It’s midnight and I still have quite a few things to do before I go to bed, so just quickly today, I want to show you our little strawberry. Thanks again, Audrey, for the hat instructions. Yours looks much prettier than mine, but I think it passes.

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I am very seriously mad – mainly at myself. The Lad, the Munchkin and I went to see our neighbour yesterday – said neighbour’s daughter wanted a shot at our Wii, so the Lad set it up at their place and played with her. D,  the neighbour, and I sat on the floor in the adjacent room and talked while the Munchkin played around us.

At some point, our little girl found a hand puppet and put it on her hand. She came over to us and showed off the puppet. Suddenly, she took it off her hand and threw it at D. D proceeded to tell her that one does not throw things at people (after I had said that to the Munchkin already, I might add), took the puppet and threw it at my baby’s head!

Luckily, this thing was a soft toy with no plastic bits that could have potentially physically hurt the Munchkin. But the look on our baby’s face was terrible. I was shocked and said as much to D, telling her that we do not deal with these situations in this manner. When the Munchkin throws things, bites or does anything else like that, we very decidedly tell her that we do not want that, that we do not hurt each other and potentially physically remove her from the situation. If necessary, we will do that again and again and again.

D responded by telling me that she has her own rules and that at least with her own children, but also in her apartment, those are the rules that apply. She said that children like our little one would never learn to defend themselves or be able to realize that what they are doing hurts others, if they don’t experience it themselves. To this I just replied that I find this eye for an eye tactic inappropriate and terrible and that I want our child to experience and find different ways to deal with conflict.

Apart from that, though, our daughter is actually in Kita and does experience how other children treat each other. She does learn to stand up for herself, but I DO NOT WANT this to happen by forcefully retaliating until someone gives in!

So I am really mad at myself now. I did not exactly have to start a fight, but I should have been more clear about the fact that D overstepped a line when she treated MY child that way. I should have stood up for my daughter more. She was so confused, she didn’t even know what to do with herself for a little while after that. My inability to speak up about this is symptomatic for my general treatment of situations like that – I never want to make a fuss, want to avoid disruption or fight. It’s awful, when you think about it. I usually end up feeling sick and develop migraines on a regular basis, because I am unable to just be CLEAR about what I want and what I don’t want.

By now I don’t even expect parents in our immediate vicinity to understand our views on child-rearing, much less to support or even share them. We have been frowned upon for babywearing, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, cooking organic baby food, respectful treatment of our child and who knows what else.

Naturally everybody has their own thoughts and ideas on all of these things. I don’t expect anyone to conform to our views. What I do expect, however, is the same amount of respect and tolerance that I show others. I would never dream of ‘disciplining’ someone else’s child because I think that’s the way to go!

If you’ll excuse me, I will go and look for my voice now.

Our Munchkin is 20 months old – she weighs 11.69 kg, is 83 cm tall, and has a 46 cm head circumference, if you must know – and I am already wondering what her second birthday will be like. Last year, we went to the Berlin Zoo and had a wonderful time. I am wondering whether we should make that a recurring birthday event. The Zoo is one of the very few places here where you don’t feel completely smothered by the city. A walk through the Zoo is a very refreshing change to an otherwise rather hectic city life – a life that the Lad and I seem to have more and more of a problem adjusting to.

Our Munchkin continues to be very active and inquisitive. She likes music and loves to dance and twirl. Her giggles lighten our hearts and her tantrums do not yet last very long. Our little girl likes to lean in and give kisses, and story time with Daddy is an absolute delight for her.

I am not sure where our Munchkin stands in terms of her language development, but she does try to ‘talk’ a lot, all the while mixing English, German and of course words of her own creation. Seemingly our baby should start using her own name and talking in two to three word sentences soon, but I do not see that happen quite yet. So far, I am not in the least worried about her progress in that particular area.

Here are the words she frequently uses these days: Baby, Mommy, Daddy, Nein, Kita, Kitty, Alle, All Done, Open, Book, Cheese, Hi, This, Bye Bye, Brush Teeth, Light, Night Night, Oh Oh, Tea. The Munchkin’s very German ‘Nein’ is definetely the most used word at the moment, usually delivered with a very decisive head-shaking.

It’s very interesting to see how our Munchkin deals with her bilingualism. Right now, she does seem to understand both languages equally well, but her teachers tell me that as a rule, she will respond to requests more readily and more sweetly when they are uttered in English.

The Lad and I both speak only English to her, but German is absolutely the more dominant language in her life at this point. I often wonder whether our little one might develop a preference for either one of her first languages later on.

Anyway, on with the pictures now!

