A few outings close to home

One Sunday (general conference Sunday: and I'll have to write about experience general conference 8 hours ahead of broadcast time) our landlords noticed we were still home in the afternoon and invited us to go to the beach with them. So we decided that sounded more fun than naptime for Lily and headed out with them. It was chilly, but a beautiful day. It's surprising seeing people swim, but even at the lake near our house we've heard that Norwegians swim all year long. Not many, but there were a couple older ladies returning from their swim when we arrived. We drove to another small dock/beach on the way back. It is so beautiful out away from the city.

On a rainy day we went with the twins to an indoor playland. Most of the things were for older children, but Lily still had fun.

Jumping is her very favorite thing right now so she LOVED the trampoline.

Another trip with the twins was up to the top of a hill in Tasta where you can see a beautiful view of Stavanger. So I took Barrett for a walk up there one Saturday morning. The pictures don't quite do it justice and the light wasn't great, but another great view just a short walk away from us.

We took a trip to Sandnes (the Southern part of Stavanger; maybe 20 minutes in a car, but an hour on the bus :)) right before Lily's birthday to pick up some cake supplies at a cake store a friend in our ward owns. We intended to take a walk around some popular hikes, but we've found that may of these sites are really hard to get to without a car. So we walked around their center of a town for a short time but the rain was pretty bad so we spent some time looking around inside their mall.
It wasn't rainy when we left to get on the bus so we decided to go to their port, and had a funny experience with some swans.
As you can see in this picture, there were just a few swans and ducks close to the steps we were at, so Barrett started throwing some pretzel pieces with Lily for them.

 Then as we look out at the port we see a bunch of swans in the distance and realize... they are swimming towards us!

 Here is their progression. It really was hilarious. It looked like a swan army coming for us all lined up. We have no idea how they even knew we had food, they seemed so far away from us at the beginning.

 It was hard to capture in one picture, but there were TONS of swans, ducks, and birds all around us by the end.

 We walked around the port a little more to see the view before heading back home.

Our little Norwegian apartment

I finally got around to taking some pictures of what our apartment looks like. I had a lot of people ask at the beginning for pictures, so here they are. Plus a couple more differences of apartment living at the end :)

In case you've forgotten, here is a reminder of what our house looks like, and the entrance to our "basement" apartment.

From the front door is our mud room. It's so nice to have this since we are often coming in with our wet gear.

When you walk through the second door and turn right there is our living room.

Sitting on the couch.

The kitchen from the door by the mud room.

Turning around from the kitchen to the front room.

The other 3 rooms in the house are to the side of the kitchen.

First door on the left is our bedroom.

 We feel a little like college students living in this small apartment because we've had to be creative with where to fit all our stuff. So there's our half-exposed clothes and whatever else we can't fit, ha ha. Luckily we didn't bring very much because there is NO way we could fit even a third of all our things we have packed in our storage unit.

Second door on the left is Lily's room.

 Our landlords' were so kind and finished this second bedroom with what furniture we wanted because it hadn't been used before. Then they showed up with a picture, Winnie the Pooh rug with  matching box, and a small Ikea chair that Lily loves. It feels like a child's room now.

The last room on the left is our bathroom, which is very nice.

Most of the apartments we looked at didn't have a bathtub, and we had even started practicing having Lily shower in preparation, so we were really excited that his apartment didn't only have a tub, but this nice big one with a jacuzzi option.

 (Notice that my washer/dryer is back!)

 Shower to the side of the tub.

We have been really lucky to have this nice apartment with great landlords and a quiet neighborhood that is family friendly and close to the lake.

One thing that I don't know how I forgot to mention about living Norway is the garbage system here. It was probably the first thing we learned about Norway when we ate dinner coming home from the airport our first night. We separate all our trash into a paper container, food container, and then all other trash (there are other places you can drop off glass and plastic but it's not picked up at your house) and there is a sophisticated schedule of what week each of the garbages are picked up. They have a 3 container system you can buy everywhere to put in your house. We've gotten used to it (although I do really miss having a disposal), but Lily always looks at us confused when she opens the cupboard after we've asked her to throw something away, ha ha.

And the absolute BEST thing about our apartment is the heated floors! I don't know why this isn't more common in America. No one has carpet here, but I don't notice it so much when my feet are toasty on my wood floors. And coming out of the shower to heated tile is amazing. It is now a requirement on our ever-growing list of what must be apart of house we will build... eventually. If we ever settle down somewhere long enough to build ;) A little more about life in Norway.

