number and letter making

This summer as we were walking past the cafe (yes, there is only one in the village), Leona pointed to the O on an OPEN sign and asked what it was. This was the first time she showed interest in letters or numbers. I said "It's a letter, O, Owen's O." She then pointed to the P, and I said it was auntie Pippin's P. Her pee? She has to go pee? She doesn't need to go poop? Ah, what a glorious rookie mistake on my part.

[here asking about the 'n']

And that was pretty much that. She was content with my ensuing simple explanation about letters. Since then she would sometimes ask what we were writing and then ask us to write her name, Eliana's, ours, etc., just like she would sometimes ask us to draw specific things or people when we were drawing together, but it was more of a 'look at it and ask for the next person('s name)' type of thing rather than 'I want to learn letters'.

Then, as mentioned in our current faves post, Leona started to get a lot more interested in numbers and letters after finding the typewriter in the hidden cott in the little bedroom upstairs.

She will point to 1 and say it is Eliana's (since Eliana is 1 years old), 3 is hers, will ask where my letter is (J) and Judge's (T - for Tobias), etc.

Last week she also started to recognize 1 and 3 on signs and licence plates, and has learned to recognize zero, 2 and 4 as well.

But she has not been interested in trying to write anything. Yesterday I offered her to trace an L I had written, which she declined. Though I am still very 'Leona led' I feel it is important to offer her opportunities for new experiences~

However, this doesn't mean she is not into creating numbers and letters right now. While playing with play dough she made a 1 and a zero and asked me to make a 3 (she felt the 3 was too difficult).

And today, she showed me this:

And said "it's my other one"...I was confused. She said "Not 3, my other one".  Her first L - her first letter - ever.

This is so exciting!




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heartwarming encounter

Shortly after I shared about how I was worried we had sowed the seed of a dog-phobia in Leona and then that I took it back, we encountered a cat on our walk home one afternoon.

We had seen a couple kids petting it and picking it up at the elementary school a bit before. As the cat started to walk towards us, Leona started backing up while saying "I'm scared~!". I crouched down and got her in a hug with my side to the cat and said that I would hold her and wouldn't let the cat touch her. I could feel her relax a little.

The cat came right up to us, pushing against me and tried to find a way to push against Leona too. I pet it while also keeping it away from Leona, and then asked if she wanted to pet it. She said no.

And then she said she wanted to touch it. The cat was super soft - obvoiusly brushed often - and super friendly and gentle. She pet it carefully at first, and I explained that the purring showed that it felt it was comfortable. After a little while we started walking again, and the cat followed us. Leona walked over to it and pet it some more - on her own.

It sat itself down in the middle of the road and streatched and started licking itself, and she copied his pose laughing.

We went to the bridge and rested a bit, and the cat continued to follow us, and Leona continued to pet it.

[I love how you can see how comfortable she is with the cat here, and how she is enjoying the feel of its fur].

Eliana wasn't as keen on the cat trying to get up to her, and so Leona even tried to lift the cat away from the stroller.

Any bit of worry that may have been left for me regarding a phobia melted completely away, and I could feel my heart settle with a sigh of confidence and contentment for Leona.


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our daily routine

[we had some foggy days this week, clearing up in the late afternoon]

Comfortable, low-stress, leisurly. That's how I would describe the routine we've settled into post summer-vacation and with Eliana's now only one nap per day.

Here's a quick run-down of a typical day - times are not a science, but they are as I said, typical:

5:45am - I wake up with Eliana and she nurses a while, then I let Judge take her while I try to get another half hour shut-eye.

7:00am - Leona wakes up - we eat breakfast and Judge heads to work at 7:25 (he starts work at 7:30).

We then play - perhaps they play with their cars, markers, paint, or play with some rice, maccaroni or flour, depending on what they want to do. And we will also read some books. Maybe we eat a bit more [bolded activities are described in the last post, our current faves].

Depending on wake-up time Eliana takes her nap between 9:30 and 10:30. While I'm helping Eliana fall asleep Leona is downstairs playing with plastic beads or play dough, unless it is Tuesday, which is her 'video' day where she gets to choose whether she will watch Totoro (in Mandarin), Crimson Pig (in Mandarin) or videos of when she was small. Then I come down and me and Leona play a bit more with the plastic beads or play dough and then we play with the train set, and perhaps draw.

