The State of Things – Fall 2015 Edition

I spent so much time trying to finish blogging most of July, that August seemingly never happened.  Hoping to start fixing that soon.  But, in the meantime, a quick status update, going from youngest to oldest.

Emma, the rascal, has potty trained herself, and now goes without diapers except at night, or on long car trips.  She started insisting on no diapers at daycare before the summer holiday, then she remained fully diapered during the five week long holiday (because we’re lazy parents), but once she started daycare again we forgot to bring diapers, so she just went without and was fine.

She’s full of energy, and is in that delightful phase where she not only wants to do stuff by herself, but will unwind whatever progress we’ve made to some random original point from where she wanted to start doing it herself.  We’re also trying very hard to get her to stop constantly whining and screaming for things by modeling a better tone of voice, but with limited success it feels.  I’m hoping she’ll get it in the end though.

She’s also apparently inherited the grow-early genes, as I’m now buying 4 year old clothes for her, although she won’t be 3 until February!  With older siblings, there’s no avoiding screen-time, and she will now screech for LazyTown or Iggle Piggle (In the Night Garden) at every opportunity.  She’s also utterly adorable, a huge flirt, and a happy kid when things are going her way.  Today she went biking with Anna on Anna’s old 12 inch bike, and she’s figured out pedaling, although she’s not very good at it yet.

Bjarki has just added a few cm to his height, outgrowing most of his pants.  He’s getting wiser, but also likes to be babied.  His favorite way to taunt Emma is to crawl into my lap proclaiming “mommy!”, or to steal her duvet and dolls.  His mood swings got a little shallower during the relatively easy going summer vacation, but it’s more touch and go now that the winter program has started.  Finnur’s instituted a smiley-face program to track his days, but we need to sit down and figure out how many smiley faces his rewards will cost.  We’re such procrastinators!

His favorite toys in the whole world are NERF guns, which he’s been permitted to buy for himself using his (birthday) money.  Second to that he reminds us daily what computer game he wants for Christmas, and he gets very very upset when his screen time is limited for some reason, or if he thinks his siblings are getting more screen time than he is.  He’s an emotional manipulator par excellence!

He surprised us all with his English knowledge this summer, but that’s probably due to the 200-300 hours of Minecraft YouTube videos he’s watched this past year.  We think he’s doing pretty well at school, although we won’t really hear until next month.  He reads fast, and usually does his math work correctly.  He’s taking guitar lessons for the second year in a row, now with a different teacher, who’s teaching him very differently from the guy before.  After some starting drama, he’s getting into the practicing groove again.  He’s also doing 1.5 hours of gymnastics three times per week, which he seems to enjoy still, and we can tell it’s making him stronger.

Anna keeps maturing.  She’s about an inch shorter than I am, and has started enjoying buying clothes, even though she generally ends up wearing the same clothes over and over again (we may be related).  She still reads manga books by the truckloads, but also likes to draw.  She’s figured out she can usually get her way by being very persistent in asking for something, even though it may take three months to come to fruition.  She’s taken to doing her own laundry, and even drying, but rarely has the patience to properly stove away the clothes once clean.  She’s also perfected the eye-roll, a must for every teenager!

She’s been doing well at school, but this coming Thursday and Friday will have nation wide “status-tests” in Icelandic and Math, so we’ll get a better idea then.  I’d say she’s doing above average, even perhaps well above average, but who knows?  We had some drama this fall with finding a sport or activity to do outside of school besides piano, which she’s still doing.  She stopped being interested in team handball last spring, which resulted in her sitting on the sofa for hours while waiting for us to come home.  Not wanting a repeat of that scenario, I pushed pretty hard, and in the end she found “track and field” which she seems to really enjoy.  Crossing fingers!

I have now worked for Marel for a whole year, and am still enjoying it.  Coming off of an idyllic summer vacation, I do suspect I’m stressing out a bit too much now (hello, again, psoriasis in my face), but I’m not sure if it’s the job, the kids, life, or just the whole thing all together.  Going back to work was harder than I thought it would be, mostly because I felt strangely drained after the summer holiday.  Somehow being away from work was relaxing, but the constant need for attention from the kids, and the pressure of getting everything ready for school, and then figuring out everybody’s schedule, was taxing.  In any given day I usually have no me-time except post nine or sometimes close to ten in the evening, and it means I don’t manage to blog or do stuff I want to do as much as I’d like to. (To be fair: I often use the opportunity to nap while Finnur cooks, because I do the lion’s share of putting the kids to bed.)

Thus it was a real joy to be sent to Denmark this past week on short notice!  It was my first trip being solo, and it was an easy job, so I had the late afternoons and evenings to myself, and it was really nice.  I went shopping, to restaurants, and read a book I’d been putting off reading because I had no (mental) time.  Being back I could feel my introverted batteries had gotten some charging, so that was good.  A patient mom wins over cranky tired mom every day.

I’m getting back into the groove of attending three “boot camp” training sessions per week, but I’ve put on weight (stress? finding energy to supplement a drained battery? who knows) over the summer, so I feel slow.  I’m also going to try to attend yoga two times a week, but this is seriously cutting into my working hours, so maybe it’s a bad idea?  I also keep meaning to swim while Bjarki’s doing his gymnastics, but that’s only happened twice so far this season.

Finnur keeps being Finnur, and we joke that I find his life more exciting than mine.  He’s still very involved with his football hobby, and might to the UK to see a game this fall.  He’s still working for Google, and a coworker has recently flown in and will be a temporary office mate until the new year.  He is the family chef, and supposed ‘sane person’ is a family of mad people, although he’s getting a bit tired of that responsibility.  He’s getting as bad as I am in going to sleep at a reasonable hour, so that’ll probably help drag him into the “mad people” category soon!

So far we have no pets (and no plans to get pets), so that concludes the status of things for fall 2015!