Where Mommy Lives

On Sunday we drove by my work and Inara exclaimed: "That's where mommy lives!"

Good thing vacation is less than two weeks away...

Oh, and parenting tip of the week: Put away all your kid's toys for a month and then bring them back out again. Satisfaction guaranteed!

What's happening?

Photo taken by my friend Jennie. You know she's playing when she's just chewing on her binky .

Inara loves asking questions nowadays. Especially in the car. On any car ride we're bombarded by: "what's happening now?", "where are we going?" "what's dad doing?" and "what are they doing?". Other popular inquiries when out and about are "what is his name?", "what is she thinking about?" and "where are they going?". I love how she's so curious and we do our best to answer her many, many questions.

Also, Inara has turned out to be quite the entrepreneur. She owns at least three stores, a multitude of cars and houses and pretty much everything else she lays her eyes on. 

She's getting very good at saying "please" and "thank you" and says it in such a way that nobody could deny her anything. She's also still very good at saying "no" and "I don't want to." And she melts our hearts by saying she likes us. 

Oh, and Andrew taught her how to do the Macarena. Hopefully a video coming soon.

Inara vs. the train and the long, long distance to the potty

Whelp. Another week almost gone by now in this summer. Planning on getting ready for winter I guess.

In the mean time this week on the island is known as 'Stockholmsvecka' which translates directly as Stockholm's Week. That translation isn't correct, however. The proper translation is 'rich kids come to Gotland from Stockholm (or where ever) and spend their parent's money getting trashed, urinate/vomit on anything that doesn't move (or does) and commit as many small to medium sized acts of drunken vandalism possible week.' I'd say it is probably the best time to visit. I'm just pissy because they are gobbling up the islands bandwidth and food. The stores seriously can't get food (and diapers) in fast enough. Like a game of hungry, hungry hippos tourists.

Now on to the main topic...

There used to be a well functioning train network on Gotland but in the late 1950's and early 1960's they decided that it would probably be better to tear that all out. All of it. Leave not a single stretch of track behind (or so). And you wonder why they did this? Well because cars and individual travel was clearly the wave of the future. Seriously, who would ride in a train or a bus in the future? It goes without saying that they who made that clever and longsighted decision are well beyond caring but I imagine them as group of guys flipping the bird at future generations. This is not wholy unlike current environmental policies in some countries. But digress again...

Anywho a group on the island seeming convinced the EU to give them money to 'restore' a  3km stretch of track. The track is nearby so Inara and I went to have ride. The ride to one end took 6 minutes (generously) and the ride back took 15 because we stopped twice to look at old train depots and get a short lecture on the history of Gotland's trains. As you can imagine the lectures were well taken by Inara. There are movies but just getting the pictures to load took me long enough to get angry at the tourists again.

So here we are. You'll notice that Inara is sporting a death metal hair style. Or as I like to call it the 'Can you wear your hat? No, no no no. How about a hair clip? no no no no' style. Getting rid of her pacifier is going great also.

She was mildly impressed with the train.

This was the look I got when I suggested we actually get on the train to ride it, which had been our pre-determined objective.

On the train while we were moving. This is one of the few times she left my lap. Trains are loud and scary.

Are we done? Nope halfway point. That engine is coming back.

Kindly conductor placing his hat on Inara for a good picture.

He was rewarded with a 'No no no, I don't want to (Nej, nej, nej. Vill inte!)' and an attempt to throw the hat under the train.

The one on the left is me wearing a stylish Money Never Sleeps shirt. Anita's neighbor took the picture.

On to the next topic... So you're all aware of our attempts to potty train Inara. She has done remarkably well with peeing in the potty. The only failures were on Maria's watch, and I suspect they were likely Maria setting Inara up. Pooping in the potty has been another beast. It seems that poop travels through a small child so quickly that it cannot be predicted by said child more than 5-10 seconds before it happens.