I then get some dinner stuff ready if it's me making dinner that day and/or get some snacks ready for our afternoon outing. And perhaps we bake some oatmeal cookies if we are out and haven't already made them with Eliana before her nap. This is usually a golden opportunity for Leona to play with flour as well as help scoup and measure if we're baking something.

Eliana wakes up around 11-11:30 or so, and we eat some more.

We finish getting ready to go outside and leave the house around 12-12:30. We walk - L rides her bike most days - either to the elementary school 1 km from our house to play at the playground there, and then perhaps to the kindergarten for a while to play with the kids - for Leona that still mostly means observe; and then we perhaps stop by the store and then head home, maybe having Judge catch up with us on the way (he gets off work around 3:30pm). Or we head in the other direction to the small playground and/or friends' trampoline down at the end of our road (about 200 meters (?) from our house). All in all we are outside between 2:30 and 3:30 hours I'd say.

Some of the school playground spots the girls enjoy:

[Sand under climbing apparatuses and swings]

[big boulders to climb on...and spot airplanes from]

[swings]

[top of slide - and climbing opportunity...here oh-so satisfied]

[bottom of slide - and snack spot...well, *everywhere* is a snack spot]

Playground down the road consists of a slide and a sandbox:

[great climbing rocks on each side of the slide]

[can also climb on the fence...and I enjoy the view]

When we get home Judge makes dinner (most days) while the girls run around on the balcony, play with their cars, or otherwise occupy themselves just around the house. Sometimes the girls will play outside-outside, but that is not a typical afternoon anymore - was more so during the summer:

[Leona was playing with the hose, Eliana with the ensuing puddles]

We eat around 5pm, and the girls take a long bath. We go upstairs around 6:30 and they play some more. Then we have our sleep routine. Girls are usually asleep between 7 and 8pm.

Now that the weather is turning, though, I am beginning to get a bit apprehensive about the fall and winter. Norwegian's have a saying "there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes", and at kindergarten the kids play outside from about 10am until they go home between 2:30 and 4pm I think, where they just have an inside break when they eat lunch. During the winter - once it gets colder - they don't go outside until after lunch. I, however, don't see us continuing to spend 3 hours outside every afternoon when it's pouring rain or cold. I'm just not that Norwegian. For the sake of the girls (or perhaps for our sanity), however, I may just have to Norwegianefie. If we got the girls some wicked good rain clothes and sufficiently warm winter clothes for all of us, a shorter or longer trip outside may still be a viable option on most days. Time will tell.

[picture taken from website introducing wicked good rain clothes - barnevaderen - where boots are welded to the pants]

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current faves

These are Leona and Eliana's current favorite activities, done almost daily:

[Play with home-made play dough. Leona still likes it more so than Eliana.

So far the most successful recipe is this one - smooth to manipulate, holds well in the fridge without getting hard, but we don't have good coloring agents for it so the colors have been dull. I recently happened upon another successful recipe, however, that gives great color ... and she looooves the smell (bottom left), but it is quite hard coming out of the fridge...this may have to do with the fact that I used coconut oil of course, so we are giving it another go today.]

[Play with plastic beads; just dumping it when done - not ironing it. Again, Leona still enjoys it more than Eliana and will do it for a lot longer.

From this she has focused on fine motor skills, colors, design (going from random to more structured) and shapes (hexagon, square, circle and heart 'plates' to work on)]

[Play with our train set. Above she notices my train is on its way to the station, so tries to move hers out of the way to let mine pass...first attempted solution doesn't work but second one does.]

[I do the majority of the work of putting it together/making adjustments so that it makes complete loops in the end...not always successfully executed as you can see above; Eliana loves pushing trains back and forth through the tunnel but most often is the Destructor.]

[Paint. We have six colors to choose from - red, yellow, blue, pink, black and white; in the beginning Leona got a glob of each color on a plate for her to paint with, but it ended up just being the same brownish color every time, so we changed it to where she now gets to choose 3 colors only. From this she has learned a lot about which colors mix to make other colors. She may say: "I want pink, blue and white...because I want purple...and light blue", or she will want red, black and white because she also wants gray, etc.]

