In the summer holidays my sister came over with her family and brought over a German book about craft projects that can be used with wind and water (Wie der Wind geschwind…), for example parachute jumpers, sponge crocodiles for the bathtub, planes, and of course several types of floating objects including boats. While I didn't make anything from the book as such, it inspired me enough to go through our 'box of boxes' (a bigger cardboard box that contains all sorts of metal containers, plastic jars, smaller cardboard boxes that seem useful for crafts) and see if we had enough stuff to build some riverworthy boats. We had tried before with simple folding boats from a sheet of paper but those soak up the water way to quickly and just sink after a while. This time I wanted something that actually stayed afloat!

I found a number of old waterproof and airtight containers that would work well as a base for larger cardboard boats. To make them last even longer I got out my box of sticky tapes and we covered the outside of our boats with those to make them more waterproof. My sister cut up an old milk bottle to get some interesting shapes which were also used. To avoid arguments I gave the two boys involved roughly the same elements to build their boats from and my sister and I did some "free form boat sculpting".

We took the finished boats to our local stream/canal in the park and with the help of a rather large stick (half a branch of a tree) that we found on the way there, we were able to retrieve the boats from bushes at the side of the canal that tried to hold on to them (evil bushes!).

Of course the boys had made some bets at whose boat would be fastest. Both of them thought my sister's boat would be sinking first – but hey, not only did it not sink, it was also leaving the other boats way behind.

At some point my sister's boat got sucked under a very low foot bridge and we thought we had seen the last of it but it came out unscathed on the other side. Phew!

In the end we decided to let some of the boats go on their own adventure but Yannick was very upset by that idea: those poor boats all on their own, and they are so beautiful!!! OK, only one was allowed freedom, the others had to be taken home.

I wonder where it got to?

(See the complete Flotilla photo set on Flickr.)

Right, on with it: I thought it would be nice to present all of our homemade craft/projects/stuff here to have a record of it. A lot of my friends will have seen these already on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, or Pinterest but I don't care, this is my blog, this is where they should have been presented first.

Here we have a list of what I'm preparing to post about (could be more, could be less), simply to remind myself:

• Bento tea attempts
• Flotilla (boats from cans and cardboard)
• House renovation project
• Yoshi keyring
• Cars playset made from cardboard boxes
• German cake attempts
• Octonauts Kwazii costume
• Quince jelly
• Transformer costumes
• Octonauts birthday cake
• Chestnut animals

I'm currently suffering of a bad bout of this. Now that Yannick spends so much time in school (three full days and two half days) I should really be starting to look for a job. Instead I'm concentrating on other things that are on my to-do list. They need to be done too but are possibly slightly less important (things like fixing the halogen lights in the kitchen, oiling squeaky door locks, etc.) At least I called the doctor for an appointment this morning on something that should have been looked at already six months ago, to get that out of the way.

OK, last night, in order to at least pretend I'm doing something, I looked at two job sites. As not to be expected any other way, there was nothing there that would fit as the jobs advertised were all full-time. Several months ago I spoke to a friend who is managing a recruitment agency and she said that all they job ads they get in are full-time. Lovely.

This won't be easy any way because ideally I don't wont to work more than 15 hours a week, and those at times suitable for me to do the school runs. Those 15 hours would cover three full school days nicely and I would still have time to get on with household things that I frankly can't see Frank get his hands onto. And really why should he? He has got a good job, is earning good money and spending time with his child admirably after work, I can't fault him. Alternatively I could try to get a household help but then that costs money that I would have to earn, and I still couldn't do much more than 25 hours a week unless I put Yannick in an after school club. Then our son would hardly see his parents during the week. That is simply not worth it.

It doesn't help that I still don't know where I fit into the job market at the moment. With only 15 hours a week I can't be a supervisor like I used to be. I could possibly do any kind of office job where you need MS Office skills (they used to call me the Queen of Excel in my old job), I think I'm good with numbers but I have never got any official qualification in that area (I have a Diploma in Information Technology Royal Society of Arts Level II but that's from 1994). The kind or work I like would be centred around web pages, possibly multilingual web pages, like in my old job. That one was almost ideal. Sigh. I did look at a leaflet with adult education course, none of them seemed to fit.

