Brothers

Who is who...?

And then there were four

Meet the newest addition to our family - Thomas Ray

Boy... definitely a boy!

So Tim will have himself a little brother. Development up to now - completely normal :)

Tim is going to be a big brother!

Due 27 August.  So far, all's well  :)

28 weeks and counting

On Thursday Christine and Finlay invited us to take part in St Martins day and walk in a "parade" with paper lanterns. Tim and I were slack and didn't get a lantern, but it was still nice to see so many of them and kids around us being all excited. Basically for those unfamiliar with this tradition (and I was until this week), you walk the streets holding a paper lantern and sing songs about St Martin. It was pretty nice and I think next year we might make more of an effort. Next year Tim might also be able to _carry_ the lantern, rather than try to eat it, which would've been most definitely the case this year :)

On Friday we made it to a Russian playgroup. I was very excited to discover that there is one in Berlin. It's actually organised by a club Karussell, that promote bilingual education of children - ie. German and Russian. So they have various music, drawing, language classes for kids of all ages. We went to the youngest group and there were a total of 4 babies - 3 boys and one girl. The teacher is very nice and plays guitar and the flute and has many toys and props, so there's a lot of singing and dancing... overall I think Tim enjoyed it... the only problem was that it was during his regular naptime. He usually sleeps between 10 and 12, and the group is at 11. He was pretty cranky the rest of the day, so I think we might try it once or twice more and if it doesn't improve then sadly we'll have to give it a miss.

Random photos from this week:

27 weeks - meeting his cousin

Zoya, Clive and Katya were here for the weekend. It was very nice to see them and the flat feels once again empty with the guests gone. I think the only creature in this household who might be of a different opinion is Unix, who got mildly terrorised by Katya. But then again - he keeps bugging us for attention, so I guess he just got a bit more than he could chew. It was pretty interesting to also see Tim and Katya interact. Tim was fascinated watching Katya running around. She was very cute and a couple of times placed a peck on Tim's cheek.

All of us managed a trip to the zoo on Sunday, where Timmy's cousin was super excited about pinguins and on Monday we ventured out to SeaLife - an aquarium near Berliner Dom that has a round lift that goes up through the middle of a 16 meter tall fish tank - quite impressive. Tim once again was so overstimulated by the various fish, that as soon as I put him down into the pram afterwards he fell asleep.

The guys were wonderful and brought us an English version of Trivial Pursuit, which we played one of the evenings. We played in teams - girls vs. boys, and to our utmost female disgust, the boys seemed to have won. Jack and I also attempted a game against each other last night after the guys left and decided that on our own we're pretty unintelligent. Ah well - we always knew that we were nothing more than a pretty face! Some photos follow:

Something mushy this way comes

Tim had his 5th checkup at the paediatrician today. Parents are happy to report that he's doing fine - weight 7980gr, height 66cm and head circumference is 43.5cm. According to the WHO growth chart he is smack bang on the 50th percentile. As Jack put it "nothing better than average". Whatever! I'm happy everything is as it should be and our little boy is happy and healthy.

Today we started solids. Why do they call them solids exactly? Germans are more honest at least and call them "mush" (Brei). Today's menu was carrots out of a jar, and our little critic gave 'em huge thumbs up. He was so excited in fact, that he started rocking his highchair so hard that it made me worried about its stability.

Here are some photos from before and after lunch, as well as some snaps with parents from dinner (thank you Lucija for the cute Mt Isa bib).

PS: before Timmy was born, pictures of smiling babies covered in mushy food always made me cringe and I thought it was pretty _off_. So yeah - to all of you without kids, who are reading this and thinking "ewww, baby covered in mush - yuk!"... I understand where you're coming from... I see things through baby-coloured glasses now, hence find it cute :)

6 MONTHS!

26 weeks - sitting up

Our little man has been sitting up more and more. Although he still tumbles to the side (or front, or back) if unsupported after a couple of seconds, his balance is getting better and he's been enjoying viewing the world from this new perspective.

In honour of this achievement we bought a second hand highchair on eBay, which Jack sanded, stained and varnished to be now occupied by the smallest member of our family. Tim is pretty excited to sit _at_ the table, and not _on_ the table in his bouncy chair as has been traditional up 'till now. His new favourite food has been red and green apples, although still nothing beats cucumbers!

