Norway 2009/2010

Friends

Just before Christmas, we packed up and went to Norway to spend time with Farmor, Grandpa, Aunt Sara, Uncle Michael, Cousins Leo and Jacob.

As an extra bonus, great-grandmother "mormor" came over from Sweden, as did great-aunt (Oh, I bet she LOVES being called a great-aunt...) Marjan, great-uncle Benny and 2nd cousins Hannes and Manda. So it was a BIG christmas gathering.

Norway was cold, but not unbearably so. We'd barely arrived and settled in before Christmas dinner and everyone was at the house. Daniel and Rachel thought it was great fun to have their names on the gingerbread cookies that decorated the tree - and cousin Hannes impressed Daniel with his lego-building expertise.

I almost titled this posting: "Woodolf the Wed-nosed Waindewe", which is how Rachel would pronouce it. She can tell the difference when listening, so you can get fun exchanges like:

"Rachel, do you want to watch Rudolf"?
"Yay, Woodolf!"
"Woodolf"?
"No, Woodolf, not Woodolf"
"Woodolf"?
"NO, Woodolf!"

Anyway - Rachel dearly loves her cousin Jacob. While in Norway, she would consistently flock to him, and since getting home, she's been saying "I miss Jacob". By the end of the trip, she would consistently remember Michael's name, but for a while, he was "Dat Guy".

Leo and Rachel didn't "click" this trip, but that wasn't really a problem, since Daniel and Leo played quite well.

And another tidbit that doesn't really fit here, but has to be documented. Rachel loves carbohydrates. Bread, pasta, cereals -> anything with starch. While sitting at a Starbucks, she acknowledged as much: to quote: "Everything with Crumbs, that's what I love!"



After celebrating christmas in Oslo, we packed the cars and drove up to Renåfjellet where we'd rented a large cabin. We were super-lucky with the weather, and had fresh snow to play in.


The kids dug tunnels, jumped from the porch into the deep snow, went sledding all around the cabin. It was reasonably cold, so after doing that, it was nice to be able to come inside and take a nice warm bath, or even get in the sauna.



Daniel and Rachel borrowed cross-country skiis, and we took a couple of trips around the area. No speed records were set, but there was very little complaining, and for being his first time, Daniel did great. He was comfortable going across on the flat, and by the last time we went out, he had figured out how to go downhill - at least somewhat. Ups were harder.




The cabin was really nice, with plenty of space for everyone, a nice big open space upstairs for the kids to be crazy in (see video posting) and it was just nice to actually all be in one place rather than have to trek across Oslo to get together with the cousins. The only flaw in this cabin's design were the white cloth dining chairs - I think by the end of the trip, Rachel had stained every single chair. Here everyone's relaxing after a busy day

Farmor and Jacob.

For a 10-year old, Jacob has an amazing amount of patience and love for his younger cousins. And, as I said before, Rachel LOVES him (so does Daniel, but not with the same fervor as Rachel).







Sadly, all things must come to an end, and so it was with this trip too. This posting wouldnt be complete without a note on how good the kids are at travelling. Sure, they have plenty of practice, but even so they are just awesome - just mellow, go-with-the-flow kids. At the end of virtually every flight, some random stranger says "your kids are good travellers" when deplaning, and it's true.

Having the right distractions is key - here's Daniel playing his favority iPhone game: "Pocket God". Mostly he likes feeding his little electronic natives to the sharks, or spearing them, or striking them with lightening - so it's not exactly an educational game, but the humor is perfect for a nearly-five-year-old.

And once home again - there was Delilah - the current love in Daniel's life. Every night, she snuggles up next to him in bed, and pretty much sleeps on his face.

So that was Norway. An excellent time with family and winter activities.

Until the next posting (which I'm trying to write today).

ADRE.

A tale of four Christmases

Friends

Christmas came early in 2009, and it came often. Because we were going to Norway, we arranged for Santa to come to Colorado early (he does that, if you know how to ask). So one fine December morning, we had Christmas at our house.

