Stirring up the peacefulness

When mum is preparing Irene for bed: changing her diaper, putting her in pyjama, cleaning her nose, breastfeeding and putting her to bed, she tries to create a calming atmosphere. Mum breastfeeds in her room, sitting on the breastfeeding chair, the lights are low, and she puts some music on in my room so that I am more calm while playing by my self (when dad is not at home, otherwise me and dad have fun together) and it is as if there is an aura of peace in our house.......but only as long as I collaborate. Which I do most of the time. But sometimes I like to stir up in this aura, and then mum has to fight her own patience and try not to get provoked, for she doesn't want to transmit the "anger" that starts boiling in her, to Irene just before going to bed. If ever you find yourself in the same situation, here are some ideas of what you can do:

• Climb up on a rather unstable table in your room (your mum will understand from the sound, what you are doing) and recite some passages from "The three goats" with all appropriate changes of voice and shouting (when it comes to the part of the troll).
• Try to climb into your mum's arms and say me too....!
  
• Pretend that you are terribly terribly thirsty and cry for water. If your mum is prepared for such a request, and has put your glass of water e.g. in the living room, pretend not to see it and cry even louder.
• Place yourself where your mum can see you, then say poo... and pretend to have some bowel movements! Then walk as if what's in your diaper is bothering you!
  
• Pick up the telephone and dial a random number...then walk around the house saying pronto pronto, Nonno? Make sure never to get within arm's reach of your mum so that she cannot sequester your telephone!
  
• Push the button on the telephone that "calls the receiver". This will guarantee you a terribly annoying beepbeep sound for some minutes.
• Bring things to your mum! She will already have her hands full...of the baby, but if you smile and say please, she will not protest when you give her one piece of your construction kit after another! When she can no longer take more of them, just throw them over the breast-feeding pillow so that they will land on the baby! Remember that it is fundamental that you smile throughout this process, for it is impossible to get angry with a boy with a puppy-face!
• Move furniture! You could try with the telephone table for example. And remember that it is not your fault if the phone-wires are not long enough to arrive to the new destination and that eventually the telephone and the router will fall of the table making a loud noise! This is a good moment to start crying as if the table has betrayed you!
• Place yourself in front of the baby's bed, point at it and say nanna. Your mum will explain that soon the baby will go to bed and you will be able to play with mum. Then insist, raise your voice a couple of decibils and say NANNA. This is a great way to test your mum's patience. How many times is she going to repeat the same answer without allowing the angry tone to enter into play?
• Press the radio-button on the HiFi (especially if it is badly tuned as mine) and increase the volume. Guaranteed success!
  
• Open the CD player and take out the CD. Use it to make a funny sound when you scrape it along the walls in your room.
• Open the DVD-drawer in the living room, remove the DVDs one by one and then climb into the drawer and pretend you are on a boat!
• If you are so lucky that your mum forgot to close the kitchen- or bathroom-door or she has left a pen or the remote control for the TV in a place that you can reach, millions of amusing opportunities will reveal themselves to you.....!

Laughing

Yesterday Irene laughed out loud for the first time. This morning we woke up to a winter wonderland -everyting covered with a nice layer of snow.
A coincidence?

15 facts

When you don't blog for a while there is a lot to tell, so I've decided to copy Stina's idea and write 15 recent facts from the life of family Polselli-Valgardsdottir!

1. Irene is growing a lot. She is >60cm and almost 6kg. And she is a real bundle of joy. If my mum wasn't suspersitious she would tell you all about how great Irene is, how well she sleeps and how happy she is during her waking hours. But since my mum thinks that telling you about it might put an end to this happy era...she won't..!
2. Irene has become a smiling champion. She smiles when she sees mum, when she sees dad, when she sees Oscar, when she hears some music, when someone whistles, when we "shake her legs"...when...we'll if that isn't being a ray of sunshine...
3. Oscar speaks more and more every day. Little by little the pronounciation is also becoming clearar. Brrr-na-na has for example been substituted with moto-jol. But Yogurt continues to be Jussjuss, a spider is angalanga and there is a range of things that falls under the category santi/santa!
   
