hleb in Russian. Another cute thing is says is cheeks and socks, both in Russian, which kind of sound like "сёшки" и "шосочки". He says quite a few words in English too, like 'car', 'juice' and 'plane'. Plane is a big favourite lately since our flight back from Novosibirsk, and Tim likes to point at the sky and search for planes.

This week the weather has been perfectly springy in Berlin - warm and sunny. The kids from the kindergarten have been spending lots of time outside on the playground and Tim has been enjoying playing in the sand. It seems that his winter deprivation of playing in the sand means that he just can't get enough now and even after more than 2 hours he throws the biggest tantrum when we have to go. This naturally makes all the other mothers looks at us very judgementally.

Last but not least he loves saying "Ай яй яй" (eng. Ay yay yay). It's something that usually I say to him when he does something naughty. But he has adopted it himself and says it about everything that he thinks isn't in order. Like today a bottle of ketchup got dropped and so Tim kept pointing at the floor where it fell and onto the new ketchup bottle saying 'ay yay yay'. There is another situation where he says it... when he himself is about to do something naughty and then does it while continually looking at our reaction, and then after it's done he will say 'ay yay yay'... this makes is laugh most of the time and makes it hard to inflict any kind of punishment.

I'll leave you with his today's photo session for a passport photo :)






And the finished product...


Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The place they call our own

We're back in Berlin. This time around (as probably almost every other time) our flat felt huge, empty and lonely after spending two and a half weeks living with my parents in Novosibirsk. We had a really great time and we (the adults) are in need of a massive diet. People keep feeding us so many yummy things that our iron will couldn't resist!

Generally we had a very good and relaxing time. The only downside to the trip was that parent's cat Sommerset got scared a lot and hissed often at Tim. So now Timmy is a little scared of some things that he wasn't scared of before - mainly anything involving sudden loud noises. We really hope this passes soon.

Some of the things we got up to:
- Tim went for lots of walks with Mum and Dad, and really enjoyed digging in piles of snow with a shovel
- we celebrated Mum's 60th, my brother Gleb's 21st and my uncle Yakov's 75th birthdays
- Gleb (who is getting married this summer!) taught me how to make sushi - very very cool
- I met up with a few good school friends
- we brought home about 20kgs of old parents' books (mainly Russian classics) and there's still more that I'd like to have here in Berlin
- Jack fixed parents' kitchen sink
- we all played cards on a few evenings and perfected our "500" skills. Usually it was Mum and me (Titans) vs. Jack and Dad (Giants)
- spent a couple of evenings drinking beer with Gleb in a nice little pub 'Garage' across the street (they have actual cars strapped up to the ceiling and the whole place done up in old Rockabilly style)
- flights there and back were really good and on the last leg of the journey (Moscow to Berlin) Tim kept playing peekaboo with a little girl on the seat behind us :)

Some photos...




















Sunday, March 04, 2012

Voting in Russia

Seems like the last post on this blog was exactly a month ago. Right now the three of us are in Novosibirsk until middle of March for Mum's 60th birthday. Today Dad, Mum and I went to vote. I even got an Открепительный Талон (a piece of paper that says I can vote anywhere without registration) from my local Russian embassy in Berlin (an amusing and usually painful process that took about an hour of my life) as I am not registered in Russia and don't have a local inside passport. Russia has a silly two passport system, which is a leftover from the good old Soviet days, with the local passport being used for things like pension, work, registration and the outside passport used to travel abroad.

So with my outside passport and this special piece of paper I went in the election poll to try and get a ballot paper. The woman at the poll doesn't want to give it to me as I give her my outside passport. The following conversation occurs:

she nodding her head - "You need an inside passport to vote"
me - "Look at the piece of paper - it's from a Russian embassy in Berlin"
she - "Yeah ok, but ... hmm... what citizenship do you have?"
me - "You're holding my passport - it's a passport of a citizen of Russian Federation"
she - "Yeah... hmmm... hold on, I need to get the chairwoman"
..... chairwoman arrives and takes a look at my passport...
chairwoman - "You can't vote with an outside passport"
me - "Look at the piece of paper - it's from the Russian embassy in Berlin"
chairwoman - "Oh ok. Hmmm... why didn't you vote there?"
me - questioning look
chairwoman - "Oh right - you're here right now for the election. Hmm... that is a bit of a stupid question, right?"
me - confirming look

Then they issued me the ballot paper. As Putin promised the election poll had a webcam installed and the urns were transparent. Dad said that all the ballots he could see inside the urn were for Putin. No surprise there. According to his official propaganda he only has a mere 17 million roubles in the banks. And according to exit polls he's getting about 60% of votes already. *sigh*