Living with Bugs

Not nearly as bad as photos of children with beer bottles...

2012-02-07T10:07:00.002+01:00

This is to remind myself to ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS close the dryer and washing machine doors. Mobile infants, climbing infants...This little munchkin today at 7.30pm became a walking infant...

You can shower yourself with 5 liters of water.....

2012-02-06T01:42:00.001+01:00

Ok, so there was no cell phone coverage and imagine this we survived, luckily we were away from civilization so no one had to wintess me proving to the world that yes I am not a sane parent. When in doubt that your child is gone missing do not possibly look around the rooms of the house where you are staying for the possiblity that your child is maybe just playing hide and seek with HERSELF, but run out of the house towards the beach and into the rainforest screaming like a panic attack on steroids, all while thinking how the hell will we get a hold of emergency services there is no frigging cell phone reception here. Then run aorund aimlessley in 10 meter raidus grabbing your head like you will pull your hair out, on the verge of a nervous breakdown thinking you must be the worst parent in the world if something like this could happen.

Three minutes later, I heard calling from the house that a missing toddler has been found in one of the bunk beds playing with her stickers. Like hell I was angry, since I am sure my horrific desperate screetches for her name would have reached well into the bunk bed that she was hiding in. I spent the next few hours in post traumatic stress, trying to explain that when mommy calls out Buggy she needs to answer back so mommy does not run into the rainforest like some crazy beast thinking someone has taken her offspring, cursing the nature experience to the core.

Oh, did I mention that not even a day before that following a storm I slipped on the wooden stairs. I would post a picture proof here but I am too embarrased of posting pictures of bruised oversize bottoms. Did I also mention that this fall happened while I was holding the hide and seek loving toddler in my arms.

Initial nature adjustment aside, third day I was all like, hell why didn't we book this longer, this is so relaxing I could do this showering with bottles, long drop toilet recovery from comforts of the everyday life that are destroying our planet, for much longer than a week, oh it will be so terrible to go back amongst people...

And what a great way to potty train your child, I wonder whether Buggy will remember that she was potty trained on a deserted beach, with magnificent sound of the waves as her pee pee was hitting the potty for the first times.

Oh yes, and she absolutely had had had to have her potty where everyone else was going potty too. Oh the long drop, how I do not miss thee.

fth day into it I could not stand to go on the long drop and damn I want that double cheezburger with mayo so so bad right now and all we have is a week old bread and nothing that resembles reconstitued cheeze from powder.

It was great, really I would do it all again, definately not longer than a week. I mean lets not fool ourselves here, I am creature of comforts after all, but having this all to ourselves was worth stepping out of my comfort zone of thinking that a 20-minute shower is necessary to be squeeky clean.

Checking into nature rehab...

2012-01-20T11:42:00.000+01:00

The idea of being on a deserted beach is better than actually being there. Two nights ago I tried to get organised for a week away, this involved reading the confirmation sheet from the park ranger on accommodation where we are staying that we received back in July, and oh deary me. Going to a desert island childless, would involve packing a bikini, couple of books and enough two minute noodles to last you a week. Not only would week include cleansing your mind but cleansing of your oversize bottom from all the junk that I keep finding while aimlessly walking around the city and shoving it all in your face.

Confirmation letter read and holy crap mother of nature, not much running water, a long drop toilet, NO INTERNET, a kid with a bandaged thumb that has been partially amputated and needs to be kept clean and dry and another kid which is currently in the i-refuse-to-do-anything-you-say-and-if-you-speak-to-me-i-no-understand-you-phase, even though I know expression "NO" has been understood previously. As if being around kids full time has not been challening as it is, lets throw ourselves into mother nature where only entertainment there is are sticks and leaves and sand. Where do we go for time out and some retail therapy to throw money at our problems. We could escape into the rainforest with creepy crawlies, but how is that option better than a toddler and an infant, who can charm their pants of you by saying things like Ma-ma and Ai luv you so mush!

I will most likely overpack, the kids will have a blast because playing with sticks and stones totally rocks and we will come back completely rested since without TV, Internet and a constant need to be going somewhere instead of sitting at home.

Lets hope for cell phone coverage otherwise my anxieties will truly kick in.

Buggy Version 2.9

2012-01-15T11:14:00.000+01:00

We are into minute 89 of trying to put Buggy to sleep tonight. I paused for three minutes here expecting her to shoot through the bedroom door like a fireball with a questions: "What you doin maaaammmmiiii?", I would give her an honest answer but I am afraid it would hurt her feelings. And I've tried to explain to her a few nights ago about how Mommy is tired and needs some Buggy and Baby Boy free time, but like heloooooo woman why would you want to have time where you do not have to make houses out of duvet covers pretend they are tree houses and eat imaginary ice-cream. I don't know maybe because I want to cement myself on the couch and eat a whole tub of real ice-cream without needing to limit myself like I do during your waking hours, since I told you this afternoon that we can only eat a little bit of ice cream otherwise we get runny poos.

Following the first chase around the living room and laying in bed again, she asked me to tell her a story and I told her I am exhausted to tell her a story again and it is bedtime and if she could please please try close her eyes and go to sleep. She could not care less and told me she will tell me a story, our conversation during the story went something like this:

Buggy: There once was a pwincess mama, did not want to go sweep. A big dwagon, roaaarrrr, up in the sky and dinasour come eat her.
Me: Buggy but dinasours only eat plants they are vegetarians.
Buggy: No, eat chicken nuggets. Up high sky.
Try not to laugh to hard, try not to laugh to hard, she will then become even more playful than what she is right now. She is so adorable, I kiss her on the cheek,
Buggy: You kiss me, I kiss you. Drools and slobbers all over my cheek. Make a little house. In hope of this actually working I obey and make a little house out of the duvet. You come in my house, sweep.
Me: Buggy, close your eyes go to sleep now.
Buggy: Mamiii awe you fwustasted.
Me: Boo boo, look how tired you are, come on try and close your eyes and go to sleep.
Buggy: You go to yiving yoom, I stay in my house.

Apart from being terrible at bedtime, being incredibly charming one minute and turns into a toddler psychopath next minute, here are Ten Things About Buggy at 2.9.

1. She can count to ten and more, but always misses out on number five.
2. She walks around constantly saying she is Peppa Pig, calls us Mamma Pig and Daddy Pig and Baby Boy is George. Now that we are visiting Baba (maternal grandmother), she sometimes becomes Granny Pig. She also lets out piggy noises ALL the time.
3. Baby Boi aua, we take him to hotspital.
4. She tells me a lot we are best fwends.
6. Sometimes when we cuddle she will giggle so happy and say: "So happi, take a peekshure!"
7. In hope of having some kid contact, while we are in New Zealand, we enrolled Buggy into swimming classes. Unfortunatelly she ended up being the only kid in the class, on the last day of the class she refused to get into the pool and pleaded: No mowe gown-ups.
8. She uses fries as cutlery for ketchup.

9. On numerous occasions throughout the day she tells me "I kiss Baby Boiii", which she does, then gives him a tap on the head and says "Luv yu little man!" This may follow with her sitting on top of him saying he is a turtle.
10. The other day we were in a restaurant, I was sitting with my back in the sun, so I asked Stefan to put some sunscreen on my back and as he sprayed cold sunscreen on my back I shivered and complained how it is cold. This morning Buggy came running with with suncreen in her hands asking Stefan to put it on her since she is very very cold.

Dubai made me want to go to Las Vegas

2012-01-14T06:44:00.002+01:00

Now that I am over jet lag and post traumatic stress of seeing the insides of Baby Boy's thumb, the impressions of Dubai are slowly disappearing, as the regret of not having one more Cinnabon is on the rise. What is not disappearing is the embarassment of a toddler running around a monstrum of a shopping mall yelling: "Mama Pig, Daddy Pig! Come and get me"

Yes, we did go for a camel ride with kids in carriers. I mean stuff the safety after the tour company squished nine passengers in a seven seater car. One hour of listening to an incredibly annoying pre-teen complaining about the lack of space in the back and asking every 30 seconds how long till we get there and freaking out over the fact that the battery was running out over whatever screen was keeping her attention for 30 seconds in between questions. I thought we reached freedom upon reaching a random carpark in the middle of norwhere. Freedom was short lasted, another car came and they packed us all back in like salty smelly anchovies, with our original driver hanging from the outside holding on to the passenger door and having a completely normal conversation with the driver, like I do over a latte at a secret topic club. At some point while I was cursing my decision to go on a Desert Safari, the driver's phone rang, which he decided to answer while manouvering ae 4WD with eight passengers and one hanging on the outside. I think I pleaded out loud: "please don't pick up that phone", response to which was ridicouled laughter.

Burj Khalifa
Did not really blow my mind, the elevator ride to the lookout on the 124th floor was slightly very boring, the observaton deck nothing in particular, the only thing to see was tens of high rises surrounding the city and a whole lot of construction sites. We did get a very cool Lego set of the building, which Daddy will never allow us to take out of the box since he will want to keep it in a mint condition. What did blow my mind and my shopping complusion is 1200 shops in a mall right next to this monstrosity of a building.

And here I thought weather was the biggest problem we had...

2012-01-13T11:47:00.001+01:00

Buggy is running around the house, away from baby boy screaming he is a monster. I keep trying to get mad at her, but it is quite comical considering his poor little hand is completely bandaged up because she is the one that banged the door on his little thumb. Total accident, one of those things you think always happens to other people.

Except this time it was me screaming as I was running into children emergency room that top of my babies thumb is squished. Like, really woman why aren't you running towards me with life resuscitation equipment. Really, why is everyone around me so calm, as I am holding his little hand in a Christmas napkin to stop the blood from gushing everywhere? And what will people think of me, how could I let this happen? Why is the nurse blowing bubbles instead of fixing my babies finger? Why do they have so many bubble blowing contraptions around? Hang on, how did we even get to emergency? I'm in a bubble this is a bad dream.

And then all of a sudden we had a doctor and a nurse and some other woman that started getting his little arms ready for IV, all of which made me freak out even more. And they were all telling me that this type of this type of thing always happens on rainy days and that they get kids in all the time with squished fingers usually caused by older siblings. I was sure they were telling me this to make me feel better or feel less judged, since of course they were judging me already, I could see it in their eyes. Then Stefan found out while running after Buggy that there were two other families in the emergency for exactly the same thing. Great, now I can be slotted together on the list of other irresponsible parents who let their little babies fingers get jammed in the doors. Nothing anybody says can make me feel better about this. Throughout all of this Buggy and Baby Boy were having great fun, play rooms at kids emergency rooms are better than indoor playgrounds that you have to pay a hefty cover charge to get in.

Always putting on a smile for the camera, even with a squished thumb.

Following five different doctors and nurses fixing his little finger, we were advised that Baby Boy will need to have surgery to properly clean the wound and stitch the top of the thumb back in place. Back in the bubble, blah blah general anesthesia, blah blah, tomorrow morning, blah blah, it will all be like new again, blah blah...Sleepless night....Ward 24D at 7.30am, forms, forms, consent after consent. I have no idea how I managed to give them any details in the pre-op room since I was sobbing the entire time. Everyone keps asking me whether this was his first surgery...His first and his last may I add...Why the hell is everyone acting like having surgeries is a normal and regular thing...The nurse in the pre-op told me that now I have a boy and need to get used to him being hurt....Thanks for the advice, but that kind of thing one can never get used to.

An hour and a half later we had this...

...a boxing glove which is now being put to very good use, a great imagination catalyst for Buggy and an experience which we NEVER want to go through again.

Now in addition to having irrational phobia of natural disasters, add balcony door phobia to the list. A list well on its way into double digits. I truly do not want any of my children to inherit any of my ridiculous thought processes, but this week they are not allowed to be anywhere near any doors.

Thank you to all of the doctors and nurses and play specialists that helped us at Auckland Starship Hospital. You truly are a well oiled bubble blowing machine.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T22:10:00.000+01:00

Grandma bored herself so much that she managed to knit ALL of her grandchildren matching sweaters and hats for Christmas. Insanely CUTE. Merry Christmas everyone!

Very un-Christmasy Xmas

2011-12-21T22:22:00.000+01:00

Next time I plan a trip away it will certanly not be a day after Christmas. The first year that Buggy is slightly aware of what Christmas is, we could have decorated trees, baked cookies, sang Xmas songs, watch Elf and cosy up next to the flashing tree - we do not even have an ornament hanging anywhere in the house and we are running around like headless chickens trying to pack and get ready for three months away. Plus to maintain our reputation as geniuses that constantly complicate and escalate stress in our lives we have planned to execute an extreme living room and kitchen makeover to come back to. Which means that most of our family room is baren and empty. I will probably compensate undelivering for Christmas this year by totally going overboard next year and turn our apartment into a giant Christmas neon sign.

Luckily we have a Xmas tree in the loby of our apartment building. I have managed to convince Buggy that it is our tree, she gets extremely excited each time we walk past and talks to "bobbles"and "staws" about how pretty they are. A. and J. hosted us last Sunday and gave the responsibility of decorating their tree to Buggy.

Baby Boy is indifferent to all the kaffufle around him. We must have selective memory as parents, since I truly do not remember Buggy being as active. The sight of wires, computers, remote controls and cell phones gets him to stand up and start shaking his leg with excitement with the hope he will be able to bang it on whatever hard surface is available. I have tried to get him to bang his frustration out on wooden toys with hammers, but nothing is as magical as forbiden fruit of banging the remote control against the floor. You would think there is a shortage of toys in our household, since no rattles or Lamaze contraptions keep his interest.

He is so overconfident in his motorics, that his head met the floor a few times last week and he was collecting bruises on his forehead, all while I was spending sleeples nights thinking how many times do you have to fall from your own height to be brain damaged. He had fever one night which I am convinced is because he banged his head so much. Luckily the phase of banging his head is now hopefully past us, I think we have 3 days injury free now.

The Happiness Project

2011-12-12T22:15:00.000+01:00

As long as our bedtimes are filled with snapshot moments like these, I will completely ignore that currently our bedtime has turned into total chaos. Moments like these just make me happy.

This is why Riga is a good thing...

2011-12-01T12:13:00.000+01:00

Less than 24 hours away, I am leaving for a girls weekend in Riga. Exciting stuff, you would think. As much as I am excited to have two days of being wrapped in all sorts of sea goo and algae vs. simultaneously feeding two kids while trying to eat my dinner, my little friends anxiety are putting up tents in my head.

In total I will be away for less than 72 hours. I am going through my standard motions of irrationality infesting my brain; amongst them a perfectly reasonable things that can happen, like you know plane being stranded due to bad weather and me not being able to come back for days, plane crashes and I die and my kids grow up motherless, earthquakes have a special place in there somewhere and you know there have been all these storms lately what if one of them ravages everything in sight and all planes get blown away and I have absolutely no way of getting back home apart from swimming accross the Baltic and then hitchiking accross Finland and Sweden. I keep Stefan awake until ungodly hour each night freaking out at him about all of this, he seems totally unfazed by it all. Like I should be, but I am wired up.

C. is being clever, she knows she cannot rationalise with me over stupid scenarios I make up in my head so she has come up with a list of positives.

Why Riga is a good thing...for ALL of us:

1. Our men will never step up to the plate unless we force them to, just like they stepped AWAY from the plate because we shoved them back with our desires to be perfect. 72 hours of fending for themselves and taking care of the kids is a perfect first step.

2. By not hovering over them they are much more likely to just get on with it and take care of the kids. Once they have tried it out for a few days they will be more confident and willing to do it again.

3. The kids deserve involved fathers, see point 1, they aren't going to be involved unless we force them.

4. The kids need two capable caretakers and they are never going to release their death grips on us unless we force them to. It is good for them to see their fathers as competent alternatives to us instead of just some guy who gets yelled at and gives them chocolate.

I am not saying this just as an excuse for my desire for an uninterrupted nights sleep and facial. I really do believe all will benefit from time together. The kids have to trust their fathers and they have to trust themselvs. It won't happen unless we give them a shove. Everyone wins. We get a weekend off while their bond is strengthened. Swooping back in to save them from each other on Saturday would only make it all much worse. And we know they aren't going to be alone. My inlaws are arriving on Saturday and your in laws are five minutes away. Pu-lease.

Grrrr I hate is when someone puts reasonablity in writing and I cannot really argue with any of it. I should go and pack my bags. I will probably call every hour to see how everything is and be totally neurotic but I need to cut the cord sometime.

Picasso in the making

2011-11-30T22:09:00.000+01:00

Buggy's BFF recently drew a self- portrait.Like a cricle with eyes and mouth and nose and there were even eyebrowns drawn in (which most of anyting impressed me), and all together it actually looked like a face. Her mum is making a drawing into a piece of jewllery which I am totally jelaous over.

So we practice drawing a lot. I love to see impressions of how she sees the world portrayed in forms of little squiggles and lines on a piece of paper.

Ignore the poor filming.

My interpretation of Buggy's inner monologue: Oh the tip of the pen is oh so interesting....Why are you bothering me with all these questions? What is this? What the heck do you expect woman that I will speak to you about my art while Lion King is shaking his booty in the background, and darn it woman when you took my attention of the tip of that pen I thought the drawing part disappeared. Oh she is yelling my name, I cannot pretend to ignore her. I just give her what she wants, hopefully she leaves me in peace to express myself throught my art while watching Lion King, and playing iPad, and eating my Friday night sweets all at the same time.

Let November be Over

2011-11-26T23:34:00.000+01:00

I know some people will hate me for saying this, but now with two babies under my belt I still have not spent a sleepless night, trying to calm a crying baby. I am sorry. I don't know why I feel the need to apologize for this, I am letting down my mama comrades down by not being a walking zombie and functioning on miliseconds of sleep. So when something like this happens two and a half years into this parenting game, being woken up by a crying baby leaves me in total panic. Baby Boy managed to pick up som germ on one of the flights when we were on our way to Estonia. His poor little nose was so runny and stuffed that he could not breathe, tired snotty baby equals to no sleep, and being in a hotel room means that there is nowehere really to go. I mean hallway was an option but I was scarred of being hit on by drunk Fins even with a screaming baby in my arms.

Three weeks after we came back, we were cured from runny noses and started sleeping through the night, when one of the germ infected children from kindy infested Buggy who in turn infected Baby Boy with yet another uber runny nose bug and we are now in night three of runny nose interupped sleeping, and it is not the topping on the cake of the November which I needed. Totally uncooperable when it comes to wiping snottsies, we now walk around with his snot all dried up inderneath his nose and possibly all over his face. Somethings gotta give...

Blog absence was due to November being over-filled with weekend trips away, Christmas parties, Tupperware parties, Thanksgiving parties, obligations,and I am trying to wrap it up by finishing Christmas shopping early and doing majority of packing for our trip to New Zealand (which is now only four weeks away).

Some snapshots of November...

Well despite the fact that we thought potty training would be a total success if we tried to do it on a weekend away and use peer pressure as a motivator, it slapped us right back in the face with a big punch of not-gonna-happen. One of the rare moments when Buggy and Juju actually decided to sit on the potty together, audience and all.

