Wow! Our baby turned 2 this week. It is so hard to believe she's growing up so fast! She is one hilarious little girl, and I know I will miss spending all day with her when we get home again. About two weeks ago, a present arrived in a big red bubble envelope for her from my grandma. She knew it was hers, but we told her she had to wait until her birthday to open it. Any time someone said "birthday" she would look around to make sure it was still there waiting for her, and would point and say "Svea birthday!" so she was ecstatic when we told her yesterday that she got to open it first thing in the morning, even before breakfast. It was a very cute book, and we read it four times yesterday. For about a week, she has also been singing the beginning of the Danish birthday song, "Svea fødselsdags" over and over again. Yesterday it was pretty much all day long. She got a new dress and some pez in an envelope that arrived yesterday morning from my parents, so that made the day even better. At dinner last night, 100 students sang the whole song to her, and her face just lit up. She loves the song anyway, but when she realized they were singing to celebrate her, she was so excited! It just makes your heart happy to see pure joy in little kids. We had gotten her a couple of small things (the theme of this year is keep purchases (a) small, (b) lightweight, or (c) dispensable.) and the boys had a great time wrapping them after school while she took a nap. They each made her a small present out of perler beads as well. It's so fun to see how much the three of them love each other and have fun doing things that make each other happy. One thing we got her is a little pink wallet with a princess on it. It has a zipper portion and a snap portion, and she thinks it resembles the phone cases combined with wallets that most people around here carry. She opened the snap part said "Svea phone" and started pushing on the plastic part where your ID would go, saying "I call papa."
This picture just makes me smile! I really hope the resolution is good enough to print out and put on the wall (edited to remove the shopping bags and coke bottle waiting to be returned to the store). She has so much joy in her little face!
This red sweater dress was one thing we got for her. It's a little bit big -long mostly- but the tag says it is size 4-6 years. I don't know any six year old, or any four year old really, who would fit in this! But it's super cute, and she loves it.
Here she is munching on the Pez that Papa Randy sent her. She even got her own new machine to put it in. Unfortunately, the photo also shows the tomato soup she had for lunch. Ah well. She's 2.
Here she is opening up the book from Grandma Marge. Yogurt face and all. It really is hard to get a picture of her where she's not covered in food! She eats constantly.
Ah, and here is the infamous "Svea birthday" envelope that sat on the counter for two weeks, begging to be opened.
And here, is half an orange. It just seemed like a good photo. And, they are amazing oranges. Jeff said he learned the grocery stores source their oranges from different places by month, in order to get the ones that are best at that particular time. Right now they are coming from Spain. A while ago they were from Israel. They are delicious!
The kids and I were walking home from getting the boys at school yesterday, and I laughed at the fact that we looked like a pretty rough lot at that time. My eyes are still funny after recovering from pinkeye (in one eye, then five days later in the other. They are both still a little glassy and blurry.), Torben has a blister in the center of his forehead where he and Anders were trying to get their own bag of popcorn out of the microwave and picked it up upside down, and oil or a kernel fell on his forehead, and Anders has a big scratch above and below his left eye from doing a faceplant in the rocks after jumping off a swing at school. He landed on his feet first, but then lost his balance and fell forward. At dinner last night, one of the cooks asked him "how does the other guy look?" because it really does sort of look like he got in a fistfight. But no. Just your average six-year-old shenanigans. It must not have hurt too badly, because today he asked Jeff and I both if we wanted to see how he did it.
We are looking forward to a beautiful weekend! The forecast says a high of 11 for tomorrow, which would be fantastic. We aren't sure yet what we will do, except that we're going to stay home tonight, make pizza, and watch Disney. The kids really seem to love staying home for dinner on Disney night, so that's a fun thing to add to the tradition as well.
This morning after I put Svea down for her nap, I spent about half an hour tidying the house. It's amazing what you can get done in 30 minutes, and how greatly it improves the whole outlook for the day. I got laundry in, unloaded the dishwasher, reloaded the dishwasher, picked up toys, put out the trash and recycling, and picked up all the stray laundry strewn about (how is it that there are always little socks everywhere! Except when you want to find clean ones to put on in the morning, then, of course, there are none.) We're running out of socks for the boys again. I cannot figure out how they are getting so many holes in them! Vickie brought two bags of reinforcements when she came in January, and several of them have already had to be thrown out as well. The boys are hard on clothes, for sure. We've gone through most of the pants we brought with us too, and had to replace them. The other day I sewed up the knee of Torben's warm suit because it had a hole in it, and when I went to pick him up at school the next day, it had another rip in it right above the one I'd just fixed. They play hard! But they have such a great time, that it's totally worth it. When I ask what they did at school every day, they either say "play, play, and play" or "had fun." Sometimes they will tell me more details about what they played, or what they did that was fun, but not always. But I can tell they love it. They always want to stay just a little bit longer.
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