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."