Is it scooting or scootering as I hear some people say? (I was pretty sure it's scooting and my spell check just underlined scootering, so it seems confirmed!)

Anyway, we had a pretty poorly winter and Yannick wasn't very fit. It was mostly little things like colds but we also got chicken pox in February which knocked him quite a bit. He asked me many times to pick him up with the bicycle from pre-school - which is only a five minute walk! After chicken pox things turned around!

Finally Yannick has found his legs (and some more confidence) again! I don't know what happened but between age two and a half and age four he lost a lot of his zest for movement and became really lazy, wanted to be carted around in his push-chair (buggy) most of the time. However, all of a sudden he doesn't seem to need his 'home from home' (that three-wheeled contraption, the push-chair/buggy) any more. I didn't use that thing much at all over the last year, it was mainly there for Yannick's and daddy's trips on the weekend. If I went anywhere where prolonged walking might be required, I would take the bicycle with him on the back as it just made the journeys so much faster. At some point Yannick didn't want to go back in the bicycle seat and just walked home, it was a miracle! For the last month or two he started to walk/run so much more, back and forth into Winchester town centre (at least an hour each round trip), up St Catherine's hill (two hour trip), anywhere we want to go. It's brilliant. If there is a down moment (I'm bored, I'm tired) all I need to do is distract, show him something, and he's on his way again. He's not even asking about his push-chair to be taken along (apart from one time with dad where we quickly convinced him that wouldn't be a good idea). Now I just need to get my act together and sell that thing on ebay.

After realising that he could walk for more than five minutes, Yannick also started to show more of an interest in other ways of moving about again. His scooter has finally been used for more than just 10 metres, he's been into town on it! We also took it along to the zoo on Monday and he had loads of fun scooting about with his friend Callum.

I think this whole new walking thing must be related to the fact that Yannick's legs grew about two sizes over the six to nine months. He always used to wear trousers one size smaller than his tops (which were right for his age group), now they have caught up. Obviously longer legs means you get about faster which makes everything so much easier!

TMI warning: if you don't like to read about the female cycle, stop right here!

Just wanted to update on my Agnus Castus results as another four months have passed by and I'm sitting here with a nice little headache which must be PMS related. Yes, shouty mum is back - but not quite as bad as before (for now). So, yes, there seems to be an effect on the mood swings, which is good.

My hormones have stayed kick-started but my body seems to have got more used to that as I had no more cold sores ever since I wrote my last entry. Yes, I actually forgot to mention that I got those every time for three months… Not a nice side effect.

It seems that Agnus Castus indeed has done quite something to my body.

TMI warning: if you don't like to read about the female cycle, stop right here!

A while after I had given birth to Yannick I started getting really bad PMS, sometimes about five days before my period, being irritable like hell and becoming 'shouty mum' for the slightest of reasons. I didn't want to do this to my little man any more so I asked around if anybody had a tip. One of my mummy friends recommended to take Agnus Castus, a herbal medicine.

I read up on it and it sounded all right. A three month course of Agnus Castus is supposed to kick-start the female body into creating more progesterone, a female hormone, and thus help to do away with the hormonal imbalances that cause PMS. I also read somewhere that it might help with conception - this should have set my alarm bells off. (No, I am not pregnant!) However, there was no more mention of that at other places so I promptly forgot about this piece of information again.

I ordered my three month course and have just finished taking it. Now I am wondering, what have I done to myself?!

I think the mood swings mellowed out a little but I am not entirely sure that I have got rid of them completely. Circumstances while taking the drug don't help determining how much it changed me: we had Frank around for the whole of December which obviously took pressure of me, so how can I tell how much of the change is related to Frank and how much to the medicine?

What certainly happened is that it kick-started my hormones! The last three periods I could tell every single time when I was ovulating and I also got my periods at shorter intervals - definitely not a desired effect! I am sure if I would try for a baby now (I won't!) I would most certainly get pregnant quickly. And this at my age…!

I also noticed some other changes but I am not going to elaborate, let it suffice to say it has to do with libido. These were also unwelcome to me. (Ha ha, now you wonder…)

In any case, I am hoping now that my body will go back to some of its sluggish ways without too much of the PMS symptoms returning - I guess I can't have the cake and eat it.

Wintermärchen, originally uploaded by Sylke Krämer.

Goodness, I can't believe that one of my last posts here featured the Hanover town hall and only about a week ago I took another photo of it… However, this time in the snow.

Autumn, winter, Christmas, New Year, time flies… What have we been up to?

It seems that autumn just disappeared very quickly and all of a sudden it was time to go for our Christmas trip to Hanover. When we arrived at my mum's place it got very cold. One night it was down to -19C, apparently Hanover was one of the two coldest places in Germany that night (the other was the Zugspitze, a mountain). Strangely I didn't mind the cold at all!

Before going to Germany I kept saying I don't want to go, what if it gets as cold as that one time when my sinuses started to hurt from the cold air? Well, surprisingly nothing hurt this time. Maybe because I didn't have a cold. The freezing air was actually nice, it was very crisp and fresh. As long as you wore enough layers, being outside for a while was great. We also had snow, for almost the whole time - I haven't seen this much snow in years! It didn't snow on Christmas eve but that was ok as we needed to go by car to my sister's house and my mum doesn't like to drive in bad weather conditions.

