Tuesday Morning at Our House

I am so happy that there are finally moments when Anna and James actually play nicely together with actual toys and a minimum of fighting. I'm not saying these moments aren't still few and far between but it is as if we can see what lies ahead - and I like it.

 

This morning while I was getting ready, James brought in his basket full of cars (his very favorite treasures) to the bathroom and started lining the bath tub with them. Anna liked the idea and started helping. James kept saying bil-caj, bil-caj. I think he is a little confused with the whole Swedish vs. English thing so he often says a word in both languages, just so he's covered.

 

James decided to line the tub with all his favorite cars. Anna was happy to help!

 When I was finished getting ready we went downstairs and of course all the cars had to come with us. This time they put them in little containers left over from Easter. James carried two and Anna carried two. It was like they knew they had to be fair about it.

Can you tell how content he looks?

Next Anna and James decided that they would stuff as many cars as they could in their pockets (they are both obsessed with pockets) Anna had really big pockets in her dress today so I think she fit about 4 cars in each one. She wouldn't let me touch them until it was time for her nap. Must have been heavy walking around with 8 cars in her dress - she sure clanked with every step!

They stuffed their pockets with as many cars as they could fit!

We had a lovely time this morning. It all probably lasted about 20 minutes - and I savored every one of those minutes.

Emma Turns 7!

This birthday post is long overdue but at least it is still her birthday month right?
This year Emma requested an ice skating party for her birthday and we gladly obliged. It turned out to be lots of fun for eveyone. Emma had 14 of her girlfriends there as well as the family. One of the best things about her party was a big surprise for all of us. Mormor and Morfar showed up! I had sent them an invitation just for the heck of it and didn't really give it a second thought. Imagine our surprise when they casually walked through the door, right on time for the party, after driving for two days to get here. It was great!

Our "theme" was rainbows. Kind of hard to make an ice skating rink all that cozy...

Emma with her Daddy (who was wearing a Swedish ice hockey jersey I might add!)

We had the whole rink to ourselves - it was great!

Three lovely ladies

Grandpa and Morfar

Mormor and Morfar ice skating - aren't they sweet?

Henry learned to like ice skating at the party and is now taking lessons!

What a great group of girls!

As you may remember, I interviewed Henry for his birthday so I thought I would ask Emma the same questions:

1. What is your favorite color?
Emma: Orange
2. What is your favorite toy?
Emma:Kompis
3. What is your favorite fruit?
Emma: Bananas
4. What is your favorite TV show?
Emma: Austin and Ally
5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?
Emma: PB&J
6. What is your favorite outfit?
Emma: Pink Adidas tracksuit with a green tee
7. What is your favorite game?
Emma: Cat in the Hat board game
8. What is your favorite snack?
Emma: Edamame
9. What is your favorite animal?
Emma: Monkey
10. What is your favorite song?
Emma: Mean by Taylor Swift
11. What is your favorite book?
Emma: Barbapapa
12. Who is your best friend?
Emma: Anna
13. What is your favorite cereal?
Emma: Honey Nut Cheerios

14. What is your favorite thing to do outside?
Emma: Ride on my scooter
15. What is your favorite thing to drink?
Emma: Hot chocolate
16. What is your favorite holiday?
Emma: Christmas
17. What do you take to bed with you at night?
Emma: Kompis and 2 pillow pets
18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?
Emma: Cereal
19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday?
Emma: Mormor's pankakor
20. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Emma: Work at Costco

Two two year-olds!

Anna and James turned 2 last week! These little ones aren't babies anymore - although I imagine they will always be my babies, even when they're 40...

We had a small party with just the family. Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Eileen, Mike and Roger came to help us celebrate. The theme of the party was Elmo - only because Anna and James recognize him and know how to say his name (they don't even watch Sesame Street). They walked around saying "Elmo" all day long - mission accomplished!

My first attempt at cake decorating - I was pretty happy with it, if I do say so myself...

Emma, Ashley and I made snow globe party favors.

Our newest tradition - the birthday train!

Elmo!

Anna enjoying brunch

Yum!

James LOVED the Elmo balloon!

Anna was mostly interested in the gifts.

She finally got to open her presents.

As did James of course

James and Grandpa having fun with the new tent.

After Anna and James opened their gifts it was time for the pinata. Notice all the pieces of tape on the bottom? Our pinata must have been defective because all the strings came off... Dan then had to tape every single piece of ribbon back on! Surprisingly it worked out great!

Notice how James is trying to put his ride on toy on top of the very small coffee table. This is why he continues to get hurt all the time!

I wonder why Anna looks so suspicious??

Our main gift to our two year-olds was this tandem tricycle. I'm hoping we'll have lots of fun with this once the weather warms up.

We also bought a second trike without pedals. They were always fighting over Henry's old one so now they each have one. I'm sure they'll find something else to fight over... (Isn't that basket the cutest?!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR BEAUTIFUL ANNA AND JAMES!

