I’m alive! I don’t feel like writing much (too tired!) but I wanted to post some pictures I’ve taken over the last few days. I got a Canon Rebel for my birthday so I’ve been shooting lots, trying to figure out how to shoot manually.
I took this one in my garden yesterday. It wasn’t until I uploaded it on the computer that I realised that the sun looks like an egg.
Note that it was around 1 or 2pm when I took it, pretty much the lightest time of day. The days are very, very short in Iceland at this time of year. We get maybe a couple of hours that could pass for daylight, otherwise it’s dark. The good news is that we’ve passed winter solstice, so it’s only going to get better from here!
And another ice bird…
My beautiful girls:
Raven is so happy to finally have some snow. The weather’s been really mild so far this year.
Our downstairs neighbours have an indoor cat. Whenever we go outside she’s there, glued to the window, wanting attention. She kept sticking her paw out and giving Luna kitty high-fives (she was gentle! ;)). Luna thought it was hilarious.
Happy New Year all! I’m sure I’ll be back soon with more pictures, and possibly even some words. ;)
We got home from the summer cabin this afternoon. We didn’t make all the stops on the way home that we’d wanted to as we were tired and Luna was getting fed up with being in the car. Oh well. We did however stop by Gullfoss (the “golden waterfalls”) and Geysir yesterday. They’re not my favourite places simply because they’re as touristy as places get in this country. Spectacular & well worth visiting, yes, but hidden treasures they are not.
I of course took eleventy bajillion pictures:
Gullfoss
Strokkur (in the Geysir area).
Geothermal pool – too hot for swimming!
On a completely different subject, I forgot to update that Raven does not need glasses. Yay! She was a little disappointed so she got a pair of purple sparkly sunglasses as a consolation prize.
In other Raven news, she’s officially on school holiday for the next month. I have no idea how we’re going to keep her occupied! She’s already bouncing off the walls and talking about wanting to go back to preschool to see her friends. I guess we’ll need to line up some play-dates. She’s such an intense, energetic kid that keeping her busy is no small task. There’s usually a lot going on downtown during the summer (festivals, free concerts, etc.), so we should find something.
We’ve been at a cabin in the countryside this week. I say cabin, but this place is huge! Way bigger than our little apartment. Just wonderful. We’re by a lake called Apavatn. It’s quite close to Reykjavík, about an hour and half’s drive.
We’ve been super lazy here, relaxing as much as is possible with two small kids (i.e. not very much). I feel slightly guilty about how little we’ve done, but at the same time it’s been nice to have a break without feeling like we have to cram everything into our schedule.
Yesterday we took a little drive to some caves in the area.
The view from the bottom.
On the way up.
Caves!
What’s interesting about the caves is that 100 years ago, people lived in them:
Painting of the cave house as it was 100 years ago.
From 1910-11 they were inhabited by a young couple, Guðrún Kolbeinsdóttir and Indriði Guðmundsson, then just 17 and 22 years old. They sold food to travelers passing by. Within a year they had earned enough to move to Reykjavík, and left the caves.
A few years later, from 1918-21, another young couple moved in. During their time there Jón Þorvarðarson and Vigdís Helgadóttir had three children, two of which were born in the cave. Can you imagine? One of the children, Magnus Jónsson, is still alive today. He calls himself The Caveman. Of course.
Looks cozy, no?
Raven was insistent that she was going to find some baby trolls in the cave.
Nowadays the house is gone. The caves are covered in moss, and graffiti carved into the soft sandstone.
I found Luna!
The view from inside the cave:
Remember the horses that were on the road?
The view standing on top of the caves.
I think today we’re going to visit the Golden Circle: Geysir (the original geyser), Þingvellir (Thingvellir National Park) and the Gullfoss waterfalls, so I’m sure I’ll be posting more pictures soon.
I had planned to write a proper entry around these pictures, but for whatever reason I’m just not in a very writing-y state of mind right now. Between the pun in the title and the fact that I just used “writing-y” as a word, it’s really for the best that I step away from the keyboard.
We found wild thyme at Raven’s preschool and took it home and made some tea. The pictures tell the story. Enjoy!
Wild thyme growing at Raven’s preschool
Collecting thyme.
You use the flowers for tea and the leaves for cooking.
The fragrance is unbelievable. Best smell ever.
We didn’t have a bag.
Flowers rinsed and ready for some hot water.
Steam! We didn’t have any tea filters so we just threw the flowers right in.
I’m hammering this post out quickly today so I can get working on another one I have planned.
I hadn’t meant for this to be such a “mommy blog”, but well, this pretty much sums up my life right now:
And because I haven’t had time for anything other than parenting, “mommy blogging” is what happens.
