Dragon Face

A few months ago, Myrna found a plastic dragon toy in the sand box. She was really scared at first, but immediately grasped onto the face of the dragon. Since then, if you ask for a "dragon face," she'll immediately show you her impression. Sometimes she takes it so far that she is shaking while she is doing it. Here she is in a new rendition of one of her favorite songs:

Ridiculous?

One of Myrna's favorite day-time activities is removing each pair of shoes from the shoe rack, trying them on, and strutting around the apartment. She's not at all discriminatory, as she's chosen my smelly old running shoes plenty of times. The only important thing is that the two shoes form a pair. I guess I should be thankful that she's helping me break in the new pair.

Skansen

The day after the race, Myrna, my parents and I gave Chris six hours of undisturbed quiet and headed over to Skansen, the first open air museum and zoo. The idea is to give you a glimpse of pre-industrial Swedish life, and there are houses you can go in to see potters and glass blowers at work. But the real treat for us was watching Myrna trek through the park.

This was a "bike" to her

She wasn't quite sure what to make of the horse, but when one of the riders told her she could pet the horse, she answered with a very stern "no!"

She had a similar timid reaction to the petting zoo goats, but I maintain that she was scared more of the kids all trying to pet the goats, than the goats themselves. As soon as she found an unoccupied window into the goat hut, she was fascinated with them. And, in fact, yesterday's word of the day was "goat." Seals being fed fish was also pretty impressive.


She, really though, liked the statues of the animals that you could climb on better than the animals themselves, as seen with the pig and the bear.



We did get to hear and see some of the traditional Swedish singing and dancing. I've never seen Myrna so seriously watching anything.

More photos of September are finally up on her Picasa album, and we'll try to write more about the last week too.

A Tour of the City in 108 Minutes

With all the visitors, we are finally getting a chance to see some of the highlights of the city. My parents have spent the last ten days with us, which gave us the perfect excuse for lots of fun outings. Of course, you have quite a different view when you are chasing a toddler around, but she does look cute in pictures so it balances out.

As expected, Stockholm has lots of tours - Hop-On-Hop-Off busses, boat tours sailing through all the islands of Stockholm, walking tours based solely on Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, etc. But the tour I enjoyed this weekend required only a pair of running shoes - the Stockholm Half Marathon - with a scenic route hitting most of the sites. At the end of June, after getting a little lost trying to run around our island (a feat that I admit is very difficult to do, since in theory to run around an island, all you need to do is make sure you are next to the water), I thought it could be fun and possible to train for the 13.1 miles in 9 weeks. The one caveat is that I pretty much hadn't been running with any consistancy since Myrna's arrival, but still mentally thought that I could run a half marathon given four weeks notice. So, I got busy training, hoping I could sneak out in the morning before Myrna woke up, letting Chris sleep, a fleeting thought that worked only about 1 in 10 times. But, we some how all made it work, and I felt ready for the big day.


I wasn't so thrilled about the 4 pm Saturday start time. But I had a great cheering squad, as my parents were still in town (to date they have been at every 1/2 and full marathon I've raced in, traveling to Portland, San Diego and Boston and now Stockholm). Myrna stayed occupied by watching the runners and playing with a balloon.

The rain and wind thankfully stayed away, and I finished the race in 1:48:45 - not my fastest time, but not my slowest time either, so I was happy. I think I can even claim the spot of "Top American Woman Finisher" if I read the results correctly. Though, I felt completely Swedish as I enjoyed the post-race Bulle (basically a cinnamon roll), and it never tasted so good.

Strutting her stuff

Last weekend we bought Myrna her first foul weather rain set - a staple here in Stockholm because, after all, why let a little rainfall prevent your kid from playing outside at least 3 hours a day? Myrna was so excited she tried to sprint out of the store in them. Since it's been paid for and made it home, she's put the pants on numerous times, even over her pajamas. And sometimes they even make it outside to tromp through the puddles.

