Monday 3 September 2012

One Month with Walter



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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