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.

9 month checkup, a few weeks late

Here he is. Pulling up and crawling like a maniac and completely taking apart the doctors paper cover thingy. He's getting harder to contain, ie crazypants. He's started to try to launch himself off the changing table and really anything, including my arms. 

But he's doing great. Sleeping 7-6:30 with a dream feed at 10. Nursing and eating anything that isn't nailed down, which ahem has been particularly wonderful for my postpartum weight loss.  :) 

Here's his stats:

• Weight: 8.513 kg (18 lb 12.3 oz) (28.32%*)
• Height: 0.724 m (2' 4.5") (40.40%*)
• Head size: (hahahah) 48.3 cm (19.02") (100.00%*) (however, they remeasured and it was 18.5 inches instead, still in the 90%)

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. 

Flappy

I'm positive there's some developmental reason for the arm flapping, but I don't really care what it is. It is simply adorable. Please never stop flapping, Espen.
 

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:

Seven!!

Seven months!! He's a big boy now. He filled out and got suddenly pretty chubby this month, awwwww. Other changes we saw this month:

• Eating more and more solids. This month we tried more oatmeal, peas, blueberries, cooked apples, pumpkin and carrots. He really likes pumpkin and sweet potatoes. 
• Sitting up! He doesn't topple over as often. 
• Grabbing stuff of the highchair. Pete put a bowl of his food with a spoon in it the other day and went to get a bib and Espen grabbed that bowl so fast. He also really likes grabbing the spoon when we're feeding him. Manual dexterity! It's a thing!
• Sleeping in his CRIB! YES. We moved him into the other room and now have both kids in one room. True to Espen's laid back nature, he was like, oh, I see that I am now sleeping here. Fine by me. He is so diametrically opposite of Lucia that way. 
• Rolling and rolling and rolling. And more rolling. 
• I think the chatting has decreased this month, but he's definitely doing more of the arm-flapping. In the next few days I'll post a cute video of him doing that. 

Behold some cutie pie pictures I took yesterday as we hung out and just gazed into each other's eyes (seriously). 

Espens first ever visit on a beach

... in slow motion!

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...

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..

First tooth

Not easy to photograph something this small and fussy but you can easily feel it now: a sharp edge of a tooth inside a 3 mm wide dark strip.

6 months pictures

Espen seems to love some foods more than others, bananas are a hit while avocado is not so hot. But hey even beer is an acquired taste for some.

Here is another recent photo in his new Viking outfit. So awesome, we hope it still fits during the cold season, his head is so big... He is already sharing hats with Lucia!

Here he is in Lucias old car seat

This will be embarrassing 15 years from now ;)

Being driven around town is hard work apparently, but also important to note is that he no longer melts down all the time in the car!

Ear infection!

So tired...

We thought we saw signs of teething;  low fever, restless and cranky, chewing his gums, chewing on toys, fingers, rubbing his ear, etc but instead we got another milestone: his first ear infection.
It was the lady who watches Espen during the mornings who saw similar symptoms in her own son and she took him to the doctor. We called the nurses and they told us antibiotics would not make this go away since it was most likely a virus, we would just keep an eye on him and ride it out.

New Bay Bridge Opening - Maiden Voyage

Late evening of September 2 we were among the very first to go over the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge! When we heard they were planning to open the new bridge nearly 6 hours early we decided to go check it out that night. We got in the car and waited close to one of the onramps and then a few minutes after 10:15PM traffic started slowly moving. The first thing you notice when you drive over the bridge is how nice and clean it is. The pavement is smooth and even the lighting is super even, I think they did a great job setting up all the lights because you are never blinded by them, yet there is plenty light. As you approach the main tower the whole bridge tower fills the view and it almost looks like a cathedral.

Somebody we know didn't last to see the return trip.

The new school

Heres a picture of the front of the new school. Its very nice except theres only like 9 parking spots for "visitors" and no street parking on the street in front of the school because it is too narrow and too busy so we have to park on the surrounding streets and walk 2 minutes. But I dont think thats too bad I think.

