Béla's two months old, and several firsts

The weekend after Jeremi's parents left, we had a small fondue party for my birthday. I didn't really want a party, as I wasn't feeling all that great about turning 30, and I was tired after all the travelling. In the end, he convinced me that just a few close friends, and something easy to prepare, like fondue, wouldn't be too much. I'm really glad he did convince me, as it was a really nice evening, and it was nice to have a little celebration of this milestone. I feel like it sort of got ignored in all the excitement over the baby, and it was nice to have a little party that wasn't entirely about him. Here are Valentina, Miroslava, Calin, and Susanne.
Now the title of this post promised you some firsts: and here you have it, Béla's first outfit with pants! Again, I'm including a few pictures because he's so darn cute in all of them. I liked this one because it shows how fat his neck is getting. (It's even fatter now, and I have to really keep on top of cleaning it, as breastmilk drips in there and slowly starts to turn into cheese...)
This outfit was sent with Paul and Betty Ann from Jeremi's brother and his wife, Nick and Cathy. It's adorable, and features a blushing frog with arms outstretched, and says "i love you this much". A happy-faced yawn...
A goofy, lopsided smile...
...and finally a look straight at the camera. Just so you can enjoy more than one facet of his cuteness.
Another big first was his first bottle. I waited longer than is generally recommended, until about 8.5 weeks, but he had some trouble latching at first, and I didn't want to mess up breastfeeding due to the much-threatened "nipple confusion". I also hadn't gotten around to trying out the breast pump that Karen gave me yet, and I was a bit nervous that it would hurt. (Getting breastfeeding going was more painful that I had expected, and I didn't want to go through that again.)

Of course the pump didn't hurt, and of course he took the bottle like a pro, as seen below. However, seeing him eating away from me for the first time, even if it was my milk, did hurt a little. I'm better about it now though, and we're trying to get into a routine where I pump one bottle a day, so Jeremi can feed him in the evening when he gets home from work. The pumping part is going okay, but we're not really good about having the bottle warmed up in time, so he either gets a not-very-warm bottle, which doesn't seem to bother him, or I cheat and feed him a bit while Jeremi's getting the bottle warmed up. I also seem to produce more milk that I know what to do with, and our tiny little freezer is getting filled up with excess milk rather quickly. I know, not the worst problem to have!
And with Béla's two month birthday, came Jeremi's first day back at work. This meant that his beard had to get tamed. Before:
And after:
Of course he still has that ridiculous tuft at the top of his forehead, as his hair is growing back after needing staples there a few months back. It looks worse when he has his hair in a ponytail, I think, though he claims that people don't notice it unless I point it out. However, once I do point it out, people tend to find it hysterically funny.

Jeremi's first day back at work also meant my first whole day with just Béla and me. Thankfully, he was the easiest baby ever, to ease me into the routine. And when Jeremi came home he found me reading on the couch, with both Béla and Aeris asleep on me. Not a bad way to end the afternoon!
That night we celebrated his second birthday with a lovely supper of salad niçoise, cheese we brought back from Paris, and some freshly baked bread. And we finally opened the bottle of "Sandbanks" wine, which is grown in the county just south of Belleville, and which was a gift from the Gariepys at our wedding. I was saving it for a special occasion, and then I got pregnant, so we've been saving it for well over a year now. It was well worth the wait!
The next big landmark was Béla's first Halloween! Unfortunately it's not widely celebrated here, and I didn't have a good occasion to justify making him a costume (and making him wear a costume), but luckily Paul and Betty Ann brought this adorable Halloween sleeper complete with black cat hat. (For those of you who were confused, and thought that this was a picture of Aeris, it's actually a picture of the baby cleverly disguised as a cat.)And another view so you can see the hat a bit better:
And while we didn't have a real Halloween party to go to, our friend Brent (who's from Lethbridge) hosted a Halloween boo-runch, where he could go and show off his cute outfit. After that, we went to my colleague Dietrich's place, as he'd offered us some toys that his boys had outgrown, and which they were happy to part with. All of the excitement left Béla a very tired cat by the time we got home.

