Good Kids

She's here!!!! Julia has arrived home safely.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:54:00 +0000

She's here!!!! Julia has arrived home safely.

Julia still ok

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:11:00 +0000

From Julia:
"they're letting us back into our rooms to sleep, but there's no heat, phones, water, or power. Airport is mostly closed, but still uncertain. ... At present all transit to airport is closed, but it might change tomorrow. Everyone here (Japanese) says it's the worst earthquake they've ever felt... Roughing it a littlle, ...but they're well prepared here. I don't have much time on the computer though"

Things seem to be calming down. Yay!

Julia is in Japan and OK

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:31:00 +0000

Hi blog readers. We haven't posted in forever and this is a crappy circumstance under which to start again. But in the hope of reaching anybody that might be worried about Julia, I want to say that she is so far fine. She is presently in Tsukuba near Tokyo for work. In case you haven't heard there have been very intense earthquakes off the coast of Japan in recent days. The lastest was measured at 8.9 and happened right in the middle of the talk she was giving.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12709598
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

She has been emailing me from other peoples phones to let me know she is ok:

6:22 GMT "There was a giant earthquake in the middle of my talk . Meeting is cancelled. We ca't go back in..."
10:58 GMT "...there is no power or water and there are constant small tremors still. its getting cold and we are a little hungry but fine..."

Day 7 - Kiev some more

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:55:00 +0000

Alright back to the trip. Kiev was actually the place we stayed the least amount of time. It was also when the real blistering heat started. We only had half the day to visit since we were getting back on the train to Simpferopol that afternoon. Here I am on the windowsill of the window in our hotel room waiting for Bela and Julia to wake up. I fit comfortably sitting here with room to spare. That a wide windowsill/thick wall.

Just outside the window on the boulevard down below was a prominent statue of Lennon with a campaign tent for the communist party in front of it.
Also very close to where we were staying was this awesome farmer's market selling fresh produce, lots of berries, flowers, meat, cheese, fish and lots of caviar. Béla of course go a carrot from one of the market people while we were buying delicious blueberries and raspberries.
Here is a picture of the strange art... advertizing... panoramic scene thing that went all the way around the market's walls.
After the market we went to see some parliament buildings that were up a giant hill. Big blocky and commie looking, they were pretty impressive.
One of the buildings, or at least one near the parliament is the House with Chimearas. This art nouveau building has a bunch of crazy looking gargoyle-like animals running all over it.

Walking further along we saw this majestic looking building. Again very solid and blocky looking but still very ornate, especially this one. Directly adjacent to it was an entrance way to an underground parking garage that was done in the same style. Needless to say this was a more affluent neighbourhood.
Then we walk in a park that went along the Dnipro river. Here I am next to a nice big fountain.
Here a cool looking outdoor theatre.
Here are Julia and Béla at a nice view point where you could see the other side of the river and the Dnipro itself way down below.
We were steadily making our way south to get to the big orthodox chuch complex (more on that soon) and made a pit stop at this play ground so Béla could stretch his legs. The playground was in need of some upkeep but Béla didn't mind. Here he is climbing this wavy ramp.
Here he is being adorable on the wavy ramp.
Going down the slide with Papa.
There was also one of those giant inflatable slides that mushroom themed. Big blown up 'shrooms were holding the slide up. Very eastern-european. We also saw a horse and carriage with a bridal party in it. We had seen it earlier seeding by at a fair gallop going through the city. Hopefully it made it on time.
Here is a war monument of some kind.
Here we start to see what was are final touristic goal in Kiev: the Caves Monastery. But it was still a little while away.
Here is a monument to the victims of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33. It's far more elaborate than this picture could capture.
And finally we got to the golden domes of the Caves Monastery. This is just the entrance to the grounds.
The Caves Monastery in a big complex holding several churches and other monuments and buildings. It's a site of pilgrimage for the Eastern-European Orthodox Christian fate. Below is the Great Lavra Belltower. And here is the view right after entering the grounds. Directly in front is the Dormition Cathedral. There are yet another 8 churches on the grounds according to wikipedia, and a monastery or two.
Here I am next to a big bell I presume went in the belltower at some point.
All these pictures are from the higher grounds. There is also the lower grounds that also houses some churches, etc. and below the whole thing are caves also used for religious going ons hence the name Caves Monastery.

More fanciness.
We were a little strapped for time by this point and the way down to the caves was not the easiest with a stroller apparently to we didn't get to see them. We opted for getting to the train on time and skip seeing the relics that populate the caves.

Béla's 13 month post (only a little bit late...)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:56:00 +0000

Since he just turned 14 months this past weekend, I figured it was about time I wrote the 13 month post... Don't worry, we took some notes so I remember what happened when. In his 13th month Béla kept up his impressive growing, to the point that we were getting worried that maybe he was getting a bit too chubby, so Jeremi asked the doctor while he was in for a routine vaccination appointment. The doctor called up his stats on the computer and said it looked fine, and hadn't actually planned on weighing him, but after Jeremi's request they put him on the scale to find that he'd gained 1.2 kg since the previous appointment only one month before, bringing him up to a whopping 12.6 kg, or 27 lb. 12 oz. This puts him up around the 95th percentile, so he's definitely a big boy for his age, but the doctor's only advice was to cut back on sweets and juice, neither of which we give him, so she figured it was okay.

Jeremi also asked about what seemed to be his cradle cap getting worse in a few crusty areas, which she identified as some sort of parasitic mite infection common in the late summer that was totally harmless and which would go away of its own accord in October, which it did. Weird.

In other growing news he got two new teeth, bringing him up to a grand total of 10, all eight incisors and his upper two first molars. His new favourite games include climbing on everything. He has a little table for drawing with two little chairs (we call it his office), and he spends quite a lot of time playing with it, but it usually involves climbing on the chairs or the table, and then doing a little dance on top of the table. There aren't too many pictures of this unfortunately because we're usually standing by as spotters rather than photographers, although he really doesn't fall from the table much. At daycare the Tagesmutter, Susi, is also pretty taken with how much he climbs, and how well he does it for his age.

This might be a good time to mention how much he loves daycare. I honestly think he's disappointed on the weekend when he doesn't get to go, because we're just not as much fun as Susi and the other kids, especially Bruno, the other boy, his constant companion. Susi put their cribs together so they can stand and chat a little before lying down for naptime, since they spend the rest of the time together as well. He really loves it, and in the morning after breakfast he's standing at the door waving good-bye, waiting for Jeremi to open it so he can get there already!

One interesting thing that happened when he started daycare is that he stopped talking. He still babbles a lot, but the few words that he was consistently using (papa, cat, duckies) pretty much disappeared. I think it might be that the introduction of the third language made his brain do a double take - just when he was starting to make sense of this whole talking thing, everyone started doing it differently. We were ready for him to be delayed with speaking because of the multi-lingual environment, and it hasn't been a problem so far. Susi is convinced that he understands some German after just a few weeks, and we know he understands a number of English and French phrases at home (some rather complex ones even), and he communicates quite well with gestures, so it hasn't led to much frustration yet. My only concern is that people will think he's a bit slow, as he's already the size of a two year-old with motor skills to match, but doesn't talk.

Speaking of motor skills, he can throw a ball overhand well now, and kicks balls around the back yard with great relish. He's still eating well, and has begun to get better with the use of cutlery. For a while we've been loading up spoons or forks with food and then handing them to him to feed himself, but now he 's getting better at actually scooping up or spearing the food himself, which results in many rounds of applause during the average supper. (Sometimes while clapping for himself, while still clutching the fork, the hard-earned chunk of food goes flying off the fork before it makes its way into his mouth, but this just allows for more chances to practice.)

He's also getting better at mimicking complex behaviour. He babbles into our cell phones, and then hands it to me so I can talk on it for a while before handing it back (much as we pass him our phones to say hello to family members), and, much to our amusement, does the same thing with remote controls when we're at friends' places. (We don't have any standard remotes at our house, so to him they look like cell phones.) He helps us load and unload the dishwasher too (one has to be a bit patient), but his favourite job by far is laundry. He's been putting things in the washing machine for a while now, but now he goes through all the motions. When it's time to do laundry I get him to help me and he takes individual items from the hamper and puts them into the machine. At some point he decides it's time to close the door (sometimes a bit before the machine is full, so we have to negotiate this part), and then he slams the door to shut it. Then he "helps" me by pushing the buttons, which means that sometimes I have to turn the machine off and start again a couple of times. (There is a child-lock, but I have to have it off while I program the machine, after which he's free to push all the buttons again, and listen to them beeping.) Then he opens the drawer for the soap and helpfully points to where the soap is (out of his reach). Then he closes the drawer, and watches the clothes turn. He does condensed versions of this on his own, moving his head up and down at the window at the end to simulate the machine moving.

In other big-boy news, I stopped nursing around the end of September. I thought I'd be more sad about it, but honestly, I felt better than I had in months. I suddenly had more energy, and my body felt "normal" again for the first time in almost two years. Breastfeeding was great, but I'm glad it's over for now. He hasn't missed it either, and now finds my breasts no more interesting than my elbows (and considerably less funny than my belly button). We've also started to transition him slowly into his own bed by taking the crib off the side of our bed and pushing it into the corner. He's still sleeping in our room, and when he wakes up in the night for milk (usually just once now, on good nights), we bring him in with us from then on, but it's a start.

I know it's unusual to have such a young child sleeping in a crib with the side off, but he has no trouble getting in and out on his own, and it lets him climb out and into bed with us whenever he wants. In fact, last week he woke up in his crib while we were still awake in the living room, and he climbed into our bed and went back to sleep on his own, because it was clearly where he'd rather be. At this point, we're still letting him make that decision, although he does take up a surprising amount of room for such a young kid, and often wants to sleep perpendicular to us.

The only really negative thing this month is that he's started to hit us sometimes, mostly me, and he thinks it's hysterically funny. He doesn't do it when he's angry, which is good at least, but more when we've been playing and he's very excited, and then he thinks it would be funny to hit me in the face, and then he's laughing soooo hard. If I'm very unlucky he does it while holding an object, like a block, and catches me unaware, so there have been a couple of fat lips. Of course we tell him that this isn't allowed, and I put him down and tell him that I won't play with him if he hits me, at which point he has a full out (but short-lived) tantrum. I'm hoping he catches on to the hitting-means-no-more-playing thing soon, but he still thinks it's hilarious every time he starts up again. He does it to Jeremi sometimes too, which I hate to admit I found a bit reassuring, but so far he hasn't hit anyone at daycare, which is good.
And now for some pictures from his thirteenth month. This isn't everything (there will eventually be a separate post from Oktoberfest, for instance), but rather the day-to-day things that didn't warrant their own post but which were still nice to share.

Here he is, just after his birthday, opening a package of Duplo that came in the mail from Calin and Susanne (who are now living in Copenhagen).

And now the jacket that my friend Rachel knit him fits! Doesn't he look smart?

Here he was playing by dropping things into my pot of (cooled to room temperature) herbal tea...
...and decided he'd like to have a sip. While he has his own high chair for eating, he's usually ready to get out before we're done, and then he pretty well always migrates to my lap for the end of whatever meal it is.
Here Béla and Jeremi were all dressed up and ready for a little bike trip.
We rode along the river and stopped for a nice early supper at a Biergarten by a historic bridge and dam in Burgau, just south of Jena. (We also went out this way for another little bike trip to visit my colleague Christian for some cake in his garden one pleasant September afternoon, but we didn't bring along the camera...)
And Béla, happily asleep on the way home, after enjoying the rabbits and birds they have at the Biergarten for the younger guests.
The following weekend the weather was really nice, so we went for a late summer picnic in a park around the Saale, eating near this lovely fountain with statues of different animals spraying water.
Béla (with cilantro from bean salad on his face) was enjoying the good weather.
This photo is included only to explain why the rest of the pictures from this afternoon look like a soap opera dream sequence, after his oily bean-salad-fingers smeared dressing on the lens of the camera.
Here Béla and I are walking along the paths in the park...
...and around the edge of the fountain, figuring out which animal is which. (I'm not holding his hand to help him walk, but rather to ensure he stays out of the water.)
After that we visited a playground on the other side of the river, and Béla had much fun.

And finally, a couple pictures to show you (not very well) how much more fun baths are now! He loves the bath now! After hearing about how much he hated the bath, both sides of the family sent bath toys for his first birthday, and they've been a big hit. He doesn't look like it in this picture, but he really was having lots of fun. But doesn't he look like Paul here (Jeremi's dad)?
After he got out of the bath and into one of his new birthday sleepers from New Brunswick, he wanted to come back to play some more as Jeremi was washing his hair. Here he's holding two of the little octopi that came with a set from my parents, with suction cups that let them stick to the side of the tub. He loves them!
In his birthday sleeper with his birthday elephant (also from New Brunswick), freshly bathed and ready for bed.
I forgot to mention it in the developmental skills part, but he's pretty well mastered the shape sorter now. The easier shapes (circle, square, triangle) are no problem at all, but the more complex shapes (cross and star) still take a few tries. I was trying to point out where the star should go, when he chose to ignore me and offer up an alternate solution to this classic puzzle...
That's right, you could do it like everyone else and put the star in the star-shaped hole, or you could use your preternatural strength to force the star through the circle hole, even though it doesn't really fit. He wedged it in there pretty well, but was quite satisfied with this alternate solution.
Here we were preparing some food as we were getting ready for the arrival of Zach (my roommate at McGill) and Meg (his wife), who were taking a short vacation in Germany to visit Oktoberfest, among other things. Béla wanted to help me, so he sat on my lap and cried his way through the chopping of many onions.
Hmmm... I think that knife is a bit too big for him.
And finally, here's our crazy baby eating some raw garlic, after having a few good gnaws on the raw onion.

Day 6 - Kiev

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:50:00 +0000

The next day we were up bright and early to get a train to Kiev that left at around 6:30 in the morning. There were many overnight trains on this route as well, but we opted for the express, which got there in about 6.5 hours, leaving early in the morning. Upon arrival in Kiev we were pretty impressed by the train station. The back end, by the platforms, looked more like an airport than a train station (and not in a good way, more in an overcrowded and charmless way), but the entrance hall was magnificent. Here's are Béla and I taking it all in.
We weren't as well-informed as we should have been about the subway system, which has a stop right below the train station, so we ended up walking to the hotel. It wasn't really that far, and led us along the side of the botanical gardens, but it was so very very hot...

Here's a lovely church we passed along the way. We probably should have gone in, but all I was thinking about at this point was getting to the shelter of our hotel.

