Breakfast

Guess what I just had for breakfast...?

Able

One of the things I get to hear more than others is Irene will be able when she gets bigger! Every day, actually many times a day, this phrase is filed into my parents conversation with Oscar. When I get bigger I'll be able to eat pizza, brush my teath, chew the meat, drink milk from a cup, walk, talk and whatnot! The list gets longer every day and I basically can't wait to be able to do all these things! But I'm able to do a lot of things already (and I'm not that lazy as Oscar hinted at...I'm just different from him, which is quite another thing!) and actually I'm able to do several things that my parents are not able to do, but they sometimes forget all about. I'll name 3:
1. SCREAM without loosing the voice! You just try screaming for about 5 minutes, as loud as possible (imagine trying to call the attention of someone that is deliberately ignoring you)...then repeat it several times in one day (if you are afraid that your neighbours will be worried about you, then just go to see a soccer/hockey/handball game and live it!) and let me know how much will be left of your voice in the end! Screaming without loosing the voice is a very underestimated ability of infants like me - and one that is very important for our survival, for we have no other way to let know that we are wet, cold or hungry! I myself didn't value this ability in it's fullness until last week when I caught a virus (from mum) that sent my voice away! Now if I scream, the only thing that can be heard is a low whistle, as if you could hear a steam-whistle kettle boiling 3 blocks away! Instead of taking me to the doctor to have this fixed, my parents arefamily is just enjoying the silence. Parents!!!!!
2. Squeeze milk out of the milk tanks! Most of you wont have had the chance to latch on to milk tanks for quite a while so maybe it's difficult for you to appreciate this ability in it's full. But I gained mum's full respect yesterday when she decided to leave me at home with dad in the afternoon and had to leave some milk with me as well. My parents had bought a simple handheld pump when Oscar was born, but had hardly ever used it, and now mum found out that it didn't really create good vacuum, so she only managed to squeeze a few drops out of the milktanks that way and in the end she had to use her own hands to milk herself! Muuuuuuu. To think that by instinct I knew the right technique to let the milk flow and was able to drink from the milktanks less than an hour after I was born, but mum had a hard time squeezing out enough for me to drink for merenda yesterday (she blamed it on small milk tanks, ergonomy and back-pain!) and dad had to supplement my meal with my first ever yogurt!
3. Eat unsalted food and enjoy it. Did you ever think about it how salt has become important to you? How, little by little, you've lost the ability to enjoy food without amplifying its taste with salt or even sodium glutamate? Try not adding salt to your food for one day and be sure that the food wont taste of anything and you will be craving for salt by the end of the day. Whereas I'm perfectly happy with unsalted food, and think that vegetable soup is awsome!

I can also fall asleep over lunch, and I bet you envy me a lot for that!

Arithmetics

I was wondering: if today my dad reached age that is his shoesize minus 1, and if in August mum will reach age that is her shoesize plus 1, then which one will be older in september? Arithmetics arithmetics... !
Anyway, I've already sung Tanti aguri many times for him today, and if you join in with me I'll continue to sing it until I fall asleep.
Happy birthday dad

Spring

Lately, after a period of what seems endless rain, we've been so lucky to have good weather! Mum says it's the spring that is arriving, and if it's always like this I wish there was spring all year long! We are still waiting for the trees to blossom and the temperature to pick up also in the morning, but now we wake up to singing birds that are merrily going about building their nests, and the people of Ponte San Pietro have woken up from their winter-long hybernation and have come out of their caves to let the sun warm their blood a bit. This also means that suddenly we are no longer the only ones going to the playground in the afternoon -now it is full of kids that are happy to run around and play in the sun. Mum can't resist comparing them to the cows that are let out of the stalls for the first time in spring -there is something primitive and wild about them!
While Oscar goes to kindergarten me and mum also go for long walks. Most of the time we go around our town, but yesterday we joined my friend Amalia and her mum Rachel and walked to an 11th century Roman church on a nearby hill that you can see in the background of this picture. The place is beautiful, the weather was great and the company was perfect, and for once the smog/mist was not hiding the mountains so we could also enjoy the wonderful view. No wonder our hearts are still smiling :)

