Werehippo...

My sweet baby is undergoing some kind of werewolf transformation. Or possibly werehippo... Bear with me, and I'll get to the hippo bit in a second.

You know the werewolf transformation in movies - usually accompanied by howls, writhing on the floor, cold sweats and twisted sheets, and usually happens at night. This has been our house for the last two weeks.

You see Arne is teething - and not one at a time, but all four top incisors. The outside pair came first, which is where the hippo bit comes in:

And now the middle two incisors up top are just visible - and judging by the lumps and bumps in his bottom jaw the fun has just begun. Every time he looks like he might be settling into a nice sleeping pattern, something comes up: travel, illness, new motor skills he just has to practice in his sleep (last night he stood up in his sleep! I lay him back down and he carried on sleeping) and now teeth. I was looking at a teething timeline, and this goes on for almost two years!

By the time he has outgrown teething there'll be night terrors, then growing pains, then trouble at school, then trouble with girls, then he'll borrow the car and miss his curfew...

Will we ever get a good night's sleep?!

The ubiquitousness of FB...

I guess it is a sign of the times that I often go around thinking in Facebook statuses (stati?). Sometimes one status update just isn't enough, so I thought I'd collect today's bite-sized thoughts, updates and pop-wisdom here:


I cooked lentils today. On purpose.

Teething baby = 3(irritability)+2(grizzliness)+5(sleepless nights)

--------------------------------------------------

3(patience)

Harvesting new potatoes from my very own potato patch! They are so tiny and cute!

I made my first honest-to-goodness autumn soup today that didn't have anything ready-made or from a packet! Cream of pumpkin, carrot and (locally grown!) potato soup, with a touch of smoked curry and garlic. Sounds like a bit of overkill perhaps, but I can tell you it was delicious.

I question the wisdom of putting nuclear power plants in a country prone to seismic activity.

I am faced with the possibility that my son might end up 'petiso' - the doctor said at his 9-month check-up that he had put on plenty of weight but not grown at all in length. I said that it was the third month in a row at 74cm, and the doctor replied: he might just have his father's stature. Noooooooo!

Autumn came suddenly - we went from 32C to 15C in one day.  Goodbye summer, hello fashion!

Autumn's abrupt arrival prompted me to transplant the self-propagated avocado plant into a pot and shift him inside - I now have my very first avocado plant ever! And my first pot plant in my new/old house. Please all collectively wish for my transplanting skills to rival those of a cardiologist and for the little trooper to flourish!

Reading an IKEA catalogue when there is no IKEA within 10,000kms is bittersweet torture.

What did I do before Internet? When the Internet is down I am at a loss - I want to look something up and I have no reference section in my bookcase...

It is more expensive to buy a kilo of bread than a bottle of cheap liquor. WTF?

Yay! My favourite Swedish blog is back up and running - for those of you in Sweden who have not yet read 'Katastrofala Omslag', what have you been doing with your downtime at work? Working?



That's all for today.

Onwards and upwards

Things have been a bit hectic of late, and my lukewarm promise to myself and my four fans to start writing again kind of fell by the wayside, as I kind of feared it might... But the upshot of the last couple of weeks' activity can be summed up in these five words: I have my own house! For what feels like forever I have been a charity case in someone else's house, but now I have a place that I share only with my husband and my son, which I have to say feels GREAT.

So now to decorate my house, Argentina style? Well, as far as that goes it may take a while, as one of the side-effects of housing emancipation is less cashflow for stuff that isn't directly related to survival. Watch this space, though. I have at least hung three (count them, three) pictures on the wall - all from New Zealand; I have hung curtains; I have hung a fabric wall hanging; and I have hung out, in my house, with my two best boys.

I have a few projects in mind, one involves moving Arne into his own room. As of today he sleeps his naps in his own room, and nights in our room - and so far, so good. We've managed to convince him that his room is a fun place, with toys and books and a coloured string of dragonfly lights on the wall. I plan to paint something on the doors of his wardrobe - maybe a zebra in the grass, all black lines on white background. Then eventually he will move in there for nights as well, but I think it is more his mother that needs to get her A into G to take that step than Arne himself. A) I will miss him and wonder what little snuffly noises he is making in there by himself, and B) (or should that be G?) I will have to get up and go into another room when he wakes up - and he always wakes up at least a couple of times. If he's not teething he's practising new motor skills in his sleep... Hmmm.

Anyway, that's all for today. It's movie night in my lounge, on my sofa.