This was probably the nicest hotel room of our trip, but without a doubt the rudest service. It wasn't just to us - the woman at the reception couldn't bring herself to make eye contact with anyone, let along small talk, and made it quite clear that anything you were asking her was an enormous inconvenience. In her defense, it was ungodly hot, but it's still not much of an excuse. (This rude service was more than balanced by the lovely ladies at breakfast the next morning who tried to entertain Béla so I could eat my breakfast.)

Once we got to the room I needed to rest - the heat was really too much for me. Béla had a nap with me as well, but not before exploring the hotel room fully, including the inside of all the cupboards. Is that a nupboard in our cupboard? (A very sweaty nupboard...)
After I'd slept off some heat we headed out for a late supper. We were walking toward a particular restaurant that we'd read about, but the route took us down the main boulevard of Kiev, which was lined with blocky, imposing buildings. Unfortunately our pictures didn't come out so well in the low light of dusk, but here's a small sampling:

This digital clock tower played a scratchy recording of a song (a really familiar-sounding song which I can't place) followed by a bell tolling the hour, which just didn't seem to fit with the style of clock.
It also displayed the temperature, which, as you can see, was 32 C at 9:00 pm. (It was 33 C the cycle before, but we missed getting a picture of it. Still, damn hot for so late at night.)
The Georgian restaurant we went to was amazing, and the food was really delicious. Béla even ate a fair bit at this place, which wasn't always true for this trip. In both this post and the last one there are pictures of me nursing him at supper, and this was generally true throughout the trip. Either he slept through the meal and we tried to get snacks into him in between, or he showed no interest in eating and just wanted to nurse instead. He nursed more during the trip than he had in months, but it was a good thing given the heat and the fact that the tap water wasn't potable - at least with breast milk I knew he wasn't going to end up with traveller's diarrhea, the same of which couldn't be said for fresh fruits and vegetables (although we let him eat whatever he wanted).
This was part of the mural painted on the wall of the restaurant, which is pretty bizarre. I'm not really sure what this is about, but the scenery looks pretty mountainous, and apparently such things are done sometimes in Switzerland.
Finally after our delicious late supper we headed back to the hotel, via metro this time, after missing the last funicular that would have brought us back up the enormous hill that we walked down on the way there. (Kiev is situated on a river, the Dnipro, but most of the city, including where our hotel was, is on a plateau well above the river, while the area where the restaurant was was right down by the waterfront.) And this was the looooongest escalator I think I've even been on. I've seen other really long escalators in metros in eastern Europe before (Budapest and Prague spring to mind), but this was really the longest single escalator I think I've ever seen. It gave me vertigo to look down. (In fact, this poorly laid-out wikipedia page about escalators might indicate that the third longest (or highest?) escalator in the world is in the Kiev metro, after only Moscow and St. Petersburg, but I can't quite make sense of the entry.)

Day 5 - Lviv's Opera House

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 11:09:00 +0000

On our second day in Lviv we toured around some more, mostly downtown again. This was the only cool day of our entire trip. Lviv is usually a rainy city but in the last couple of weeks before we got there it had been nice and the heat had been building up. But finally, the night before it rained good and hard and brought the temperature down. I was very grateful for this since it had been very hot (32°C +) since we had left Jena. It made walking around very pleasant. Here is part of the old city walls we saw as we were making our way to the Opera house.

Also a funny camera shop add that had a elephant made out of camera equipment.

Before the opera house we stopped at a Viennese style cafe for coffee and cake. Bela had berries, I had a fancy cake with some kind of orange sauce, and Julia had some opiate seed cake... I mean poppy seed cake. I fact it she said it was the best she had ever had... and she felt great afterwards... and she put on a very energetic puppet show for Béla using removable parts from the stroller depicting bird beaks eating his belly (which he loved). Unrelatedly, we also heard that poppy seeds weren't held to the same "fun" removing processing found in the EU and probably North America, but that could have been a rumor.
This was just across the opera house's front square where every kid was riding a power wheel. This is the traditional way for parents enjoy the opera in Lviv; drop your kid of in the front yard with his or her power wheel, then sit back and enjoy the show. I'm kidding of course, there was no matinee that day. These were however for rent on the opera square and kids would used them more or less like bumper cars.
Sure beats having to buy one.
Then we went to check out the inside of the opera house.
As you can see the 'usual' fancy marble and carved wood that is so commonplace in grandiose late 19th century buildings. Just being silly, it was of course beautiful and very reminiscent of the Vienna opera house that my parents and I got a chance to see last year.
We were willingly subjected to a tour of the facility by a very nice extrovert who was waiting to prey on unsuspecting tourist for a very modest fee. She ran us through a quick and concise tour complete with many photo ops. Here is one illustrating the use of mirrors to give the illusion of having yet a bigger space. And of course 400 hundred Bélas.
Up there, not a window, more mirrors.
Laughing, about cry? I don't know but there are more mirrors.
The stage, displaying this beautiful mural while in wait.
And the whole family in one of the balconies. I was not allowed to go to close to the edge as I was holding Béla.
After that Béla slept through another fine Ukrainian meal. This is one of the many pints of Kvas we had during our time there. The linked page doesn't really do it justice I find or maybe we were especialy partial to it because of the high temperatures and the fact that it really filled the non-alcoholic alternative slot nicely, often needed when traveling with baby. Basically it's a fermented rye drink. It's fizzy and sweet but in both respects far less than pop and is often sold on tap from kegs or giant tanks on a trailer. Delicious and refreshing.
Here is our 'tourist' room at the George (the less fancy and less costly rooms). You actually had to open two pretty big doors to get in the room, one opening into the room and one into the hallway, on either side of the 2 foot thick wall. We really couldn't say the walls were paper thin but I'm pretty sure they had secret passages in them.
A somewhat better depiction of the actually very classy hotel we were in. Marblely.
Also the included breakfast was a delight. They had the usual cold cuts, bread, fruit, tomatoes and cucumbers we've come to expect in Germany but also many hot dishes including crepe/eggroll creations some that had cottage cheese and some cabbage. Also the next day we had to leave very early to catch the train to Kiev and we were supplied with breakfast brown bags to go. Very convenient.

Here is a poker-crib-sushi-bar call Montana. Interesting combination.
Here is Béla eating some borscht for our last meal in Lviv. We also had there perogies and ribs I think. All delicious.

Then we were off to Kiev to see...

Day 4 - Downtown Lviv

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 07:40:00 +0000

After the exciting night train, we arrived in Lviv at 6:00. We waited around for a while as we tried to figure out if our friend Myroslava's brother was coming to pick us up or not (there was some confusion with late-night text messages), but we eventually ended up walking into town. Here's the train station in the early morning sun. The writing in Cyrillic on the building says the name of the city.
The walk into town was pleasant, but it was already clear by 7:00 that it was going to be a really hot day. We went to our hotel but it was too early to check in, but we were able to leave our luggage at least. From there we headed to a park across the street in the middle of a central boulevard, where we had a leisurely breakfast on a park bench while Béla played with stacking blocks and we watched the people heading to work.

We were right next to a statue of Jesus, around which an old woman was expending lots of energy tending to the flowers, and just a bit further down was a statue of Mary. I couldn't believe how many people, some quite young, stopped on their morning commute to pray for a few minutes before the statues. I really don't think I've seen such public displays of devotion in a Christian community before.

Our friend Myroslava (who works at the same place as me, and who grew up in Lviv before immigrating to Canada when she was a young teen) explained that the statue of Mary had been removed by the Soviets, and the church in general was really repressed. Because this region of western Ukraine is the most anti-Russian of all, they flocked back to the church after independence as a way of demonstrating their freedom. It's also a region where everyone speaks Ukrainian, rather than a mix of Ukrainian and Russian (as in Kiev) or only Russian (as in Crimea, in southern Ukraine).

Further up the same square is a statue of Taras Shevchenko, a very famous Urkainian poet who is also featured on the 100 hryvnia bank note.
And still further up the square is the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet, which is featured on the 20 hryvnia note. We went on a tour of it the next day, but I'll get back to that.
The first day in Lviv we spent a lot of time wandering around, checking out various churches. This one impressed me in particular with the amount of embroidery! Look at the sashes around all the paintings...
...and a little closer...
...and a little closer...
...and closer still! That's a lot of stitches!
We toured the central market square...

...and visited an outdoor used book market, which is held around the base of a statue of Federov, who was instrumental in introducing the printing press to eastern Slavonic languages, and who lived in Lviv in the 16th century. (A good place for a book market, isn't it?) Jeremi was impressed with his style, and was wishing that he had a long apron too.
One of the many picturesque buildings around town...
Here's one of the four fountains that are found in the corners of the bustling town square.
We had a lovely lunch while Béla slept, enjoying the view of the Bohemian Chapel behind him.
After lunch we had a bit of a nap to recover from our night of customs, and to get away from the heat a little. In the late afternoon we met up with Taras, Myroslava's brother, who lives in Lviv, and his girlfriend Yuda. They took us around to see some of the sights of the city, such as this little art gallery/café, with a cool ladder going somewhere...
We went out for desserts and coffee, and then later went for supper at a theme restaurant, which was set up to be like a resistance camp of partisans against the Russians during the war, with country-style food, like what they'd have in the camps, and a guard at the door in an antique uniform (with an antique weapon) checking for Russians and asking for the password (which was something like death to Russians). This all really underlined the fact that we were in Western Ukraine. Here we are, enjoying our meal.
Look at the size of that kolbasa! And it was sooo delicious. This was also the first place where we tried salo, a Ukrainian specialty of seasoned slices of pork fat. It sounds a bit gross, but was really surprisingly delicious, and went incredibly well with its garnish of chunks of raw garlic. Yum!
Here's the basement of the restaurant, which had live music as well. The atmosphere here was a bit more lively, but they asked for us to sit elsewhere so that Béla wasn't exposed to cigarette smoke, which I thought was really thoughtful.
Afterward we went for a walk through the city together, stopping to enjoy the romantic views around the fountain in front of the opera house. At this point it even started to rain a little, which continued into the next day, providing the one cool and cloudy day of our vacation. We'll tell you more about the next day in Lviv in the next post...

Night 3 - Night train to Lviv, Ukraine

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 07:32:00 +0000

Everyone had warned us about the trains in Eastern Europe, about how they were always late and crowded and slow and dirty and not air conditioned, and that even the first class wouldn't be as nice as German second class compartments. (And we did splurge for the first class, as it meant we had our own sleeping cabin, which seemed worth it with a baby, and wasn't all that expensive compared to German trains).

Well were we ever pleasantly surprised! The first night train we were on had really fabulous little cabins, complete with a little sink with running water that was cleverly folded away into a little cupboard. (I really wish we'd taken a picture of that!) The conductors were also dressed more like flight attendants, and came around shortly after we started to offer coffee or tea, the latter of which came with slices of lemon in these really cool glass mugs with pewter handles.

Here's the view from the bottom bunk, where Béla and I were cozily snuggled in together. At first this didn't seem like it was going to work so well, mostly because the bed slanted slightly, and a bit the wrong way (i.e. so that I was worried about rolling out in the night). The bar on which the folding mattress rested was a bit loose, which wasn't at all dangerous, but meant that it leaned a bit outward. It was remedied by shoving Jeremi's sandals between the bed and the bar, and we slept find after that. That's our big backpack wedged up over the door, which will be relevant later.
I sort of wish we'd taken more pictures of our compartment, but we were really ready to get right to sleep. The train went from something like 10:00 to 6:00, which sounds like we were on board for 8 hours, but it was only really 7 hours because there's a time change, and it took us an hour to get Béla to sleep after he'd explored the train compartment fully, and beyond that we were crossing a border in the middle of the night, so we knew we'd have to wake up for that. What I didn't realize is just how long we'd have to be awake for that...

First the conductor came around and knocked on every door so we would wake up and open our doors, and he handed around entry and exit forms that we had to fill out. (Because Béla has his own passport rather than being included in my passport, which isn't very common in Eastern Europe, I filled one out for him as well.) Then we waited a while. Here's Béla waiting for the border guard to come around, passport at the ready. (Yup, his feet were really dirty.)
First came the Polish border guard, who collected all our passports so that we could get exit stamps. We waited a while, and another border guard brought them back. Again, we waited.
Next came a Ukrainian border guard in military fatigues who took away all our passports and the completed forms. He didn't understand why there were three passports but only two people, so we showed him the sleeping baby, and he laughed at his passport photo, and gave us Béla's form back. Then we waited a while longer. Next came a woman from customs, who was going through peoples' bags. Because the big backpack was shoved up over the door she didn't notice it, which saved us having to go through everything. (There was nothing of interest in there anyhow.) Then we waited a while longer. Finally, a different Ukrainian border guard came, this one in a fancier uniform, and gave back the passports with entry stamps inside, and the entry part of our immigration forms removed.

Finally, we could get back to sleep. All in all we were awake for at least two hours at the border, which made the 6:00 am arrival in Lviv seem all the earlier. But for that, you'll have to wait for the next post.

Day 3: The Salt Mines

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 14:12:00 +0000

The next day we were taking a night train to Lviv, leaving at something like 10 pm, so we still had the whole day to explore the city. After a nice breakfast, we headed to the train station to store our luggage, knowing that we didn't want to cart it around all day. From there we planned on visiting the Wieliczka Salt Mines, which aren't so very far away from Krakow. These salt mines are a UNESCO World Heritage site, and had been a place I'd wanted to visit since I read about them as a kid. (Yes, I really do love salt...) The guide book (Lonely Planet Eastern Europe) indicated that there should be minibuses leaving from a given intersection downtown, and we decided to go and check out if these minibuses looked remotely babysafe, and then decide if we were going based on that. But first we stopped at a little market and bought some food for a quick little lunch, trying out some street food (like long open-faced subs that we saw everywhere), and these seemingly homemade molded pastries that were being sold by women from little carts in the street:
We were surprised by how much they were charging for these little "pastries", and then surprised by how heavy they were... And of course it's because they weren't pastries at all, but rather smoked cheese. It was really delicious, but we probably wouldn't have bought quite as much had we known it was cheese.

And then on to the salt mines... or so we thought. Lonely Planet let us down in a pretty big way on this one - there were no longer minibuses of any description going to Wieliczka, and none from the intersection in questions. We still wandered around for quite a while trying to find them though, before we asked at the tourist information centre, where they very helpfully gave us information about how to take a city bus out to the town, which was only about a 40 minute ride away. Getting to the bus stop was a bit of a fiasco, mostly because we somehow lost the map they gave us but thought we could do it from memory, and ended up walking around a big block and seeing the bus we wanted drive by us three times while we tried to find the stop. Eventually we did though (after getting directions at a giant fancy mall that had more high end stores than most airports), and we were off!