4. And more about talking. Oscar is good at keeping the two languages separate. There are certain words that he won't say in icelandic (such as thanks, come, water, go away) and certain words he wont say in italian. But in general he speaks italian with dad and icelandic with mum and does not mix the two languages.
5. The winter is definately arriving to Ponte San Pietro. It is getting colder every day, and mum hopes every morning to be able to announce the arrival of the first snow. She is curious to see Oscar's reactions, for he doesn't remember the snow from last year!
6. Christmas is also coming closer. As we live in the centre of our town, we can see how the shops are being decorated, lights have been set up above the main street (we pass there every day on the way to kindergarten) and they've started to make the presepe by the river, we'll show you a picture of it when it's ready. Mum has bought a poinsettia for our living room, and she thinks she might have to start buying christmas gifts soon if she doesn't want to challange too much the italian postal service by sending her parcels late around the world!!
   
7. Despite the fact that we live by the main road that crosses our town, there are not nearly enough Babu-babu passing our house with blinking lights and the sirens sounding. That's a real disappointment! Maybe we need more criminals in town?
8. When the first low pressure area of this autumn arrived, with loads and loads of rain (just as good that they hadn't started preparing the presepe, for it would have been swept away with the river that was at least double in size), Oscar mastered the pool-jumping technique. We sincererly think that he was the only one in town that greeted the 10th rainy day in a row with a big smile -and there wasn't a pool between our house and kindergarten that he didn't jump in.
9. Oscar's stomach has been nominated the 8th wonder of the world. For science can not explain how all that food that he eats can fit into the stomach of such a little boy. He often eats as much as mum and dad, even if he is not yet 2 years old. We wonder how much he will eat when is 4, or 8 or 12 years old. Maybe my parents need food-aid from the government to be able to satisfy his hunger!
10. It is always crowded at our dinner table. Even if physically there are only Oscar, mum and dad (if he's not away for work) present, plus Irene that watches from her cosy-chair, then it doesn't stop grandma, grandad, Kidda, Maria, Erla, Sara, Steina, Gudjon and...well literally everyone that has ever come to visit us, to join us at dinner every night. Oscar offers them very generously to eat from his plate...but in the end all the food finishes in his stomach. Which comes far to explain why he eats so much!
    
11. Breakfast is the meal with most fantasy in our household -maybe because we are so fresh after a good night sleep, or maybe because we eat so slowly and enjoy to chat during the meal. During one such meal a slice of bread can change from being just that, to be a train then a bus, then a car, then a motorbike, then a horse, then a dog, then a hen, then a ball, then the moon, then a star and then finito. Every bite changes the sculpture, and every new form is accompanied with the right sound. Never a dull moment!
    
12. Mum sometimes calls Irene "miss adaptable", for she has to adapt to the house's routine all the time. Maybe she is comfotably lying in her bed, dreaming about a wonderland where every hill and tree and house and street is a milk tank, when she is pulled out of it, dressed hurriedly and squeezed into the kangaroo-bag, for mum has to go to pick up Oscar, or go to the shop, or pick up the laundry or whatever!
13. Mum has not got a very good eye for shoe-size. When the cold weather arrived she went to the garage to get Oscar's old boots -from last winter- that are becoming far too small. But as Oscar didn't complain (even if an X-ray of his feet might have revealed that his toes were bent in the boots) and as mum was very busy translating and didn't have time to go and buy new ones, he used them for a few weeks. The day mum finished her project she went to buy a new pair, but either she miscalculated how fast Oscar's feet are growing, or she is aiming at a national prize in parsimony (buying things that will fit Oscar in a near future), for she bought boots that are so big that they could serve as a winter-home for a whole family of mice. A real pair of 7 miles boots. But they sure do effect when Oscar does his pool-jumping!
14. Oscar is always inventing new games. One of his latest inventions is the go to bed game. Where he lies down on the floor with a blanket, and pretends to go to sleep. Recently he added a new effect to this game. The object in the mouth. Never having used one himself, the pacifier was a real mistery to him when he saw his friends stuffing them into their mouth before going to nanna at the kindergarten. But the kids sure looked content with it, so Oscar decided that he should give it a go himself. Here you can see Oscar fitting a piece from his construction kit in his mouth while playing the go to bed game. Well, actually hefound it slightly strange, and soon gave up on it and declared that he couldn't understand what all the fuzz was about!
15. Every town in italy that wants to be noticed by the outside world has got a tower...or two. In Ponte San Pietro there was none, except for the church-tower, until the family Poselli-Valgardsdottir came to town.Then people started noticing a human tower moving around town, that consisted of mum or dad with Irene in front and Oscar on the shoulders. When it's raining, and mum brings Oscar to kindergarten, she doesn't want him to become all wet from pool-jumping (leaving such wonderful activity for the way home in the afternoon), so she has to rescue him from the street, and put him on his shoulder, and then the tower becomes complete with a lovely umbrella on top!
    