You can see in their eyes how much mischief they get up to together. Four days away in a nice cabin next on the sea front in a romantic location proved not to be any more relaxing than staying at home. On the contrary, we can say for a fact that we will not go away to a place where more activities, outdoor time and time away from each other is possible.

My lovebundle baby boy, and his chubby cheeks, biting them is so hard to resist. Oh adorableness which started crawling on the first of the month.

Banana car races and Oopsy Daisies

C. made these adorable adorable adorable pixie hood jackets while we were away. I helped out by cutting the pattern out, so I can push myself in there somwhere as a creator of these.

While we were getting dressed up for a Christmas party, Buggy just had to get dressed up also for a sleepover at her grandparents, as Maja the Bee of course. She also decided that we must "take peekshures" all dressed up.

Fun with feathers at the Thanksgiving party

All knick-knacks have become endangered species

Happy Turkey Day for those of you who choose to celebrate holidays totally unrelated to your culture as an excuse to stuff your face.

December will be kicked off with a girls trip to Riga with some serious mud wrapping, massages and spa pampering. I am trying to ignore separation anxiety which is infesting my head, with excitment of having quiet time, being able to get on a plane without twenty kilos of hand luggage which is filled with all sorts of baby entertaining equipment, and having a flight without a fear of one or two kids having meltdowns. The positives of it all really outweigh the negatives, but 72 hours away from my babies still messes with my head and makes me look at optional flight schedules for an early return home.

I am full of assumptions here...

2011-11-06T22:24:00.000+01:00

Estonia is wierd....I cannot decide whether I like it or whether I am indifferent to it. I certanly do not hate it as much as I hated being in Turkey. Its like a great big mix betweeen the Scandinavian countries and the Eastern Europe. Even the mentality of the people (and I gather this from a couple of tour guides from the tours we did yesterday and today) is the same...Neither here, nor there....

And then there is a whole lot of groups of men travelling together in flocks, like A LOT....Drunk Fins and Brits....How long do you think it takes for a drunk Fin to strike? With baby boy in a front carrier, I walked into a bar at our hotel asking for spoons and some slobbery red faced drunk jerk, off his face at 5.00pm, literally I walked to the bar started walking towards me and spitty slobbered out: "Zat babyz zo cute and zo are you!" (OK that may sound a bit more German but lets pretend it is Finnish). Sure I look sweet, oh wait a second while I just get this big glass of get the fuck away from me and smash it in your face you drunk jerk....I didn't say that, I got me my spoons and got out of that bar as fast as I could.

A couple of hours later another dumbass cracka drunk Brit while I was waiting for an elevator clearly with a baby bottle of milk in my hands turns towards me, in my head I was all: "Please don't talk to me, please don't embarass yourself!", but then he said it: "Oh, you look cosy there!" Yeah sure I do, as I am waiting here impatiently for the elevator, fidgeting because I really do not want you to talk to me, I must look incredibly cosy...Who the truck says that to a person that they never spoken to a word to in their life? He will eternally be etched into my mind as the guy who told me I look cosy with blood shot eyes and alchohol breath.....Just yuck, and so obvious that I am getting old, in my younger days I would probably just take the piss out of him for a little to get a good laugh, instead of getting annoyed....

Yesterday I managed to bike for 14 km. I loved it, it was so cool, and I felt all super healthy, so much that I made a decision to possibly get me a bike for Bergen....I could bike to work no problems, but then I thought that the bike back from work would mostly be uphill and all of a sudden that idea went crashing into the abyss of never gonna happen...

Here a proof that some of my brain nerve connections are truly missing.

Fresh air makes babies sleep oh so well!

Today we were on a tour to Laheema National Park, which is really just a big forested area. In between all the driving, we saw beaver dams, went for small hike to see power plant ruins, then we stopped at this totally random place in the middle of nowhere like a village popular for boat building or sea men or something maritime...We had lunch there at this museum which is more like someone's house with collection of Estonian maritime memorabilia on display....My smoke baked salmon was served to me litterally by the hand of the artist who paints the colour of the sea for each day of the year. There is 365 wood planks, thankfully not all on display of The Sea which looks like Buggy and Juju going wild finger painting, but you know I am not an art buff I may be very very ignorant.


Buggy attempting to portray in a photo how beavers eat wood

Baby Boy snuggled up at Altja fishing village.

We will do a proper walk through Tallinn Old Town tomorrow since all we really saw this far is (erm, cough) McDonalds. Do not judge me, I am not about to go into a restaurant, and spend money on a meal that I will not enjoy because there is a very big chance that during the time we wait for the meals:

a) one of the kids will not think going to a nice restaurant and waiting longer than five minutes to be served is all that fun, and will want to play chase around the restaurant.
b) other kid will keep throwing whatever we put into his hands all over the floor and will be making high pitches screams at the annoyance of lovey dubey couples next to us, or a flock of men trying to have some male bonding time before they hit the strip joints.
c) one or both of the kids will poop and smell up the entire restaurant
d) someone will start screaming for boob and I am not so keen on pulling it out in restaurants and feeding inside a toilet is just not an option.

It a nice place to come and visit for a couple of days even with the kids in tow...The pool and the hot tub at the hotel provided an afternoon of fun. I love how Buggy takes in her surroundings like a sponge and is already paying much attention to expensive shoes in shop windows...and Baby Boy, Stefan is convinced he said "MAMA" tonight as he was putting on his p.j's. All in all a nice break away from the ordinary everydayness.

Welcome to Tallinn

2011-11-04T22:44:00.004+01:00

Current conversation between me and hubby:

Me: Hang on what time it is?Is it 7.00pm or is it 6.00pm?
Him: My phone says 7.00pm
Me: Mine says 6.00pm. The TV says 7.00pm.

Thank godness for free wireless at the hotel, Google quicky answered our question. Oh, no wonder we are so tired we changed time zones? We are so totally jet lagged by one hour. Hence most of the day was spent sleeping.

Toddler and infant travelling wise, totally successfull flights. Like no technology used what so ever on 90% of the trip. Woop woop, fantastic to get my hopes up about how easy that two day trip to New Zealand will be with total of...What? 30 hours of flying...Completely changing day for night...

Baby boy did manage to grose out and possibly change the mind of a young lovey duby couple of their future of having kids, by barfing all over me. I was just waiting for the girl to barf all over her boyfriend\husband\lover, whatever he was as she watched me use a serviette to clean it up. This also happened when we were getting of the plane, so not really conveniet to get to the baby bag...Toughen up missy, its just baby puke.... No biggie, after all I have nothing to change into since the friggin' airline LOST OUR LUGGAGE, it was suppose to arrive on a flight at 7.00pm, but luck would have it that there is no luggage in sight...So, call the insurance company, get very excited about spending a serious sum of money on new clothes, get dressed in my puked on smelly dress one hour before shops close and try and get a whole new wardrobe and toiletries for all four of us within this one hour. Bought pretty much everything we need apart from one thing we probably need the most - DIAPERS. Nevermind, at least I have gotten mascara so I don't look all washed out on the photos.

And you know, it is probably even better that our luggage got lost, since yet again I was so disorganized with packing, last night when I was running frantically around the house thinking what we need to take with us, all I was focused on is that I need to take iPad and stickers so we avoid meltdowns on the plane. I deserve all the panic and anxiety, since instead of spending the day packing I spent the day making five kilos of pumpking puree (since that is what I will need on a weekend getway...I have no logic in me at all), having lunch with C., watching re-reruns of Oprah and just generally f'in around instead of doing what I really should be doing.

Welcome to Tallinn, I cannot tell you real impressions, exhaustion brought on by getting up at 4.00am, two flights, shopping for an entire wardrobe within an hour has not gotten me much further from the hotel. The taxi driver was great and the hotel is really nice, town has a good atmosphere, nothing like ex. SSSR feel as expected. So all good in the hood, we're off sightseeing on a bike tour, which I will have to do in high heel boots. When you have one hour to shop your reasoning kind of disappears.

Confessions of a Masked (Guest) Blogger

2011-11-01T07:21:00.000+01:00

I have safely returned home from my trans-Atlantic barrel of laughs. I have gained some new insights about my character. It turns out that my inability to react sensibly to a stressful situation (which last week I thought was brought on by a screaming toddler shortwiring my brain) has perhaps its root causes in exhaustion. Alternatively, its root causes are in plain ol' craziness. I wouldn't put it past me. I relate the following story to illustrate this fact:

Picture me, 20+ hours into my travel day, boarding my last flight into Bergen. My daughter is exhausted but well-behaved, and falls asleep in the window seat next to me. The man sitting next to me smells funny. He fidgits a lot. He has strange looking hands (fat fingers). He is sweating profusely and keeps wiping his brow with a handkerchief. His anxiety is contageous and soon I'm pretending to sleep with my eyes half-open, keeping an eye on his suspicious hand luggage and waistline, probably both stuffed full of explosives. He's going to take me hostage when he terrorizes the plane, I decide. I am tired, and accept my fate: to die in a new terrorist attack against these poor Norwegians who have done nothing wrong except be very rich and very smug and not all that polite. The man (who is Russian and speaks no English as far as I can tell from his interaction with the cabin crew) takes the magazine out of the seat back pocket and attempts to read it, upside down, with his fat sweaty fingers nervously and unsuccessfully trying to flip through the pages. I'm going to die. My daughter is going to die, she's going to be terrified to see her mother taken hostage in the last minutes of her life. It will be awful. My husband will get my life insurance. Wait, how is that fair? Sure, he's my husband, but why should he get all that money? Our only dependant is going to die with me, he doesn't need all that cash. What is this, comfort money? Shouldn't my parents get some of that? I can't let myself die without getting this shit down in writing. Should I send a text message? Hope my phone survives the crash? That's not a good bet. No. I can't let myself die with this big financial question hanging over my head. So I excuse myself to go the bathroom. I can feel the terrorist's glare at my back as I go, not to the closest bathroom, but to the one at the front of the plane where the cabin crew is chatting about salted vs. unsalted peanuts.

I tell the head stewardess. I think the man in row 14 is up to no good, I tell her. He is strange. He is anxious. I saw him use his cell phone in flight. Also, instead of drinking his free mini-bottle of red wine, he put it in his backpack. That's not allowed. Two violations of the rules, plus he smells funny and is just weird.

She is surprisingly helpful and concerned for me. She reassures me that she is ex-law enforcement and will check him out and keep an eye on him. If I want to move seats, I may. But I don't want to move my sleeping daughter. See? Some inconsistancies in my thought patterns here. But if I'm wrong (and maybe he is just smuggling a kilo of heroin in his colon, who knows?), I don't want to wake my sleeping toddler, that would be almost worse than dying in a terrorist attack. So I take my seat again and resume pretend-sleeping.

We don't die. The plane lands safely. I consider telling the police officers at customs to do a cavity search on the guy, he is clearly up to no good, but, eh, whatever, I'm tired and want to go home. As I leave the airport I am given reason to believe that the man actually works for my company, and was about to go on-shift in the North Sea. Alternative theories, more plausible theories, come to me days later as I recover from my lack of sleep and stress of travel:

1. He was afraid of flying.

2. He spent his entire off-shift time plastered out of his mind (because all Russians are alcoholics, right?), and was sweaty and nervous from the withdrawal and the prospects of 4 weeks of no vodka.

3. Some people just smell bad and have shaky hands.

The moral of this story: one day, I probably will sit next to a real terrorist and die in a horrible plane crash because I won't want to report him and embarass myself by making this mistake again.

Isn't that the moral? I think it is. See? Even with a full nights sleep, I'm still crazy.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T11:26:00.001+01:00

Crocodile and Shark checking out their treats following a pretend trick or treating session and getting high on black icing and cookies.

At six month control...

2011-10-28T23:46:00.003+02:00

I don't want to underestimate local health stations here, and I understand their purpose completely, I know that there are challenges in the society and they are here to provide the vaccinations, weight control and they need to ensure that children are nourished and taken care of the way they are suppose to be. The nurse that is taking care of both, Buggy and Baby Boy, she gets it. She knows that I have stepped into the parenting world by choice, that I read books and have access to Google, so she really limits her advice to what I need. We weigh and measure baby boy, have chats over how cute and adorable he is, we discuss the growth charts, she gives him some cuddles, vaccinations, we talk about the weather, she tells me all looks like it is suppose to be and that I should just continue doing what I am comfortable with and what works for me.

But the doctor, man, we are on completely different wavelenghts and I am sure I irritate him just as much as he irritates me. I truly do not want to underestemate how much effort and time he invested into his schooling, to allow him to make judgements on me, but he leaves me with no choice.

I do not have most fantastic experience with him from the time when we needed to go for monthly check ups with Buggy. Buggy was a puker. At about six months, I was so desperate from changing her clothes about hundred gazillion times a day, desperate with worry whether she is getting enough nutrients, whether she has reflux, whether she is any pain from this and I am just not getting it, I asked for an appointment with the doctor. Without exaggeration, Buggy may have puked about 50 times per day. He was so disinterested in my worry, and pretty much questioned me on why I am worried, that all that matters is that she is growing and gaining weight. I stood my ground and said that if he cannot give me an answer on what might be wrong, that I will not leave his office until he sends a referral for us to see a specialist. I guess to get me out of his office, he sent a referral to the hospital. Five minutes into my appointment with the gastro specialist, diagnosis was that most common reason for kids that barf a lot is milk protein allergy (which they usually grow out of by the time they turn one or two). I was told to stop eating milk products, which I did, Buggy stopped puking. Once I've done my research online, I found that in 60% of cases of pukey infants reason is milk protein allergy. Now, I feel that if this is so common, that a pediatrician should be able to offer eliminating milk from a diet to a distressed mother as a first step in trying to calm her down and eliminate the problem. Buggy obviously grew out of her allergy since now she guzzles milk by liters without the mess previously involved.

At the control today following the standard probing of Baby Boy, checking whether all nuts and bolts are in the right places, I thought we would be finished, but my doctor friend wanted to talk. He asked about solids. And stupid me, instead of just saying to him what he wants to hear I told him how it actually is. Introduction of solids into Baby Boy's diet is not going so good, well actually apart from a lucky day when he eats a smothie, most of what we offer him he tries, but upon giving him second or third spoonfool of it, he starts blowing raspberries and somewhat spitting the food out. This does not worry me. Buggy never really actually properly ate until I stopped breastfeeding (at about 15 months) and everything turned out just fine. He suggested I should try and give him some bread and butter. What? Shall I also add a side of spicy ribs? I knew what I got myself into so I nodded my head and just agreed with whatever he said knowing I will never follow the advice. I thought we were done, but he continued.

Dr: Does he still nurse at night?

Me: Yes.

Dr: Why?

Me: I guess he needs it, it is never much, and he probably does it for cuddles too.

Dr: Cuddles for who: him or you?

At this stage I clenched my teeth, gave him a sour smile and asked him if we were done so I can point myself to the door. I presumed the guy went to Richard Ferber's school of parenting, and next advice I was going to get is to leave the kids in a dark room and not go back in there for 12 hours no matter what kind of noises are coming out of the room.

Our nursing session go something like this: latch on, suck a moment, pull off, latch on, suck a moment, pull off. Nurse a minute, pull away to smile at gurgle and flirt with mama, nurse a minute, pull away to listen to TV, nurse, pull away, Buggy may be doing something funny and he must check it out, nurse, pull away, milk let-down squirting all over his face, wiggle, wiggle, nurse. There is too much going on for him to focus on boobie.

Luckily instead of faul doctor advice whom I have not much trust in I use Kellymom as my guiding star when it comes to any worries I have about breastfeeiding and solids. I am quoting the site here:

"Babies aged two to six months are notorious for pulling off the breast at any distraction (real or imaginary)...more night nursing until he's figured out how to deal with distraction. Do take advantage of night nursing during this time - it doesn't matter when baby takes in his calories during a 24-hour period. One study showed that older babies can consume as much as 25% of their total daily intake of mother's milk during the night, probably partly because of daytime distractibility."

I wish I had these facts when he presented me with a question, but I always come up with the best come backs about two days too late.

Does this look like a baby that needs bread and butter? Didn't think so.....He is so fine with just boobie, I could eat half of him and he'd still be fine....

Weight: 8 560g

Height: 67cm

The Happiness Project

2011-10-26T12:50:00.002+02:00

I had a tin full of crayons which Buggy does not like coloring with being dragged from one corner of the house to another. I have been on the verge of throwing them out many times. Today as I was getting my daily dose of pinning, I came accross this. Brilliant, Baby Boy is taking a nap, and I will do something more "productive" than pinning and suprise Buggy with giant heart crayons when she is back from kindy (in future I think this would be a fun project to do with her).

The crayons overbaked, due to me looking at this, half way through reading reviews upon decision that I will not buy the book, I remembered the crayons in the oven. Smell of overmelting wax may have played some part in it also. Nothing like pretty giant crayons which I would have had if I had better attention span.

As I was taking them out of the mold, annoyed, cursing inside of myself, I was presented with pretty shiny mush of colours on the bottom of the brown goo. Lighbulb moment would be it: instead of buying the book, I should start my own happiness project. Little things that make Marija happy. It will be a way to motivate me to finally for the gazillionth time this year organize the mess that is upseting me in the cupboards, make an effort to clean out the basement, wall paper the wall as planned six months ago, pretty much finish all the half way started projects I have sitting around the house and in my head, not leave the packing for mini break to Tallin next week for last minute, not leave packing for trip to New Zealand in December last minute, not allow December to stress me out and try to have fun with EVERYTHING while doing it. Now that it is all written out it seems a lot, but worth a try.

So here, first thing that sucked but in the end made me happy.

Off to unload the dishwasher as part of this project....should be FUN! Yeah right....

I am not promising that I will stick to this, as evidence proves I do have short attention span and may forget all about it as soon as I hit the publish button.

Singing Debut...Mispronounciation and All

2011-10-25T23:09:00.002+02:00

Yes people, she is destined for a career of a singing puppeteer!

From dieting to pumpkins to annoying our neighbours...

2011-10-24T23:11:00.008+02:00

My diet grumpiness is continuing on. I forgot myself last night and drank Christmas soda which is nothing but sugared food colouring, but what the heck it was Sunday. The small sugar fix from the soda was nowhere nearly enough to improve my mood. I feel guilty for being a snappy bitch, but I think in the hugeness of things having a mommy and a wife that feels good about the way she looks will compensate for these couple of week of grumpiness. On our drive back from kindy, this woman stopped with a car in the middle of an intersection where we were suppose to turn, I forgot myself yelled: "Move you dumb cow!". I am roadragy as it is, the feelings are quite intensified latelty that I could not just say this to my chin so kids do not hear me. Not even a minute later I heard Buggy say: "Mama shtuhpid couw." Totally deserved!

We managed to find one and only pumkin in the grocery store which we quickly grabbed without even looking at the price. Impatence has it, pumpkin is already carved. Despite being extremely excited about the "pup-n-kin" prior to carving, once the face was drawn on it, Buggy observed the enitre process from a distance. Baby boy was all about getting into the goo! While he thought that playing with the plastic was so much fun, mommy was having anxiety attacks over possibility of asphyxiation .

