To the beach

Today Elin and I picked up Rhiannon and Sofie from barnehage at 1:45pm and we all went to the beach! It was packed but we found a nice spot to set up camp. The first thing that Tryfan did (after I covered his pale skin in sunscreen) was get a nice big handful of sand and eat it. Rhiannon and Sofie played in the water and under the jetty, making cakes and so forth.
Tryfan is wearing a cute swimsuit that I got him which has a picture of a crab on the bum and the claws stick out to the sides. Johanne seemed to like looking at it!
Coming over to share some cake with Tryfan and I
I don't think any of us got sunburned, but it was our first day really OUT in the sun, so we took lots of refuge in the shade. Anyway, it was a great way to spend the afternoon. We shall have to do it again sometime soon.

The Risky Biscuit

When we lived in Reno, every Saturday morning we would listen to the "Risky Biscuit Hayseed Hoot" on quite possibly the best (at least one of them) radio station ever, KTHX. I really miss those Saturday mornings of country, bluegrass, Americana, and other string-pickin' good music. And you know we don't get any of that coming out of these Norsk radio stations :-( However, I discovered recently that they finally started broadcasting via the internet. Woohoo!! So you can bet your bottom dollar that we are the house of the Risky Biscuit now as we are catching up on previous radio shows. Yeeeeeeehaaaw!

A good way to start June

We decided to take our canoe, the SS Meerkat, out for a spin this weekend. Since Rhodri and I can't take it by ourselves with the kids in tow, we invited Jamie and Solveig to come along! Today was a gorgeous day in our neck of the woods, so the fjord was very busy with boats and sunbathers. Here is the SS Meerkat (the slightly yellow speck in the middle-left of the photo) with Rhodri and Jamie in it, paddling over to the little peninsula where we would set up our picnic spot.Solveig, Rhiannon and I walked around the little bay and Tryfan was pushed in a stroller along a very stroller-unfriendly path through rocky outcrop and rooty forest. The idea was that Tryfan could sleep in the stroller, but it didn't work out that way! Here is our picnicking spot with the canoe launch site on the Konglungen peninsula in the background.
At first I was grumbling because I realized that I probably wouldn't have a chance to go in the canoe this time and I also hadn't brought any books or magazines to read. But it turned out that there was so much to see from our perch...people swimming in the fjord, water-skiers, other picnickers trying to grill hot dogs in a very windy place, sailboats darting back and forth, and of course our own party in the canoe! So Tryfan and I just hung out on the blanket and watched it all go by. Then the troops joined us for a few nibbles. Happy June!

Summertime at last

Yesterday was the first day that felt like summer. I reckon that the only thing better than the first day of summer is a 5-day forecast for more of the same! Here is the Minx when I picked her up from barnehage. Rhodri had a late meeting so Tryfan and I walked all the way from home to barnehage (uphill!) and to get her, then we all walked back down the hill a few hundred meters to pick up the car at work. Then we came home and played in the kiddie pool in our backyard. Woohoo for summer!

Pippi revelations

We have had some days (okay, this was last week now) of glorious clouds -- whites, grays and blues that move quickly across the sky and burst into hailstorms or brief intense rainstorms and then move on to leave blinding bright sunlight in their wake. I love this weather -- just barely warm enough to be called "warm" unless you are in the shade and the wind picks up, and then its not warm anymore.I have been going around whistling the theme tune from Pippi Longstocking recently. Once that song is stuck in your head, watch out! It sticks around. We have been borrowing the DVDs from the library and I have been happily transported back to memories from my youth. Indeed, some of the songs are still part of my daily life...I sing this one all the time to Rhiannon:
We're all together, we're all together
And together we'll be happy and we'll have a lot of fun!
Its a whole new experience to watch Pippi in her native tongue rather than dubbed over into English. By the way, I am referring to the 1970's TV series featuring real people, NOT any modern cartoon version. We watch the original version in Swedish with Norwegian subtitles, and I have my Norwegian dictionary close by. Many things make sense now - I remember one episode when Pippi, Tommi and Annike went camping and cooked their food over a fire that they built, then they went to bed and the sun was still shining! I remember thinking "Wow, they are only 9 years old and are allowed to play with fire?" and "Oh they are such good kids to go to bed while it is still sunny outside and no parent telling them that they had to!". It all makes sense now because children here are taught how to build and cook on outdoor fires by the age of 5 (and often earlier), and of course it doesn't get dark here in the summer until well past midnight. Pippi revelations! Now if I could just get that dang song out of my head...

