Ouch - again...

You might be bored of me writing about kids being ill, Pappa Kas being ill, Malo, the goldfish, dying. So much misery, I’ll make this short and sweet.

Brave smile from our little H(ero)

So when I now write about H having high fever and put on antibiotics, there’s nothing new there. She was at the hospital for a couple of days, but when she started getting her energy back, eating, drinking and taking her medicine we could go home.

Doing laundry - and loving it! 

It’s been sad having her on the sofa wrapped in a blanket, with her dummy, security blanket and Lagontxu, bit it has also given us time for snuggling.

Baby M got to have her first ever sleepover at her grandparents so that Little H could get all the attention from her parents and Baby M all the attention from her grandparents. It’s been a win-win for everyone.

But what to do with a girl whose energy-levels are down to 1 (from 100)? Well, get her involved in some easy housekeeping between watching The Lion King, Sleeping Beauty and Peppa Pig. 

P.S want to know what happened to Malo, here’s my FB update:

Missing Malo, the goldfish was miraculously found at a pet-shop yesterday. 
We have no idea how he managed to get that far. 
But we are thinking he was kidnapped as we had to pay a ransom...

R.I.P. Malo

Little H loves pink, Hello Kitty, feta cheese, swings, dogs - all animals in general and especially her own goldfish.

While Little H is recovering at the hospital after an urinary infection (I will give no details), a tragedy has taken place at Casa Castro-Nyhus. 

H has two goldfish in a bowl .With its pink pebbles the bowl is the centerpiece of our living room. Not nice, but what do you not do for your children? You certainly commit interior design crimes. 

The fish are called Pinky and Malo. The fish were given to H as a present from Amama Socco and Aixite Sebas. Amama Socco has had plenty of goldfish during the years and apparently all of them have been called Pinky. 

First they were both called Pinky and Pinky, but after Pinky tried to "escape" several times (slip through H's fingers whenever she tried to catch the poor fish), it was re-named Malo (xxx in Spanish. 

Pappa Kas has noticed that Malo has not been his active self over the past week or so. Yesterday he barely moved and Kas anticipated that Malo did not have long left to live. He was right. This afternoon I found him belly up in the bowl. Poor poor fishy fish.

I have been told that the most common cause of death for gold fish is overeating, but for skinny Malo it must have been something else. 

I panicked a little bit and asked Kas what to do. “Easy peasy” he said. “Malo being Malo. He just escaped”.

Aha, brilliant.

So upon visiting H at the hospital we had to break the news. 

Pappa Kas told her that Malo escaped during the night. This came as no surprise for Little H, she had not been at home to look after the goldfish and Malo had seen the opportunity to make a run (swim) for it. 

Sad to say Malo took his last swim in our toilet and down the drains this afternoon.

RIP Malo. 

H & M - partners in crime

Such a happy wee one

You might think that baby M should overshadow little H, but it is impossible to out-stage her cheeky big sister. Little H fills the house with her presence and her little sister comes in the background. But baby M is here, it’s just that she is too nice for her own good.

She sleeps well, all through the night if we want her to. But with skinny arms and legs and a bit below average on the scales, we wake her up to feed her once a night. When she is awake, she laughs, smiles, makes cooing noises and is the nicest baby on earth.  

Not so innocent as they look

But there is a tingling at the back of my head. I know that these two will be partners in crime sometime in the future. It is just a question of time before they will gang up against us. 

Monkey no more

It’s carnival -time and last year we had such fun of dressing Little H like a monkey. We thought she was the cutest little cheeky monkey we had ever seen. It is bad to laugh at your daughters expense but, it was impossible not to. The costume proved a great success, but that was last year.

This year we thought that the monkey costume was an easy choice, but no. 

When asking Little H what she wanted to wear for the carnival she promptly said: “Princess, Pink Princess”. Oh, nooooo.

I tried: “What about a cool and scary lion?”

