Balcony - two months later

So in the two months since we've planted our balcony paradise it has succumbed to mildew and has been attacked by some sort of little white insects. The invaders had a main culinary preference for raspberries but didn't refuse to try some blueberries as well. So Jack and I took a trip to the nearest hardware store and bought some organic insecticide and fungicide, which he very kindly sprayed on the plants. It has helped a little but we need to do it another one or two times.

So far everything has been surviving except for one lavender, which dried out and did not come back to life after my resuscitation attempts.

Kids have been very helpful picking out weeds, but haven't really shown much interest in actually eating the berries...

In the meantime there has been a little harvest...

Balcony - two months later

So in the two months since we've planted our balcony paradise it has succumbed to mildew and has been attacked by some sort of little white insects. The invaders had a main culinary preference for raspberries but didn't refuse to try some blueberries as well. So Jack and I took a trip to the nearest hardware store and bought some organic insecticide and fungicide, which he very kindly sprayed on the plants. It has helped a little but we need to do it another one or two times.

Kids have been very helpful picking out weeds, but haven't really shown much interest in actually eating the berries...

In the meantime there has been a little harvest...

18 meters of paradise... time will tell.

We bought our first flat in the end of 2007 and our second one in 2012, but only renovated and joined them together in 2013. When we put them together we also joined the balconies and ended up with one very skinny and very long balcony. For most of the year it's just a long grey space that collects dust off the busiest street in Berlin, bird droppings and dry autumn leaves. But in summer when the weather does pick up for a few months and when it's not too windy we do love to sit on it and see the city life go by.

So I've been cherishing the idea of having something green there. About two years ago I decided that vines or something such like would be great there.  I've done some research.  We even went with Emmi to look at some plants in the local hardware and gardening store two years ago.  Then nothing happened.  Last summer the desire picked up again in spring, but then nothing happened either.  So when the desire came again this spring I had a firm belief that it will come and go.  But no!  Given that we came back early from our road trip we actually had Thursday and Friday with Jack to ourselves while boys were at Kita.  We used Thursday wisely by just hanging out in a cafe by the river brunching and then shopping for new kids clothes.  But Friday we decided to be productive... first we took our car for a quote of repair, so that it can at some point be fixed.  While it was being looked at by the mechanic we went shopping for pots and plants and vine supports.  We first hit IKEA to see what they had... that took about 2 hours.  Then we went to pick up the car after the quote and drove to the hardware store next door.  That took another 2.5 hours.  While Jack was paying for and loading into the boot the stuff we bought there, I went to IKEA again to buy stuff from there that we were not sure of the first time around.  So a mere 5 hours and some couple of hundreds of euros later we drove home via a major detour due to a culture festival this week, needless to say in a less than happy and content mood.  To illustrate the mood we were in, here's a little sketch from KVN (sorry, Russian only)...




BUT... on Saturday with the help of the boys we put it all up and now our balcony looks a bit more like it should in my fantasy.  We bought five big pots for climbing plants and five types of climbing berries to go in them.  There are all the berries that my Grandpa used to have in his country house - raspberries, black currants, red currants, goosberries and blueberries (actually I think Grandpa didnt' have any of them, but in any case...). We also bought some lavender and a little olive tree in a pot, but it's already starting to look a bit sad*.  Here are some photos of the balcony as it is now...

 

* NB: I am not much of a gardener... the only plants that don't die around me are cacti and succulents. But I am hopeful... and there's Google to help.

New doorbell sign

After having to verbally tear some guy a new rear-opening when he was trying to collect money for something as the wife and both kids were sleeping (doorbell was off, so he knocked loudly), we decided to be fair and warn them with a new sign for our doorbell:

Translation:

Advertising / Sales, propaganda and fundraising prohibited.

Offense punishable by verbal humiliation.

The Owner

Life in 'finally!' spring

This week it has finally gotten a little warmer. We had the coldest March since 130 years and every single person in Berlin has been moaning and complaining that spring is not coming.  But today was the first night when it was above 0 and during the day it's around 7-9 degrees, which feels like the tropics - yay!

In any case, things here are good. We've finally gotten rid of our builders (very long story that may at some point get written). Basically for the last two months they were working very slowly and very poorly and our relationship escalated to boiling point. At that point we mutually decided that now our ways must part and they collected their equipment and left. This situation created many positives: 1) finally after more than four months we have the flat to ourselves and don't have strange people here 6 days out of every week. 2) the stress of trying to get them to fix things that they've done crappily is gone 3) did I mention no strangers in the flat? Naturally the negatives are: 1) a lot of things are still left undone, hence The Great Renovations are not finished and 2) we keep finding more and more things that they've screwed up, meaning there's more and more things that were theoretially done, but now need fixing.  So yeah - that part of our lives is just continuing fun fun fun.