My big brother

He is funny. He sings and dances and makes me laugh and sometimes he imitates people or animals or characters he's seen somewhere and there is nothing I like more than watching him play!
He's caring. If I cry he feels sorry for me and comes to caress me or kiss. Sometimes he gets a big urge to hug me, and his embrace is always warm and tender. He let's me play with his toys (as long as he can decide which!) and he likes to show me things and explain what they are.
He's my role model. Everything he does, I'd like to do too. When he is playing I like to play like him and when he is singing, sometimes I join in with my baaabaaaabaaa! My parents had to anticipate the start of the weaning, for I didn't want just to sit around watching Oscar eating and get nothing myself, and actually the best way to stimulate me to eat is to have him right before my eyes.
He distracts me while I'm breastfeeding. He likes to stay around when I'm drinking from the milktanks -reading a book, playing with Hvati (my dog), singing or doing whatever he comes up with at the moment. When I hear him coming I stop drinking and bend my little body in an arch to see him. Then maybe he comes and tickles me and I laugh so much that the milk spills out of my mouth. First mum was a bit upset about this, for it meant that she was never sure if I was drinking well or not, but then she decided to lean back and enjoy these magical moments for they are only here now...
He can be mean. He is sometimes angry with me and hits me or grabs the toys I'm playing with. He does this on purpose, I know, but his purposes are always noble, for he thinks that I want to take away from him the love of our parents -when in fact all I want to do is to share it with him!
He is the best, and he is my big brother...

Playstation..

..has got a different meaning in my family...!

6 months

Half a year has passed since I left mum's belly and started exploring the world! And what an adventure awaited me!

To celebrate, mum brought me out for a long walk. The day had started out gloomy, but at lunchtime the sun managed to melt a thick layer of clouds and me and mum jumped out to enjoy a prelude to the spring. We walked around town, through the center, and down by the river. We stopped for a long while on the pedestrian bridge over the river Brembo, letting the sun caress our faces while we watched a lady feeding a big group of seagulls that are unfaithful to their name and have decided to hang around Ponte San Pietro -which is as much inland as it gets in Italy. I guess we should call them river-gulls instead!
Once we came home mum gave me some prunes to eat, but don't be fooled to think it was to celebrate my 6 months...it was just to soften you know what, which has become a bit "different" after I started on solids! I merrily spit it all out, so mum had to really use her talent to get me to eat half a jar! For the rest of the day I was busy with all the things that the life of a 6 months old baby eveolves around, watching Oscar, hugging mum, giggling with dad...!

cindarella...fiskinn minn!

Over breakfast this morning:

Me: Mamma kona (mum woman)
Mum: en Oscar? (but Oscar?)
Me: Oscar maður (Oscar man)
Mum: Hvað með pabba? (what about dad?)
Me: pabbi maður (dad man)
Mum: en Irene? (but Irene?)
Me: Irene öskubuska (Irene cindarella)


And at lunch today, every piece of the tunafish-steak that entered my mouth was accompanied with: fiskinn miiinnnn, namminamminamm!
Live IS good!

bits and pieces

It's strange how time can seem to pass fast AND slowly simultaneously! Each day passes with our small errands, playing and growing and learning a million new things, and before we know it months have passed and we don't know what has happened to all that time we had on our hands but that we have now archived in the past! We would like to think that we've used the time well but sometimes the thought nagges my mum that she could have been more efficient, she could have done more things, learnt a language, knitted a sweater, made a website about walking with babies in the province of Bergamo, written a book or decorated our house, but she tries not to let these thoughts trouble her more than necessary and continues her idle life...!