Of course I do know what I DON'T want:

- a call centre job, never ever again!
- a job that takes more than 30 minutes of getting there.
- anything that involves travelling.

I guess I need to start and update my CV. And possibly get myself to go to the Job Centre to find out if there is anything they can help me with. But first I'll have lunch! *grin*

In Germany the first thing we saw from the plane was snow! Lots of it. And guess what, it didn't shift for the whole two weeks that we spent there. I've never seen that much snow at home ever since I moved away from Germany in 1992. Yes, we saw some snow over the last winters too but not that much. However, Frank who hardly visits Germany in the summers says it's hard for him to remember his home town Berlin without snow by now, for him it seems to have become something close to a polar town.

As not to be expected otherwise, my mum was wishing the entire time that the snow would simply disappear as it bothers her when driving. But to be honest, I loved it – even digging out my sister's car was kind of fun! Of course the snow didn't look too great around the roads, it always gets slightly dirty there, but since it wasn't thawing at all, the snow never became that really slushy mess that I'm far too familiar with from my German winters.

The first day in Germany was spent buying warm clothes for Yannick. We were really lucky getting the very last pair of snow boots in the local shoe shop (somebody had returned them earlier as they were too big). We also found some reasonably priced thermal underwear, a huge anorak, and padded snow trousers. Yannick threw himself into the snow in these clothes many times and usually stayed very dry and warm. At times he tried conquering snow mountains bigger than himself, sinking in quite a bit. Very funny. Before Christmas Frank and Yannick went off to visit Oma Karin in Berlin and I had three days and most importantly nights to myself. Bliss. The two of them were quite lucky with the trains despite the weather, always getting to where there wanted to get with not a lot more than about 60 minutes delay.

At Christmas eve, Yannick finally got the present that he had been waiting for patiently for the last two months, another Optimus Prime, but this time with trailer! To find it, he started unpacking the biggest presents first, almost discarding the first two when they weren't what he was looking for, and then stopping altogether with unpacking when he found what he had been searching. I think he only got back to the other ones a couple of hours later.

We had planned to go home Thursday 30 December. Yes. Planned. We made it as far as to the gate at the airport. There was no plane. It was supposed to land but all of a sudden things changed and we were told that it had been diverted to Düsseldorf as there was too much fog in Hanover. We were told to get our luggage and then go and rebook. We had to wait for quite a while for the luggage and while doing so there were these announcements about an exhibition at the airport that made people roll their eyes: 'enjoy the magic of the airport… ' Yeah. Right. Anyway, we had the option to fly out later on the same day – but only to Birmingham. That would have meant a subsequent bus trip back to Southampton airport and then a taxi ride home to Winchester. Frank suggested the he goes and we stay behind to take the next available Southampton flight which was early on 1 January. My mum was flabbergasted when I called her with our news but of course came to pick us up again. Frank arrived home at 1:30 am. As the trip for Yannick and myself was kind of early I tried to sleep through an hour of excruciatingly loud German New Year firework noises, Yannick never even woke up. We flew out as planned on the Saturday. All went well.

Funny thing was that while queuing the second time round at the airport in Hanover, I started chatting to a young Romanian woman in front of us. When we arrived at the gate we had worked out that we only live five minutes from each other in Winchester – the world is small. We gave her a lift home.

Yesterday morning I lost it.

The day before Yannick had been mentioning that his ears felt funny after being outside on the bicycle. I take him to school on the bicycle as it only takes about five to ten minutes that way, whereas walking takes about twenty, time we don't have when we also have to do at least five minutes of play before leaving. He is usually only wearing his bicycle helmet but I was already thinking it is getting too cold for his head like that. During the evening he was still saying he had a pain in his ear every now and then, so I knew we had to do something the next day on the bicycle to keep his ears warm – and also told him so.

(That evening I ordered a couple of headbands for him, they should arrive soon.)

