Walter is one month
old today! I can’t believe that he’s been with us for a month already. We’re so
happy with our little son and so proud of all his accomplishments:
- he’s outgrown all of
his newborn clothes and seems to be gaining weight at a good rate. I had him
weighed two weeks ago and He clocked in at just over 9lbs. I wager that he’s up
to 10lbs now.
- He can easily hold
his head up when he’s on his stomach and can turn it from side to side when he
wants to. He loves using this new skill to look into our eyes or to look at
mirrors. He also is fascinated with the
bedroom wall (not sure why)
- He loves to ‘climb’,
using his feet to push up on us and using his hands to grab shirt collars or
necklaces in order to hoist himself higher. He gets really angry when he
reaches the top of our shoulders so we’re not sure what he’s hoping to find at
the top but it’s clearly not there.
- he’s gotten really
good at communicating his wishes for food without crying. He
knows to hit his mouth with his fists in response to my asking him if he's a hungry boy
- he’s able to sit in
his bouncy chair for up to 30 minutes without needing our direct attention,
which is just long enough for me to wash dishes or do some cooking
- he’s learning to
suck on his fingers and learning to grab and hold onto things, like his
receiving blankets. Sometimes he remembers to hold his soother in his mouth but
usually he forgets.He's not a huge fan of his soother unless he has gas pains or is overtired, which I'm pleased with as I don't want him addicted to it.
- he’s not given me a
proper smile yet, but his comfort smiles are increasing and sometimes, after
particularly long days, he’s sweet enough to cuddle up to me and give me lots
of little smiles as he falls asleep.
- he loves talking
with us. Mostly it’s just a steady murmur interspersed with some throaty
grunts, but he’s getting very definite vowel sounds in there. He responds well
to questioning tones of voice which we have quite a lot of fun with.
Needless to say, we’re
both fascinated by our little son. It’s nice seeing him becoming able to
demonstrate love, as the past couple of weeks with him haven’t been the
easiest. Between fussy periods and noisy nights (he chatters, grunts, and
snores for hours and is SO LOUD) the days can get very long. It’s worse because
we’re in the middle of an international move and the amount of paperwork and
other stuff that I’ve had to do for this is a full time job on its own. For
more days than I like my choice is to nap OR do things that require
concentration (or two hands). The big stressful stuff is getting taken care of,
however, which means:
- we have a place to
live (just north of Mitte in Berlin)
- passport &
citizenship applications are almost finalised. The paperwork for Walter’s
documents has been a nightmare. Literally, it has haunted me for months. He
can’t get a full passport because he doesn’t have proof that he’s a Canadian.
We apply for proof and it takes 12 months, so in the meantime they issue him a
limited validity passport which they’ll only issue if we have proof (ie a
flight ticket) that we need to travel. I can’t get a flight until we have a
place to live in another country. So the timelines have been very, very tight.
On top of it all, the passport application itself has had various annoyances
for completion. So it’s not exactly been fun. Plus I hate filling in forms and
get really anal-retentive about them and then worry.
- flights etc are
ready to be booked! Meaning that I’ve found the flight I want, I just need some
dozy-Walter time in which to book them
That’s enough for now.
I’ll cover Walter’s baptism in a separate post. Walter’s 1-month day was so
busy that I didn’t have a chance to photograph him, but he has loads of
pictures from his Baptism the day before!
And here he is looking adorable, a week ago today (we were heading out for a walk and a pint!):
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