Last week mum learnt the important lesson that it's useless keeping your baby away from kindergarten for a week in order to escape a stomach-flu outbreak if the bug is a virulent one! On the evening of the second day after my re-entry to kindergarten I efficiently delivered half-digested broccoli-pie and blueberry-yogurt all over my bed, my teddy-bears, my mum, the floor in my room and..well, you get the picture. It took one night, two full washingmaschines and a lot of hugging my mum to get over the bug, but a day later I was ready to join my friends again at kindergarten as if nothing had happened! And mum couldn't help thinking: was I keeping him home for a week for THIS!
I got back to kindergarten just in time for the annual carnival-party! Me and the other kids got dressed up in ridiculous costumes and got some sweets to eat. Mum actually thought it was a waste of money to buy me a costume, she believes I might like it in a couple of years, but that at the moment dressing us up like that only serves the parents so that they can say "oh how sweet they are". But then she felt the social pressure on her and finally bought the cheapest thing she found, and then spent a considerable time convincing me to wear it! And I was cute...!

I have been busy lately adding to my vocabulary. I love to pick up phrases from the books my parents read to me and then use them in daily life. The other day for example I got my mum's heart smiling when I threw my latest construction on the floor (THAT actually didn't make her happy) and said "Brotnadi i thusund mola" (broke in thousand pieces), showing that I had understood and remembered a phrase that mum had read to me days earlier. And I've also started to try and sing along with mum. I particularly like "Litlir kassar" and sing "annar raudur, annar gulur, annar rondottur" until my mum's smile reaches about 360° around her head.

Irene is making alot of progress as well. She can sit upright and spends hours watching me play while she licks my toys! Mum says that she is a little bit lazy, which can also be read as "used to have things done for her". She is for example quite capable of doing the rollover both ways, but unlike me, she doesn't find it the least entertaining (I was unstoppable after learning the trick) and only uses it when it's strictly necessary -which means that first she tortures us with her high-pitch scream for a while, and only if mum doesn't give in and roll her around, does she do it by herself. But she can be quick if she wants to, and when she sees one of my toys lying around, but too far to reach with her hand she throws herself after it like superman. I don't even stand the chance of removing the toy before she has started chewing on it, so if the toy belongs to the category of my toys that I don't let her play with (yes, it's ME that decides), I have to rip it from her mouth!
One last thing...I think the spring is on it's way..and I can't wait! It's still cold in the morning here, but there is something in the air that tells me that soon we can leave our heavy winterclothes at home...

Email...

Mum sometimes calls me a name that sounds like email, and says that once I can hold a sharp knife without cutting myself she will buy a small hut to put outside our apartmentbuilding!

Irene's nights

If mum thought that being able to fall asleep by oneself was the recipe for problem-free nights forever, then she has had to think again!
Mum says I'm lovely, and that being able to put me to bed awake and counting on me falling asleep by myself has been one of the keys to the good times we've been having the past 5 months. But lately I've started waking up more during the night. First mum thought that the reason was that I was hungry! In fact I WAS beeing more distracted while drinking during the day, and so mum thought that maybe I had to recover the drops of milk lost during the day with some night-time sipping. But recently she got more of the idea that my night-time drinking was making me less hungry during the day and therefore more distracted during the daytime-breastfeeding. Then, when I added a couple of more wake-up moments to the night, accompanied with loud screams (NB. not cries, screams) that would fit more to a film forbidden to under 18yrs (and that scared the shit out of most of our neighbours (and our good guests from Iceland), than to the throat of a 5 months old cuty, then finally she added 2+2 and got the right result. I was waking up to socialize (whith whom, you may wonder since I called for attention by screaming). When mum decided that she was not going to breastfeed me 4 times a night she started to listen to the way I was screaming, and realized that I was not calling for the milk tanks at all and therefore, without further a do (and no warning whatsoever) cut the after-hour feedings to zero. Now I wake up happy as a bliss int he morning and feed well during the day, and mum wakes up with two bricks in her bra and a smile on he face. She thought it was about time to recover a good night's sleep.

