raaahhhr

these were the only clear shots i could get of henry during his morning snack time birthday party in his class.  we brought banana bread to share and he got a t-shirt that said he is two years old, but he only wore it for a second before complaining he was 'too hot.'  

then he almost immediately got out of his seat and asked me to help him put on this outfit instead....

and he went around 'rahhhhhrrrrrr'ing at everyone...

because he's now two, he can no longer sleep in the prams at nap time.  i think because they are not allowed to restrain kids once they reach two (sounds harsh... looks a little harsh too when you see it, but the kids are strapped into the prams so they don't climb/fall out).  today was his first day sleeping in the nap room in his classroom, and he succeeded in not falling asleep which i wasn't surprised about, despite the fact that he'd stayed up later than usual last night at his ice cream party.  he fell asleep in the burley on the way home and then slept on the couch for about an hour.  i have to say, i don't think i've known a more peaceful afternoon post-little ones pick up.  i'm not saying i value peace over the wild things afternoons we typically have.  i'm just saying... it was peaceful.

now, i hope you consume some chocolate.  it is valentine's day after all.

goodnight! 

henry turns two!

a birthday!  henry's first in denmark.  the rest of us have had our danish birthdays, but henry turned one just 4 days before we arrived here, so he's had to wait most of a year to celebrate overseas.  that's okay because by now william really knows the lyrics to one or two of the (three or four) danish birthday songs-- which is what we sang (in the sense that william sang and greg and i mumbled) to him this morning to wake him up, and then 'happy birthday to you.'  he seemed to understand something special was happening for him and he was definitely into the idea of his presents this morning, which he (with significant, unsolicited help from his brother) opened before school.



after dropping them off i bought things for ice cream sundaes, then went back to their school for a parent-teacher conference with henry's teachers.  all... well... mostly... good things to report: "sweet... always happy... always smiling... cute... peter pedal... what do you call him?  curious george?  yes, that's it... he's curious!... quick and clever, so sometimes we forget he's just a little guy when he does something he's not supposed to... energetic... falls down a lot and runs into things because he's always moving so quickly... likes playing with the big kids in the class... hits... throws... but that's just a boy thing... they all do it... starting to speak in danish... understands what we're saying... good appetite... not always tired at nap time... talks a lot when it's time to go to sleep... has not bitten in a long time..."

then i went to william's classroom to pick him up, since i'd decided to bring them home early for henry's birthday.  he was eating lunch.  i watched in amazement as he ate four bowls of soup, as if we never give him any food at home... though it wasn't urgent like that... just consistent.  such a rare thing it is to see him eat one spoonful after another without pause.  then we went over to henry's classroom where the teacher said he ate three helpings of soup.  i think i mentioned in another post that their school's cook has created a cook book of her meals.  i must remember to bring 20 kroner to their school to buy it soon.

we went home and the guys played with all the new toys henry received and the heating guy came and replaced the fan and eventually our house returned to a level of comfortableness we had not felt in four and a half days.  at the last minute we ordered pizza for dinner... something i must remember not to do again, because it's really not good, unfortunately.  and we called our two-doors-down neighbors and shared ice cream sundaes with them in celebration of two years with little henry.  our own little peter pedal.

after all the salt and sugar... two sleeping boys... one with his new handmade rhinoceros from our neighbor.  thanks emily!

happy birthday littlest one!

what does a furnace and a tree with batteries have in common?

william asked if he could tell about the day today, so these are his words [with my words in brackets], which is helpful as his dad and i have some gift wrapping to do before tomorrow's birthday. he wrote about himself in the third person but quickly switched over...

"tomorrow it's henry's birthday and william's so excited about it and we're only going to have ice cream cause i like ice cream so much and we had hot chocolate this night and i had marmelade med [with] toskohome [i have no clue if the spelling is correct.  he tells me it's some kind of fish] and it's so yummy together and i built a big big puzzle at school by myself.  our furnace ran out so we had to get some (what are those called?) space heaters.



[around here he ran out of things to say but said he wasn't finished, so i gave him some suggestions.  he went with the 'tell them some danish words' suggestion.]

juletræ is christmas tree and lamp is lampe and picture is tegning and rope is snor and man is menneske.  the top of henry's truck always falls off so he has to put it on again and henry said good morning in the night time when i was sleeping and then i thought it was the morning time but then he turned on the light and it hurt my eyes.  henry's favorite tree with batteries in it ran out [here we had a discussion about what tree he was talking about... it seems clear from the rest of the sentence that it is one in his imagination] and i gave it to him for his turning two birthday.  and that's all.

