A clamber

This was taken by the rose garden at Oranienplatz.

Beets

Beets in belly. Then...



And after a good cleaning.



He also ate some sand.

Up down and up again

A standing video...enjoy.

The real June 15th

All that napped from five fifteen to six twenty-three stuff? Boring. We should just make a chart, and no need to litter the blog with it. If we can get him to actually follow a schedule convenient for us, then we have something to talk about. 

Today was a qualified success, at least for me. Magoo mistakes were made, but nothing fatal.

In the early afternoon I took Magoo in the stroller that we're borrowing to the Kaethe Kollwitz museum. The stroller stayed in the lobby, I put Magoo on my back, and off we went. No go -- he started squirming and gurgling, too loud for a museum. 

So I went for a walk around the block to try to put him to sleep. Got myself an ice cream cone; he immediately started squirming for it. How did he know I was eating something? He's on my back, and he doesn't understand mirrors! I kept walking and walking, increasingly feeling desperate. I would never be able to enjoy a museum again, the next five years would be like this, my life as a human being is over, etc., etc. Just as I started feeling wet around the eyes, he finally fell asleep. 

At this point, I had only about forty-five minutes for the museum. Fortunately, that was just about perfect. I like Kaethe Kollwitz a lot, especially the desperate clutching, but she can be a bit much. 

At three-thirty, I met a language exchange buddy named Soeren. He had sent me a most bizarre email, suggesting meeting at the Bellevue S station in the Tiergarten, "3:30pm sharp to 6pm on this Sunday, 15  June....I found that was always a perfect time to meet for tandem! I recommend to meet downstairs by the lift of s-bahn station. So does this work with you? Please let me know asap. You may use bvg.de to plan your trip." I was pissed off, especially by the out-of-the-way location, but beggars can't be choosy, so agreed to meet him. Turns out he's simply something like mildly autistic! He talks and talks, and doesn't listen, and is obsessed with statistics. Once I figured that out and relaxed, it was quite lovely, actually. And the Tiergarten has some very nice parts. 

Magoo fell asleep at about seven, and Rob and I thought we might be able to go to a restaurant. No luck. He woke up as we were passing through the Kulturforum on the way to the M29, and screamed and screamed and screamed. He was evidently hungry (Magoo Mistake #1) and cold (Magoo Mistake #2). We stopped to get falafel on Adalbertstrasse, Magoo still quite unhappy. After we ate, I ordered a plate for the baby -- just soft stuff: a falafel ball, some eggplant, and some hommus. Turns out feeding him works. I'll call this Magoo Solution #1. 

Finally, Magoo fell asleep, and we even managed to catch the last half of the Czech-Turkey game at the corner biergarten. Uncanny stuff! I was particularly excited to see Turkey play without a goalie for the last two minutes of overtime, but no such luck: turns out somewhen else gets to sub when the goalie gets a red card. 

Schedule II

Well...he slept through the night. Up at a 7am, napped from 9:45--11:30. Napped again from 1:45--3:15pm. Short nap in carriage from 7--7:20pm. Down now for the night at 10pm.

Schedule

We're trying to figure out if Magoo has a schedule. Today he woke at 9am (after an hour up from 5-6am). Then he napped in the Kreuzberg museum from 2-3:30pm (on my back). He fell asleep again at 7:30pm, and is still asleep. Are we making another Magoo Mistake by letting him sleep so late at night? (See future posts for other recent Magoo Mistakes.)

GOAL!!

An extra time goal by Turkey just set Kruezberg ablaze! (...and woke Magoo.)

Sit, semi-stand

Well, it's true...Magoo now sits up on a regular basis. From a lying position on his belly, he pushes his butt in the air, works his way back with his hands, and then plops on his butt.

He also pulls himself up to a standing position now if he has a generous ledge. He's currently sleeping on a mattress on the floor flush to our bed -- our mattress is about 8 inches higher than his, and from his mattress he can now stand up leaning on our mattress.

Berlin: Day five. A terrible day

Terribly hot. Magoo got sunburned. Rob is feeling sick. I'm always exhausted. We're not eating enough. Despair sets in. 

Tried to go to the Biennale at KW with Magoo. Tough. He woke up and had to skip most of the video installations, which had better have been the best part because the rest of it wasn't. I did like Pushwagner's Soft City. Here's some guy's personal photo of one of the pages.

The nice thing about the gallery for Magoo was that a number of people smiled at him, which he just loves. Otherwise not many people on the street do. The one occasional exception is middle-aged Turkish men. In short, it turns out that Germans may hate babies.

It appears that Magoo can now sit up by himself from lying down on his belly. He sort of did it last night at Armen and Hro's place, though to be fair one of his legs was folded behind him, which isn't how one normally sits. More importantly, Rob claims to have seen it at least twice more today. 

He also likes standing up by himself while holding on to something like a low stool. But he's not entirely stable. 

Berlin, day four

We arrived in Berlin. Weather is consistent: unrelenting sun, cool shade, no mugginess. Quite lovely, actually.

After much work, I've managed to anmeld myself. This made me very tense. The lady knew that I was supposed to be legid! and that the woman we're subletting from is not the owner of her place! (For future reference: I recommend the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Buergeramt 2 on Schlesische Strasse rather than the larger and more centrally located Buergeramt 1 on Yorckstrasse.) 

So now we have cell phones. (Ffr: we should have angemeldet Rob also, as, for example, Vodafone only allows one phone per angemeldet customer.)

Magoo doesn't sit much anymore. He hangs out on his belly and his back instead. He does some cripple crawling when provoked. And he can do plank pose and downward dog. Rob took a little video, but I can't figure out where it is on the hard drive, so maybe Rob will upload it later. 

He likes to rip tissues, leaves, and other rippable things. He takes ripping tasks very seriously.

Today was an exciting day. At about 4pm we met up with Armen, Hro, Valery, and Oleg, and went to play volleyball at some bar in a park behind the Technisches Museum. Armen, Hro, Oleg, and Rob played (photo), and I talked to Valery and watched Magoo. 

Valery is German but speaks Russian amazingly well. Never have I seen such a thing. I am, of course, intensely jealous.

Magoo discovered sand, and just sat and played with it, passing it between his fingers. Photo. He didn't try to eat it, but did cover his eyeballs with it. I had put sunblock on him, so it stuck.  

Then we went out to the lake near Krumme Lanke and went swimming. The water was cold and Magoo wriggled and panted and eventually turned purple. Then we took him out and he turned pink again, somewhat like his color-changing duck.

Oh, there was some football involved, before and after the swimming.