So yesterday morning we were all dressed up, only hats and helmets were missing. I showed him a fleecy hat that I thought would fit under the helmet. I knew it would be a VERY tight fit, his head is nearly at adult size at 53 cm (adult's seem to start at 56 cm) and there isn't much space left under the helmet for anything but the head.

Well, he didn't like the hat.

I showed him some other stuff: the hat that he used to wear last winter under the helmet (didn't cover his ears properly any more), my fleecy headband (just not right because it was mine), his big winter hat from Berlin that nicely covers the ears (too big for helmet).

Nothing was approved of and it was getting late. At that point I opened the door and shouted at him, go outside, feel what it's like and then tell me what you want.

I also threw in the fact that he couldn't go to the birthday party that he is invited to this Friday if he had earache.

He stumbled out, angry with me for shouting but still realised just how cold it was and desperately wanting to go to the party he asked for his big Berlin hat.

OK. I put him on the bicycle with that, and without helmet. I thought we could go now.

But alas, he wasn't happy. He wanted the helmet as it was not safe without. Crying.

I was angry and getting even more stressed – but of course that's what we have been telling him all these years. Only on this day I would have happily traded safety for warm ears for once! There is nothing worse than an ear infection.

Tried to pull myself together, got the helmet and tried to put it on top of the big hat. He looked like a mushroom but surprise, surprise we were able to close it! Phew. Everybody happier and off we went to school.

—–

I guess I'll have to investigate children's bicycle helmet sizes next and see if I can find one that will fit nicely with a big fleecy hat underneath.

And here we have a Devastator built by Yannick in school:

I am used to a warm meal at lunchtime and I need it as we usually have a simple German 'Abendbrot' (rye bread with cold meats and/or cheese) in the evening. At this time Frank also gets some soup. Yannick has his hot dinners at school, so he doesn't need one at home.

Both Frank and I are greatly enjoying the soups. Here is my newest addition: Spicy Carrot Soup.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!'

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 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 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.

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…

I wouldn't mind him waking up so early if at least he would just go and play. But no, even when in his own bed (that he can climb out of), he calls for me to get up and see to him. When he is in my bed he 'needs' me to lead him to his room (which is just next to mine). Once he's been to the loo and I've dressed him, I go back to bed to rest and he's quite OK to play by himself – but only in little instalments of 15 to 20 minutes each. Then we get 'mummy!' and he wants me to get a book for him, something to eat, or I don't know what. Not my idea of a good morning.

What has changed, what can I change?

• First of all, the young man is out of nappies. Despite still sleeping in one he mostly (in 98% of all cases) wakes up dry and needs the toilet first thing. Understandable that he might wake up earlier than usual as his bladder must be full.
• Secondly, he's managing sleeping in his own bed for a whole night a lot more often than before.

Taken by themselves, these two fact don't t sound too bad, do they?

But which parent likes to be woken at 5:30am, I wonder?

I think I'm going to try this:

• Said young man usually wakes up sometime between 10 and 11pm to drink some water. I might just pop him on the potty there and then.
• As I said, often he's sleeping the whole night in his own bed. The problem with this is that he's looking for his mummy in the early hours to cuddle up to. So I might just carry him over when I go to bed and keep him with me for the rest of his night. In the past he usually slept longer when he was with me. The bad part of this plan is that my sleep probably will still be disturbed as he cuddles up and either kicks me with his legs into my tummy or head butts me at the same place. Sigh.
• I'll try and sneak in a nap for him one of these days. That usually resets his biorhythm a little and he'll sleep later in the morning for a few days. But this might mean that he also goes to bed later – which is not so good.
• Even though it sounds odd, it sometimes helps when then young master goes to bed earlier. Maybe we can get him to sleep by 7pm today. The effect is that all his usual wake up times are slightly earlier. This obviously includes the morning waking time, that one might be shifted to 4:30am. However, this is not bad. At that time it is much easier to get him back to sleep. So there, we'll try this!

Or does anybody have any better ideas?

Here's the complimentary photo for today: