The tables have turned It's been a week since my last entry. I haven't really had the energy to write anything, I have been travelling and stuff.
The good news is that Hannes is feeling well. The bad news .. Jessica and I are sick. We both threw up last night, and are now two zombies walking around in slo-mo. Hannes is the happiest of us, but of course I'm a little worried about us getting pulled into a very vicious circle where we keep passing the stomach flu around to each other.
I would love to stick around and tell you more about Hannes's latest tricks, but ... I gotta run. If you know what I mean.
Hannes Pukerinen He launched the first one at 11.59 a.m. The second one, equally powerful, saw the light of day at about 2.30 p.m. And there would be six more in the next 16 hours. Fountains of puke, that is. And when I say fountains, I mean fountains.
When I was in high school, a friend of mine used to draw a picture of a Roarman all over the place. It was a picture of a cartoon guy, that vomited so that his entire mouth was filled with puke, like playing backwards a film where somebody hoses some puke into his mouth.
For some very weird reason, Hannes was Roarman for 18 hours. He puked 8 times in 18 hours. He ate about 7 times in those 18 hours. What was weird about the whole thing (he's fine now, and demands my attention ;) was that he would puke, Jessica and I would semi-freak out and Hannes would just laugh. Same thing every time. He would play with his toys or something, then puke, and just laugh and continue whatever he was doing.
Family reunion I have been riding my bike to work the past few days, and I have listened to this one song over and over again. It's a Hootie & the Blowfish cover of a New Grass Revival song, "Let Me Be Your Man." I love Darius Rucker's voice, I think he is The Man, but there are also two lines of text that I thought capture a lot of love in a way I always wanted to capture it:
"My love depends on you,
It grows, it blows, it flows by you."
I¨m off to Stockholm tomorrow morning. It'll be great to see Jessica and Hannes again
Double or nothing Got a letter from the poh-lice today. They want me (or my representative) to go to the Immigration Office and get the court decision that makes Hannes a Finnish citizen. I (or my representative) have to do that within 30 days from today. What's a little peculiar is that I (or my representative) should take my own passport (or my ID card or those of my representative's) AND Hannes's passport.
I (and my representative) think that's a little odd.
Which passport? The Swedish passport? Surely not. How could he get a Finnish passport if he's not a citizen? Oh well, I am sure there's a logic here somewhere but I am just too tired to figure it out. (Actually, I don't think there's any logic, ever since that Y77 episode)
However, Hannes is now a Finn! And a Swede! Just imagine those headlines in the sports sections. (Swede Finnish, anyone?) Oh yeah!
Jessica and I decided that Hannes is not half-Finnish, half-Swedish. He's not half-anything. He's twice everything.
My song is your song, Hannes Kas, on Mikki merelle lähtenyt, pikku kaarnapurrellaan,
ja vaikk' onkin tuuli vain yltynyt, Mikki laulaa innoissaan:
Hii-u-li-hei ! Huolta nyt ei ! Merimies näin käy merta päin !
Hii-u-li-hei ! Merimies ei pelkoa tunne ei !
Ja kun aallot Mikkiä keinuttaa, kotirannat kauas jää.
Oi, oi, mikä kummitus tuolla ? Haa ! Mikki aivan säikähtää.
Oi-oi-oi-oi ! Pelkään jo, voi ! Armoa suo, vie emoni luo !
Oi kiltti peikko, olen niin heikko, pelasta, auta oi !
Myrsky nyt purtesi hävittää. Tyi räh-häh häh-häh-häh-hää.
Vaan, mik' ihme ! Valkea lintunen yli kuohuin kiitää päin.
Kas noin ! Suomen Joutsen käy auttamaan,
ja nyt laulu soi taas näin; Hii-u-li-hei ! Huolta nyt ei !
Merimies näin käy merta päin ! Hii-u-hei ! Merimies ei pelkoa
tunne ei !
"...how wonderful life is, now you're in the world."
[Echo, echo, echo] I just heard noise from the bedroom so I stopped typing for a second to listen what it was. Maybe Hannes had woken up. Then I realized that Hannes isn't even at home - he and Jessica flew to Stockholm on Saturday morning. That leaves me here listening to the sounds of silence and commenting TV shows to myself. In Swedish.
Hannes is only five months old, but it feels like he has always been a part of our team. It feels strange to think that we haven't always had him. And then it feels even stranger to think that he won't remember any of the things that we do now, not the first trip to Stockholm, not having his first cold, not how we always wake up together or how he takes showers with Jessi. That's really too bad.
Anyway, I am home alone again, and I spend a lot of time sitting by the computer, doing stuff, and every once in a while checking out Jessica's Hannes site, and especially this photo:
Beat of a different drummer Hannes had a field trip today. He took Jessica out to "open day care" center in Vantaa, close to where Hannes's friend, Linnéa and Jessica's friend, Frida, live. Coincidentally, Frida is Linnéa's mother.
They had sung songs and played different instruments (Hannes got the two pieces of wood that I always got at school, what a fine family tradition) and networked. OK, I know, I take it back. Not everything is about networking, sometimes, most of the times, it's all about hanging out. So, Hannes was hanging out.
I really would have wanted to see Hannes with the other kids, just to see how he reacts when he sees other children. He hasn't really been around other children that much, you know. According to Jessica, he had just looked at everything and everybody with his big, blue eyes. And of course clapped those two pieces of wood.
And if he's anything like me, he probably closed his eyes and played the air drums a bit, too.
Holy crap! Yes, we have finally made it to the main topic of all families with small babies: poop, crap, shit, you name it. A colleague of mine told me that when her husband calls her, the first words are, "has he done it?" It sounded a lot funnier until I started saying the same thing to Jessica when I call her.
Hannes has been eating small portions of solid food for 10 days now, and he has shit twice. (That last meaning opens a whole new discussion, or two, I know. I am saving them to the days when I have nothing to write about, but just for the record: I don't really know the different conjugations of "shit", and I am not sure if 4-month old babies even shit in the first place).
I do know, though, that once Hannes released the bomb last Saturday, I was ready to put it in the oven and save the dried specimen for future generations. It was a masterpiece. And it most definitely made Hannes feel a lot better.
The next big event was tonight, four days after the Big Dung, so the intervals are getting shorter.
Rockin' and a-rollin' This is actually still just a rumor, but I heard it from a very reliable source. I am not going to name names, but I trust my source one hundred percent, and if she says that our son rolled from back to his stomach, I am going to believe it.
Yes! Hannes has now taken the first, um, movement towards taking the first step. Amazing! Only a few weeks ago, we had to support his head because he just was. Now, grabbing objects - hair is definitely an object - making funny noises, turning around in all ways imaginable (like, waking up with his feet on the pillow), and practically sitting up on his own. There is nothing this kid can't do, I am telling ya!
