Finnur’s electric bike developed some connectivity problems (probably because it’s been shaken to death by all the ice on the roads), and he ended up borrowing his parents’ car to go to work.
We had to pick him up again at the end of the day, but we arrived before he did so I got a few photos of the three grandkids that were there. (3 images total)
Kids flanked by their grandparents.
Pics from the living room this afternoon. (11 images total)
The last image I took, but the only (decent) one with all three kids. Bjarki was kinda busy playing on the Wii though! (This was post-6 pm.)
I’ve been dragging my feet in posting about this (I didn’t want to jinx things!!) – but Emma moved into her own bedroom on 30 December 2013, and has slept there, quite well, ever since.
The long story is that she was slowly but surely killing me by repeatedly waking up at night, and yes, her crib was in our bedroom.
By the end of November, things were getting a bit better, but the midnight feeding kept moving all over the place, sometimes all the way until 2 am. That’s when the chorus of women around me started chanting ‘drop the midnight feeding’, and I figured… why not?
On 01 December, Finnur flew off to the USA, and I decided to stop sleeping in my own bed. Instead, I moved full time to the single bed in the door-less ‘office’, i.e. the fourth (bed)room on the second floor.
And lo and behold, Emma stopped waking up at night!! (I also kept going to bed very late so I didn’t wake up to every whimper and complaint, so that ‘helped’).
When Finnur returned some two weeks later, I kept on sleeping in the office, except for a few nights where I tried sleeping in my own bed. The conclusion was always the same: Emma slept worse with me in the room (of course, she could care less about Finnur!).
What needed to happen was clear: Emma had to move into the ‘office’, except it had no door.
After some prompting and prodding from Guðrún, I called around to see what a door might cost. Of course the door-opening is non-standard (almost two doors wide, but not quite), so we were looking at either a) a very expensive custom-made double door, or b) a cheaper single door with a wooden panel on the side, either as a DYI project, or employing a carpenter.
Being female, I decided to go for option c) (that’s a joke for Augusto 🙂 ) and hang thick curtains to cover the opening and call it a day! (10 images total)
It struck me one day that we still had a set of thick-ish Ikea curtains on a semi-permanent loan from Holla. We’d originally used them to cover our bedroom window in our rental apartment during our first year back in Iceland. Amazingly, I managed to finish hemming them the day after we put them up. I guess I’ve learnt my lesson after too many hemming projects that I let linger half-finished for years…
Today’s Fake Football Fanclub outing (#4!) was inspired by Elsa, and an ad and an article in the paper.
It turns out a scholar, Guðbjörg Kristjánsdóttir, has been working on analyzing a manuscript from the middle ages, called the Icelandic Book of Drawings (Íslenska teiknibókin), since the 1970s – and it’s finally culminated in the publishing of a book about the book, and an accompanying exhibition at the Kópavogur Art Museum – Gerðarsafn.
Said book just won a big Icelandic book-award, so admission to the exhibition was free this weekend, and I decided to go.
The aforementioned ad in the paper was regarding a free guided tour at 2 and 3 pm, but not only do I dislike crowds, we were also busy later in the day, so 11 am it was!
Ironically, I was late for my own event due to oversleeping (yeah, seriously!) but only by about 15 minutes. (57 images total, I kid you not.)
Gerðarsafn in Kópavogur is one of those buildings I’ve biked past a thousand times, but never actually entered. Well, finally the time had come!
[Written 01 February 2014] Finnur picked Bjarki up from after-school-care this Friday afternoon, and it was immediately apparent that Bjarki was in a bad mood/hungry/tired/cranky/you name it-he had it. They managed to go to the store to pick up dinner (sushi!) but by the time they got home they’d gotten into a tiff over whetherRead more
[Written 01 February 2014] I realized some time ago that I was long past due hosting a sewing club for the Ex-Californian Women, but holiday stress, illnesses, and scheduling difficulties pushed it to the end of January. (Turns out I last hosted a club in November 2012, ahem!). For some reason, everybody but one guestRead more
How time flies!!
Today was the third outing of the FFF (3xF?) club, and I was in the mood to be arty.
The art of choice was the opening of a new photo-exhibition by female Icelandic photographers dating from 1872-2013, called ‘From a Different Angle…‘ at the National Museum of Iceland.
Overall I really liked the show. The photos were undeniably ‘feminine’ in that they portrayed views that felt quite intimate, and/or home-y.
They “rang true”, is about as succinctly as I can put it! (31 images total)
I parked by the main building of the University of Iceland. The museum is on its right.
The school asked kids to come to school wearing something ‘national’, i.e. woolen. Luckily, Eyrún, Finnur’s very talented sister, loves to knit, and has given the kids a few woolen jumpers. Yay!Read more
[Written 25 January 2014]
This winter’s been a little unusual in that a sheet of ice has covered the capital area pretty much since early December.
One result is that our street is crazy bumpy due to uneven ice, and the other is that our poor neighbors have had to skate to their cars in the morning, because their drive-way isn’t heated like ours.
So they decided to do something about it. (8 images total)
I took the kids swimming this Sunday morning, and when we came back, we noticed that our neighbors were attempting to thaw some of the ice in their driveway via a mostly unsupervised hose with hot water pouring out. Anna jumped at the chance to supervise…
[Written 24 January 2014]
Emma’s not walking yet, although she’s started to occasionally let go while standing.
Walking doesn’t seem to be a huge priority for her though – she’s mostly trying to get to the places we’ve cordoned off, via pushing furniture around and climbing.
Oh, dear! (15 images total)
Thursday 16 January 2014
Well, hello there phone. Can I get you? You’re a little high up. What if I put my toe there?… (The phone got promptly moved onto the keyboard.)