“Pink?” She said

“What about a ladybird?” I asked

“Princess?”  She answered

“What about Pippi Longstocking?”  I was running out of options

“Pippi with Hello Kitty?” she answered enthusiastic

Now we were getting somewhere

I tried: “Pippi with Pink Hello Kitty elastic bands and hairclips? And Pink nail-polish?”

I was negotiating with a two and a half year old!

“Ja ja ja!” She shouted and we had finally reached a conclusion we both could live with.

So here she is:

Pippi Kitty Longstocking with pink and purple nail-polish and at least seven Hello Kitty hairclips to keep her pigtails - with pink Kitty rubber bands, in place. 

Cousins - tough love

As you could read in the previous post, we have recently spent some time with our family in the North of Spain. I always want to highlight the North, as whenever I say Spain, everyone sighs with envy and says: heat and sun - just what you need this time of year.
I hate to disappoint you - rain and max 10 C is more like it in December and January.

Little H (and Baby M) has a cousin  in Spain. Her name is Laia and she is cute as a button. She was born in July 2011, and is a year younger than H. They have met several times, and Saturday mornings are Skype play-date-time, so they are no strangers to each other.

The whole family was very excited for the two of them to meet again, as they now both has become little ladies- with tempers, and their own sets of habits.

It was wonderful seeing them together and they clearly enjoyed each others company. Although tugging hair, pushing, yelling and stealing toys from each other they always said sorry and hugged after.

See for yourself:

I'm splashing soap in you face Laia and I like it!

Idyllic - before the balloon- fight

Laia with a cheeky grin and up to no good

United in the name of Hello Kitty

Our parents are forcing us to hold hands and act natural

The excuses

Oj, no entries since December. What’s the excuse?

Not entirely sure, but I can think of a few:

• Forgetting my IPhone in the car when flying to Spain on the 30^th of December.
• Deciding to go off-line for the two weeks we were in Spain
• Me being ill with Stomach-flu for almost a week
• Pappa Kas being ill with Stomach-flu for two weeks
• Baby M being ill with stomach-flu for 4 days
• Little H going bananas in quarantine while her family was ill and no one was allowed to visit.
• Knitting woolly trousers for Baby M (yet to be completed)
• Reading: Margaret Attwood – A handmaids tale (brilliant).
• Hanging out with friends and family when not in quarantine

I am boooored

Now we’ve been back home for two weeks, slowly adapting to normal. This means kids with the flu, plenty of housework, various DIY projects, planning new time-management strategies, lunching with fellow mothers on maternity leave and generally spending time on…

What really?

What are you spending your time on these days? 

Just chillin

Christmas came early

As last year, and the year before that and... (you get the point) Christmas came early this year as well. My plans are there from early November, baking the seven kinds of cookies required for being a proper housewife and mother, knitting presents for everyone, make my own candles of beeswax, sew new curtains in subtle but Christmassy colours, scrub the fllors and ceilings and so on.

At least we got a tree

What did I manage to do? Well, I made ginger-bread cookies - twice. I made it to a cookie-and-sweetie making date with a friend. But arrived two hours late and with a baby M who would not sleep. We ended up chatting, cuddling the wee ones and eating sushi instead. 

I managed to order Christmas cards about a week before Christmas Eve, but wrote snd posted them the day after they arrived from the printers,and due to a fantastic address list saved from last year, I do not think that I missed anyone. See- I am organized sometimes.

With ligths...

Christmas Eve came and went without any hatches, so I guess I had nothing to stress about, but next year I will be having a project plan in Excel starting late October, and be so organised that even Pappa Kas-the perfect planner proud.

 That is if I can get started in time.Perhaps best to put a reminder in my calendar already now, as to not forget my perfect plan for a perfect Christmas 

and it was decorated before the 24th

Merry Christmas to you all- a week late. 

Baby it's cold outside

Well, not anymore. We’re up to minus 3 Celsius, which is 15 degrees warmer than last week. 