Among the toys we picked up from Dietrich was this sort of mobile, which hangs over the baby when he's lying on his back, and which has dangling objects that he can reach up and bat at or grab. (There's probably a name for this in English, but I don't know talk to people about these things in English very often.) Here he is enjoying it, or at least enjoying chewing on his hand, on his activity mat from Ikea. (The quilt that's covering him is the one that Mrs. Gariepy made for him as well.) Though we don't have photographic evidence of it yet, he's getting pretty good at getting his fingers through the rings that are hanging down when he grabs at them, though he's not always so successful at keeping his thumb on the outside for a true "grasp". I'm sure it's just a matter of time though!
And finally, in other news, yesterday we got a package from our friends Brandy and Bruce in Victoria! It came wrapped in a vintage map of Vancouver Island, which was pretty cool. (So cool in fact, that German customs just had to open it up to see what was inside, and helpfully rewrapped it with their customs tape, after enclosing a pamphlet about the rules and regulations for shipments from non EU countries. Thanks, Zollamt!)
Inside the package was a mug that I had when I was a kid, which says "look who's hiding in my cup" on the side...
...and which has a little pink dog inside! We had two of them, one with a pink dog, and one with a blue bird (which broke, I think), and I loved them. This one made it with me to Montreal, then Halifax, and then Victoria. When our household in Victoria was dissolved through garage sale, Craig's list, and giving things away, this mug ended up with Brandy and Bruce. (Brandy helped organize the liquidation.) Since we now have a little one in the house, she thought it was time to send it back, wrapped in a receiving blanket, with a map of Canada enclosed, so he could enjoy it. Here's the little dog inside:
Thanks for the package guys! It was a great pick-me-up after a long day.

After the trip with Paul and Betty Ann

Once we got back from our trip, we still had a couple of days in Jena before Paul and Betty Ann had to head back to Canada. Luckily, the weather was finally a bit nicer, and we made use of one crisp sunny day to head out for a big walk.
We crossed over the footbridge near our house...
...and had a nice look at the river Saale.
...and a look at the circus vehicles, which were set up along the shore.
Paul was amazed by the ducks which were so tame and used to people (and not used to getting shot at).
From there we headed through Jena Ost (East Jena), following the trail signs for those heading to the Fuchsturm (the fox tower).
These soon led us onto forest paths, which brought us up, up, up, to the top of one of the hills surrounding Jena.
At last, we could see our destination, the Fuchsturm, ahead of us.
At that point Béla was hungry, so I fed him in the courtyard below, enjoying the sun, while the others climbed the tower to enjoy the view. Here's the view from the tower onto the courtyard where you can see my legs as I'm sitting beneath the tree.
The view from the tower:
Look how high we climbed!
Paul at the top of the tower...
There's also a nice little restaurant next to the tower, which serves traditional fare, and we stopped in there for some lunch.
And of course, a beer or two.
Everyone enjoyed the food, especially after all that hiking.
After eating our lunch, Béla was ready for his photo shoot. He was wearing a sleeper that was part of a present from Jeremi's colleagues, and we wanted to get a good picture of him in it to send in a thank-you email.
We wanted the picture to show the tower as well, as it's a well-known landmark in Jena. We took several pictures to be sure that he looked good in one of them, but he looked so cute in all of them, that I thought I'd include them all here for your viewing pleasure!






Then we headed back into town, and had a nice supper of Greek salad and spanakopita (not shown here). The next day was my 30th birthday, and we celebrated by dressing Béla in his giraffe sleeper for the last time (as it no longer fits).
I was also greeted by flowers and a candle at breakfast.
Aren't they lovely flowers? They still look pretty good, actually. That day we headed out shopping, buying things for supper that night and souvenirs for Paul and Betty Ann to bring home. That afternoon they all worked together to cook up a multi-course Middle Eastern extravaganza for supper, including lamb-topped flatbreads, a cucumber-mint-pomegranate salad...

... a chick pea dish topped with garlicky yogurt...

...a big bowl of tabouleh, my favourite salad of all time...

...and roasted chicken stuffed with a variety of dried fruits. It was all delicious, and made for wonderful leftovers as we relaxed on the couch the next day!

And then we all went to bed pretty early, as Paul and Betty Ann's train left from Weimar shortly before 5:00 the next morning. Because there aren't any regional trains running from Jena to Weimar that early, we borrowed our friend Valentina's car and Jeremi drove them there at 4:00 the next morning. It was sad to see them go, but I'm so glad that they were able to visit us, see where we live, explore Europe a bit, and meet their grandson!

