My New Norwegian Home

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...

A couple of weeks ago, my mother-in-law told me a typical Norwegian quote, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing!" I still have no idea how to dress and when I came here with all my "Kentucky clothes" as I call them now, I wasn't prepared at all for Norwegian weather. I just love a quote from one of the Alt for Norge contestants, "The Norwegian weather hates you!"   That really sums it up! :-) When I first arrived here to a very rainy and cool summer, my husband asked, "Where's your raincoat?" I told him, "I've never had one." He looked at me like I was crazy and asked, "What did you do in Kentucky when it rains?" I explained to him if it rained, it would dry soon. Kentucky weather changes from hour to hour, so a raincoat never mattered much to me anyways. And honestly, I've never had much use for umbrellas and raincoats. I hate wearing layers of clothing and I hate clothing (like...

Before meeting the husband, if I could have moved anywhere in the world guilt-free, it would have been a close tie between Iceland and Canada, but I would have probably moved to Canada. Not in the sense of getting upset over a disappointing election and giving the popular threat, "Looks like we're moving to Canada!" either. If I could have moved anywhere in the US before, I would have probably chosen Washington - not Washington D.C. (I hear only crazy people live there) but the state of Washington. Living in a place with huge pine trees, a coast line and mountains, and is mostly cool and known for rainy days. That seems like a great place to live in my book. So here I am in Norway. The country with the second lowest population density in Europe, covered in pine trees, a mountain here, there and everywhere, crisp cool air, and surrounded by the Atlantic everywhere except that border to Sweden (and Finland and Russia.)  I've only started really paying attention to the...