Otso's 18th Month

Summary
Otso learned a lot of new words this month, especially in English (which makes sense since we were in the US for 2 weeks).

Events
21.3 playdate with gemma and diego
24.3 easter breakfast at barnehage
27.3 flight to US. He had a couple long stretches of crying, but did manage to nap for a bit.
28.3 drive south to St. George (week at a beach house with Grandma and Uncle Troy and family)
31.3 new tooth! Left upper first molar
4.4 drive to the villages
11-12.4 flights home to Stavanger

17.4-21.4 Tantie Nikki, Uncle Dave, and Nova visit

Development

He is all about talking and running around and throwing things.

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), "the ball" (it first sounded like " mall", beans, hot dog, " little ball ", duck, grandpa
7.4 rode around in the grocery store shouting " Grandpa! "
He seems to understand more each day, and speaks more, too. It's great to see how understanding and being understood eases his and our frustration. When he doesn't get what he wants or he can't say it, he hits.
He consistently says something like "de batz" for water bottle or cup. The word/language he is trying to use is still a mystery.
He consistently says something like "baa baa" for nursing.

Social
22.3 saw his reflection in the mirror and started smiling and waving
He is enjoying his cousins in the US. Samari plays with him and pretends to chase him, which he loves. Sophia lets him hit her in the face.
9.4 really bonded with Grandpa today

Toys/Games
He likes: the box of beans, throwing socks or small cloths, balls
He doesn't like: potty, diaper changes, swimming
He likes the sand okay but with an erratic sleep schedule he always seemed to be napping when it was beach time, so it didn't seem like a great thing. The couple of times he was wide awake, he seemed to love jumping in the waves.

Eating
favorite foods: anything he can chew. he still has only 8 teeth and that seems to limit him the most. he loves raisins, yogurt,   . he still won't drink anything but mother's milk and water.
20.3 both kids finally tried oven-roasted beets and loved them.
22.3 otso ate a lot today. it seemed non stop.
While traveling, we had more trouble than usual getting him to eat. We eventually bought a bunch of savory puree pouches.

Sleeping
bedtime is 7:00, wake up at 6:30. he sometimes has night wakeups but often can be soothed with a big drink of water.

He took 3 days to adjust to the time zone on the US trip.

12.4 we moved the crib into Lumi's room for them to share.
13.4 we moved the crib to isä and äiti's room because the crying was too much (they are both still jet lagged). we plan to move it back after our friends visit.
15.4 slept in crib most of the night

The jet lag in Norway took about a week to re-align. It was a hard week for us.

Health
3.4 woke up sniffly and coughing.

Stats
Clothes: size 86 (18 months) and 92

Teeth: 9 (left upper first molar on 31.3)
Weight: 10.96 kg on 19.1
Length: 80 cm on 19.1

Random
24.3 today was the barnehage's Easter Breakfast, where they invite the parents for something to eat. otso and i came to lumi's class for the party. lumi's class had built a diarama out of sand, complete with crosses and little cardboard disciples and a hole for the tomb with a rock that rolled away from the door. it was pretty clever and must have been a fun art project.  it was maybe 60 seconds from when i released otso to play that i saw victoria and lumi running over to ellen karin and i heard them saying something about "utsu" and then i found otso digging in the sand with a disciple in each hand.

27.3 he had a rough time on the planes. I wish we had brought more than one savory baby food pouch. He seemed hungry. He had a hard time sleeping and cried for long bouts of time. After nursing again and again, äiti refused and everyone just had to deal with it.

He did pretty well on the flights home but he did cry a lot.

Lumi: 4 Years and 2 Months

a bit delayed this month, but here we go:

Summary
Lumi had a great month. We have been more social with friends in Stavanger, and then at the end of the month there was the trip to the US.

Events

6.3 kimmo traveling
8.3 diego and gemma came over to play
12.3 kimmo traveling
14.3 day trip to Lindøy with Gemma and family, and Christophe/Joëlle/Clémence
15.3 Sørmarka forest with Gemma and family
21.3 suomikoulu
21.3 playdate with gemma and diego
23.3 4-year check up at health station
24.3 easter breakfast at barnehage, kimmo traveling

27.3 flights to US. She was fussy when she got tired but couldn't sleep immediately
28.3 drive south to St. George (week at a beach house with Grandma and Uncle Troy and family)
30.3 photo session
4.3 climbed the St. George light house

Language
15.3 i heard her at home playing by herself but speaking Norwegian.

she likes to speak norwegian to otso and will pronounce his name "utsu" like the norwegians.

