17 May

It’s that time again. The day when Norwegians get dressed up in their gorgeous bunads, watch their children march down the street waving flags, buy them an overpriced balloon, eat copious amounts of ice-cream and hotdogs, and complain about the weather.

It’s also the only day of the year when you will see this many people in the Halden town centre. Michael got some great photos back in 2009, when not only was the sun actually shining, but Norway had just won the Eurovision, so everyone was on a high.

The bunad tradition is apparently based in nineteenth-century romanticism. I’m a fan. As I had to look after the little guy, who was more interested in walking around in circles and poking his little flag into the holes in the park benches, I didn’t get a very good view of the parade. It didn’t matter, because everyone who walked past me was wearing something like this, so I had plenty to look at. Secretly I’d quite enjoy wearing a dress like this. One little girl we met was wearing a beautiful dress that her grandmother had once worn.

No photos of us, because although we learnt our lesson in previous years and did not turn up in jeans, we can’t really compete with the natives. You do feel conspicuously non-Norwegian on the 17th of May. We were invited to a party in the afternoon, and Felix ate a hotdog in lompe (a kind of potato pancake), tasted jelly for the first time, and generally had a ball playing with other kid’s toys and trying to keep up with the big kids. So despite the fact that we are all really very tired just at the moment, it was a very nice day indeed.

 

A day in the woods

Every weekend, whatever the weather, Norwegians go into the forest, make little fires and cook their lunch. Last Sunday some of our friends invited us to join them, and it was a lot of fun. Remember these photos? It was so sweet to see the little guys together again a year later.

Just how do I get to that truck?

And after reading Blue MIlk’s post about photos of the invisible mother, I just have to include this photo too. It may look like the babbies are pretty self-sufficient in the above photos, but that is an illusion!

 Our friends cooked us pancakes.

After their lunch, the little guys slept in their prams while we ate more pancakes.

After that a couple of intrepid Norwegians changed into their running gear and went for a run (did I mention it was freezing?). Felix woke up and practiced his walking. All in all, a pretty perfect day.

 

A little birthday party

Today some close friends came over and we had a little birthday party for Felix. Good friends are so precious. In this photo you can also see: Felix’s lion, which was a hand-me-down from a very lovely lady in Idaho Falls, who has a son a couple of years older than Felix (Felix adores this lion, so my cake was an attempt to approximate it); the curtains my Grandma gave us; the coffee cups and milk jug my Nanna gave us for our wedding; tulips which reminded me of the ones you can see here; a vase which was a birthday present from the barnehage; a delicious cheesecake made by my lovely Norwegian friend; a colourful bowl that my parents gave me when I moved to York; a candle holder that Michael acquired many many years ago, long before I met him; and the gorgeous cardigan that my Mum knitted for me while we were in Australia, shortly after these photos were taken. So although we are a long way away from our families, we were pretty much surrounded by love. And Felix seemed to like the cake.

The little guy had a good time playing with his birthday presents and his new friend Pearce.

In the background in this one you can see the walker that we spied in a shop in Adelaide, but Michael’s parents bought for Felix in Germany. It was a happy day. Surrounded by love, indeed.

 

More photos from Australia Day

On Australia Day we had a BBQ at my aunt’s house, which turned into an impromptu early birthday party for the babies. Here they are testing out each other’s presents.

I made some bug-cakes

Mala tried to steal Grandma’s lunch

Felix practiced his standing

and learnt how to wash the dishes.

Next time the little guys meet they will be taller, older, wiser. This next little sequence of events is too sweet not to record.

 

A most beautiful afternoon

We took Felix to Brighton beach again this afternoon, intending just to get a coffee and then have a stroll along the sand. Felix had other ideas. Mum held him while I kicked off my shoes, and she said she heard him gasp when he saw the ocean. He wriggled and wriggled, so we put him down to play on the sand. But he was off like a shot, crawling full-pelt towards the water. Mum caught up with him and stood him up in the shallows for a couple of minutes, then carried him back. He was away again immediately, ‘like one of those turtles’, as Michael put it. I ran after him, but there was no way he was standing up this time, he wanted to sit in the water!  We didn’t even have a towel with us, but we stripped of his clothes, slathered him in sunscreen, and let him go.