It looks awesome, so good that we do not want to put it outside since any sign of food (including poopy diapers) in front of our door gets totally destroyed and dragged all over the show by birds. Buggy is still frightened by it. Earlier this afternoon when she walked past it she stopped a little, took a step back, did a little shake and said "Scawwy!". Just within few hours this has progressed to refusing to walk past the pumpkin unless either one of us is holding her hand, accompanied by repeatedly saying "Scawwy scawwy!", while holding her little hands in front of her eyes, guarding her vision from the scawwy pup-n-kin. Pumpkin's destiny is at the mercy of greedy poop eating birds.

Oh and see that candle inside of it? Yes, it looks large. While I was changing Buggys diaper this morning I noticed that the inside of her nose was black, same with baby boy, then I looked at myself - same thing. Last night, we had friends over and while we were chatting I thought that it was quite smoky in the living room, but I thought that it was because of the sugar detox my head is all fuzzy...Time to change the batteries in the smoke detectors.

The work is taking so much time and effort, days of being able to go to the office and put in solid four to five hours work are now gone. The solid four and a half hours work, couple of times per week will now need to be done from home where the floors are clean enough for baby boy to circularly crawl around and where his high pitched screams will annoy only myself. I am not regretting the decision to work while on maternity leave, but I do feel some guilt not being as interative with baby boy for those hours that I work, and leave him to entertain himself since in between breastfeedings, working days really take up majority of the time Buggy is at kindy. He does not seem to mind the time he has to himself, he happily gurgles and occasionally lets out above mentioned high pitched scream and continues to bang the rattles against the hardwood floor. We are yet to receive death threats from people living in the apartment below us...

Confessions of a Masked (Guest) Blogger

2011-10-23T12:04:00.000+02:00

She is back, and I am still on Pinterest!

Alas, poor readers of Marija's blog, I know you have missed me, the mysterious masked guest blogger. No? Didn't even notice I've been away? That's okay. It helps soothe the guilt of my absence, knowing I wasn't missed.

I have my excuses. First I was sick, and then I was traveling alone with a 2 year old from Norway to the forgotten back country of America, and then I was recovering from traveling alone with the above mentioned 2 year old, and now, finally, feeling like the jet lag is under control and the airline drama receding from memory, today I started packing my carry-on for the return journey.

Let me just say right away, that all of you who read Marija's blog know that she is from New Zealand (well...sort of), and that she and her family will soon be making that trip, which is, without exaggeration, the longest trip possible on Earth. If you point at Norway and New Zealand (on something as archaic as a globe), you will see that you are really pointing at the ends of the Earth. It is a loooooooong way to go with kids. So from Marija I expect no sympathy for my easy peasy nice and cheesy trip across the Atlantic. But from the rest of you, hear me out.

I spent my last days in Norway reading blogs and online articles tagged with "airline travel with toddler" so I was pretty freaked out by the time the big day arrived. To those of you who don't know me (and how could you, my identity being such a closely guarded secret?!), I have a fair amount of "airline travel with toddler" experience. More than probably ANY of the people who write articles about it. So why I need to go get myself worked up over their quasi-professional advice is beyond me. But I do.

Most of the articles were about moms and babies (or children) getting kicked off of flights, usually illegally. But who cares if the airline has a right to do it or not, I don't want it to happen to me! So when my kid was dehydrated and desperate for a drink of water on the runway in Detroit, did I ask for water? No. Because fresh in my mind was an article about a family that was removed from a flight for doing exactly that - asking for water before take-off. That was the slant of the article I read; I think we can all, in moments of calm and sane reflection, imagine that there was more to the case than just a polite request for water from a family with young kids. But when your toddler is freaking out and people are sending last minute text messages before the plane leaves the gate saying "OMG just my LUCK, I have to sit next to a HYSTERICAL little brat for 3 hours" (seriously, I saw a woman texting and I'm sure that it was it said), "calm" and "sane" are words that do not apply. So I let my dehydrated kid freak out for 20 minutes until we were safely in the air before I asked for water.

If I had a do-over I would do things differently. I would ask for water, because the worse possible thing that could happen would be the flight attendant saying "no" and then everyone hating HER instead of me. Getting kicked off the flight was obviously not going to happen to me. Not sane. Not calm.

Here is where I am good though: not sane, and not calm, but good. And that is in packing my carry-on (which, as previously mentioned, I began to do today but have been mentally preparing for weeks, for a flight that is still 6 days away) with a toddler in mind. First of all, I have nothing in my giant overnighter-sized carry-on for myself other than my passport. You see a granola bar in there? That's not for me. Everything in the bag is for her. Most of it is gift wrapped so she can have the excitement of a new present every hour or so of the journey. Then, all I have do is spend 30 hours focused on keeping her squirly little body in her seat (thanks, TSA, for making it a crime now to walk around the cabin on flights bound to America, that's just great!) by doling out kinder eggs, stickers, and trying to judiciously control the number of Dora episodes she watches so she doesn't grow sick of the ipad before the day (and a half) is up.

It's not fun. In fact, I hate it. It is stressful even when it goes well. In 6 days I get to do it again. The kinder eggs, the stickers, the Dora after Dora after Dora, the people with their stupid text messages complaining about me and my toddler. And then, after we've had a few hours to recover, I'll drop her off at daycare, grumpy and jetlagged, and I'll go sit bleary eyed at my office and think about how I really need to take more holidays. We'll probably also pick up some disgusting illness from a fellow airline passenger which will prolong the grumpiness and jetlaggedness by a few weeks. Niiiiiiiice.

Absence

2011-10-21T14:48:00.000+02:00

I am not busy, I am just obsessed with Pinterest. Oh, like I did not waste enough time (read money) as it is on Etsy, this little new thing makes my schedule full. But I am pinning and learning how to organize and coming up with some awesome dinner ideas that will never get cooked and have some wicked cool ideas for knitting, and crafting that will never amount to anything...And it is so cold and rainy outside that I find it hard to get myself out of the house. Yesterday I was even lazy to take Buggy to kindy, we did leave the house long enough to get some oxygen, get rained on, jump into some muddy puddles. We quickly wrapped up the entire outing and go home to cosy up (is that even a word in English, I am becoming far to Norwegianized).

Plus, I am on a second day of sugar detox, I am close to barking. I am not very nice to adults around me...I just need to get to day three and I will be fine, right?

Solving sticky situations by stickers...

2011-10-17T23:26:00.002+02:00

I am not big on giving advice...erm...I lie, I am...I can rephrase... I am big on giving useless advice. A few of my friends are soon to become first time mommies and out of all the wisdom I can shed on them, the first thing I end up saying is not to buy the diaper disposal bin. It is a first time parent trap, nasty poopy diapers smell bad, no matter what kind of gadgets you try to stuff them into. If anyone is interested in one, I can try and dig ours out from the basement, it is probably burried under gazzilion other crap I purchased that I thought would make my parenting life easier. But, to parents of toddlers, I promise this is not useless at all...Wherever you come accross stickers, buy them. If they are cheap, buy whatever the shop has in stock. Stickers will become your saviours, they are magic and will be your key out of most sticky situations.

Stickers give you (me) enough time and calm the situation enough so that you (I) can get myself cool, calm and collected and deal with the situation the way Dr. Sears would. They are a great way to interact and teach new words, colors, see how your kids are progressing from not being able to peel them off the paper to being able to peel them off the paper and then stick them ALL over your furniture...The possibilities of stickers are as big as your imaginations and most of all they are the most awesome sugar free bribe for your kids...

But, even with the ever presence of stickers, we are still privileged to experience some serious meltdowns. Teeth brushing is a big strugle, every night. She clenches her jaw shut, while Stefan holds her down and I try to get in there to get a few brush strokes. This bright brain said to her tonight that if she lets me brush her teeth I will give her two stickers. To which she raised both of her hands and said five stickers. I stopped my negotiations at two, I mean we need to show her who's the boss around these neck of the woods (feel free to insert LOL here), showing her how to hide the other three fingers, since I am convinced the demand for five stickers was brought on by the difficulty of coordinating the movements to remove your little finger, ring finger and thumb from the equation and make peace sign. We reached the agreement, teeth were brushed, I even managed to get a little peek in there to ensure there are no cavities.

All pleased with the outcome, we walked over to the sticker stash, I ripped off two stickers as promised, handed them over, and what was suppose to end in a mutual satisfaction ended with a serious meltdown on the receiver part of the sticker end. Some serious scrying. I walked away while husband tried to resolve the situation by seeing what the heck was up. Apparently it was not the two stickers which she wanted. Of course they are not, she wants the Dora stickers for which she learned how to climb the bookshelf. She knows the Dora stickers are a reward for when she does poo poo on the potty. Which BTW is totally not working, she gets my hopes up by going to the bathroom, taking her diaper off, sit on the potty, talks about how she will get "Dowa-stikous", then gets up, looks in the potty to exclaim "No Dowa-stikous!". Why she can learn to take her diaper off and almost get dressed all by herself and cannot learn to go potty is a whole new blog post. Anyhow, meltdown...I could have concluded that stickers she got were not the ones she wanted by not giving her attention at the negative behaviour but we can save that discussion for later. He was all like: "I don't want to make her feel deceived and want to hear her out, she was really sad." At this stage I was bursting out laughing. which upset husband, he thought I was being insensitive...I guess he does not witness her "real" tears daily over putting her shoes on when it is time to go to kindy.

At playdates, stickers allow us to get some adult conversations in, even though we are subject to being stickered. Do not underestimate their power!

Maybe useless advice after all, but my stash is getting low, and I am not leaving anything to chance. You can find me on a sticker hunt tomorrow.

Because I could have not said it better...

2011-10-16T15:36:00.000+02:00

Cutdorable!!!

2011-10-13T21:58:00.000+02:00

This past weekend we crafted with the kids. Yes, we let them do whatever they like....Yes, we cleaned a lot afterwards, but we laughed till we cried and think that our kids are so adorable that we need to invent a new word for cute which we will use when referring only to them...

Birthday Bash....

2011-10-12T23:41:00.000+02:00

I would really love to revive the excitement, butterflies, tummy popping out of your ears type of feeling for my birthday. The expectations of grandeour are all gone, a sure sign that I am getting old, the serious double digit number also proving the same.

My hair wished happy birthday to me, by hosting a grey hair. What? I see grey hair on my head? While making myself look pretty in order to feel better on my birthday!!! I freaked. Like, what the hell? Really? You choose to show up on my bloody birthday, on a day when I already feel miserable and depressed enough as it is. I showed that bastard the power of tweezers. Following which I remembered that somewhere I overhead some conversation in which dicussion was lead on how if you pluck one grey hair, three will grow in its place. Utter panic....the decision making process began...To dye or not to dye.....Oh I will have to cut my hair short now since dyed long hair can get so dry and sad lookin... Preservation of hair will require more frequent already dreaded trips to the hairdresser. The panic, will they cut off too much will now turn into, will it turn out the wrong colour, will they burn the hair, will the hair wash off my head together with the hair dye.

Then, in order to host some kind of shibang on your birthday, as you get old, you need to do all the work yourself. Hence while all the expectation of grandeour is gone, now you realize how much work your parents put into celebrations. Hence morning after, I celebrated in true style by polishing up 1\4 of the cake that was leftover from last night (a blog post on how my fat jeans are extremely snug fit to follow).

My hatred for gaining yet another year is still present. It will creep around for a few more days probably. I sense some serious retail therapy to perk myself up, and of course there is always bugs to give me a grandeour feeling of happiness with some slobbery kisses and gummy smiles.

Exit Passive Stage

2011-10-06T15:18:00.000+02:00

This is how one tiny little baby can flip over from lying\seating position in a car seat to...whatever this is...Oh boy, it will get busy, it will be a lot of no-no-no's, no more I find you where I leave you....Crap, I am not ready for him to start doing that....I want him to be my little cuddle bunny like he has been so far. Next he will be wriggling his way out of my cuddles....

Maybe some other time...

2011-10-02T23:12:00.000+02:00

If anyone tells me that they sleep in during the weekend, I longingly look in the other direction hoping those days are not far from me. The nights last longer now, so last weekend when Buggy woke up at her standard hour of 6.30am, it was still dark outside. I started telling (lying to) her how it is still middle of the night and how everyone is still asleep and she needs to get back bed and try to sleep a little bit more....I tried my luck, nothing to loose...And lucky I got!!!! 10.00am was the next time I felt slobery kisses on my cheek telling me to get her some milk. Yes, I get to (rarely) sleep in here and there when S. takes responsibility for the kids, but I never quite manage to properly fall asleep and cosy as much as I used to, probably because I constatly expect someone to start yelling to make myself and my boobies available. And then I have this stupid thing in my head how I will probably miss out on some first and never truly really SLEEP IN.... I long after those lazy late mornings and waking up at my own pace.

Buggy has a wierd sleeping rythm, there are nights when she is bed jumping until 10 pm, and she is still wide awake and ready for action at 6.30am. The girl loves her some afternoon naps, its not rare that she sometimes sleeps for about three hours

Since I got the taste of the past last weekend, I am on a mission to change the rythm. Obviously she needs those extra hours of sleep, but I am hoping she would skip the afternoon nap and make up for the three hours in the mornings.

So, yesterday I decided that best way to do this is that we can skip the afternoon nap all together...And it went great. No grumpiness, a pleasant two year old who behaved ALL day even with increased sugar intake....She went to bed and fell asleep immediately without waking up gazzillion times to go pee pee, have some water, and repeatedly ask to sing the birdie song. She still woke up at ungodly hour of 6.30am.

Today, a charming little bug entire day, I had butterflies in my tummy anticipating the joy of lazy mornings in the weekends. She just needs to realise that she will not get to sleep during the day and will be making up for the extra hours in the mornings in no time. Late in the afternoon we were visiting my sister-in-law, Buggy was drawing and doing her own thing. After some time the constant demand "Mama, mama, mama draw Sesanie dress!" subdued. It's amazing what irrational anxiety does to mothers brain in a matter of three seconds, which is exactly how long it took for us to "find" her. I had at least three disappearing and kidnapping scenarios being worked out in my head one of which included aliens.

Fast asleep, we creeped around to capture the moment digitally, she woke up from the flash of the camera, but fell back asleep immediately.

I guess it is not time yet for that transition and I should just accept getting up early. I am forgetting that now I have two bugs and can kiss sleeping in goodbye for at least a few more years. I wonder whether I can get myself hypnotized to be turned into a morning person.

When should kids stop napping in the afternoons?

Night Off

2011-10-01T22:01:00.001+02:00

We tried to make ourselves younger and cooler than what we actually are by attending a death metal concert. It started nicely with a couple of margueritas at a cosy bar, which would have been a fantastic place to continue our childfree evening.

We really did not blend into the environment, a couple of close to metrosexuals and a mommy trying to look all deathmetallyrock...Not fooling anyone....

Ear plugs were put into good use immediately....

Oh my, these people use a lot of make up for deathmetallers, ewwwwww

Beer spillage

Graaaggghhhh

Look at my cheezy smile, I look uncomfortable.

The whole shibang is a bit of a blur, I felt like I was watching a nuthouse on stage and was thinking that these guys must spend more money on white and black body paint than what they actually make holding these concert. I was expecting to get an epileptic attack from combination of cocktails, beer and flashing lights. Warm up band was not so bad, entire time I wondered whether he was screaming in English or Norwegian. I cannot say much of the impression of the music from the main act, we walked out following the realization that the frontman of the group wore a jacket with a picture of war criminal printed on it... I believe in freedom of speech, but there are limits to everything. I would not expect a government funded student body to accept lionising of a war criminal whose ideologies and acts were inspiration to terrors commited just recently by Breivik.

After a couple of bar hops, the highlight of the night was the best hot dogs in the world, and realization that we are far to old to bar hop. We decideed to call it a night...First thing hubby said when he saw the 158 kroners starting fare on the taxi was that the first time he went out taxi home costed him 78 kroners...Yes, when you start saying "when I was young" sentences, it is a sure sign you should stick to privately organized parties or even better your sofa and channel surfing. Which is exactly what I am doing tonight, and loving it. Its nice to do something out of the ordinary just to reasure you how much you like and enjoy ordinary.

The best part of my day today, being cared for by Malli (our niece\babysitter). She brought hangover cures to bed and gave me a foot massages and even offered to wake up in the morning with the kids. Aftera dual screaming session she had to deal with just before we came home, I could not possibly ask that from her also. Lucky she is old enough to know all the tricks available for curing a bad case of mixing drinks (I never learn). I was never such a clued on young adult.... I am ready to pimp her out if anyone needs a babysitter.

Stuck at a red light...

2011-09-29T23:18:00.000+02:00

On our way to nonna's today...impromptu photo session...because who could resist that cheeky little smile.

Sticky Buns

2011-09-27T21:23:00.001+02:00

Somehow it ends up that every day at around 2.30pm, right when re-runs of Top Chef start that baby boy has his dinner, and this nursing session takes long enough to watch just enough of Top Chef to get royally annoyed. I love cooking shows, even lispy Jamie Oliver can be enjoyment to watch, but Top Chef should just be cancelled, if it hasn't been already. A few days ago, the cooking challenge was deconstructing food. What the hell is that....Deconstructed Cesar Salad. Ok, lets take some lettuce leaves, dressing, egg, bacon, crouton, tomatoes, play building blocks with it on some fancy square plate, serve it to bunch of pretentious middle aged food critics and let them scrutinize it. A few weeks ago while judging meals they complained how they could absolutely not eat a piece of roast beef because of the way it was cut. Lakma (or whatever her name is), made a comment on the meal she was served that she eating it but that she is not sure if she thinks it is good because she is hungry or because it actually tastes good. I am sure she has travelled to India and seen people who would eat dry rice if they had any. Erm, shame shame on you, and on people who just don't want to smash the plate in your faces. Hello famine in Africa, hello almost 40 million Americans that live below the poverty line....Shame on you for not trying to do something better with a resource not available to so many.

Anyhow, I constructed some sticky buns. Plain old boring with ovepowering taste of cinnamon, butter and sugar, and I ate them not because I was hungry, but because they were warm, almost goey, sweet and delicious. The recepie is from The Free Range Cook cookbook by Annabel Langbein I got from my mom for Christmas.

The recepie is large, so I made half of the recepie immediately and another half a couple of days later. Something magical happened to half of the dough that was in the fridge for three days and what I thought were average buns when made from the non refrigirated dough, when made from the dough that was kept in the fridge resulted in om nom nom nom nom buns.These are perfect for rainy autum evenings.

