Two brothers

Tom is 1

One month that is :) we celebrated with some apple cake despite the whole family being under the weather.

New doorbell sign

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

Translation:

Advertising / Sales, propaganda and fundraising prohibited.

Offense punishable by verbal humiliation.

The Owner

And then there were four

Meet the newest addition to our family - Thomas Ray

Eight, nine, .... TEN !!!

Jack and I have been married for 10 years today.
Hard to believe that it's been this long.
We're still very very happy and now looking forward to becoming parents for the second time around.
Life is one amazing roller coaster and it's the greatest blessing to spend it with the one you love.
Any day now :)))

29 weeks

25-26 weeks

25 weeks...

26 weeks...

Tim is 3 !!!

Thank you very much to everyone who emailed, wrote, called, sent presents and had our little boy in their thoughts!  

Baby Ni at 22 weeks

Today we had an appointment for "fine diagnostics", which is basically a very detailed ultrasound.  So far all is looking well at 22 weeks.  Here are two pics of Baby Ni's face.

  

And here's Tim at 20 weeks... for comparison :)

20 weeks

So far everything has been going well with the pregnancy. Docs keep saying that Baby Ni (it's our name for the baby, for lack of other ideas, since we had two girl names prepared and none for boys - seems like finding decent names for boys that sound reasonable in three languages is very difficult) is even a little bigger for his age. Who knows - may be it just means he'll come early. Either way for now everything is normal and that makes us all very happy.  I now have been feeling him kick for about a month and the kicks are getting stronger every day :)

Belly at 19 weeks...

Belly at 20 weeks...

Life in 'finally!' spring

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

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

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

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

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

Boy... definitely a boy!

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

Tim is going to be a big brother!

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

Tim the chef

Our little boy has a new hobby - helping us in the kitchen.  He brings a chair, stands and watches and sometimes gets to do stuff with us.  Makes us all very happy :)