Bugs are in the air...

2 weeks ago I stayed at home most of the week with mum and Irene because I had a bad cold. My nose was running and my ears hurt, but for the first time I managed without having to take antibiotics (quite a milestone). Last week we had a visit from Iceland. Raggy and Hakon came to see us, and I looked forward to busy days with them...but again I was forced to stay at home, for I got influenza, and was actually quite ill with body-temperature near boiling-point. This week I was looking forward to seeing again my friends from kindergarten. Monday morning I strawled with mum and Irene to kindergarten (it's about 6-7 months since we parked my stroller for good and took up good and healthy walking) but were almost run down at the door by one of the teachers who was going back home vomiting... leaving only one healthy teacher at the kindergarten, as the others were already busy emptying their stomach-contents into the WC at home! Needless to say we were sent straight back home, were we are still...hoping that the postponing of me going back to play with my friends, will let me pass the turn and not bring the stomach-flu-bugs home. We are also waiting for one-size-fits-all virus-proof overall that mum bought on Ebay and which should make me less appetizable for the bugs!

Re-invented smoothies..!

I did a major discovery at lunchtime! I was having lunch with mum and Irene at home (or Irene was more just watching), and since we had a busy morning with Irene having her vaccination and me having to go to the doctor because my ears hurt, we were eating late and mum had many things to do..! I had already finished my soup and was drinking a freshly squeezed orange juice and eating a strawberry-yogurt while mum was putting the dishes in the dishwasher, when I got a mega-idea...why not add the yogurt to the orange juice? I managed to pour about half the yogurt into my glass before mum noticed! Mum decided not to become angry (although part of the yogurt missed the glass and hit the flour...ouch) but encouraged me to drink the new product, which I did...and mamma mia, that was good! Mum told me this was called smoothie, which I tought was a suitable name for a fantastic drink...I had to ask for more orange juice to make smoothie from the rest of the yogurt! If this hadn't already been invented by somone else it would probably have made me very very rich...!

Not desperate, but housewife...!

This month it's 2 years since mum left her job to stay at home with her (first one, now 2) treasures. This anniversary passed silently as mum is more of a "background" item at the moment-the two main players being me and Irene! But I thought this milestone (if that's what you can call it) was worth a blog. I'm not going to tell you how much mum enjoyes motherhood, for despite some critical moments once in a while, she thinks it's the best job she ever had -but I'd like to tell you about her other job...being a housewife.
One might think that 2 years of housewifeness would make her master the skill..but far from it. Every day mum watches from her window the lady next door who is a real master-housewife that never takes off her apron, that polishes the windows and windowsills every day, that washes at least one machine of white and one of coloured clothes every day (while mum has yet to fill a washing-machine of white only, and therefore just puts everything together at low temperature!) and moves the laundry all around the balcony to catch the best drying spot at the moment. Mum can't help wondering how one can accumulate so much dirty laundry in such a spot-free house, but has arrived to the conclusion, that maybe other members of the family have to change clothes when they come back from work/school every day so that the environment can stay just that clean! Anyhow, mum considers herself the exact opposite of her neighbour. You might think that mum had at least used this golden opportunity to master the cake-baking-skills (being a sweet tooth and all), but since she would basically be the only one to eat her products, she considers the lack of baking-activity to be a major cm-saver for her waistline! So what has she obtained with 2 years of staying at home?
She has mastered the:

• ..great skill of not seeing dust and disorder around her
  
• ..tecnique to clean the house silently (and relatively superficially) while the babies are sleeping
• ..to cook dinner without her son noticing (he is conditioned to great hunger whenever one of his parents approaches the kitchen (pavlov's dog what...)) and without stopping to play with her little ones
• ..skill to consider clean clothes that have not been ironed as clean clothes that have been ironed and then worn for about 45 minutes (the time necessary for an active person to reduce ironed clothes to a non-ironed state)
• ..tecnhique to check her hair in passing-by-car-windows while walking outside with her little ones early in the morning, and to ignor it if she realizes that she forgot to comb it! Fuzzy hair is cool!

