2nd Birthday Party

Felix had ball at his birthday party today: he loved the attention, the friends, the presents, the jelly, the vegetarian hotdogs (he ate three!) and the cake.

The photographer in the house is complaining about the quality of these images (as you can see he’s in the photos not taking them), but I reckon we had so much else to do that it’s an achievement to have any sort of a record. Our house was full to capacity – five of Felix’s friends came (not counting the baby who slept in her carseat the entire time), and 8 of their parents – German, Swiss, South African, Irish and Norwegian – and everyone had a nice time. Then everyone went home and we all had a nap, which was nice too.

 

Two

My gorgeous boy is two years old today. I do not know why I am quite so proud. I am terribly proud. I am proud to bursting. I want to tell everyone – look, my beautiful boy, he’s two!

When I picked him up from the barnehage yesterday, there was a valentine’s card he’d helped to make for me waiting in his spot. ‘Did you make that for Mummy?’ ‘Yeah!’ ‘Thank you, it’s so pretty!’ ‘Pretty for Mummy on the train.’ As it happens I will be on the train to Oslo on Valentine’s day. I think I’ll take it with me.

Yesterday another mother was picking up her boy, hugging him and squeezing his cheeks. ‘Is he not the cutest boy you ever have seen’, she said to me, with uncharacteristic expressiveness. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘apart from my own.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but have you looked at him closely?’

We had a lovely day – a bun in our favourite cafe, a play in the park and the library with some little friends, before picking up a parcel from my Mum at the postoffice on the way home. Felix loved his miniature kettle and whisk. In the afternoon we went out to order a cake for his birthday party (Michael is away all week, and time is of the essence), and Felix begged me to stop at McDonalds on the way back (you walk past it to get back to the car). As it was his birthday, I thought, why not, so he capped off the day with his very first happy meal. Not exactly what I had planned but he had a wonderful time, and clutched his complementary balloon all the way home.

 

Sixteen months: brought to you by balls, bubbles, puddles

In a couple of days, my darling, you will turn sixteen months old. You amaze us every day. You make us laugh. A couple of times this week you stretched your normal 6am wakeup to 4.30 am, which we weren’t exactly thrilled about, but as you smiled at us sweetly, your father had to ask ‘could you be any cuter?’ You took your first steps over a month ago but it has only been in the past couple of days that you’ve been comfortable just walking around everywhere without having to think about it too much. I think it’s made you much more relaxed in general. Today you were running in circles around your father in the kitchen, giggling.

Your latest words are ‘shut’, and ‘keys’. You are quite frustrated when doors are shut, but at least you have a word for it now. You are pretty much obsessed by songs with actions, and there are several we watch together on youtube every day, in addition to songs that go with your boardbooks, songs you learn in barnehage, and songs we sing in the car and in the bath. Some of your favourites right now are ‘Down at the station’, ‘Insy Wincy Spider’, and a very silly one on youtube called ‘Uh-huh’ (actually you really like all the youtube clips from Super Simple Songs). You adore your books and have taken to toddling off to pick the one you want to read next and bringing it back to me. Your favourites at the moment are any with flaps to lift, and any about trains. You love pointing out animals and practicing your animal sounds.

This weekend your parents were a bit grumpy and tired, but together we turned it all around. As it was raining today and we couldn’t think of anything else to do, we went across to the big shopping centre in Sweden again. Your father bought you hundreds of balls. When you discovered them after your nap, you couldn’t believe it. ‘Ba! ba!’ you said, tottering over to them and plonking yourself in.

Later I made us a cake. I turned 33 this week and took two of these cakes to work on my birthday, but I decided we needed one all to ourselves. It turns out a family of three can demolish a sponge roll in one sitting, even if one family member is less than a meter tall. (It’s also probably time a sponge roll featured on my blog again. Our new oven is better for baking than our old one. I’m always tempted to try out variations such as chocolate and raspberries, but I will record here for posterity that you cannot beat a sponge roll with strawberries and cream.) You insisted on eating your piece with a spoon. Mermos was also impressed and snuck in through the kitchen window to lick up the cream.

Just before your bedtime, the sun finally came out, so we headed into the garden. You ran around the trampoline for a while and had a poke in the sandpit, but got frustrated trying to walk on the lawn in your gumboots so I took you over to the driveway. Oh my. We have the best puddles. The cats couldn’t quite work out why you wanted to stand in the middle of them.

I remember a card my Mum had sent me half way through my pregnancy, with a photo of a little boy toddling down a lane. And it’s hard to say exactly what I felt, except that it was somehow momentous, seeing you stamp around your very first chain of perfect puddles, and pick yourself up when you fell.

