about being spread out

We are back in Boston after a long nice break back home. A trip that reminded me that our ties are spread over many places, which on one hand is great and satisfying as we belong and are welcomed several places. We get to feel at home with the spectacular views of Northern Iceland, the food and the friends in Reykjavik, and the extended socializing around a dinner or lunch table in Denmark.

And then we return to our home here, and slip back into the way of life we have here. It's all good being spread out like that, but going 'home' to reconnect and coming 'home' again after that carries a bittersweet reminder that thoughtful and fun grandparents and aunts and cousins and friends that really matters are also spread between large distances. If only we could see them all a little more often.

I hope you all entered 2013 with proper celebration. I woke up to the new year with a wide awake toddler at 6am -- blame it on the jetlag. Happy New Year to you from Boston!

 Oversæt til dansk

happy holidays

We are leaving tomorrow afternoon for a long awaited trip back to Denmark and Iceland for Christmas. Weeh! We are so excited to see everyone. Silja woke up with a fever today, so fingers crossed she is better tomorrow. In addition to all the for us usual Christmas traditions, we have spent the last week also celebrating and learning more about Hannukah through our sweet neighbors who invited us for latkes and lightening of the Hannukah Menorah, and Silja's daycare which threw a party and provided goodie bags with a dreidel and Hannukah chocolate-gelt. 

Now we are packing up our suitcases, stuffing them with Christmas presents and warm socks and are looking forward to catching up with dear ones, relaxing, eating æbleskiver in Denmark and Icelandic lamb in Northern Iceland. Lucky us.

Whatever you are celebrating, we wish you happy happy holidays!

Oversæt til dansk

troublemaking baby

I was unable to keep it a secret for anyone I knew over here, and quickly shared the exciting news of an addition to our family back in the hot days of summer to all the other moms I knew on the playgrounds. I was nauseous and dead tired, but it was a happy surprise that we would add another little one to this unit of ours.  Having had an easy first pregnancy I was confident all would go smooth with this second one, and just curious to experience how the whole process would be in America compared to my experience in Austria.

The second trimester started off with an ultrasound that showed abnormalities in the fetus, which resulted in what seemed like endless screenings, ultrasounds, blood tests, meetings with specialists and genetic counselors, and beyond all a lot of worry. Ugh!

We are by default connected to a Harvard affiliated hospital, and they have been amazing and extremely thorough in the whole process.  We have undergone a lot of genetic and other tests, some of which are still unavailable in Denmark, Iceland or Austria. This is both good and bad, because they have looked into so many details that could potentially be something (hello worry…!) but then turned out to be nothing. As the cardiologist, who saw us at Boston Children’s Hospital said, we end up having a healthy baby, but the two of us have lost our mind in this whole process from everything the doctors (with their best intentions) have put us through.

They have ruled out known genetics disorders (after initially standing with 50-30% risk for Downs etc.), they have detected a strange chromosome 2, which turned out to be inherited from me (and hence not dangerous), they were concerned about the kidneys, which later turned to out to be okay, and they found a bad heart defect at 20 weeks, which made us schedule a time for an abortion (which was just heartbreaking). The abortion was canceled one day before scheduled, because the heart to the cardiologist’s big surprise looked healthy and normal one week after the initial finding.
All in all it’s been such a rollercoaster ride between happy excitement and extreme worry, about either preparing for a baby, who was not entirely normal and healthy or having to decide if the outlooks were so bad that we were not going to continue.

But here we are now on the doorstep to the final trimester with a rapidly growing bump that has been examined to the extreme, and which valuable inside now looks like it should according to the doctors. We have been left alone for a month, and it’s been a month of searching for and finding trust in the fact that everything is indeed all right, and letting happiness and excitement out rule worry and anxiety. It's a gradual process, but we are getting there... 

Oversæt til dansk

...

I keep wanting to update this space with our pretty amazing American daycare experience, a growing bump and a little brother on his way to our family (!), HSSPA and just the ordinary details of life in general. I know from earlier that this way of keeping track of our experiences and thoughts abroad is fun to have later on, but time keeps running away from me. Our camera is currently - and sadly - out of order, so in order not to completely neglect this space, here's some outtakes until I return with more words. 

