We’ve escaped to Berlin for an excellent change of scenery, some amazing playgrounds, and vast amounts of delicious food. More on that later. Today the weather slipped a little from the days of blazing sunshine, so we decided to take Felix to the AquaDom. Felix was predictably in heaven. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite so excited. ‘Mummy, daddy, LOOK, fishies!!! Swimming round and round! Big eyes! Big mouth! Big tail!’ He also wanted to make sure that the fish weren’t going to eat the starfish, but we assured him they were all friends. It was so much fun that we decided to make use of our all-day passes and went back in the afternoon.

One of the highlights was a little aquarium tunnel near the end just for children to run through. The face says it all.

As an undergraduate I could barely read the comments on my essays, I was so nervous. This process is also making me think of my phd – the tireless detailed notes my supervisors left on draft after draft, and how, slowly, after about a year and a half, I finally got what they meant.

The first of May is a holiday here so we took full advantage and wandered off to the forest in the morning. Felix is happy to sit in the stroller for the fifteen minutes it takes to reach the edge of the forest because he knows he’ll be able to run around once he gets there.

Felix had fun hiding behind trees

and banging them with sticks.

After a picnic lunch Felix raced off to chase the deer in the field.

There were two of them today, though I didn’t manage to take a photo of them. When we came here last weekend, there were six! I couldn’t stop Felix trying to reach them. ‘Want a pat?’, he said, ‘just want a cuddle!’. Later he informed Michael that deer are ‘a bit shy’.

Felix keeping a very firm grip on the wheel a couple of weekends ago…

The blog has been quiet lately because I have been busy. Every spare moment (i.e. every moment in which Felix is sleeping and I am not) I have been marking essays. They are all done now save one. Despite this, it’s not going to get any easier till July. The next big deadline is the end of May – my level three Norwegian test, and before then I also need to finish my syllabus for my teaching next semester. In the midst of this I’m trying to straighten out the house a bit to make life more streamlined. And one week after my Norwegian test, I’ll have fifty exams to mark. I have one day a week to myself – the rest of this must be done in the evenings. One day at a time.

Despite this Felix and I have been enjoying ourselves. Michael was in America last week and I was impressed with how calmly we kept things together. Yesterday Felix and I spent an hour in the park in town. Felix poked sticks into puddles with some bigger kids, and then ran round and round in the rotunda while the seagulls reeled about us. And today Michael was back, bearing gifts, and we had the loveliest day all together again.

It’s Michael’s birthday later this week. When I asked Felix what he thought Daddy would like for his birthday, he thought about it for a minute, then said ‘beads’.

These are photos from a (very cold) afternoon at a wildlife park in Germany over Easter, which I’ve been meaning to put up for a while.

We saw rabbits, pigs, penguins and raccoons but Felix was most excited about the little train. He was desperate to get on it but didn’t enjoy it as much as he thought he would as it was a bit noisy.

Waffles certainly cheered everyone up. Then I even got to meet some old friends.

German Easter decorations are out in force!

Our favourite ice cream cafe

Also, snow.

Sigh. We are so ready for spring.

Felix never wants to take off his pyjamas in the morning and for once we indulged him.

It has been a little stressful as Felix appears to be allergic to something in this house, but his ventolin puffer is keeping it under control. He just loves his Oma and Opa and has been practicing counting to ten in German.

Felix is enjoying his second German Easter so much! He can’t get enough of his Oma and Opa.

These photos are a couple of weeks old but I wanted to get them up here. The cold weather has been conducive to feats of engineering.

As might be apparent, it took three of us to build the castle, and Felix was not the only one having a ball.

I love how Felix always says, slowly and sweetly, ‘Mummy!’ when I pick him up from the barnehage, as though it were an unexpected treat, and he gives a little smile and trots towards me.

And I love how a South African woman I met today in a cafe told me that South Africans are very into their hugs, and I got a hug from both her and her three year old son as they left.