He had the most fabulous time. He crawled straight into the water, and even went quite deep at times, but not too deep. The little waves splashed him. He splashed them right back and clambered around and dug his hands into the sand. Then he spotted a two year old girl and crawled over to her, and they played and played, splashing and picking up shells. I chatted to her grandma. And I do not tell a lie when I say it was one of the loveliest hours of my life.

 

Happy Australia Day!

 

 

Christmas take two

The next day we did it all again with the other side of the family at my Grandma’s house.

Little Miss Mala stole the day, walking laps of the gardens with various adults in tow.

Everyone was happy to have another generation around.

The desserts were pretty good too.

Felix got thoroughly spoiled – at one point the three of us were sat together on the sofa, pretty much buried under an avalanche of presents.

Here Felix is looking about as exhausted as I was by that point,

but it was a wonderful, wonderful day.

 

Aussie babes

We met Felix’s second cousin Mala today for the first time. Caitlin and I reminisced about the days they were born, just over ten months ago, on opposite sides of the globe. I was still in hospital when I heard Mala was born; Caitlin was in the early stages of a protracted labour when she heard about Felix. We had announced our pregnancies to our families on the very same day last year, and met up in Berlin when we were both about 20 weeks. It was so sweet to finally see the little ones together.

The babes were oblivious to the significance of the occasion, but were very happy munching their vegemite toast.

 

Sleep – another perspective

“awake training” for mummies

I’m not sure who wrote this but I came across it on a parenting forum, and it’s just too funny. (So, um, if you wrote it and you want to be credited, or you don’t want me to repeat it here – let me know! Also – I love you.)

Dear Fellow Babies,

OK, here’s my situation. My Mummy has had me for almost 5 months. The first few months were great – I cried, she picked me up and fed me, anytime, around the clock. Then something happened. Over the last few weeks, she has been trying to STTN (sleep thru the night). At first, I thought it was just a phase, but it is only getting worse.

I’ve talked to other babies, and it seems like its pretty common after Mummies have had us for around 5-6 months. Here’s the thing: these Mummies don’t really need to sleep. It’s just a habit. Many of them have had some 30 years to sleep – they just don’t need it anymore. So I am implementing a plan. I call it the Crybaby Shuffle.

It goes like this:

Night 1 – cry every 3 hours until you get fed. I know, it’s hard. It’s hard to see your Mummy upset over your crying. Just keep reminding yourself, it’s for her own good.

Night 2 – cry every 2 hours until you get fed.

Night 3 – every hour.

Most Mummies will start to respond more quickly after about 3 nights. Some Mummies are more alert, and may resist the change longer. These Mummies may stand in your doorway for hours, shhhh-ing. Don’t give in. I cannot stress this enough: CONSISTENCY IS KEY!! If you let her STTN (sleep through the night), just once, she will expect it every night. I know it’s hard! But she really does not need the sleep; she is just resisting the change.. If you have an especially alert Mummy, you can stop crying for about 10 minutes, just long enough for her to go back to bed and start to fall asleep. Then cry again. It WILL eventually work. My Mummy once stayed awake for 10 hours straight, so I know she can do it.

The other night, I cried every hour. You just have to decide to stick to it and just go for it. BE CONSISTENT! I cried for any reason I could come up with:

-My sleep sack tickled my foot.
-I felt a wrinkle under the sheet.
-My mobile made a shadow on the wall.
-I burped, and it tasted like rice cereal. I hadn’t eaten rice cereal since breakfast, what’s up with that?
-The dog said “ruff”. I should know. My Mummy reminds me of this about 20 times a day. LOL.
-Once I cried just because I liked how it sounded when it echoed on the monitor in the other room.
-Too hot, too cold, just right – doesn’t matter! Keep crying!!
-I had drooled so much my sheets were damp and I didn’t like it touching me.
-I decided I was sick of all the pink in my room so I cried.

