Category Archives: Motherhood

The maybe game

Posted on by
1

Are you still looking for the perfect holiday gift for new parents? Or are you a new parent yourself and looking for ways to entertain you and your partner over the holiday season? (Because – let’s face it – your childless friends will be out on the town, but you will absolutely be home alone with a baby and multiple bottles of bubbly…)

Then I recommend this year’s hottest new item – The Maybe Game (designed exclusively for P&P fans worldwide). This exciting mystery puzzle takes a modern spin on the age-old activity of trying to guess what the f* is wrong with your kid.

To play this game, simply gather a group of parents around the table and select a card from one of the decks labeled “Sleepless Nights,” Mysterious Crying,” or “Parental Karma.” Read the situation on the back of the card and discuss. At length. And repeatedly.

Example #1:

You select a card from the Mysterious Crying deck that reads:

“Your baby is crying.
Maybe it is gas.
Maybe it is hunger.
Maybe it is tiredness.
What do you do?”

At this point, you and your partner sit on opposite sides of the table and discuss possible solutions ad naseum.

Winners do not exist because there are in fact no correct answers. (What – you thought you had the answers?! HA! You over-confident schmuck, you must go directly to the Jailhouse of Dirty Diapers for the next three turns. Do not pass Go and definitely do not look at your partner for assistance.)

Example #2:

You select a card from the Parental Karma deck that reads:

Your baby slept like an angel on your cross-country flight to grandmother’s house.
You should therefore expect either:
A. Continued angelic behavior
B. Total meltdown

(Hint – the answer is not A.)

The Maybe Game never ends. Repeat the same cards in another 20 minutes and enjoy all the fun you have trying to figure them out the second time. The possibilities are endless!

Recommended Players: 2 or more (partial ownership of at least child is required in order to participate)

Time Required: 30+ years

Goal: Survival

Give the perfect gift to all the dazed and confused parents on your list this year!

Giving thanks abroad

Posted on by
1

I’ve been living overseas on and off since 1999.

That’s a lot of missed turkeys.

Thanksgiving abroad is a mixture of blessing and curse – if you’re willing/able/crazy enough to put on a feast for your local friends, it’s a day you’ll never forget. Thanksgiving is probably the one remaining 100% American holiday that hasn’t been exported abroad, so your presence is essential for it to happen. And you go so far out of your way to do everything “properly,” things you’d never actually consider doing at home… ordering a freshly-butchered turkey weeks in advance, cleaning an entire pumpkin for hours to bake a real pumpkin pie, making stuffing and gravy and cranberry sauce from scratch because the boxed versions aren’t available.

Per and I made a traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings for eight friends in Stavanger in 2009. Naturally, as there were Norwegians involved, the festivities lasted until 3am the next morning. We had an apartment slightly larger than a shoebox, so the table stretched from the far wall to the kitchen counter. It was tight, cramped and absolutely fabulous. A real Thanksgiving.

But if you don’t have a group of friends yet or they aren’t readily available, it can be a recipe for one gigantic, disastrous case of homesick-ness.

This year is a bit unique, as you might expect since I’m typing from my lounge chair in a bikini top. There’s no big dinner planned at the Svendsen house, but I can still do my slightly-cynical list of thanks. Over the years, I’ve discovered this to be a pretty good remedy for delaying the onset of turkey-induced homesick-ness.

So here goes….

  1. I’m thankful that I haven’t accidentally killed, disfigured or injured my son yet. Well, there was that one big tumble off a bed last month… so scratch the injury part. The other parts still apply.
  2. I’m thankful that I’m typing from my lounge chair in a bikini top. Until I look down and see my post-preggers pooch-y stomach laughing at me… so scratch the bikini part. The lounge chair thanks still applies.
  3. I’m thankful that I have very special guests visiting this week and next. And that afterwards I’m traveling to visit very special friends and family during the holidays. Except that means long hours alone on the plane and the road with Per Christian, who has entered his I-hate-being-strapped-into-anything-and-everything phase… so scratch the travel part. The friend and visitor thanks still apply.
  4. I’m thankful that I have a husband who apparently still loves me despite all my CFM madness. I suspect he spends a lot of time laughing at me behind my back, but it’s probably well-deserved.
  5. I’m thankful my grandparents are still alive and will join us for Christmas this year to meet their 28th great-grandchild. No joke – that’s some serious family, folks.
  6. I’m thankful that we have a bit of money in the bank. It’s not a lot, it’s not even a medium amount. But it’s enough that we don’t have to worry about where we’re going to live or how we’re going to eat. The number of people who can’t say the same thing grows every year, so we should never take this for granted.
  7. I’m thankful that I don’t live in the US and therefore don’t have to deal with vicious Black Friday shopping crowds tomorrow. Except that I am seriously craving a bit of retail therapy (the absence of which probably accounts for #6 above), so scratch that…
  8. Most of all, I’m thankful that my son just napped long enough for me to write all this down. I feel much better. Except that he’s awake now, so scratch that too….