Luckily we got there shortly before an English-language tour was due to begin, so we didn't have to wait too long upon arrival. We'd already checked the stroller at the train station, as we figured that salt mines were probably not very stroller friendly, which proved to be a good decision, as the tour began by descending 378 stairs to get to the bottom. By the end my knees were really feeling the extra 25 pounds of Béla in the carrier! Check out the view down the centre of the stairwell - it looked like it went on forever...
Yes, mom, I'm a little sherpa.
There were lots of warnings to bring a jacket because it was cold underground, but we found it remarkably comfortable. (We'd read it would be 14 C, but I think it was more like 18 C.)
Here's one of the many statues in one of the chambers we visited. Everything there was made out of solid salt - the carvings, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, with the exception of some wooden support structures. (Wood keeps really well there because all the salt prevents rot.) This statue is of Copernicus, who was, of course, Polish.
These statues tell the legend of the founding of the mine, something about a noblewoman throwing her golden ring down the shaft, and then the riches of the salt deposits being discovered. In this and other pictures you get an idea of how dark the salt rock is - it's something like 92 % NaCl, but the impurities make it look really dark, and it's sometimes called "green salt". Naturally it's refined before use.
Here there were some stalactites of pure salt, really long ones, that reminded me of crystal-growing "experiments" with salt water and hanging strings as a kid.
Here's a chandelier in one of the many chapels. The "glass" in the chandelier is also salt, but it's been purified to appear clear rather than grey-green.
Despite the dark appearance of the "stones", they really taste like salt. Mooo...
This is a bit hard to see, but it's a statue of a miner doing a special job where they'd try to burn off methane build-up using lanterns on long poles. Naturally a very dangerous job, with lots of casualties, and no longer necessary in the still-functioning part of the mine thanks to modern technologies.

There were lots of little models showing how things used to be done in the mine, including the use of horses underground.
Along this particular section of wall you could see how cylinders were drilled in to break off chunks, reminding me of granite rock cuts in Northern Ontario.
One of the more narrow white-washed passages...
Hard to see, but here there was a view down a sort of canyon in the series of tunnels and chambers where you could see down something like 70 meters. Of course it's rather dark, and we're not the best photographers.
Here's a set of the original stairs used by the miners, which were carved out of salt. Of course they get rather slippery when wet and wear down over time, so they've replaced most of them with wood for the tourists.
Here's an underground stream running through the mine, with something like 18% salt in the water (saturated in any case, I don't remember the exact figure).
Hard to see here, but the water was actually sort of a greenish colour. It looks rusty here just because the vessel is rusting (of course).
This room had carvings of the little gnome-like spirits that the miners believed lived underground in the mine.
This was one of the smaller chapels, one of more than a dozen built by the rather religious miners over the years.

But that little one was nothing - this is the Chapel of St. Kinga, which was truly breathtaking. My favourite part was the "tiles", which were designs routed into the solid salt floor.
There were also lots of other carvings though, like in any church, with bas relief reproductions of the last supper, and a giant statue of Pope John Paul II.
Béla loved it, of course. He was quite a hit on our tour in fact, and coped well with the three hour tour, which is longer than he likes to be in the carrier these days. At least in the big chapel I could let him out to run around.
That's the Last Supper on the left...
From there the tour continued, and we went to the Weimar chamber, which was cool for us because Weimar is a city really close to Jena (about 25 km away). Goethe is a really famous German poet and writer who lived and worked in Weimar and surroundings, but he actually came to visit the mine in his earlier career, when he was a German civil servant and was coming to inspect the mine operations. Here he is now!
And here's the sign for the Weimar chamber, which had water in the bottom and a really high ceiling with wonderful acoustics, and we were treated to a piece of music by Chopin (who was Polish) while we contemplated the beauty (and we tried to keep Béla respectfully quiet - he found the echo in the giant chamber rather fun).
At the end of the tour we had supper at the restaurant at the bottom of the mine, which serves up traditional Polish food cafeteria-style, and is meant to be a bit like what the miners get in their cafeteria. Honestly, the food was delicious and quite affordable, and Béla ran around like a mad man, burning off his excess energy, while we enjoyed our meal.

After that we headed toward the exit, which led us by the big event hall with the fancy dining room, shown here. This place is rather classy, and is famous for a big New Year's Eve ball, as well as private functions, including weddings.

Thank God we didn't have to walk back up the stairs! Instead there was a cage-style elevator that brought us up, and which freaked the hell out of Béla. He screamed from the moment the doors closed until the moment we exited, which was actually a pretty long time given that we were 125 m underground. I'm not sure if it was the darkness or the claustrophobia or the creepy elevator operator who he was smooshed in next to, but he settled down as soon as we exited. I haven't noticed him being nervous or upset in other small spaces, so maybe it was just a one-off. And even if he has an irrational fear of cage elevators in salt mines operated by creepy men, he'll probably be able to make it through life without it holding him back too much...

After that we took the bus back into the city, stopped at the high-end mall to pick up some eats for the train, grabbed our luggage, and headed on to Lviv. We'll tell you all about the train trip in the next post.

Day 2 Krakow's Vavel Castle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 08:34:00 +0000

After getting off the noisiest train ever, we made our way to our hostel, the Secret Garden, hidden away in the former Jewish quarter of Krakow. It was a nice place where all the rooms had been given names pertaining to a fruit. We were in the Raspberry Elation room. We got in pretty late so we went to bed right away after a long day of travel. The next day we headed out to see downtown Krakow. The old city and market square are surrounded by a nice park, which makes a nice separation for the locals from the annoying tourists. Here is Béla sleeping next to a pretty cool fountain. It has three arms that shoot water at a big slab of cement. Slightly less conventional than the usual squirt-water-directly-up models.

Here is Julia in the market square. At two hundred meters squared (not 200m², twice the size of our apartment, but 200x200=40 000m²) it is the largest medieval town square in Europe and surrounded by beautiful buildings. In the very center is the old cloth market building, behind Julia. It now houses a bunch of souvenir shops that actually don't look all that tacky. They have a lot of traditional crafts including woodwork, amber jewelery, embroidery, and little dolls.

Here is Béla going at some corn on the cob that we bought from a vendor on the square. He did pretty well on it.

And as you can see here, he loved using the cob as a teething toy. Zombie Béla will eat your corn!
At one of the squares corners is the St. Mary's Basilica, a brick Gothic church where a trumpeter signals the hour with a song that is cut off mid note to commemorate the famous 13th century trumpeter, who was shot in the throat while sounding the alarm before the Mongol attack on the city

There were little carts all over the place selling sesame-covered bagel-like bread, which I can't bring myself to call bagels because they don't really resemble either the Montreal or the New York version of the food. Still, they were tasty, cheap, and ubiquitous, so we had a few along the way. They also sold little tiny bagels on a string, and we saw some kids wearing them, so we got a mini bagel necklace for Béla to wear. He tore into them, devouring only a few completely, but taking chunks out of almost all of them. He was quite pleased.

For lunch we found a nice place that served traditional Polish food. Julia had the perogies, I had the mixed grill and Béla had fun at a nearby fountain. There were many children playing with the several jets coming out of the ground in front of the fountain. Bela did really well with this. He is not crazy about having fun with water and is usually very cautious in a pool or the bath tub. But he went right up to these and splashed around and didn't even cry when he was accidentally splashed by other kids.

Then we made our way to Wawel (pronounced Vavel) Castle. A short walk from downtown, it is perched on a hill on the banks of the Vistula, the river that runs through Krakow, and houses a cathedral and several museums. They only let a certain number of people into the museums a day so by the time we got there we only got to see the state rooms and I went to see the cathedral. Here is the entrance to the castle, a long ramp going up onto the defensive position.

There was also a Dragon!! More on that later

Behind Julia is the cathedral, cathedral museum and parts of the rest of the castle. We stopped here to catch our breaths and let Béla sleep a little after his mini-bagel orgy. The cob is also in there somewhere. (Note from Julia: After he awoke and we took away his bagel necklace I found out that these little bagels were actually rather sweet, unlike their larger sesame-covered kin. As I'd spent the past six months carefully guarding Béla from any refined sugars, I was mortified, but I needn't have worried - by the end of the trip he'd be eating far worse...)
I went to check out the cathedral while Julia stayed with Béla since there were a lot of awkward stairs packed with tourist that we didn't feel like carrying him up. The Cathedral was nice with many gilded decoration and fancily carved wood. Then we went on to the state rooms. In each room they had a loosely wood-framed map on a lectern describing the antiques in the room. Béla loved to grab these and tear them apart from the carrier that Julia was wearing. After a couple times he wasn't allowed to go near them any more, but this also meant that Julia couldn't get near enough to read the interpretive signs, which is something that she loves. The room were pretty grandiose, often with interesting paintings and designs on the ceiling. One had deep squares cut out and squares in the middle of the room had a bunch of carved heads looking down at you, quite surprising. Another few had leather wall paper, which Julia noticed. Unfortunately we weren't permitted to take photos inside, and didn't want to push our luck after the wooden sign fiasco. Here is a picture of the courtyard.
Here's a picture from the court yard looking through the wall and over the outer wall at a few tall church steeples.
On the way to the bathrooms outside of the courtyard we saw a couple of strangely inclined benches. They were made to sit a little farther down that street where the incline is much greater but someone had dragged them up.
After all that, Julia went dragon slaying in the dragons den. I'll let Julia interject with her comments on the den, Julia:

We were all supposed to go to the Dragon's Den, but unfortunately there was an incredibly long spiral staircase heading down into it, which just wasn't practical with a stroller. I went ahead then on my own, unfortunately without the camera. As the stairs wound down it got cooler and cooler, until the walls were dripping with condensation. Eventually it led into a natural cave at the base of the hill, which exited right onto the riverbank, where I could wait for Jer and Béla. Now back to Jeremi.

Meanwhile, me and Béla went the long way out of the castle to avoid the pesky dragons. Little did we know that it was waiting outside it's den for us, where we were supposed to meet Julia. Much in the style that Béla defeats the cat, he went in to pull the fire breathing monstrosity's scaly tail. Here he is getting the drop on it (see lower left).
And, yes, it did actually breath fire. Every couple minutes a flame would burst out of it's mouth.

And the peasants rejoiced frolicking around the defeated dragon.

This is one of the castle's towers seen from the river.
Then we went back to the Raspberry Room for a diaper party/drop off our souvenir loot, before going to look for one of the kosher restaurants recommended by the hostel.
Béla didn't quite make it there and slept through the meal. Nice for us, quiet diner, but unfortunately this started a bit of a trend where Béla would fall asleep every time we stopped at a restaurant. This means that we had to find other times to feed him and that the breast milk demands went up.
We had a lovely kosher meal; Julia ordered a bean and buckwheat stew that although salty was very good not to mention that it came in a giant portion, which meant we could bring some back to the hostel for Béla to eat when he awoke. (Yes, I know, salty food is terrible for babies. Didn't you already read about the sugar-bagels? We're terrible parents!) I had goose necks stuffed with chicken livers. Julia was thrilled to have Haroseth for dessert, bringing back old Seder memories.

Also noteworthy is how hot it was, or at least how hot we thought it was. It was actually only in the low 30s that day. Little did we know what crazy temperatures would be in store for us as our trip went on. As you read the following posts, it will become apparent why I say "only in the low 30s". The next day we went mining. Stay tuned for day 3.

Eastern European tour: Day 1 Jena-Krakow

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:57:00 +0000

To help deal with the overwhelming amount of pictures and information, we've decided to break our vacation up into days. This makes the first post rather boring, however, since it was almost entirely a travel day. We left Jena at 8:45 am, and didn't arrive in Krakow until around 9:30 pm after taking four trains. We also have almost only a few pictures from this day, including this young traveller waiting on the platform in Großheringen, just north of Jena, who looked as if he were heading out on a round-the-world tour by himself.

The train left a bit before Béla's usual waking time, so we were packed and ready to leave while he was still sound asleep. So we wrapped him in a blanket and got him into the stroller without waking him up, and he only woke later to find himself without any pants on, waiting on a train platform. He took this all in stride of course, which I don't think I would, in his position.
This was our first train of the day, which had a small-child-compartment, in which we found a sleeping train employee, which was sort of unusual. You can see him there in the background, after he woke up. (Usually this compartment is only for families with small kids.)
Overall the day went off without a hitch, which is all you can ask of a travel day. We had an hour to kill in Berlin so we had a nice picnic in a park near the train station inside old prison walls. From there we were on a train to Warsaw, of which we saw only the rather grim train station as we ran for a tight connection to Krakow. This train was by far the worst of our trip, though we didn't know it at the time. Everyone had warned us about the poor quality of eastern European trains, but this was really the only train that seemed unusually bad. I've never been in such a noisy train, and when it went over certain sections of track it shook back and forth so violently that you had to hold on. It's hard to explain just how rough a ride it was. (Béla found it exciting, after he woke from a long nap during which the rocking and vibrations seemed to help him sleep.) We'll tell you more about Krakow in our next post.

Béla is one year old

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:44:00 +0000

That's right, as of Monday, Béla is one year old. And what a year it's been! He's more than tripled his birth weight, and has grown a whole foot in length. He's been to eight different countries (plus an additional four in utero), and three different continents. He's learned how to walk, climb, and play, and he makes us laugh continually. He's really a happy baby, and generally pretty easy going. At the last immunization appointment he was 11.4 kg (over 25 lb) and 79 cm tall, and he's got all eight of his incisors now. After flirting with green, his eyes are now decidedly brown.

This past month was a month of travelling, which we'll blog about soon enough, but he still managed to learn a few things along the way. He started walking backwards, which delights him to no end, even though it results in banging into something from time to time. His stacking skills have improved, with three objects being common now, and I've seen four on at least one occasion. He can scribble with a pen or crayon now (see video in birthday party post), and is pretty good at it even. Interestingly, he does it preferentially with his right hand, contrary to how he earlier ate with mostly his left. He has a little riding car that he's just figured out how to propel forward, which is quite exciting. He still loves opening and closing, and putting things in and out. Light switches are also much loved these days. He also really likes negotiating ridiculously large and heavy objects. The packages that came with his gifts meant that there were lots of big boxes that could be pushed around, lifted (even when barely possible), and climbed on. A current favourite toy is the broom, which he gets from behind the bathroom door and carries around the apartment, carefully negotiating it through doorways. He doesn't like being read to as much as he used to - he seems to lack the patience now. He still brings us books to read to him, and is quite happy for about the first four pages, but then he wants to get a new one.