 

Five Years

This little blog turns five years old today. Five years feels a long time and a short time. Much has changed, and, strangely, much has not. When I started blogging, I split my time between England and Norway, and I was midway through a PhD. Now I live in Norway, the PhD is long finished, and there is a new little human in our lives. I have enjoyed posting these little postcards to myself and to the world.

To celebrate, over the next five days I will repost one of my favourite posts from each year of this blog. To begin:

                                                                                                           

July 2007: Parapenting

That’s paragliding. In French. We return with brown arms and peeling noses, serious leg muscles, and – almost – two paragliding licences. Eight amazing flights, but no photos. Too many other things to think about. I shall attempt a slide show in words.

Image 1, Monday: Despair

Our attempts at paragliding always involve highs and lows. In the past we’ve battled floods and weeks of unflyable conditions. This time it seemed too good to be true – Monday morning, up on the mountain bright and early, light wind, perfect conditions, arranging our lovely new wings ready for take off. And then the instructor takes a closer look. Where’s the gutesegel? Wings flown by German pilots in Germany are required to be certified by the DHV – the German hang-gliding and paragliding association. Our wings are certified by the European association, not the German one. No matter that we are in France, we live in Norway and England, and the flight school is Austrian. We cannot fly.

We sit on the back of the launch site, our shiny wings crumpled around us, our heads in our hands, as other people launch. It had been too good to be true, after all.

Eventually a very kind man who already had his licence offered to swap gliders with me. His wing was ten years old, but at least it had the right certification! And we were the same weight, which is important. I got two flights. Poor Michael carried his glider back down to the landing field. The next day the school found one he could rent from them. All was not lost…

Image 2, Tuesday: Rain

We lie in the back of the snuggle-car, and read. Rain falls on its roof and the windows, all day and all night, turning the camp ground to mud.

Image 3: The French Cat

White, brown and ginger patches, beside the red geraniums.

Image 4, Wenesday: The Climb

Despite the shuttle service, you still have to lug your 15kg glider on your back up the mountain for at least 15 minutes in the sun. That’s where the leg muscles come from.

Image 5: Take off

You can’t take a photo of this, anyway. The weight and the balance of it, as you plunge forward and the glider lifts behind you, and now is above you, and you run, and are suddenly weightless, and the wing that you carried now carries you, and the hillside disappears below, and you sit back in your harness and the air is all around: gentle, smooth, free.

Image 6: Treh

In the afternoon we go to the high mountain. There are gliders everywhere: launching, hovering, spiraling up in the thermals, crossing against the sun. Like great multicoloured birds, like a carnival.

Image 7: The Thermal Flight

Now it is my turn to launch. The wind is quite strong but I’m off with no problems, and the instructor says fly right, fly into the thermal, fly circles. Soon I am high over the launch site. I am flying up, for the first time. My first thermal. Other gliders kite around me, but I seem to be in the perfect spot, I go up and up and leave them behind. I am at cloud-base. The air beneath the cloud’s grey belly is slightly misty. It’s much colder up here, 6000 feet above the valley floor. My t-shirt is not enough. I wish I was wearing gloves. The mountains stretch below me in every direction. I can see the whole valley. I can see white clouds beside me in the sunlight. I can see the other gliders far below, distant and tiny, like tic-tacs. I hover there easily. Eventually, slightly nervous that the cloud will swallow me, I fly out towards the landing site. But I do not come down for a long time, nearly an hour, shivering with cold and with joy. The sky is reluctant to let me go.

Image 8: Wind

The next day the wind is too strong to launch, but we play about with the gliders anyway, practicing. The lovie does fine. Come, Meli, come, he says, you try too. Apprehensively I hook myself up to my glider. The wind seems to get stronger. Just hold it there for a minute, he says. But the wind is insistent and it shoots up anyway, dragging me sideways until I manage to get it up properly, controling it above me. But the sky likes me too much. Suddenly I am four metres above the ground, and I’m not coming down. The lovie stands below me, more scared than I am. When I do come down, he grabs me and pulls the lines, and we tumble over together and the glider miraculously stops. No harm done, and I got an extra little flight. Heh.

I can fly. I can fly. I can fly.

 

Happy birthday, Nanna!

This weekend my wonderful and very clever Nanna turns 89. We’ll be on the road back to Norway, so I wanted to wish her a very happy birthday now. We had such a nice time visiting her while we were in Australia, and going shopping with her, and going out for breakfast at the French Cafe, and out for lunch with Dad at the Belair Hotel. We crashed Dad’s and Nanna’s regular Thursday lunchtime date twice, and they got us to take a picture of them at their regular table. I love you so much, Nanna, and wish I could go out with you every week. xxx

 

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.