[and now, discussing future events...] henry's birthday was fun.  he got some train pieces and some trains and also some menneske and you know what trains are in danish?  they're togen ['the train'] and dog is hund and puzzle is puslespil and computer is computeren [the computer] and rock is stene and lego is lego [pronounced slightly differently].  goodnight.  [it was time for bed at this point.]"

happy birthday tomorrow, little man-tiger. 

cat in a barrel

no heat.  at least not centrally speaking.  the guy had to order a part, maybe those bearings i mentioned yesterday, i don't know.  but it (the part) will be in transit tomorrow, and so we don't get our heat back, the forced air kind, until wednesday.  he left us with two space heaters, which we use safely, and they tend to make the circuit breaker trip and we're left really then, with just the fire, like 'olden, olden days' until greg goes and resets the breaker and we get our electricity back... about 20 seconds.

i could tell you about how the wing turney part on the threaded rod on the burley was so stubborn today because of all the rust and the cold and the salt and how it seemed that the burley was either always or never again going to be connected to my bike, but i guess i should tell you about fastelavn (fest-eh-lown) instead.  a halloween-like holiday here, which was technically yesterday, i think, but celebrated today at my school and the guys' school.  kids, and those learning danish as a second language, dress up.  william was a ninja again, henry a construction worker, i was just wearing an old louisville sweatshirt.  the entire holiday seems to have evolved from a sort of pre-lent/pre-fasting party time.  the big thing is to hit a cat out of the barrel.  no longer a real cat, but in the 'olden, olden days,' there really was a cat in the barrel.

here is the barrel event at my school....

and the hitting the cat out part...

until someone actually breaks it open...

and the candy spills out... or the cat runs away if it's lucky...

and in henry's classroom (a picture of a picture)....

the other big tradition is the fastelavnsbolle...

 a sweet roll with frosting and a filling.

 the hat didn't go with the costume, but i think it was a cute touch...

happy fastelavn! 

four self-portraits

these self-portraits were taken some other night, but we were photo-less today so i thought they would bring some good energy to this post which is being written tired and close to the fire.  it wasn't so bad, day two, without heat, but i will be happy when we have it working again.  we have gone through a lot of wood, but i suppose we're getting near to the end of the season.  i haven't looked at the forecast lately, but i'm going to think positive in hopes that the temperatures coordinate accordingly.

if we're starting the week the american way, which is to say, today, sunday, then this is the week we will have a two year old running through the house.  otherwise, in denmark, week seven starts tomorrow.  a lucky week to be celebrating a birthday!

light and warmth

"have you got plenty of wood?" asks our neighbor who used to, i thought, rent, but greg says own, the house we live in.  it is the first thing he asks when he comes over tonight to diagnose the problem with the fan for our heating system, which sometime in the middle of the night stopped working, meaning we do not have any heat.  we've been on the phone with our landlord throughout the day and we finally settle on a plan to have our neighbor come over.  he tells us it's the bearings.  they are worn out and will have to be replaced.  we can call the guy at the end of fynsvej to fix it but we won't be able to get a hold of him until monday.  no problem really.  we have had the fire going all day and so the main room is plenty toasty.  the bedrooms are simply good temperatures for sleeping when you consider the down comforters, and the bathroom... well, you just don't hang out in the bathroom any longer than you have to anyway.  we usually keep the vents in that part of the house closed up, so it's really no different than usual.  we don't have a blizzard to contend with either, so all in all, it's sort of like us being sick... minor compared to how it could be.

we also spend part of the day searching for tickets to the u.k.  we have friends living there who may move back to the u.s. at the end of the summer and we want to see them before they go.  denmark takes a large chunk of the end of march off for easter, so we are hoping to take advantage of that.

but in the morning we did puzzles...

here is henry showing you his... 

and before that... yesterday... henry and i watched a horse and rider walk up østre kirkevej...

here was our backyard this morning...

to our disappointment, a neighbor cut down the two tall trees that used to encompass our view. 

but like i said... no blizzard. 

recap/replay

all of the ways we were sick before have happened again it seems.  just a replay really.  even going all the way back to henry's mild case of the chicken pox.  can you have a mild case of the chicken pox twice?

it's difficult to remember what happened when, but you might remember william's strange case of the stomach flu late last week.  that led to greg and i both fighting off a second case of the stomach flu all that weekend, which we seem to have successfully done.  on monday, william came home from school feeling achy and feverish, though he was completely recovered by the next morning.  but that night i also began feeling bad.  i should have known something wasn't right when my morning tea and mid-morning coffee did nothing to keep me from feeling sluggish that day in class.  on tuesday i stayed in bed.  achy, a horrible sore throat, which i continue to have, but never feverish.  i think it was that morning, when greg asked me how i was feeling and i said, 'still crappy' that he responded he thought henry might have chicken pox (which is going around their school).  so one night, sometime before that morning, maybe last weekend, he'd had a fever.  we sent him to school though, because the symptoms were questionable (only a few spots on his face), his spirits were high, greg needed to work, i was sick, and apparently once it gets to the point of spots, he would have already been spreading it, if that's what it was.  in the course of all this, william got maybe one or two spots on his face and henry's hasn't gotten any worse.  so who knows for now.  wednesday i seemed mostly recovered until around noon, when the achy feeling returned, though not to the same extent as the day prior.  today i was still achy until a dose of ibuprofen which i haven't needed to repeat, so i must be getting over it.  just in time to take over responsibilities from greg, who came home with the same symptoms.

so that's what you've missed in this unintentionally long break from posting.  not very exciting.  not even anything to complain about, given how mild it's all been.  just continuous, that's all.  sort of like the cold weather here.  we thought for a minute we were past it, and then it returned.  tomorrow is -1C and the weekend ranges between -8 and -4 with snow both days.  but february's a short month, and i have to think that in denmark, it really is spring beginning in march.

here, a little video to show you what henry's all about these days as soon as we get home from school.  it's sideways for a lot of it, and there's nothing i can do about it except remember in the future to turn my phone sideways when i take the video so that it's upright when it plays...

goodnight!