We’ve just had exotic visitors from far far away. Amama Socco and Aixite Sebas came from the warm south to inspect their new granddaughter, Baby M and to catch up with their “oldest” one Little H( which is two and a half).

Mmmmm, chocolate

Amama and Aixite had eagerly followed the weather forecast for Norway on various websites and had become a bit concerned when the temperature started falling below zero and snow was starting to fall.  We tried to hide these minor details for them, as we thought they might postpone their visit if they knew the truth about the December weather. 

Before they came we prepared by buying spikes to attach to their shoes so not to slip on the ice. We stocked up on firewood, and found extra hats, gloves and other necessities.

When they arrived I was impressed by their good spirits, they dressed in layers and went out on walks and played with Little H in the snow.

I was extra happy that we could show them some of our Christmas preparations and they both had Christmas porridge (boiled rice and milk with a bit of vanilla). A tradition is to hide and almond in the porridge and whoever finds it gets a small pig (!?!) made of marzipan.

See and Learn Little H

Aixite Sebas also decorated gingerbread cookies with a precision I have never seen. Every M&M was placed carefully on the cookie in the desired pattern before glazing was applied as to test the symmetry and color coordination of the small chocolates before they got glued on the cookie. I started to understand where Pappa Kas’ sense of detail and thoroughness comes from…

After a week of cooing over Baby M and running after Little H they went back south with tales of cookies shaped like pigs and reindeer, almonds hidden in porridge, kids playing outside in minus 8 C, and real pine trees with lights outside everywhere.

They must think that Norwegians are mad about Christmas. And I guess we are…

Proud Amama and Baby M

Ginger Galore

It’s the time of the year when you can make and eat cookies, drink mulled wine and watch soppy Christmas films all you want. 

I love this time of year and all the preparations. Not to say that I am keeping on top of things, but every year the planning, the illusion of the home-made presents makes me tingle with joy.  This year is not any different, but with two small girls I should lower my expectations.

On Friday we made Ginger bread cookies together with the “Skinheads”, who are not so hairless anymore. I guess I should go back to calling them Hanna’s post-natal group. 

This was the start of a weekend of gingerbread cookies. We baked and tasted on Friday, we ate at least a kilo of cookies on Saturday and then we made some more on Sunday.

Christmas is all about traditions and we have now managed to make a tradition of baking gingerbread cookies together with Sergio’s Senoritas (Ashley, Audrey and Adriana). We operate by the rule of when something is done three years in a row, becomes a tradition.  So now it is. 

Little H is not the most patient of girls, and she got really disappointed when we were not going to bake something she could roll into small or large buns. She was however good at handling the rolling pin, and extremely good at eating the Smarties and the other sweeties we had to decorate the cookies with.

So now our cake-jars are filled with hearts, stars, reindeer and small gnomes, all with a more than healthy tan  and dressed in icing, sprinkles and Smarties (most of them pink).

So what to bake next? 

Rather tanned, but I love the colour scheme 

Pappa Kas, Ashley and Little H in full concentration

Enjoy the silence

We’re slowly but surely getting to know Baby M. She loves milk, she likes a bath (with a couple of drops of nice baby oil. She prefers purple to pink, but is not really fussed about her clothing (yet).

She does her business regularly, she grasps and pulls Little H’s hair when it is dangled in front of her. She loves kisses and cuddles and is not a fan of sleeping alone. She likes her dummy and finds comfort in it when times are tough.

But perhaps the most important trait inherited from her mum is: She loves to sleep! Last week I phoned my mum worried that Little H had given Baby M a concussion, as M had been sleeping for 6 hours straight.

This weekend she slept through five hours in Ikea, a man playing bagpipes close to her pram and a pre-Christmas dinner with eight grown-ups and seven kids.

How long will it last?

I don't care what I wear

Going for a drive

Having coffee with the girls