Oversæt til dansk

two years, three languages

I got myself a notebook and started making notes about Silja's management of several languages. I'm not one (yet) to make a lot of parental notes, but having grown up in a monolingual environment myself it's fascinating to see how all these languages affect her linguistic development. Probably this will be of interest to her too one day. I thought I would share some of it here.
Her vocabulary has exploded over the last half a year or so. She continues to speak mostly Danish, but is mixing in Icelandic words and expressions.

Sýna far klistermærkerne (show dad the stickers)

Tiger búrningur (tiger costume)

Hvor biða? (wait where?) 

Some of the words I don't always understand, and I'm trying to make sense of what she is trying to say. Hvor er der biler?! Tiger børn?! Hvad snakker du om...? So I'm slowly expanding my Icelandic vocabulary as well, although she is clearly already ahead of me (to my defense I'm not read to in Icelandic).

After she started daycare, English words are also popping up daily, and are thrown into sentences. Wash your hands, cow, jumping, let's go, sit down, please. Almost every time she returns, she will say something new. Today was the word tissue. She doesn't always get it completely right, as it is with words in Danish and Icelandic, and it sometimes takes time for us to figure out what she is trying to say. She came home a few weeks back and was singing the same sentence over and over again Shalom, how are you? Shalom, how are you? Shalom, how are you? It was extended a couple of days later to How are you TODAY? One day when I was making dinner, she was playing daycare with her stuffed animals, her current favorite role play game. She had organized a little pretend circle-time and was singing over and over again I fain, hahlaba-tju, I fain, hahlaba-tju. And, of course, I realized after hearing it repeated again and again, it was the next line in the song. Shalom, how are you, how are you today? I'm fine, how about you? We still don't know how the rest of the song goes...

This clip has horrible light, but as you can see we continue to hear and occasionally participate in pretend circle time and the daycare song. See video here.

Oversæt til dansk

hurricane and halloween

We made it safely through the hurricane. Thankfully it didn't turn out to be too bad here, although it was incredibly stormy. The whole city was more or less shut down so the three of us stayed in following the news, cooking, playing, and looking out the window. I thought Alex' comment in the previous post about nothing better than sitting around the house, watching wild weather exploding safely outside, and confidently knowing you've got plenty of pie, was excellent advice, so we woke up and made apple pie! We were afraid power would go out, but luckily that didn't happen. It's fun how such out of the ordinary events bring you closer to the people that live around you. We had neighbors knocking on our door to check if we owned the car that was stuck underneath the fallen tree that was dangling on top of some power lines (we didn't), and another neighbor came to borrow an egg. Everybody was stuck at home and had plenty of time to chat.

Today we've been celebrating Halloween, or I guess it's been building up over the last couple of days with monster cup cakes and jack o'lanterns. I couldn't figure out the trick or treating part though. I didn't know if Silja was too young, so I ended up sending an email to the organizers of a local city-organized event explaining we are these Halloween-clueless Europeans and would it be appropriate for a toddler? I got a long email back explaining it would be everything between tiny babies in costumes to grand parents partaking in the event, and we should please show up and join the fun. So we went trick or treating with lots of other big and small kids and parents and dogs down the local main street, and the highlight was clearly the police station that had someone dressed up as dogs. Silja kept petting and following the bull dog and didn't want to leave him. I guess the highlight for the rest of us has been eating some of all that candy she got...
Happy Halloween!

Oversæt til dansk

head of the charles

We went to see the Head of the Charles Regatta last weekend with rowing boats going up and down the Charles River. It had been raining and lightning like it was the end of the world during the night, but then it cleared up in the morning and was such a pretty day with fall colors and rowing boats on the river. 

At the moment we are trying to figure out to what degree to prepare for hurricane Sandy. Massachusetts has declared a state of emergency, and our electricity company and Harvard have sent emails about the importance of stocking up on water, flash lights, food, and medicine if needed. Apparently the power might go out for several days. The whole scenario is completely foreign to a Dane and an Icelander, and I suppose quite unusual for the locals here too. Fingers crossed it won't be too bad for this region or for all those further south.

Oversæt til dansk