Lumi's 31st Month

The big news for the month was that we moved to Stavanger, Norway. Lumi is still getting settled in the new environment, and she definitely misses the Villa Luna team in Prague, but she seems very happy to have daily contact with Kimmo, and to explore. The Villa Luna team gave her a beautiful photo album of her time there, in addition to a Czech songbook and Czech-English word book.

Events
11.8 - Zlute Lazne with Pedro
15.8 - last day at Villa Luna with Kathy, her first caregiver.
23.8 - last day at Villa Luna!

23-25.8 - spent the weekend at Pedro's apartment -- lots of fun.

25.8 - flew to Stavanger, Norway and moved in to new apartment

Food
Lumi's appetite seems to have increased recently, which is great. we're being quite relaxed about her eating at actual meal times and giving her lots of snacks, which we will probably pay for down the road. It seems we're getting dependent on the 'rohlik', which is a very cheap (less than 10 cents) small soft baguette, and they are available in big bins at pretty much all grocery stores. People in the Czech Republic seem to use them to keep kids calm while grocery shopping (it works really well -- instead of a fussy hungry kid who is picking up random things and driving you and everyone else crazy, you get a kid quietly looking around while s/he chews on the bread, and because it's so cheap you don't think twice about it), and Lumi loves them. Even though we would prefer it if she ate fewer bread products, we can't deny the ease of this practice. She bought her own with "her" money on 15.8.

Language
Finland was great for language acquisition, and her speaking at home seems more balanced now between Finnish and English. She also is quite consistent with code-switching at Villa Luna -- she only speaks Czech to Mirka and English to Kathy. She has learned the words "English" and "Finnish", at least in English, which helps when distinguishing among books.

The nanny here in Stavanger has tried speaking to her in Norwegian, and I'm curious to see how much she will pick up.

Learning
Counting is coming easier, and she is generally more savvy by the day. She actually laughed at a Peppa Pig cartoon when something funny happened, which was interesting to see.

Behavior
After the storm incident (see below), Lumi has been afraid of wind. Sometimes this means just the sound, but also for example when we're leaving daycare and she looks out the window and sees trees blowing in a strong breeze, she gets a bit scared and wants to be carried.
She is really going to miss her caretakers at Villa Luna. Today (14.8) when we arrived, another little boy about 1 year old had just arrived and was getting his morning hug from Mirka. Lumi got really close to Mirka and stood there glaring until Mirka passed him off to Jirina and then Lumi got her hug and then she smiled and happily said goodbye to me. 

Obviously it has been a stressful time with the move, and we have seen the resultant behavior: Lumi is really disagreeable with lots of sudden tantrums. We hope this dies down when we get a routine in Norway!

Toys/Books/Games
We got a bunch of Finnish books from our colleague Marja, and Lumi is enjoying all the cow stories. She is quite focused on Legos these days and loves building towers with Isä. The packing means that her toys are shifting around, but she doesn't seem to mind.

She also loves taking care of her stuffed animals and frequently insists that one or several of them are crying and need to be comforted.

Health
Since in Prague we had multiple doors to the balcony, if we had 2 doors open at once it creates a wind tunnel in the apartment. On 4.8 there was a really sudden thunderstorm that came just when we arrived home from grocery shopping. We had had laundry on the balcony drying in the sun and kimmo went to get it while angela put the groceries away and angela thought she heard him yelling to open the other door, and opened it, and then a very strong wind came through our apartment. it lifted up rugs and slammed doors and lumi's foot was caught in one door. The wind was so strong that Angela couldn't even close the balcony door for maybe 30 seconds even though she was pushing it with all her might and trying to lock it, and lumi was screaming because she was still stuck in the door. Eventually (it felt like 15 minutes, but maybe was 15 seconds or so) there was a break in the wind and Angela got the door closed and Kimmo also came in and we were able to get Lumi out. She lost part of a toenail and one of her other toenails on the same foot was purple (and has subsequently fallen off) and all the toes swelled up, but she was able to walk after an hour or so and wiggle her toes, so we didn't go to the hospital. A day later she was cheerful about it, but liked to tell the story.
10.8 we got special kids toothpaste for lumi to use. She is thrilled and loves to use it. She hasn't mastered spitting it out yet, though, and that leads to constant stress because we don't want her swallowing the flouride.

Her dependency on the pacifier is getting worse, not better. She cries every morning and after every nap when we ask her to spit it out.

Stats
clothes: 2T in US, 92 or 98 in European
height - 88 cm
weight - 12 kg
naps - one at midday, and has actually lengthened to 2+ (or sometimes 3!) hours after the move to Norway.

Random Funny Stuff
She mixed up "salami" with "sam-i-am" from "green eggs and ham", so she told me she ate "sam-i-am" for dinner.