'finished'

One of the seriously useful signs Leona uses is 'finished'. It totally helps lessen frustrations and increases our ability to respect her desires.

For example, when she is done in her high-chair she doesn't need to start fussing or tossing stuff around for us to know she's done (though she has just started practicing the actual act of really tossing stuff around, which is not something I'm particularly looking forward too in the high-chair-sitting department).

Also helps in the ECing department, as she knows that she can come off the potty or toilet right when she says she's done - there's no second guessing about it (yes, we're still ECing). And by done I mean she's done sitting there, not necessarily that she's done any actual business on there.

And then there's her own additions to the usage of 'finished' - for example if we are doing something she doesn't want us to be doing, she uses this sign. Like when we hug. That's right folks - Leona is not a fan of PDAs between me and Judge and she's not shy about letting us know with a sharp 'Ah' and then 'finished'. It's pretty hillarious.

Another example is as she's nursing and switching sides, she requires that the side she just finished gets covered up again right quick - otherwise there's a firm shake of her head and 'finished' sign, then pulling at the bra, and only once it's all nice and covered is she willing to nurse on.

She's most definitely a girl who knows how to orchestrate the world around her to follow her rules and wishes - and we are generally totally fine and happy to follow her 'turtle-hairedness' (as we say in Mandarin), because she's just so darned cute - and because it's no real put-out on our end of course.

[Leona loving one of her favorite past-times: strolling with a bag pulled behind her along our mezzanine]

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stricty-mc-strictersen

First, two more shots from our bilberry trip that my mom captured that I just love:



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Sometimes when we're out and about and see some young kid eat icecream or chocolate or some other kind of sweet or candy, Judge will ask me how old Leona will be when I allow her to eat it. See, since we don't go out much, and aren't around other kids, we (I) pretty much get to keep her super sheltered from the world of sugar, and am totally happy about it.

So far, the sweetest thing she's had are fried bananas with a drop of honey (once - all subsequent times no drop of honey), buns we've gotten for free...which I am sure have sugar in them but are more cinnemony than sweet, and in total three kornmo crackers (whole-wheat and where you think there is no sugar, but when you read the label you see there totally is...thus the kornmo cracker train has come to a halt for now as well)...and then of course fruit, which can be super sweet in their natural state.

She's also only every had my milk, 'replacement' milk (during the day when I first started working and didn't have a place to pump ... and was actually glad as she was totally old enough to eat and drink other stuff than just my milk), and water...oh, and soups of course. No juice whatsoever, no other kind of milk, no nothing.

This may seem militant, but I really think sugar is the devil just bad - not that I boycott it for myself of course. And since we are in a situation where we can easily avoid it, I am so cool with doing just that for as long as we can.

Anyhow, I've already become a lot more lax in my strictness than I was before / planned on being, seeing as she eats bread and flour stuffs (on the 'restricted list' originally as they get transformed into sugar in our body). Oooooooooooo, crazy-lenient, I know.

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social butterfly

We did our Saturday treck to town again today, and hit up the library as per usj. Lo and behold we walked in on 'Bokfest' (book party), right in the middle of story-time.

I have to say this guy was good! Everyone sat there with rapt attention, little kids and adults alike. But as we are not at the story-book stage yet, we just snaked our way through the throngs of people and got to our little kids books' corner.

After checking out the kitchen nook again, and flipping open a few books, Leona once again started walking right up to people - bigger-than-her kids or adults, no matter.

It fascinates me not only that she does this, just open and trying to interact with others (and not all smiley when she does it, just straight forward), but that most people kind of just look at her, not quite knowing what to make of her overtures and then precede to ignore her.

Some did kind of interact with her though. For example, a kid about 7 (?? totally no clue) first looked at her, then at us questionning almost, and then turned away from her to ignore her. However, she's not deterred so easily, so as she persisted, he took the cup she was offering and then just dropped it on the floor, then when she came back with a plate he took it and just set it down, then finally took a book she offered and put his book down and started flipping through it.