She has also lost the ability to cook for herself and enjoy it. There is probably a whole lot of other things that she has learnt, but without going into further details, the conclusion can be drawn immediately...
Mum was not made to stay at home ...and if the financial (and not) crisis that the world is passing is not too prohibiting, she should start looking for a job soon (to start working maybe in the autmn...)...does anyone know of something?

Big responsability!

As I've mentioned before, I've been making great progress lately in the talking business! Not only am I learning new words every day, but I'm also working in the construction field. The sentences I construct might not all be perfect, there might be important words missing, but the important thing is that I get understood. Here is a recent example of a conversation with mum (this morning at 6.50 am):
me: pabbi? (dad?)
mum: pabbi er ad fara i vinnuna (dad is going to work)
me: pabbi ekki vinnu, pabbi leikskola (dad not work, dad kindergarten)
mum: nei pabbi fer i vinnuna og oscar fer i leikskolann (no dad is going to work and oscar to kindergarten)
me: otta nei leikskola, otta heima mamma (Oscar no kindergarten, Oscar home with mum)
This is the part where mum gave me a big hug...and then of course I did go to the kindergarten. But from this short example you can see that not only can I construct sentences, but there is also logic in what I say. But sometimes I get tired of thinking about the way I should speak -it's not always simple to be struggling to become a bilingual kid, and then I use a much more fluid way of speaking. Basically it means just putting together an endless flow of sounds and syllables and make it sound as if you are saying something really important (at kindergarten I let this pass for an Icelandic monologue!). The trick is to include at least 1-2 comprehensible words and gesticulate a lot with the hands, so that what is missing from the linguistic part of my expression is gained with the visual part. An example of this way of expressing me is saying
balabiditibidasirimamaniIRENEsararedetegaiisemuneretabanare- MAMMAnididarebenosiOTTA while pointing at the baby-gym in the first half of the sentence, and then at my playing corner in the second half. Then mum has no problem understanding that I'm really saying: please put Irene to play in the baby-gym and you come and play with me in the playing corner!
Mum says she feels a lot of responsability in teaching me icelandic, for as we don't have other icelanders in our everyday life, the icelandic I speak is a mirror of the icelandic she speaks. This basically means that if my icelandic sucks I can blame it on mum, and if e.g. I swear in icelandic (a part from no one understanding it but my mum) mum cannot say that I picked it up from TV or from the kids in kindergarten -I must have learnt it from her! There are several remidies:
mum reads a lot of books for me in icelandic, I listen to a lot of icelandic music, we invite icelanders to stay with us (soon e.g. cousin Hakon is coming with his mum to see me) and mum tries to swear only in italian -that way, -porca miseria -at least she can blame it on TV or the kindergarten if I pick up some of her bad words!

How to ruin kitchen utensils when making gnocchi!

Some things need dedications and extreme precision to be made, others the exact opposite...! Today mum was preparing her lunch. She had programmed to eat yesterday's pie-leftovers, but when Oscar had got his fourth (sigh!) helping last night, it became clear that the 35° of a pie that were left would not satisfy the hunger of a breastfeeding mum at lunch the next day. When lunch approached, mum opened the fridge to check how she could supplement her lunch, and when she got her eyes on the leftovers of the 4-cheese-pasta-sauce that dad had made a few days earlier, she got the brilliant idea to use it with some gnocchi that are easy and quick to make, and would be the perfect side-dish to the broccoli-pie-leftovers. So, she put the water to boil, and then she reheated the pasta-sauce on the stove. At that very instance, her ray of sunlight (me), which up to that moment had been sleeping peacefully in her bed, woke up with a scream that would have broken diamonds -if there had been some in our house, so mum ran to her bed to console her little girl thinking that she had woken up from a nightmare (a nightmare for a 4 months old baby is basically a land without milk-tanks), only to find that her little jewel had made a small pooh-bomb which had exploded in her diaper and travelled all the way up her back and through 3 layers of clothing. Somewhere around the moment when the dirty clothes had been removed, the disaster zone had been cleaned, and new diaper had been taped around the tiny waiste, and mum was sharing a giggle or two with her fountain of joy, she smelled something! It was not the pooh-bomped diaper, it was not the pie that had been left in the microwave, it was.... Exactly...the pastasauce! Mum arrived in the kitcen just in time to declare the "death" of the pot that had contained the pasta-sauce.

