June 1st, 2008
We’re now about half way through our stay here in Oslo and have finally had some visitors to show it off to. My parents came out here for a week to see us and Oslo. The weather was warm and sunny on 6 of the 7 days that they were here for, which certainly helped them to enjoy themselves (at least that’s what they said!).
The weekend was spent in a “hut” by the sea, near Fredrikstad - our first experience of Norwegian hut culture (see http://www.norgesbooking.no/ - an excellent site to book huts on all over Norway) and one I’m hoping to repeat at some point. It was basic (compost toilet, no running water inside but a tap just over the way) but very comfortable and felt very personal, which I think we all appreciated. Emma’s favourite bit was the baby table that went with the garden furniture as it meant she could stand up for meal times.
Back in Oslo we walked, walked and then went for a run most days, all in the sun. The Norwegians keep telling us it was like this last year in May and then rained for the whole of July. As most of our visitors are coming in July we’re hoping that it isn’t like that this year.
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June 1st, 2008
Emma has now grown out of her second size of Tommee Tippee nappies so I’ve had to update our stock. As ever, it was a long and complex process choosing which ones to buy, followed by some random button clicking at the end when I actually placed the order. All of them have pros and cons and however well-written the information is it’s very hard to tell what’s going to fit your baby’s bottom best. In the end, I plumped for a Flexitot and aBamboozle (both by Totsbots) and a motherease Sandy (see kittykins, a very friendly nappy shop with lots of details of the nappies they sell). All have been worn once and seemed to work. The Flexitot is a lovely nappy and I’d buy more of those if I had a chance, the only downside being it uses velcro (which for some reason all nappy websites call applix). I’ve bought poppered versions of the other two as velcro tends to get a bit fluffy after a few washes and then starts to curl. As for nappy nippers, …
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May 8th, 2008
Today Oslo was the warmest capital city in Europe, so I was told by a reliable souce (our landlord!). It’s certainly warm here, even at quarter past eight in the evening. Emma has continued to sample the great outdoors and we’ve managed another two runs in the running buggy this week.
It’s good to see Emma enjoying the running buggy so much. She sits with her head out, looking from side to side and exclaiming when we see a dog, a bird, a buggy, another child, a bus, a motorbike, a bike, … However, 40 minutes was enough today and I don’t want to push it. To thank her for being so patient, we ended at the playground in Frognerparken. There’s an amazing castle-shaped climbing frame which is brilliant for the over 3s and a great sandpit with small climbing frame that’s more Emma’s size. We were in the sandpit for getting on for an hour this morning. Then a walk round the park while she had a sleep before a picnic on the grass. She loved it all.
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May 4th, 2008
I’ve restarted my marathon training so Emma and I braved the Nordmarka with the running buggy this morning for a long run. I managed 80 minutes running, she managed 30 mins sleeping so everyone was happy. There was still some snow on the tracks, which being pretty old was quite slippy. We could cope with little patches but when it got more extensive we had to turn round. That meant the run was a bit stop start and didn’t have a nice satisfying loop. The buggy worked fine except on the really rocky stuff, where the front wheel seemed to work itself a bit loose, but that may just have been me not putting it together properly.
Most importantly, we ended near a playground so Emma could have a play in a sandpit and a go on a swing before we caught the T-bane home. That meant both of us enjoyed our morning out and felt we’d got a good dose of sunshine. Hopefully the weather will hold for the rest of the week so we can do a few more running trips out.
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May 1st, 2008
Today was a public holiday in Norway, to celebrate a very important person’s birthday and Lillomarka OL had put on a middle distance race at Bygdøy to keep us amused. I was off first with not quite enough time to get back to take over Emma from Dave. Unfortunately, that preyed on my mind throughout the run and I made a few pretty big mistakes.
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April 13th, 2008
The Norwegians are claiming it’s spring here but with the temperature hovering around 5 degrees and not many leaves out on any of the trees I’m definitely still in winter mode. We went down to Halden for the Norwegian Spring orienteering meet today, which seemed a pretty big competition. Thankfully I’d opted for long rather than elite as this was my first outing in Norwegian terrain for sometime (with the exception of the sprint round the local woods in the Oslo City Cup last Tuesday). It wasn’t my best result ever (15th out of 25), most probably due to my lack of rock climbing/descending practice in the past few years. I was a bit of a wimpy weed.
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April 6th, 2008
We finally made it to Norway a few weeks ago, although Emma and I have already been back to the UK for a few days. Nonetheless, life has settled down into some kind of normality and we’ve settled into our flat very easily. It’s great living somewhere without the clutter that Dave and I seem to collect. I have grand plans for a clear out on our return!
So far, it feels like a holiday as we’ve had little interaction with the locals. Dave’s much better on that front as he’s out at work most of the day and has made it along to a few running and orienteering events. We’ll be able to start those next week.
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February 20th, 2008
Before Dave gets a chance to write a blog on our new carrier I thought I’d get in there. We bought a Macpac Vamoose (see reviews at Planet Fear, and Mumsnet) last weekend and have now taken it out a few times. I took it out today at the army event at Ocknell as a sore throat meant I didn’t fancy running. So, pluses and minuses:
Pluses:
Emma seemed to like it and was happy whenever I looked at her in the handy pocket mirror; it has a handy pocket mirror; the straps are comfier than on our previous one; it looks good; hopefully it’ll last a while.
Minuses:
It was quite pricey and it’s relatively heavy, although Emma’s weight eclipses that.
3K round a yellow-standard course in the New Forest isn’t really a good test and our other walks were hardly mountainous but we’re relatively happy so far. We’ll see how it stands up to Norwegian weather and terrain in a few weeks’ time!
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November 25th, 2007
We were out in the New Forest yesterday to celebrate me getting old with a few friends. I’d been planning a run from Lyndhurst for months so was really cross when I went down with a sore throat and temperature on the Friday night. It still hadn’t shifted by the morning so I was relegated to the walking party, leaving all the fit people to run.
After a good hour’s exercise we headed to La Pergola for lunch. The service was good and the two babies who were there were tolerated very well (thankfully both behaved themselves impeccably, which probably helped!). Choosing chicken in a creamy sauce was stupid as I don’t like creamy sauces but the enormous slice of cheesecake was delicious, although even I was struggling towards the end of it.
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November 24th, 2007
I stumbled across the UK mushroom growers site the other day and they have some very attractive recipes on offer. We tried the creamy quinoa mushroom risotto, partly as I’ve been wanting to try out quinoa since its recent coronation as a superfood, and partly because I like mushrooms. It was easy to cook and tasted great, even without the dried mushrooms. I’m not sure whether the quinoa was an improvement on risotto rice, but it made a change and is apparently very good for you.
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