Fifteen months

Sometimes I am astonished at how quickly you change, but you are still you. You still calm down when I sing about the animals in the bus while we’re driving, exactly like you did when you were five months old. You have the same delight when you show us a new skill as you did in the beginning. You still want to nurse every couple of hours overnight, a trait that I am not quite so keen on. You learnt to walk this month, but you still prefer to crawl.

This month has been about songs. You have learnt some of the actions to the songs in the barnehage, and you love to clasp your hands and wave them about for the bumble bee song, and point your index fingers together to make a little diamond for twinkle twinkle little star. That’s my favourite one, I think, because it’s so careful and deliberate and quiet – you do it, and wait for us to notice. The other day we were driving and you pressed the button on your little elmo to make the ‘twinkle twinkle’ song, and then made the diamond with your fingers. You also do it when you hear any other music you like. It’s just adorable. You also sing little songs to yourself, and have a good go at saying ‘baby bumble bee’ – it comes out ‘baby bee’, which is pretty close.

You’re still using all the words I mentioned last month, and have added ‘switch’ (one of your favourite things), ‘cheek’, ‘toe’, and ‘hole’. I sometimes wonder about all the Norwegian whirling around in your head…It’s funny to think about how your erratically expanding vocabulary reflects your interests. We talk about toes a lot at the moment, partly when reading ‘Ten Little Fingers, Ten Little Toes’, but mostly it’s when I want to wrangle you into your pyjamas without the tears. ‘Look’, I say, ‘I wonder if the toes are going to come out the end this time. No, there are no toes there, I can’t see any toes, I don’t think it’s going to work this time. Oh… there they are!’ You laugh and laugh.

You love the bath and never want to get out. One night I let you stay in for ages and ages, and I could tell you were tired of it. ‘Do you want to get out now?’ ‘No!’ ‘Well, do you want to stay in?’ You looked very confused.

You dramatically say ‘fffff’ and hold out your hand as to say ‘stop’, to mean something is hot. You do this to the oven, to lights, to food in bowls. You are very earnest about this and seem quite pleased with yourself. You’re excited when you get to eat hot food. Just the past few days you’ve decided that you are interested in eating a variety of food after all and the anticipation when you’re about to tuck into dinner with your spoon is just priceless. The other week when we were having a picnic in the garden, Whitby came up and tried to eat our falafels. You looked straight at him with great concern and warned: ‘ffff! ffff!’

Whitby is your best friend. It is just delightful to see the two of you together, patting and head-butting each other. I am so grateful we have a cat like that for you to hang out with. He’s very selective and is afraid of strangers, especially other children, but he adores you and always comes to visit if you’re in the sandbox. You look out for him too and tell me if you see him outside, waiting to come in.

 

Moments

Tonight I am loving these long spring evenings. It is 9.15, and I have just made it up to my desk after tidying up a bit downstairs. The sun has set but it is still light. The sky lazily changes its pastel hues. The huge tree in our garden towers above me, bristling with new green needles. The magpies have fortified their nest near the top. If I stand up I can look down and see the swing hanging from its lowest branch, the sandbox, the white garden chair. This gives me a bit of a thrill. It is still a novelty, this new little family, this home.

Living with a small child intensifies your experience of time. In case you haven’t noticed (hah), I am prone to nostalgia and have an insatiable need for reflection – to stand back, to stand still, to breathe, to write, to record. But my small child makes my desire to reflect even stronger (while at the same time dramatically reducing the time available to do so). Right now, this is who we are: there are three of us, and one of us is one year and two months old. Next year, next month, this will be different. It is strange to look at older children and realize they were once tiny bumblers like our own.

The days and nights tumble into each other. Last night the boy kept us awake for hours, and when we had to get up at seven on a Saturday morning, it was with great reluctance. Felix is still not well and is high-maintenance – going quickly from cheeky laughter to tears and back again. He crawls away and then cries for me to come to him. He needs to sit on my lap. He is hungry but won’t eat that. He wants a sip of water but only one. In the back of the car, he does all his tricks for us: clasps his hands, claps them, makes a pointy diamond with his index fingers, laughs like crazy. Then complains.

After I put him to bed we flop onto the sofas. ‘It was a good day, all in all’, says Michael, and it was. We were together. A hundred tiny moments made it a good day. And something in me strains to catch them all, to pin them down, to somehow keep this day, this boy, this feeling. The light has mostly gone now from the sky and the tree is dark. I am here now and that is enough. But it doesn’t stop me trying.

 

Wednesday

I was going to write a post entitled ‘slog’, and it was going to be about how hard we have been working. Clearing out the spare room in the evenings once Felix has gone to sleep (after we have worked all day) has been tough. There is still more to do, but we have cleared out enough now to get him in there. And then of course the poor fellow starts teething again, so settling him into the new sleeping arrangements has been more difficult than it otherwise would have been, and we are still not getting nearly enough sleep. So we are tired. But I have changed my day off from Friday to Wednesday, and that is better, much better. This afternoon the sun shone and Felix and I had a picnic on the lawn.

Lying for half an hour in the sun with my favourite boy and my favourite creatures was more than enough to restore my spirits.

Also I’m very proud of myself because I knitted the little vest Felix is wearing, all on my own. The pattern is here. I started it a few weeks back, when I had my ear infection, at which point I knitted all night because I was in too much pain to sleep. It took me a while because I had to undo bits when I did them wrong – if I do another one I’ll be much faster. But isn’t it great! I’ll try to show you some pictures sans bib another time.

Felix chased the cats around for a bit, bounced on the trampoline with me, then made some calls. It was a very nice afternoon indeed.