Then, when she spotted a mom and two kids eating buns, she b-lined it over to them and stood about a foot away from the mom and signed 'eat' with a very adament 'ah!' added in. The boy who was a little older than her kept acknowledging her ('baby, baby') but the mom looked around, I caught her eye and smiled, and she kind of wrinkled her brow and semi-not-really-smiled smiled and then ignored Leona. Perhaps she felt like Leona was demanding food from her or something. In any event, rather than continue to let Leona work out these social instances I asked Judge to just bring her back over to where we were sitting....kind of fail on my part but so be it.

Anyhow, she was hungry, obviously, so I got up to go find a place nearby that sold buns, and saw that they were giving them away free (which is where this mom had gotten them from) naught 10 meters away from us. Yay!

Out of everyone, there were just two adults who not only acknowledged her, but spoke with her, accepting the book, and interacting a bit more before moving on.

Oh, and one little girl, 15 months old, who was eager to grab Leona's sippy-cups that were just laying there...of course promptly stopped by her mom. Actually, this same little girl was sitting close to us, and suddenly Leona had stuffed a piece of bun in her mouth before I could stop her - her mom was cool with that though, thankfully.

On the way home it started raining a bit, but Leona was knackered from all the hub-bub and fell asleep despite the wet cold (and it is really cold these days!):

PS. I added the following picture to the 'boot fail' post as it belongs there (courtesy of my mom):

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animals galore

A few weeks ago we had some friends over for dinner, and one of them mentioned how her sister had done baby signing with her kids, and how one time pre-verbal they had gone to the zoo, and the toddler was madly signing away for all the animals, and it hit me: we should do more signs for the different animals as Leona's soooooooooooo into them right now (kind of a forhead-slap moment).

So we did. Couple that with all the animal books we've been borrowing from the library, and Leona and Judge reading hours on end together, we now have a girl who went from dog ("woo' woo'") and duck (her hand kind of doing 'yapyapyap' like if she thought we were talking way too much) to quickly adding about 13 more to her repertoire, most of them perhaps unrecognizable to anyone but me and Judge as we're the ones who've made them up (and we have started coordinating between us, so she doesn't have two signs for each...not that it confused her when we were uncoordinated as she has three spoken languages she differentiates/understands as it is).

Reading the books consists of either her pointing to an animal and looking at us and we do the sign and say the animal, or she does the sign/sound and we say the animal, or sometimes us pointing and her doing the sign/sound (and then us saying the animal):

• Bear (from me): clawed hand swatting
• Giraffe (from me): tongue sticking out (to grab a leaf to eat...see, there is logic behind these, I swear!)
• Penguin (movement from me, sound from Judge): tip side to side (like a waddling penguin without walking) while saying 'tak tak tak'
• Lion (from Judge): lunging at you with clawed hands while saying 'rar'
• [and 'finished': hand open palm out by face]

• Fish (from Judge): and swimming wildly forward (until it hits her stomach) and saying 'psiiuuuuuuu' [my version which she loves when I do is a fish mouth...she has tried this a few times as well, but now the 'psiiuuuuuuu' and hand motion has stuck]
• Rabbit (from Judge): fingers on head doing rabbit ears [my version is wrinkling a bunny nose, which she does by squinting her eyes and then moving her mouth]
• Points to cat (this is one she is not interested in signing at all for some reason...I use the standard baby-sign for cat and say miao)
• [and 'come sit here': patting the spot she wishes you to sit]

Other animals on the current:

• Turtle (from Judge): really reaching breast-stroke motion with arms
• Rooster (from Judge/me): fully open hand on top of head like a mo-hawk
• Sheep/goat (from me): baaaa (innovative, I know)
• Cow (from me): pointing fingers on top of head as horns, bend forward and say mooooo (he uses closed fists)
• Pig (from Judge): pouty lips outward and hard breathing in and out
• Panda (from Judge): flat hands on cheeks (like if you were surprised) (we tried hand in a circle over eye but it just didn't take)

And some that haven't yet caught on:

• Horse (from me): loose 'flappy' lips as breathe out, you know, like a horse
• Crab (from Judge): sissor hands
• Seahorse (from Judge): 'cobra' arm

These are all I can remember at the moment (I think I've noted the majority of them, if not all).

