And thus it begins…

First off: Happy 21st Birthday Pétur Breki!!  Wheeee!!! 🙂

I’m blogging from my office this time, having just returned from teaching the first class of this semester.  I guess this means the newest roller-coaster ride has begun!  My main course this semester will be “Antennas and Wave Propagation” and I ended up choosing Kraus’ “Antennas for All Applications, 3rd ed” as the textbook I’m going to follow (or attempt to follow, it’s 938 pages, and no-way-jose will that all get covered!)

In other family news Anna has just started practicing gymnastics (first practice was yesterday, it will be two times per week) and she seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.  She’s in a group of ten girls about her size, and the teacher seemed to keep them all engaged doing lots of different things.  Each practice is an hour and forty minutes, which is long but Anna seemed to be ok, although she was very hungry by the time she got out.

(Sidenote: While I was waiting for Anna to be done, the Icelandic National Team in ‘team handball‘ started practicing in one of the halls.  Man, they throw those balls hard!  And the unflinching-ness of the goal keepers is just astounding.  Also, the observation windows were crowded with kids just emerging from their own practice – how very cute! 🙂 )

(Second sidenote/question: Does practicing gymnastics stunt growth, or is it rather that the taller girls self-select out?)

Bjarki seems to be doing fine.  His big interest these days is clay, and he asks to play with our huge tub of playdough-tubs pretty much every day now.  He’s also becoming very good at doing jigsaws, and can manage 35 pieces easily.  He seems to like daycare, and climbing on people.  We’ve also signed him up for some sports (“Sport-School”) which will be once per week for an hour.  It’s hard to know if it’s his genes (ahemm… Finnur’s genes!), his prematurity, being cross-eyed at a sensitive age, or what, but gross motor skills aren’t quite his forte (they never have been).  So we’ll see if a little practice will help him along.

Finnur keeps working from home, and I keep promising to keep a better schedule.  Oh, and go to the gym now and then.  It’s kind of silly orchestrating all this movement for the kids, and not oneself! 🙂