Christmas 2008

Here it comes, it is Christmas time again meaning that I haven’t blogged for 3 weeks now. Shame on me! I was planning to blog at least twice a day …. ;-)

Well, Christmas time is usually a very busy time, so I’ll pick this as my excuse this time. Now, the day after the big evening things have calmed down quite a bit and we have a few days to relax and enjoy ourselves. We have moved to Heidi’s parents for the Christmas holidays to spend some time together with them and the rest of Heidi’s family.

Not quite unexpected the first night was a bit rough. Nina didn’t sleep from around 11:30 pm to 04:00 am as she wasn’t used to the new surroundings. Needless to say, all three of us were quite shattered the next day. Luckily, the following night went without problems and we recovered from the first night relatively well.

Well, so far Nina is enjoying Christmas even though she is not getting the concept quite yet. I guess next year she’ll be ready...or maybe the year after. We’ll see... :-)

Nina and Heidi standing in front of the Christmas tree. I'm just about to unpack my first Christmas present. Yippiiiieee!! Look at my new doll!! Hmm...which present should I unpack next? Uh, opening all the presents is really tiring... Ulrik, Nina’s 6 weeks old cousin enjoying his first Christmas. Can someone explain to me how this microwave works? Nina and daddy posing for the camera … Heidi holding nephew UIrik with Nina's Santa hat on (notice the braids he's got, ha, ha).

You might have noticed that Nina eyes are quite red on some of the photos. Last week she caught an eye infection that bothers her sometimes. Hopefully it will be gone by next week as the doctors promised.

Here are a few movies from a few days back:

Thanks a lot to our australian friends for their comments! :-) It is great to see that someone is reading the blog also on the other side of the world. Yes, we can buy sushi in Norway ... we just need to drive to the closest shopping centre. The sushi is good there, but it cannot compete with the delicious sushi from THE SUSHI HEAVEN. That's for sure! Well, it's time to go to bed now! But before that I guess Heidi and I will have another piece of the tons of cake everybody made for Christmas! Merry Christmas to all our friends out there!

Nina, Heidi and OLI

Snow

Looks like the winter has arrived for good now. The last few days we had a bit of snow and contrary to last month, the snow stayed this time around. Nina was quite skeptical to this white strange stuff and started crying every time we would put her on the ground. But now after a few days she slowly got used to it and today she was crawling all over the place outside leaving traces in the snow. Here are some photos from around our house in Ås. Another thing with winter in Norway is that it gets dark quite early during the day. We pick up Nina from child care at around 4 pm and at this time of the day it is already completely dark these days. No surprise then that most of photos of Nina are indoor photos and movies. Here are a few from the last couple of weeks.

Nina giving her daddy a friendly warning not to film any more. And then going back to one of her most favoured activities .... EATING.

Nina explaining how to use the telephone:

Nina looking for her baby doll and enjoying the attention of being filmed:


Okidoki ... that's it for now. Cheers OLI

Oli's first post on blog

It’s about time that blogger nr. 2 (Nina’s daddy), does some blogging, too. Heidi is really becoming increasingly busy with her PhD work, which leaves very little time for her to continue blogging on a regular basis.

It is already one month ago since our last blog entry which makes us realise how quickly time is passing by. Heidi and I talked the other day about that it is unbelievable that 7 months have passed since we came back from Australia. That is almost as long as our total stay in Sydney. Just have a look at a photo from yesterday and the same date one year ago.

Nina one year ago: Nina yesterday:

Last year Nina could turn around from lying on her back to lying on her stomach. She could lift her head and upper body somewhat, but she still could not crawl. That happened a few weeks later on in January. :-)

And now Nina is more like a little girl almost constantly talking in a language neither Heidi nor I understand. But it's great fun to listen to her. ;-)

She can actually say a few words now, some in Norwegian, some in German. This depends mostly on which word is easier to say, the Norwegian or the German. Poor girl, handling two languages all the time is not easy.

Here you can see Nina doing some blogging of her own on daddy’s old handheld PC.