Yesterday Inara explained to me in a gaspy voice that was immediately recognizable as the 'pooing' voice that she, 'needed to pee' during lunch. I sprang into action and grabbed her up and ran her to the bathroom and the potty. I set her down and waited. She finished up and stood up. Mysteriously there was no poo in the potty, just pee. I checked and there was definitive evidence of poo on her posterior. I then began to survey my surroundings like a man who has ran into a mine field. In the immediate vicinity there were two cherry pits that had clearly passed through the business end of someone, but that was it. It was odd, but I figured I'd dodged the bullet. I cleaned Inara up and proceeded to the kitchen to finish eating, and where Grandma Anita had never stopped eating her lunch. It was there I saw it in all of its glory. It must have dropped out of Inara nearly the same time I picked her up. I strongly wanted to take a picture and post it here but I suspect that would have been on the verge of passing what is considered good taste.

Today as we were having dinner Maria got a similar warning but hesitated two or three seconds to put her fork down. This resulted in the poo landing on the floor mere feet from the potty. I'll keep you posted on how this shapes up.

Inara vs the cold, cold water

So after a series of fails (and an unknown fail to come) today we decided to go to the beach. It certainly cheered Inara up.

In other news Inara is learning to pee in the potty. It is going reasonably well. She does hold her poo until she has a diaper, which I guess is better than having her poop on the sofa.

Summer

A nice long weekend has unfortunately come to an end. Here are some picture of Inara enjoying the beach and jumping off a rock. We also went to pick wild strawberries, but only managed to find about as many as would fit in Inara's belly.

Dancing and singing on the dock. Not sure where she got her talent from.

Moves!

Who's birthday is it? Inara's!!

Someone's been extremely pumped about their birthday for about a month, reminding us several times a day that she's going to "fylla år" (have a birthday), while showing us how many years with her fingers. Finally the big day came! Inara started out by sleeping in (!) until 7.30 which made for both a happier birthday girl and happier parents. We got up and made American pancakes:

 

We put a candle on her pancake and let her blow it out. It's a bit hard to hear the conversation in the video, but Andrew asks what day it is and Inara says it's her birthday and shows us how old she's going to be. 

 

Then she got to open the gifts from us. You can hear her exclaim "a doctor's bag!" when she opens the second gift. 

In the afternoon we had a birthday party at the park. We had invited three of Inara's friends and their families.

Since Inara doesn't like cake, Andrew made her a melon cake.

Everybody seemed to have a good time, especially Inara. 

When we got home we still had a few gifts to open from grandma Nitz, grandpa Barney and aunt Annie. Then all her cousins sang her happy birthday on skype. After dinner, she left the table to go play in the living room and we could hear her singing the Swedish happy birthday song to herself in the other room. I think she had a really good day. 

I realize all parents say this, but I can't believe she's two now. I actually thought she looked older this morning when she sat at the breakfast table. Having a newborn again is probably going to make her seem even bigger. I also can't picture what life was like before we had her. Even though things are busy, I can't imagine anything more worthwhile than than spending time with her.  

30!

As you probably know, we celebrated Andrew's 30th birthday last weekend. Andrew and about ten friends of his went to play paintball in the afternoon and then we had a big bbq in the evening. The paintball seems to have went over well with only minor injuries. I'll let Andrew tell you more about the paintball in the next post. The day had started out with rain so we were a bit worried about having to cancel the whole thing, but it cleared up just in time and turned into a beautiful evening. We were too busy to take pictures, but fortunately our friend Reagan saved the day by being our photographer. The pictures are largely of Inara and her Casper, but who I'm pretty sure no one will mind.

Rolling in the grass - providing hours of entertainment since the beginning of time.

Buddies

There is a SNAIL on my SHOE!!!

Check it out!

Dessert

Patiently awaiting the strawberries

Casper helping Andrew open his gifts

Another snail!

They chased each other around and around in the grass, laughing hysterically the whole time