Visit to a fire station

Otso's 17th Month

Summary
The biggest jump this month for Otso has been his transition from a kid who knows how to walk to a kid who walks everywhere. It means that he has a more active playground life at barnehage, and that we have to watch him closely in parking lots so he doesn't walk off. 

Events
22.2 vitenfabrikken with Gemma, Diego, and Filippo
23.2 first Norwegian word at barnehage "ferdig"
28.2 kimmo's birthday party
1.3 thea's farewell playdate
8.3 diego and gemma came over to play
14.3 day trip to Lindøy with Gemma and family, and Christophe/Joëlle/Clémence
15.3 Sørmarka forest with Gemma and family

Development
21.2 he learned how to high five, and was walking around the living room with 2 hands up to give high fives.
25.2 casually walking around the living room - now it seems he is really a walker.
3.2 when i arrived at afternoon pickup, he was happily walking around the playground with the help of a Brio wagon. and Lumi was helping him turn.
5.3 otso took his plate from the table and put it in the right slot in the dishwasher. :)

Language

Words: something like "ma" for "more", äiti, isä, nei ("no" in norwegian), "atta" for otso, ferdig ("all done" in norwegian), vann ("water" in norwegian), mall ("ball")

23.2 first Norwegian word at barnehage "ferdig"
25.2 said something like "atta" in reference to himself.
5.3 said "vann" for his water bottle

Social
He is getting more social at barnehage. He likes to watch the other kids and also now he plays a bit with them.

Toys/Games
He likes: balls, cars, the walker toy, building blocks, containers to fill and dump, chasing and being chased
He doesn't like: books, diaper changes, sitting on the potty
He loves to throw any and all balls, but his favorites are the hard plastic balls from the helicopter toy. This is dangerous and he has managed to hurt all of us at one time or another.
5.3 otso was home sick so we let him play with the box full of beans for pouring and sorting. he really liked it.
In the final part of the month we are seeing some interest in books. He won't stay to listen very long but he will pick one from the bookshelf and bring it over and then pay attention for a couple pages.

Eating
favorite foods: raisins, polar bread, cheese, lunch meat (salami and turkey so far), yogurt
Nursing is down to 2 or 3 times per day. There doesn't seem to be much milk in the evening.
He has recently tried and loved olives. He is often suspicious of new foods but we can usually coax him into trying something after a bit.
14.3 instead of the yogurt every night for a bedtime snack, we started varying it. This evening he was so upset that we weren't offering yogurt, he came to the offered spoon (of porridge, something he normally eats) and looking at it, then crying and marching away all the way to the living room. Then he came back. He repeated this look-cry-walk-return cycle about 7 times.

19.3 he skipped the morning nursing and went straight to breakfast. could this be the beginning of weaning?

Sleeping
otso hates when we change his clothes, but now we have a little ritual to change into the pajamas: we get him naked and then he walks around the living room, laughing like a maniac, while isä and äiti "chase" him to put on his diaper and pajama top and pants.
He still wakes up early. If it is after 5:00, äiti goes in and sleeps with him in the guest bed until the alarm goes at 5:45 (I am gradually shifting this to 6:00). He snuggles and often falls back asleep. Or cries that whole time. But if he sleeps, he likes to put at least one hand between skin and shirt and burrow, so a lot of that time is hard to äiti to sleep because there is a little hand digging around under her shirt.
Another fun game he plays before 6:00 is to lift äiti's shirt and put his mouth against my belly and then giggle.

Toward the end of the month he has had some great nights. We have had nights where:

 - he is happily playing in his crib and then puts himself to sleep when he is ready (whereas we normally have to stand there until he is asleep)

 - we end up waking him up for breakfast at 7:00 (instead of him waking others at 5:30)

 - we put him to bed and don't hear from him until morning (instead of several wake ups during the night when he needs a sip of water and some soothing)

Health
24-27.2 fighting a small cold. he is coughing a lot and has a bit of snot.
4.3 was odd at barnehage and feverish in the evening
5.3 he seemed chipper in the morning but still not eating, so we kept him home from barnehage

Stats
Clothes: size 86 (18 months) and 92

Teeth: 8 
Weight: 10.96 kg on 19.1
Length: 80 cm on 19.1

Random
8.3 twice he indicated with pointing that his diaper was wet and needed to be changed.

Spring

It's so nice to have sun again.

Lumi: 4 Years and 1 Month

Summary
Lumi is charming and clever. She seems happier these days, but maybe we all are because it's clear that spring is on the way and we have much more daylight.