We had a little birthday party for Luna on Sunday afternoon. I’ve been so sleep-deprived recently and between that and her sudden clinginess I was very tempted to not do a party at all. Guilt got the better of me though. Poor Luna, the forgotten second child. Her mother hardly took any belly pictures when she was pregnant and it’s all been downhill from there. I sent out the invites.
I tend to stress myself out with parties, feeling like everyone will be silently judging me for not having 14 brauðtertur and 37 marengstertur. And I mean, why? No one cares. You come, you get free cake, the kids run around screaming, then you go home. No big deal. So, I kept it simple: chips, dips, some fruit and a few carrot & cucumber sticks, some nice cheeses and a couple of cakes from the bakery. Put it on some plates. Done.
Oh and how could I forget? My sister-in-law very kindly donated some very pink cupcakes that were just perfect (I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of them!). So yeah, if you have a lazy party then be sure to have a sister-in-law who is both generous and also an accomplished baker.
See? Easy.
As always when I’m feeling antisocial but make myself do something anyway, the party was fun. Loud, but fun. I’m glad we did it. Luna hadn’t napped and could have been overtired and stressed out with all the people around, but she wasn’t at all. She loved it and stubbornly kept herself awake until the last guest left.
For the first time in my life ever, I failed miserably at taking pictures. Or rather, I took a bunch of pictures of everyone else’s kids. Here are the couple I got of mine:
Blowing bubbles outside.
Wearing the beautiful hand-knitted collars from their aunt. The picture doesn’t even come close to doing them justice.
Luna has been a velcro baby these last few days. Teething maybe? I don’t know, but let’s just say it’s that. It sounds better than “My baby is fussy and I have no freaking clue why!”.
The positive side to the clinginess is that it gives me an excuse to tinker with this blog while she naps on me. I’m trying to nice-ify it, so please bear with me as I change things around a bit!
I’m less than a week into blogging and I’m really enjoying it so far. For me, one of the hardest things about having a baby toddler is the feeling that I can’t get anything done beyond the bare basics. Rationally, I know I’m being too hard on myself – just keeping a little one alive & happy is a 24/7 job. Still, I need a creative outlet, and this humble blog goes a fair way towards scratching that itch. I’m also looking forward to getting back to school in the next couple of months. Studying while my baby naps makes me feel like I’m winning at life. The queen of multitasking. Okay, I’m no Þóra “Bad-Ass” Arnórsdóttir, running for president whilst briefly stopping to give birth, but it’s something.
On a completely unrelated note, I just have to share a few more pics of Luna in her birthday tutu (made by yours truly). As you can see, she’s obsessed with socks at the moment. She’s turned into a little sock bandit, thieving them from laundry baskets and even mugging them right off my feet. Fifty-bajillion toys and all she wants is nasty old socks. Toddler’s are weird.
Anyway, behold the incredible cuteness that is Luna in a tutu (and Raven too, of course!):
My baby is one year old today! Happy birthday my darling girl!
To celebrate, I’m going to finally post her birth story. It only took a year! I would like to have edited it a bit more, but I’m just going go ahead and post it while it’s still officially her birthday.
A quick word of warning: this is a birth story so obviously there will be references things like pain, placentas, membrane sweeps, and other fun stuff like that. If you are of a sensitive disposition then you may wish to skip ahead to the cute baby pics down the bottom.
Our second daughter is born
Our baby was officially due on June 7, 2011. My mother had planned to come and visit us after the baby was born, and booked her flight for June 18. I’d been having bouts of painful, regular contractions on and off since 37 weeks, so I figured that the baby would surely be at least a week or two old by then.
I was wrong.
By 41 weeks 2 days, nothing had happened. My midwife did a membrane sweep to hopefully speed things along, telling me it would either work within 24 hours or not at all. She also scheduled an induction for when I reached 42 weeks.
I didn’t feel any different after the sweep so I wasn’t too optimistic. However, finally, 24 hours after the sweep, I started feeling something might be happening. I didn’t say anything about it to my partner, B, because I didn’t want to get his hopes up (though I’m not sure I could have if I’d tried, seeing as I’d been “crying wolf” with prodromal labour for nearly 5 weeks already), but I had a strong feeling I would go into labour that night.
That evening I was determined to get things moving, and went for a walk around the block with my partner and Raven. I was in major discomfort, but joked to my partner I was NOT coming home until a baby popped out. I walked until I could walk no more. I came home feeling tired but optimistic.
We put Raven to bed and had a quiet evening watching So You Think You Can Dance. At around 12.30 – 1am (I wish I’d made a note of the exact time!), I felt my first contraction. It was painful right from the start, very different to labor with Raven, which started out mild and built up very gradually. I didn’t say anything to B because I didn’t want to make a big deal over what might be nothing. Sure enough, I felt another one shortly afterwards. I went to the kitchen to get some water to try to distract myself. I stayed in there a few minutes trying to make it through a contraction or two. At that point it was fairly clear that this was the real thing, so I went back to the living room and told B what was happening.
