Instruction's manual

Sometimes my mum thinks it would be nice if children came with an instruction's manual. Can you imagine it? After the baby is born, and before the placenta is discharged of, a neatly folded 500-pages manual would pass through the birth-channel. This handbook would be written with letters so small that one needs a magnifying glass (or even a telescope) to read them, and on paper that is five times thinner than the paper they normally use to print the bible -for there is a lot of information needed to accompany a small baby! If there was such a handbook, then my mum would be curious to know whatever it is that I'm passing at the moment, she would look it up, and know how to handle the situation! Since my 100ths day (easter sunday) until now, I'm having some problems at night, and rather than waking up only once a night as I did (largely) before, I'm waking up up to 6 times. My mum is a bit exhausted and I'm pretty tired myself. There are many theories for WHY I'm doing this: the change of season; I'm teething; I've understood the difference between me and my mum and therefore I call her many times at night to control that she IS; I'm used to the bad habit of falling asleep during nursing, and therfore I want to see the milk-tanks when I wake up at night! Who knows what is the correct theory. My mum just hopes that this passes..soon (it's 3 weeks now, and no signs of improvements), she is looking forward to sleeping more than just a 2-3hour stretch a night (when things go well!)!

But maybe the handbook wouldn't be such a good idea, for two of the nicest things about parenting is the discovery of new abilities of the baby and the satisfaction of being able to handle any kind of situation that comes up -the manual would steal all these precious moments, make things more predictable and less exciting. So, keep up the spirit mum, and I promise to start to sleep better before...eh, eh, (better not exaggerate with promises), before I start school...!

Birthday

Today I'm 4 months old.

How fast time is flying! In these 4 months I've doubled in size, I'm learning new things every day, and life is pretty good.

Lately I've not been very good at blogging, mainly because we're still in Arezzo with my grandparents where the internet-connection is rather slow, but also because I'm not sleeping so well at night and therefore my mum doesn't always have time to lend me her fingers during the day -for she has to recover from the night. If things improve soon I promise to write more.

Ciao, Oscar

Milestone

I discovered something really great yesterday, something that my parents would call a milestone in my development. I feel rather happy about it myself too, so I felt like telling you about it right away! Well, I’m down in Tuscany with my grandparents, and yesterday after a long and a sleepless day my mum was putting me to bed after the last nursing. But as I touched the mattress of my bed (which, mind you, is not my usual bed, but a bed for camping that I’m supposed to use when I’m far from home) I woke up. My mum is always hoping that I will fall asleep by myself (and sometimes I do), so she left me there and kept an eye on me to see if I would fall asleep. So I thought, why not put on a show for the oldie? And I did. In a matter of 5 seconds I had turned from the usual belly-up position to belly-down! My mum was so surprised that she didn’t breath for a long while. When she had taken in the emotions of my show, she turned me around and I repeated the act, then again and again –as if I’d never done anything else in my life. My mum immediately sent a message to my father, who was turning back to Pavia in his car, and had no idea of my new capacity (and was sorry for not being there to witness it), then she ran down in the kitchen to tell my grandparents, who came to watch me and suddenly the quiet bed-time became a showtime and I don’t know who was the happiest person in the room. This morning when I woke up I showed that yesterday’s exercises had been no coincidence and turned around every time my mum turned me back. She calls me her little turbine now and is considering to lower the electricity bill by letting me produce energy with my movements (as she calls me her ray of sunshine, we could call it alternative solar-energy)!
As the internet-connection here at my parents place is rather slow, I’m not going to put a picture here now of me turning (of course a series of pictures has been taken!!), but maybe we’ll add one when I’m back to Pavia.
In case this was not enough, then last night, for the first time in one week, I slept for more than 3 hours during the night, so this morning me and my mum are feeling extra well and really feel that it’s time to celebrate.


We're back in Pavia and here is the picture that I promised to add :)

Something missing

Can you see something wrong with this picture?
Something missing? Look well, and in your mind go through everything that should be in a baby's bed.