So interesting to see which animals she picks out and which ones she slides over.



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boot fail

As mentioned previously, Leona has one type of shoe she is willing to wear, and one type only - you know, those leather moccasins. Well, yesterday on our berry trip I knew the ground was going to still be a bit wet from the previous days' rains, so dug up some boots that are about her size and a water resistent fall-suit she could wear.

When she saw the fall suit she was totally hyped, wanted to wear it right away, so I slid the arms on her and she walked around with a pink and gray penguin tux for a while before we headed out the door.

After hiking up to the spot we decided to start picking for reals, we took her out of the carrier, and I tried putting the boots on her.

Not a popular decision in Leona's books. At all. She stood there, feet planted firmly in the ground, 'a a a'ing to let us know this was not cool, reaching up for me to pick her up. I tried to lure her into trying them out, you know, maybe she'd surprise herself and find out it wasn't so bad, so I scooted just a little bit away and explained I wanted her to try and take some steps in the boots.

It was like they were nailed to the ground, then slowly she lifted them - like she was wearing some kind of magnetic boots and was walking on steel, and took the necessary two steps before she let me know that this really was not happening.

And that was that. 'twas a warm sunny day, so warm in fact that no jackets were necessary (!), and just a little moisture in the ground, so I decided she could just get a little damp and then we'd change her after.

A mighty good decision, as we then got to enjoy the splendid afternoon that we did.

bilberry trip

Today we had our one day of summer...just in time for fall. And what a glorious day it was, as we packed small buckets, lunch and something to sit on and headed into a vally of bilberries.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but nature up here is impressive once you get off the island - something that we don't do too often. Luckily, thankfully, my mom lives here and is more than happy to go on excursions with us, as otherwise Judge would nare catch even a glimpse of it.

After we picked berries for about an hour and a half it was time for a nursing break that slid into a delicious outdoor nap.

...and then lunch:

...before more berry picking:

[she sat with my mom for a good long time, just picking and eating]

[sat on her own for a bit as well - so focused...and I just have to say I absolutely love this photo!]

[totally love this one too, how it fully captures her concentration]

Judge was the only serious picker amongst the four of us. While I ate 95% of what I picked, he not only saved 95% of his, but went on a full-out picking spree, filling two of these buckets worth:

[he's got the hands to show for it]

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a Hamnadagen coup

Today we headed over to our old hood (Hamna) for 'The Hamnda Day' festivities at the elementary school, and most importantly for us, its communal garage sale. And boy did we score!

Our first win was a little rabbit (NOK 10):

With Leona's affinity for animal books lately, she's picked up a lot new animal signs: Fish, bear, penguin, lion, and:

Next huge score was this awesome lounger: 

Price...are you ready for this?...NOK 20. Yes, two-zero. And boy does she know how to use it:

The next were plastic stuff - a plate, a spoon, a fork, a knife and a spatula (she's into kitchen stuffs) - all for NOK 1 each. Not too shabby. Could have gotten more of each, but we felt like this totally suffices.

The last item was a necessity but not a coup - the toque she's wearing in the first lounger picture. Practically new, water and wind proof (essential for arctic weather) and lined with wool (also essential). We lost her winter hat last easter, so this is a good find for sure, and it saves us money from having to buy a brand spankin new one, but it was not a garage-sale price at NOK 50.

And at a total of NOK 85 that left us with a nice little NOK 15 profit. Yep, that's right, as we were walking to the school, I picked up a 100-kroner bill that was just laying there waiting for me. Probably dropped by some poor kid...thought of trying to find a lost-and-found to hand it in to, but then laziness got the better of me [cue a nagging conscience].

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