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!

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.

Just some things I wanted to take note of before I forget again.

Recently I've noticed that Yannick seems to use the German word 'jetzt' ('now') in English sentences. I'm trying to tell him the proper sentence every time this happens, so hopefully at some point 'now' will have made it into his memory.

Yannick is often saying in German 'ich meane' (as in English 'I mean'). Proper German would be 'ich meine'. So he maintains the right verb declination but uses the English word, quite funny.

Even though there are plenty of words in German and English that sound similar, Yannick is not confused at all by words that sound the same in both languages but actually mean something different. In a German book we came across an 'Igel' which means hedgehog. Then a little while later he learned the English word 'eagle' which is pronounced the same way. Even though he had heard the word 'hedgehog' before he was thinking for a short while we were talking about the German hedgehog but as soon as I explained that this was a bird called 'Adler' in German there was no more confusion.

He's also becoming a right little translator. Sometimes when I don't remember a word out of an area that he knows quite well (like farm words) I'm now taking to asking him to help me, and more often than not he can do that. It's quite intriguing. It seems he has a very good concept of the two languages being separate entities, rather than muddling everything up and trying another word in the same language of the word I asked him to translate.

Sometimes he doesn't seem to know certain words or phrases for his games in one language or maybe simply remembers something from playing in pre-school and switches to the other language there and then: 'Das Auto soll hier lang fahren. It's going over a big branch and it's breaking the gate. Brrrrm.' He'll stay with the other language for a little while until I or Frank say something again in German. Sometimes we go along speaking English for a while but usually I'm trying nowadays to switch back to German quite quickly so that we don't fall into bad habits and only speak English at home at some point. That would totally defeat the object of raising my child with two languages. The trouble with this is that both Frank and I sometimes don't even notice which language we are speaking as we switch just like Yannick when a phrase in one of our two languages seems more suitable for what we want to express. It must be quite weird to listen to the three of us at times!

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…

On his second day of swimming (Tuesday), Yannick went in as if nothing had happened the day before. However, as soon as they were supposed to go into the water he wasn't happy any more and cried again. I felt really bad about leaving him down there but the teacher really looked after him so well that I thought Yannick simply has to get over this to learn to be less water shy. I believe that if things really would have been bad the teacher would have called me to collect him anyway. So Yannick was crying for 15 minutes - and then all of a sudden he started to enjoy himself! After swimming I bought him a pair of goggles and he was very happy.

On Wednesday he didn't want to wear the goggles. Argh. My child, typical! But he was happy so all was fine. The only thing he needed was a toilet break. Surprising as he went before we left the house and again before he went into the pool. I guess it was nerves.

On Thursday he finally took the goggles with him and the teacher showed him how to use them. It took a little getting used to. Again a toilet break but nothing else.

On Friday all was fine. The goggles went on and stayed on, no crying, no toilet break. Success!

I hope I can go swimming several times during term time with Yannick, he would definitely enjoy that and he said he would like that. I've heard that there is another Swiminis course during half term so I'll try to sign him up again - there's nothing better than proper tuition!

I've decided that I'd like my boy to learn to swim much earlier than I did. So, I've registered him with a five day Swimini course (swimming for children at beginners level) at our local leisure centre. Of course this won't lead to him swimming but at least it will expose him a little more to water than I managed to do in the last three years. Unfortunately I couldn't get him into the weekly swimming lessons during the upcoming term time any more but there's always another term after that.

I think it's fair to say that both Frank and I are complete couch potatoes. We've only managed to take Yannick once to the pool before the lessons started - and that was last Sunday. Eek. However, he's been to the seaside where he loved the splashing waves and he expressed an interest in learning to swim when he was in a relatively big paddling pool of a friend. When I said to him that he could go to a five day swimming course with an instructor he was all up for it!

So today we had the first 30 minute lesson. I was watching from the gallery. Yannick was so excited that he could hardly sit still and wait for the instructor to 'swim' with him. The first 15 minutes of that went well, Yannick enjoyed himself. Nevertheless, he made sure to be as close as possible to the pool edge most of the time and sitting on the top most step rather than a little further in with the other children. Then the instructor started showing them how to move through the water on their backs. Yannick didn't like that. I don't know if he got too much water into his ears or his face somehow but all of a sudden he was sitting at the edge of the pool and was crying. The crying sounded half way theatrical but he was clearly somewhat upset. The instructor got him again and talked him into trying the next thing and Yannick seemed OK to go on with it. I could see he was a bit fearful as he was putting his legs around the instructor instead of relaxing them. The instructor managed to calm him down a little, still he came back a little bit more upset than before. This was hard to watch but I decided to keep my distance as the instructor was trying to console him and Yannick didn't seem like he needed me badly. In the end I went down a couple of minutes before the end and Yannick noticed me a moment after I sat down behind him. But he didn't come running to me as I half expected. So I'm not quite sure what to make of this. Let's see how this develops over the next four days.

So what's going on you must be wondering. Is he speaking English now? Yes, he is!

Yannick has been growing up in the UK in a German speaking family. The first two and a half years of his life, Frank and I only spoke German to him when we were on our own. I would occasionally say something in English but more by accident when in English speaking company. We have a number of English friends so we were never in short supply of an English language environment with other children. I also took Yannick to Sing and Sign (baby signing) and later Jo Jingles (structured music intro). We started Sing and Sign when he was eight months old and far from speaking any language. He quickly picked up the most important signs to him, 'eat' and 'drink'. Other signs followed (including 'more' and 'bird') but as they weren't quite so important they took some time. At 18 months Yannick all of sudden had a speaking explosion, within a couple of weeks he knew and used loads of words (see here for my notes at the time). At his second birthday he spoke quite well but not complete sentences yet. This all developed over the twelve months and his German is just great. Of course there are some things that are not quite right yet, but mostly I only notice a wrong form of a verb in past perfect tense or similar. Sometimes he struggled to put all of what he wanted to say into one sentence and they got ridiculously long and warped, but it was just great to hear how much he was interested in communicating his thoughts. So far so good.

At two and a half I started to speak to Yannick in English when we were playing and reading as I wanted to increase his confidence. I knew he understood a lot as he often would comment on a situation in German to me after listening in to other people's and children's conversations. But he was just not speaking. Slowly, slowly he started to speak back to me. At age three he started pre-school, prepared with the most important things to say, and off he went. From the first week I noticed changes in the way he was using English and while he's not quite as fluent as in German, he's definitely confident to speak now. Sometimes we get funny translations and you notice that German is his first language. For example he still says 'I know that not' or 'I want that not' which is literally translated from German word order. But at the same time he comes out with English songs and typical phrases that he heard over and over in his books. When I ask him what a word means in English he can almost always tell me in German. It's just incredible. Soon he'll be like a native speaker!

We had a nice word a while ago, it was a fusion of 'mechanic' and 'Mechaniker'. What we got was 'mexicaniker'. There were more funny words but I can't remember a thing right now. Have to activate my memory one of these days…