My labor with my first daughter was long and slow, 24 hours in total. With that in mind, I tried to settle in and watch some more of my show while things progressed. However, one more contraction and I realised that the pain was already too intense for me to concentrate on the show. I turned it off and got in the shower to help ease the pain. I told B to call the hospital to let them know I would be coming within a few hours.
I timed a couple of contractions and they were already under 2 minutes apart. I was heavily in denial – I remember looking at the clock and seeing that it was less than 2 minutes since the previous one, and telling myself that I must have timed it wrong. I’d only been in labor about 15-20 minutes at this point, and I was so stuck in the mindset that early labour would be long and slow that I couldn’t quite believe it.
B came in to check on me, and I told him he should call his brother to come over to look after Raven. B’s brother showed up pretty quickly. The contractions were getting seriously painful and progressing quickly at this point, so I knew it was time to get to the hospital. Between strong contractions, I somehow managed to get myself ready to go. It was 1.30 am at this point. I managed to send my mother (who was due to arrive from Australia in 14 hours) a frantic email saying “In labor!!!”. Whenever the contractions stopped, I’d rush as fast as I could to get things done before another one hit. I was bending over, moaning and groaning. I was in pain between the contractions as well, though not as bad as during.
Once I was dressed and packed, we jumped into the car. I lay down in the backseat as I was in too much pain to sit up. B was driving like a madman and I was lurching all over the place. I remember commenting that I already wanted an epidural (it took me 19 hours to reach that point with my first labour). We made it to the labor ward in about 10 minutes. It was 2am at this point. Labor was intense enough that my recollection from this point on is a bit hazy.
After some confusion as to how to get in, we made it up to the reception. At this point the contractions were already one on top of the other, and I remember the staff talking around me, seemingly surprised that I was checking in so heavily in labor. They got us into a room where the midwife checked my dilation. 4-5 cm. All my plans for a natural birth went out the window and I asked for the epidural. I was pretty out of it at this point. The midwife gently held me off and asked whether I’d like to try the laughing gas. I said sure. It took the edge off the contractions a tiny bit, but they were still very painful. The gas helped not so much as a pain relief, but because inhaling it rhythmically gave me something to focus upon.
After a few minutes I was still asking for the epidural but B and the midwife encouraged me to try the birthing tub, as had been my plan. At that point the contractions were so intense that knew that if I got in the tub, there would be no turning back to get out again and get the epidural. I felt like I was being tricked into it. I don’t mean that in a negative way – it had been my plan to avoid the epidural, and I’m glad that they encouraged me to stick with it, especially as I was already so far along.
I did feel a little better once I got in the water. The contractions slowed down a little, but then picked back up again. After a while I was in absolutely excruciating pain and screaming bloody murder. I was completely out of it from the laughing gas, but at this point it wasn’t even touching the pain. I screamed my head off and bit down on the gas inhaler mask like a crazed animal. I heard the midwife saying to B “Wow, she’s really having a heard time, isn’t she?”.
I mumbled something about the epidural again, though the rational part of me knew I wasn’t actually going to be able to climb out of the bath again and stay still long enough for them to administer it. The midwife suggested checking my dilation again as she suspected I might already be too far enough along to get it. She was right – I was already 8 cm! I was so relieved to hear that. It was about 3.15am at this point. She said something about the baby being here within an hour, and I wondered how I’d possibly survive that much longer.Thankfully, I wouldn’t have to.
I felt a pop – my water had broken! The pain escalated and B and the midwife had to hold me down so that I wouldn’t injure myself from all the flailing around. I felt the baby turning and moving down inside me. Not long after that, I started feeling the urge to push. I didn’t tell the midwife. For some reason, in my dazed state I didn’t think she’d believe me. She could tell though, and gave me permission to push. The pain eased off a little and I felt very surprised and relieved that it was nearly over. I didn’t really even need to push – the baby pretty much just flew out. I felt the head come, then I gave one slight push and the shoulders and rest of the body followed. After roughly 2 hours 45 minutes of labor, the midwife caught the baby and put her on my chest. It was 3.38 am, nearly the exact same time that Raven was born.
She looked just like my older daughter. I remember thinking “Are babies really this small?”. She was slippery and covered in vernix and I was having trouble holding onto her. The placenta came out with no problems and I was able to get out of the tub.
The midwife left us alone for a while to have some quiet time with the baby. She was absolutely perfect and nursed happily, quietly looking around. Eventually the midwife came back to weigh her – 4.16 kg! A big girl!