 

The week you turned one

You fed yourself porridge, spoonful by heaped spoonful.

The sun shone on our little house and we were happy inside it.

The tracks I made pulling you on a little sled around the tree stayed there all week.

You watched schnappi with your father.

You patted the cat, and chased him around the house, and squealed with glee every time you saw him. (Sorry that Mermos just looks like a black blob – it’s really hard to get a picture of him. It’s even harder to get a picture of Felix and Whitby together because every time Whitby hears Felix make a sound, he’s out of there.)

You slept in your pram.

You walked up and down our living room, clutching your new walker. You stood by yourself with your hands in the air and a grin on your face. You had your first full days in barnehage, which just about broke my heart. You really liked it until you were smitten with a nasty cold. You held up your lion blanky and whispered ‘raaa!’ You pointed to the sheep in you books and said ‘baa!’ You pointed out the doors, and exclaiming ‘door!’ everywhere you went. The image of you crawling up to a new doorway and peering around the corner is one I never want to forget. You looked very sweet in your new winter wardrobe. (And yes, that’s the green jumper I knitted. I am so pleased with it.) You woke me up many times, every night. But I adore you.

 

One Year

things don’t recur precisely, on the sacred earth: they rhyme

Les Murray, ‘The Idyll Wheel’

There was snow today, but not as much as last year. It was cold, but not as cold. The sky that filled the bare trees was pink as the sun rose and orange as it set.

This day last year, I baked brownies, I waited, I walked through the snow, I visited friends, I waited, I went to bed. I would not have long to wait.

Today, I baked an orange and blueberry cake, I made a lentil shepherds pie to eat for dinner today and tomorrow, for I return to work tomorrow, I knitted, I finished writing a paper, I walked through the snow, a friend visited me, I tucked my very nearly one year old son into bed.

Returning to Norway this past week has felt like the right thing to do. It has been strange, overlaying last year with this year. Being suddenly back here, at just this time, I feel the memories in my body. My body feels narrow and strong, because last year it was stretched and heavy. Small things bring moments back – walking along the cobbled main street, bending over to blow-dry my hair (something only a Norwegian winter can induce me to do), the warm, woody smell of our bedroom.

Things do not recur precisely. But a world with a Felix in it is a better world 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.

 

Six months

Well, my dear sweet boy, it seems tonight you have forgotten how to sleep (or, more precisely, sleep without me by your side), which means composing this post is taking longer than I had anticipated. We do however persist in lugging you all over the country, so it’s perfectly understandable if it takes you a couple of days to get back to normal. I’ve left you snoozing in my bed, which you’ve made abundantly clear is more palatable than your crib this evening. It is your half-birthday, after all.

You were weighed and measured two weeks ago, and you are a very tall and healthy guy. You were 8.4 kilos and 71cm, which puts you at the 99th percentile for height and 78th percentile for weight, and means you’ve grown on average three centimetres a month! At six months, you love water bottles, paper cups, and, most of all, plastic cups with icy drinks inside.

You also love cameras, the TV remote, and our computers. You would quite like to eat them all. You will also happily gnaw away on a stick of sweet potato or a pizza crust. You are not so keen on any form of goo.

You really are a charming little fellow, and whenever we are out and about (which is often, as you insist upon it), you are constantly scanning the environment for new people to entrance. When we were out at a pizza restaurant in Boise, the waitress was trying to tell us the specials, but you kept interrupting with your own monologue: ‘aha! aha! aha!’ You looked very pleased with yourself and had the rest of us in stitches.

Your hair is getting fairer and thicker. Your eyes are going greyish in the middle – I don’t know if they’ll end up grey-green like mine or grey-blue like you father’s. You are learning to sit up and can manage it for a couple of seconds at a time. You’ve discovered you can rest your feet on the tray on your stroller.

You are very clear about what you want, and if we suggest you might like to chew on one of your toys instead of the TV remote, for example, you are not easily convinced. You have also just worked out that if you throw something on the floor we will pick it up for you. You think this highly entertaining.

You love your baths. You especially want to eat the flannel. You look for it as soon as we get in. I do not encourage this. You love getting dried off after your baths by your father. He’s invented a game where he drops a little towel on top of your face, saying ‘where’s my baby?’ and you pull it off and you laugh at each other.

You are still a snuggly little guy. When you are tired you cling to my shoulders and bury your face in my neck.

Today we walked with you along the river, hung out with you in the coffee shop, and played with trains for the first time in the Barnes and Noble. We didn’t buy you a train yet but we bought you some farm animals to play with in the bath. We celebrated with cupcakes after you went to bed (six months is quite an achievement for us, too).

You are the sweetest and funniest person we know. You’ve changed everything. We wouldn’t have it any other way.