Saturday morning

The proverbial "two birds with one stone"! I ground up some oats and made oatmeal for Tryfan but of course Rhiannon wants some as well.

Barsel homies

Today Tryfan and I met with our barselgruppe (a group of 7 Mamas that live in the same neighborhood and have babies that were born around the same time). Some days we go for a walk and other days we just hang out at someone's house. Here are (l to r): Astrid, Erlande, Sofia, Malin, Maximilian and Tryfan.Tryfan was by far the smiliest and also fastest crawler of the bunch
I like the idea of the barselgruppe, but its usually a frustrating experience for me because everyone talks in Norwegian (although they periodically offer to switch to English). I try desperately to follow along because I want to snakker norsk, but its hard work!

Blue Steel

Last night Tryfan started making the "Blue Steel" face. I guess he is still working on "Magnum" in secret...(apologies to those of you who haven't seen the film Zoolander!)

7 months old

Our little Tryfan is 7 months old today. His hair is starting to grow a little bit, but no teeth yet. He has an absolutely cavernous mouth and he loves food (and Mama's milk, of course). Brown rice and dried mango are his current favorite foods. Here he is gnawing on a bread roll at the wedding last weekend.
He is very ticklish on his feet, his tummy, under his arms, his legs, his chin, and his bum. Changing his clothes and diapers is often a funny experience since he is giggling throughout the episode. He is very quick to smile and laugh at people, so he is a delight to be with out in public. He has deep, thoughtful eyes and strong hands. He loves being in the bath - he lays on his back in a couple of inches of water and happily kicks his legs, making lots of splashes. Rhiannon is less of a bath-lover and she doesn't like being in at the same time as Tryfan because of this kicking and splashing. Older sister torture looks like it is starting early in this family! As for the sleeping...lately he has been inconsistent. Some nights he sleeps 9 hours at a stretch and other nights he wakes up every 3 hours. And after 10 days of crawling, he has become a very fast little Tryfs. He can cross the living room floor in less than 30 seconds if he has his eye on something. Hurrah for our little 7 month old!

A good day to not be Norwegian

Today was the worst May 17th (in terms of weather) that Norway has had in 50 years. 3 deg C/ 38 F and sleeting snow/ rain! It was a good - no, make that great - day to not be Norwegian. Soooo blissful to take turns sleeping and to not get dressed up and mobilized for parading in the cold. And somehow the fact that we could see other people suffering from our living room window made our Saturday-in-pajamas all the more enjoyable. Is that wrong? We watched the local Asker schools parade past the Crown Prince and Princess' house and then we watched part of the main "Barnatoget" (Children's Parade) in Oslo ...all on the telly. This photo is from the Aftenposten website.When our neighborhood parade went past the house at 1:30pm, Rhiannon and I hurriedly changed out of our jammies and went out to heckle. (Okay, we didn't really heckle but it was a short trip outside.)
View from our window of the neighborhood parade going past the swimming hall to the local school. Last year we joined the parade and went along but this year we just couldn't be asked.
We did, however, join our little housing estate for the annual party which started at 6pm. By this time, the snow and rain had gone and it was just cold but brilliant sunshine.
Rhiannon happily plowed into the cake and the candy, then befriended one of the older kids and played with him until a very late bedtime of 8pm.