This was a big year for girly-stuff for Rachel, who scored a dollhouse, a farmhouse, some dolls, cribs, stroller and other random pink things (guess who's writing?). She was thrilled.

Daniel's takeaway was a robot (it dances, it whistles, it has a remote control), a space shuttle and a dinosaur hotwheels track. As he took it all in, he said "Papa - do you want to play Robot-Space-Dinos?"

Lesson for parents - unwrap and assemble toys first. With all of the twisty-ties and other packaging, christmas morning was an exercise in frustrated kids waiting to get to play, and a lot of paper and junk spread around.

Christmas #2 happened a few days later at Grandma Babe's house. She cooked a yummy dinner, and again, there were presents. The kids got a globe and stomp rockets.

Daniel is a master negotiator, who's learned that we won't tolerate him simply snatching his sister's toys away. So if he wants something, he'll work to convince her that some other toy is more fun. "Hey Rachel, is this a cool sword, or what?".

No dummy herself, when she doesn't agree, or doesn't want to share - Rachel will answer: "What!"

Christmas #3 was in Norway, where we got together with Farmor, Grandpa, Aunt Sara, Uncle Michael, Cousins Leo and Jacob, great-grandmother mormor, great-aunt and -uncle Marjan and Benny and Eric's cousins Hannes and Manda. It was quite the Swedish-Norwegian-American christmas feast.

In Norway, Santa comes during the evening after dinner, and will sometimes come in and say a few words to the kids. I guess he must have been on a tight schedule, because he just knocked on the window and left a bag of presents outside.

The Norwegian santa (and family members) brought playmobile toys. So Daniel found himself the owner of a boat and a submarine, while Rachel got a complete vetrinarian setup to go with her barn.

Here's Daniel and Grandpa discussing some of the finer points of playmobile. Or perhaps it's Lego - D also got a lego police helicopter. And it turns out that he's pretty good at following Lego assembly instructions. Sure, he likes to validate every step with an adult, but you can say "Daniel, make it look like this" and he goes and finds the right pieces, puts them in the right place and could (if he wanted to) build complex legos on his own.

And, as if THAT wasn't enough present-madness, when we got home from Norway, there were packages waiting. Aunt Erin and Chloe had come to visit while we were gone, and of course the mailman had done his part too. Daniel is very proud of his new Batman laptop. It has a number of activities/games, and he's gotten into a few of them - some are still beyond his interest, though.

Whew - with all of these new toys, it'll be a long time until anyone gets bored around our house. It's actually a bit overwhelming. Perhaps next year, we can consolidate everything into a single christmas.

Until next time.
ADRE

End of the year and some movies

Friends


Happy New Year, and all that. It's finally time to catch up in blog-land. There are a total of three postings today (because, if you leave this alone for 4 months, the volume of things to talk about overwhelms one post). I'd tell you that my resolution for 2010 is to be better about posting here, but you can tell that I'm already off to a bad start.

In any case -this is the "videos" posting.


Daniel's preschool class held an end-of-year christmas pageant, and Daniel was a shepard. It's nearly 13 minutes long, of which Daniel's speaking role consists of the line "Where is he?" at around the 6:19 mark. The editor recommends the sequence starting at about 5:20 for those who don't want to sit through the whole video.

Rachel's been learning some tricks of her own, and she really wanted to show off this one - so without further ado -> Rachel, demonstrating the correct playschool method of putting on a jacket.

Jingle bells - with keyboard by Daniel.

This little book with a built-in keyboard has the most amazingly ear-penetrating, fake-synthesizer sound. But that's not really the point of this video -Daniel figured out that by reading the color-coded notes and playing them in order, he could play the keyboard. So that was pretty cool.

This little video is called "Energy Ball". It could also be called "Kids+Sugar+Cabin Fever=", but in reality, they are having a great time. Daniel, Rachel and their cousin Leo decided to literally bounce off the furniture at the cabin we rented for Christmas. After hanging out with Leo and Jacob for a couple of days, Daniel developed an accent that is EXACTLY like what you can hear Leo say in this video, but sadly I don't have any video evidence of this.