The biggest news this month though is that he's started daycare! Here there are two basic styles of state-supported daycare, one in big centres (called Kindergarten), and the other only for kids under three, which has one caregiver for up to five children. It's like an in-home daycare, except that they're usually not in a home, but rather in a separate flat or business place (at least the ones that we've seen). He's going to the latter kind, which is usually called the Tagesmutter (which literally means "day mother", which I hate, because I'm still his mother during the day, even if I'm at work, although there is one Tagesvater ("day father") in Jena, and all the official documents call them the Tagespfleger ("day carer")). After much stress and searching and a Tagesmutter who decided to stop being a Tagesmutter after we'd settled upon her, we ended up with a spot in a newly opened place only six doors away on our street with the Tagesmutter Susi. She's great, and the location couldn't be better.

Here they have a really good structured introduction phase of two weeks before you go back to work where the child visits for a little longer each day. First he went for one hour at the end of the day and Jeremi stayed with him, then it was an hour at the start, and then Jeremi left during an hour and a half. By the end of last week he was staying for a whole morning by himself, and yesterday he stayed for naptime too, and Jeremi picked him up only an hour early. So far it's gone really well, and he hasn't cried at all when being dropped off. In fact, he's thrilled to get to play with the other kids, particularly one older boy, Bruno. Today is his first full day. We were worried about shifting his schedule to the timetable of the Tagesmutter, with drop-off at 8:00, when he was usually up at least until 10:00 pm and sleeping until around 9:00, but it's been okay. (He did have a couple nights when he crashed early and hard though, falling asleep in the high chair during supper.)

Here he is going out on his first day of daycare:
He was ready to go! Papa wanted to stop him from running down the stairs himself, mind you.
And so they decided to go together.

And here he is trying on all his new raingear, which we had to get so he could go out to the playground with the others, even if it's raining:
Check out all his reflective stripes!

How cute is that? (There's a little red sou'wester coming soon from the same company, but they were sold out and had to ship it a bit later.) His red rubber boots are also really sweet, but he can't walk in them properly yet. I'm sure he'll figure it out soon enough.

Bela's First Birthday Party!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:48:00 +0000

Monday was Béla's first birthday, and while any normal Canadian family would have held the party on the weekend before, this is considered really bad luck in Germany, and just isn't done. We could have had it the weekend after, but it's a little too far past the date, and I'm heading to Oxford for work next Sunday, so it wasn't the best choice for us. And so we had a party starting from 4:00 on Monday afternoon.

I stayed home, and Béla was only at the daycare for half the day because it's still the introductory phase, which meant that we had time to Skype with my parents beforehand while he opened the packages from my family, and I was there to film him opening the present from daycare and playing around a bit before his nap. It also made the preparation a bit easier.

We invited three other babies and their parents, the mothers with whom I met most often while on parental leave. There was Kerrin and Sebastian and their daughter Hanna, who is only 9 days older than Béla. We met them at prenatal class, and the whole class met throughout the year as a playgroup, which I went to for a while. They live right around the corner as well, and Sebastian was also staying home with Hanna for the latter part of the year, so he and Jeremi met up quite often. Also in attendance were Hanna and Andrew (who I know from my German class, he's American and she's German, and they both work on the same campus as me) and their daughter Ella, who is two months older than Béla. Also there were Dai and Bakr (he's in my department at work, and she's his Egyptian-Canadian wife who I met with often, sometimes to help her with translation) and their son Eiad, who is four months younger than Béla. Also in attendance were Klaus and Sina and their six year-old son Yannik, our downstairs neighbours.

Here you can see Béla opening one of his presents - a riding car from Bakr and Dai. (That's Eiad in the upper right, and Ella in the lower left.)

A wider scene where you can see more parents. Unfortunately it was really cold and rainy (a high of maybe 15 C or so), so a garden party was out of the question. Instead we rearranged our furniture a bit to get three couches in the living room, which worked well for 10 adults, four babies and a child.
Kerrin and Hanna, trying out the crayon/paint pencils that they gave Béla.
Here Béla's working on opening a big package from Hanna, Andrew and Ella.
And here he's checking out the contents - a big picture book with scenes full of people and objects for pointing out what things are.
An overview of the spread - I cooked a lot getting ready for the party, and I don't think anyone left hungry! (Okay, so Bakr and Dai left hungry, but only because it's Ramadan, and they brought home lots of food to eat after sundown!)
Some highlights: the potato salad that looks like a fish, a classic family recipe from my Baba. I thought of her while making it too, and how she'd be happy to know it was being eaten at Béla's party. People were quite impressed by the radish scales and cucumber teeth.
A very delicious roast of beef, which was prepared the day before and served cold. I tried to get all the cooking done on Sunday and it was a cold buffet, so we only had to put things out.
The veggie tray, which was served with homemade tzatziki. There was an even prettier fruit platter, but it wasn't out yet, so it didn't get photographed.
One of my favourite breads - a rich braided loaf, each strand of which is stuffed with a poppyseed, shallot, parmesan cheese mixture. It was served with both butter and a slightly spicy spread made with puréed corn, butter, onions, and spices. (It's much tastier than it sounds.) My friend Julia had made the spread before and I liked it so much I wanted the recipe, so she re-borrowed the book from the library for me after she'd thought that she had bought it. It was all very complicated, but worth it, because the spread is that good.
And a perennial fall favourite (in Germany), Zwiebelkuchen (or onion tart), served with Federweißer, a sort of young wine.
We put a few lentils in some of the balloons so that they rattle, which made for lots of fun and lots of noise. Speaking of noise, my brother sent a variety of noise-making gifts for Béla, to get me back for a really loud electronic drum that I bought for Owen in Tokyo. You can see a xylophone in this picture, which Béla loves, but there is also a tambourine and a clapper that looks like a crocodile. In fact, due to some confusion with online ordering, we received a case of 12 individually-packaged crocodile clappers, some of which we then gave out as party favours. I'm sure they'll all find happy homes eventually!
Chris and Karen et al. also sent us a cool pop-up tent/tunnel complex, which we broke out at the end of the party when it was just Kerrin, Sebastian and Hanna. We still have to set it up in full and let him explore, but the early reviews are quite positive, despite falling in it, smashing his face, and bleeding all over from his lip at the end of the night. He was still in good spirits despite this and an earlier fall in the kitchen that left him with a big bruise on his forehead. I have to say, he dealt with all the fuss of his birthday with remarkable poise. I think he likes being the centre of attention!
And finally, we filmed a bunch of things throughout the day, and added in a couple balloon-themed clips from the two weeks prior, so you can get a taste of not only Béla's birthday party, but also see what he's up to these days - how big he is, what he can do, how generally cute he is... But just to warn you, it's about 11 minutes long, so get comfortable!

11 months old! And we're heading out on vacation!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:44:00 +0000

Prescript: I wrote this post at work, so it's not directly related to the pictures. Instead, I'm adding pictures with captions in brackets throughout the text, to make it more fun to read.(Last weekend we had a lazy morning, which meant that breakfast took a little longer than Béla wanted. When I came to the kitchen from the bathroom I found he'd taken things into his own hands and gone rummaging in the cupboards - not unusual by itself - and found...)
(...a bag of raw potatoes, which he started to eat. Poor starving thing! He's nothing but skin and bones... ...and substantial amounts of muscle and fat and plump little organs.)

Today Béla is 11 months old. I swear he's grown in the two weeks since his last doctor's appointment, and his hair is definitely getting longer and thicker. It even looks a bit shaggy now, which I love.
(One morning when I was leaving for work, and Béla was already down for his first nap of the day, joined by his sleepy papa.)

This week marked the first time that he spent a night away from me, as I travelled to Bonn Monday night for a meeting at the German space agency (DLR) on Tuesday. Béla and Jeremi did just fine, though he wasn't impressed with having to wait for the bottle to get ready the two times he woke up to eat in the night.
(Trying to decide which bucket fit best on his head. It's a shame we didn't get a better picture of him wearing the yellow one - it looks like a big fez on him, like in the Julius Meinl coffee logo:)

Yup, he still wakes up to eat pretty often. He really slept through well the first 5-6 months, and now wakes up at least once, and sometimes more. I'm convinced that he needs the food though, and that it's not something that needs to be "trained" out, and we're nowhere near desperate enough to attempt any sort of sleep training that involves crying. Usually he wakes up, nurses, and goes right back to sleep. Occasionally, less than once a week, he wakes up and is quite alert and wants to play. At this point, when nursing doesn't get him back down, Jeremi gets up with him. Sometimes they just have to go to the living room to play for a little, sometimes he needs a little midnight snack (of food, not milk). One time this past week when he woke up hungry and I nursed him on both sides and he was still desperately hungry and not going back to sleep, Jer got up with him and got him a bottle of cow's milk (we've started introducing this over the past couple weeks), and he drank 300 ml (~10 ounces), after being nursed. This is partly why I'm convinced that he's waking up because he's really hungry. And he's really growing! Right before our eyes! He was 26 pounds on the bathroom scale this morning, which is two pound more than he weighed on our scale last month.

(He's been playing with the pots for a while now, but on this particular morning he was smashing together two pot lids like cymbals, which pleased him to no end. It also gives me ideas of dressing him up in a monkey suit with a little red velvet vest and gold cymbals as a Halloween costume. Oh, how I wish Germans liked Halloween more. All my costume-making energy is wasted here. Our area doesn't even really go in for Carnival so much, unlike some regions of Germany.)

He's getting more active and independent by the day, and spends lots of time walking around, bringing items from room to room. He loves moving shoes, and it's quite standard to have to hunt for one or both of them before leaving the house. They might be in the bathtub, the bedroom, the kitchen cupboard, or the playpen. There's really no way to know. Last night he put one of my shoes in the oven, which thankfully wasn't turned on, which is partly why we're trying to get him to stop playing with the oven in general.
(Here he is, wearing his Osh Kosh 18 month overalls for the first time. They're still a little long, but definitely not too narrow! And yes, that's a pile of cardamom powder that he's standing in.)
(Looking like a baby, on his hands and knees. His eyes look pretty brown here, but they're a little greenish. I hope they stay a bit green like mine, but I'm sure he'll be gorgeous regardless.)
(Absolute concentration...)

This month marked the first time that he can actually get the stacking rings onto the classic Fisher Price stacking ring toy, which has been very exciting. He's also moved from inside-outside (the concept that informed all of his play last month) to open-closed. Anything that can be opened and closed must be repeatedly opened and closed, or else he becomes quite frustrated. This is hard, because some things he's not yet able to open on his own, at which point he hands it toward whichever parent is there, and if you don't immediately open it, he starts to get rather angry. But of course some things we'd rather he not open, like the jars of spices that he plays with (though he did manage to spill cardamom powder all over the hall last week). There's one plastic case that holds a deck of cards that we've renamed "the box of unending sorrow", as he had so much trouble opening it at first, and it made him cry so many times. (It's better now, partly because his motor skills are improving, and partly because he wore down the clasp through repeated use.) The plastic wipes box with the lid that flips open is also a particular favourite.
(Playing with his friend Hanna, the daughter of friends of ours who we met at prenatal classes, and who conveniently live around the corner from us. Hanna is 11 days older than Béla, and her dad's at home with her right now too, so he and Jer hang out, just as her mom and I hung out when I was at home.)
(Hanna and her dad, Sebastian. They get together every week or so. I got together with all the moms and babies from the prenatal class while I was off, they meet roughly weekly, but I haven't seen them since April, but apparently Hanna and Béla are the only ones walking so far!)

In other non-milestone-related news, we're heading out on vacation tomorrow! We're doing a bit of a crazy tour, travelling over 2700 km by train, stopping in Krakow (Poland), Lviv, Kiev, Bakhchysaray, and Sevastopol (all in Ukraine), and then going by ferry across the Black Sea to Istanbul, where we're spending a week, meeting up with our friend Marie. (See approximate train route on the map below.) From there we're flying back to Berlin, and finally taking the train back to Jena. All told we'll be travelling for 18 days. We likely won't be updating the blog in the meantime, but you'll hear all about it once we're back, of course.

Größere Kartenansicht

(After having removed everything from the cupboard, there was clearly plenty of room to climb in. Of course!)

Check up number six

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:13:00 +0000

Yesterday Béla when in for his 6th official check-up. His cholesterol isn't too high and his heart is in good shape, so no statins yet. He impressed the doctor with his walking and she said that he was as advanced as a 1 year old. His stats as of July 12th:

Weight: 11.02 kg (24.2 lbs)
Height: 78 cm (30.7 inches)

Here he is healthily waving around a cardboard tube.

The day before he also went to the dentist for the first time. This time they were impressed with how many teeth he already had, which is 7 now. We went to a kids dentist and they had a ball pen, slide, aquarium and other random toys in the waiting room. I put him in the ball pen but he didn't seem to be that interested.

In other news, it was too hot to live here for a while, which is also why he's not wearing any clothes in a lot of these pictures. Here is is having a sweaty nap on the couch:
...while Aeris was napping in the playpen (aka "castle"), wishing she could sweat.
All this naked hanging out meant that not much besides the chair and his diaper got stained while he enjoyed quite a good serving of pitted cherries. Here he's kindly offering me one.
With all that heat he went swimming a few more times, but we still haven't managed to get a picture of it. Maybe while we're on vacation...

The other big news over the past couple of weeks was our anniversary! Not the anniversary itself, which is really just another day, but the fact that Béla was babysat for only the second time, and we were able to go out together, just the two of us, for the second time since he was born. (The first time was while we were visiting Canada in April.) But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before the babysitting and the evening out, we first had a lovely riverside picnic to celebrate our anniversary, complete with bottle of fancy champagne thanks to Paul and Betty Ann. Here Jeremi's popping the cork, while trying not to blind himself:

Jeremi was very clever, and brought along two blankets, which meant that there was more room for Béla to run around, and he actually stayed on the blankets playing for the first hour at least, meaning that we could have a relaxing picnic without having to continually chase him as he ran for the river. He did eventually venture off the blankets, at which point he started collecting beer caps. How lovely. And he did make it down to the water's edge, but then I was right there with him, and we dipped our feet in the Saale. But while we ate leisurely, he was content to play with his stacking cups while staying right on the blanket.

We had little puddings for dessert, which Béla doesn't get yet because we're trying to avoid giving him sugar until he's at least a year, but I did let him have at the container once I was done...

And then he impressed the pants off me by trying to put the cork back into the bottle. It was impossible, of course, especially with the giant corks in champagne bottles, but I was really impressed that he even knew that the cork belonged to the bottle, so long after Jeremi had taken it out. (It had been long enough that the bottle was empty already, and we weren't drinking quickly.)

