Daniel :)

I´ve been bad at blogging, and have instead been enjoying my two beautiful boys in whatever "extra" time there´s been to enjoy. Oh, to think I thought I was "busy" when I had just one child and was not in school again! Life has been very, very busy, and very, very, very wonderful for the past 18 months. Daniel arrived and won all of our hearts. He´s such a joy, so smart, determined and full of life and love. He and Aidan have a special bond that fills my heart with a simple pleasure that nothing can come close to, and life feels full and fulfilling.

Daniel´s birth was a triumph for me. I experienced a cesarean section with Aidan´s birth, and it was amazing and peaceful. But since I doubted my ability to have a natural birth, I wanted to have one to prove myself capable. And it was an amazing experience. And it only got better from there. Daniel has brought so much love to our little unit.

Off to create a blog for both of our boys :)

I love you, John, Aidan and Daniel. You are the sun and the stars to me and you fill my heart with joy.

Depth

I have the pleasure and wonder of watching Aidan´s emotional and spiritual sides unfold.
We have talked about death, since Scot (John´s sister Roseann´s husband) and my young nephew Joshua both died in 2009. We all held each other in a big family hug after Aidan cried about death. He said he never wants us to die, and wanted to know what happens when people die. I talked about the spirit of a person always staying with those who knew them, and that a part of them would always be here. That seemed to comfort Aidan a little bit, but for weeks, death was the focal issue, and Aidan needed time to ask questions and explore his feelings about it. It´s a subject I have not fully come to terms with, so I don´t expect him to be completely comfortable with it either. I doubt most people are. Aidan seemed to grasp the finality of death in a way I would not expect a 3-year-old to do, and reacted to it strongly. It was moving and sweet in a way, to share such raw emotions and fears and work through it together.

when Aidan was 2, we listened to a sweet and haunting melody together. It was a Swedish lullabye called "Byssanlull," and it brought tears to Aidan´s eyes. He stopped playing and just listened, then started crying. When the song was over, he wanted to hear it again, and then cried again. I did not know that such young children could feel such things so deeply before I became a mother myself. My respect for young children has grown tremendously as a mom. Their capacity for love, emotion and spirituality is huge.

Aidan asked my aunt, who recently had eye surgery, how her eye feels and how she is doing. She was so touched by his genuine interest in something he does not have any real experience with, and the fact that he could in some way understand that it was difficult for her.

Aidan worries about life post-baby. His little brother is due next Saturday, and he is more anxious than excited. I think he knows that baby will change our lives, and he is not naive about that even though he has no real frame of reference for it. He´s also excited and happy, and hugs my belly lots and talks to the baby. So for him, like for us, the unknown holds its wonder while at the same time causes a bit of worry about how it will turn out.
He marvels at the tiny baby clothes. The first time he saw one of the tiny outfits, he said "wow, so small?"
He wants us to have one more baby after this one. We were talking about family sizes, and I said something about our family being composed of four people. He said "no, let´s have one more!" Haha, he wants the kids to outnumber the adults :)

Aidan is 4!!

I just love my little, big man!! Aidan is a caring, fun-loving, wonderful human being, and it is such a joy to be his mom!
We had a great party at Child Planet, a children´s play place here in Oslo. His guests were:

Taylor (Tonje and Kelly´s daughter and a great playmate to Aidan)
Maja (Bo and Jenny´s daughter)
Juni and Eirill (sisters and daughters of Frøy and Jørn)
Nikolas (Hilde´s daughter)

And Momo and Elfrid came as well! Momo made a delicious marzipan-covered cream cake, and I made some very simple vanilla cupcakes.
Maja´s gift was a huge plastic sword, and Aidan loves it. He asked me what it was, which was nice as he´s never had a toy weapon before. So he´s slowly losing his innocence, but as long as it´s with a plastic sword which he´s convinced is a pirate sword, we´ll be fine :)
Taylor gave Aidan a remote-controlled jeep, which I am going to like playing with. I have always liked remote-controlled cars, and so I get to play with it when Aidan is in kindergarten!
Momo gave Aidan a really cute electronic toy cash register, and Aidan´s loving ringing up our grocery orders and giving us our bags of food.
Elfrid and Ivar gave Aidan an airport set, and Aidan´s really enjoying it. It´s all over our living room floor. So it´s a big airport!
Nikolas gave Aidan a really sweet wooden xylophone. Aidan loves music, so he´ll get good use out of that.
And last but not least, Juni and Eirill gave Aidan a 3 cd set of Albert Aaberg´s stories and music. He was a Swedish children´s author, and I´m sure we´ll all enjoy the cd´s. I love almost everything Swedish when it comes to kids music and films!

After the party, we came home and Aidan was on a high. He said "now I know how to be a party man." Hehe!

"Do we speak Kjelsås?"

Aidan has been learning a lot about different countries and languages, especially since our recent trip to Turkey. And some of his classmates in barnehage are from foreign lands, so he´s been extra curious about languages lately.
On a recent bus trip to the Teknisk Museum (Oslo´s science museum), he asked where the museum is and I said in Kjelsås, which is a nearby area of Oslo. He then asked me, "do we speak Kjelsås," assuming that they speak a different language there. He´s good at both English and Norwegian, and can switch between the two without a problem. He occasionally asks how to say something in Norwegian, as he is a bit more fluent in English since that´s what we speak at home.

Pictures!

"The whole wide world"

That is Aidan´s way of saying he loves something, or thinks its really awesome. Tonight while putting him to bed he said that he feels like a snail is walking on his hand. A few days ago a snail did walk on his hand, and he thought it was so cool that he could barely feel anything except a little tickle (it was a tiny snail), so he was obviously thinking about that. So he says, "I like snails the whole wide world!" I think I have said that something or other is my favorite thing in the whole wide world, and so Aidan uses the phrase when he really, really likes something!

Funny things Aidan says and does

A few mornings ago, Aidan woke up and sleepily said "Mommy, I want cake." His eyes were still closed, so he must have had a dream that involved cake. I sleepily said we didn´t have cake but could get some later. He started screaming, "BUT I WANT CAKE!" Crying hysterically, yelling the house down!! LOL! It´s funny now, though I wasn´t laughing when it was happening.

He makes me laugh all day with his wise, funny, silly sayings.