It took awhile, but it worked. She fed me at 4am. Tomorrow night, my goal is 3:30am. You need to slowly shorten the interval between feedings in order to reset your Mommies’ internal clocks.

Sometimes my Mummy will call for reinforcements by sending in Daddy. Don’t worry Daddies are not set up for not needing sleep the way Mummies are. They can only handle a few pats and shhing before they declare defeat and send in the Mummy.

Also, be wary of the sleep sheep with rain noises. I like to give Mummy false hope that listening to the rain puts me to sleep sometimes I pretend to close my eyes and be asleep and then wait until I know Mummy is settling back to sleep to spring a surprise cry attack. If she doesn’t get to me fast enough I follow up with my fake cough and gag noise that always has her running to the crib. At some point I am positive she will start to realize that she really doesn’t really need sleep.

P.S. Don’t let those rubber things fool you, no matter how long you suck on them, no milk will come out.

Trust me.

Sincerely
Bub

 

Choices

Reading Penni’s meditation on the choice to have – or not to have – children – I have been thinking about my own choices. As she points out, it’s a discussion that is somewhat fraught, because not everyone makes the same choices, and not everyone is given these choices to make, and the pain of this can be terrible.

I was never possessed with a burning desire for children but I always assumed I would have them one day. I remember realising in my early twenties that yes I did want a family of my own, but it wasn’t forthcoming at that time, so I quickly turned my focus back to other affairs, like stories about dragons, European cities, and medieval poems. As I progressed through my late twenties it remained clear to me that I wanted children at some point, and I remember discussing this with Michael, telling him that he needed to think about whether this relationship was really long term or not, because if it wasn’t, I needed to know.

My desire for children at this point was intellectual, deferred. I had never had much to do with them.

The other consideration, of course, was career. If you finish a PhD aged 30, you really need to factor in several years of post-doc work, if you’re lucky, most likely preceded by several years of patchy contract teaching, trying to write, research and publish at the same time, and if you are lucky enough to get a permanent position at the end of all this you need to be prepared to move to wherever in the world this might be on offer. Which would mean, if I did everything right and was lucky as well, I might get a permanent position in five or six years. But where would that be? And where would that leave us? I decided not to find out.

So there were a multitude of little choices. I chose to move to Norway. I chose to accept a job there that had nothing to do with my career prospects but would provide not only an income but paid parental leave. Just in case.

As I finished my PhD we both started thinking about it and wanting it more and more. Michael was very keen. And in the end it was pretty much a physical compulsion to stop taking the little pills. My body wanted babies. And my mind, and my heart, and my partner agreed. We expected it to take a while.

We got pregnant immediately. Shortly after this, it went spectacularly wrong, and we were faced with a much more difficult decision.

We conceived again quickly, but the four months between ending my first pregnancy and discovering my second were painful and strange. I hadn’t anticipated how vulnerable you suddenly become, when you decide to say yes, let’s do it, let’s see. Because it’s not really a decision to do or to make or to achieve something, it’s a decision to let life happen, to open yourselves up to transformation and change which may or may not come, and often not in the way you expect, or at the times you had planned.

And now we are a family and our lives are changed and we are changed. We are only at the very beginning, and we are feeling our way forwards. We are learning how to balance our needs and our desires with the very pressing needs and desires of our little one. Michael reckons we should have got started five years earlier. I don’t. I relished the freedom and confidence and geographical, social and intellectual exploration of my late twenties. But right now I am entranced, challenged, and utterly in love with this little being we brought into the world. (And of course still exploring the world and relationships and ideas, but in different ways.) It is a marvelous adventure.