You wont find the resulting burnt pasta-sauce at the burnt-food museum, for if you've ever questioned the bottomless hunger of a breastfeeding mum, then here's the information that you needed: mum DID scrape what she could of pasta-sauce from the burning ruins, and ate together with the gnocchi ! Buon appetito!

2 years, 4 months -happy new year!

We're back from Tuscany! We had a wonderful christmas time in the "Ottomani" empire -no we did not go to Turkey, I'm just referring to the fact that every time that me and Irene were in need there were four sets of hands (otto mani in italian), mum, dad, nonno and nonna, ready to pick us up and comfort us...which was great. We had a splendid time, playing with i nonni, zia Sara, zio Elio and zio Luciano, the cousins and nipoti and all the adoptive zie and zii -and of course mum and dad. We had an ocean of gifts (thank you all of you for your generosity), and my car park was expanded so much that my parents decided to hide some of my new cars, for they say that otherwise I wont enjoy them so much! One new car at a time is the new rule here!
I also passed a language explosion, both icelandic and italian, and have started to construct sentences of up to 5-6 words (even more, but then my parents loose the thread and don't understand them) and my parents say that I never close my mouth...hehe.
During this period I also celebrated my 2nd birthday. Yes I've become a big boy! I celebrated with a cake and in the evening we went out for a pizza.
L O V E L Y, basically !!!












A few days later Irene filled 4 months. She is becoming really big (ca. 65 cm and around 7 kg) and she becomes sweeter every day!
In between these two important events the new year came, with promises of new adventures and we are curious to know what they will be...
Big hugs to all of you and

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Gledileg jol

This is probably going to be our last blog before christmas. This weekend we will pack half our belongings (or so it seems) and if there is still going to be some room left in our car, we'll fit ourselves in it and drive down to i nonni in Arezzo where we will stay until the new year.














We wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new year. We thank you for the company this year and look forward to seeing you online (or better: offline and in person) next year
Big hugs from Oscar, Irene, Sergio & Rut

Amma Finna

Today it's one year since amma Finna left to explore other dimensions. Not a day has passed that she hasn't visited our thoughts, we find her presence and teaching in many of our doings, even where we least expect, and a little piece of her continues to live within our hearts.
We miss you...

Books and bugs

I often read books with mum. Well, sometimes we read, sometimes we just watch the pictures and mum tells me what is on them. One of the books we've read is called My first 500 words. It is a nice book with a a lot of nice pictures and colours, but I must say that that I'm a bit perplexed about the priority that the authors have when it comes to the words to learn. On the first page of the book (see picture) the authors list among others the following words: octopus, icecream, windmill, ghost, unicorn and crocodile. These are very useful words for a little baby, as you can imagine, and I can't wait to get the chance to use them!
But this weekend we were glad for having read this book, for at least I knew what a nurse was when I saw one at the hospital in Ponte San Pietro, where my parents brought me for a visit, as rather than sleeping friday night, I just cried out loud and insisted to be cuddle in my parents arms. We came back from that visit with the diagnosis ear infection, and a prescription for antibiotics.
If some of you wonder how a 3 months old baby can get an ear infection, then examine this picture of a little girl and her older brother who has just had ear infection, and guess what the big boy did to the little girl only seconds after the picture was taken. Yes you're right...he kissed her right on the mouth!