At not quite 12½ months, Yrsa has been on the verge of walking for a few weeks. Olof and the kids have all seen her take some steps on her own, but I’ve yet to witness it, probably because whenever she’s near me she has to be in my arms or on my lap. Lately she’s very clingy and mammig (she wants to be with Mama all the time — why don’t we have a word for that in English?).

As mentioned before, she has seven teeth and is currently working on at least two molars, which means that she bites. Hard. And often. Every day and every night — especially every night — I contemplate weaning her, but I haven’t got to the point yet that I really feel like forcing the issue. Night weaning will probably be in the works sooner rather than later, however.

Apart from the clinging and the biting, she’s really a delightful little thing, mostly easy-going and fun to be around. She babbles a fair bit, but has only three “real” words so far: Mama, Pappa, and bye. “Bye” — complete with accompanying wave — seems to be her favorite, but she doesn’t really get that it’s connected to someone leaving. Oh, and she sings the opening theme to Futurama, which gets big laughs around the kitchen table.

She’s also crazy hard to get a decent picture of these days, but here’s the best of what I’ve got:

When early December gave us this:

I heard plenty of worries that we’d never get this:

Rest assured, we got it.

So it was Yrsa’s birthday yesterday (and also Olof’s and my ninth wedding anniversary — something that slipped my mind entirely until Facebook reminded me), and of course we celebrated with cakes and cookies and family and presents and all that good stuff. The birthday girl put her seven (!) teeth to good use on a Kermit the Frog cupcake (theme chosen by Petra), and managed to stay awake and mostly cheerful until the party had wound down and we’d all left Olof and his like-minded techie sister and brother-in-law deep in conversation about one geek think or another.

Why, yes, she is still in her pajamas in the mid-afternoon. In fact, she’s been wearing those pajamas for nigh on two days now. She doesn’t seem to mind.

I’m sure Olof and the kids would heartily disagree, but I think these two weeks of Christmas break have seemed very long. I can hardly believe that only fourteen days have gone by since Christmas Eve — it feels like months and months ago. I’ve been itching for a while now to get back to a routine and to have a chance to take a break from playing referee to squabbling kids, so imagine my dismay when Lydia told me that they don’t go back to school on Monday, but on Tuesday. I didn’t want to believe her, but a quick check on the municipality’s website proved her right. Olof’s back to work on Monday, though, and for the first time I think I’m actually a little envious.

I’ve just got the last of my supporting documentation together for my application to the master’s program, and I’ll send it off tomorrow. I won’t know until mid-March if I get in, so that’ll be a bit of a nerve-wracking wait. In the main, though, I’m much less stressed than the last time I applied to graduate school. I’ll either get it or I won’t, and no amount of worrying about it will change that, so I’ll just go ahead and not worry.

Tage’s hair had been getting pretty shaggy again, but he resisted all our attempts at persuading him to cut it. Until, that is, we told him he could get the same cut as his idol, the Tenth Doctor:

The result is pretty freaking awesome, I have to say. Very worthy of first-post-of-the-new-year status, am I right?

A couple of months ago, my friend, Debbie, discovered iHerb, a webshop in the States that has lots and lots of groceries of the kind I love but can’t buy here. Not only are their prices reasonable, but they ship packages under four pounds overseas for the unheard of price of six American dollars. Honestly, that’s practically free! I order from them at least once or twice every week, and I’ve yet to be disappointed.

Well, that’s not entirely true, but you’ll soon see that iHerb is in no way to blame.

This afternoon I got a shipment with a big bag of pecans and three boxes of my new favorite snack, Nut-Thins crackers. Brynja also has a special fondness for these crackers, so I’d stashed them out of her reach before I left the room for a while. When I came back, I found to my dismay that she’d employed a chair to put the crackers within her reach and that the now-empty cracker boxes were on the floor.

But she wasn’t eating the crackers … oh, no. She had taken the inner bags from the boxes and was merrily stomping the hell out of them. “Why?” I yelled as I hurried to rescue my bags of still-precious crumbs. “Why, why, why?!” but after nearly four years of living with Brynja, I knew there wasn’t a satisfactory answer. This is just the kind of thing she does, and as much as it drives me crazy, I confess that it’s also part of her charm. There’s just no telling what she’ll do.

*Oh, also, if you happen to order from iHerb, enter this code — TOJ481 — at checkout and you’ll get $5 off your first order (plus I’ll get a little bonus, too!).

I got Olof the same present that my mom got Brynja. You wouldn’t think that would work, but clearly it does.