Dresden with Paul and Betty Ann

After leaving Vienna, we had our longest train ride of all, all the way to Dresden, which took almost seven hours. Of course, we had Béla on the train to entertain us.
We also shared the compartment most of the way with an older Czech woman who spoke perfect German, as the region in which she lived was part of Germany until the end of the war, when she was about 13. I talked to her a lot, and translated what I could. She spoke some English as well, but wasn't so confident. She had a lot of interesting and incredibly sad stories about the time after the war, when the region suddenly became part of Czechoslovakia. The new government took everything from the former German citizens who lived there - property, money, possessions, and many of them fled to Germany, where things weren't much better. Her family stayed, and she learned Czech then, though she remembered having to draw pictures on the ground with a stick when she didn't know the word for something. Some of her stories were so depressing that I ended up crying while translating them for the others. She had been in Vienna visiting her son who has been working there for years, after her dog of 16 years died three weeks before. They wanted her to visit to get her mind off it, but she was still sad thinking about coming home to an empty house, without the dog. This story made me cry too...
Béla wasn't sad though, and slept well most of the way, whether in the sling, in someone's arms, or on someone's lap, as is the case here.
Once we got to Dresden, it wasn't far to get to our hotel. We were all a bit tired though, and didn't feel like going out to explore the city too much that night. Luckily, there was a grocery store nearby where we could buy food for breakfast, and there was a brewery right next door, with a restaurant in it. There we were able to order one of the "beer lanterns", which came in either 3 litres or 5 litres. Here are Paul and Betty Ann with the 3 litre variety.

The food was good too, and they had a special seasonal menu for fall, with lots of game. We were able to try rabbit, deer, and wild boar. Béla also enjoyed the restaurant.
It was a pretty cool place, and while it wasn't functioning as a brewery anymore, it had a lot of the old equipment still in place. This giant copper dome was over what was now the bar.
The beer was so good that we got a second beer lantern, and then we drank some more over cards at the room afterward. As such, breakfast was a little later than it might have been, but we all ate well.
After breakfast, we headed out to explore the city. After some coffee and tea en route, we all needed to find a toilet. The tourist map had public toilets marked on it, so we ended up at this little coin-operated toilet, which automatically cleaned itself between uses. It was pretty cool, but took a while as we had to go one at a time, with about a minute between us for the automatic cleaning cycle.
Then we did a little foot tour of the city, seeing all the major sites, including the Frauenkirche, which was destroyed in WWII, and recently rebuilt in all its former glory.
We then walked along the river Elbe, behind the Academy of Arts...
...along the fortified wall, the drainage area of which can be seen here.
This brought us to the cathedral which is attached to the palace.
The church was interesting enough in its own right, but our visit was made necessary by Béla's hunger. I wasn't completely sure that it was okay to breastfeed in a church that's open to the public as a tourist attraction, but it was too cold to sit outside on a bench comfortably, so I went for it.

In the meantime, Paul and Betty Ann had a good luck around the church, checking out the incredibly ornate pulpit, among other things.
Béla found the setting so relaxing that he decided to have a GIANT poop. Unfortunately the bathrooms were temporarily closed to the public, and they didn't have a changing table anywhere else. The woman at the information desk suggested that I try the palace across the way, but it was already starting to leak through his clothes, so we decided to change him right on the pew. As such, Béla ended up stark naked in the cathedral, but no one objected (or perhaps they just didn't notice).

Just around the corner from the cathedral is a long wall with thousands of tiles from the porcelain manufacturer in Meißen, the nearby city in which porcelain was first made in Europe. I'd seen this mosaic before, with a row of noble men on horses, and at that point I got the fact that it was a princely lineage, but it didn't really mean that much. However, in the meantime, I've read a series of historical fiction (in German) which is set in this area of Germany in the 12th Century, and I actually knew who a few of the noblemen at the beginning of the procession were, at least as characters in the book. (I was actually a bit bummed after I read all the names, as at the point I am in the series, after the third book, it's not clear which one of the Markgraf's sons will succeed him, but now I know. The fourth book hasn't been published yet, but I can't wait.) In any case, I was pretty excited by the mural this time around.From there we headed on to the opera house (the Semperoper) and the Zwinger, a palace complex that now houses several museums. Outside there were lovely gardens of densely planted chrysanthemums.
Inside the courtyard, Jeremi posed as the king of Poland, looking as regal as he could. (The crown was added to the palace after the conquering of Poland.)
Some views around the stately courtyard...


Paul and Jeremi, imitating one of the goofy satyrs who are holding up the building.
There was also a carillon with ceramic bells, which plays complex tunes on the hour, or so I thought, but we were lucky enough to hear it at the quarter hour, at 2:15.
After leaving the Zwinger, we passed by the more modern arts centre in the centre of town, which has another historical mural on it, though this one is dating from the more recent communist East German period...
Before our train we had time for a late lunch, and after checking out what we thought was a goose restaurant (with very little goose on the menu), we opted instead for the Vietnamese restaurant across the square. It wasn't as traditionally German, but it was delicious, and everyone enjoyed it. Here's a look at Betty Ann's dish...
...and Paul's dish was decorated by a lovely little rose-shaped carrot.
After that it was time to head to the train station again, to end our trip with the final journey to Jena.