Bye Bye Binkie

About a month ago we said goodbye to Lily's binkie.  She seemed to be getting a little old for the binkie, but we really needed it for the move from Baltimore and to Norway to stay sane, keep her calm, and adjust with the time change. But once that was passed we got really tired of waking up several times a night to give her the binkie so she could fall back asleep. I wanted her over it before the baby came. (Sidenote: I just found out that Norwegians say to take the binkie away before age 3, so most people here are quite surprised to hear that I already took the binkie away. Ahead of the curve here, but a little behind what most "American experts" say in America) To be honest, Barrett and I were both really nervous to take the binkie away. She only used it to sleep and she was instantly calm when we gave it to her. And she's been a fairly good sleeper. But after I got past my initial pregnancy sickness and felt well one morning, I decided that was the day. I told her over and over in the morning that we were going to sleep without the binkie and to say goodbye to the binkie. Here is the video of her saying goodbye to it.

After I had her throw it away in the garbage. (Sorry for the gross garbage picture)

 The first few days were really sad! It was almost panic for her that she didn't have it when it was time to go to sleep. She was fine remembering it was in the garbage when it wasn't time to go to sleep. But she cried less and less each time she slept and I would praise and often reward her for not sleeping with it. At the beginning when I opened the door she would say "Lily slept without binkie. Bye bye binkie. Binkie in garbage." We originally started out with just baby in the crib to comfort her, and then elephant, kitty kat, and sippy were all added, sometimes with additional blankets. 

But this led to continual playing and taking FOREVER to fall asleep at nap and bedtime. Now we're back down to just baby (plus quiet music) and it's still a little struggle with how long it takes her to get to sleep at bedtime. However, we rarely rarely get up with her during the night anymore. Yay for uninterrupted sleep! (well besides getting up to go to the bathroom all the time :))

When I mentioned to people here that I had taken Lily's binkie away they always suggested we visit the binkie tree, which is really close to here. I also recently heard of quite a few other places and tales that go along with the places to help facilitate saying goodbye to a child's binkie. I think it's such a fun Norwegian tradition to help children adjust to the idea of no longer using their binkie rather than it just being gone one day. It took several weeks to make the trip to the binkie tree, but my landlady took me there. Here are quite a few pictures.

Marcela brought her camera along and was so nice to take more pictures for me. 

I look so happy to be tying that binkie to the tree, ha ha.

 I was a little worried about pulling the binkie out that had just been sitting in the diaper bag and Lily wanting it, but she didn't even care. I don't think she even realized it was her old binkie. So not too much emotion regarding the tree, which was good. Here are the kids watching me tie it.

Now Lily also associates binkie with "tree" as well as "garbage" and "bye bye",  ha ha. We got her a baby for her birthday, which has a binkie, so she will still sometimes ask where Lily's binkie is and then proceed with what happened to her binkie. But no more sadness or attachment to it. Yay! One thing down before the baby comes. Now if we can also master a big girl bed and potty training?? We'll see.

The Saga of the Washing Machine: Part 2

Oh how I wish this story was over, but nope it's still going on. Now I haven't dyed any more clothes, maybe some minor shrinking. But it's not my lack of understanding of the settings that kept this story going. At least I don't think I broke the machine...

After my last post, doing the laundry was still an adjustment. Every week something was different, ha ha. I would get one load done perfectly and then be confused when the next few loads finished. The actual washing of the clothes was pretty easy. But drying was another story. I never figured out which setting was best for which type of clothes. It seemed that most times they would either be really wet at the end of the cycle and I would air dry the rest for fear of using high heat and shrinking, or they would come out SO hot that the items of clothing would burn my hand and be crispy wrinkly. (I should have taken some pictures to explain better) Well I was going about my normal Monday morning washing a few weeks ago and suddenly the dryer stopped and started beeping at me. I looked at the screen which read "E20". Well that doesn't seem good. I spent the rest of the day trying to dry my loads with the dryer often stopping, beeping, and displaying the same error code, E20. I got my laundry done at even slower rate than usual and kind of ignored it, thinking it would go away before my next laundry day. The following Monday I was anxious to start the dryer and was so disappointed when I heard the beeping. Another wash day, this time playing around with the dryer settings seeing if any worked. I did find that if I used the timed drying for the lowest amount of time (11 minutes!) then it didn't beep. So every 11 minutes I would go back in the bathroom and restart my load! Then after awhile of this I would be brave and try a different setting, and every now and then a miracle would happen and it would dry like normal. If not, I would continue going in every 11 minutes until I tired of this and finally just air dried the load.

