My New Norwegian Home

Some people are called in to Civil Defense in Norway. My best comparison to it is a minor similarity to the National Guard because Civil Defense is what the country calls on when there's a state of emergency or problems like forest fire, floods and rescue missions. The purpose of the Civil Defense can be read here.  My husband occasionally gets called in for practice or meetings with the Civil Defense. He hates it. Mostly because this is something he gets called in to do. It's not something he's volunteering for. While some people work in Civil Defense voluntarily and make a career out of it, others like my hubs are called in for "duty." The portion he works in when he gets a call to come in and practice is a unit in decontamination. So, for example, if there were a local meth lab explosion or some other catastrophe where decontamination would be needed, he'd be called in to work on the site. My grumpy man in uniform.  Last week, my grumpy man ha

Back in September was when I first learned about babies napping outdoors. The first post about babies sleeping outdoors can be seen here!  My initial reaction was a quick one and I kept thinking, "Wow, if that happened in America, Child Protective Services would be getting a call!" When I get a reaction from other Americans it's very close to the same as what I first thought about it, but more words and phrases are tossed around like, crazy , insane ,  "freezing to death",   kidnapping, " what are they thinking!?!? !", poor babies, neglect  and abuse . I explain, go into detail of this practice (Nordic cultures do this with children without a second thought) and sometimes it soaks in and they understand and other times it just simply doesn't. I'm not entirely sure if people get this image of moms wrapping their children in a blanket and tossing them into snow or what exactly is going on there. I hope this blog post clears up some things thoug

Oslo has some well known musicians coming into Norway. Last week it was Lana Del Rey, Mumford and Sons and Ellie Goulding. This week, 3 days of Bieber Fever had hit Oslo. Anyways, last week Arild, I and some friends went to Oslo for the Mumford and Sons concert. The concert was great, by the way and since this was Mumford and Sons' first concert in Norway, I really hope they make an effort to come back! If you've seen the video to  I Will Wait  then you've seen exactly what their concerts are like. Our day went great up until the point of finding our car. We had parked outside the University of Oslo and arrived there around 8 or so. My husband had misread a sign and assumed we were allowed to park there and he thought before 6 PM there would be road work and we were allowed to park there afterwards. With there being other cars parked at the time we arrived, that led him to think it was okay. Apparently not. He asked the road workers who were nearby what happened t

Yesterday morning, while reading the news my husband sent me  this article  on what a Norwegian child's first words are. So what are the top ten children's first words in Norway? 1) Mamma 2) Hei (Hi in English) 3) Brr 4) Nam-nam 5) Pappa 6) Nei (No in English) 7) Ha Det (Bye in English) 8) Takk (Thank you in English) 9) Bæ (Baa in English) 10) Voff voff (Woof woof in English) Welcome to Norway where babies learn to say "brrr" before they can say "pappa!" My husband is a little uncertain about the idea or bilingual parenting, but everything we've read about bilingual parenting seems to be perfectly fine as far as their understanding of both languages go.  However, mine and Arild's plans as far as which language to use in our home with our little one arriving in September will be bilingual. I will only speak English and he will only speak Norwegian to the child. Our plan with speaking to each other is for us to speak Norwegian as much a