23.3 part of the 4-year checkup is a language/mental development test. There nurse asked about barnehage and asked her name, age, and some other basic stuff. And then she had a picture and they discussed what was happening in the picture. They talked through colors and prepositions and counted and discussed feelings and favorite movie (Frozen, natch). And Lumi did it all in Norwegian. I was holding her on my lap and getting all teary-eyed because I was so impressed and so proud of her. I remember the beginning of barnehage in August and September and how frustrated she was to be in this environment when she couldn't understand the language and now here she was just chatting away with the nurse in Norwegian. The nurse told me that her Norwegian is great, with no problems.

Social
She enjoys other kids and can be quite kind.

Lumi is loving her cousins. She is weirdly stand offish with Grandma except for story time.

Toys, Games, what have you
8.3 she saw "pippi långstrump" in swedish and really enjoyed it. on sunday we put her hair in braids and she danced around, pretending she was pippi. kimmo was assigned the role of policeman, otso was the monkey mr. nilsson. as for äiti, she was told "you can be my mommy who is dead."

She does a lot of role play and likes to assign roles to people. A current favorite is that she is the baby bear and then Isä is the isä bear and äiti is the mommy bear and otso is also a baby bear. We don't have to do much other than agree to be whatever she assigns.
Thanks to a couple of movies with orphan characters there have been a few times when äiti has been assigned with these words: "you can be the mommy but you are dead."

In St. George she loved to swim in the pool with Samari's floaties. She enjoyed 'dancing' in the waves, and building sand castles.

Food
She isn't eating much these days and we are changing tactics. Now we are going to try the rule that she has to try a bite. Also we are varying the bedtime snack from only yogurt to try some other things. On 14.3 we did oatmeal and she ate 2.5 bowls full.

20.3 both kids finally tried oven-roasted beets and loved them. 

She barely tried anything new while we were in St. George.

Health
23.3: 4 year check up at health station. she had an eye test, and measured height and weight. we shared vaccination information (a bit tricky because this is now her 3rd country and the vaccination schedules differ). And then there is a mental development test (see above in the Language section). Lumi's writing skills were also tested. She was able to draw an x, a circle, and write her name (which the nurse seemed surprised about). The only part of the test that was difficult was when the nurse asked Lumi to draw herself. It turns out that Lumi thought it meant to trace the outline of a person just like we did a few weeks ago at home on the big paper. So she was trying to figure out how the hell she was going to lie down and draw herself. But just like she does with us at home when she doesn't know the answer, Lumi just sort of stopped. She wouldn't speak or respond to me or the nurse. The nurse kept prompting like "you can draw anyone. just a face? maybe you want to draw this bear?" and finally the bear triggered it. She put the bear on the paper and started to trace him and that is when I figured out what the confusion was about. And then after she was done tracing the nurse asked her to draw the eyes, nose, etc and it went fine.

She got sunburnt in St. George, plus fell on the stairs and gave herself a black left eye. Plus had what looked like an allergic reaction to something on her right cheek. So she looked like hell that week.

Stats
size: 104 (4T) in most clothes (though some 4T shorts slide off her hips), 27 shoe
height: 102 cm on 23.3
weight: 15.1 kg on 23.3

Random
8.3 it was a rainy morning and lumi told me "äiti, you're not ever going to go on a jog."

9.3 about a nearly full moon: "it's like a ball who flies in the night!"

20.3 Looking at a big pile of beans:
aiti: how many do you think there are? 200? 1000?
lumi: maybe 28! or twenty-twelve!

she quite likes wearing her hair in braids now à la Pippi.

she has now taken to sleeping in our bed during the night before kimmo travels, so that she is sure to get a goodbye. on 24.3 she hugged him and said over and over "tule takaisin!" (translation: "come back!") then she pointed out that if äiti traveled too then she couldn't go to barnehage.

28.3 "grandma it's much better to be with you than to be in barnehage."