wednesday

it's hard to put down your reflections of the day with just one hand to type with, and yet that is what henry is requiring that i do.  ever since the sickness, and today being the least sickly of them all, henry has been difficult to put into his bed. i hope it's just a temporary "shift" in the bedtime routine.  he's always been so easy to put down (once he's fallen asleep mind you) in comparison to his brother, who was always difficult to put down (even after falling asleep).  it suffices to say that these boys have never been "easy" to get to sleep, the way that some babies (all danish babies-- just kidding) are, so this one-handed typing thing isn't outside the bounds of normal nighttime parenting for us.

okay, now that i've spent fifteen minutes typing out the preface, let's move on to the substance of the day.  my great-aunt, evna (a.k.a. lennie), died yesterday, which i learned of this morning.  she was in her mid- or upper-nineties.  i guess your age, any age, becomes one of your defining "traits" (?) once you die-- well, okay, when you're alive too.  anyway, hers was a "respectable" age to end on.  she has an older sister, still living, who is 101.  no one's going to say they didn't stick it out for the long haul.  they were/are my grandmother's sisters. i like what my own sister said, "i hope she is sharing a Blatz beer with grandma somewhere now!"

also, we went back to school today-- henry's--  and i missed my first day-- an excused absence-- of danish lessons (which i mistakenly put on the calendar as "first day of english classes!"  which, though a foolish mistake, is surely much better than writing something like, "first day of dutch lessons!").  we have homework already, that one of greg's co-workers brought back to us.  i'm a little excited to have homework again-- and you can choose to emphasize either little or excited and both would be correct.  i hope it's not too much.  i haven't had to do the homework thing and the kid thing before and i like it that way (despite daydreams of going back to school while i'm here, since it will probably take me two and a half years to find a job and i might as well make myself useful-- but alas, i don't think the free tuition perk applies to residents).

things went relatively smoothly at henry's school today.  except he kept pulling off one kid's glasses.  a kid older than henry, but still much too young to defend himself and probably much too young to realize he's even wearing glasses, except whenever henry ripped them off his face.  my son, the unwitting bully.

good news! the super best had maple syrup today and coconut oil-- the newest cooking fad, which i am embracing.  if nothing else, it has a pleasant smell.

i think that's all the news here.  goodnight! 

oh, here's a picture of the fjord from this evening...