Out and about at 65°N
We failed to adequately block the bedroom windows last night, so Bjarki woke up at 7 am (instead of 9am) in broad daylight, and refused to go back to sleep. Finnur (asleep at 1am) decided to be Mr. Hero and got dressed so that Anna (asleep past midnight) and I (asleep even further past midnight) could sleep in to 9:30 am.
Shortly thereafter Bjarki took a tumble and fell on the pavement outside and hit something hard enough that his scalp started bleeding. After the initial shock and cry-session he looked fine, so we were just going to watch him, but then him and Anna got into an altercation which left Bjarki upset, which made the hole start bleeding again. That gave me visions of an entire day with a bleeding head, so since it’s a little impossible to put a bandaid on hair, plus Bjarki got very upset when we touched his sore spot, I decided to take him to the ER to see if they could close the wound properly (see following blog post for picture).
Kata was kind enough to drive us there, since we don’t know where the local hospital is, and even went to get something for us to snack on at her in-laws while we waited. We waited for about an hour and a half, during which time it became ever more apparent that Bjarki was perfectly fine, except for a pesky tiny trickle out of the wound every time he started moving around. Eventually we were seen by a nurse that literally glued the wound shut and then showed us how to fasten a gauze to a head full of hair. For this we paid $5.20 (800 isk) – have I mentioned just how much I loooooooooooooove our socialized health insurance/care system?!?! 🙂
After all this drama, we had a relatively calm day. Kata and I took the girls (plus one extra!) to the local swimming pool, while Finnur attempted (and failed) to get Bjarki to nap. Again, a massive curtain failure, plus he’d dosed off in the car during the 10 minute ride back. We then fed the girls and collected the boys and went to a local forest that has play structures. The weather played nice just for us, and the kids had a lovely time.
A sandbox plus play-houses in the old-Icelandic-style
plus the massive swim-slide by the swimming pool.
The gang on a hanging bridge in Kjarnaskógur.
Bjarki in the car seat, with a lovely gauze on his head.
Grétar and Signý with two of their three children.
p.s. I’ve added blog posts from the 10th and 11th of August below the ER post (sent from the cell-phone) below.