snorrason

So the family has moved to a new apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It’s about a 5 minute walk from our old place. It’s bigger, better and nicer. Andri has his own room. Doesn’t have a backyard though which is the only downfall, but we’re closer to Prospect Park now.

Here are some pictures from the moving day (those movers were excellent, All Star Moving Brooklyn) and some pictures from cousin Lena’s first visit to the new digs on Mother’s Day.

It’s finally here, a sweltering 33 Celcius (90 Fahrenheit) and the flowers are in bloom, Andri and Bessie are enjoying.

Last week Andri had his picture taken at school. I remember my first picture day as terrifying. You can tell I had only just stopped crying long enough for the picture to be taken. The only other time I’d been spoken to in a soothing voice under bright lights with a strange man was at the doctor’s office and we all know what happened next, shots and finger pricks, not fun. So I think it’s reasonable that I found sitting in front of some sort of contraption, under bright lights, in front of a strange man quite frightening. But that’s not what I wanted to write about. Over the following weekend Snorri brought his big fancy camera home along with the tripod. He took out the battery and let Andri have a go. He put his eye up to the camera and called for me to sit in front of the camera and say cheese. I followed his instruction and Andri peeked from behind the camera and said, “See, Mommy!”, as in, “See, it wasn’t so bad, was it?” which is what I imagine the photographer said over and over again as he tried to photograph Andri and his classmates. His teachers didn’t say anything about him having a hard time with picture day. His father has been putting a, from Andri’s perspective, giant lens in his face from day one so I guess it follows that he’d be okay with picture day. Here are a few pics of Andri behind the camera.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted, mostly due to the ease of uploading photos onto Facebook and the pain in the hind quarters it is to post using the current software for our blog and I’m all about the photos of the little one. At this moment, I have only enough patience to post one photo. It’s from Andri’s birthday party earlier this month. Yup, birthday. Andri is the big 3 and since his birthday has been testing Mommy’s limits. He thinks it’s hilarious when Mommy grabs him by the hood of his coat in the grocery store to keep him from running all over the place because he doesn’t want to go along with Mommy’s request that he “Stay right here with Mommy”, for example. Ah three, the other Mommies told me there would be a year like this.

In other news, Snorri has recommitted himself to speaking to Andri only in Icelandic. So far, Andri is using a couple of Icelandic words, bless and kisa and will repeat some of them back to Snorri. Most of the time he seems game to learn a new language but sometimes, especially when Snorri is reading to him at night, Andri seems to think his father has suffered a traumatic brain injury and is making up wacky words for things. Snorri will point to something in a picture book and say the Icelandic word and Andri will say the English. When Snorri repeats the Icelandic, Andri repeats the English but a little louder. Sometimes Andri relents and repeats the Icelandic back to Snorri but other times he screams, “No!” and the English word over and over again. I think when we go to Iceland later this month he’ll realize that his father doesn’t have a brain injury and isn’t just messing with him when he speaks Icelandic.

I’m not sure of when it started–it happened so gradually–but somehow our little Andri has become a pro at the games on NickJr.com. At first, I would play the videos on the website for Andri, he’d watch Go, Diego, Go! and whatnot. I don’t remember when we started this… last spring perhaps… I could be totally off though. Well, at some point Andri started getting bored with the videos and started putzing around the website– clicking here and there and discovering the games. Even the games that I thought were too advanced for him he insisted on figuring out, calling from his desk chair perch, “Help! Mommy! Help!” or grunting and screaming in frustration until I came over to help, more the latter than the former now that I think about it. In the past few months he’s gotten pretty good. He uses the arrow keys and space bar in tandem, making characters walk and jump. His skill with the mouse is so precise that he navigates from the desktop, down to the dock, opens the applications folder, clicks to the next screen of the apps folder (saying “two” as his clicks on the number, and then “SAFARI! See Mommy, Safari”. Andri loves playing games on the computer so much that we set him up with his own login on the family computer. Before then he would often misplace things on my desktop so we figured we’d give him his own login with full parental controls before he got into any serious trouble. I’m thinking he’s bound to become some sort of tech genius, change the world for the better, make lots of money, and be able put me and Snorri up in a luxury retirement community when we’re old and gray. I should probably get off the computer before Andri starts complaining that it’s his turn.

Andri won’t be going to school this afternoon. He’ll be laid up on the sofa watching Noggin and his Mommy will be praying that he keeps his food down.

Hér er Andri í lopapeysunni sem hann fékk í jólagjöf frá Ömmu Mæju.
Andri is wearing the “lopapeysa” (woolen sweater) his grandmother Mæja gave him for christmas.