Some random updates that didn't fit elsewhere

Friends

When you don't write an update for - um - nearly 4 months, then stories just build up. And then it's this overwhelming task to post, which causes further procrastination, etc. A bad cycle. And, with some of the former audience having moved to Colorado (yes, I'm talking about you, Grandma Babe), some of the pressure is off to provide updates. That said - we have this nice, almost 5-year-long diary of the kids growing up that I'm sure we'll look back on as a fond memory - so no more excuses.

Both of the kids have been taking swim lessons through the fall and again here in 2010. Daniel is working on technique and endurance, and Rachel is zooming up through the skills of floating on her back, blowing bubbles, kicking, etc. Her teacher loves her for her enthusiasm, and she's doing great. On the last lesson of the year, though - she must have swallowed a bit of water, so she complained that her "tummy hurts". When the instructor failed to take the warning seriously, Rachel had the most impressive projectile vomiting all over the pool. That shut down the pool for the day, so everyone else's lessons were cancelled. (Rachel was fine, it was just water)

We've had colds throughout December, and here in January, Rachel got RSV, so she was sounding like a harbor seal. Still everyone was in pretty good shape for Norway. Knowing that bad things can happen if Daniel gets a fever, we fought to get him vaccinated against H1N1 early, and that involved standing in line at a public vaccination for a while. He took it in stride. Rachel got hers a few days later at a similar event, and by December even the adults could get it. So no little piggies in our house.

Daniel is still a couple of inches taller than Rachel, but due to differences in their builds, they are within 0.5lbs of eachother in weight - and I won't be surprised if she laps her brother soon. They're frequently thought to be twins - though that impression doesn't last past Daniel opening his mouth. They have gotten a lot better about playing together - it's no longer Daniel dictating the game and Rachel just following, and he's adapted (sometimes) the idea that she has opinions too.

From preschool, Daniel has developed love for all things Star Wars - even though he's not allowed to watch it yet -> so he has these odd associations that he's pulled together from talking to his friends. He's constantly trying to validate his assumptions: "Can Jedi's die?", "Is Chewbacca a Jedi?" and "Carson says that there is a mom-Vader". After spending time in Norway with his cousins, he has a whole new lexicon to work with "Republic Battleship" is a favorite.

Leading up to Christmas, there were a whole series of activities related to the season. We went on a date with the Finch family and kids to see the Parade of Lights downtown, and while it probably made some impression, the cold temperatures made more of an impression. Then there was a Christmas party for our local city, which was popular - they got to decorate cookies and sit on Santa's lap (speaking of which - I'm not sure I've seen those photos yet).

Daniel is making some steps towards reading on his own - he can recognize short words, and sometimes sound out longer words, but he still prefers to have books read to him. His memory is so good that if you read a book to him once, he can "read" it back to you, so it's a little hard to tell when he's actually reading independently or just pulling things back from memory.

Rachel is about turn 3. She alternates between wanting to be a "Little gurl" and a "BIG Gurl!". She's really quite mature for her age - as I suppose most second children have to be to survive. It's worth remembering that at this age, Daniel still used a pacifier (Rachel never did), and her counting/sequencing skills are ahead of where his were at the same age - it helps to have an older brother! (that's my line and I'm sticking to it, Aunt Sara).

OK, no pictures makes for a boring post. Have a great weekend everyone. I hope to be back with more updates on a more regular basis than in 2009.

Love,

ADRE.

Most Excellent Milestone!

We hope to get a Christmas posting up soon, but I just had to report on this morning's 'first'. Daniel fixed breakfast for Rachel and himself with NO help! They got out the cereal, Daniel got two yogurts from the fridge, asked Rachel which she wanted, poured Rachel's cereal, opened both yogurt containers, got spoons, then poured his own cereal. He didn't even spill! We witnessed it undetected from the laundry room. It was a GREAT moment!