 

Thirteen months

Well, it’s been a challenging month for all of us, little guy, but you seem to have come through it with your cheeky grin intact. You’ve made great friends with the kitties. Whitby, who was very suspicious of you to begin with, has nominated himself as your special friend, and often comes up for snuggles. For a while there you were being very sweet indeed and saying nawwwwwww as you buried your head in their fur. Now you are a little more confident however, your displays of affection are more animated, and I am not sure how long the cats will put up with you.

The weather has been unseasonably nice for this time of year, and we are spending more and more time outside. You were pretty impressed with the trampoline.

You like zooming around on your walker. You love cars now – both toy and real varieties. In the playground the other day, you pointed at a car going past, and said ‘brrrmm!’ You’ve started holding telephones up to your ear. You love chatting with my parents on skype – you are so excited when I start the call that you clap your hands with anticipation. It is very sweet to see.

You eat grapes, strawberries, bananas, porridge, pasta with tomato sauce, bread with mackerel paste, plenty of breast-milk, and not much else. Sleep at night is still a challenge, and I have been working so hard to clear out the spare room so we can move you in there. Hopefully this weekend. Just today I noticed a new tooth coming through – your seventh, and your first for nearly four months. I was so relieved to see it because I had no idea why you had been screaming for hours.

As far as I’m concerned, you are pretty much the loveliest thing in the whole world.

 

Deep breath

Sunday afternoon with friends and scones.

A little boy who has learnt to head-butt the kitties with great affection.

A knitting project slowly materializing.

Soft warm black cat, purring.

Ear no longer leaking noxious goo.

It’s looking up.

 

Best moment of the day

I was breastfeeding Felix on the sofa after picking him up from the barnehage, when Mermos climbed up onto my lap, rested his paws on Felix, and Felix and I gave him a pat while Felix finished his feed. Mermos’s fur is so thick and so soft; he is like a midnight velvet polar bear.

 

Ready to go

I was going to write – it’s hard to leave Norway in May. It’s true, the country is now at its most beautiful – the brand new glittery birch leaves are a sight to behold, and it’s light forever. But the past couple of days it’s been raining. So it’s not that hard. I will miss our long evening walks into the forest: the slanty light, the cool, fragrant air, Felix cooing at the treetops. Last week I even saw a young deer standing staring at me on the path ahead. I didn’t get a picture of the deer, so here is dear Whitby instead:

Things are finally coming together. Our passports with our visas arrived on Monday, much to our relief. We’ve renewed our residency permits and got one for Felix. Our cats have a home for the time we’re away (we left them cowering under the sofa on Saturday, but apparently already by Sunday they were much happier). We’ve arranged for some friends to stay in our house while we’re away. We even managed to sell our car! Talk about leaving everything to the last minute.

The place feels a bit bereft without the cats, to tell the truth. I hope they are having a good time exploring their new kingdom.

Felix has recovered from his vaccination grumpiness but it has mucked up his sleep patterns. I guess they’re about to get mucked up anyway. He is still being very adorable. He loves to say ‘agoo’. Michael was zooming him around like an aeroplane one evening, and every time he zoomed in to give me a kiss, he said ‘agoo!’ And last night I was giving him a bath, and he looked at me quietly, saying ‘oooooooo’. ‘Can you say agoo, Felix?’, I asked. ‘Aaaagoooo’, he said. He just melts my heart.

We just have to pack up the last bits, and tidy up a tad more. Someone’s coming to pick us up at 7am tomorrow morning. I’m so, so excited.

 

Three months

My dear, you are so adorable right at the moment that your father says you can stay this size forever. ‘He’ll be cute when he’s bigger too’, I say. ‘But look at him!’ He says. And you truly are pretty gorgeous – such a sweet, smily little guy.

You had your first lot of immunisations today and it was a bit horrible for your Mama to hold you still while the nurse jabbed both your legs. Now you’re having a long long sleep to recover. They weighed and measured you today, and you’re 65 and a half cm long, and six and a half kilos, which means you’re tall and slim – just like me.

Yesterday we lugged you up to Oslo to apply for our American visas. You sat patiently in the car for nearly two and a half hours, even in the traffic jam, and you waited in line with me outside for half an hour very happily too. By the time we got inside though, you’d had enough and you screamed and screamed. (You were starving but couldn’t calm down enough to eat.) Afterwards I found a nice quiet doorstep (heh) and you had a long long feed and then were happy again during the drive home. Next week you have your first trans-atlantic flight, so i’m crossing my fingers that you find an aeroplane a little more relaxing than an embassy waiting room…

But we’re still finding time to sit under the birch trees in the garden, enjoying the sunshine of your very first spring.

 

Our other darlings

Michael took these gorgeous photos of our beautiful cats last night.

I remember when they were kittens, thinking how nice it would be when they were grown up cats and could just hang out on the deck with us. And it’s very nice indeed, especially when you add a baby or two, some friends and some Sunday afternoon scones and tea.

Mermos caught a bird on the weekend, though. I guess it was only a matter of time. Thankfully he didn’t try to bring it into the house. Here they are checking our their next catches:

Ps. If you live in Halden you don’t fancy adopting them for six months from the middle of May, do you? We will be away and they are such lovely, lovely animals… Also by then they’ll probably have shed their winter coats. Right now there is fur on everything.

 

Sibling rivalry

Today I was holding Felix and Mermos (our black cat) decided it was time for a cuddle. He purred and nudged Felix with his head until I put Felix on my shoulder. Mermos promptly curled up on my lap. I passed Felix to Michael. Mermos enjoyed pride of place for a while but then decided he needed to sit on Michael. When Michael passed Felix back to me, however, Mermos followed immediately.