We told my landlord and both of us started researching error code E20. We first thought it was a drain blockage. So Barrett took apart what he needed to and we drained the hoses and there was no blockage. The next week my landlord ordered a new part online that might fix it. He and Barrett worked on it one night and tested a load... Nope, still beeping. Then my landlord asked that I stop using the washer/dryer just so something bad didn't happen or make the problem worse, but offered for me to do the laundry upstairs. Now, I am really happy I don't have to go to a laundromat every week, and they are so kind to let me invade their home every week to do laundry. But it is added work for both of us. I plan a time to start my first load upstairs as early on Monday morning as I can, and since Norwegian washers and dryers take so long, it is about 3 hours to complete one load. So I travel up and down with my laundry basket of dirty and clean clothes a few times Monday, and it always carried over to Tuesday morning before everything is clean. My landlady is really great about letting me wash when I want, and will often change loads for me and once even brought down a dry load to my house. But I also feel bad because it adds work to her. She has to work around my washing schedule and it really is creating more laundry for her as she helps me out when I'm not there late at night or early in the morning.

Good news: Last night our landlord took our machine away to be fixed! Bad news: It could take a couple weeks for the company to even start looking at our machine. The maintenance companies here are not that effective my landlord told me. This company is only open from 8-12, Monday through Friday. It costs significantly more money for them to come to the house and their first suggestions of what to look at to fix it we have already done. Most Norwegians just go out and buy something new if it breaks or replace items a few years after they buy it. I'm not sure if Norwegians buy new products because the maintenance companies are such a pain to use, or if the maintenance companies are open short hours because there is not enough work due to Norwegians buying new, rather than fixing items. I'll never know which came first here, the chicken or the egg. 

Yesterday and today it has been raining REALLY hard. I run from their front door to mine so the dry clothes don't get all wet, ha ha. I really hope a neighbor occasionally looks outside to see the pregnant lady decked out in rain gear, running with her full laundry basket to the basement, often with a toddler, also decked out in rain gear, trying to keep up from behind. It's nice to know I'll at least have either a fixed or new machine in the near future, but for now I'll keep taking my laundry upstairs and listen to Lily ask over and over "Where did Lily's dryer go?" And, in reality, if this is the worst part of renting, I'll take it :) Hopefully the next post about the machine will be about my successful week of washing clothes in my own apartment.

And Baby #2 is a...

 BOY!

We are so excited to have a boy joining our family! When we first found out we were pregnant we both liked the idea of having a boy because it's fun to have a different gender, but as time went on we both started thinking it was a girl. And this continued until my sister, Melissa, found out that she was having a girl (after having 4 boys; yay!) just a few days before our ultrasound. As I talked to her on the phone I started thinking that our baby was a boy. So for the last few days I felt strongly we could have a boy; however, Barrett still thought it was girl. And so did most of our family members. Only 3 other people in both our families thought we were having a boy. So it was a little surprise when we went to the ultrasound, but not shocking. It's funny how obvious it is on the ultrasound when it's a boy. She zoomed in and said well what does it look like? We hesitantly said boy and she said, I haven't ever seen a girl look like that, ha ha. Here's the ultrasound hanging on our fridge.

I bought some blue nailpolish that day and we found a cute pair of boy shoes. (We've already found that shopping for newborn boy clothes isn't quite as exciting as shopping for girls. I kept pointing out the cute girls clothes and gravitating to what I could buy for Lily, ha ha) Then we decided to have a photo shoot the next day in our boy attire to announce the gender. Here are the pictures we took with our tripod.

 We were SO lucky with these pictures! It was sunny all day until just before we started taking pictures and the raindrops started falling as we were cleaning up. Plus, Lily was pretty grumpy and tired. In fact, we were all pretty grumpy that day :) The excitement of announcing from the morning before had worn off a little as we tried to make the picture work in the cold right before dinner. But for 2 pictures with Lily we told her to look at the camera and say "Cheese" and she did! Plus the pictures looked good! A miracle!

 I like the first picture with Lily's hand reaching for me and the shoes :)

You can see how tired she is here. Didn't want to be set down.

 Everything feels a little more real now that we know the baby is a boy and I'm starting to feel movement. I'm just about halfway through the pregnancy. Can't wait for a new baby to join our family!

Just a cute impromptu video of Lily from another day. She came up on her own to say hi to baby. So cute! And now she says calls him "little brother". I love having another child to experience pregnancy with!