Parading

Today was the "Syttende Mai" (17th of May) National Day celebration at barnehage, which is commemorated by parading around the neighborhood singing and waving flags, and every now and then shouting "Hurrah!". Parents and other family members are invited to come along, so Tryfan and I joined the parade. Here they are as we were lining up ready to go.Marching (and not singing along). The kids are supposed to wear nice clothes so Rhiannon is wearing a supercute dress but she wanted to wear her playsuit over it. Oh well.
Halfway through the parade route, Tryfan decided he didn't want to ride in the stroller anymore and Rhiannon decided she wanted to take his place, so they swapped. Tryfan was getting a little heavy to carry while also pushing the stroller, and I didn't have my Ergo or sling with me, so one of the teachers came to our rescue and carried him for a bit. Of course, tomorrow is the real big day. Last year we went downtown Oslo but this year we can't be asked going to all that effort! The forecast is for rain anyway, so we will lay low at home...

Houston, we have a crawler!

Here is Tryfan on his 3rd day of crawling. He figured it out on Friday morning and this was taken on Sunday at the hotel in Kristiansand.

Of course, in the background is Rhiannon shouting "Baa Baa Lille Lam" which is currently her favorite song. At the end of the song she says "Se på meg", which is Norwegian for "look at me". Just in case you were wondering...

Wedding in Kristiansand

Our friends Jamie (Scottish) and Solveig (Norwegian) were the ones getting married. They had a mercifully short ceremony, mostly in English, that was in a lovely church in the village where Solveig grew up. It was really hard work keeping the two kids quiet for the ceremony, but they did it! Tryfan chewed on my necklace while Rhiannon kept waiting for the Minister to start telling a story about horses that Rhodri told her was going to happen.
The happy couple!
Outside enjoying the sunshine at the Reception, which was at a Cultural Center / Agricultural College.
The wedding was at 2pm and the reception went on until 1am, but we didn't stay the whole time. We left around 8pm. Rhiannon was bouncing off the walls - she had befriended Solveig's father and he was giving her little candies every time she came over to visit the head table. Then she caught on and started just asking random wedding guests for candy and most of them happily obliged because she was so cute and cheeky and asked for them in Norwegian. Anyway, we all slept well this night! Here are the troops on Sunday morning. They let me sleep in while they all played on the floor in the living/ kitchen room.

Weekend in Kristiansand

This weekend we drove down to Kristiansand for our friends' wedding. Kristiansand is about 300 km south of here, and we estimated it would take ~4 hours on Friday to do the drive....Wrong! We left at 11:30am on Friday and pulled into the hotel parking lot at 7:45pm. Booo. Okay, we made a few stops along the way...we were traveling with kids after all and we were also in a convoy with our friends Ravi and Harini and their 3-month-old baby girl. First we stopped at the Drammen Spiralen, which is a spot overlooking the city of Drammen and you have to drive up a 6-spiral tunnel inside a mountain to get to it. Here is Tryfan being a good boy.And Rhiannon being her very energetic giggling self. She was climbing on and around this statue of a grouse.We finally got to Hotel Sørlandet and put the kids to bed, then Rhodri and I went downstairs for a lovely dinner in the hotel restaurant (thank heavens for baby monitors!). The next morning we let Daddy sleep a little bit while we explored the city. This photo was taken at ~6:45am at one of the small harbors in the city just 3 blocks from our hotel.
At 8am the "Lekerom" (playroom) opened! They had a huge room with a pool table, lots of tiny person couches, tables and chairs, bins of Legos and blocks, puzzles, books, a Playstation, and a room full of these balls to play in.
They also had an outside play area with this jungle gym and two tractors with trailers. Nobody else was here so we had the place to ourselves.