Halloween is making a bigger appearance every year in Berlin, and this year there are even carved pumpkins outside of our building :)

On Thursday we caught up with Christine and Finlay and went to the west zoo and aquarium. Timmy absolutely loved all the different fish, especially some of the large stingrays that swam right past the glass. Definitely need to go there more often while our yearly pass hasn't expired.

Today we ventured out to Gärten der Welt (Gardens of the World) - a large park in the outer east of Berlin, which has a collection of themed gardens from all over the world. They have a Japanese garden, Korean, Chinese, Italian, oriental and a couple of others. They're all very well maintained and quite pretty. There was even a little hedge maze that we walked through. The weather was perfect - warm, sunny and basically made for a very enjoyable outing. Thus, we're trying to get the most out of the last couple of days of this beautiful autumn.

Tomorrow grandma Emmi is departing and we will be missing her very much. Tim lights up every time he sees her in the mornings and it will be an adjustment to be so far away again. But I guess that's life in our modern global world, and as they say - each goodbye means that you get to say hello sooner :)

25 weeks - a very quick swimming lesson

Today while Emmi was wonderful and looked after Timmy for a day, Jack and I were at the first aids course for kids. We got to learn a whole bunch of acronyms that didn't make a lot of sense and overall the whole things was pretty useless. Mainly it involved the instructor woman talking really slowly about the literal meaning of the words "first aid" for about the first four hours and what to do if a child has gotten into quick sand, or whether one should revive a person who had a motorcycle accident and has a note on them saying "do not resuscitate". Unfortunately she only spent a small fraction of the time on actual (in my mind) useful household scenarios with the main message being - call an ambulance. There was, however, a very heated discussion as to whether one would jump in the water to try and save their child if they fell in, or (what the instructor was saying) call an ambulance and let qualified people deal with it. On the upside I did very briefly get to refresh my CPR skills on a child and baby dummy, and got the phone number for the poisons hotline. I think I'll just find lots and lots of bubble wrap and keep Tim in it until he's 18!

In other news, on Thursday we took Timmy for a trial baby swimming class. Unfortunately it didn't go quite as well as we hoped. The pool (read large bathtub) was about 3 x 4 meters and full of roughly 10 parents with their children (who were a fair bit older than Tim, which was a. surprising as it was meant to be a swimming class for _babies_, and b. crappy - because they were very loud and splashing around a lot which made him scared). At first Timmy really liked the water, and although unsure of it, he was enjoying himself. But then he got grabbed by the teacher (your classic short haired lesbian - sorry, but she really was) and swished around rather violently, which he didn't really enjoy and was very happy to go back to me. She showed me some moves to do with him and so we were trying to find a less splashy corner of the pool to practice. We were doing ok until she came again and started moving him fairly strongly from side to side and laughing in his face (she had pretty big teeth and even I was a little apprehensive). He became afraid and started crying. So instead of handing him over to me, or trying to calm him down she started fake crying back at him pretty loudly... which (surprise surprise) didn't help. So I took him off her hands and tried to calm him down, but he was too upset, so we had to finish our lesson early, only after about 10 mins in the water. He was happy immediately afterwards, so hopefully no long lasting psychological damage. But yeah - this particular swimming school is definitely out.

We signed up for a course at a different pool, where they're supposed to have only babies 4-9 months in the water and a larger pool area. The course is also on Sundays, which means that Jack and I can go together and then one person can stay dry and then dry Tim after the lesson. This was tricky with me being wet and drying Tim, then taking him (on my wet self) to the womens changing room to change myself... realising that he got wet again from me, trying to keep him warm in the meantime while changing like a person on fire, and then changing him again... bleah - too complicated, thus another (dry) adult is of much convenience.

We have been enjoying this autumn by taking many nice walks this week. On one of them we stumbled across the Stauffenberg memorial and saw the actual site where he was shot. This just adds another piece of colourful history onto the map of this city for us. The festival of lights is on again in Berlin, but somehow this year it's a bit disappointing - all the lights seem somehow a little dull or just uninteresting. Here's a selection of random photos from this week.