STICKY BUNS

125 g butter
2 cups milk
2 teaspoons dry yeast granules
3\4 cup sugar
6 cups high grade flour
1 teaspoon salt

Place butter in a small pot and heat gently until melted. Remove from the heat and add milk. The mixuture should be blood temperature before you sprinkle the yeast and sugar over the top. Stir. Mix flour and salt together in a large bowl, add milk mixture and stir until just combined, tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and silky. Place the dough in a large, lightly oiled container, cover and leave to rise for at least an hour in a warm place (so it is almost doubled in size). When risen divide in half and refrigirate one for later use (it can stay in the firdge for 3 days max, if you will not use it then just freeze the dough). Roll the other half of the dough in a rectangle, and spread softened butter liberally. Sprinkle with sugar (plenty of, I used demerara sugar) and cinnamon. Roll the dough tightly along the longest edge into cyllinder shape. Cut into slices (the recepie says about 4 cm wide, but mine were more like 2 cm). Line the tin in which you will bake with baking paper and arrange the scrolls relatively close to each other. Cover and let it rest in a warm place. Bake for about 15 minutes at 220 degrees Celsius or until golden brown and cooked through.

Glaze the scrolls with a glaze made out of 3 tablespoons of water and 1\4 cuo of sugar which was heated in a small pot until sugar was disolved.

Now, I am not a great food prepaerer or constructor, so this is for those of you who bake once in a blue moon or only when greatly inspired. Foodies who are unsure whether food is good because they are hungry or becuase it actually does taste good should stay on lame TV shows .

Confessions of a Masked (Guest) Blogger

2011-09-26T12:59:00.000+02:00

Another week of daycare is under my belt and the crying is subsiding somewhat. My crying, that is. I remain completely torn apart emotionally about the world of daycare. One of her teachers told me on Friday, "she trusts us, now all that remains is for you to trust us too". He said it kindly, and I must trust them or I wouldn't be leaving her in their care all day, but it is true that I worry about her, worry what it must be like for a little brain to be one of so many kids in a noisy environment all day long. I feel a need to be friends with her teachers, and by "need" I don't mean that I actually expect to invite these people home for Thanksgiving or out to a movie. It isn't something I'm planning on following through on; it is just a simmering angst I carry around inside about how I should know more about the people who spend their days with my daughter. And of course, OF COURSE, it is also because I think they will like my daughter more if they like me more. Which isn't bad logic, because I judge people by their relations all the time and I think everyone does.

Which is an excellent reason NOT to try to foster some kind of friendship, because I am not always the easiest person to like, and god forbid my charming daughter should lose some of her charm simply by association with her less-charming mother. No no, better to try to act normal and not-neurotic for those minutes every day when I help her put on her crocs and hand her her lunchbox and blow kisses at the door. Better to smile at the teachers and thank them for their effort at the end of the day, but not in a OCD co-dependent anxiety ridden tell-me-about-the-consistancy-of-her-poop-yes-but-was-it-dark-brown-or-more-of-a-medium-brown-and-did-you-see-any-undigested-raisins-in-it kind of way. Just in a I'm-a-normal-mentally-healthy-mom-picking-up-her-adorable-daughter-at-a-totally-respectable-not-too-early-so-as-to-appear-over-protective-but-not-so-late-as-to-appear-neglectful-time-of-day. No problem, no problem.

It's a fine line, and I'm working on following it to the best of my ability. Some people manage to drop off their 6 week old infants at daycare and by the time the kid has developed a personality to like or dislike they can point their finger at the daycare staff and say, "don't you go calling my kid hyperactive, YOU did this to him, YOU'RE the one who raised him." Ooh, that was catty of me, I'm sorry. Clearly, if you put your kid in daycare at 6 weeks you have an excellent reason to do so and I'm sure it was heartbreaking and awful. But when you put your 2-and-a-half year old in daycare, there is a whole lot of YOU in the equation, all fingers point at mom, because it is MOM who didn't do a good job of introducing green vegetables and MOM who didn't teach junior to wash his hands with soap and MOM who doesn't know how to discipline. And I can be all, "no no, we had a nanny you see, and the nanny told her to point at every spec of dust on the sidewalk and loudly proclaim YUCKY" but when she is going around pointing at the grubby faces of the other kids at daycare and shouting "YUCKY!!!! GO AWAY" no one blames the nanny. Or the daddy, for that matter.

I'm becoming increasingly unsettled as I realize that this isn't going to end. That I'm always going to feel like this about my daughter, always going to want people to like her, always fear rejection on her behalf, and always take that rejection as some kind of personal affront. To my own mother, I'd like to say I'm sorry. I'm quite sure that any time I was (or am) hurt that it was worse for you than for me, which should be some consolation but probably isn't. And now you can have it doubled up since I'll get hurt everytime my daughter gets hurt, so good luck enjoing that triple-layered multigenerational cake of guilt and worry. That must be nice. I wouldn't have wished this upon you had I known, in fact, I wouldn't have wished MYSELF upon you had I known. But done is done, and here we are, trying to make sure the daycare teachers like us so we can all get a good night's sleep.

The Space Invaders Hat

2011-09-25T00:05:00.000+02:00

Hot of the needles, the hat was knitted for hubs whose ears need to be kept warms since winter is just around the corner. Even though it is small, this is my first "adult" project. I can see so many mistakes in it, and I am sure you can too, it is a bit (a lot) messy, but for a first I am quite proud of myself.

I knitted it as much as I had to un-knitt it, I got peeved with myself many times knitting this. At least I learned that there are certain things that cannot be done while multitasking, and most of all it has tought me to read the instructions c.a.r.e.f.u.l.l.y.

The wool is Dale Freestyle, pattern is Space Invader Hat by Arne & Carlos for Dale Garn.

First solids....

2011-09-23T22:01:00.001+02:00

After some deliberating, we have decided that it is time to start baby boy on solids. We ordered super funky dunky chenille bibs from Mountain Aven to get him styled for the occasion that arrived a month ago, but the thought of changing the diapers filled with non breastmilk poop, kept me nursing up to six to seven times a night without attempting to try and fill his tummy with something more solid.

I have been relatively sleep deprived over the last few days and today in desperation to maybe get a break, and nurse only three times a night, we agreed that an attempt at a little but of porridge will not hurt. And the give-me-a-little-bite-look that he has on his face each time we eat something did not help in my persistance to keep the diapers relatively pleasant to change.

I am almost going to eat my fingers...om nom nom nom I am so excited.....

Erm, yes we could not come up with anything more apetizing other than rice porridge little buddy....I know that parma ham and rucola pizza that we were stuffing our faces with earlier looked much better...But...hello allergies...I am not convinced you will be tasting anything milky or cheezy any time soon, you're quite on the pukey side if mama over does it with milk products.

You can make the most adorable faces but no pizza...get ready for a diet of mashed banana, pureed carrots and apple sauce.

Building the "Oprah" House...

2011-09-20T22:23:00.001+02:00

Five years ago, when I was in the process of moving to Norway, on a Friday night, while I was chilling with girlfriends and consuming sauvignon blanc, hubby (then to be) called me. The conversation went something like this:

Him: My boss has put in an offer for work on the "oprah" house, so we may need to move to Oslo for about 6 months.
Me: The "Oprah" house? Cool!
Him: Yeah, well the outside of the "Oprah" house.

Upon finishing the conversation I announced to my girlfriends that Oprah is building a house in Oslo and my husband will do her garden and we may need to move to Oslo. I was in extatic, I may even sneak in and see what Oprah's Norwegian garden will look like. I even played out some scenarios in my head where I meet Oprah...and she becomes my mentor, guru, I become her protege.

As I was downing a glass of sauvignon, I got questioned on reasons why would Oprah be building a house in Oslo. Erm, like who cares why, my husband is going to do her gardens.

A few days later, I posed the same questions to hubs, who probably thought that I was missing some nerve connections in my brain since he did not say that Oprah is building a house in Oslo, but that his boss had put in an offer for the Opera house which was being built in Oslo. The prospects of relocating from New Zealand to Bergen and then from Bergen to Oslo all of a sudden did not seem to be so attractive.

Anyhow, I just finished watching the final episode of Oprah show, which probably aired in the U.S. months ago, but heck that is not the point. I have ugly cried at many Oprah episodes, happy or sad.
Despite Oprah being too preachy for my taste sometimes, the emitting energy things she is on about is a little bit too Celestine Prophecy. It is humble that she believes it was the will of God that got her where she is now, the woman is made of willpower, hard work and success. And by success I do not mean the obvious financial one. She inspires me that I do not need to do grand things to make an impact in the world, I am doing something great by being an inspiration and provider to my kids and those around me.

Today, as I was listening to her final speach, she said when treating others and assessing how others treat you, you need to ask these three simple questions:

Do you see me?

Do you hear me?

Does anything I say mean anything to you?

Last week hubby was home on stress leave for a week. Extreme headache, total burnout. He has been saying to me for years now that he is not happy with work and cannot see himself in a managerial position at work, he is more of a creative force rather than paperwork type-of-a-guy. And for years I have been pushing him and telling him that he needs to look at the management side of his job as a challenge, overcome it and feel great. And he kept saying to me that it is not him and it is not where his skills lie. And this entire time I kept pushing him to do something that did not make him happy, because mainly in the society and organizations, managerial positions equal to success. I was truly not listening what he has been saying to me this entire time, that what he does makes him unhappy, and it is sad that a trip to the emergency room with accute headache was required to to open my eyes, and accept what HE wants to do. So, he stepped down and work and stepped up at life. Its strange, we get so busy with kids, life and everday expectations we set upon ourselves that I did not stop for a moment to see, hear and pay attention to what is going on with us as individuals and try and look in the same direction as him.

So I learn from Oprah: connect, embrace, liberate, love and be the safe harbour for those close to me to fall in. I will really miss bowling my eyes out between one and two in the afternoon every day.

Confessions of a Masked (Guest) Blogger

2011-09-19T17:20:00.002+02:00

The big news in my week is that I got a new iphone. I am enjoying playing Angry Birds and streaming 90s radio all day at work (hellllllllo Green Day). At home I can’t do that of course, because I have a toddler. She can sit on the sofa in front of the tv with her ipad in one hand and her father’s iphone in the other and STILL want to use my phone. That’s right, I said “her ipad”.

I just read an article about “generation 94” – kids who were born at the advent of the internet revolution and are now about to turn 18. But “generation 94” is already old news, because “generation 10” is the next big thing – these are kids like my daughter who were born in the age of the touch screen. We bought an ipad around the time she started to sit unsupported. She knows how to unlock my iphone using a 4 digit PIN (this is the security measure my company requires to keep confidential work related emails secure…if they required a retina scan, my 2 year old would probably teach herself how to surgically remove my eyeballs in order to use my phone), there is nothing on a touch screen she can’t do better than me. But not all of it is skill, some of it is just anatomy : her fingers are tiny.

Look, I may not be a card carrying member of “generation 94”, but I’m young enough to not be blown away by the digital age. I’d like to think that since I grew up watching Star Trek I was mentally prepared for touch screens and teleporting. What, you don’t teleport to work? I do think that all this digitalness is advantageous for little brains, I think people who say otherwise are a) old and b) old. They are confused because their brains were melted by electrical radiation seeping out of their black and white tvs while they watched Lassie as children. Lassie has really nothing in common with Angry Birds, but they seem to be lumped together into a big bad “kids today” rant. What is so great about suffocating fireflies in glass jars and squeezing toads until they explode? Interactive screen time is stimulating stuff, and it is building a skill set in children which is relevant to their futures. Children are able to accomplish tasks digitally before they can do so “in real life” and that can’t be so awful. Nostalgia is not a good reason to insist your kids learn archaic skills like finding their way around a card catalog in a library.

I want my kid to play outside as much as the next person, but frankly, in my neighborhood playground she is just as likely to pick up hepatitis from a used syringe as she is to learn anything about earthworms. When was the last time anyone caught the plague from an iphone? Let’s focus on the positives. Like the fact that spelling bees are going to be a thing of the past, praise the lord, no one needs to know how to spell thanks to the auto-correct keyboard on the iphone.

Puddle Fun

2011-09-16T21:02:00.002+02:00

There is no toy or iPad (heaven sent for crisis situations when the need for well behaved toddlers is in desparate need) that can surpass the fun of jumping in the puddles. Buggy and her BFF Juju got a day off from kindy this week...unplanned playdate, unprepared for the weather and the activities...

This swing is so much fun, we can swing fast fast! Don't be fooled by our angel faces...we are checking the field of puddles right across from the swing.

Oh, oh, we may have misjudged the possible depth, wet wet wet!

Run, run....

And let's do it again and again...

Cuddle time...


Look how we have to walk through town to get home....

The mothers may have been on the receiving end of strange looks from passerbyers who may have wanted to send a child protection services SWAT team after us. Hearing the girls chuckle...totally worth every condenscending look....

Giving thanks...

2011-09-13T23:53:00.000+02:00

Have you ever met one of those people that seem to be uber efficient, particularly with using time. I question a lot where the heck does time goes, what I did with it and what do I have to show for it. C. probably does not ask herself that questions a lot, she whipped up this cloth book for baby boy on Saturday morning, following which she probably baked muffins and froze plenty of cookie dough, while all I managed to do on Saturday morning before we met for playdate (no one needs to know that it was lunch at McDonalds) was get myself and the kids dressed, and that I did with some help from hubby.

Thank you for giving baby boy his first ever non-inherited toy! The extra dangly bits are a total hit.

In addition to creating toys, she has whipped up dinner for us two days in a row. This is what was left of Spinach, Corn and Black Beans Enchiladas.

She is A is for AWESOME!

Growing up...

2011-09-12T15:59:00.000+02:00

Baby Boy is 152.18 days old today.

Height: 67 cm

Weight: 6 660g

Adorableness: immeasurable

When I look at him he gives a smile where his gums shine in all their glory, while he rubs his eyes with the back of his little hands. Its nap time. Happy 5 monthday my little monkey. Its such a pleasure getting to know you. We'll party on, boobies and all, after nap time....

Confessions of a Masked (Guest) Blogger

2011-09-11T08:01:00.002+02:00

My daughter has completed her first week of daycare, and thankfully the only fear I had fulfilled was that she ended up sick with a cold by the end of it. The transition to full time daycare has not been as difficult as I had expected, and has taught me a thing of two already. One is that having a kid in daycare is the ultimate in performance anxiety. Never mind the stress of allowing another person to raise my child for me, what little nuggets of private wisdom will my daughter share with these total strangers? Thankfully she is still too young to have the kind of vocabulary to express the truly embarrassing ("when she wakes up mamma's breath smells like poop"), but she IS old enough to have her own set of little quirky personality traits that may or may not reflect poorly on her parents. And by "her parents" let's be honest and say "her mother" because we all know where the blame goes.

I wonder, does she ask the ladies at the daycare if she can put her mouth on their boobies? I stopped breastfeeding months ago, but that doesn't stop her from having a love affair with my breasts. And when my husband puts her to bed he has to subject his "boobies" to her twiddling thumbs too, she does not discriminate based on size or gender. Boobies are boobies and they are all lovely to tug and twirl and stretch and twist. So does she ask that to the women who care for her at daycare? And do they let her? And what do they think of her request? What do they think of ME because of her request?

I feel so much criticism for so little reason. They have been nothing but lovely to me, but I assume they judge me based on how much she cries when I leave and how happy she is to see me when I come back. I assume they judge me based on what I pack for her lunch, and what clothes I put in her cubby. What does my choice of diaper say about me? And footwear? The length of her fingernails? Her overuse of the phrase "GO AWAY!!"? This is no joke - I obsessed over the font on the name labels I have ironed into her clothing: you can't having something too frilly (Pepita, Lucida), but I don't want something that says "default value" either (Arial, Times New Roman). I want a font that says "I'm a mom that cares, but not freakishly so." Which I suppose also means "I'm clinically insane but trying to keep the crazies under wrap." I went with Tempus Sans ITC, and I feel pretty good about it. Strangely enough, no one has commented on it.

I haven't noticed an excess of clingy-ness since she began, but she is definitely more demanding of my time when we are together. I can forgive her that, it is difficult for a little girl to be on her own for so much of the day, I understand that she wants me all to herself when I finally return to collect her. I think that it is part of the reason that many working mothers find it so hard to imagine being a stay at home mom - they envision a world with that kind of intensive neediness all day long, day after day, week after week. Which is not to in any way diminish the job of the stay at home mother, but the relationship is more relaxed, I think, between the mother and child who see each other all the time - there isn't the need (for either of them) to pack so much into so few hours. When I work all day long and only see my daughter for a few hours in the evening, I want to tick all the good mom boxes before bedtime - reading, singing, coloring, painting, vegetable eating, teeth brushing... if I were home all day I wouldn't be doing that stuff intensively for 12 hours, I'd be spreading the same amount of good mom behavior over that time and watching America's Next Top Model for the rest (or Sweden's Next Top Model, I'm not picky).

So now, as we settle into our first real weekend (having had our first real week), complete with runny noses and sore throats (that's plural because she shared her daycare germs with me so I'm sick as well), I'm thinking both that this is much easier than I feared and yet still so hard I don't know if I can do it for another 16 years. I have fantasies all day long of alternative lifestyles - ones where I've won the lottery for sure, but also "average" lives: where I teach English in China, or where I'm an organic farmer in Costa Rica. Lifestyles that make it easier to spend more time with my family, or that change the expectations I'd have of myself and those around me. I hate the idea of uncritically accepting the norm, even though time and again, the norm has proved itself to be the best.

Sleep...erm patience training...

2011-09-06T22:09:00.000+02:00

Couple of weeks ago, in a moment of hope to regain two hours of the evening back to myself, while we were getting ready for bed I started flattering Buggy how proud I am of her independence...which I truly am.

My little bug is now putting on her own shoes (the right way), her rain trousers (sometimes back to front), she takes her diapers off all on her own when she is in the mood to go potty (this has been more infrequent lately), in the mornings when we get ready for kindy she brushes her own teeth (well at least pretends to brush them), washes her face, brushes her own hair (badly) and puts on loads of face cream. So I challenged her to show us how she can also go to sleep all by herself. I held my breath in what seemed to be a really long time until she nodded her head in agreement that she will do this...I almost broke out in a happy noodle dance...

All that extra time, what will I do with it? The pile of movies that has been waiting to be seen may have a chance now, all the knitting projects may have a chance of being at least started, I may even have a chance to read a book or two, possibly be an active member of the book club discussions, have some adult conversations with hubby that do not involve delegating who will change whose diaper and who will heat up the milk...

We are now in the third week of our new routine. Three weeks were I have not seen a movie, nor knitted, nor read....We have had thre weeks of getting out of bed excuses. Main excuse is potty. I think one evening it was as many as five times. Buggy guzzles half a litre of milk before bed, it is not hard for her to produce material for potty on demand. And since we are kind of potty training right now, any initiative on her behalf is rewarded, even if it is just an exuse to avoid going to sleep.

So now instead of just lying in bed, chilling and pretending to fall asleep, each night is a test at how patient we can be, with hopes that if we endure this for a little bit longer we will get our evenings back to ourselves. I give it one more week, if it doesn't work I am back to pretending-dead-routine.

Fredag's Kos

2011-09-04T23:05:00.002+02:00

Bloody Norwegians and their weekend "kos" (translated to someting like weekend cosy ups). Jenny Blake illustrated it perfectly in her book Brown Cheeze Please.