Click on image to enlarge it:

The school sits on this hill in a nice residential neighborhood with lots of trees surrounding it and has a huge open paved lot and a couple of play structures behind the buildings where the kids can run around. Not nearly as nice as the old school but a lot easier on the clothes and shoes! Unfortunately, theres another larger school directly next to it with several hundred more kids so the traffic can be completely insane at critical times of day (drop off and pick up times). Its best to be early.

Espens First Avocado

Will he like it or not?

Month Five

Here he is in all his wiggle worm glory. Espen is 5 months today. This month we've seen him learn to roll over, push up with his arms and the ever so slight beginnings of the inchworm scooch about. He's "talking" more and more and likes to chew chew chew on his hands. He's spitting up a lot more, which we asked the doctor about, and he shrugged and said he'll probably outgrow it in the next few months. We think the other baby at the nanny share is encouraging him to start crawling and interacting. Our nanny said that when her son tries to play with Espen and he isn't ready, he now holds his hand up as if to say, gimme a minute, yo.

Also noteworthy this month: we finally figured out side-lying nursing, which enables me to get some sleep in the middle of the night. It's glorious. 

Someone commented on a picture recently and said he was getting so big, and instead of feeling sad, I beamed. I know, I thought. He's my boy. In the journey to get him here, there's still a part of me that can't believe it's real, so I'm so thrilled he's doing so great and growing up to be yes, super strong. My little love bug. 

First bug

Here's little man drowsily drinking a teeny bit of water after he threw up what seemed like the entire contents of his stomach, twice. And I mean threw up, complete with heaving and gagging. Ugh. He threw up three more times. Two hours later he woke up and was ready to nurse, so I guess it's out if his system? Weird!

First Day of School

Welp, it was definitely memorable. Short story is Lucia was 75 minutes late for her first day. Long story is we got a heap of forms on Wednesday night, i.e. not enough time to have them all signed and turned around by our HMO, and welp, they didn't get signed. We figured we could plead ignorance and have them turned in right after we dropped her off this morning, but they refused to admit her. Good thing is Lucia didn't seem to mind and was totally down with driving all over town, in and out of the car with everyone, up the elevator, in this office, out of that office, now go get the car, everyone piles in, lather, rinse, repeat. I asked Pete if he got any good pictures today before things went sideways. "Yes," he said. "Did you make sure you got one of Mommy having a nervous breakdown??" Kidding/not kidding. It was that bad, people.

"Pretend you're excited!"

8:14AM On her way! (little did we know what was about to happen)

Lot of activity and nervous kids and parents.

Very happy to see a familiar face in the crowd, here's RJ who lives on our floor.  I think he was happy to see Lucia too because it was his first day at this school also. 

The little reading area outside her classroom

That's her teacher through the window and at the far right corner of the window you can see our Blondie. 

Classes only go to 1:30 this week, so we arrived at 1:15 to eagerly get the full report on her day. She said she had a great time, and gave her teacher a hug on the way out. Awwww. Later when we got home she said she was bored, so we're thankful for the after care program that she will start tomorrow. Hilariously, she protested a LOT at bedtime tonight and as a last-ditch effort tried crying and insisting, but I'm just nervous for tomorrow! To which we talked with her and tried to assess what she was nervous about. Then out came the truth: I don't like it that I can't do whatever I want there! Hahahaha. Guess things got a little too real at Kindergarten. So funny. It's a step towards growing up, and while this morning was a total nightmare, I will say I was grateful we didn't get to have that teary goodbye moment. We were all running on sheer adrenaline at that point, so the parting was brief. Maybe that was for the best today. At any rate, we're looking forward to a much smoother Day 2. Phew. 

New shoes

For school. Tough call as to who's more nervous. I'll be so relieved when tomorrow is over.

Farwell Dirty Feet and Preschool