And here Nina blogging like a mad man: OK, I guess this is the end of Oli's first blog post. I promise I'll come back with some more soon. Cheers

Last time I wrote that I hoped it would snow soon, and a few days later it did! But the snow didn’t last long this time, so we’ll see when it will come back. Before x-mas I hope :-) But it has been cold the last few days, last night we had -8C here in Ås, brrrr. It’s crispy outside, but still very nice. And for Halloween (and to light up in the dark nights) I’ve made a little pumpkin head :-)

Nina is melting her parents with cute words and big smiles, and she is also sleeping well most nights, so we can’t complain at the moment :-) But she is also in a period when she wants to do everything herself, even if she can’t do it. She tries again and again to put her shoes on, and gets more and more angry and frustrated, but does she want help from her parents? NOOO! It’s ok if we’re just at home and she’s just “playing” with her shoes, but it’s not that much fun when we’re in a hurry and Nina absolutely wants to put on her own clothes. Most of the time we end up “strapping” her down to get the clothes on, and she’s screaming like we’re killing her, but two seconds later, when we’re out of the house it’s all forgotten. We are not close to “the terrible twos” yet, how will this end :-)

Oh, stupid cap! Why is this so difficult?

...there...did it work?

Yeees! I did it!!!

One of Nina's favorite caps...her nappy (it's clean :-)

Now, how can I put on this glove?

And how can I get my shoe on???

Maybe it's easier if I sit down?

I want to sit down on the sofa...difficult...

...but try again, and then next mission, put on a way too small hat!

One of Nina's cute words - "titt-tei" = peek-a-boo

Of course I want to eat without help, even if it's blueberries! Yum!

Mum and dad want to have some fun with Nina's shoe-fetish...mum's basketball shoes look cool on Nina...and of course she loves to have them on!

And some more fun with Nina's hair...well, again, she's having fun too :-)

And if she's bored...

...then mum or dad come and make a funny face...

...and Nina smiles again, TADAAA!

getting darker...

After turning the clock back one hour today it’s getting dark really early. Well, it’s quite cosy actually, but I guess we’ll be sick and tired of darkness when we are coming to the end of November, not to mention the end of December. I hope we’ll get some snow soon to get some more light outside. But the good thing is that I have an excuse to curl up on the sofa with my laptop and write on the blog. I’m too tired to work this evening after playing basketball today, but both teams won today, so then it was worth an aching body :-) Nina is getting used to being in the gym to watch mum and dad play, and she likes to run around after all the basket balls :-) And of course she loves all the attention she gets from both teams.

Well, what’s been going on lately…we went on an outdoor arrangement for kids here in Ås one weekend, and Nina got to play in the hay...that was really popular :-)

Nina is a lot of fun these days...she just loves kindy and is usually happy when she comes home too, if she’s not too tired. She’s becoming a big girl, and wants to do more and more things herself, which is a good thing, although her temper destroys a bit of her satisfaction sometimes. I also think she is quite frustrated that she can’t talk, because she’s pointing at things, but can’t tell us what she wants, and sometimes it’s really hard to guess. So I hope (for the peace in our home, he, he) that she’ll start to pick up some more words soon. But although she hasn’t got many words she’s talking non-stop anyway...sometimes we wonder if she knows what she is saying, ha, ha.

There's the camera...

Nina can say "ball" and throw it...comming basket ball star?

It's also fun to talk on the phone...a real one or a play phone

She can also say brrrriiil (= bil = car that makes a brrrr sound)

We also had three visitors on Saturday, Ragnhild and Tonje, my friends from uni and Ragnhilds daughter Sigrid (3 months). It was really nice to have the girls over for lunch, and Sigrid is just adorable :-)

Ragnhild and Sigird

Sweet little Sigrid

Nina was really curious about Sigrid's “bed” and found out she wanted to test it...

Look, there are toys in here mum!

Puh...I'm tired, I might just take a nap...ooops,a bit to big for this bed :-)

Tonje and Nina reading a book.

Ragnhild and Sigrid wanted to read too

Four girlzzzzzz

And finally, Nina today...snotty, but in a good mood.

I see you behind the camera dad!