Bellmanstafetten

We've had the first round of visitors (Chris's parents) here, and the second round (my parents) due to land in a few days. Suffices to say, we've been a bit busy and haven't blogged in a while (though we have kept the photo albums up to date). That said, I'm actually not going to attempt to report on all that fun and excitement, but instead fast forward to this last Saturday for the Bellmanstafetten 5 x 5 relay race (5 people each running 5 km (~ 3 miles)). Two of the graduate students here in the Math Department at KTH, Katharina and Kathrin, put together a KTH/SU Women's team. We look quite stunning in our matching blue uniforms
We were treated with beautiful weather (a pleasant surprise) and a fun picnic basket to enjoy after the race. Chris and Myrna were a grand cheer squad - and Myrna has declared the word "Mama" to mean any woman in running garb.
You can watch a video of each our finishes here; I'm runner 1. I guess all this training gave me a little extra spring in my step, as I finished in 23:21. I can guarantee that I won't be running that 7.5 minute mile for the Stockholm Half-Marathon.

MMR-tastic

Two weeks ago we woke up early to get out of the door by 8:30 (that's a push for us) to get Myrna to the doctor. We had another immunization scheduled, but little Myrna thwarted that plan by waking up with a fever. We were pretty sure she got that fever on purpose, just to avoid a needle. She spent that weekend sleeping a bit more, eating a bit less and very warm - but other than that she still was full of energy. Little did she know that she couldn't put off the inevitable, so yesterday we took a second stab at it. She was so excited about our morning adventure (she must have seen us setting alarms) that she woke up at 4:45 and was rearing to go. At the doctor's office, she immediately started in on the toys and slide. All was well until she saw the needle come into the room and she knew something was up. Thankfully it was all done in just one go, and we celebrated by going to the park and playing in the wading pool.

Here she is showing off her band-aid (something she likes to remind us that she has).
More photos are in her new August Picasa Album.

Bananas in Pajamas

We bought Myrna some new pjs when we were in Seattle, but it wasn't until last week that it was cool enough to wear them to bed. We were happy to see that they still fit, and have provided Myrna with lots of fun hearing the skid-free rubber feet squeak as she walks.
Here she is at our pre-8 am photo shoot, carefully navigating down the stairs without hands. The last of the July photos are on her July Album.

A Long Weekend in Köln

We spent last weekend in the sun and heat visiting Köln. We definitely got a little nostalgic for all our favorite German treats. We stayed close by to Kaffeebaum (which was not on summer holiday) and made our way through the coffee selections. Even Myrna enjoyed herself there, as Anna gave her a creamsicle (after which clever Myrna led us back behind the counter to find another). Here's Myrna enjoying a glass of bubbly water after some ice cream in the Altstadt.

Other favorites included plum cake, only just barely in season. Here's Myrna asleep and oblivious as we enjoy some cake.

Other nap-time treats were enjoyed at Päffgen Brauerei. Remember when our blog looked like this?


We also had some new treats, now that we had a toddler in tow. We'd always seen the fountain on the Rhein, but hadn't ever used it before. It was a huge hit!

Myrna also reminded us of the many uses of staircases in art galleries while we were at our friend Noa's exhibition.

One of Myrna's new things lately is sharing and giving gifts. When we go the park, other day-care-acclimated parents marvel at Myrna's friendly overtures of shovels and sticks to other children. And that sounds all cute and such, but Sunday she "gifted" someone with a dead fly. This all went down when we were at a video shoot for our friend Latanya's music video.

But they say you can't go home again, and of course a lot of things in Köln had changed. We couldn't get any Belgian beer, due to the closure of the gourmet Belgian supermarket chain. Other favorite restaurants had changed management. Even the English school I used to teach in had moved. Things change... Returning to Stockholm, though, the baby ducklings in the pond behind our building were just as tiny and fuzzy as we'd left them, and we were glad that at least things didn't change that fast.

4th of July

I've never been one for big 4th of July celebrations, and I don't think I ever attended one of the enormous fireworks shows until I was taking a bunch of math campers. But, we got invited to the American Club of Sweden's 4th of July Picnic, so we thought we'd jump right on into the celebration. It also didn't hurt that we're in the midst of a sunny and hot run of weather, so after a morning cup of coffee at Drop, we headed just north of the city to Lidingö to hit the beach. This was Myrna's first beach trip, but as a beach is a giant sandbox, she was as happy as a clam.
Her favorite activity was running into the water to fill a bucket, which she would bring ashore and dump on herself.
The breeze from the sea kept us nice and cool (though we'll see if we all got tricked into sunburns despite the sunscreen).

We had fun playing with our toddler clan and meeting people who, get this, don't have kids (or at least not toddlers). No fireworks for us though - seeing as it doesn't get dark here until way too late.

More pictures from the weekend and the beach are on Myrna's July Picasa Page - and see below (the previous post) for Chris's account of hiking with four toddlers.