Weekend kos in addition to plentiful candles usually consists of A LOT of junk food and sweets is generally accompanied by a cheesy movie. Of course being the patriot that my hubby is, he supports anything Norwegian particularly when it comes to activities where main undertone is...well being a lazy pig, "weekend kos" is practiced in our family. I of course support this tradition...since lazyness is just my cup of tea, particularly if it is accompanied with shoving food in my face.

Days of needing to present my body in a bikini on a beach on a daily basis are long gone, and so is motivation to loose the weight I have gained with breastfeeding munchies. The motivation to reach the goal of mid twenties weight is being finely folded together with the summer clothes that I have been putting away from the cupboards to make space for winter woolies. Althought, last night I was incredibly disciplined, I resisted stuffing my face with a ginormous bag of potatoe chips. Imagine this, I stopped after a handfull. Physically I stopped, but like a stalker I obsessively thought about it, until this morning you could find me in the living room surrounded by burned out candles with the remainders of weekend kos being shoved in my face before breaksfast. What is more concerning is my inner monologue where one of the thoughts was that if I do not get caught eating this, the calories will not count.

Following the early morning binge, suprisingly I could move, so I spent the morning clearing out my cupboard and making way for some winter clothes. And there they were, at the back of the cupboard, one or two items which I keep every time I clear my cupboard, items that hardly fit over my knees, but I keep them, because someday I will get back to my "normal weight".

The fact is that since mid twenties my body has gone through two pregnancies, which changed the distribution of the weight on my body, just as any plastic surgery would, just not so much to my advantage. I am baking a serious muffin on my waistline and and it is spilling over like batter into which you put too much baking powder.

As I struggled to pull these pants further than my knees, I had an ephiphany. I will never be fifty kilos again, mainly because I do not go out 5 nights a week and dance my ass off, live on diet soda and salty sticks and work 70 hours per week.

Instead I will listen to my body, if it tells me that it wants some ice-cream, I will feed it some ice-cream, instead of obsessing about how many calories are in a scoop of ice-cream for days. My determination disappears withing a day or so, and then instead of eating a serving of ice-cream I eat an entire tub...or two. What is important is that I continue to eat well and healthy, and do not deprive myself of small satisfactions, since whenever I try to put limits on my relationship with food, the amount of junk food in my diet increases.

The "skinny" jeans are in the Salvation Army collecting container, bring on the garlic truffle fries.

Sticker Canvas

2011-09-03T23:40:00.000+02:00

Stickers, Buggy and Baby Boy...What could possibly go wrong?

Confessions of a Masked (Guest) Blogger

2011-09-02T11:40:00.000+02:00

I have been watching a marathon of Sopranos episodes recently. Until now I've caught a single episode here and there, and I knew who the main characters were, but a few weeks ago we started with episode 1, season 1, and are making our way through the whole series start to finish. I enjoy the show, but I have to wonder to what extent it wiggles its way into my conscious and subconscious. For one thing, I notice that I say "pasta" now with a New Jersey accent: paaaasta. And I recently went to a salon to get inch-long acrylic nails. No, I didn't do that. But I did write a few work emails peppered with angry-gangster speech. Three hours of back-to-back gangland business meetings blurred reality for me, leading me to mistake strong language for acceptable office banter. So now I try to throw in an episode of Project Runway before I check my work email in the evenings.

My daughter has picked up a few unappealing speech patterns of her own from television. I do, generally, try to keep her brain from rotting away in front of the TV, but the girl loves her Caillou. For a while now she has been showing her hand to strangers and saying loudly and clearly: "GO AWAY" when they get too close. There is only one response she has ever gotten to this mannerism, and that is universal giggles and smiles and a playful "no YOU go away!" in return. People love it, and of course their response keeps her coming back for more. I didn't know where she had gotten that from until a few days ago when I overheard Caillou say it to his cat (Patches? Squiggles? Harold? I don't remember the cat's name. And it is an irrelevant detail.) in an animated episode she has seen 50 times. Oh. Nice job, Canadian Public Broadcasting Association. Thanks for that. What?! Parental responsibility, you say? I don't think so!

The truth is that I am drawn to dramas ("draaaamas") like the Sopranos, and enjoy watching them despite the general uneasiness and discontent I end up with for hours, and days, afterwards. A feeling that I can't quite put my finger on but that worries me and nags at me, like maybe I've just momentarily forgotten that there is a price on my head and they know where I live. When I have such a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction, I find little wonder in the fact that children get freaked out when Iggle Piggle loses his beloved blankie.

It wouldn't hurt my mood (or my language) to spend more time watching Big Bang Theory and less time with the mafia. Just like it wouldn't hurt Caillou to stop being such a whiney little motherf-er and leave his poor cat the f alone.

Skip over text to the picture...

2011-09-01T22:09:00.000+02:00

A couple of days ago a friend has confronted me about my disinterest in another mutual friend. She feels that the reason I do not make time for socialising is because I am threatened by her self-assurance, which in turn would mean that I have confidence issues of my own... I have been reflecting over the last couple of days wondering whether this actually could be the case. Am I so insecure in myself that someone else's assurance would make me avoid contact? A day has only 24 hours in it and with parenting, marital and family obligation, I cannot buy enough hours in a day to see people I truly enjoy, even if they are overly self confident.

I suck at being diplomatic and if something bothers me, despite my bickering to people surrounding me I generally end up speaking about it to the person concerned...usually at a completely wrong time...in a completely wrong manner...but you know, I get it out of me and we move on. In case it is someone who I am not particularly close with, I choose to disolve the socialising to a level where I do not feel like I need to be a fake freak to preserve the civil interaction...

I am slighly annoyed to be in a situation I thought only would happen on an episode of The Real Housewifes of whatever city you are following, I have far important things to nourish than ambiguous friendships...It is not necessary to mediate or try to psychoanalyse the lack of willingness to socialise.

While I am at it, those who send me text messages and I never reply to them...it is not because I do not like you, it is because text messages are really time consuming, and my attention span is so short that if I do not have time to reply to a message the minute I receive it, as a standard rule, you will wait until the apocalypse to get a reply...Call me, please...I screen my calls and if you're one of the lucky ones it will be nice to hear your voice...

Total overuse of ellipsis...and I thought to throw in a baby picture in it all, just because he is...well... A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E.

Hallways and Drains

2011-08-31T14:06:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago I started writing a blog post about how having a husband that works outside means that on some mornings you wake up and step into a pile of sand that used to be stuck on his work shoes, but is now stuck to our hallway floor, probably because he was too lazy to take of his shoes to fetch the keys he forgot to get before he put them on. After two days of waiting for him to notice that our hallway has turned into a sandbox and rock out a hoover or something, I got annoyed. He was advised that next time there is sand in the hallway from his work shoes and he does not clean it, I will collect it and mix it in with the chocolate powder he drinks in his milk. This was a couple of weeks ago...

This morning my hallway was a sandbox...I am too much of a chicken to pursue what I said I will do, but you never know next time I may not be as much of a coward as I am today...

In case hubby chooses to complain about something I don't do, like you know, he does have to clean out the shower drain from a lot of hair, which he has non of. I will bring up childbirth. Childbirth was painful and so far I went through it twice, and I do not need to put up with sandy hallways and childbirth now, do I? Irrational, but I am ready to play the childbirth pain card for a very very long time....

Buggy on the Run

2011-08-30T12:22:00.003+02:00

I am officially ready to be awarded the title of the biggest time waster in the world. I could be sorting out the mess of my bedroom, I could be knitting, I could be reading, I could be productive, but this is so much more fun.

Buggy is on the run and The Hoff is after her.

It takes a long time to load, but it is worth it.

It is like reliving The Hoff jokes from a few years ago all over again.

Like Mother like Daughter

2011-08-28T21:17:00.000+02:00

There are certiain times I forget that I am a parent. I succesfully tought Buggy to pull faces while taking photos yesterday.

Consequences are:

And this is on pretty much every picture which was taken since the precedent. Can you think of any funky names for that photobook? She is still charming my pants off and has been making me a proud mama and Baby Boy - well he is just adorable squishy loveliness.

Confessions of a Masked (Guest) Blogger

2011-08-26T20:21:00.000+02:00

Highlights of my week:

Bragging about the high cost of my luxurious childcare situation upsets karma. I googled "patron saint of childcare" so I could refer specifically to who was pissed off with me talking about my nanny, but the first hit was for this site: http://www.daycaresdontcare.org/index.htm which has kind of eaten away at my soul since, nanny-less (she quit on Monday), we are now going to go the daycare route ourselves. The DCDC website is some kind of scary witch-hunt, but there are plenty of good points mixed in there with the paranoia. One is: "Wherever you choose there will be a transient, overworked, underpaid, and undereducated staff taking care of your child." I can't find fault with a statement like that. I know it is true. I also generally agree with the authors of that website and the authors they quote (including some articles from "mothering magazine" which I have subscribed to and like very much), that daycare is not ideal. Unfortunately, I cannot claim that I have no other options, because I have plenty. But this is kind of a non-issue in my daily life because EVERYONE uses daycare and no one wants to think very critically about it, myself included, so there. End of discussion. She'll be fine.

So yes, my nanny quit, and yes, my daughter will now begin in public (government) daycare. Which is not really the way I want it to be, but there you have it. Obivously I don't feel strongly enough about it to look for a different solution. Ask me again in a few weeks. No, you don't have to ask. I'll just go ahead and tell you.

OK, the gods of childcare were upset with me, so I sent them an offering. Of my hair. Which was long and thick and clogging up my shower drain, but is now chopped off and in a bubble envelope somewhere between here and Florida where some lovely people are going to make it into a wig for a sick child: Locks of Love. So far my only complaint is that I have to wash my hair in the morning instead of the evening because when you sleep on wet short hair you wake up looking very funny indeed. But my entire household (perhaps extending also to my friends and coworkers) was getting tired of picking my long hairs out of their food, so I think it was overall a good call.

Ta-da! There you have it, my week in a nutshell. Appologies for the lack of humor, this week was kind of a grind.

Before

After

Emergency Instructions

2011-08-24T08:55:00.001+02:00

I was going through holiday photos and forgot to share this one, no comment necessary.

Why I was never sleep deprived....

2011-08-23T16:30:00.002+02:00

Recently I started working one day a week, well actually two half days and for one of those I go to the office and try and do as many hours as baby boy behaves. I do this to prevent my brain from becoming a total baby mush, like it did when I was on maternity leave with Buggy and turned into a latte connoisseur. This week baby boy behaved for five full hours, even longer if I take into consideration all the chit chats I had on my way out of the office, whoever I spoke to wondered and was in total disbelief that I can, without any stress work for five hours, as long as the boobie is provided at regular intervals. One person in particlar whose children are about the same age was literaly lost for words and even went as far as asking me if I gave him any drugs or whether he is so sad that he sleeps all the time. Erm, I am not sure how saddness in four month olds would manifest itself in the fom of sleeping, but OK. You can guess that this was the topic of conversation by the coffee machine.

There are certain decisions that I make, which I am perfectly comfortable with, however when discussing with others, particularly colleagues, I take a step back. Like you generally do not shout your religious or political views from top of the highest mountains, funnily enough our family sleeping habits seemed to have fell into do-not-discuss-with-majority box.

I am not a member of the attachment parenting chanting club, even though I assimilate with most of the ideologies of this parenting philosphy. I am far from the baby wearing extreemists, but we are a co-sleeping family. Here I said it, without needing to add something like "oh we are hippie parents our children sleep with us in our bed. We are all about LOVE". I strongly believe that Baby Boy and Buggy when she was a baby are calm because we co-sleep. Once aquainted with this information I have been inappropriately asked by people about my sex life, felt laughed at if not even ridicouled. I generally ignore the comments, I have read books on co-sleeping where chapters have been devoted to giving justification for the sceptics and general stangers who inapproproately ask about your sex life, but each time someone makes a comment about it I am still gobsmacked that the initial thought someone has about us sharing a bed with our kids is the presence or the lack of intimacy with my husband.

I do not promote co-sleeping and tell everyone they must do it, and do not think that it is so fantastic that I expect everyone to do so. It works for our family, and I do think that it is one of the reasons I have had calm babies. Yes, there are nights when I despise the fact that our bedtime routine (as previsouly described here) involves anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours of pretending to be falling asleep in order for my children to fall asleep themselves, that we constantly get hit by toddlers limbs in all parts of our bodies, but in a society where family contact has been significantly minimized and obstruced by the use of various electronic devices, the precious four hours that I get with my kids before bedtime when I am at work are not nearly enough and I feel that those hours we spend together during the night in the same bed bond us as a family and build confidence in my children.

I have never even thought about judging anyone who let a small baby sleep in a dark room all alone, or lets their 4 month old baby cry it out in order to fall asleep, whatever gets you through the day, as long as you are comfortable with what you are doing, your baby is happy and you all get a good night sleep, it is all that should matter. My milk bar is opened 24\7, and at night it is self-service. I don't remember ever being incredibly sleep deprived with either of the kids, same cannot be said about the asshole who takes freedom to question my private life with inappropriate questions.

Confessions of a Masked (Guest) Blogger

2011-08-19T20:36:00.000+02:00

Lucky for me to have a guest blogger to keep the audience entertained while I am going through a serious lack of will to do anything. I will get better at not wasting time, and napping my days away together with baby boy.

In addition to all my other mental illnesses, lately I've been struggling to feel my age. Denial has always been a strength of mine.

It started a few days ago when a stranger told me I look too young to be the mother of a toddler. Which was an incredibly lovely, if untrue, thing to say. I took the statement to heart, though, as is easy to do when one already lives 80% of ones life in a fantasy world. Then at work today I was "borrowing" some text for a report I'm writing, and the donor-text is from the year I was born. Not only that, but the man who wrote the original text sits just two cubicles over from me. Which brings to mind (at least my mind) many thoughts, such as "wow, he's old" and "wow, I'm young" and "it must suck to have worked in this company for 30 years and still not have your own office". Wait wait, not 30! 29! I turn 29 in a handful of days. It is the first time I'm turning 29, and I look forward to many duplicate birthdays to come.

Other events, though, sway the jury (that being the schizophrenic jury in my head) to the contrary. One being that a few days ago I bribed a colleague to help install a child's seat onto the back of my bicycle. Now I don't have to walk around pushing a stroller for people to know I am a mother - even without a child in tow there isn't much room for interpretation. Which means that cute guy who parks his bike next to mine at the office doesn't need to waste his time flirting with me anymore. But it also means ornery old women don't need to shout obscenities at me for riding my bike on the sidewalk anymore either, because now I'm just a harried young mother trying to squeeze too many errands into a too short day. Further evidence to my advanced age is that I employ a domestic worker. There aren't many teen moms out there forking over cash for an indentured servant. But me, oh yes, I say goodbye to half my salary every month to pay a nanny. To her credit she does an excellent job of keeping the toys quarantined in their respective tupperware containers which I really do appreciate.

Most of the time I feel too young for the life I lead. Now that my daughter is no longer a baby, and now that many of my friends have welcomed baby number two or three into their homes, I guess it is fair to say that at the very least I am a "young adult". I know I have youth on my side because I can sprint past my many geriatric colleagues on the way to the coffee machine when not busy stealing the work they did in the 80s. They say age is just a number. So what is yours?

Wishlist

2011-08-15T22:12:00.000+02:00

Someone needs to tell me that I do not need this!

Half Way Up

2011-08-14T08:17:00.001+02:00

I am not sure how it came to it, we were with friends and giggling on the couch after overeating, next thing C. was nudging me and telling me to say I will also go, surely he was going to abandon the idea if I say yes, two children will need to be dragged with us. I was truly hoping he will bail out since in all of the befuddle I realised what I agreed to was going for a hike. But I should know my husband better than that. He hardly ever bails when he says he wants to do something. So, following a HUGE meal, we set of to conquer the mountain in our neighbourhoud, just what I like to do on a random Thursday evening.

Of course I did not make it all the way up. What do you take me for, I don't have THAT kind of determination when it comes to excersise type of thingys, my determination is more of empty all the plates in the house type.

Confessions of a Masked (Guest) Blogger

2011-08-12T10:23:00.000+02:00

From now on, hopefully most Fridays will be reserved for a guest blogger. Since "it" is masked, I cannot say much more than that. Enjoy!

I took my two year old to a playgroup today because though my skin itches when I see all those other snotty germ covered children sharing plastic chicken drumsticks with each other, my daughter does like it and it does make my day easier. It is also an excellent outlet for my compulsive need to organize inconsequential and meaningless things. By which I mean, my attempts at keeping a household budget are shoddy, and I don't claim to do a good job of sorting out the recycling, but if sorting legos by color and size are your thing, I've got your back.

So I was at the playgroup and organizing legos, and the aforementioned snotty germ covered children (SGCC for short) kept trying to mess with my head by mixing the dark greens with the light greens even though I had patiently explained at least twice that that kind of behavior was unacceptable. And the woman who runs the playgroup came by and (instead of chastising me for my neurotic compulsion) complemented me and thanked me for helping "sort things out"!

Well. Let me tell you. I don't need to do anyone else's job, and pay for the privilege, no less! So I packed up my lego compulsion and planned to have that be the end of it, until I witnessed one of the SGCC putting fisher price little people in with the brio train set which I think we can all agree is just wrong. Maybe you think legos can comingle irregardless of hue, but no logical person would find peace with plastic people lumped in with wooden trains. No no no. It was time for us to go, anyway. So we did.

This compulsion problem (if you can call it a problem, and I do not) was a gift from my daughter. It was a package deal. She's given me anxiety too, which is not to even touch upon the standard gifts bestowed on all new mothers like sleepless nights and stretch marks. I won't pretend her generosity in this matter was an easy pill to swallow at first, but I'd like to think in the past two years I've come to peace with most of the changes she brought with her. Most but not all. And here we reach the heart of the matter, the reason Marija wanted me to write a guest blog post, which is that she finds humor in my exasperation over my least favorite motherhood change: incontinence. I usually like to call it "wetting myself" because it sound less dire, but I'm feeling emboldened by the anonymity of my "guest blogger" status.

I wet myself when I laugh or cough, which began while I was pregnant and then never really went away. I also wet myself while being physically active - like jumping or running or dancing. I should be aware of my limitations by now: I've had over two years to get used to it. As much as I would like to participate in a friendly game of virtual rope skipping on Wii, I'll sit this one out along with all the other mothers who have to cross their legs before they cough.

But then, just a few days ago I was visiting some friends with a trampoline, and doggoneit, it just looked like so much fun, watching my toddler bounce around on it that I thought, "my turn!" and not a single other (more practical) thought occurred to me until I was up there for all the world to see: peeing all over my friend's trampoline.

I guess I could try to put a positive spin on it. I mean, many of the gifts my daughter has given me are of the sort that expire. I got over my postpartum depression, I have more-or-less lost the baby weight, she and I both sleep through the night (again, more-or-less), maybe it isn't so awful to have this one thing etched into my body to remind me of her. Every time I sneeze.