[Initially Eliana was just painting with some finger paint we got this summer, but this week she has started with the other paints as well. She's hooked. She will sign that she wants to paint first thing in the morning, and probably once or twice more throughout the day.]

[Read]

[Drive their cars. Here I'm being told to please move 'over there' because she's going to drive suuuper fast.]

 

[Draw - with markers. On their bodies, their play table (allowed) and around the house (not allowed but Eliana loves walking around with markers and I do my best to restrict her wandering.]

 

They also love to play with water (Eliana's favorite - she will try and pull up her sleeves as a sign that she wants to go to the small sink and play) and play for a long time in the bath tub at bath time.

Usually they do at least one of these every day or every other day:

[Play with rice on the floor. I now try and have them do this at separate times, as it doesn't work so well for them to do it together anymore; Eliana will go grab/dump all of Leona's rice, something that Leona is not too happy about.]

[Play with flour on the counter]

[Work and talk on their 'computer-phones']

[Use the type-writer (only Leona uses it so far, usually while Eliana is nursing before sleep). She has been asking a lot about the letters and numbers and is now starting to recognize some through using this]

[Play with droppers, colored water and paper towels - also a Leona-activity so far.]

[Cook with macaroni in the toy kitchen - they both love this one, but Eliana usually ends up eating the raw macaroni more than cooking with it.]

Sometimes they also enjoy straw threading (Leona) and playing with pompoms (both):

 

And of course there is playing outside at home, down the road (sand box, slide and trampoline), at the elementary school's playground, or at the kindergarten.



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a side-note regarding kindy in Norway

I realized that I use the term kindergarten incorrectly, per se, in terms of how it is used other places around the world.

In Norway, we have something called barnehagen, literary translation: child-garden...which is the same meaning as kindergarten in the sense that kinder means child and garten is garden.

Here, most kids start in kindy when they are 1 years old, latest usually at 2 if one of the child's parents took one year unpaid leave after the first year of parental-leave is up. Not many go this route. Even less go our route of being home with the kids for the first 3-4 years, or homeschool/unschool; I don't know the exact figures - but I digress.

So usually kids are in kindy a total of five years if they start from they are 1.

Most kindergartens are split into three groups. The youngest - 1 to 2 year olds, are in one, 3 to 4 in another, and then the oldest - here in Innvik at least - are in a "5-year-old club" the year before they start elementary school. So the 5-year-old club would be the equivalent to 'kindergarten' in North America.

The 5-year-old club here in Innvik spends the mornings (inside) and early afternoons (outside) at the elementary school, and then comes back to the kindergarten around 1pm every day. This is so that they can get accustomed to the environment and have a bit of a different set-up, be more stimulated by the bigger kids' playground...and perhaps more importantly because there isn't a lot of inside space at the kindergarten here in Innvik. There is also a day a week (or two?) where the 5 year olds from Utvik (neighboring village about 7 min drive away) come and hang with the group here, or the group here go to Utvik, so that they kids get a connection, as the elementary school is combined for the two villages.

[Three of the 1-2 year olds down for their afternoon nap - in Norway the standard kindergarten (and home) napping place is in a stroller outside. It is convenient, as the kids can nap when their rhythm is used to it, not dependent on the other kids, and the reason they sleep outside is that the outside air is considered better for them. In the background you see the factory where Judge is currently working - don't think I mentioned that before? Judge has a 5-week contract. Woop!]

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rethinking the phobia-issue

Today we were heading out - Leona on her bike as usual, and up ahead I saw a lady sitting by the river we were going to cross, with a dog on a leash. I point the dog out to Leona, and say it is on a leash so it will not run to us. Her response when we get closer: "It is so cute!"

And so I thought about the phobia-issue some more...again. And I realized, perhaps it really isn't a phobia that is building at all. Her reactions are actually quite in line with where she's at right now in general.

She doesn't like crowds if she is expected to participate in them, but is totally fine if she is at a slight distance and can observe. Has always been so. For example, when at the kindergarten these past two weeks, she once again has been very content to sit or stand in one spot and observe. I actually see myself in her desire to not interact with the others but rather to just watch what's happening around her.

She also doesn't like meeting more than a couple new people at a time (aka doesn't like crowds...hrm). Any more than a couple people at once and she gets overwhelmed and prefers no-one trying to engage her - she pretty much shuts down in terms of interacting with people when she is not familiar with them.