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and pass the turkey!

I have a plan…

Posted on by
2

I’ve decided to use my son as fish bait to find new friends. This might not get me the Mommy of the Year award, but I’d be willing to bet actual money on my success.

I’ve never been a modest person in general, and certainly not about my son. He’s been grabbing attention ever since I popped him out, and he’s only improved with age (this is, of course, a totally unbiased mother’s opinion).

But I really never anticipated the overwhelming reaction Per Christian has received in Gran Canaria. Strangers stop to coo over him at every turn, and I’m not even exaggerating. Yesterday our waitress at lunch stole him out of my lap and walked him around the entire restaurant. (This is not a complaint. Per and I sipped wine in peace for at least three blissful minutes…) This morning, I literally had a woman chase me down the street to stop and give him a little spanish beso. She started telling me what sounded like a very interesting and lively story, but I didn’t hear the words “cortado” or “cerveza” in there anywhere, so I got a bit lost in translation.

And don’t get the mistaken impression that it’s only the women, either. The men are just as eager to stop us on the street and sing praises to this miniature meatloaf. But they don’t usually get rewarded with his cheeky little smile – even at such a young age, Per Christian is a committed ladies man.

So my brilliant new plan is to beef up the Spanish lessons, strap Per Christian into his Baby Bjorn and hit the streets. I’ll just walk around until someone stops to admire him, then I’ll amuse them with my witty language skills and lure them into my friendship web. Bam! Amigos galore!

Feel free to forward my Mommy of the Year nominations to your nearest social services office.

In other news, crawling is, like, so last week, y’all….

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

While the cat’s away

Posted on by
3

Per is out of town.

Mommy is home alone, drinking a local Rioja and typing.

A potentially lethal combination.

This is my most recent life in the paradise isle of Gran Canaria – put the Golden Child to bed at 18.00 and face the night alone. You’re in paradise, but you’re still a Single Parent for the evening. So you can’t actually go out anywhere. All you can do is open up the wine, heat up the frozen Ristorante pizza and entertain yourself.

Oh – and a bit later, after I’ve procured myself a fabulous little red wine buzz, I’m going to make this fabulous little minty peas recipe for Per Christian…. Seriously, this child doesn’t even know how blessed he is.

If this all sounds a bit pathetic and boring, then you don’t have a baby and you’re just plain wrong.

I just finished reading Thor Heyerdahl’s In the Footsteps of Adam. If you don’t know about good ol’ Thor, imagine a 20th-century reincarnated Viking, sailing on a wooden raft for 101 days from Peru to Polynesia. A modern-day Science Fair experiment to prove that his theory of migration was right and others were wrong. It’s all depicted in his book and also in the Kon-Tiki museum in Oslo (which is one of only three museums I visited in the entire two years I lived there, all of which were under the duress of visiting friends & relatives).

(As a cultural disclaimer, I did actually go to the National Gallery the first week we moved to Oslo, so I’m not a total schmuck. I’m just a bad tourist, preferring coffee shops and boutiques to museums and walking tours.)

So in his book, Mr. Heyerdahl writes about his many adventures over the years and totally boring life experiences like comparing the quality of local goat’s milk with Fidel Castro in Cuba. Amid all of that, there’s a great quote that I highlighted and dog-eared, specifically because it applied to my life at the moment:

“Those who have found paradise have found it within themselves. Everything I had seen and read had taught me that paradise and hell do not have separate locations on this planet. They are always in the same place, and one cannot simply avoid one by moving away. The two turn up like inseparable companions, no matter how far you have traveled.”

Being an Oxford-MBA graduate and semi-skilled mother has been a bit of a rough blend these past seven months. Now we’ve moved to Gran Canaria for Per’s work, and everyone expects it to be paradise for the entire family. But the truth is, it doesn’t matter where the map places you at one particular moment in time. A new move and new town don’t change the fact that I’m still floundering, still unsure, and still semi-skilled.

And yet, in the midst of that floundering, there are some small snatches of Thor’s paradise in my daily life. I feel them intensely; I breathe them in and hope they are imprinted upon my brain for when I lose my short-term memory in 30 years and only have these moments to remember.