Now on to the babysitting! Our friend Grit is visiting from Ithaca for the summer, staying with her parents (she's from Jena), and she and her mom babysat Béla from 4:00 until 9:00 pm the Saturday before our anniversary, and it went really well! We felt a little mean because he fell asleep in the stroller on the way to their house, so we were sort of sneaking off while he was asleep, but apparently he woke up just as we were leaving the garden (which we didn't notice), and saw us walking away, and didn't really mind. Besides, they have a parrot, which is far more interesting than his boring old parents. They took a bunch of pictures while he was there, but only one of them with our camera, which we had inadvertently left with him. Here he is with Grit's mom, reading a new touchy-feely book in German that she bought him for the occasion:He had a great time, and so did we! We got all dressed up and went out for a nice supper, and Béla played and played, finally dropping from exhaustion around 8:00, and still soundly sleeping when we picked him up later. Hooray! Babysitting success!

Summer fun (and 10 months old)!

noreply@blogger.com (Julia) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:20:00 +0000

Here's a recap of the past few weeks, showing a bit of what we've been up to since getting back from Paris. Unfortunately Béla came down with a bit of a cold a couple days after we got back, nothing serious, but with enough of a cough that we all had a few nights with very little sleep. I stopped counting one night after I'd been up with him 8 times. In one night. Of course he wants to be nursed every time, even if it's just for the comfort, since there can't possibly be any milk left at that point. And then I got up and went to work. Unsurprisingly, I got a bit of his cold, which morphed into a sinus infection, but which finally went away on its own after a week of suffering.

But his cold didn't stop us from doing things, such as attending my institute's summer party. It was a beautiful day for it, and the turn-out was good, and we had some good BBQ outside on the grass around the building where I work. Jeremi and Béla came up for the party, and he impressed everyone with his walking, and he had lots of fun picking up rocks, sucking on them, and trying to shove them through holes in a grate. Unfortunately his cough was getting worse as the evening went on, so we didn't stay too late. We also forgot to take pictures the whole time, despite having our camera with us, so Jeremi took this picture while we were walking home.

The following weekend was Calin and Susanne's going-away party! After three and a half years here, they headed back to Copenhagen. Susanne's thesis isn't quite done yet, but she's working on writing it up this summer, while Calin is busy fixing up their condo there and looking for work. They'll be missed, that's for sure!

The going-away party was lots of fun, and there were many babies there. Here Béla is playing with Alexandra and her son Konstantin, who's about three months younger than Béla. (They were actually one of the families at the prenatal class that I translated for my colleague's wife last fall.)
Calin at the party, after receiving his chocolate Dutch World Cup as a going-away present from some of his colleagues. (Perhaps he'll get a real one soon enough...)
The day after the going-away party was Fathers' Day! (The North American version.) Jeremi was really spoiled this year, getting cards and packages from Canada, as well as gifts from Béla and me. Here Béla is helping him unwrap the present from me: Vietnamese coffee filters (or hats), along with Vietnamese coffee and evaporated milk, so we can have delicious Vietnamese coffees at home. Béla very much enjoyed unwrapping the individual boxes.
And here he is playing with one of the gifts he gave Jeremi: some new English children's books, including such classics as "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?", among others. (Okay, so not directly a present for Jeremi, but having some fresh material makes being a Papa easier, so everybody wins.)

Later that afternoon we headed over to Bakr and Dai's for a wonderful BBQ, with more food than we could have possibly eaten. Bakr works with me, and his wife, Dai, who is Egyptian-Canadian, had a baby boy, Eiad, about four months after I had Béla. My colleague Christian (at left) was also there. Unfortunately we didn't get the camera out until late in the evening, when Dai was inside trying to get Eiad to sleep, so neither of them made it into the picture. We had lots of fun eating and grilling outside, and Béla really enjoyed all of the gravel for sucking on.

This picture was snapped a moment too late, because Jeremi was trying to get him all the way in the cupboard, with only his feet hanging out. Rather than putting on locks, Jeremi has rearranged the cupboards such that there's nothing too dangerous or fragile in the ones he can reach. He has great fun unpacking our spice cabinet, and pulling various things out onto the kitchen floor. Certain items are favourites though, and we can find them later in various places throughout the apartment. Favourite storage places are inside the washing machine (it's a front loader), inside the laundry hamper, in his car seat (which is in the corner of our bedroom at the moment), and on the balcony, after being dropped through the bars of the safety gate. I can't believe that in his nine-month post I wrote about him not really getting the idea of putting blocks back into the bucket - now it's all he wants to do! He's really taken with the idea of inside-outside in any context, and can repeat a given exercise many, many times. (A favourite is dropping a block into Jeremi's stainless steel water bottle, with or without water in it, which has a neck just big enough for Béla's hand to pass through. This makes it tricky to get the block out, which requires sometimes dozens of attempts. Once successful, he drops it in again, and repeats.)

(I also like the above picture because it somehow makes him look like a newborn again, though I'm not sure why.)

One fun item he found while rummaging in our bedroom this month was a boomerang that we were sent by friends in Jena after they moved back to Australia. He set off right away to hunt some wombats.
He decided that the wombats must be in the laundry hamper, and actually opened the lid and looked in with the boomerang held aloft. Alas, I got pictures immediately before and after, but didn't get one of the hunter at work.
One more, just to show you how pretty the other side of the boomerang is. (You can also see how scraped up his nose was - the right side is from the gravel at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and the left side is from a tumble at my institute's summer party. Our little bruiser!)
There has also been much BBQing this summer, which is great. It's been really hot here, so much so that we didn't want to cook for a full week, so pretty well everything went on the grill. (This requires a certain amount of patience though, as it's only charcoal here.) We had a nice supper with our friends Grit and Ekarat, before Ekarat headed back to Thailand for good, after finishing his PhD. Alas, we didn't get any pictures of this, or of the supper we had with them in town either. They were among the first non-work-related people we met in Jena, through the German-language Stammtisch that Grit organized. She's now teaching at Cornell, but is back to visit for the summer. Hopfully we'll get to see her some more this month.

We did, however, get some pictures when we were in the backyard grilling with two other families from our building. Here Jeremi got a nice picture from our kitchen window, while he was up getting something from upstairs.
And here, a wider view, where you can see Béla sleeping on the trampoline. He'd fallen asleep on my lap upstairs, and I didn't want to be stuck up there waiting for him to wake up, so I came down with him, thinking he could finish his nap on my lap while I chatted with the neighbours. They suggested I put him on the trampoline instead, and it was perfect! Not to worry, we were watching the whole time to see if he stirred, but he was really in a deep sleep, and he doesn't really go straight from sleep to running anyhow.

To give you an idea of how deep the sleep was, the two six-year-old boys of the neighbours chased each other around the trampoline with sticks for quite a while, and he didn't budge.
And a close-up. I love this picture, because somehow the perspective makes it seem like he's a giant, fully half the width of the trampoline, which is clearly not true. I think his feet sticking out from the quilt makes him look taller too...
Eventually he did wake up, and came to eat a delicious meal with the rest of us. After supper he went back on the trampoline to play with Jeremi. The game basically involves Jeremi running around the trampoline, trying to catch Béla, while Béla, on the surface of the trampoline, giggles like mad while trying to "run away". He always starts running or crawling from where Jeremi last caught him, but then goes in a nearly straight line the other way, only to find that Jeremi's there waiting for him! Then he changes course a little, but it always ends by being caught by his papa. And repeat. He really, really loves this game. It was already late when I started to take pictures of it, so they didn't come out well, but here are a couple representative pics: Pure joy!

Out of focus, but showing the unstable walking/running. The fact that it's on a trampoline makes the walking a bit harder, and when he gets going he even bounces a little, which usually results in a fall. But of course it's not so hard a landing...
Finally, after much running around, getting off. It was already after 10:00 at this point, but he was still raring to go. Crazy baby!
Here he is surveying the view from his prison cell, or perhaps looking at the latest objects to get dropped through the gate and out of reach. Jeremi's cell phone has ended up out there, as has one of my nipple shields. (Another lost one was found a couple days later in a pot on the shelf, with its lid back on.) Here he's wearing his little bathing suit outfit that Betty Ann bought him while we in Canada, in preparation for a trip to the beach (fake lake, with nice wading pool).
We've brought him swimming twice now, which actually went really well and was tonnes of fun! I thought he might hate it, given his uncertainty about the bath, but he was really excited to get in the water and splash around a bit, especially after seeing all the bigger kids doing it. And of course, it being (the former East) Germany, all the kids are naked. Not just little babies like Béla, but kids up to about 10 years old are regularly naked. So far we've gone swimming in the evening, so sun exposure really isn't a concern then, so he got to wear his bathing suit there only to be stripped naked before going swimming. (Diapers are off too.) I know in Canada babies are naked at the beach sometimes, but here it's really something different. Alas, we forgot the camera the first time, when he was happy as a clam and splashing about, and then he slept through our second trip, when we came armed with camera and videocamera. Third time's the charm? Let's hope so. (We were joking about writing a long post called "Béla's eighth time swimming!")

One more out of focus picture from that hot-hot day last week, just to illustrate something relatively new: He now regularly brings us books that he wants us to read to him, which is really cute, and really fun.

One other new thing this month is that we bought him a bike helmet! Now he can go out in the Chariot as a bike trailer instead of just as a jogging stroller. We have yet to try it though - perhaps this coming weekend. The manual officially says to wait until they're 12 months old, but that's for the average 12 month-old, and he's easily as big and robust as the average 12 month-old. Here he is, modelling the cool helmet with fishies all over it:
And, with a bit of help from me, actually showing off his face while wearing it.
In other general developmental news, he now says "cat", and repeats it quite excitedly as he abuses the cat. He really tries to pet her, but he's not so good with "gentle" just yet. And that swishing tail of hers is just too tempting not to grab. (At least he lays off the ears now.) She keeps coming back for more though, and will roll on her back for him, exposing her tender belly to his "petting". She has batted at him a couple of times when he hits her in the face too much, but without claws. Sadly, he doesn't get that this means she wants him to stop.

As mentioned above, he's the master of inside-outside now, and can spend much time playing with his stacking cups. When they're adjacent sizes it's still quite challenging, as he can't fit the little one in the big one if one of his chubby fingers is in the way, but if they're two sizes apart it's just fine. The square ones are also a bit tougher, but the round ones are no trouble at all.

He's not as excited about knocking down towers as he used to be, but he loves putting the blocks back in the bucket. In fact, he likes putting anything that will fit into the bucket. He has made a couple attempts at stacking too, though I don't think he's managed to make towers more than two blocks high (though Jeremi might be able to correct me on that).

He walks so much better than he did a month ago - it's good to have to video to remind us of this! Now he barely crawls at all, only sometimes to get over an obstacle he can't step over. He can climb up onto the lower of our two couches, and onto our bed. We're working on teaching him to get down feet first, as his instinct is to go down head first, which isn't so safe. Hopefully he learns this soon, as he requires more supervision now that he can climb up onto higher surfaces. In general, he's quite happy to wander around the apartment. In the evening if one of us is in the kitchen and one is in the living room he comes and checks on us, bringing objects back and forth to show us and to play with.

As for his stats, by our measurements he didn't grow as much as last month, which isn't surprising given that he was sick twice, which puts him off his food a little. He last weighed in at 11.4 kg (25 lb), and is about 76 cm tall (29.9"). He's going to the doctor for a check-up next week though, so we'll get the "official" figures then.

So there you have it, ten months old, and only about a week late, after all!

A weekend in Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Julia) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:10:00 +0000

First of all, let me thank Julia for doing all the posts since Béla was born and possibly before that. Luckily for our readers, keeping our friends and family in the loop is a high priority for her. I also love you guys, but not that much (kidding). This is the first post I've done in a long time but should be fun because I get to bitch about die Bahn (the German rail service) a bit.

This was Béla's second time in Paris although events did not make it easy for him to get there. First, we weren't sure if we would go at all since we were going for one of Julia's meetings. This particular one had only been briefly mentioned a while ago by her boss who could not attend and wanted Julia to go in his stead, but was unsure if this was possible. A few days before the meeting, he told Julia that it was indeed possible and that she could go. This was also a good meeting for Julia to attend since it had a lot to do with her present work. So we decided that Béla was getting better enough (see last post) and that we could afford my last-minute ticket.

This trip usually takes 7-8 hours, three trains and is relatively pleasant if you reserve the kids' room in the wagon. It took us 19 hours and six trains. The first train was a short 20 min ride to Weimar, where we can get on the fast east-west express line. It was 5 mins late, no big deal for a regional train, practically on time.

The next train that should have brought us to Frankfurt was an hour late. Already this meant that we would be missing our connection for the train to Paris. This was also the last connection out of Frankfurt that day so we weren't sure how we would get there in time for the meeting. Julia went to see the Bahn Travel Center and was told she had to bring her problems to the incompetent person at the Bahn Service Point. Die Bahn is the company that controls pretty much all rail passenger traffic in Germany and possibly everything else that moves on rails (Julia, Germans or Bill, feel free to specify in comments below). Usually in most largish stations they have two desks were you can interact with them; the Travel Center and the Service Point. They are allowed to do different things and your supposed to know which one to go to when your trip has been screwed up because of late trains. Anyways after some hardly helpful rude 'service' from this person, we now knew that the earliest time we could get there was at 9:30 the next morning, half an hour after Julia's meeting would have started, and to do so we would have to take the night train from Stuttgart. We considered our options; calling it off, renting a car and driving there; or taking the night train where hopefully Béla would not have any trouble sleeping. Since the hotel room was non-refundable and the car would have to be left in France and this is usually not worth it because of the drop-off fee if at all possible (and because Béla really doesn't love being in the car), we decided to go for the night train. We also decided that we would ask someone in Frankfurt to change our tickets, someone hopefully more competent.

When the train finally did come it was of course packed and the air conditioning was broken. This sounds like we're whining about our comfort but the ICE train, the high speed trains in Germany, was not designed to run without AC. Since it's a high speed train you can't open the windows plus it was really hot out which did not help. It was literally about 40 C on the train. After seeing how much Béla was sweating, even after getting stripped down to a diaper shirt, and knowing that we had three hours before our connection in Frankfurt, we decided we had enough time to get off at the next stop, in Gotha, and wait for the next train, since they run roughly hourly.

So we got off in Gotha to wait for the next train which was also 30 mins late. Still we had enough time in Frankfurt to get the train to Stuttgart to get the night train, so we were still not too worried except that we didn't know if Julia would have time to take a shower at the public bathrooms in Frankfurt. She would have to go to the meeting directly from the train station in Paris and spend the night sleeping on the train as opposed to our hotel room.