She also doesn't like getting crowded by others. For example at the elementary school, during recess a group three to five second and third grade girls often come over to us and 'fawn' over the girls a bit ('oh they're so cute' and wanting to pet their faces and heads. Leona shakes her head at them, so they pull away, while for Eliana I explain that she doesn't like this), before running off to play more.

An exception is the third grader who Leona is really comfortable around - she often comes and sits with us the entire recess, just calmly being present and interacting - mostly with Eliana. In fact, most of the kids around here think Leona can't speak or at least doesn't speak Norwegian, because she basically doesn't answer them, or she may speak a bit of 'baby talk' and use sign language and charades with them when she does start interacting with them, until she feels comfortable around them.

However, interestingly, with some people it is almost an instant connection - my cousin and his girls a bit older than her, my uncles and aunties (especially my aunt that has Alzheimer), and then those three kids I mentioned last time - who she's all had enjoyable, non-in-your-face interactions with. Mostly it is if there are just a couple people and they are not overly zealous. If you are to eager to get to know her she will pull away.

Herein lies the 'phobic reaction' I have observed with the dogs, especially, and a cat that wondered toward her once.

You see, she used to just pull away and shake her head, or turn away when someone was too proactive or in her space. If they don't take the blunt message and still touched her, she would retreat further, and I would be there to intervene.

Recently, however, she has started to scream/cry really, really loudly. I only observed this in relation to other things, like if she fell down, for example. But two weeks ago Judge and her took the bus to Stryn for shopping, library and playground fun, and while at the playground, one of Judge's previous classmates came up to them, a grandma. Judge and Leona were sitting on opposite sides of a picnic table eating their snack. The grandma wanted to give Leona a hug, but Judge told her she doesn't like people touching her. Rather than taking the blunt message to give Leona some space, she put her hand out and patted her cheek instead of giving a hug. Leona started crying her really loud cry, and didn't calm for a long time.

And this is basically what the dogs are doing. Running right up to her, full of energy, going to sniff her, and she doesn't know them. It is too much for her. So her 'phobia' towards animals is the same 'phobia' she has towards people she doesn't know or is not yet comfortable with, and thus not a phobia at all. The energy the dogs bring, especially, is way more than people usually do, though, so her reaction is so strong and she has become so scared of them. Makes total sense.

I think.

[today at the playground at the elementary school - enjoying perching]

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an observer in crowds

We started visiting the kindergarten again last week, after about a two month break (summer vacation and us not sure if we were welcome back for regular visits again after giving up her spot). They're totally cool with us picking up where we left off - stopping by in the afternoons for an hour or so a couple times a week, which is great. It is also great that the eight biggest kids from last semester have graduated to elementary school, as there were quite a few boys that brought a bit too much energy for Leona. There are still 25 kids, but with quite a few new littlest ones, the whole dynamics has changed a bit, though it is still full-throttle. The progress towards starting to feel a bit at ease that Leona had develop towards the end before summer vacation has completely disappeared.

Yesterday, on our way home, we met someone along the way and chatted a bit (it's about 1 km or so from kindy/elementary school and our house and it is not every time we meet someone ... small village it is). I mentioned we had stopped by the kindy to visit and play, and he asked Leona if she enjoyed herself there. She shook her head no, and he said oh, maybe there are a bit too many kids, it takes time to get comfortable, and she didn't really answer. I thought her initial no was more of a 'no I don't want to talk to you' no, but that evening when we were talking about our day and what we were going to do 'tomorrow', she said she didn't want to go to the kindergarten. Her reasons were that she didn't like that the kids said hi to her, and that there were so many kids there. Tonight she said the same thing when I mentioned we could go to the kindy tomorrow. I asked if she didn't want to play with x, y or z, and she said no. I think she just again was overwhelmed by it all.

However, she did mention three kids she does like to play with - two are the two youngest boys of a family with six kids from Eritrea who we visit sometimes (play on their big trampoline, especially). One is 5 and the other is in third grade, and it is the third grader who is especially great with Leona. The third is a girl who is also in third grade who has come with her younger sister a few times and visited us, and who comes and sits with us during recess when we are at the school's playground.