Events
3.2 barnehage birthday celebration (one teacher and one other kid have the same birthday!)
6.2 first bike ride outside
6.2 package from grandpa and mama dollie arrived -- lots of birthday presents!
7.2 lumi rode her bike to the grocery store and back
8.2 walk 'n' waffle in the morning with Amy, Hattie, and their families. 
8.2 Clémence's birthday party
12.2 at gymnastics, isä was the helper
13.2 Karneval at barnehage - Lumi wore the Elsa dress and wore lipstick for the first time
15.2 playing at 3 swords beach with gemma & family
22.2 vitenfabrikken with Gemma, Diego and Filippo

27.2 stayed home sick

28.2 ice skating with suomikoulu

28.2 kimmo's birthday party

1.3 thea's farewell playdate

Language
All 3 languages seem to be in good shape.

At barnehage, she chats with the other parents in Norwegian.

Learning
16.2 first discussion of women's monthly cycles

24.2 she proudly told us that after a poo, she wiped her own butt at barnehage

Social
8.2 during clémence's birthday party we were impressed when we saw her stick up for her little brother. otso had been playing with a toy xylophone and another kid (who is a few months older and much bigger than otso) grabbed a mallet. otso cried and tried to hang on to it, but eventually the bigger kid got it away from him. then lumi (who was sitting nearby) said firmly "that is otso's!" and ripped it out of the kid's hand, and gave it back to otso. and then it got a bit weirder, because she growled at the kid. but i was very proud nonetheless!

24.2 more protective behavior toward otso: otso hates the potty. today kimmo was holding him on the potty for about a minute and otso was crying, and then lumi leapt up and ran over to them and starting pushing kimmo's hands away from otso. 

3.2 when i arrived at afternoon pickup, otso was happily walking around the playground with a Brio wagon. and Lumi was helping him turn.

she says that Lily and Chloe from barnehage are her best friends.

Toys, Games, what have you
She loves the new bicycle.

She really likes her dolls. She isn't so interested in taking care of them or dressing them up; mainly she likes to have characters to act out scenarios. It feels a bit ridiculous that we have these Lego sets and for a week all she wanted to play with were the little people.

8.2 update on the legos: kimmo and i are impressed how much she can do by herself now. the lego kits come with the step-by-step instruction books to build the thing from the cover. and at first she insisted on having a lot of help. we got her a kit for her birthday that has a truck and a helicopter and some other stuff, and she wanted some help for the beginning of the truck but then did the bulk of it by herself. with each step she looks to see how many of each piece she needs, then she fits them on. our neighbors pointed out that maybe she is ready to put together some IKEA furniture by herself now. :)

We got a kids game for Christmas (Halli Klack) and she likes that, and our neighbors have some kids board games and she enjoys playing. She got another game for her birthday.

She likes to watch episodes of children's shows that we rent from the library. Current favorites are Maya the Bee and Franklin and Friends.  She watches in Finnish (although the language of choice for the movies is English). 

on 28.2, the suomikoulu group went ice skating. we haven't skated since the outing in Helsinki with vaari, where she clung to the "helper" thing. this time she wanted to skate around without the penguin helper. she was quite slow, but we were impressed that she was on her own. hopefully next time she will be even more confident.

We got a bunch of used books last month and have been working through them. We are almost through with her second chapter book (both from the My Naughty Little Puppy series by Holly Webb). I don't think she is very interested in the story and neither am I. But there are pictures every other page and I think it's just enough to keep her interested. And I'm glad because it's giving her practice at listening to longer stories. She really likes some of the finnish audio Miina and Manu books we have, and I think that is helping her auditory skills too. I am hoping to get some English audio picture books next month in the US for her to try.

27.2 first game of Go Fish.

Food
She seems to be eating less lately. We had been having a good run, but now her appetite is next to nothing. She almost always completely skips dinner, and then has two bowls of yogurt before bed.

Health
She seems pretty adjusted to this no-nap schedule now, though sometimes she will take a nap on the weekend if we are out and about with the stroller or the car and she falls asleep there. She has been fairly resistant to colds, thank goodness. She gets sniffly and so on but it hasn't been too bad.
15.2 we had to treat her cradle cap again
15.2 she had a shower instead of a bath

26.2 came home from gymnastics seeming really tired and complained of being cold. she had a fever and woke up shaking at 22:00. we gave her some ibuprofen and she slept the rest of the night

27.2 no morning fever but we kept her home anyway to rest

Stats
size: 104 (4T) in most clothes, 27 shoe
height: 101 cm
weight: 14.8 kg on 21.12

Random
19.2 äiti and lumi both wore the same style of ponytail (high on the head) and matching barrettes. it's the kind of thing you dream about when the ultrasound shows you are having a girl.

21.2 lumi let me put her hair in 2 French braids