Drinking habits

Most members of the Stier family like to drink wine, and a lot of it too. Now I realize that the drinking habits in the family are founded early on. Look at Mik, nine years old, drinking mjöd (the kind of beer the Vikings used to drink) in Uppsala, Sweden 1984.

Watch and learn, Joanna and Felix!

Santa, apes and human origins

See how Felix sits in the armchair, trying to look educated. Or … eh even literate. Calm down, little boy, your time will come!

For the moment it’s Joanna’s time to show off her brains. You say stuff to her, she takes it in… and a couple of days later she comes up with a question or comment that shows that she has really processed the information. Like when she asked the other day “Which ape gave birth to the first human being?”

That was after I had told her that we humans originate from apes.

Well, intelligent or not, I think she suppressed the fact that I revealed to her that Santa is not for real. You might ask, why would you want to do that, and ruin all the fun on Christmas Eve?

Well, she asked me a few months ago, in a really serious tone: “Mummy, is Santa really for real?” And I have this idea that you shouldn’t lie to your kids, no matter what, so I answered “No. Actually he doesn’t exist.”

I thought I had ruined her childhood. But now she goes on and on about Santa and what she wishes he will bring… It’s a rational kind of information selection I guess. Some discoveries can wait.

Here she is with Jocke’s oldest boy Jacob when we met this weekend. He is really sweet to Joanna and she looks up to him a lot.

He got the boar!

A tired but happy guy came home this evening. He got the boar! His first

Waiting for prey

We have gone backwards in time in this family, back to a hunter-gatherer kind of community. While Mik sits in the woods, waiting for game to shoot, I stay back in town with the kids, gathering milk, bread and vegetables in the local grocery shop.

I think we forgot to tell you that Mik got his hunting licence this autumn. Since then strange magazines and dvd:s have shown up in our home, with enthralling titles such as “Boar fever”.

Anyway, what makes my husband happy can’t be that bad and Mik is really into this. He managed to come home from the beginner’s course with some kind of golden badge for excellent shooting that it usually takes a lot more experience and training to get.

Tomorrow, Sunday, it’s time for the big initiation rite – he’s going for his first real hunt! We’ll be back with a report. The most important thing to me is that Mik gets to eat the boar and not the other way around.

Tunnel flying in Germany

Back home after three days in Bottrop, Germany (Felix’ second trip abroad). My mission was to learn how to fly headdown in a wind tunnel and as you can see the mission was completed

A few weeks ago I was asked if I wanted to join a Norwegian-Swedish VFS girl team, just for fun and to learn. It was exactly what I wanted (even if I wasn’t aware of it, haha). So off to the tunnel I went to perform some necessary technique training.

Baby gear and fly gear go well together…

…as long as there’s a kind babysitter around. Here you see Felix hanging out with mom’s coach Peter and babysitter Jenny. But since Jenny is also one of mom’s future team mates, we will have to find another babysitter next time!

God is dressed in yellow

“I know what God looks like”, Joanna said today. “She is dressed in yellow.”

My idea of what God looks like is more like what I saw this morning, when Joanna leaned over Felix and said: “Oh, he is sooo cute!”

After the first months with a new little being in the house, it feels as if the whole situation has settled. Joanna has always been really sweet with him, but her temper has been very much up and down towards us  during these months. It’s been very difficult to do anything right, she has been testing our limits a lot and all in all she has acted somewhat fragile.

Now she is somewhat calmer, more at ease. I guess some of the new pieces in the family puzzle have finally found their place.

First swim for Felix

Today, Sunday, we took the whole family for a swim. Joanna and Mik played like crazy in the water.  (Excuse us for the bad quality pictures, I only brought my cellphone).

She is such a great swimmer now, very comfortable in the water.

We tried to let Felix take a bath too, in the arms of his dad. It was ok but a little bit cold for him, so he and I ended up watching the others instead. Not too bad either.

Here’s the latest picture in our series “Felix and dad sleeping”. One of their favorite activities.

Gymnastics

Today Joanna started a whole new adventure – we went to her first gymnastics class. She has been talking about gymnastics since late summer, when her idol Jacob (Jocke’s 16 year old son) taught her how to do a front flip on the trampoline. And now we finally went.

She got to try a lot of new stuff that she had never done before. A back flip, a cartwheel, a split and so on. No, no, she didn’t perform these manoeuvres on her own and not at all perfect. But she did get to try them with the teacher’s help and she seemed to enjoy it.

In the picture above you see the teacher helping a girl with a back flip while Joanna – second from the right – and the others study them.

Look how she balances along! She’s wearing my old gymnastics/dance suit too, it felt really cool to see it on her.

The shot here below is fun. The teacher demonstrates jumps while Joanna watches with an expression of awe.

Joanna felt shy, being the only new one in the group. But she was very social anyway. She joked with the teacher, was not afraid to ask about things, and made a friend already (they talked an enormous lot while waiting in line).

Look at the girls’ body language here below. You really don’t need to know what they’re saying to each other to understand.

Point of view

Sleeping like a baby…

Felix’s new role models

To our family’s great joy, Joanna’s godparents Jordan (“JD”) and Tamara have accepted to expand their godfamily and also accept to take Felix under their wings.

Best friends for a long time despite long distances, it is warming to be able to think of them as family, and we couldn’t imagine better suited role models for our children.

Joanna with her and Felix's godparents JD and Tamara, at their wedding 2005