Jack has been very busy at work and has been trying to juggle that with trying to do more on the renovations, spending time with Tim and also giving some attention to his at times somewhat emotional pregnant wife.  Pregnant wife for that matter has been doing fairly well.  I've finally finished all my assignments from winter semester and now starting to give my masters thesis my full attention.  The aim is to get it done by the time the baby is born... but have to see how that's going.

Tim is doing well. He's talking a lot, singing a lot and generally fairly happy. He is still in some sort of a Trotzphase - terrible twos phase, where one of the favourite words right now is 'no'. In fact that can be an answer to anything right now... even as an absolute first reaction to a question 'do you want to go for ice cream?'  Along with that he loves asking questions and a favourite is "what for?"  Other than that we've been taking advantage of the warmer and snow-less weather and going for walks on his bike.  He's getting to be very good on it and sometimes even picks up both feet and holds balance. We're trying to do more extra-curricular activities with him and along with our weekly music class, we've signed up for swimming and a 'tumbling' class, which both Tim and Jack find incredibly fun.

So there you have it - a little update on our life :)

Absurdity in boxes or "look who's stupid"

A week ago our (almost) last things arrived from Australia being a total of 3 pallets = 5 cubic meters. All this assortment packed in about 70 boxes. Joy! For a few days this pile has taken a life of it's own because we couldn't really believe that we shipped so much crap. And crap it really is... at least say 70% of it. Jack and I kept looking at each other in disbelief that we really did send all this stuff and it really is here now, and is really taking up A LOT of space in our already full-of-stuff apartment.

Now when we were going through our things in March back in Melbourne we did get rid of a lot of things. But clearly not enough. And the main problem then was that we a) had limited time to sort through things, b) were sick of sorting through things over and over and over again (which is probably the most important point here). To illustrate the full absurdity of the kinds of things we packed (for reasons refer to point B of the previous sentence):

- empty half broken CD cases
- tiny ripped bits of fabric that I kept from my good old sewing days at school when I cherished (hoarded) anything and everything I had following the whole Soviet experience
- cups with IBM logos on them
- old floor towels
- an assortment of shoe polish brushes

But none of these demonstrates this absurdity more than the following conversation that we've had back in March and the result thereof.

Jack (as we're packing these said boxes): "You're not seriously going to take this stone with you?" (pointing at a big stone that I used as paperweight on my desk)
me: "Well... containers go by volume, not weight, right? So why not - I like this stone."
Jack: "Fine! Then I'm taking my stone, too!!!" (he also has a big stone that he used as a paperweight).

Yes - we shipped these two stones from Australia! At least Jack can remember the significance of his and where he found it. Mine? I think it might be from the Grampians but really - it's just a big grey stone... and now overnight they have become a lot more famous and valuable for travelling across the globe. Now these stones are trying to find a respectable place in the PILE of stuff that is our current flat and I am glad I want to become a psychologist, because the human psyche is one deep, dark, absurd abyss!!!

Jack + tools = furniture

Yep - Jack has been at it again. Making furniture that is. His latest project was to make a bookshelf and three drawers in the loungeroom. I think they turned out really well and it's amazing how nice it is to be able to put books on shelves the right way, as opposed to stacking them in piles next to each other, which is what we've been doing for the past couple of years.

Work in progress:

Finished product:

Six weeks

On Tuesday this week Timmy has crossed the 4kg mark. He's was 4360 grams, and 57 cm long. This is precisely 1320grams and 6 cm more than six weeks ago. Now that he's _so_ big, some of his body parts are especially so - like his double chin (demonstrated below). It is so big that we're almost worried that it'll overtake his first chin :) He generally has a lot more baby fat on him now - like chubby arms and thighs, and what I especially love are the dimples on the back of his hands.

This week we've been trying to regiment his feeding a little. Prior to this and since his birth I've been feeding him pretty much constantly whenever he'd cry. This on one hand has been good, because it ensured that breastfeeding worked perfectly, but on the other hand meant that I am tied to him almost all the time. So we've been trying to leave 2 hour gaps between feeds and it's been working reasonably well. The only trouble is that because he doesn't take the dummy we have to entertain him whenever he's unhappy and starts crying, and obviously can't use the boob to calm him down. It's been manageable so far and today has been a very good day - he's been going almost 3 hours between feeds and seems very happy and content.

