February update

It turns out that this is my first blog post in 2015. I don’t have any illusions about daily or weekly updates in the blog but occasionally I will drop by to summarize some recent events.

Nursing a baby obviously takes a lot of time, energy, and commitment. During February, and beginning of March, we are enjoying the support of Tanya’s mother which makes life much easier for us. There is of course also a valuable social component to it as well and Tanya is able to escape the “apartment prison” to a larger extent.

Sonja is now 4.5 months and she is developing well as far as we understand and are told in the regular checkups. She has invented her own language mainly consisting of variations of the sounds “agah” and “agoh” but she might also throw in an “rrrrrh” sometimes. She eats well and is not afraid of putting on some weight. When Ira and Vitaly is back I should ask to get the scales back so we can see if she is over 8 kg now (which would be in the upper segment according to the growth charts). Sonja grips things with her hands, also slightly heavier toys, and can coordinate both hands in operations like “grab the big matryoshka doll and bring it in for inspection by mouth”. She enjoys sitting in the bouncer reaching for toys and listening to psychedelic MIDI versions of great classical masterpieces. And she still falls asleep quickly when being put in the stroller for a walk. (She might have inherited it partially from her mother who also typically quickly falls asleep, also before becoming a mother, when she is going by car.) Since Sonja sleeps well in the stroller we take longer walks than we used to do when we only had Freja. Even if Freja maybe gets less attention than “pre Sonja”, she at least enjoys the longer walks.

Our lives are of course very Sonja-centric at the moment but we have also looked into other things. With the current state of the ruble it might be a good opportunity to acquire an apartment in Saint Petersburg so we have sent Tanya to sort it out. More details later if things play out as planned.

At CS, my work, things are going well and I have found a spot in the organization that I enjoy. It’s a good mix of requirements engineering, business analysis, software development, team building and communication. It takes time to shape the role to one’s liking in a big organization so I’ll try to keep it this way and then we’ll see how it goes. I have learnt that things can change fast, for good and for worse. At the moment I enjoy a bit more flexibility and freedom so I tend to work from home on Fridays. That works well since we have an office, including a bunch of laptops, a few servers, and a fridge plus water boiler, in the basement.

March seems to have some things lined up for us as well. In the beginning of the month we will escort Tanya’s mother to the flight home which departs from Munich. Meanwhile there we will visit the city center which I have not been to since 2010 if I remember correctly. Later on we will make an attempt for Geneva and the Motor show. We went two years ago and this year I was given tickets so we’ll go if we can.

We don’t currently have a big amount of renovation projects or such going on but before the snow came, we currently have a few centimeters covering parts of the garden, I started installing light posts in the garden. When the snow disappears, March?, I will try to finish it. Yesterday we bought a lot of Magazine files (“Kassett” for those who knows the IKEA products) to harmonize the chaotic book shelves in the living room. Small improvements can also be improvements…

I don’t usually recommend movies here but why not. Leviafan is worth watching as it gives a much more interesting and nuanced picture of some parts of the Russian society than one usually finds in big movie productions. Lately I have also watched Fury (not great, not bad) and John Wick (stupid but fun to watch Michael Nyqvist as Viggo Tsarov).

The Sunday is about to unfold so it is time to finish and enjoy the day.