When we got to Frankfurt we ran for the Service Point and the Travel Center. Against our wishes, we had to buy reservations for the night train because they were obligatory and the Die Bahn policies are apparently too stupid to make exceptions for our case. The man said that we could likely claim the money back later, given the circumstances, but it was still annoying. Most of the time you can buy tickets without a seat reservation which means if all the seats are taken you have to stand around somewhere, but usually night trains and some international trains require reservations.

With that done, Julia ran for the showers with a mere 20 minutes left before our scheduled departure. The shower was really necessary after sweating on the crazy hot train, and then playing with Béla on the filthy train platform in Gotha. I went to the platform and stopped to get some food for the night. When I got to the platform she was already there with time to spare. Of course this train was also late but only by 10 mins or so. Strangely they were very apologetic during the announcements unlike the other trains that were far later in which they mentioned their tardiness only for your information. Passing through Mannheim (important to remember for later on) we finally got to Stuttgart where we had another couple hours to wait for the night train.

We walked around a little trying to find a bench where we could camp out and wait and maybe sleep in shifts, it was getting around 1 am by now. There were no benches inside but the night was very warm so we picked a bench outside on our platform. Julia and Béla got a little nap as you can see here. Bela did eventually get a couple blankets on him as it got colder.

I sat next to them and read. By this time we also knew that the night train was also running late, about 5 mins at first then 10 - 15- 25 - 50 - 60 mins late. By the time Julia woke up from her nap the train was 90 mins late although announcements had stopped. Because of this we went to the Service Point again and asked what was going on. The train was now more than 2 hours late, and they weren't sure when it was coming. We asked for an alternate route and she gave us one that had us taking four more connections to finally get to Paris at 9:35, the first train leaving in less than 5 min. So we ran for that train that was going back towards Mannheim.

This train was actually on time. Julia slept a little in her seat while I walked a very awake Béla up and down the passageway at around 4 am. The Bahn employee that had taken our tickets saw me and told me that there was a high speed train leaving from Mannheim and going directly to Paris that we could take instead of the three more connections. The only downside was that it was going to get us there at 9:49 in the morning instead of 9:40. Great, I said, we'll take that.

This conversation took place while Julia was in her seat and I in the dining cart so she didn't know exactly what was said. Just before getting in to Mannheim, the very useful Bahn came to tell us that there was a connection that would get us in even earlier, the night train. The same night train that would eventually go through Stuttgart and that we knew to be more than two hours late. Julia thought this was the connection I had told her about and that now we were going to be even later waiting for it again in Mannheim. Since we had already passed the stop we had to get off at to make the three other connections that would get us there at 9:35 that was no longer an option. While the Bahn Lady and a very tired Julia argued over the confusion in very good German, a very tired Jeremi was trying to explain that we were talking about two different trains in less than perfect German and that we could still take the ICE going to Paris and arriving at 9:49 and that it was NOT the night train. All this happened while pulling in to the Mannheim station and finished with Julia having a nervous breakdown (while wearing Béla in the carrier) and the Bahn Lady removing herself from the situation cause it was getting heated and her train was leaving again. Once she had left we clarified with another very nice Bahn employee that was on the platform that there was indeed a ICE leaving for Paris as we had thought.

This guy was really nice, but had an incredibly thick regional accent, and there were a number of Bahn mechanics hanging around who joined in in the conversation as well, who also had accents that were hard for us to understand. The mechanics assured us that the night train would run better once they were done with it, as they just had to swap the locomotive for another one, and then it should run much faster. We weren't convinced. They also explained that the train chaos was largely caused by thunderstorms in western Germany, on account of the heat, and there were lots of trees down over the tracks, which means also that the power lines that run over the high speed trains were damaged in several locations.

Again we had some time to kill in Mannheim. And we thought about what had happened. They only option we were told was available once we had gotten to Frankfurt was this stupid night train connection. We were even told they could put us up in a hotel to wait for earliest connection to Paris the next day, but that only got us in to Paris at 11:30 or something. But of all the Bahn workers we talked to none of them considered that we could have gone to Mannheim, gotten a hotel room, slept for 5-6 hours, and taken the 6:40 train to Paris getting us in at 9:49, a whole 9 mins after the stupid f#%& night train. Great job Deutsche Bahn.

Killing time in the Mannheim station at "0' stupid hundred" in the morning, Julia filled out some paperwork to get us partial refunds on this ridiculous trip and me and Béla stretched our legs a little. This is mostly just to give you an idea of how well he could walk at the time, when he was almost 9.5 months old. It's funny, looking at it now, only a month later, he looks really clumsy, but at the time we were really impressed! He walked up and down the length of the train station a few times while we waited, quite pleased with himself, and quite enjoying watching people going up and down the escalators.

The last train of this odessey finally came on time but was still late getting into Paris at 10:15 ish. Then we spent the weekend in Paris. The End!

...just kidding. I will go on about our time in Paris and show you more pictures than Julia having to sleep on a bench.

Directly after our arrival Julia had to dash for the meeting and got there and told them about the craziness that was our trip and made it through the rest of the meeting pretty well having only slept a fragmented hour or so the whole night. Me and Béla went straight to the hotel and tried to get some sleep. After a while of exploring the hotel room Béla succumbed to his nap as did I shortly thereafter. With the extended train trip in the hot weather we were a bit worried about the milk that we'd brought with us for the time that Julia was at the meeting, as Béla is still drinking only breast milk or water, but Julia's clever plan of putting bags of milk into my stainless steel water bottle, filling it up with water, freezing it solid, and wrapping it in a towel for insulation, meant that there was still ice in the bottle when we got on the train in Mannheim, and it was still nice and cool when we got in to Paris, and I was able to store it in the fridge in the breakfast room of the hotel until he needed it.

This time in Paris we didn't bother with any of the tourist stuff but just hung out instead and enjoyed being in a big city. Except for that night of course since we were all quite tired. We still managed to go to a restaurant for some nice French food. Béla loved my canard confit and also Julia's side vegetables which mostly only he got to eat. Then we went back to the hotel to finally sleep for real.

The next day, Saturday, we wanted to get Béla some nice French board books. Mathilde, a friend of ours that went to McGill with Julia, had recommended a store that was near where we were staying, so we walked towards it stopping at nice markets and bakeries for a leisurely grazing breakfast. The book store was aimed at kids and teens and had a whole section in the back with board books. We found a bunch that we liked and bought them. We then continued to walk around and found another market with the most wonderful Lebanese booth that sold fresh galettes with ground meat and spices or with zaatar. Delicious!

Here is a picture of Béla napping, with his face still covered in croissant crumbs, after enjoying some pastries on the go. Mmm, buttery pastry...

We stopped at another restaurant for a beer and a nurse. One thing that Paris is not great at is having kids in restaurants. This is something Germany does a lot better. Very few places have high chairs in Paris, not that we've tried all the restaurants, but we were told this by Mathilde and found it to be true. In Germany or at least in Jena the opposite is true. Last week we went to the Mexican restaurant and they had a high chair and a place mat with cutouts of animals that could be folded and stood up. Plus they brought a baby spoon with the utensils, all without even asking.

On the way back toward the hotel we thought it might be good for Béla to have a chance to play a little, as he'd been cooped up much of the day, so we stopped at the Jardin de Luxembourg, where there was a playground exclusively for small children (under 5 or so)! There was a nice grass area, little wading pools, and sand boxes. Here he is running around in the grass.
And making friends
Playing with a balloon a little girl gave him.
Playing with Papa, and one of his favourite things - our camera bag, which has a velcro flap, perfect for opening and closing, and for putting things into and taking things out of.
Try as he might, the nipple on that giant balloon was not giving up the milk.
Charming all the ladies.
Offering to shod one of them. A little too Cinderella for my taste, but whatever works.
More friends in the sandbox. "Hey Blondie, hands off my soother"

Looking for treasure!

Béla dancing the Haka.
If you are ever in Paris with little kids, I definitely recommend this place. It's really chill and the grass was soft enough that Béla could probably had landed face first without hurting himself. And green despite children running all over it all the time. Seriously, what did they do to that grass? Something awfully right or awfully wrong. It's Paris, probably something awfully wrong. Maybe they found a way to produce a high power fertilizer from all the dog poop in the streets.

This next pic is from earlier in the day and just an aside for my family that lives in St-Ignace. It's the church of St-Ignace. It's always funny to me to see the word Ignace any where else then in the tiny village where I grew up since it's not a overly common name.

The next day we met Mathilde and her daughter Éloïse at Le Jardin des Plantes, the botanical garden of Paris. It was a five minute walk away from where we were staying and also has a zoo. Mathilde and her family were supposed to move that month but the seller postponed at the last minute and have stranded them somewhat since someone is supposed to be taking there apartment before they will be able to take possession of the new apartment. To boot, she was just about nine months pregnant with their second child. Yet she was still able to make time to come and meet us at the zoo and apologized for not being able to put us up. I'm leaving out a lot of crazy details here but we wish them luck with their tough times.

This was Béla's first time at a zoo! He was not overly impressed. Perhaps because he has the Calico Wonder at home which is not usually in a cage and he can "pet" most of the time. Or maybe he just isn't old enough to be interested in it. I though it was cool, especially the stout and powerful looking snow leopard. Very differently shaped from other big cats. Big paws.

Anyways here are some funny looking rabbits and weird species of deer looking animals, and the kids looking at them.

"I like panini."

You can also see a bit of the fresh wound on the left side of his nose in this picture - gravel parks are not so nice for face plants. There was a fair bit of blood, and some crying, but nothing that some nursing couldn't make better.

We of course saw a bunch of other animals but the camera ran out of batteries after these. After the zoo Béla nursed and fell asleep and we checked out a bit more of the botanical garden before packing it in and heading back to the train station. They had a history of wheat display among other things. It's a pretty big park and it doesn't feel like you're in the middle of a gigantic city when your there. (Both Julia and I even got pooped on by birds while we were there, which made us feel "at one" with nature.)

The trip back to Jena was relatively uneventful, although we had to take a crazy bus trip from Erfurt to Weimar, as they were doing some work on the tracks, and this was running a bit late. I was really wondering when we were going to get to grandmother's house, because this bus went the most roundabout backwoods route imaginable. It was mostly full of young people who'd gone to watch one of the early World Cup games (Germany won), so there were some cops on hand in Erfurt to make sure things stayed orderly. The fans were well-behaved, but one of the cops mentioned disparagingly that it was a bit late to be out with a baby (it was shortly after midnight). Julia glared at him and commented that the trip from Paris is a long one, and left it at that.

After how well Béla dealt with the crazy trip from hell, we decided that it really isn't insane to take him by train all the way to the Black Sea this August. Honestly, he's really easy going, and is happy as long as we're there, there's something to eat, and he can move around (which is why I wouldn't want to plan a driving vacation anywhere). But more on our crazy vacation plans in another post...

Roseola!

noreply@blogger.com (Julia) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:09:00 +0000

I love picnics. I think it's so much fun to eat outside, and was so looking forward to bringing Béla to the park to eat this summer. What fun we would have! And so, one beautiful Saturday afternoon, Jeremi and I packed up lots of yummy food, and headed out to the park to enjoy it in the shade of a tree.

As we set up, it became clear that Béla was not excited to get to run around in the park, and didn't really even want to play with his toys. He had only been out on grass without shoes a few times at this point, as it had been really wet, so we thought he was still being weird about touching the grass (which he was at first). But he didn't really even want to sit on the blanket either. In fact, he mostly wanted to sit curled up next to one of us, although it was a very hot day. And so we started to eat, with Béla perched on his papa's lap. It was really cute, so I tried to get a nice photo of them together, with Béla smiling.
And I tried again (but here he looks even more sad)...

...and again...
...and again...
...and again. No smiles, but a couple of half-hearted attempts at eating. And attempts are all that we got, really. He barely ate, despite the choice of tasty food that we'd brought with us.

Oh well, we decided, he must just not like eating outside. (Right, because that's the most logical explanation. Silly rationalizing parents!) Then he wanted to nurse, and after much fussing and crying, fell asleep. We finished our picnic with him sleeping in the stroller, and walked on home. When he woke up from his nap, he had a high fever, and suddenly his lack of enjoyment at the picnic made much more sense.

He had no other symptoms (no cough, runny nose, etc.), so we were pretty sure it was going to be another urinary tract infection, which was really bad news, as then it might mean that he had a congenital problem that, in the worst case, might even require surgery. (After more than one UTI with boys, they often start doing testing, which in and of itself is unpleasant, let alone the treatment.) He had a fever again on Sunday, which we treated with acetaminophen when it got to 40 C, which meant that he felt well enough to help Jeremi install the baby gate on the door to the balcony.
Little did he realize he was building his own jail cell! (Yes, that's a wrench in his mouth.)
Béla is lots of help.
He was barely eating, and mostly just wanted to nurse and cuddle. There was lots of quiet play, and many fewer smiles than usual.
On Monday we brought him in to the doctor, with a bag to collect a urine sample already on him. (Unfortunately there wasn't any pee in it when we got there, so Jeremi had to run back later with the sample. In fact, he had to run back twice, as they were closed from 12:00-4:00, which we hadn't realized.) Once they tested the sample, the good news came back: no UTI! Hooray! The doctor mentioned that it could also be this very common "three day fever" (a direct translation from the German name), which is simply three days of high fever followed by a painless rash. And so we waited, with our poor feverish baby. Here is is sleeping on my lap after falling asleep while nursing, fighting the good fight against whatever virus is attacking him.
The pictures from this 3-4 days are really heartbreaking. There isn't a smile to be seen. But here he is sitting at his new little table. When we visited the daycare he'll be going to, the woman asked us if he was used to sitting on a chair, as that's how the kids there eat their meals. We didn't have any little furniture, so we got him a little table and chair set, which is really cute. And of course he did fine with the chair!
He and the cat, surveying their new prison. You can tell he's not feeling 100% here, because he's only half a meter from the cat and is making no attempt to grab her tail or "pet" her. (We managed to teach him not to pull on her fur anymore, but now he "pets" her with an open hand in a rather robust manner. She's the most patient cat in the world.)
And finally, the rash appeared. It's hard to see here, but there were tiny red dots all over his chest, and a few on his arms, legs and face.
On the back it's a bit more clear. It was a very classic presentation of Roseola, a.k.a. sixth disease, a.k.a. exanthema subitum, a.k.a. roseola infantum, a.k.a. baby measles, a.k.a. three-day-fever.
Once the rash appeared they're supposed to feel better right away, but it was a couple of days before he was really back to normal. In fact, I'd say he got his full energy and appetite back while we were waiting at the Mannheim train station at around 5:00 in the morning on our trip-from-hell to Paris, which took 12 hours longer than it should have. But I'll save that for the next post!

the Weinmeile, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Julia) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:01:00 +0000

Ah yes, another year, another Weinmeile! This was my third time at the wine festival that takes place in the wine region north of Jena every Pentacost, though last year I was pregnant, so it hardly counts. We went with our friends Calin and Susanne, who made the wise decision to start in Naumburg so that we were able to negotiate the walk from the train station to the first booth in daylight while completely sober, as it's along the side of a minor highway, which you have to cross without traffic lights.