After a couple of hours we got shown back to a room with a nice double bed. We tried to sleep a bit but it wasn’t easy as various medical staff kept coming in & out to check on the baby. I was feeling relatively good and really just wanted to get home to Raven and my mother, who was just about to touch down from Australia.
We managed to get checked out and went home around lunch time. Shortly after we got home, my brother-in-law dropped off Raven and my mother, who had come directly from the airport perfectly timed to meet her hours-old grand-daughter. Raven was so excited to see her new sister. We set her up on the bed so that she could hold her.
It was truly one of the happiest moments of my life. Raven was so sweet with her, and really has been ever since. I was so glad my mother was there to see her on the day she was born.
OMG, two blogs in one day! I’m sure I’ll calm down a bit once the newness has worn off.
I’m starting a sketchbook for quick doodles. Luna naps really lightly (unless she’s sleeping on me, which she does a lot!), and only for 30ish minutes at a time, so there’s no time to mess around. It’s just 1…2…3…DRAW.
This is a pencil sketch I started the other day. The flowers had been picked a few days earlier so they were pretty sad & droopy when I drew them.
The set-up
The rough lead pencil part took about 2 minutes and the colour on the buttercup took about 20 minutes.
A 25 minute nap = this.
I’ve always hated showing anyone my rough sketches, so posting this stuff is an exercise in not being so precious about it.
Next time I’m going to try to sketch while Luna’s awake. I’m pretty sure she’s just going come over and try to eat my pencil, but it’s worth a try.
“I see you’re trying to work. Allow me to grab that and drool on it for you. You’re welcome.”
I don’t remember feeling this way with my first daughter. Luna’s first year has gone by so much more quickly, and I’m not quite ready to give up her babyhood. I feel like it was only yesterday that we were bringing home a tiny newborn. (Speaking of which, it’s probably about time I finished writing her birth story. I don’t know why it’s taken so long – my labor was so fast that I could probably cover it in a paragraph or two.)
Moving on to different subject, there’s another important birthday today: Iceland’s! I don’t intend this blog to be all about pictures! from Iceland!, but hey, it’s Independence Day, so I’m not going to fight it right now. These photos are all from a local farm/museum called Árbæjarsafn, where we went today.
Women wearing the national costume:
A (sort of) close-up of the beautiful embroidery. You can’t buy one of these, you pretty much have to make it yourself.
Icelandic sunshine is BRIGHT:
Hobbit home?
The Icelandic horse. These guys were really friendly:
This guy…not so much:
This is Raven eating a plant called hundasúra, which Google tells me is called “sheep’s sorrel” in English. It has a sour flavour and she eats it compulsively. Her preschool teachers teach the kids about which wild plants can be eaten. One on hand it’s neat, on the other, it freaks me out a little. Luckily they’re aren’t many toxic plants here, so I guess she’ll be okay.
The Kolaport market is an anomaly. In contrast with Reykjavík’s chic design stores and sanitised tourist shops, Kolaportið is eccentric and jumbled, a hoarder’s heaven piled high with a fascinating blend of junk and oddities (mostly junk). Like most markets, there are also treasures to be found: vintage clothes, jewellery, books, antiques and, of course, lopapeysur galore.
The most interesting part, however, is the food section. There you can find traditional local produce such as graflax and dried fish (which is far tastier than you’d think), as well as more controversial fare such as horse meat, whale meat, and the infamous hákarl (rotting shark).
Usually we buy some smoked salmon or baked goods, but this time Raven had her eyes on something else:
The blue eggs at the top of the picture come from a species of auk known as svartfugl (literally: “black bird”), a sea bird found off the coast of Iceland. The birds themselves are occasionally eaten too. (They’re not a threatened species, in case you were wondering.)
We bought three eggs and took them home. I pierced both ends and blew out the contents so that we could keep the pretty shells.
Auk eggs are large, roughly equivalent in volume to 2-3 chicken eggs, and the yolks are a deep reddish-orange. I cooked them in a simple omelette for Raven and the man of the house.
Yum?
The cooked eggs had a fishy/ocean smell, so I expected Raven to recoil at the taste. To my surprise, she ate them with enthusiasm, so much so that we went back and bought more the following week. My partner tried them too and said they were okay but a bit dry and rubbery. I have to confess that although I’m generally an adventurous eater, I didn’t try any myself. Eggs are one of the few foods I really dislike, and the ocean “fragrance” did little to sweeten the bargain.
The eggshells are so beautiful, in shades varying from white to pale blue to deep turquoise. I’ve been obsessed with these shades for a while now. They remind me of the ocean and swimming pools and other pretty things.
I’d like to incorporate them into a design somehow. The challenge is to illustrate blue eggs in a way that doesn’t end up looking like an Easter card. I’ll give it some thought and see what I come up with!