Soft Kitty

My Mom used to sing a song to us when we were growing up that went:
Soft kitty, warm kitty
Little ball of fur
Sleepy kitty, happy kitty
Purr purr purr
Rhodri and I have been singing this song during times when we are being very gentle and coaxing Rhiannon into doing something that she otherwise might not be so keen on doing (e.g., putting a turtleneck sweater over her head, brushing out snarls in her hair, changing a dirty diaper...). Nowadays, she reminds us if we are not singing that song at the right occasion. Yesterday I witnessed her singing Soft Kitty to Tryfan as she tried to put her sunglasses on him (over his head since they have a velcro strap that goes around the head). He wasn't too impressed!

Mister Piggy

Here is Tryfan playing with his favorite Miss Piggy doll. Rhiannon insists on calling her "Mister Piggy". Tryfan doesn't seem to care what her name is ;-)

She twigged

Yes, that's right. She twigged. She found out. The lightbulb went off. We are in real trouble now.
Rhiannon realized last night that there was nothing stopping her climbing out of bed. So we had one week of sitting outside her room telling her to lay down and sleep (rather than sitting up and taking her clothes off or singing songs to her animals) and now its just gotten a lot worse. Last night, Rhodri and I were both downstairs for a brief time and when he went back upstairs, I heard him say in Welsh "What are you doing out of bed? Get back into bed NOW!" It turns out that she had climbed out of bed and put lotion all over her face. I suppose it could have been a lot worse. At least she put lotion and not toothpaste or shaving cream.
What a skunk!

Sunday at Vollen

This morning we did something different: as soon as everybody was awake, we left the house and drove to Vollen (~5 minutes away). Rhodri peeled off and bought some pastries at the Vollen Bakeri while we walked down to one of the many beaches. It was a stunning day and we had the place to ourselves for awhile. Rhiannon was thrilled to dig and find some snails in the low tide.
From our sandy breakfast spot, we could see downtown Oslo, the Holmenkollen ski jump, several islands and dozens of boats in the fjord between Vollen and Oslo.
Here is our little beach spot from another angle. Tryfan was asleep in the stroller for the whole time we were in Vollen.
This turned out to be such a great way to start a Sunday morning, I vowed to try and do this every Sunday morning! After all, even if its not as gorgeous as today was, we can always take shelter at the Bakeri.

Saturday with Auntie Sions

On Saturday I left the rest of the gang and went into Oslo to do my own thing, so Rhodri and Sioned were alone with the kids most of the day. Here is Auntie Sioned with Tryfan.After I got home, Rhodri and Sioned took the SS Meerkat out for the first time since last autumn! They went up to Semsvannet and were the only ones out on the water on this supremely gorgeous spring afternoon. I had a lovely day in Oslo. This was the first time that I left Tryfan for several hours during the day, and that was a strange feeling (not to mention a bit painful towards the end because I was so full of milk)...but I might have to do it again sometime. Anyway, I was happy to be home with the troops in the late afternoon and was glad to give Rhodri and Sioned a chance to enjoy the day on the SS Meerkat.

Friday with Auntie Sions

Friday was not a holiday but it might as well have been because all of the schools and barnehages (daycares) were closed. Since Rhodri was working this day, Sioned and I took the troops into Asker. It was a cloudy but fresh lovely day. The troops slept in the double stroller on the way into town - we had a few raindrops along the way so we put on the rain shield.
After Sioned and I had a bit of lunch, the kids woke up and we went to the library and then played around the Asker fountain which is now filled with water for the warm season! Rhiannon managed to get her shoes wet after threatening to do so plenty of times, but it didn't seem to phase her. I was very glad that Auntie Sions was there to chase the Minx around the plaza while I sat and nursed Tryfan.Rhiannon saw a few of her buddies from barnehage at the library and outside in the plaza. She was really happy to see Tora, and so Rhiannon grabbed her hand and they ran around smiling and holding hands.
On the walk back from town, Tryfan wasn't too happy in the stroller so Sioned carried him in the sling and he was much happier