My son is struggling so intensely to get up on his feet, and I’m so moved by his independent effort that I simultaneously cheer him on and shed a tear.

He is unbearably cranky by the time his bath and bottle are finished every day, but then he nestles his head into my shoulder for just that second, and it’s glorious.

He’s been waking at 6am recently for whatever unknown reason, but my grumpiness fades into the background when I go into his room and he literally bounces in his bed from excitement at seeing mommy in the morning.

These are my mini-snatches of paradise each day, and I treasure them. The rest of the time, I’m just a semi-skilled mommy and Single Parent trying to do her best.

So yes, I’m drinking red wine and making minty peas for my sleeping baby upstairs.

It’s my own modern-day version of paradise on Gran Canaria.

Thanks Thor.

CFM

Posted on by
5

I have a certain personality trait that everyone around me has always known. Everyone except myself, that is, until recently.

I’m a 100% type-A outta-control Control Freak.

That’s me. And, as I repeat daily to my husband, you have to love ALL of me…

So all you punks out there reading this and thinking “duh…..,” I have to admit that this really is a recent revelation for me. Maybe part of me still imagined myself barefoot in the rain at yoga camp. Or maybe since I’ve lived in six countries over the last 12 years I still imaged myself as some peaceful vagabond hippie-type. Or maybe since my hair is curly I thought my personality naturally followed suit.

But then I became a mommy, and all those assumptions came smack up against reality. Because the truth is, when it comes right down to it, I much rather prefer order, precision and cleanliness to spontaneity and clutter.

This is not necessarily a desirable trait for a mother of a seven-month-old baby boy.

I really do wish I were one of those ultra-cool, ultra-relaxed Earth mommies I see everywhere, sipping coffee calmly in the café while their little angels sleep soundly in their strollers. But that’s just not been my experience thus far. For better or for worse, I’m the mommy giving her little one his bottles at precisely 08.00, 12.00 and 18.00, plus feeding him puréed fruit/veg/porridge mush at precisely 09.00, 13.00 and 16.00.

If we’re late, I get nervous. If Per Christian is still sleeping, I start pacing the floors. If we’re out and about and there’s no suitable feeding area nearby, I start to panic. I literally start to crawl out of my skin when a feeding time approaches and something gets in the way.

Per Christian probably couldn’t care less – I’ve never once heard this kid cry out of hunger, even when he was a newborn. I always jumped up and popped him onto my boob before we got to an actual cry. In fact, I don’t even know what his “hunger cry” sounds like.

So now – picture this Control Freak Mommy in a foreign country on her first major pantry-stocking shopping trip. This is an always an important event in any country you move to, both as an interesting adventure to see what new goodies might be available and, at the same time, as a potential nightmare if you are a CFM like me.

Imagine this scenario…. I’ve been advised to start PC on chicken and fish at 7 months of age. That’s in two days. Not before, not after (see how the CFM already rears her ugly head???).

So we’re at the ginormous Carrefour in Canary and I’m looking for boneless chicken breasts for his first real meat-lovers meal. It’s getting close to 16.00 (see timetable above), we still have 17 aisles of grocery store madness to cover, and I can’t find the f*cking chicken breasts.

I start to panic.

I’m thinking: “My son needs to start eating chicken in exactly two days and I can’t find the right stuff. I’m a horrible mother!!! I can’t feed my son properly!!! He will remember pangs of hunger caused by lack of chicken in his diet, and he’ll have to cope with his mother’s negligence during his therapy sessions in 20 years!”

Of course, I couldn’t actually vocalize all of that intelligently in the middle of Carrefour. So what I did instead was give my husband the shock of his life when he turned around in the deli section and confronted a CFM rocking back and forth with a tear-stained and utterly distressed look on her face.

I’m not kidding, folks. I cried over chicken breasts.

I’m so lucky to have the husband I have because he immediately hugged me, discovered the trigger point of my CFM madness, and made me see the humor in the entire situation.

And then we both laughed, and we did actually find the chicken breasts.

On the way home, I realized I might potentially be a 100% type-A outta-control Control Freak. Or maybe I’m just a a mother of a seven-month-old baby boy.

You decide.

Punks.

My superhero self

Posted on by
1

There are hundreds of articles and pieces of advice out there about what to expect from your post-baby body. Changes in hip and waist sizes (ugh!), changes in bra sizes (fabulous!), hair loss, tender joints and sore lady parts…. You name it, someone out there is postpartum and feelin’ it.