James

James did not have a good day last Friday. While I was out running errands and having a parent teacher conference about Henry (more on that later - that was the best part of my day!) James and Anna were at home with the babysitter. James was jumping on the little mini-trampoline we have in the basement (it has since been moved!) and somehow tripped and fell off. He fell badly onto a speaker next to the trampoline and got a deep gash between his eyes that apparently started gushing blood immediately. Luckily our house cleaner was also here and between her and the babysitter they got James somewhat calmed down, the bleeding to more or less stop and made the phone call to me. Fortunately I was close to home so I rushed back to take James to the emergency room. We could all see that he would need stitches. I was shocked when I first saw him.  He was sitting shirtless on the kitchen island, wimpering and looking scared. The cut was very deep - about a centimeter. This is what it looked like when James and I got to the ER:

Once at the hospital they put a topical anesthesia on the cut and we waited about an hour for the gel to do it's job. When they were ready to put in the stitches we put James' arms on his back in a pillow case and wrapped his whole body in a sheet so he couldn't move much. There was also an technician who held James' head the whole time. Surprising James was never hysterical. Of course he cried throughout the procedure - but fairly quietly, like he knew he had to be still - what a brave boy! The Surgeon put in 3 stitches under the skin and 8 on top. This is what James looked like when they were done:

He was so sweaty when it was all over! You can also tell how tired he was - he missed his nap that day and after that much pain and crying I can only imagine how he must have been feeling. James and I finally got home around 5pm, after making a detour to the Dairy Queen drive through - this boy deserved an ice cream!

The next picture shows James today. (I managed to take a blurry one as he was eating a snack...) He hasn't seemed bothered by the stitches at all and hasn't touched them once. We'll go back to get the stiches out on Wednesday. I'm sure he'll have quite the scar...



James scares me - he has already been to the ER twice and he's not even 2 years old yet! (The other time we had to take him was when he knocked out a tooth at 8 months old)

Utah trip

The past couple of years we have taken a trip with my side of the family over Christmas. Last year we went with Sofia and her family to Lake Tahoe - it was a quick, three day trip and though we had a good time, the house we rented was dirty and unsafe and the twins were not quite one so that combination didn't work out so well. This year we had much higher hopes about our trip to Salt Lake City. This time we went for a full week and my parents also joined us which made it feel much more complete - although not fully complete as Fredrik and Pilar weren't there. I really hope we can all be together next year - it's been too long!
Nate did a wonderful job finding us a house that we all more than fit in. There was plenty of space for the kids to run around and the adults to find a quiet spot every now and then. Emma, Henry, Siena and Oliver have so much fun playing with each other. I love it that the cousins are so close in age. At least Anna and James have each other...and speaking of the twins, I seem to have no pictures of them from this trip - they are too quick for me to catch!

Emma and Siena doing some arts and crafts

Mormor and Nate reading - doen't it look peaceful?

Dan can't resist the draw of his laptop!

The boys decorated a gingerbread house...

...and so did the girls.

The kids thought it was so exciting to go in the hot tub outside in the freezing cold!

Waiting patiently...yeah right...to open presents.

Almost ready!

Love that there even was a tree for us to put our gifts under.

The spread

Christmas sweets

Henry's Birthday Party

As promised, here comes a little report on Henry's birthday party. We had it at an indoor "inflatable playground". Essentially it is an enormous warehouse filled to the max with giant inflatable play structures. The kids had a great time - I thought it was a little overwhelming... You couldn't see around, through or over any of the structures so trying to keep an eye on 20 or so little boys was not easy. When it was time for pizza and cake one of the staff members had to climb through everything to find a kid who had decided to just sit in a corner and take a break all by himself for a while. I was pretty nervous there for a bit that we had lost one of Henry's friends... Anyway, everyone came out of there sweaty from all the jumping and climbing and full of sugar from the cake and goodie bags so we'll call it a success! Henry was so happy and felt so special - that was the only thing that really mattered anyway.

Catching up...

I feel like I have more I would like to share from our holiday season. December was so busy that I didn't get a chance to post everything I wanted to. It doesn't matter when the pictures are posted, as long as they are, right?

Somehow we ended up meeting Santa 4 times this Christmas season. That must be some kind of record - for us anyway. Each visit had varying degrees of loud screaming or excessive pouting involved, as you can see below.

The first picture is from our town's official "Cookies with Santa" event. Sounds harmless enough, don't you think? Apparently Anna and James did not feel that way. They screamed pretty much from the time we entered the building to the time we left. Not sure why we stayed, waiting in line and all, other than not wanting the outing to be a complete failure. The only way we could get a picture at all was to include Dan:

Dan is trying to stay positive!

The next set of pictures is from the Lucia celebration where Emma was part of the show. This was probably our most successful visit with Santa. Actually he was Jultomten as Henry explained to us that this was the svenska Santa! Tomten gave out enormous bags of candy that may have had something to do with our success rate.

Henry is explaining to Jultomten that he wants a Nintendo DS for Christmas. (which he did not get this year...)

Emma, looking a little selfconscious on Tomten's lap.

Even James was happy! You can tell he is looking in the bag where the candy is.

Of course we couldn't be 100% successful. Anna was NOT happy - luckily she still got her bag of candy though - the evening was saved!

Next up is our visit with Santa at our country club. This is where the pouting came into the picture. Henry wouldn't have any part of sitting with Santa. Maybe he had had enough of the man in the red suit at this point? Whatever the reason, there was no talking our stubborn little man into being photographed.

Classic Anna!

Another one where Dan had to step in.

Unfortunately our fourth visit with Santa was not documented with pictures. The kids each got a gift this time and it all moved too fast for me to manage my camera. Anyway, we probably have enough photos... You may be asking yourself why in the world we insisted on our upset children sitting in Santa's lap and getting their picture taken over and over again. I think that is an excellent question. The only answer I can come up with is that we got caught up in the moment and it was "the thing to do". Plus I think it's kind of fun looking at these!