Pretending Dead

2011-08-10T00:36:00.000+02:00

There are days when I hardly move myself away from the couch and wonder where did all time time go and most importantly what did I do with it, apart from staring at the white wall while brestfeeding at random intervals during the day, and then there are days when I do gazillion things in one day and still have time to do more. Since I started working (mainly from home) about 7 hours per week, I need to make sure that I have more of the later days. I plan to acomplish this by consuming energy drinks on days when I just cannot get myself going and will ensure that I have a hefty supply in the fridge.

Today, on top of working for one of those hours, I took baby boy swimming, walked around looking for an idiot proof can opener which I can use (since evidence shows that I am unable to use a regular one like most normal people), made a nutritios dinner, and for the second night in the row am taking care of bugs all on my own. At about 7.17pm (and I know the exact minute since my over clock told me so) Baby Boy was extremely tired, I told Buggy to say nite-nite to baby boy as he is going to bed, she grabed her minkyand said to me: "Sesanie bed osho!" Oh my alarm bells have been going off since previously bedtime attempts earlier than standar 8 o'clock bedtime, resulted in me very frustrated and Buggy very awake.

Our bedtime routine, in addition to bath time, teeth brushing and "mlikas" (milk) involves me playing dead for however long it takes Buggy to fall asleep. Generally this does not take longer than 10 - 20 minutes, sometimes I take the role so seriously that I fall asleep and do not wake up until the morning. Anyhow, today my plan was not to fall asleep but to get up and paint a drawing table and chairs for the kids. I have been planning this for a long time, I am great at planning and not doing. It is my specialty. Today I finally got the paint and was going to get going as soon as Buggy fell asleep. At 7.17pm hearing her say she wants to go to bed, for a split milisecond my heart jumped a beat since that is extra 43 minutes of painting I could do, but deep down inside I was welcoming frustration who was just about to join me. Even when we all settled in the bed I had high hopes since her eyes looked so tired, but what followed was singing a whole lot of twinkle twinkles, flowers, crocodiles, hey diddle diddles, little birdies, bunnies, following which on my behalf was a whole lot od pretending dead, but on Buggy's behalf, was fluffing the pillows, removing the pillows, bringing back the pillows, rotating 360 degrees while trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in, moving the pillows again and scratching the sheets with her fingers, pretending to clip her nails, pretending to clip baby boys nails, cuddling baby, cuddling mama, attemting to wake mama up to "singesong", holding hands with mama and baby boy, and finally falling asleep. Or so mama thought, I sneaked my way out of the room, grabbed a paint brush, the oven told me 8.33pm, I thought to myself oh one hour and 16 minutes is not so bad, only when I turned around, little pink stripy p.j.'s were rubbing their eyes and smiling saying: "Mama up, me oso!"

Two coats of paint on the table and the chairs are done and it way way past MY bedtime.

Vanishing goals

2011-08-08T23:12:00.000+02:00

Post baby food binges, serious problem of a sweet tooth, followed by obvious visual signs of overgrown belly bump and not fitting into any clothes, let me further depress myself by weighing myself. Preferably do this on a very relaxed Friday evening, so that from relatively pleasant human being you can bipolarise into an insecure monster asking questions I already know the answer to all while stuffing your face with left-over dinner. Since you know, you always start the diet in the mornings, preferably Mondays.

Standing on the scale was followed by making a hairdresser appointment this week at an overpriced hairdresser to make myself feel better. Big hair is needed for bottom and top to look symetrical. Babysitter for Baby Boy was immediately organised, appointment was confirmed on Thursday (bless the Internet for instant gratifications). And then as I was stuffing the last bite of the leftover in my mouth, I got the idea that yoga mat which Buggy pulls out every day since it is the best things to play with, is there as a sign from above and I must, must start with the change NOW, not tomorrow morning or Monday or any first of the month. I freestyled sixty sit-ups then and there.

Excersise is not my thing, so I did those goddamn sit ups wrong and instead of using only stomach muscles I did some strange neck\stomack rolly pollies. Today I am moving my entire body to turn toward something, since there is no chance in hell to turn my head without being in excruciating pain.

I am good on eating though, leftover peach pie is still in the fridge and I only took one piece which was lunch. Not exactly a healthy lunch and probably contained enought calories for a week, but heck it is better than snorting in any food bits that cross my way.

Rolling Over

2011-08-06T08:41:00.001+02:00

Four days ago, Buggy came up to me and said: "Babytooawoud!" I missed it, but she witnessed it and now cheers her baby brother on each time he rolls over. They are both awesome.

We started this new thing with allowing Buggy to dress in order to empower her a bit more, so far not bad with the colour scheme, but not doing so good on accessorizing. We had to battle for that beer can before we left for kindergarden.

Back to everydayness

2011-08-05T23:45:00.001+02:00

My friend C. told me that one of her friends, who is triple experienced dealing with terrible twos has said that everything else you go through with your baby is a myth. Terrible two's aren't. A few weeks ago on one of the rare days that I got to sleep in, I got woken up by husband screaming for help. Buggy was in the bathroom in front of the mirror where she pulled up her little chair and got into my make up bag. Pulled out the mascara and tried to "draw eyes" like mama does. For an entire day she looked like a goth, mascara was EVERYWHERE, inside her eyes on her forehead, hands, bathroom. It was a great snapshot only Buggy did not seems to think so and while I was holding up the camera to document the occasion, she yelled at me NO. Of course I respected her decision, I also hate taking pictures with runny mascara. The same day while we were having a shower she emptied a brand new full bottle of expensive shampoo in the shower. I have no idea where she learned to unscrew tops or for that matter how she manages to do it even though they are tightly screwed on.

Despite the daily challenges of living with a two year old and a baby, we decided to further challenge ourselves and go on a "holiday". It is nothing like a year long adventure C. lived through, but you know what they say - my problems are the biggest in the world, just because they are mine.

We flew back about a week ago from our two and a half week break from everyday lives. Everyday things like two year old with shampoo bottles and mascaras, changing incredible amounts of diapers, breastfeeding, work were replaced with bugs on flights, public buses and hanging at the beach. Yes, travelling with children was stressful, but so is the thought of what can happen when the kids learn to unscrew bottle tops, and learn to put on their own shoes and head to the beach all on their own. I cannot put us in a bubble and wait to do everything with children once Buggy is over her terrible twos and Baby Boy is a bit older. Our life is today and I refuse to think that doing things in a few years will be easier or better than doing them right now. So, I have enjoyed our holiday as much as I could and learned that arming myself with a whole lot of sense of humor, solidarity, patience and wet wipes makes you survive five hour public bus journeys. Having friends around who love bugs and provided a helping hand was heavenly also. I was convinced that at the end of the week we spent together they would change their zip code, phone numbers and go into some sort of witness protection programme, but 24 hours after we waived bye to each other at the airport, they called to tell us that they miss the kids and cannot wait to see them again. No you cannot have their number, I keep them to us and us only.

We are still to master some things on holiday, like trying to feed the kids something other than fries and "kepchups", not snap at each other when we least need it, find a natural medicine to prevent motion sickness that is available in Norway which does not cause super dooper grumpiness and tiredness and I most of all need to learn to get over Dalmatian mentality, particularily if I want to have a summer house there.

Breaking Concrete Benches

2011-07-22T22:25:00.000+02:00

Reminder to work on getting rid of baby weight....Just look at all that flab. My aim: Back to mid twenties weight by 10th of October. And if I actually succeed, I will treat me to some bling!

Living it up...

2011-07-21T09:17:00.001+02:00

I have been enjoying the first week of our holiday so much, that I was too lazy to look for internet connection. It felt liberating, and I only would think about checking my email about five times an hour on average. We have now moved on from Dubrovnik to Brist and are stealing internet from the cafe downstairs. Although technically it is not stealing if they offer it for free.

We did not visit Dubrovnik since our wedding and I was curios to see how I will feel to visit. I am in love with the atmosphere of the city, the history and would love to have a summer house in the surrounds. Things went splendidly until retard one (myself) and retard two (Stefan) decided to do nine hours ofsightseeing at unbearable heat. Serves us right for having feet full of blisters, annoyed children, soar arms from having to carry both of the kids out of the carriers most of the day, and not a lot of photos to show for it.

However both of the children did sit through a 45 minutes history slash laser show slash 3-D documentary thing. I am so impressed I may even attempt to take Buggy to the cinema. Lesson was learned and obviously while on holiday we need to limit sightseeing to half a day, unless we want to deal with annoyed children for the next two days.

We stayed in a small apartment in a perfect location, about 100 meters from the beach on a walking promenade. It was heavenly compared to the balcony railing anxiety from Turkey last year. Both lovebugs really enjoyed swimming (or floating as Buggy calls is). I on the other hand learned that sitting on a beach post partum surrounded by girls whose legs grow out of their necks is a bad bad idea, and have decided to start running and working on getting rid of baby belly once we get back. We may or may not have not used ice-cream instead of milk to get Buggy to take her afternoon nap.

There may have been a couple of incidents with sour old ladies who do not know how to simply say "Excuse me" to get you to move out of the way, instead they make long winded comments about how you stood in the middle of the door which ruined her momentum of the speed at which she was walking out of the store. I decided to be a smartass back and told her that excuse me would have worked just fine, and she should attempt to buy herself some manners and a bit of patience. She did end up swearing at me by sending me back to my mothers womb (a rough translation). Then there was an incident of the lady that yelled at me for having sunglasses on baby boy and putting sunscreen on him, but erm I choose just to ignore that one.

Need to rush to the beach, I would add more photos but the connection is so bad (free) that it takes forever to upload them and I am not ready to waste valuable sun time.

Summer Candy Dress

2011-07-13T00:21:00.001+02:00

I keep telling myself I need to go to bed, there is 10 hours of airplaines and airports waiting for us tomorrow morning, but I am far too excited to sleep. Ten hours of trying to get my toddler tornado to be well behaved and not let her terrible two's shine in their full glory...Hang on, is it really a holiday we are going on?

Summer candy dress was finished just in time for the summer vacation. My first relatively complicated stripy project. Actually this is the second one, I made exactly the same dress as a birthday gift for a daughter of a friend of mine, in slightly different colours. The yarn is 100% cotton yarn, Mandarin Petit.

I am inlove with the colors, and that little lovebug wearing the dress.

Planning a holiday on a deserted beach...

2011-07-12T21:30:00.000+02:00

My husband is incredibly spoiled. I say this for number of reasons. Of course because he is married to me, and despite all his outbursts I still put up with him. Yes I have outbursts too, but from my standpoint his are of course much worse. Anyhow....

He has stated on more than one occasion that he is unable to stay at home and care of children. One year parental leave that we are entitled to needs to be divided between the both of us, he is legally required to take minimum of 10 weeks. Since he is unable to take care of kids, he is using these 10 weeks to do me a favour and go to New Zealand on a holiday so I can see my mum and friends.

During these 10 weeks, so far we have confirmed a mini break in Dubai, and a week away at a beach house which could possibly be heaven on earth.

Three Months

2011-07-12T00:03:00.000+02:00

Dear Baby Boy,

Last week you had your first set of vaccine shots, one of those damn things that we just have to do, despite the fact that I probably hate it more than you do. Or maybe not. You were showing your cute gummy smile to the nurse, while she spoke sweet nothings to you before jabbing the needle into your little thigh. Bright red screaming: "HOLY SMOKES WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME, DON'T OFFER ME BOOBIE NOW, AND YOU EVIL SWEET TALKING LADY I REFUSE TO LOOK AT YOU AGAIN, YOU EVIL NEEDLE - OH NOOOOOO ONE MORE, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AROUND HERE. MOMMY WHY ARE YOU LETTING HER DO THIS TO ME."

The vaccines marked three month milestone. Since we met in the light of the neon hospital room light, you have doubled in weight and grew 13 centimeters. I am also doubling in size together with you, since we both spend a lot of time on the couch eating and watching a whole lot of Oprah and other junk. Sometimes we cry at the sob stories you hear on day time talk shows.

Your sister thinks the world of you and constantly wants either to "cullebeibie"(cuddle), "nexbeibie" (lay next to you), "kissebeibie". She knocks your head a lot while showering you with these cuddles and kisses,and holds your hand while you are both going to sleep.

She lays with you in baby gym showing you how to properly make the bells ring, desperately trying to get you to ring them yourself and is already trying to teach you all parts of your body. You smile at her a lot.

My heart wants to explode each time I see how much she loves you, despite the fact that she could have possibly once or twice whacked you over the head with a toy or sat on top of you while laughing insanely.

I am not sure how or why we started calling you baby boy. I was hoping Milli would stick, however Baby Boy seems to like you. I am not sure if we will ever stop calling you this we will try and work on changing to another nickname before you start school, although I am making no promises on this.

Love,
Mama

Overpreparing and overanticipating the holiday

2011-07-08T00:39:00.001+02:00

Our first holiday with Buggy was to Croatia when she was close to four months. I have no idea what I was thinking when packing, but I clearly remember taking more than two baby blankets and a sleeping bag which you of course need in 36 degree Celsius heat, and a small suitcase full of toys. Like a four month old needs much more apart from boobie and diapers to keep it happy. Then there was the Turkey experience last year, which I would just like to forget.

My inner control freak has kicked in for our upcoming holiday next week. The choice of destination totally unadventureous, somewhere we have been before plenty of times, know our way around, speak the language and where I know there will not be any random strangers kissing my children on the mouth. Accommodation has been booked in places where there is no or little stairs, all on the first level of houses, equipped with washing machines so we can truly pack light. And by packing light, I have limited the toys for Buggy only to:

Mama bunny and baby bunny
The fishing game
Colouring pencils and paper
Some farm animals

Much better than a suitcase full of rattles. These toys are mainly to keep her entertained in airports, on the flights, and in the restaurants, the rest of the time she will be enjoying the rocks and the sea and these will be just emergency toys to keep her still in one place. And if all else fails, our trusted friends Big Bird and Elmo will be brought in to teach her how to do the alphabet and count.

I wonder what the people whom I booked the accommodation with thought when I asked them how far apart are balcony railings spread?

Four years and two kids on....

2011-07-07T07:41:00.001+02:00

The idea behind our wedding was to tie the knot on 07.07.07 at 7.00pm in Dubrovnik. The stash of Euro bills that was requested by the priest at the Dubrovnik Catholic church was not enough to stop him from being a royal pain in the ass. I guess he expected a generious tip on top of it. Two days before the wedding he had decided to let us know that no way he was to wed us at 7.00pm, as this was the new time for the summer evening mass and he is now to wed us at 6.00pm or 8.00pm. Despite the fact that the time has been booked ten months in advance. Now if I were a religious person I would probably be able to respect this "mistake", however 66 guests from all over the world were expected in the church at 7 as stated on the invitation, and it was not like there was anything else to organize apart from contacting all 66 of them that were dispersed around the city and the surroundings to let them know of the new time, and trying to move all other arrangements ahead by one hour. A day before the wedding he called yet again to advise that the release we had received from the catholic church in Norway was not right and that he is not able to marry us without the right paper. Just what I needed for my already anxiety infested brain. We rushed to the church to see what the problem was and from what I understood the only problem was that the paper was not printed in colour. Did I yell profanities at him? Luckily some people had my back and fixed the situation and prevented me from murdering a man of God. Serves me right for wanting to go through the entire shibang just because I thought the entire location was romantic and the photos would look great. On the day of the wedding I was so exhausted from the entire whoopla with the priest, dealing with all details last minute since the wedding planner was just as effective as the priest, wearing a dress made out of 40 meters of material in 36 degrees celsius heat that in some of the photos I look in a desperate need of an anti-depressant.

Despite all and there would be plenty more to add to the story above, YES was said, rice was thrown and it is now 4 years and 2 kids on.

A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year. ~ Paul Sweeney

Happy anniversary honey, I love you and you are my soulmate, despite the fact that this is the year I want to kill you on the days that end in "Y".

Twinkly toes

2011-07-03T01:01:00.002+02:00

For a person that likes to look good and pretty I sure hate spending time and effort into doing it. And in all honesty I have the same motto about looking good as I do in cooking: minimum input, maximum output. Hence in cooking I use a lot of vegetable stock and bacon and like meals that can all be thrown in the oven and when it comes to looking pretty, erm it comes naturally. I constantly complain about my hair and how it is so boring but hate to spend more than twenty seconds that it takes to tie it into a ponytail.

Summer holiday equals new summer sandals equals total freakout over the state of my toenails. While I was discretely trying to guard my frodo feet from the assistant that was selling the sandals to me I lamely said: "Pedicure here I come!". Note to self: no effort is not the same as minimum effort. On top of it all I have somewhat of an adult feet phobia, particularly other people touching my feet, paying someone else to get them looking pretty is absolutely out of the question, not because of the investment involved into the actual pedicure, but because I would need to have a psychiatric appointments prior and post the treatment.

So what better to do with my Saturday night than to attempt to get my yaba daba doo feet in order by myself. Instead of just going for simply red tootsies, why not try to look classy with french tip pedicure. Stress levels are peaking, the tips are uneven and messy, french tip nail polish is not only on the tips, but all over the toes possibly some on my P.J.'s. Since I forgot to twist the tip of the nail polish closed, there is possibly plenty of nail polish on the night stand. Waste of time, but it sure looks prettier than two hours ago . Sweet baby Jesus I will be damn pissed tomorrow when I chip that french tip even though I did four layers of top coat.

Of course there is no picture, no one actually cares what my toes look like anyhow. I must have been delusional to waste precious no kid awake time on ruining nightstands.

Monkey Hat

2011-07-01T09:39:00.000+02:00

Having a baby that is pretty much imovable means a lot of time in between the feedings and changing poopy diapers to get good at new hobbies that I have taken up. I have completed a few knitting project and am quite proud of myself, I started knitting semi complicated things. This hat was made in collaboration with hubby who drew and cut out the monkey out of felt.

Imagine this took only 2 days. It was super easy and quick. So much that hats may become my item of choice to knit all the time since I can admire the finished item within a few days.

Splendor in the grass

2011-06-29T22:44:00.000+02:00

What's your Italian size?

2011-06-29T21:45:00.000+02:00

We are off to Croatia in a couple of weeks. I am desperate for some sunshine after this miserable summer we are having in Bergen, some sunshine or at least no rain and 20 degrees is impatiently expected on Saturday. Two and a half weeks in Croatia by the sea will compensate for the lack of summer here.

In preparation for the holiday, I have purchased some shorts in Benetton in size 46. Ok, Italian sizes are a lot smaller than average, but just the size of that number makes me depressed enough to drown my sorrows in Oreo milkshake. Which is exactly what I did. In all my misery I stumbled upon this stupid page on Facebook, something along the lines of the hottest summer body in a bikini. Browsing through hundreds of photos of girls with flat tummies, preky boobies and teeny weeny bums did wonders for my self image. Rest of the afternoon was spent studying my post pregnancy body, counting celulite dots above my knees, and obsessively asking husband if I look fat, and planning herbal tea diet in order to have a bikini presentable body.

When I was pregnant somebody told me that amongst obvious benefits of breastfeeding, it helps loose pregnancy weight. Aparently one session of breasfeeding equals to 15 minute workout session or something like that. This is possibly true, but that someone forgot to mention that breastfeeding gives you serious munchies.