The weather couldn't have been more perfect, and it was one of the nicest days we'd had yet that year, and there were lots of groups of people at the train station that morning, heading up for the day just like us. Here are Béla and I on the train.

This is from the first stop of the day, where they had this cute little paper garland of bunches of grapes.

Here Calin is practicing his high-five technique with Béla, which was a big hit.
There was a group at a nearby table who heard us speaking English, and I think assumed that we were tourists (which we were, sort of...). They all had the pottery snail shells that many people wear on strings around their necks, in order to drink wine from them. The woman had two spares this year (they're stamped with "Weinmeile 2010"), and she kindly gave them to us. Here you can see Béla checking it out.

Here we are at what I think was our second stop of the day, where Béla is enjoying the grape stuffed in his mouth. One of the common snacks sold at this event is skewers of alternating grapes and cubes of cheese, which are pretty well his two favourite things.
Enjoying the scenery, walking from winery to winery...
...and the view across the field of the city of Naumburg, with its famous cathedral clearly visible.

Ah, nap time!

It was hard to get a picture that did it justice, but the road was really packed with pedestrians. So many people out to enjoy the perfect weather and the lovely wine.
The next stop was winery Hey, which we hadn't visited in previous years, but which was recommended by our friend Barbara, who had worked there during the Weinmeile a couple of times. It was set back a bit from the main road, but worth the walk in...
Béla slept through the whole time at the Hey winery, which was a shame for him, as he missed the delicious pork picatta and asparagus!
Here's one of the funny-shaped barrels on display along the way, with the poster from this year's Weinmeile, complete with map, posted on it. The barrels are oval so that they can be rolled, but don't easily roll away.
Here we are just breaking out of the trees to go along the biggest section of vines, where the big "Saale Unstrut Wein" sign is, and where there are sample vines along the left of the different varieties of grapes grown in the region, which is fun when visiting in the fall, for grape-tasting.

Here you can see the sign in the upper right (like the "Hollywood" sign, but a bit smaller).
It being only May, the vines weren't so impressive yet, but in a couple of months (i.e. now, because I'm so late writing this), it's another story.

Later in the evening - Béla was asleep again, and the sky was growing darker. Here we're passing by the sign for Saalhäuser, so we were almost at the end. What we discovered was that although you can go either way on the Weinmeile, pretty well all the big late night parties are toward the other end, where we started, by Naumburg. It was okay that we missed the big parties this year though, as we really needed to catch the last train back, and Béla may not have been up to the big party.

We did manage to find one last place open in Bad Kösen though, so we were able to have one last bottle of wine on our way to the train station.
I like this picture because both of us are wearing shirts that match our eyes. (I think his eyes are a bit browner now, but still not fully determined.)
And finally, he was out for the night, clutching his shell to make sure it didn't get away. He was a champ - really, the easiest and happiest baby all day long. At each place we took him out of the stroller (when he was awake) to let him move around a little so he didn't feel like he was cooped up all day, and he really seemed to enjoy the whole day. In the end we were out with him for 14 hours, and it was a complete success. (Easiest baby ever!)
And us, at the end of a perfect day, being a bit silly while waiting for the train. As you might be able to guess, Susanne took most of the pictures, which is why she's not in so many of them. Thanks, Susanne! You're much better at documenting our lives than we are!
I'm already looking forward the the 2011 Weinmeile!

Weinmeile practice

noreply@blogger.com (Julia) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:59:00 +0000

A few weeks after Männertag comes Pentacost (or Pfingsten in German), which gives us a holiday on the Monday. It's also the weekend during which the annual wine festival in the region north of here takes place, the Saale-Unstrut Weinmeile. (You may remember blog posts from the first one, when I went with just Calin and Susanne as Jeremi was in Canada, and we got incredibly drunk and got into trouble on the train on the way home, or last year when I went with Jeremi and my friend from Belleville, Pam, when we got rained on and Pam drove her bike into mine, causing me to fall while six months pregnant. Always a good time!)

We were already looking forward to the Weinmeile this year, but I was a bit concerned, because it seems that I can no longer drink red wine. At Christmas I could, but sometime this spring something changed, such that when I have 1-2 glasses of red wine with supper, I wake up with a brutal hangover. I can still drink beer, but it's really not worth it to drink wine. I wasn't sure about white wine though, which is what we usually drink at the Weinmeile, because it's what they grow best in this region, so we thought it was best to do a practice run before drinking several glasses of wine and then wanting to die the next day.

We had just wanted to buy a bottle of wine the weekend before and have it with supper, but we forgot to add it to the grocery list, and it was Sunday so everything was closed. But bars and restaurants aren't closed, so we did our own little Jena pub crawl, going to a few different places over the afternoon and having some food and a glass of wine at each. It was so much fun, and Béla really enjoyed it too!

We only got pictures at one bar, the Grüne Tanne (which was described in the last post as well). Here he is, after crawling away, almost onto the road. (Not to worry, we were watching, and there's very little traffic on this street.
And a close-up, to show how darn cute he is. You can still see some of the bruise on his right cheek from the fall on Männertag.

Sitting at his papa's feet, which makes him look tiny (or perhaps makes Jeremi look like a giant?).
A good time was had by all. And best of all, I woke up Monday morning feeling fine. White wine is officially okay, and the Weinmeile was a go! (More on that shortly.)

Männertag

noreply@blogger.com (Julia) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:11:00 +0000

Ahh, Männertag. I was trying to get the blog up to date in chronological order, and was waiting for Jeremi to write this post, as he was actually there, but found that it was creating a bit of a bottleneck. As such, I've decided to go ahead and write the blog post for him, just so I can catch up a bit, and maybe be only one month behind...

Männertag means "men's day", and it's sometimes also called "Vatertag" (fathers' day) or Christi Himmelfahrt (the day of Christ's ascension). It's a holiday here, on the Thursday something like 40 days after Easter. It's a holiday in all of Germany I think (some are only for some states, mostly depending on whether the state is predominantly Catholic or Protestant), but in some regions (including ours, and I think mostly in the former East), it's celebrated in a peculiar way. Rather than being like a North American Father's Day, where dads spend time with their families, the men go hiking in the woods and get hammered. They sometimes bring along wagons filled with beer (mini-kegs are often on sale around then), and there are even special belts that hold a couple dozen mini bottles of Schnapps (which just mean booze here, nothing sweet).

Last year Jeremi stayed home with a pregnant wife, and we just hung out and had a lazy day. This year, he got to celebrate like a real Thüringer, going out with (from left to right) Christian, Calin, and Dennis, for a day of walking and drinking.
The other three got a lift up to Calin's place in the morning (at 10:15), where they had a giant brunch before setting out on their hiking and drinking. This shows the lazy foreign influence of the group (Calin is Dutch and Jeremi is Canadian), as often German men here meet up around 8:30 to start drinking for the day. I'm just inferring from the scenery (as I was at home with the baby), but this looks like they were still up in Cospeda, on the Windknollen, having one of the early beers of the day.
From there they must have walked to the next bar (these pictures may not be in chronological order - remember, I'm writing about something I didn't participate in). One nice thing about hiking around here is that there's a bar on the top of every other hill, so there's always a reward when you make it to the top. (Raw wilderness it's not.) On Männertag they're all open early, with the grills fired up, and often have specials like whole roasted pigs to feed the hungry and drunken men.
Here they're at the Papiermühle, the local brew pub, which is at the bottom of the hill leading to Cospeda. Shockingly, I see some women in the background of this photo!

That's more like it, this is mostly men (some with matching hats, probably to make it easier to find each other when they lose someone unconscious on the side of the trail later).
Prost! (Like "cheers" in German.)

I can't be sure, but based on the light fixture in this picture, I think they might be at the bar on top of Jenzig, the biggest hill in Jena, on the other side of the river.

Meanwhile, while they were out drinking, I was home with Béla, busy baking a cake and preparing a Greek salad in preparation for a BBQ that night. I went over to meet up with the other wives and girlfriends at Dennis and Jule's place around 5:00, while we waited for the men to show up. Around 6:00 they called and said they'd be half an hour, and an hour and a half later they actually arrived. The evening was lots of fun, though Béla had a pretty good fall onto a bookshelf and got a big bruise on his cheek. He was fine after a few minutes of crying, but it looked pretty bad.

Here they're at the Grüne Tanne, an old bar just on the East side of the Camsdorfer bridge in Jena. (It's the bar at which the first fraternity was formed, and it's still the official bar of this fraternity. On the weekends we sometimes see old men wearing the sashes and hats of the fraternity going in in the afternoon. Fraternities are something different here than in the US, and they sometimes involve sword fighting and initiation rites involving facial scars, which are officially banned, but still sometimes happen. Weird, in any case.)
Finally, a picture of all four of them!
I'm not sure what's going on here, but it looks like Jeremi is going for Dennis's nipple...
On to the next place?
Alas, we didn't get any pictures of the end of the evening, but we had a lot of fun. Christian and his girlfriend Carmen hadn't seen Béla since he was four weeks old, so they could hardly believe it was the same baby. Dennis and Jule have a little girl, Nele, who was just over 2, and who weighed the same amount as Béla. She's just on the smaller end of normal, and he's on the bigger end, but it was still pretty funny. (They also had the same size feet, but she's way taller than him.) I'm sorry we didn't get a picture of him coming home. It was a bit cool, and we hadn't brought a hat for him, so he borrowed Nele's hat, which is like a little pink raspberry. Super cute, but super girly. Alas, we didn't get a photo. Perhaps he'll thank us for that later.

Béla's first sip of beer

noreply@blogger.com (Julia) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:40:00 +0000

Our unplanned trip to Canada unfortunately coincided with our friend Valentina's week-long visit to Jena. She just finished her PhD in my group at work, and was back to finish up some work on a paper, and to take care of some details after moving away. We arrived on Thursday, and she was leaving on Saturday, so we were able to meet up for supper with the gang from the Spanish Stammtisch. (She's Italian, but speaks Spanish as well, and hung out a lot with this group. They also speak German and English in general, so we can hang out with them too...)
And of course this meant that Béla got to have another visit with his Zia Valentina!

Hmmm... Where's that hand going???
During supper (and the drinks beforehand) Béla was doing his damndest to get a sip of beer, and we kept trying to distract him. As some of you may recall, my nephew Owen had his first sip of beer at Oktoberfest while visiting us when he was around the same age, and my sister-in-law in Canada mentioned that Béla shouldn't miss out on this important milestone for too much longer. Combining that with the fact that a German who was out with us reassured us that most babies don't like beer, so once you give them a sip they'll stop asking for it, we decided to give in.

Here he is, fielding the first offer, but distracted by the novelty of Valentina.
Back to boring old mom for a second try...
And finally, success!
While the look on his face doesn't look like pleasure, he most certainly enjoyed it. (Babies make strange faces while eating sometimes, even when they keep coming back for more, and I think it might have been the carbonation that was surprising.) Alas, Ute's theory about most babies not wanting beer after a first taste seems to have found its exception in Béla, and he's still forever trying to get into our beer glasses and bottles. Not to worry, the sip was a one time thing.

Béla is 9 months old!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Julia) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:36:00 +0000

A short update about our boy - he turned 9 months old on Sunday!!! Here he is, walking across the room last night, something he can do incredibly well now.

Yup, after three weeks of practice, he can not only walk better, but he can stand up directly from the ground (without pulling up on anything), can walk while clapping, can walk over rough terrain (i.e. his activity mat, toys), can bend down from standing and pick up something (like a book) that's lying on the ground and stand back up, and can effortlessly drop from walking to crawling without missing a step. While crawling he can navigate over our legs and over pillows without any trouble now, and it's amazing to see how strong his arms are. And while we don't have any stairs, he gets to practice crawling in and out of his "castle", the playpen seen here, which he doesn't really like when it's closed, but loves when it's open.
Here he is with his new ball, which he can already palm. (It seems that rather than growing into his giant hands and feet, they're growing right along with him. In fact, he's already outgrown the Robeez that Karen got him when we left Canada just a month ago, which were already size 12-18 months. Maybe that's why he's so good at walking - it's easy to balance on feet that big!)

Ah yes, his first mouthful of dirt, which he seemed to quite enjoy. He fell asleep while we were coming home from shopping on Saturday afternoon, and we didn't want to wake him, so we thought we'd look for a nearby patio on which we could have a drink while he slept in the stroller. After we were let down by no less than four nearby bars (one was closed because the owners were on holiday, one was closed for a private event, one is apparently always closed on Saturdays, and one just didn't bother putting out their patio furniture on a sunny Saturday afternoon), we gave up and carried the stroller into our apartment and had a beer on our own balcony. Then he woke up and came out to hang out with us, and while we were being incredibly careful about keeping him away from the edges, he got a good handful of soil from our basil plant in his mouth. He didn't seem to mind it much though!
And while he doesn't have another doctor's appointment scheduled until July or August, we'll give you his stats based on measurement with our bathroom scale and a measuring tape.
Height: 74.5 cm, or 29.3 inches
Weight: 11.1 kg, or 24.3 pounds,

For those of you unfamiliar with baby stats, this means that he's giant. And not just heavy, also tall. Around the 90th percentile for both height and weight, in fact. But at least he's a healthy weight for his height!

In other, non-gross-motor skills, he's doing pretty well too. He's had the pincer grasp mastered for a while (I think any baby who feeds himself figures this one out early), and he can both clap and wave bye-bye (this latter one is brand new). He says "papa" to Jeremi (though sometimes it's "papapa"), and "mama" when he's really desperate for milk (which is sort of like calling for me). He's come close to saying "cat" when we talk about Aeris ("ka, ka"), and he has very clearly said "duckie" when we're lying in bed in the morning looking at the mobile, which we always refer to as the "duckies". He loves the mobile, and will point at it and grunt until we spin it, which makes him deliriously happy, at which point he says "duh-duh-duh..." and occasionally "duckie". What's sort of heartbreaking though is that if we say the word "duckie" in any other context (i.e. with a rubber duckie in the bathtub, while reading a book, while bragging about our baby who can say "duckie"), he looks at the ceiling in whatever room we're in, to look for the duckies. He also has six teeth now, two on the bottom and four on the top. And one other cute thing that he's picked up over the past two weeks is squeezing his eyes shut before he either eats something (food or while nursing) or when he gets really excited while playing. It's like he's overcome with anticipation, and he just has to shut his eyes.