But nobody told me about Mommy Ears. Not visible to the naked eye, Mommy Ears is a curious phenomena that only newly-minted mothers can appreciate. (Fathers are, apparently, immune.)

It results in a heightened sense of sonic abilities – some are so powerful they could land you on the cast of Heroes or X-Men. You can hear the tiniest peep from your little one several rooms away and at all hours of the day or night. You can instantly distinguish your little one’s cries amid all the other noise at the shopping mall or your mommy group meeting. You can sleep through earthquakes and natural disasters, but never through your little one crying.

This is some serious Superhero stuff.

Take, for example, my experiences over the last several nights. Lille Per Christian is teething up a storm, so everything I knew about his sleeping and eating habits has flown out the window. Damn.

So I’m deep in an exhausted sleep and wake suddenly for no reason at 2:50 am.

I lay in bed, body tense, holding my breath.

30 seconds…. 90 seconds…. three minutes….

Whew. Nothing. Roll back over to sleep.

But NO! There it is. A small whimper from the nursery. A pint-sized stirring that warns me my son is awakening at a most unappreciated hour. I leave him for a few more minutes to make sure, during which time his small murmurings become much louder and more insistent. A few more minutes to make double-y sure…. Yep. The little guy is up.

How is it possible that those tiny sounds can travel through walls and sealed doors to snatch me so abruptly from Slumberville? I can sleep through all manner of drunken debauchery on the streets outside my bedroom window, but I wake at this?!

Mommy ears, I’m telling’ ya.

I’m unsure if these abilities will intensify or weaken as Per Christian gets older and I grow more comfortable with my Superhero powers. I half-expect he’ll be a 27-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in the Zambian outback and I’ll still be laying awake at night for the sound of him waking.

But I guess that’s all part of being a Mommy (aka Superhero).

Note: This image is NOT representative of Per Christian during teething.

Newton’s law

Posted on by
5

NOTE: This post has been updated on 14 October due to my embarrassing blunder in scientific history. Blerg! See here for full disclosure…

I remember when I was young(er) and my father would travel quite often for business. This was always, always the time when something went wrong in our house and my mother would have to deal with it alone. It was inevitable – the plumbing would rupture, the toilet would overflow, the car would break down, the dog would get sick, the kids would get arrested (kidding).

Of course, this was also inevitably the time when my mother would wallpaper the bathroom or paint the kitchen. I guess Newton’s Murphy’s law worked both ways in my house.

Now that Pappa Svendsen is gone for two weeks getting set up in Gran Canaria (check out our new locale here), I’m discovering a new-found sympathy for my mother’s former plights. He’s only been gone for four days and already Newton Murphy is in full swing.

The computer breaks down and I don’t know what to do (we recently purchased a MacBook Air which I both love and hate in equal intervals).

Lille Per discovers the joys of the television remote and now you can just guess what doesn’t work anymore.

Teething pains descend and Lille Per is at maximum levels of fussiness until – miraculously – tooth number two made an appearance.

And days like this happen that make me wonder how single mothers ever survive.

We’re only renting our place here in Oslo, so I’m not following in my mother’s wallpaper/painting footsteps quite yet. But I am doing my own version of pet projects during my quiet nights at home – writing on this blog, trying out some new recipes (since I’m the only potential victim), looking over a few Spanish lessons, taking a quick farewell trip to a friend up North…. Whatever it takes to get out of the house and avoid as many versions of Newton-ness Murphy-ness as possible.

Let’s just hope the kids don’t get arrested while he’s gone (kidding).

Mission impossible

Posted on by
Reply

Mission for the day:
1. Leave house
2. Buy new jeans
3. Buy sugar

Plan of attack:
12.00     Wake, feed and dress PC
12.15     Depart home
14.00     Return home

 What happened in reality:

11.30     Baby starts stirring in bed. Mommy gets herself dressed and food packed so everyone’s ready to leave.

11.40     Baby wakes, is dressed for the day and hangs out a bit with Mommy.

11.45     Baby spits up apple-avocado breakfast on his clothes.

Oh s***… Maybe damage isn’t too bad. I think we can get away without another costume change.

12.00     Baby gets his bottle (see here for why we’re not breastfeeding anymore).
Baby doesn’t burp, decides instead to vomit all over Mommy.

Oh s***. Can’t go out like this. Mommy rushes to change clothes while PC chills in the crib.

12.05     Mommy is dressed and ready to go again. 
Baby is dressed in hat and coat (amid piercing screams on his part).
Unmistakable smell of dirty diaper-ness reaches Mommy’s nose.