Apart from snow and cold weather, I had my first Yannick free nights ever since he was born! Frank took him to Berlin for two nights in the hotel so that they could go and see Frank's mum before Christmas. Yannick got plenty of advance 'warning' and of course didn't want to go without me and I had to talk to him several times about this before he went. He was OK in the end, had made his peace with the idea of being without mummy for once. And guess what, I didn't get any tearful calls, nothing, it looks like they did really well! The only person who cried was I - after I had taken them to the train. It was another ice-cold day with trains being late. Their train was packed, they couldn't get to their booked seats at first and I could feel Frank's temper well up. I couldn't even say good-bye properly before the doors closed. It felt horrible and I had to have a good cry once I arrived at my sister's place.

My mum and I went to pick up Yannick from Berlin and see Frank's mum too. Another cold day with late trains but it went OK.

The next day we celebrated my mum's birthday and as almost every year had lunch at a Chinese restaurant.

Christmas eve we were at my sister's place and as to be expected Yannick just loved it. Funnily enough he was most impressed by a toy that he didn't get. His best friend in Germany, Felix (my sister's partner's son) who's eight, owns a Wall-e robot. Oh my goodness, he loved that thing… Wall-e watched him unpack his presents, slept next to his bed every night, you get the idea. However getting so many new things took Yannick's mind a bit of Wall-e which helped leaving him behind.

On Boxing day Frank came back from Berlin and we moved over to my sister's place. We also got to see some of our relatives over the following days which was nice.

Some pictures taken by Yannick:

On 31 December we had our flight back and it snowed like there's no tomorrow. The flights were still on luckily but we spent an hour in the plane while it was being de-iced and the runway being cleared over and over. Eventually we took off and everything was just fine.

I was happy to discover that it was quite cold in the UK as well as this means that I don't have to walk through muddy fields to get to pre-school: everything was frozen hard. Then it started to snow here too and pre-school was closed this Wednesday and Thursday even though conditions weren't too bad. Bummer! But today it was open again. I guess British people are finally coming round to the idea that you can continue life despite snow and ice.

Oh by the way, I've got some more photos over on Facebook and also a few on Flickr.

Got lost…, originally uploaded by Sylke Krämer.

I was collecting leaves with Yannick today and I was totally amazed by the diversity of colouring you can find on leaves of the same type. Check them out!

Staircase, originally uploaded by Sylke Krämer.

During our summer holiday in Hanover my sister suggested to go to the Rathaus (mayor's building) and go all the way up on the main tower to enjoy the views. Mainly because Yannick likes lifts so much.

The Rathaus has a very special lift that goes up a curve and it is entirely made of glass. So you cannot only look up and sideways at the walls while you are moving but also down below your feet. Not everybody is comfortable with that so it did help that the glass floor is already quite scratched. In any case none of my photos of the lift or the views are too interesting but I took some nice ones inside the building which I published on flickr today. This staircase is just one of them.

I've been busy, I made quince jelly! I love that stuff as it is not as sweet as jam or even marmelade. Unfortunately I've got only about three and a half jars… One of them made me laugh as it set so quickly that the jelly got stuck to the lid:

We've finally also cut off all the red chillies which now will have to be dried. Here you can see Yannick's chubby fingers holding one for the camera:

The varieties are called 'Ring of fire' and 'Cherry bomb'. Have a guess which one is which. I am wondering whether the few remaining green chillies will also manage to become red or whether I should rather cut them off as well. Any advice?

As I've already mentioned on facebook, Yannick surprised me by suddenly wanting olives on bread. He must have overheard a conversation with my of my friends who is a vegan. I dug out some tapenade (with sundried tomatoes) and ever since that's what Yannick is having at least once a day, usually for breakfast. Until recently he actually wouldn't touch olives at all. Weird world.

Yesterday he surprised me again. At lunch time I was preparing rice with chicken breast in tomato sauce with peas. He usually has the meat and not much else nowadays. Yesterday he said he didn't want chicken and ate copious amounts of rice with tomato sauce and peas! He hadn't touched peas in months! After a while he also had a little chicken but this behaviour was definitely quite different! I wonder is he turning vegetarian? Maybe so, as he keeps asking me what is animal and what is plant: 'are courgettes animals?' 'Now, sweetie, what do you think, you've seen them grow in the garden!'

Our three week holiday was great - with our relatives really trying to think up things to do that interest Yannick! We did a lot of tram/underground spotting and riding, train and boat trips, going up and down lifts and elevators, playing with water features, building sand castles, going down a water slide, visiting a park with deer and hogs… Not bad at all. Thank you, Mama, Elke, and Karin!

At the same time Yannick has become really quite challenging, going wild at times, running around, still throwing tantrums, biting, pulling hair, pushing and chasing other children, trying to climb up on people. Is it pre-school that's to blame (I think he feels a lot more independent now)? Or simply the age?

Yannick's interests have widened too, he really wants to understand how life and things work. We had a long talk about what happens when people die. As I don't believe in any afterlife stories it was all about how our buried bodies become soil and plants can grow out of that. After initial unhappiness about the idea of dying one day, Yannick decided that he wanted to be an oak tree and was quite happy with that idea. He also thought hard about who he wanted to stay with if either mummy or daddy died (the other parent of course) and it was tough for him to voice his thoughts on that. In addition to this, he said to me that he will go and fly to grandma Gertrud the next time I shout at him. Equally if he shouts, I will have to do that too… This was another tough conversation, he kept starting to cry at the thought of leaving me. But it had to be talked about.

Oh, yes, while we were away, Frank built the rest of our new living room shelves/cupboards/tv unit. It's actually not as imposing as I thought it would be, so I'm quite happy. However, I'm surprised at how many of the little shelves are already blocked by Yannick's stuff…