The milk pump arrived yesterday and today I already expressed some milk (whole 40 ml worth!). Thus tonight will be a moment of truth - will Timmy take the bottle? Jack's betting that yes, and I'm leaning more towards a no, given our experience with the dummy. We'll see.

~~~~~~~~

In other weekly news Jack's laptop and our printer decided to die on the same day this week. The printer we managed to revive with an original HP cartridge - annoyingly cheaper versions don't seem to work, and give a "Cartridge Error" (strangely only some months later). But the laptop does seem to be well and truly dead. So now the two adults in the household (not counting Unix) are forced to share one laptop... which is very novel and somewhat difficult, considering that we're both at home at the moment and spend a lot of our non-baby-related hours (or should I say minutes) on the internet. Because it was also the laptop that we used to hook up to our projector and watch stuff off the internet (my laptop doesn't have the right s-video connection), we're now forced to entertain ourselves with German TV - and we can safely report that all in all TV here is pretty crappy, just like Timmy's nappy. But on the upside we do get to watch the first World Cup match tomorrow - Germany vs. Australia.

Speaking of the World Cup, Germans are all going crazy about it again - just like four years ago. Bakeries are selling doughnuts complete with a whistle shaped like a soccer ball. Cafes and pubs are attracting more customers by advertising matches on their blackboards. Almost every car has a German flag on it, as do many of people's balconies. Jack has just rearranged our Aussie flag on the balcony to be most visible from the street. And not even an hour later we got an "Aussie Aussie Aussie!!!" cheer from below, courtesy of another set of drunken louts on a beer bike who saw it. When I got out onto the balcony they all waved at me, and I waved back - go Aussies!!!

Two photos of nightly Berlin below...

Ready!

So we're pretty much ready for the baby. We've been on a major shopping spree - stocking up on lots of groceries (especially the heavier stuff like juice and water).

Two nights ago we finished the mobile for the cradle. Polina made and painted the shapes, the curled metal bar is actually an old part of the reinforcement for the walls we ripped out of the flat that I bent into shape - really could have used a blow torch to get it a bit better. Our view and his view.

And last night we went on a cleaning binge turning my workshop, aka the guest room, aka Polina's study into the baby room. This room is now clean:

The sheep is called Sofie

Now we're just waiting...

Cradle, sans cat

Back in March I started building a cradle and a cot, here the sides of the cradle (damn fiddly work cutting and sanding all those little bits of wood) and the base of the cot. You can also see the beginnings of a small set of shelves that will fit behind the drawers under the changing mat area.

It's still not finished - being sick with a cold for a couple of weeks, twice no less, I still haven't finished :-( The cot will probably have to wait until some undefinable "later" (when the child is too big for the cradle), but I've been working on the cradle with Polina's help over the last couple of days, I'll update this post as more gets done.

My new toy - a jigsaw. The design of the fancy bits is Polina's work - I just do structure not decoration ;-) Though cutting it all out did take about 8 hours, and the sanding is taking even longer - note to self, straight lines make life easier...

Over the last days I finished the staining of the "cradle" section with Polina's help. Last night the last coat of varnish went on, and then I put the "cradle" section together. The legs still need to be sanded, stained and varnished. Hopefully all done by the weekend.

Over the weekend, with Polina's help, I managed to get the last of the sanding done on the uprights and was able to stain and varnish them before putting the whole thing together. It's not completely square unfortunately, but it's not so far out as to be a problem. We'll need to get some new wheels too, as the current ones are plastic and they don't grip on our floors, so the whole thing just ends up dragging.

Also managed to get most of the small set of shelves (for under the changing table) done. Just need to sand and paint the actual shelf parts (tonight hopefully).

Baby Furniture

As the baby approaches I've decided to build some more furniture for him. This is mainly because what you can get in the shops is a. horribly overpriced and b. crap.

Instead of buying a special "changing table" we bought a cheap 2nd hand set of drawers from fleeBay.

These got pulled completely apart, sanded, glued and put back together (so now it's not wobbly and cheap feeling), the outside got varnished, the drawers were done in acrylic paint, and the insides laid out with contact. Polina still has to do some funky coloured knobs.

Before to these drawers are now clean.

PS. The extra holes on the front of the "arms" of the changing mat area are not an accident, they're there in case we ever have to put the drawers in such a way that the changing mat cannot hang off the back. It simply unscrews, flips over and the end piece gets swapped to the other side of the arms - you can't buy that in a shop either ;)

I've also started building a cradle and a cot, here the sides of the cradle (damn fiddly work cutting and sanding all those little bits of wood) and the base of the cot. You can also see the beginnings of a small set of shelves that will fit behind the drawers under the changing mat area.