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Picture time! Our baby will be 18 months old in 12 days. She is sporting 3 1/2 teeth by now, her current favorite pastimes are climbing everything that seems remotely suitable for it and putting things in order – I have honestly no idea where she gets that from.  Our little girl charms everyone with her generally cheerful disposition – wherever she goes, she smiles and is friendly with people. I love that quality about her so much, I attempt to soak up her positive and happy attitude and try to make it my own. Anyway, on with the pictures. I always try to reduce the amount of photos I want to show to three or four when I sort my way through the recent pictures, but end up using way too many regardless. I can’t promise that’ll change anytime soon, I am afraid.

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The last couple of weeks have been quite strenuous for us. When I collected the Munchkin from Kita one Thursday, I heard a little girl in her classroom cough quite badly. I felt reasonably sure then that we would be graced with the appearance of a cold sometime soon.

The Munchkin was restless throughout the following night, but seemed otherwise ok. On Friday then, her condition deteriorated after I picked her up from Kita. Her temperature rose up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and I was unable to lower it for any length of time. She also developed a terrible cough and became increasingly lethargic. When she seemed to have trouble breathing and her overall condition worsened, the Laddie and I took her to the Emergency Room.

Turns out our baby was suffering from acute spasmodic laryngitis (spasmodic croup) and obstructive bronchitis, so her breathing pathways were basically blocked both ways. The doctor explained to us just how dangerous spasmodic croup can get and gave us a room on the pediatric ward of the hospital. We (the Munchkin and I) stayed there for four very restless and exhausting days. The Lad came to be with us every day from about 7:30 am and left when it was time for our little girl to sleep. Our nights at the hospital were filled with frequent visits by nurses and one alarm or other going off approximately every ten minutes or so, startling awake both the Munchkin and myself.

At some point during our hospital stay, the Lad voiced what I had been thinking about all the time, too: We have never been this scared for our daughter. I felt utterly helpless and useless, seeing my baby hooked up to the monitors, getting poked with needles, taking cortisone, inhaling every few hours. My poorest child. I took comfort in the fact that I was very close to her all through this time. The Munchkin spent the first night at the hospital sleeping on my belly. For the remaining three days, she snuggled up very close beside me at night – thankfully they had pushed two beds together for us, so our sleeping situation was similar to what we’re used to.

We arrived back home last Monday and the Munchkin spent the remainder of the week with me. Yesterday was her first day back at Kita and she seems to have missed that part of her routine a lot. Leaving the classroom on Monday, I read that scarlet fever is an issue at Kita right now, too. I guess I should get used to that kind of thing.

In other news, the Lad celebrated his 27th birthday on October 8th. Due to our stay at the hospital and the resulting stress and chaos, I was unable to make his special day truly special for him. We did spend the day together, but things were just really unorganized, messed up and generally lacking. By October 7th, a feverish cold had knocked me out, too, so I was basically rendered useless once more. I feel absolutely terrible about how this year’s birthday went for the Lad – I hope I will be able to make it up to him somehow.

Our Munchkin is asleep, the Lad and I will snuggle up now, have some homemade chicken soup, watch a movie and hope the next illness isn’t looming on the horizon just yet.

I just realized it’s been quite a while since I last posted pictures of our Munchkin, so I will dedicate this entry to new pictures. It’s incredible how much she’s changed in a few months! Huge amount of pics to follow

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Our little Munchkin is now 15 months old and has started Kita on August 11th. Kita is the German equivalent to the American daycare and right now, we’re in the middle of the ‘Eingewöhnung’, the adaptation period.

For about one week, I went to Kita with my baby at 9:30 am every day and stayed there for one hour while she played – after that, we’d go home together. She immediately was incredibly interested and happy to be around the other kids, to just be and play in a big room full of toys. Only when her teeth were bothering her, she’d come to me and sit in my lap (yes, at 14 months, the Munchkin finally started teething! We now have two bottom teeth to report).

After the first week had passed without incident, we started going to Kita 1 1/2 hours at a time and my baby was fine with that, too. Last Thursday then, we tried the first separation of ten minutes. Our Munchkin did protest a little bit at first when I left, but did not cry – so I continued to go out and sat down somewhere out of her sight. Things were going really well, so we extended the separation by five minutes. When I came back outside to be with her, my baby did not seem to have missed me much *sniff*. I’m ok, really *doublesniff*

Since everything went so smoothly that day, we attempted a 30 minute separation on Friday. This time, my baby did not object at all when I gave her to her nursery teacher and she was fine for the whole half hour. I felt weird, sitting in the teachers’ conference room, listening out for any crying or other noises of distress from my baby. When I came to pick her up again, my Munchkin reached out for me, smiling. She waved bye bye and on our way home we went.

We’ll be back to Kita tomorrow. The plan is that I sit with our Munchkin for about 15 minutes and then see if she’d be ok with me leaving her there. I’ll stay close by, but I guess it’s intended that she stays there for a good while without me. I’ll have to be honest, this whole thing seems to be much harder for me than it is for her. Of course I am happy that she is so enthusiastic about going to nursery, but it’s still a big, big step for me.