Now for things he can't do: He loves to knock down towers of bricks or stacking cups, and to tip out buckets full of bricks, but hasn't even made the slightest effort at making his own stacks or putting anything back in the bucket. We've tried to get him to give us five, and he loves it when we hold his hand and make him do it (it gets a laugh every time), but he completely doesn't get that he could, of his own free will, hold his hand up for this to happen. He still loves books, but often lacks the patience for us to actually read what's on the page before turning to the next one, so books with fewer words are favourites right now. But he really does love the page turning part, and adores the "coucou" books he has where there are flaps to open with something hiding behind. He's really good at them, and will open and close the flap repeatedly (to which we say "coucou" every time, of course), before going on to the next page.

Also, though it's too early to tell for sure, we think he might be left handed. Most things are pretty well equal between the two hands (such as handling blocks and toys), and page-turning seems to be usually done with the right hand, but I think that has more to do with the direction books are read in English and French. But when it comes to fine motor skills, and particularly eating, he does at least 80% and more like 90% of it with his left hand. His right hand will grab a piece of something and then just sort of hold it, while his left hand puts piece after piece into his mouth. It may change, but it's been like this for the past two months at least. We're both right handed, so it's a bit surprising, but by no means unheard of.

So there you have it - Béla as of nine months. We've got some other posts to catch up on that happened before Sunday, so we'll be going back in time slightly, but I didn't want to wait and write about what he was doing at 9 months when he's already 10 months old...

Our latest trip to Canada

noreply@blogger.com (Julia) — Thu, 27 May 2010 15:11:00 +0000

At long last, here's a report on our time in Canada. There's quite a bit of introduction, followed by lots of pictures. Feel free to skip ahead if you know the basic story already...

It was a fairly last-minute trip, as my Baba became quite ill rather quickly. She was suddenly quite unsteady on her feet, and had increasingly severe headaches accompanied by nausea and vomiting. When they brought her in to the hospital (expecting it to be food poisoning or something of the like), it was found that she had a large mass in her brain. After a few more tests and treatment with steroids (to reduce the inflammation) and antibiotics (in case it was an abscess), it was determined that the mass was, in fact, cancer. Given her age and the extent of the tumour, she wasn't a candidate for surgery, though she did undergo radiation treatments in an effort to reduce the swelling and make her more comfortable. It became quite clear that she wasn't going to get better, and that she was likely not going to leave the hospital either. It was estimated that she might live for a few more months at the outside, and family and friends were contacted to say their goodbyes.

We weren't sure how long she'd live (no one was), but we decided not to leave right away (just before Easter), partly because it just wasn't clear if now was the right time to come, or if we should wait a bit longer. I was planning on going back to work at the beginning of May though, so I thought that it would be good if Béla and I could have a visit without worrying about taking vacation. We'd already booked a week off at the end of April, as we were supposed to meet my mom and dad in Rome for a week for my mom's 60th birthday, as part of their dream vacation through Italy, weeks before my dad was going to have his prostate removed after it was found to be cancerous. (Yes, my family has had a really rough few months.) We decided that I'd go a few days earlier, and Jer would come for just over a week, using the same time that he'd already booked off as holiday.

Well, I came just in time. After a surprisingly good trip alone with Béla (complete with a stop to visit our friend Jenny and her family in Frankfurt), I arrived in Canada on a Tuesday evening, April 13th. The next Wednesday I visited Baba in the hospital, and she was awake for much of the visit, and quite lucid, sitting with her arm around Béla on the bed, and quite happy to see me. After this visit, she was barely awake for the next ten days, until she died the morning of April 24th. We were supposed to fly back that evening, but ended up buying new tickets and contacting Jer's bosses so that we could stay for the funeral, which was on the 27th. I'm so glad we did, as it was a great chance to see lots of family and friends, and was honestly the most fun I've ever had at a funeral. It was sad, of course, but it really was a celebration of her life.

We got back to Germany on April 29th, and I went back to work the following Monday, May 3rd, and Jer's on parental leave until September. Needless to say, there have been lots of changes over the past month! But more on that later. In the meantime, here are some pics from our trip to Canada. They're not in chronological order quite, and are all taken by either Chris and Karen or my mom and dad, as we managed not to take a single picture while we were there. For the first few days it was understandable, as Béla was super clingy, and wouldn't leave my side (he was like that after Jer left during our Christmas visit as well - once his papa's gone he won't let me out of his sight, it seems!). Here we are at Chris and Karen's either the first night or the second night, as my brother and I try on funny hats:

Another view of our handsome boy, all decked out in Canadian gear, working hard to take off his sock.

And a close-up, showing off his beautiful eyes of still indeterminate colour.

Storming the barricades of his uncle Chris...

And here's his younger cousin Gavin, trying out the Exersaucer, perhaps for the first time!

Here's a pic of him eating - there have been lots on the blog of course, but the whole baby-led-weaning approach of giving him regular food prompted much fascination in my family, which I understand. It really is entertaining to watch him figure out how to eat things with limited teeth (only two when this was taken, though he now has 6!) and motor skills. (As an aside, since we're back in Germany, he's begun to master the spoon. We still let him feed himself, but just offer him loaded spoons full of food, as seen in an earlier video with yogurt. He's now really good at it though, and a two-spoon system is a must, as he hands back the empty one as soon as it's left his mouth, and expects another to be waiting.)

The two grandmothers, my mom and Jer's mom Betty Ann. For a while it was looking like Jeremi might not make it to Canada because of the volcanic ash, and I was getting a bit desperate with a baby that would not let me be more than a meter away at any point, and wouldn't think of letting anyone else take him. We'd mentioned earlier that Jer's parents should come to meet up with us in Toronto, and they were thinking about it, but Betty Ann didn't want to intrude. After being heartily reassured that she'd be doing us a favour, she got on a flight on Monday, April 12th, and made it to my parents' place before Jeremi. (We still weren't sure if he was going to make it at all when she flew, or if he'd be stranded at the airport in Munich, where he spent the night.) It was great to have her there, and she got to spend lots of time with not only Béla, but also Nic and Jeremi, her two boys.

A handsome family portrait, in which you can see a bit of the rash on his cheeks. This finally cleared up once we got back to Germany, and my just have been caused by teething (his front top teeth cut through the day after we got back), exacerbated by a bout of impetigo which required a trip to a clinic and a tube of antibiotic cream while we were there. He looks much better now, but there's still a bit of a mark left in the places where he had the impetigo blisters (around his left ear and on his left upper arm).

This was quite typical of Béla during the first few days - I had to put my shoes on, so I put him on the ground, and he sat there leaning against my lower leg to be sure that I didn't go anywhere. It was quite sweet, but also quite tiring! He's also got a big celery stick in his hand, which was quite helpful as he was teething up a storm, and he seems to like gnawing on them. I'm not sure, but we may have been getting ready to walk to the hospital. It's about 5.5 km from my parents' house, and I thought it would be a good way to get a walk in. My mom came with me at least once (maybe twice?), and my cousin Jenn did as well, and I know I did it once with Betty Ann and Jeremi. It was a nice way to get some fresh air, and to ensure that Béla was well-napped before having him cooped up in a hospital room for a few hours for a visit.

Here he is, standing on his chubby little legs. He started crawling a couple weeks before we got there, and worked to improve his skills while we were there. He was also able to pull himself up to standing on couches etc. already, but got way better and faster. And, while we were there, he started standing unassisted for decent periods of time (like maybe 30 seconds), while everyone in the room held their breath. He even shuffled his feet a bit, in first attempts at steps, but without great success. This would have to wait until we got back to Germany (see video in preceding post).

This was the morning before Jeremi arrived, sitting in the backyard with Betty Ann and Béla. She was so good with him - notice that he's sitting on her lap?!? Here we were going through the Caillou song book they got us, which has lots of classic French songs that Jeremi has since taught me. There's some pseudo-music in the book as well (notes to play along with a little electronic toy piano that came with it, but no timing), and we were discussing the differences between the melodies that they know and the melodies in the book, which are sometimes quite significant! Regardless what the tune is, Béla loves this book, as every time he turns the page we sing him another song. It almost always makes him happy, and happier than just singing the song without the book. (A guy sitting near me on the plane called it a "karaoke book", as I sang along with it.)

And here we are, jumping ahead to my mom's birthday dinner on the Wednesday night (the day she turned 60!), where Owen is helping her open a present.

And here's Cathy, giving Béla a little cuddle.

Here my mom was opening the shawl I knit her, described in great detail two posts ago. She wore it to the funeral, and looked fantastic. Actually, we all looked fantastic, Jeremi in a new dark brown suit he bought for the occasion, me in the black maternity dress that I wore to Dina's wedding (it still fits although I'm far from pregnant-looking, as it's really stretchy), and Béla for the first time ever in real pants (with a fly) and a button-up shirt, complete with sweater vest! (Béla's formalwear was provided by the stash in Chris and Karen's basement.) Alas, I don't think that anyone got a photo of any of us, probably because it's sort done, taking pictures at a funeral. It's too bad though, as we all looked great, and likely won't have a reason to dress up again for a while.

Béla and Papa playing...

Ah yes, the food! Once Jer got there and Béla relaxed enough that I could put him down from time to time, I started cooking. We'd even brought along an Italian cookbook that we use a lot, in the hopes that we could make mom and dad some nice Italian dinners to compensate for their cancelled vacation. There was one huge and special meal for mom's birthday, but then there was another multi-course extravaganza the Friday after that, which she seemed to have taken some pictures of. Here are some of the dishes...

...and the famous stuffed mushroom caps, which my family couldn't get enough of.

Karen, having a little nursing break with Gavin.

One thing we learned while we were in Canada is that Béla's great at climbing stairs. We don't have any in our apartment, and we hadn't let him play around in the stairwell yet, but he took to it like a pro.

Or like a little monkey, as per his pyjamas. (We didn't realize that they were pyjamas, and Karen totally laughed at us for letting him wear them all day. They looked like clothes to us!)

My mom and Nic, during the Friday night dinner (I think).

My dad playing with Béla. By the end of the trip Béla and Grandpa were having lots of fun together!

Béla enjoying some BBQed bread with tzatziki - lots of tzatziki...

Now we're jumping back in time a bit, I think. While the meal above was being prepared, Jer, my dad, and my uncle Jon went over to Chris and Karen's to help them move and/or set up an air hockey table and a fußball table in their basement. After which, of course, they had to try them out, and drink a few beers.

Look at Owen's crazy concentration !

One night, while over at Chris and Karen's for supper, Karen suggested that, since Béla wanted to do pretty well anything that Owen was doing, he might enjoy the bath more if he took a bath with Owen. And so we decided to try it. Here Owen's already in the bathtub, while Béla is stripped and ready to go, but not quite sure yet.

Then he moved a little closer, surveying the scene. He did make it into the tub for a little while with Owen, but then at the first hint of a splash he scaled up my arm to get out. We ended up bathing him alone afterward, which still went better than usual. And since coming back, every bath has gotten better! He even plays a bit in the bath now, and has started looking at the bathtub and bath toys as if he might actually want a bath. Hooray!

Supper on the Sunday night, the day after Baba had died. Here you can only see part of the table, but from left are me, Jenn, Jer's friend Bea, Béla, Gloria, and Chris. Also in attendance were Karen, Owen, Gavin, my uncle Jon and aunt Joan, and of course Mom and Dad. Basically, there were about 12 people for every meal. I know this because my mom had a lot on her plate with organizing the memorial service and the meal after, and my cousin Jenn and I took over her role in organizing all the food for the many people who were coming in and out of the house. Every day there were nice brunches (that was all Jenn and Tim!), then lunches of nice cheese, cold cuts, bread, pickles, plus homemade soup, and then giant suppers. There was lots of help, but we were pretty much the kitchen crew. One of the things that my mom mentioned while we were at the hospital the morning that Baba died was that it was like she was "graduating" to the next generation - she was now the elder. I really felt like Jenn and I graduated to the middle generation as we took over the kitchen, let me tell you! It was really fun to spend the time with her doing it.

After supper one night, as Owen and Béla had had enough of sitting at the table, and their baba went to hang out with them for some quiet time in the living room.

Béla having a nap on the living room floor...

Béla playing with grandpa, as I drank yet another giant mug of tea.

Spending the extra few days in Canada also meant that we had more time to hang out with my brother and his family. On the day before the funeral we were all having supper over at Chris and Karen's (lasagnes that I'd made up in advance, plus more stuffed mushrooms so Karen could seem me make them, and a giant tossed salad), and we were there in the afternoon ahead of time so we could go to the park with Owen and Chris. Béla fell asleep in the stroller on the way there and slept through the whole park part of it, but Owen had lots of fun! Here he is on the slide:

And here are the two of us, running up ahead, while Jer and Chris lag behind with the stroller.

The two handsome boys in the double "SUV" stroller that Chris and Karen have. (Yes, he's pulled off one of his socks and his holding it in his hands.)

Owen and I, after mounting one of the rope-climbing toys. (After this picture was taken, I climbed into the basket with Owen, and then we were joined by another little girl. Luckily they make this stuff pretty strong.)

And finally, a picture with some family from up north who came down for the funeral (that's Jenn on the left, with my mom's cousins Diane and Lovey). While we didn't take any pictures on the actual day of the memorial service, they came back the next morning for brunch, and this is from then. They also came back to my parents' place after the dinner after the memorial service, and we had such a fun evening, sitting around talking and hearing crazy old family stories. We managed to get Béla asleep and put the baby monitor on so we could come back down for a few more hours of drinking and talking, which was really fun for both Jer and me. I'm so glad we were able to stay for longer!

So there you have it, our most recent trip to Canada. The circumstances were sad, but it was a really good chance to see everyone, and I'm so glad we could be there. It really seemed as if Baba stayed with us just long enough for me to come see her, and then it was okay to die. She is already greatly missed.

And in closing, a few pictures of my baba. One from when she was young:

And one of her and me at our wedding:

And finally, another picture from the wedding, formatted for the thank-you cards my mom got me to help her with. It really is a nice picture of her.