I am plotting a way in my head to help me become more active and less hungry all the time. Stopping breastfeeding in order to attempt to reduce my apetite is absolutely not an option, I enjoy being a snoby breastfeeding nazi far too much to give it up. Any suggestions?

The Hytten

2011-06-21T13:37:00.000+02:00

We are building a house, I do not talk much about it yet, right now we are in the process of pouring out pennies out of our bank accounts to ensure that government administrators have something to do, and that the unemployment rate stays low, in order to get the building permits sorted. It has been a long and emotional process so far, and until I see the final paper which says bring in the big guns and start blowing away the mountain I will be restraining myself from choosing the bathroom tiles and writing about it on here.

While we are waiting for the final paperwork to be started, we have slowly started to prepare the section for the beginning of the groundwork. I should really not use the word we here, but you know WE are raising our children together also and we already know who does most of the work here.

This weekend it was turn for Stefan's childhood cabin to be taken down. The cabin was built on a section behind Stefan's parents house, equipped with bunk beds, couch, fireplace, stereo and a TV and no adult access. You can imagine how many local kids has their first beers there, smoked their first cigarette, how many make out sessions were hosted, Sega Mega and Nintendo games played and movies watched, Pink Floyd albums played.

These are the remains of "the hytten", they will go up in smoke on the midsummer eve.

Interpret it your way...

2011-06-20T22:10:00.002+02:00

Divergent thinking is most developed in kids and it is one of the essential capacities for creativity, which Sander (10) has loads of. When Buggy was born he made a nativity inspired drawing, starring Stefan, me and Buggy. This time he went for minimalistic image, his style has changed as he's grown a couple of years older.

When he was asked what is the head with the squiggly thing, he looked at us like we were total ning nongs and said: "A baby!" (like erm doh, what else could it be).

Definitely the most awesome card we have gotten to welcome baby boy to the world!

2Cellos

2011-06-18T00:08:00.001+02:00

Move aside violin playing tall slim women with legs growing out of your neck , the cello men are taking over.

Keep on pushin'...

2011-06-15T14:21:00.000+02:00

When Buggy was born I had no idea that it is becoming fashionable to be given a push present. The baby should be enough right? Well yes, the baby is enough and it is the real present, but the idea of getting a new piece of jewellery for carrying the child for nine months, getting sick and ruining my body (yes blame the pregnancy, not the Oreo milkshake addiction) does not sound bad at all. So I started pushing the idea of a push present onto Stefan.
When the contractions started with baby boy, we dropped Buggy of to her grandparents. When we were heading out the door to the hospital Stefan nonchalantly mentioned that his mum is going to see the lady that made our wedding rings, and that we should just give the rings to his mum then and there to get them polished. Superstitious as I am, I refused to enter the birthing room without either of us wearing our wedding rings. I thought the symbol of our togetherness needs to be present while baby boy was coming into the world.

I had no idea that he had a cunning plan to get the rings polished, and at the same time get a push present to match the wedding ring.A few weeks later, I parted with the ring to get it polished. Also, I may have complained more than once about not even getting a bunch of flowers for giving birth.

On Friday our wedding rings came back polished, together with the "push present".

I don't care if it is materialistic, look at that bling bling, so pweety!

Soaking in Vitamin D

2011-06-08T22:03:00.000+02:00

This morning brunch was served on the balcony. I have gained so much weight after giving birth, my stomach is a bottomless pit since breastfeeding makes me crave something constantly. I am trying to be healthy for myself and for baby boy, since pregnancy nausea prevented me to consume not much other than dry crackers. Key word in the past sentence: trying. And then there is current obsession with pita bread.

Pita bread pocket filled with baby spinach, tomatoes and mozzarella

I made the most of the day without the rain; lazing on a balcony planning small apartment redecorating projects, working on the summer candy dress, unexpected coffee with a friend, watching a giggling bug run around the garden terrace.

Despite wishing for miracle of sunny weather just for one more day, I am a little bit more ready for insane rain that is expected tomorrow.

Mini Break in June

2011-06-07T18:23:00.000+02:00

What would be your reaction when someone tells you that they took a two year old toddler on the active side and a six week old baby and drove over 1600 kilometers within 92 hours. Surprisingly we are still married, kids are alive and in one piece, the only thing that suffered was the odometer on our car.

Summers spent at a family cabin in the east of Norway is a topic of conversation at many family events with my in-laws. Hubby wanted to take a drive to reminess for a while and this long weekend was a perfect opportunity to escape from the rain that seems to be hovering over Bergen and refusing to go away. It is June, I am still dressing the kids in woolies. Its bad, a trip to the sunny east, despite 10 hour drive sounded a lot better than trying to catch some fresh air in the pouring rain.

I baked ham, cheese and sun dried tomatoes muffins the night before as on road snacks. I just need to give up on savoury muffins, the mind blowing taste experience will not happen. What I definately learned during the trip: sustainable meals for kids cannot be found at service stations along the way. Service stations which were incredibly scarce, as were cafes and any content that would make you want to stop and just hang for a little bit at a random location. We were close to starving when we stopped in Rødberg. The town felt airy and empty, and the hotel at whose cafe we stopped to lunch felt slightly middle of Russia (here I dare to compare, I've never been to Russia, but somehow in my head that's how Russia would feel). The meatballs were awful, the decor just about the same. I am used to Norwegian frugality, and love the simplicity, but that makes for a relatively boring ten hour drive, unless you are really into nature and greenery and are very good at planning and packing a whole lot of snacks.

The drive lasted for nine and a half hours without any meltdowns, and then last ten kilometers both kids started with the "symphony" at the same time. Being the great problem solver that I am, I jumped over to the back seat (yes, illegal I know but it was a crisis, we needed to get there and could not waste time stopping). I love how sometimes, just holding my hand calms bugs down, its gratifying and makes all the hard work worth it.

After a quick dinner which included ice cream and very short walk around the Tønsberg harbour we were all overtired and ready for bed.

The old family cabin is now owned by someone else, there were so many cars parked in front of it, and people running around that we were too embarrassed to ask to take a picture of us in front of it. We opted for walking down to the beach and treat ourselves to strawberries and chocolate dip.

While we already drove ten hours to see the cabin in front of which we did not manage to get a photo, why not test the patience of our bugs even further and drive extra three hours just to add another country to the mix, so Sweden it was.

Gothenburg was so much larger than what I expected and definitely cannot be explored in the three hours. We did manage to go on the Gothenburg's answer to London Eye, witnessed something of a worship Bieber random convention of horny teenage girls, bought far too many sweets and Croatian instant pudding.

And of course, we spoke with Swedish accent the entire time and laughed a lot at Swedish signs...

Importance of Having Friends Around

2011-05-22T12:15:00.000+02:00

A friend with OCD "skills" is a true blessing.

There are no before pictures, mainly because I never thought this organizing session will be such a huge success that I will feel the need to share and because it is embarrassing to show what a true slob I am. There is a system to the organization in the way the groceries are used. It is so practical that I may manage to keep it looking like this on a permanent basis. Which I will probably not, but not because sloberness is a habit that is hard to get rid of, but it is important that as a good friend I nourish C.'s OCD "skills".

Growing Independent

2011-05-20T10:13:00.000+02:00

Despite enduring constant kicks in all parts of my body during the night from Buggy and constant waking ups from Mili, this constant functioning on sleep deprivation (I know whatever I say next sounds incredibly selfish and is crazy) but I will miss this stage of them being so dependent on us. This ship of independence is cruising slowly and is on the horizon, particularly with Buggy. This morning while getting ready for kindy, on her own initiative, she put her shoes on - the right way around, chose her jacket and put her lunchbox in the backpack. She is growing independent, and yes it is gratifying part of parenthood and a very very cool feeling to have something so simple feel so huge, but I will miss her requests for me to sit in a lotus position to become a human chair for her in order to put the shoes on, or even mornings when we had wrestling matches to get dressed.

Mili in just five weeks of being around is loosing his newborn look and starting to look more like a baby. Last week when we weighed him at the four week routine health check, he has gained 1200 grams, and the alien like movements are slowly being replaced by propeller like action of hands and feet - ready to take of.

Shooting Clay Pigeons

2011-05-17T21:56:00.000+02:00

I am tempted to purchase and possibly read Men are from Mars Women are from Venus. Tempted only. Oreo Cookie Cupcakes prevail that temptation, together with the delusion that they are not all that fattening and that men are able to multitask. Which I'm sure they are, I have witnessed my own husband, watch more than one show on television, surf the net and eat - all at the same time. Ahem, this inability to multitask is actually a big fat lie to get me to do a hell of a lot more mundane tasks that I should and than it's fair.

Whilst in the honeymoon stage, during some conversation while I was still on cloud nine, I have agreed that I will do work inside the house and he will do work outside the house. I have no idea what I was thinking when saying YES to that arrangement. How relevant that was this to us then and now, since we live in an apartment where an "outside" area equals to five square meter balcony?

So, now it is the fight to get the habits changed. It is really not all that bad, not to sound totally ungrateful, but they sure could get better otherwise following will happen:

Computers will be destroyed by way of a baseball bat, or thrown out the window.
Collection of vintage Star Wars figurines may mysteriously find their way out of their protective casings into Buggy's toy box (we've seen Toy Story many times, we know what toys are up to when we're not watching)
Pay Pal account will be blocked (this sounds like a warning for a girl!)
I was going to say something about giving the TV away, but I realised I would only be harming myself.

For the umpth time in the last ten months I have managed to mess up my phone. Some water could have possibly leaked all over it from a water bottle which I have thrown into my handbag when I was flustered over one bug screaming for the boob and another bug screaming for attention, all while I was possibly trying to get somewhere on time, while a certain someone who should have been there to help me was shooting clay pigeons. Luckily the distance was long enough for me to fight of the urge and drive out to the shooting range myself to try out my hand at it, however my gun would have been pointed at nothing made of clay.

Transitions

2011-05-10T22:25:00.001+02:00

I have a problem with change - anticipation of it, making it happen, going through it, however I do not have much problem getting used to the new circumstances once the process is finished. Last May I was struggling with going back to work, becoming a working mum, moving to a new apartment, putting it upon myself to be more creative, accepting the fact that someone else spends more time with my child than I do during the day. It took me a long time to get back into the swing of things at work, and talking about things other than breastfeeding, child bearing and exchanging birth stories.

This May I am struggling with transition back into full time motherhood. I guess the adrenalin from giving birth wore of , and reality is I am tired and exhausted. Throughout the whole pregnancy I never thought what impact having two children will have on me, my time and household dynamics. Waking up 3 times to nurse during the night was no problem with Buggy, since I did not have any obligations apart from caring for her when she was born. With husband having to leave for work before the kindy opens I have the responsibility to ensure that Buggy gets there on time, so I am not able to doze of in the morning following the early morning feeding, this is the time my day starts, and with terrible two's in full swing I am exhausted even before we get out of the door. I should have been better at preparing myself for this situation before Mili arrived in order to be able to cope with the transition better and without huge emotional effect it has on me right now. Like, I should have thought sleeping arrangements better through, instead of changing the bedroom around for the third time in the last 10 days.

The extreme tiredness is also brought on by trips to emergency at 2 a.m. On Friday, Buggy suddenly got very very high fever, accompanied by projectile vomiting. I was close to hysterical, seeing her close to lifeless, randomly blurting out some words and her eyes rolling back. It was the strangest kind of fear I have experienced. Like if anything would happen, I I would not be a functional human being ever. I am not sure how bad it was, since the doctor gave her an antibiotic immediately while we were still in the examination room. Luckily she was back to her normal self by lunch time on Saturday, a very moany and needy normal self. The following night I felt the same fear since it was Mili's turn for high fever, in addition to tummy cramps I feel completely helpless to make him feel better.

But everything is temporary right, especially with kiddies. They constantly transform and surprise us, I am sure that next month brings positive surprises from both bugs and black circles will be gone from around my eyes.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

2011-05-05T13:43:00.000+02:00

Steak it is :)

Bigger Boobies Anyone?

2011-05-05T12:29:00.000+02:00

There is a whole lot of boobies talk in our household over the last 3 weeks, with the newborn around and me having no shame to flop them out and nourish my infant no matter who is around. In case I try to go and seclude myself in the bathroom to get 30 seconds of piece and quiet, I usually hear a scream after 15 seconds: "Honey we need you boobies!" There are moments I wish I could just detach them, and let the hubby take on the feeding duty, but then my ego wouldn't be overly inflated with the fact that it is only me that can nourish Milli and comfort him no matter what it is.

On a daily basis Buggy claims that boobies are hers, she pretends to be a baby and kind of goes for them. I was totally up for tandem breastfeeding so when she makes her move I tell her that it is OK if she wants to drink the milk. At which point she looks at me like I am a total fruit cake, makes a pukey grimace and says NO in protest. Reverse psychology in action.

This morning curiosity prevailed and while I was snooping on Facebook and seeing what is happening in other people's lives, one of the side advertisements directed me to a site selling cream for breast enlargement, apparently markets most proven method for breast enlargement. I believe that one just as much as I believe in cellulite removing cream and treatments. I guarantee that the best method for non surgical breast enlargement is pregnancy followed by prolonged breastfeeding. Great boobies for as long as it lasts, however, following this no cream in this world will make them seem perky or larger again, only silicone will be able to do that. That means - snip snip.

Being an advocate for aging graciously and embracing my life lines, I am not sure that I will be able to embrace my saggy boobies once child bearing is finished. To snip or not to snip: depends on my emotional stability in late thirties, possibility that husband could run of with perky boobed 20 something Veronica Mars lookalike and possibility of a delusion that I am not afraid of needles, surgical procedures and enduring pain for beauty. I avoid plucking my eyebrows because it hurts, would I want to ensure the recovery from a surgery for perky boobies.

Enjoying an awesome boobies year until further notice.

Wedding Fever

2011-04-29T10:07:00.000+02:00

Am I watching the wedding? You bettcha! I like to join in on any hype, even if the soundtrack is East 17.

Happy belated Easter!

2011-04-28T10:53:00.000+02:00

Is it too late to say Happy Easter? Even if it is, I hope you all had a great one. We have sunshine, no jacket weather and I am utilizing as much of it as I can. I love sunny spring days in Bergen, when everyone comes down from the mountains into the parks.

My little walking Disney commercial

Sunny weather = fantastic Easter break. Buggy has been living on candy and milk for the last 5 days - we have been very responsible and ensured that we at least scrub and brush her teeth every night. Forcing a sugar high toddler to do something that is hated as is, is bucket loads of fun. Thankfully, colored eggs provided some protein over the period. We are now on a sugar cleansing diet, hence Buggy has had no sugar for 2 days. Hopefully we make it to three. Us, the responsible adults, on the other hand cannot say the same, I have been stuffing my face with leftover candy that we have hidden from Buggy to prevent her from entering sugar coma.

We took the bugs to Tivoli, even though only one bug could enjoy it, the other bug was fast asleep the entire time.Usually not a sceptic, Buggy was very apprehensive towards all the blinking lights and binging noises, and clutched on to her Minky, Mickey and Donald. We tried to put them away but she kept dragging them out of the bag, until we got her on the first merry-go-round. Since it took two of us to get her out of the car once the ride was finished, there is no photos, although I would have like to have the image of her holding on to the wheel, hysterically crying and fellow parents starring at us as we're dragging her out documented.

A few rides later I was ready to escape the blinking lights, binging noises and hillbillies that we were surrounded with in exchange for quiet time in the park.

Buggy says: naise flawlers (nice flowers) mamma, loves dogs of all sizes, however freaks out at the site of a small ant. Ironic, considering her nickname.

Mili Vanilli melts my heart just as much as Buggy does. I still cannot believe how tiny he is, and when I look at Buggy, while she is still mini and little, what huge transformation she has gone through in only 2 years. Mili in only 2 weeks has gained 450 grams, has peed on us almost every time we change his diaper, poops approximately 10 times a day (without counting the number of times he projectile shits in rare occasion he is on the changing table without a diaper on, this usually happens when Daddy-O is on diaper duty, and I love to watch the frekout-fest each time it happens), and he still makes alien like hand movements. He is adored by his sister, who always wants to hold-e-baby (hold the baby), and wants to help with everything bathing, changing diapers, and even does row row row your boat with him, I keep trying to catch it on video, but by the time I get organized the moment passes.

I am still feeling euphoric after birth, and aside from the number of diapers changed daily I am still under the impression: "This baby is easy!". This may be induced by jaundice, however Buggy was close to a perfect newborn (minus the puke-fest) and so will baby boy be. I am chanting....

All in a week...

2011-04-21T08:34:00.000+02:00

Today one week ago, about the same time as I am writing this, I exited the hospital, following giving birth the night before. I saw absolutely no reason to stay in the hospital, imprisoned in a room with uncomfortable decor and even more uncomfortable bed. My adrenalin was kicking full mode and probably still is since I feel like I have not stopped doing things since. My brain is constantly on, I need to take time out, but for some reason this seems to be impossible for now. The weather has finally turned sunny and I want to be out all the time soaking in vitamin D. I am just waiting to crash and burn, it's bound to be around the corner.

Despite the fact that I have dealt with a newborn before, it is now a whole different game with two kids. My attention is divided and it is not possible for me to stimulate B2 as much as I did Buggy as a newborn, since there is a toddler to pay attention to also. I was happy that I didn't over read on introducing bugs to each other. Apart from being a little bit more territorial and claiming that boobies are hers even though she does not want to breastfeed, Buggy has been showering "baby boy" with kisses and cuddles. It makes me incredibly happy that this transition has been easy (at least so far).

We have modestly celebrated Buggy's second birthday, however this did not reduce the amount of her enjoyment. If I have learned anything from this, it is that sometimes simplest is the most fun. We made chocolate chip muffins one of which was utilized as a birthday cake and had just some of the family pop by. Buggy's favorite cousin I. played and played and played with her until they were both exhausted from giggles. Hearing those giggles and being able to enjoy them without the stress of baking galore and making sure all is served properly, beats out any huge party I thought was necessary in order to celebrate birthdays in grand style.

I am counting my blessings and thanking the universe for another bug that is an "easy" infant. As long as his head is resting on either of our chests he is sleeping (4 hours uninterrupted last night - can I hear a woop-woop for that). I will ignore the fact that I will get a bad back from sleeping sitting up - that I can deal with later, once it becomes a problem, which undoubtedly it will.

Enjoying another week of being able to abuse hubby while he is off work, a week from today reality will kick in.

Happy Birthday Buggy!!!

2011-04-17T13:55:00.000+02:00

Happy birthday to the most loving bug in the world!

Birth Day


1st Birthday

2nd Birthday

Awesome Foursome

2011-04-15T10:32:00.000+02:00

B2 entered the world on Tuesday, 12 April 2011 at 10.32pm.

Geneder equality has been restored in the household.