Our Munchkin has never been babysat by anyone. For the last 15 months, I have been separated from her only very rarely and if so, it was only for a few hours at a time, while she was out on a walk with the Laddie. It’s not that I wouldn’t have let someone else watch her, but our baby to this day is still nursing and won’t go to sleep without me. Sadly though, even if that weren’t the case, my sister, the only close relative we have around, is not particularly interested in seeing her niece on a more or less regular basis.

Anyway, all this means my baby and I have been very, very close ever since she was born. So her going to Kita by herself for a good few hours every day is really a big deal.

Next week, it’ll be decided whether the adaptation period can be considered successfully completed or not. If all goes as planned, I will then have a few hours each day to study for my Masters, which I’ll hopefully have completed by May next year. Geez, too much to think about right now. I’m losing my baby, sort of. Must go and wallow a bit.

Our Munchkin turned one year old on May 13 and even now I hesitate when people ask me how old she is – she is still just my baby, it seems impossible she should have been with us for the past 12 months. It feels like she is very close to taking her first few unaided steps – she cruises along furniture like there is no tomorrow and uses her baby buggy to whiz through our increasingly crowded apartment.

Our Munchkin will start attending daycare in August and I am far from ready to let her go. Alas, I have no choice in the matter, as I have to return to uni to complete my Masters. Next May then, I will have to return to work as well and I’d prefer to have uni behind me at that point. I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like trying to juggle work, uni and family life with a toddler. We shall see how all that will work out, though, as we seem to have a bit of a problem even finding an adequate childcare facility. There are so many things involved that I can’t quite seem to wrap my head around – I am running in circles and at this point simply can’t make the decisions that need to be made.

Before this tiny little nonsensical post turns into even more of a ramble, I will leave you with new pictures of our littlest baby girl.

First, for all to see, a picture of the birthday dress I made for our Munchkin:

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I have felt terribly miserable and quite sorry for myself lately, so I didn’t really think I had anything worthwhile to contribute to this here blog. Seems a bit silly not to blog about personal and/or the more difficult stuff in our lives, in hindsight, since this blog is in fact a personal one – it would seem there’s no need for me to force myself to remain on a subjectively perceived appropriate level. So I’ll just take things as they come now and see where that takes me blogwise. Anyhoo, on to Baby News.

Our little Munchkin is so incredibly active right now, she pulls her tiny self up literally everywhere she can grab hold, walks along furniture and ‘talks’ a lot. She seems very interested in people, especially other little children, smiles and waves whenever she sees them.

On that note, I find the mentality of people in Berlin revolting most of the time. Our baby is so friendly and eager to interact and very often, people notice, but can’t be bothered to show any kind of friendly behavior. Yesterday, for example, the Laddie and I took the Munchkin to a park near our house. She was just really happy to be outside and contently looking at people, when she saw a mommy turn the corner with her little boy strapped in a stroller. My little girl stood up on my legs, smiled at the boy and waved at the mommy. The mother just looked at her briefly, then looked away again and walked past, never even changing her facial expression. My baby looked after her in a sort bewildered manner and eventually shifted her attention to something else.

This kind of thing really does break my heart. It happens more often than I care to admit, but I just can’t get used to this kind of indifference. It’s beyond me how anyone can behave this way. Whenever I see other children do things like this, I can’t help but smile, no matter my mood on that particular day. I personally find it terrible that my child is introduced to the ‘real’ world this young.

Berlin and her people have not presented themselves particularly child-friendly to me within the last year or so, if I’m honest here. Right now, the Laddie and I frankly feel sick of the Berlin mentality and the technicalities of big city life. I’ve had to keep the Munchkin on my lap all this time at the park yesterday, simply because there were things lying on the ground you don’t want to imagine your child getting close to. It’s so sad that we can’t go anywhere with our baby where she could play and crawl around freely, without her parents anxiously hovering over her all the time – it just feels so restrictive.

The Munchkin has just fallen asleep and I have tons of things yet left to do, so I will leave you with pictures of our little sunshine. (more…)

Here’s what the rocking horse looked like after I applied the first coat of paint.

I didn’t really think it looked quite white enough, so I put on another layer of white.

Almost done now, I think. I ordered a bit of cloth to make a pillow from. As I’ve never sewn anything properly before, this might turn out to be a bad idea, but I’ll try my best.

The Laddie and I are otherwise trying to deal with a lot of problems right now, which is paralyzing in more than just one way. Jobs, money, studies, childcare, family, friends…Everything just seems to be going downhill. In the midst of it all, we are trying our best not to let our Munchkin feel any stress or strain. A monumental task at the moment, really, a draining exercise. Hopefully things will look up again eventually.