When I went to put Wasgij #13 away, I stumbled upon an unopened Wasgij? box, which promptly got opened. I think I worked on it some in June, and then it got moved into the front room, where it languished for a few months. It was only this November where I got my act togetherRead more
Soooo… This household has been pretty beset by viruses and bacteria for over two weeks now. Thankfully it hasn’t been all illness all the time, more like 2-3 days of somebody getting something, and then a 3-4 day break before the next victim would fall.
Things came to a bit of a head though going into Friday this past week, when Bjarki came down with Emma’s cough-virus from a week earlier.
He woke up at 1 am with a fever and had a hard time breathing. I dug up an expired can of ventolin (asthma medication) and then held him in front of a warm shower for a good long while to try and moisten up his unhappy airways.
Between attending to Bjarki and then Emma (who woke up at 3:30 am, and 5:30 am-ish), I woke up every hour during that night – and spent a good chunk of it on Bjarki’s tiny Ikea bed (Which didn’t break! I was amaaazed!).
One night like that would have been ok-ish, except the following night I again woke up during every am-hour on the clock (except 2 am). Ouch! (I really, really, really hate illnesses that compromise breathing. Really.)
I should have spent Saturday in bed sleeping, but Anna had a team handball meet, so she and Finnur were out of the house from 10 am to about 4 pm. (Anna’s team won one game, lost three. Which would have been fine if they’d doled out participation medals like they do in swimming, but there were no medals, which bummed Anna out more than anything.)
After all this, I basically threw in the ceasefire-towel, and once Emma’d had her midnight drink, I crawled into the bed we have in the ‘office’, and fell asleep. (The ‘office’ is the fourth room on the upper floor, but it doesn’t have a door, so it’s not really a bedroom. It’s called the ‘office’ because there used to be a desk in there, and that’s where the bookshelves live.)
Finnur valiantly fielded Emma during the night, but found out the hard way that if you let her up onto the big bed, she’ll try and crawl on top of an adult every hour or so. I regained consciousness around 5:30 am (having heard the screams through the night) and saved Finnur. We then tag-teamed through the day, but there were two pretty grumpy adults stomping about the house throughout Sunday. (But Finnur did manage to help Anna clean her room, finally! Oh, that was a relief!)
Last night we repeated the mom-sleeps-in-the-office and lo and behold, Emma drank at 1 am and then I woke up at 6 am and could hear her waking up in the other room. Finnur had made the smart decision to leave her in her crib no matter what, meaning neither of us was in a mood to wake up to her fussing, so we don’t really know if she did or not.
So here’s crossing our fingers that we’ll have another five hour stretch of sleep post-midnight tonight, and that I can move back to my bed before too long.
(Yes, the smart thing to do would be to move Emma into the office, but I have issues with that. And there’s no door.)
I leave you with some pictures of Emma: (4 images total)
24 November: Emma gleefully chasing after the camera. Funnily enough, she’s most interested in the camera strap, not the camera itself!
We got 2-3 days of snow finally! (4 images total)
As is now ‘customary’, the kids built a snow-“house” on the front patio on 17 November.
We’ve had a great time making ginger bread houses and decorating ginger snaps in the past. Here’s 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007 (2007 longer version), and 2009.
Anna reminded me not so long ago that I’d failed to fulfill my promise to make a ginger bread house last year, so I felt extra inspired to do it this year. And since Emma fell ill, we were kinda forced to have a quiet inside day anyway, and what better way to spend it than in the kitchen? 🙂
We invited Holla and her girls over to lend us a hand… Óli is far far away up in the highlands somewhere on a job, so he missed out on all the fun.
Mindful of the information from 2007, I made two kinds of dough for the ginger snaps, namely Piparkökur 2 and Piparkökur 4 (pipar = pepper, kökur = cakes, aka ginger snaps). We used the #4 dough to make the cookies, and the #2 dough to make the houses. Opinions were split on which one tasted better, #2 was a little softer (stickier?), while #4 was crumblier and more sugary? (14 images total)
Just getting started.
Emma continued being a sick little chickling for a second day. She had a non-productive cough and intermittent high fever (when the fever-reducers ran out). (Thankfully, the fever went down the next day, although a lingering cough remains.)Read more
Emma woke up with a high fever this morning and stayed pretty comatose throughout the day. I took her to the doctor in the afternoon because she’d had a cold for a while before this, and sure enough she has a nasty ear infection, but also a nasty viral cough. The doctor decided to giveRead more
Emma and I have made a temporary truce in the nighttime. She gets yanked onto the big bed at her first complaint, drinks every now and then, and I’m too tired to really notice. (She was probably on a two-hour schedule last night. Who knows. Oh, and on the too-much-information front-especially-if-you’re-male: we’ve worked out aRead more
Emma did her darnedest to finish us parents off last night. If memory serves the timeline looked something like this: 23:00 – Emma gets her ‘midnight’ drink ostensibly “for the night” 00:00 – Parents asleep. 01:30 – Emma wakes up crying and standing in her crib. Mother too tired to do more than yank herRead more
Emma and I went shopping for timber today so we can install safety gates on the stairs. The plank we got was 2.55 meters long, so I got to handsaw it into three pieces so that it would fit into the car. The guy who brought the plank graciously steadied the 4.5cm x 9.5 cmRead more
Emma’s fully on board the train to walking now. She’s become a pretty speedy crawler, has been practicing straightening her feet with her hands still on the ground, and now she’s started pulling herself up to stand. Getting down again is a somewhat unsolved problems still though! In other news, Finnur just returned from aRead more