Oh s***. Can’t take him out like this. Might as well change his apple-avocado pants while we’re at it.

12.10     Diaper off but trashcan out of liners. 
Mommy replaces liners while Baby chills on the changing table (diaper-less)
Mommy feels drops of liquid on her head, looks up, receives well-placed shot of baby urine in the eyeball.

Oh s***. Are you kidding me?!?!

12.15     Mommy dries off face, hair and changing table, takes a deep breath and wishes Pappa weren’t out of town.

12.20     Diaper pail re-lined, Baby re-diapered and re-dressed in non-apple-avocado-covered pants.

12.30     Assorted keys, phones, wallets, food containers, bottles, burp cloths and other baby paraphernalia gathered. We’re out the door.

Oh s***. It’s raining. How did I not know that?!

12.32     Family returns inside for stroller’s rain cover. Cover attached and we’re out the door again.

Final result:
Comedy of errors continued throughout the day, leaving mother and son to return home at 14.00 without either the jeans or the sugar in hand.

Six months and counting!

Posted on by
Reply

Okay great big world, today’s my half-birthday and it’s time for another status check. If you missed my first update at one month old, check it out here. So much has happened since then!

  • Eating – check!… I’ve rapidly expanded my repertoire to include apples, bananas, apricots, avocados, carrots, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, beets and – 
    my most favorite of all – pears!     (Editor’s note – he’s not kidding folks, pears really are his favorite and he screams bloody murder if mommy gets distracted and doesn’t shovel them in fast enough.)
  • Pooping – check!… I continue to set records in the Dirty Diaper category of baby-hood. What goes in must come out, much to mommy’s nasal dismay.
  • Sleeping – check!… Mommy keeps thanking someone named Jesus for my sleeping from 6pm-7am every night. I’m not sure what he’s got to do with it since I’m doing all the work. 
  • Playing – check!… I’m discovering some new friends in the neighborhood and have a not-so-secret crush on this little brown-eyed girl named Nina. What a hottie!
  • Ut på tur – check!… I love my trips in the great outdoors with mommy. I hear we’re moving to a warmer climate soon, just in time to get rid of these annoying hats and put my baby swimming skills to the test!
  • Entertaining – check!… I am a Svendsen after all, and just like my parents I love me a glass of prosecco. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so they say…. 
  • Being adorable – double check!… I’ve inherited mommy’s giggle and love to put it on display for everyone’s amusement.

Coming attractions include sitting up, continued exploration of my toes, stage two foods and higher degrees of baby babbling.

Happy half-birthday to me!

The end is near

Posted on by
5

Gentlemen, beware. This post involves talk of The Boobs. You have been warned.

I always planned to breastfeed Per Christian until he was nine months old. This may sound like an arbitrary number, but it was based upon the fact that we’ll be traveling to the US for the holidays this year and I wanted to easily feed him on the plane. I don’t know all the nutritional facts about breastfeeding for nine months, but I do know what it’s like to have a fussy baby on a long-haul flight. I wanted to avoid that as much as possible.

But the fact is – I just don’t have it. For whatever reason, my supply is about done. I’ve exhausted myself with pumping sessions to try and keep it up, but I’m about to forfeit the game. My mind is going numb with the rhythmic whirring sound of the electric pump; my wrists are developing carpel tunnel from the manual version. And it’s almost embarrassing to admit how skilled I’ve become at one-handed Tetris on the iPhone. I have always despised pumping with a heated passion, it’s like being at the dairy farm and having your worth measured by how many ounces you produce each day.

I have no idea how other mothers manage. Is it all worth it, I wonder? (FYI – I know I’m not the only one out there with such fierce pumping-fueled hatred. See here, here and here for more of the same.)

I’ve somehow managed to compare the end of breastfeeding in my head to those protesters’ signs outside the Capitol building. They all predict doomsday around the corner and your inevitable persecution for being such an unworthy sloth.

Save yourself!
The End is near!
Have you prayed lately?

I know this pressure and sense of judgement is only in my head. I know breastfeeding for six months is a great accomplishment. I know my son is well-fed and happy (his heavily-dimpled arms and legs are proof of that). But still I can’t help feeling a little nostalgic already. This stage of Per Christian’s baby-hood is coming to a close and it went by so quickly. Did I appreciate it enough while it was here? Should I have spent a little less time complaining and more time enjoying the moment?

It’s sad to know that our days are numbered and we’ll never get these moments back. On the other hand, I’m so, so thrilled to be moving off the dairy farm and getting rid of that evil pump. Far thee well, you squeezer of flesh and crusher of nipples!