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...