Faking it

2011-04-12T08:10:00.000+02:00

Friday night as I was crocheting away, within an hour I had four contractions. I got very arrogant thinking how good I am at predicting when I will go into labour, considering possibly having some supernatural powers and started mentally preparing myself for what lies ahead. What I did not realize lies ahead is 4th day of contractions, that only seem to last two to four hours a day.

On Sunday when they were 5 minutes apart I was showered packed, ready for hospital. Buggy was excited to go on a sleepover with Lotte, hubby was on the phone arranging work for next days since it was a matter of moments before we will be running for the hospital. Four hours later, I was contraction free, doubting whether the last four hours are real or just an illusion.

I am refusing to Google how long these "fake" contractions (that seem incredibly real) can last, I am not sure how much more of it I can take. No ecstatic birth taking place here just starting to get impatient to meet B2.

Finishing...

2011-04-09T21:45:00.000+02:00

My constant resolution is to be better at finishing things. I have a small tendency of starting many many things and finishing just a few of them. Like a year ago, upon returning to work, idea of being more creative sprung up on me. I was to knit, sew, do this blog, cook more, work, raise a toddler, become better at socializing, be pregnant... combine this delusion with a tendency to be on the lazy side, and you get a whole lot of unfinished things, plans that never came to fruition, no need to explain this any further.

First week of maternity leave, I have lunched a lot with friends, watched a whole lot of TED talks, and finished - FINISHED a knitting project 12 months in making. Luckily knowing my tendency to take a while, I have decided to knit a sweater for Buggy in size of a 3 -5 year old (genious!!).

The model was on the grumpy side today, so an action shot will follow, but here I present, my very first wearable finished knitting project, with crochet trim and all.

Mother's Nature Child

2011-04-08T11:05:00.000+02:00

I have received my diploma for enduring 50 hours of Integrating Classes. It was not all that bad as I make it sound to be, I do have a tendency to exaggarate. I have met some great people, had some good giggles and potentially found a cleaning lady which will make my life heaven once I return back to work from one year "vacation" called maternity leave, into the abbys called the two working parents home.

Since the idea was for the classes to be interactive, a lot of the conversations during this class revolved around education model. Not enough tiger mother's here, everyone thinks that education is not focused enough on academic achievement and too much focused on play.

I have posed a question to my other half last night, asking him what shall WE get Buggy to develop her talents. She cannot ride a tricycle yet, thinks Pingu is hilarious and here I am thinking about getting her a violin. I am happy to be self critical enough to realize how ridiculous my thought was. I guess at that moment I should have been beamed up to some country where they have interview panels for accepting three year old into kindergarten. You want your kid to get into the right type of kindergarten, as what they do there until they are 6 years old will determine their entire life's success. So, imagine this - a three year year old sitting in front of a panel of educators deciding whether the resume of a being that has been on the planet for 36 months is impressive enough for him\her to attend their institution. I wonder what kind of questions they ask the kids. "What? You wasted the first 6 months breastfeeding only?" That's ridiculous.

As Sir Ken Robinson says, human flourishing should not be based on a mechanical model, it should be based on an agricultural model - like a farmer, we need to create conditions under which the kids will flourish. I came across this trailer for a documentary which explores nature’s powerful role in children’s health.

Time to stop being a couch potatoe and vegetating in front of whatever screen is in front of me, forget about the violin and get out into the woods, make mud pies. This is what I want for my bugs. And Pingu is hilarious.

Our communities depends on diversity of talent, we do not need entire populations to have MBA's and phd's who are just enduring what they do, instead of having a planet populated by people who love what they do and what they do is what they are. So here is me making a conscious decision, not to push bugs into educating themselves for something I think is right for them and educate them out of their creative capacity. Can someone please remind me of this, once I am freaking out over a teenager who does not want to go to school to become a lawyer\doctor\CEO.

Moanfest

2011-04-07T09:34:00.000+02:00

I had a bad bad night. I slept bad, mainly due to a head cold/flu that decided to rear its ugly head in 39th week of pregnancy, partly due to an almost 2 years old somehow taking up more space in bed than husband and myself combined.

Oh, co-sleeping, how I love thee

but not last night.

Last night as I was getting kicked in the face - I snapped, hubs quickly told me to chill and moved Buggy and then told me to move the hell away from the bottom of the bed which was an obvious reason why face was an easy target for foot kicks. So, Buggy moved, I moved, we should all have been in-sync without feet anywhere near my head, but Buggy decided to flip around, and put her feet on the pillow and continue kicking me. 3.00-amish I was wide awake, thinking about how weird is it that Buggy's position in bed is the same as the baby's position in the womb, she always wants to have her legs on the pillow or sideways or something out of the ordinary. Maybe it has to do with earth poles, and I should consider changing the position of the bed in order to ensure a good nights rest. I read that somewhere, but I am not sure that I want to go through the process of changing the room around in order for it to have no effect what so ever on the quality of sleep. another solution would be to move Buggy to her own bed, but I am being selfish here. I am so ready to put up with the foot kicks on some of the night, for the cuddles I get on most of the nights, I just need to moan a little.

Anyone who has been around me in any of the pregnancies, knows that I am on the edge and ready, ready to have the pregnancy over and done with. Today is the day that I had decided it will be the day to give birth, but with the head cold plus sleep deprivation I don't really have the feeling like it will happen, or even if it does I don't think I would have the energy to push it through - today or in the next few days. I keep my fingers that I am wrong (and please all of you send contraction vibes my way also).

Cherry on top of it all - Buggy is in morning tantrum phase this week when being dropped of at kindergarten. Even other kids were looking at me and the two other teachers with pity while we tried to get her to get herself cool calm and collected. This morning's tantrum was brought to you by courtesy of swapping the winter rain suit for a summer one, the new one being so impressive that we just did not want to take it off. Mornings will be much easier when non-jacket temperatures come about (or so I keep telling myself).

Think, its only a matter of days before I will have two of them to deal with. Erm, maybe hold off on those contraction vibes for a few more days.

Bottom Up

2011-04-02T15:46:00.000+02:00

Maternity leave would be so much more fun if all of your favourite mommy friends decided to be pregnant again with you at the same time. Erm, since this is not the case unless some have been keeping pregnancies a secret from me, I am on my own, since most mommy friends are back at work or galloping the world. This "year off" may not prove to be as fun, the novelty also wore off with the first baby.

While I was contemplating this a couple of nights ago, the bump painfully took a very very odd shape. B2 must have been turning. Instead of being happy that this was happening, I immediately started to panic and think, what if everyone's doubts were wrong and the bottom was up, and now it is turning around - in the wrong direction. Bottom up, bottom down, girl or a boy...oh too many uncertainties for me to handle. Chances for everything are fifty\fifty.

One uncertainty has been removed yesterday, bottom is where it is suppose to be. I almost hugged and kissed the technician, however somehow thought that a Norwegian may think this is totally over the top, so I was just overly thankful. Back to birthing plan A, screaming for epidural as soon as I hit the hospital door.

Paintfest

2011-03-31T07:48:00.000+02:00

We had a very grumpy little buggy on our hands yesterday. Since messy activities cheer everyone up (apart from me), I whizzed out the works.

The body painting got out of control. Lesson in all this, do not leave your child unattended when painting even if you are using organic toxic free paints.

Bottom Down

2011-03-30T10:32:00.000+02:00

B2 is approximately two weeks away from being here. I am slightly panicky about the state of the household. Yes, this is what I am worried about - that I will come back from the hospital and it will not be cosy enough for me to enjoy the pain of my uterus shrinking back to pea size and enduring mastitis.

I had a midwife appointment yesterday and the outcome after my belly has been poked and probed by two of them is: we think that the head is down but we are not so sure, it is too soft at the top of the belly for it to be a head but it does not feel like buttocks or back. I am having another ultrasound on Friday which will tell us the bare truth of it all, and whether I should panic about anything else other than a messy household. Like maybe B2 has a spongy head or a really bumpy bottom.

On a serious note, there is potential that baby is in breach position and this means either breach birth or a c-section, neither of which is optimal solutions for the birth I had in mind. I thought to get in there and pop it out and go home 6 hours later, enjoy Parenthood and Brothers and Sisters marathon, get cuddles from Buggy and be spoiled by hubby, who this time will want to have ice-cream when we take B2 for a walk the first time. When Buggy was born we went for a walk, I wanted ice-cream and he didn't and I had a major flip out (tears and all) since he did not want to eat ice-cream as a family. Yeah well, hormones!

Despite the fact that I have told myself I will not think about any possible scenarios if the baby is in breach, until all is confirmed on the ultrasound, my mind is racing. My first initial response was I WILL HAVE A C-SECTION, but now I read a LOT about breach birth and the more I think about it the more I want to avoid C-section - it is surgery after all. And with breach birth they drug the living bajeebers out of you anyhow, and the recovery is much much easier than a C-section. The hospital where we live is also one of the specialist hospitals in Europe for breach births, and from what I gather reason for breach positioned babies to be born by C-section is only lack of training on breach deliveries. So, at least I am at the right place for it.

Until Friday I am refusing to do any exercises I have read that could help B2 turn into the right position, since you know it could only be a bumpy bottom, and then what if it is in right position and turns the opposite way because I forced it to. Tick-tock, only 48 hours until we know for sure.....

Eat my muffin

2011-03-28T08:08:00.001+02:00

This Sunday I was in a super-mommy mode, even if it was just for an hour or so, until these babies were baked. My kid was about to have healthy muffins and smoothie for breakfast and nothing could stop me. The rest of the day I spent napping on the couch or napping in bed, which I guess is the side effects of the early morning adrenalin kick.

My aunt, who is not really an aunt, but my Mum's cousin, I just like to call her aunt, wait, would that make her my aunt, what would really be her correct relation to me, anyone?

Anyhow, she sent me a recipe for these. At first I was a bit sceptical, I mean oats and wholemeal flour are really not my forte usually, but holly smackers these were nam-nam. If you like it a bit sweeter add more honey, but 3 spoons was more then sufficient even for my sweet tooth.

1 cup oats
1 cup yogurt
2 - 3 tablespoons honey
1/3 cup vegetable or canola oil
1 egg
1 tablespoon finely grated orange rind
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup frozen blueberries

Mix the dry ingredients with the wet. Add blueberries at the end and just smoothly mix in with the muffin dough. If you find the dough too "dry" add a bit more yogurt. Sprinkle some extra oats on top of each muffin before baking them at 180 degrees for about 30 minutes.

Bon appetite!

Too much info on carrots

2011-03-23T13:06:00.000+01:00

How do you come accross an idea to Google the term "baby carrot making machine"? Yes, well, too much time on your hands and boredom make you do extremely strange things. At least this time I did not throw any money at the boredom by just randomly buying yet another thing I did not need.

Anyhow, I love carrots, baby carrots to be precise since they are made for lazy people like me. I prefer them coated in Ranch Dressing, since it truly does make everything taste better. I also love carrots in other forms, like roasted with chicken and other root vegetables, or a carrot cake. I can easily state that carrots are my favourite vegetable. It is my favourite vegetable because of its versatility and living on the edge between cooked and raw and sweet and savoury.

Research first pointed me to The True Story of Baby Carrots where I found out that there really is such a thing as a properly grown baby carrot, not just a mchine made one. I am convinced that these carrots will taste better than any other carrot I have ever tasted in my life, and since fresh vegetables offer in Norway is relatively limited I will not even try to find them, I will just wait to have my own garden and try to make (grow) them myself (I will ignore the fact that my gardening skills have managed to kill every possible living plant that has been withing my reach so far).

So how did baby carrots come about (this is all sourced from the above mentioned page on the story of baby carrots):

" It all began in the mid 80's ago when Mike Yurosek of Newhall, California got tired of seeing 400 tons of carrots a day drop down the cull chute at his packing plant in Bakersfield. Culls are carrots that are too twisted, knobbly, bent or broken to sell. In some loads, as many as 70% of carrots were tossed. Baby carrots are not as nutritious as full whole carrots, because a lot of the goodness in carrots is contained in the skin and just below it. This is removed in the baby carrot making process.

After harvesting, the carrots are mainly washed in chlorinated water, just like our drinking water, and cleaned to remove dirt and mud. Some finished baby carrots are washed, or dipped, by a further chlorine solution to prevent white blushing once in the store. There is no evidence that this is harmful, but it is worth knowing about! "

Cast off carrots, all the vitamins peeled off and killed by chlorine...I eat chlorine!!! OK I know it is in extremely small amounts but I am still having a freakout over this. This freakout may even make me get of my lazy ass, peel and cut some carrot sticks and stop living this mini-vegetables taste so much better because they are cuter lie.

Ready to pop

2011-03-20T12:16:00.000+01:00

Sentence of the month has been: "I am just ready to give birth.", and now 4 weeks until the actual due date I am serisouly getting fed up with heartburn that is almost burning a hole in my neck, peeing 36 times per day, being uncomfortable no matter what position I am in - although I have not tried standing on my head yet, puking, being sleepy but unable to sleep, or just sleeping too much. I want it out. Pregnancies are not enlightening experiences for me, and I am ready to have it ticked of my list. Thank god the result of it all is oh so lovely.

Apartment sold and we will be going to the Bahamas. Good luck has been my middle name this week - potty training, Bahamas, and winning. I should probably not talk to much about good luck so I don't jinx anything, but it is weeks like this that make me think maybe The Law of Attraction it not so cheezy as I make it out to be.

Ok, am off to the couch to vegitate, be uncomfortable and imagine myself giving birth.

We do tha poo poo in the potty...

2011-03-18T08:03:00.002+01:00

It was spontaneous, it was not planned but it happened. I am extatic at the thought of being diaper free with at least one child in the next six months. I figure (without doing any research) that six months is reasonable enough time to be potty trained.

PROUD!

To sell or not to sell

2011-03-17T14:04:00.001+01:00

Our apartment is for sale. There is only 3 hours left until we will have the first open home for it, and I am a little bit on the edge. According to everyone the market is good and it is better than its peak in 2007 (this is aparently only valid in Bergen at the moment), and whoever I speak to about my concerns of not selling, has the same reply: "But the market is so good!". To top it off the agent is not very overly enthusiastic and is really setting no expectations which is probably a good thing, but makes me either, worried or angry, I want him to be overly enthusiastic, he is getting paid enough to fake it.

So, this is how volatile my mood over selling the apartment is over a period of a week.

Thursday (photos and ad received for review) - oh wow, it looks awesome in photos and the great thing is that they are good photos and give e very realistic impression of what it actually feels like. Who would not want to live there. We are so selling it next week.

Friday (the apartment was put on the market) - oh uhm, what if we do not sell, what will we do then, I wonder how many people looked at the ad already.

Saturday - the apartment looks mucho fantastico, I am not selling for less than 10% over evaluation, and when we do we are so going on a crazy and extravagant holiday in June and wherever we will stay we will even use the mini bar. I am also so going on a shoe shopping spree.

Sunday - we sell for whatever we get, if we can even get anyone to be interested in it. Oh my, what if no one is interested, what will we do then, do we rent it out again, what do to we do?

Monday morning - oh uh, the agent does not seem too enthusiastic, there was a 1000 hits on the internet ad, but according to agent that is not much, and only a couple of people have called - maybe we just sell for whatever the old evaluation was.

Monday afternoon - Stefan called me to let me know that there is someone coming to look at the apartment since they will not be in the country on Thursday for the open home. Yeeehhaaa, stuff unenthusiastic agent, we will sell, we will sell and we will raid the mini bar at the hotel on the extravagant vacation.

Tuesday - the person that came to see the apartment looooveeedd it, f%&¤ the agent, we are selling and going to Miami and to cruise the Bahamas!!!!!

Wednesday - the agent is an ass, he has a buyer and he is only being unenthusiastic since he wants to put down the price, ass, I will give him a call and give him a piece of my mind. I did call him but I was extremely diplomatic, assertive and naise (!!!) and did not use the word ass during the conversation). The ad came out in the papers, oh why did I not tell him to move that stupid picture from the paper ad!

Thursday - what if no one shows up for the open home - ogh F%#¤ F&%# F%&¤# .

OK, yes I am not quite all there, and am a bit mentally unstable. Here's to Bahamas and a good sale!!! 2.5 hours to go!

Of Lotte and runny poos….

2011-03-15T13:27:00.000+01:00

After a sleepless night, a lot of foot kicks in all parts of mine and Stefan's body, it was time for Buggy to go back to kindy today. Runny poos or not. No more TV addict watching Pingu, Elmo, Koala Brothers, Scooby Doo and munching on leftover Cheerios from the floor. Time to go to kindy for some good ol' playing with munchkins your own age. Life must be hard for a toddler. Imagine choosing between following activities: staying at home and drive your parents crazy by demanding Elmo on repeat all day or going to kindy and playing all day and sleeping. I wish those were my choices, instead of choosing which crap I will try and finalize today. I anticipated that it may be a bit of a drama leaving her at kindy today.

Yesterday neither of us was able to stay at home, so Buggy was delivered for care to Farmor (paternal grandma). The biggest excitement about going to visit Farmor and Besse (paternal grandad), besides the spoiling factor and being able to do whatever she likes is Lotte. Little furry west highland terrier which is so special to Buggy that there are nights she wakes up and starts chanting Lotte Lotte Lotte. She gives her special cuddles, shares cookies (even though she is not suppose to) and supervises to make sure that Lotte eats all her nam-nams.

I find this little obsession extremely cute, on most days. I am also happy that she has a special bond with an animal, since I was kind of a fuddy duddy growing up that was scared of most animals, dogs in particular. Today was NOT one of those days where I thought that Lottobssesion is cute. In addition to enduring foot kicks in all part of the body , tonight's 3 a.m. wake up consisted of both me and Stefan needing dance the Wiggles dance in order to calm her down. I felt like a fruit loop immitating those fruit loops in the middle of the night, but this is unconditional love.

Since yesterday was a Lotte day, she expected that today she will see her again. The morning was going relatively smoothly until we turned into the driveway for kindy, instead of the driveway for Lotte (kindy is right across the road from her grandparents place). First worried cries were let out, accompanied by finger pointing in the direction which we did not turn in and saying: "Lotte, Lotte!". I tried to explain to her that Lotte is sleeping and that today she will play with her friends, and that we can visit Lotte on our way home. The worried cries turned into a full blown tantrum before I knew it. To my misery I forgot one Crock at home and one at her grandparents, so there was no bloody way of calming her down (Crocks seemed to be doing the trick lately). At some stage, with me trying to get everything in her locker and trying to stop her from running out the door, across the road into Lotte's embrace, this had stopped being a tantrum and turned into sad, sad broken heart type of crying. She was holding a box of cereal (which was one of the props I tried to use to revert her attention) walking aimlessly in kindy hallways hoping to find Lotte. A box of cereal - I should seriously try and be more creative. The kindy teacher tried to help, but both of us were absolutely useless. And then a five year old boy came to our rescue. He'd heard her her cry from another room and came out did this little wiggle at her - the crying stopped. I just called kindy to see how she was doing and after playing for some hours with our little saviour, there was no more runny poos and all was dandy.

Five year old boys with high EQ may become my favourite people in the world (I think I may just sneak in a chocolate bar into his locker).