Now think harder....I'm sure you'll arrive to it...

My mum has continued reading the book of Dr. Bollea -even if I don't understand why! But some of the information there at least make her laugh, such as this one:

A baby should go to bed at a fixed time, in his room where the air is fresh, windows far from the bed, the pillow and the bed should be low. He should never be too covered and should always wear a pyjama (the small babies, as we know, easily throw away their blankets), and a bell should be placed next to it to be able to ring if necessary.

My parents are not good parents...they still haven't provided me with the bell!
So this is how the picture really should look like!!

But dr. Bollea, would it be wrong just to use the voice?

Maternity leave

Maybe some of you remember that my mum didn't want to believe that she would get a paid maternity leave until she'd get the check...son here's the news: THE MATERNITY LEAVE HAS BEEN PAID!!
Yippy
She got 5 months of a paid leave, from 30.10.2006-29.03.2007, i.e. from 2 months before I was born until, well a couple of weeks ago! But as my mum worked until just a few days before I was born, she still has 2 months of a paid leave...but who knows when she'll be back to work!!

Easter, chocolate...and sleeping

I forgot to wish you all happy easter, but I hope you had a great holiday and ate a lot of easter eggs. Aunt-Kidda in Iceland always makes sure that my parents and now also me get Icelandic easter-eggs -mainly so that we get our annual proverb, which is very important, but also so that we get our share of icelandic chocolate. This year my mum asked to have only very small eggs. This may come as a surprise to you, knowing how fond she is of chocolate, but the truth is, that the results of the chocolate that she eats in this period can be seen on my face, which gets full of red spots when she eats more than just a small piece!!!! I'm turning out to be the perfect chocolate-eating stopper for my mum !!
Anyway, here you can see me with my chocolate-egg (eaten of course by my parents). My proverb was: "The believe can move mountains" which I think is rather nice. Thanks Kidda :)


We had a calm and nice easter in Pavia -didn't want go somewhere only to stay in a traffic jam with millions of italians all going nuts...! To relax we went for really long walks in the countriside close to our house. You can see one of the pictures taken on one of these walks here on the side. This is how nice a field of cabbage can be.

The downside of easter (as judge by my mum) was that I got out of the marvellous phase of waking only up once in the night to nurse. The last 4 nights I've woken up every 3 hours or even every 1-2 hours (i.e. 2-3 times a night), which has made my mum rather desperate -especially because rather than nursing and falling asleep in 15 minutes I've taken up to an hour to get done and during the day I've gone from 6 nursings to 9-11 nursings. She hopes I get back into the usual sleeping pattern soon again. I don't know what is the cause for this irregularity, but maybe I'm passing a growth-spurt, my parents really hope so! Just as good that they've bought some wide 68cm clothes for me...!

The world

Maybe you already know it, but I'm a very curious guy and love to look around and explore things, so for me it was a great moment when my parents finally decided it was time to turn me around in my kangaroo-bag so that I wouldn't be facing their chest any more, but now I'm facing the world.
This is great -I discover something new every time they bring me out. The only problem is that my parents can only manage to walk with me for an hour or an hour and a half, for they say I'm weighing too much to permit longer walks. So now I just have to learn to sit by myself, and then they can bring me out in the baby-backpack that they already have and that is waiting to be used :)

Iceland

We have just booked the tickets for the summerholiday...and we are going to Iceland
I'll arrive with my mum on the 24th of july, my dad will join us the 7th of august and we'll stay until august 21st. I'm looking forward to going there. Of course I've been there before, last year, but then I was in my mum's belly! However, I still remember the bumpy road to Askja and the emotion experienced at the top of Blahnukur to name just two of the memorable moments -but this time I'll have some first-hand experience :) And I'll start the vital viking-training!
I hope I can see some of you when we are in Iceland.

P.S.
This picture, of a very nationalistic moss, was taken by my grandfather Lalli.