New Helmets!

We finally have helmets for both kids; Espen rides his little car when we go for walks, and has successfully learned to stop at the corners and wait for everyone before crossing and/or maniacally laughing as we repeatedly say STOP ESPEN. We had to abort our walks early a few times to teach him how to cooperate, but it worked! He was a model citizen on our walk last night. 

Lucia, on the other hand, really needs a new bike (but has a brand-new helmet!) We took her training wheels off last night to let her try to scooch her bike along for the walk and get used to balancing, and it was a disaster. Pete carried her home with the bike in the other hand, with her sobbing. :( So, a new bike is in order.

First Mani Pedi

Lucia said she wanted some girl time a few weeks ago, so off we went for our first mani pedis. She was BEYOND cute and big-girl about it. She really got into the whole pampering thing. She's also having her first cup of hot tea here. So cute. :)

Tooth Fairy

It's possible we forgot to do tooth fairy duties this week. Whoops. Thankfully, Lucia miscounted her "moneys" and thought the tooth fairy brought her one piece. Rather than scramble in there and try to pretend she just hadn't looked carefully enough, I asked her to write a note to the tooth fairy asking what's up. 

Translation: Dear Tooth Fairy, I think you forgot to bring me some money last night. Here is my tooth I love you, Lucia. 

She also added a PS on the back to please don't take her tooth. 

Here's what the tooth fairy brought back! Look at all the moneys!!! 

She was very thoughtful this morning, and asked, why would the tooth fairy want me to brush and floss? Doesn't she want my teeth to fall out? Good point, I said. But the tooth fairy wants you to develop healthy habits. We've talked a lot about teeth brushing; for a long time when we told her if she didn't brush her teeth they would fall out, she was like YES, EXACTLY because she saw her other classmates at school losing teeth and that's what she wanted. She's clever. 

Weirdly sick, likely nerves

Lucia spiked a fever overnight on Monday, the day after she started her fancy day camp. I wonder if I talked about it too much and she got nervous. Yipes. Her fever was 101 and she slept tons, but was back in action yesterday morning. Phew. Also, in this picture she is so clearly mini-Pete. 

Fun with cardboard

Lucia's "spaceship" was found today and behold, fun was had. (Pardon the clutter- more to come on that but suffice it to say we've been busy!) 

Last day of kindergarten

What a year! Here she is with her teacher. 

Growing up on us

Sniff sniff.

It happened at JCC. She actually misplaced the tooth but drew a picture for the tooth fairy so she would understand. I can't wait to sneak in and put a dollar under her pillow. :)

Awwwwwwwwww

Cutest

Love this pic of our girl. 

Rockin It!

I had long dreaded Lucia's first parent-teacher conference, largely because I was under the (false) impression that Lucia's personality was still clashing with her teacher's. I was wrong. We went on Monday and bottom line: she's doing GREAT. She's reading and writing and right where she needs to be. Her teacher said she was like a "different kid," and whatever we did to get her to behave, keep doing it. We were thrilled to say we didn't do much, Lucia figured it out on her own. I don't think we've posted about it here, but her teacher is highly, highly organized and runs the classroom like a German watch factory. For behavior, and presumably to corral 27 kids daily, she institutes a card system, where you start out on green, and if you act up, it progresses to yellow, orange and red. Lucia has come home with probably about 6 red cards. She was having a really hard time delineating play vs. learning time, and she'd act out to test the teacher. We had a meeting with her teacher about 6 weeks ago, and after that we gave Lucia little things to look forward to on the weekends if she got 5 green cards. We did that for maybe 2 weeks, then we dropped it to see if she would get it on her own. And she did. She comes home with green cards pretty much every day; I think she got a yellow card a few weeks ago for a minor offense. 

It's pretty awesome that she figured it out on her own. And a HUGE RELIEF for us that she's rockin this kindergarten thing. So proud of her. 

Little coder

Lucias class recently took part in the national event called "Hour of Code" and was given this cool diploma.
However, the coding on kindergarten level looks nothing like this:

if (InputRegAddr8 == MaX1385::rd_FIFO)
my.device.ReadWord_HiLo(InputRegAddr8, &DeviceDataBuf16); 

But actually looks like this:

The "coding" is done by clicking and dragging the little arrows into the squares on the right in the right order for the little hair ball to reach its target.

Thanksgiving 2013

Here is a great selection of pictures from last night, Thanksgiving. It was great to spend time with our norwegian friends having great food. 

 Pre dinner greeting

Espen checking out the wheels on his toy car

The Turkey was incredibly moist!

 Per serving the girls at their own table

Espen eats  

The side dishes 

 Caitlin prepping the food

Notes were taken 

Movie time after dinner. Toy Story in norwegian at 11PM!!!

No school Day - Play Date

Today was no-school day, but Lucia's classmate Veronica invited her for a playdate. Lucia had so much for that when we left she begged me to let her have a sleepover and cried most of the way home ( think mostly because she was exhausted and very hungry) Heres what she looked like after a 10 minute ride home:

Brudder and Sissy

Daddys turn

Tonight it was my turn to don the head light and explore the new steps on an evening walk:

Big sister, big help

Sweet potatoes are a hit!

New bed is finished!

The bed came in this very compact box weighing about 50kg (110,23lbs), mattress was simply rolled up, pretty impressive I think. 

First part done!

No whale tail but nearly there!

Because I took all the pictures it looks like Heather did ALL the work, not true!!
It was a 2 hour team effort..

Yay! Bed is completed but the rest of her room obviously need some love soon. Lucia cant stop jumping up and down. Lets hope her first night goes well and not forget she is a bit higher than usual...

Lucia

I asked her what she thought about her old bed and this is he look she gave me.

New bed!

We took a trip to IKEA last night to check out the bed we have been thinking about for Lucia. She has been in her current bed since she was no older than Espen is now and he needs to move in to a bed he can't climb out of..

Fab Five

Waking up with crazy hair: she went to bed with wet hair so we put a towel on her pillow...

So she is five years old and she loves it! She feels so much older and different already, I mean wouldn't you? The last few weeks she has been a lot more into writing and recognizing words and into school-things. But Thursday morning was all about celebrating her birthday so we served her "breakfast" in bed which included some cookies with marmelade filling and chocolate on top and orange juice.
A huge thanks goes to Anna who helped us Wednesday night to get a couple of balloons, Lucia was thrilled to have balloons in the morning and even tried to engage Espen to play with them too. Her first gift was a StarWars encyclopedia of Lego sets, so it shows all the sets that has been made and what figures are in them and their relationships etc. Really cool book, too bad the only StarWars Lego sets in sale these days are total crap. Her other gift was a set of "magne tiles" she used to play with these at OGS and she totally loves them. She uses them to build dollhouses and garages for her cars. Totally awesome!