And that was 15! Hope you have a great weekend :)

Sprinting the 100 meters

For good results on the sprinting track, it's best to be well prepared. The more and better you train yourself, the faster you can go and the better your time is going to be. But you need more than training to get good results. If you, e.g. sprain your ankle midway through the run, or have a graceous fall a la Merelene Ottey, you are not going to be able to complete the run in an acceptable time - and maybe you are not going to complete it at all. Furthermore, if the there is a northern gale blowing right in your face, you know that the race is going to be all uphill. But no matter what the atmospheric conditions are, and no matter how well or badly you are trained, once you are in the start-blocks you automatically start to hold your breath, your eyes are focused on the track in front of you and you start to concentrate on the job you have in front of you. Then there is the B of the bang andyou exhale, extend the whole body so there is a straight line through the head, spine and extended rear leg - body approx. 45 to 60 degree angle to the ground. You keep your eyes focused on the track just in front of you, keep low and relaxed and then run (but not step or jump) out of the block. Once you're off you continue to keep your eyes focused on the track and keep the body low to allow the build up of speed. As you proceed you keep the whole body in a forward lean, with a straight line through the head, spine and extended rear legs. You start fast leg action, using a good stride length allowing continual acceleration. Of course it is also important to have the appearance of being smooth and relaxed but driving hard with elbows and legs (right!). If you are following well the description, then what comes to your mind is approximately what you see on this picture.
Now cancel the image you have of the perfect athlete, and substitute it with someone that is completely out of shape. Someone that actually hasn't run the 100 meters before, EVER!!! Then imagine that instead of maintaining the drive for approx. 20-30 metres and then letting the whole body slowly come into a high tall action, this out-of-shape-never-run-the-100m person keeps the drive for approximately 100 meters, only allowing himself to relax a little bit on the last few meters. If you can develope this picture in your brain: an out of shape athlete that is running the 100m with the whole body in forward lean, keeping the eyes fixed on the track, not allowing himself to look at other runners, the crowd that is cheering or, let alone, the finishing line...then you've more or less got the picture of my mum the past two weeks. If you then change the 100m track with 168 pages of legal text (a summon) in Italian that had to be translated into Icelandic during the race, then the picture becomes more clear to you. Lastly, if you substitue the stadium into a 3 room flat in Ponte San Pietro, and the crowd into 2 little children and a husband, then the picture is more or less complete. Luckily there were no misfortunes during the race (the kids kept healthy...fingers crossed that this continues for a good while), and the wind did not blow too strongly against the runner, and despite quite a few extinct italian words that needed to be tamed during the sprint, it all went quite well in the end. The thrill of the race is over by now. The job has been completed, the finishing line on the 100m track has been passed (a part from having to legalize the translation at the courthouse next week), and the un-ambitious icelandic housewife can focus again on dusting, hoovering etc. and maybe write a blog or two if she's up to it!

Back soon...

We're not gone, we're just on a break...for mum is very very busy these days taming extinct italian words and searching for the longest and most complicated sentence thinkable in the italian language. The best part is that she gets paid for it ;)
We'll be back. Big hugs, Oscar & Irene