Spontaneous afternoon

Today I picked up the troops from barnehage a bit early (~3:45pm) and felt brave enough to take them both shopping on my own (Rhodri was away on business for the past couple of days). It turned out to be a grand success -- the most enjoyable outing with them I have EVER had, and that's saying a lot! We had to go buy some birthday presents for our friends so we even drove the extra mile to go to my favorite toy shop in Sandvika (Sandvika Storsenter is ~10 minutes drive away). We managed to get out of the toy shop without breaking anything and without any whining or asking for Mama to buy anything! Huge success already!

The Storsenter has 3 levels and an open area in the middle on the ground floor with a cafe and a water fountain. Quite pleasant. This afternoon there was a man playing the piano in this area, so I decided to go sit at a proper table, order some food and attempt to eat out in public. (We have not attempted this in a long time, mostly since it is so expensive to eat out in Norway.) By the time we were finished with our meal, Rhiannon was cozily stretched out sideways in her armchair, wearing her denim dress with a white thermal top underneath, pink flowery tights and lime green wellies, gnawing on a calzone crust and saying hi to whoever walked past us. What a little Minx she is! Then she decided that she wanted to dance, so she got up and went over by the piano and started dancing. Not crazy dancing, just a little bit self-conscious but still swaying and wiggling her rompe (pronounced "roompeh", meaning bum/bottom). Needless to say, this sort of public happy spurt of spontaneity isn't really done here in Norway unless it is ~2am and the adult who does so is extremely intoxicated. All the people who were taking the stairs or escalator down towards the ground floor were watching Rhiannon and smiling. The pianist was overjoyed - we totally made his day, he said - and he came over to chat with us for a bit afterwards. It turns out he is Italian/ Romanian and has lived here 20 years but is quite disenchanted with how un-exuberant most Norwegians are. Anyway, we stayed there later than I planned to because the kids were about 45 minutes late for bed, but it felt really great to have a spontaneous afternoon like this.