So that is good - these two families live right at the end of our road, where there's also a sandbox and a slide that we visit sometimes. They are relationships that can easily be developed (rather than the girls who are Leona's age who live close to the kindy...not that it is far from here, but it is harder to just 'drop by').

[Simplicity - and a love of climbing...I mean, why walk on a road when you can climb rocks??]

She mentioned that she is sometimes scared of one of our neighbors who she's been comfortable with before, so I have also decided to make more of a concerted effort to do really short visit with them more often - they're the ones with a cat too, so maybe we can work on her fear (come to think of it, she's not super scared of this cat, so it is more a phobia of unfamiliar animals than all animals).



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phobia development - and an update (3y4m+)

Over the past five or six months, Leona has developed a phobia of animals. Before we left for Taiwan last year, we were taking a walk, with Leona in the stroller, and came upon three horses that had broken out of their pen, wandering around by the side of the road and eating flowers in people's gardens.

I pushed the stroller over to them so that Leona could get a closer look, and they walked over to us. Leona was strapped in the stroller and unable to get away (not that she tried, but still), and one got right into her face. She didn't stick her hand out to pet it, but she also didn't seem nervous about it. It was I who was a bit nervous and maneuvered her away after first failing to - gently - push the horse's face out of her personal space.

Fast forward to the last few months, where if we are outside and a cat or dog starts coming towards us, she freaks out. If it gets really too close she will start crying/screaming out loudly - unless I am crouching down holding her with my body between her and the animal. Then she still says 'nononono' and tries to burrow into me, but not the terror of if I am not there.

Thinking about it, I realized it is perhaps us who have sowed the phobia seed in her, explaining that it is best not to touch a dog or cat if the owner is not there, because we do not know the animal and how it relates to us - some animals may bite or scratch (and the neighbor's cat, that we have fed for a stretch of days a couple times when the neighbors have been away, or been around when visiting with them, is such a cat - not very kid friendly ... ok with the girls being close to it, but not necessarily petting it to a big degree).

And the dogs around here that go off-leash are quite energetic and friendly - the 6 year old that lives in our basement apartment often walks a dog, and it has run up to Leona several times, as had the neighbor's kid's dog a couple times when the kid (25 years old or so?) has been home. These dogs aren't big...but neither is Leona, so thinking about it the 'Lassy' dog is like a 'Beethoven' for Leona. That'd be pretty intimidating. So I understand the phobic development.

I want to try to undo some of the fear, and the first step I came up with is to borrow some kids books at the library where a kid has a dog that is a good friend or something, and talk more with her about it. I think being cautious around unfamiliar animals is important, especially for her who is so small, but I want to try and take the edge off the fear at least, so it doesn't keep developing into a full fledged terror.

I also thought about step two being to maybe ask if anyone in the village has a dog that is mellow and super kid friendly, and then go visit them so that she gets exposure to a dog she could be comfortable around after a while, but then again, there's no rush really. Just getting the edge off is enough for now.

In other news.

A few fun words Leona's been focused on or that she says awesomely:

• Differentiating between the pronunciation of pajamas and vagina when she says these words (beejana and bejaina).
• Differentiating between 'peanuts' and 'penis' (this is an old one, but still valid as being words she concentrates on to make sure she says them different)
• Kitchen and chicken. With this one she doesn't try to say them different - they are both chicken. I am now so used to her saying 'chicken' for 'kitchen' that I catch myself not noticing that she says it wrong.
• Beads and seeds. She says 'plastic seeds' (those small plastic beads you can make designs with and then iron...if you want to iron them) and 'sunflower beads' (sunflower seeds).
• Candle and handle (she uses 'handle' for both)
• Cahtupu (computer)
• Tebeh (tablet...as in Judge's transformer-tablet)
• Pesteh (toothpaste)
• Maybe (definitely)
• Doditi (dirty)
• Memer (remember)

She has also started to really get into playing with her train-sets, and loves loves LOVES to play with Eliana. Not all the time of course, but especially upstairs in the bedroom before bed, as well as tons of other times. They are turning into great partners in crime - caught them munching on crispy onions together from the box of said 'treat' that Leona had climbed up onto a table to get down for them.

[Eliana the destroyer in the middle...]

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