danieljohnson

Yesterday, when Marc was at home with Daniel, they were watching TV and Doctor Phil came on. Daniel instantly pointed at Dr Phil and said "Daddy!". Ha ha! Funny! (What Marc and Daniel watch when I'm not at home is a totally another question...) Oh and Daniel said "Mommy" when Fergie was on MTV with her new single.  I have to say that I think I got the better end of this deal!

Now that the weather's sunny and warm, the kids play in the sand box all day long at Kindergarten. That means that Daniel's covered in sand dust and has half a kilo of sand in various pockets and shoes when he gets home. His hair is usually also sand coated, so that's another half a kilo. I wonder how often they need to fill the sand box up at Kindergarten since all the kids take some sand home every day? Anyways, all of that playing in sand of course means that Daniel needs to take a bath every night. And that is just as much fun every single time.

Daniel does NOT want to take a bath because he knows that after that he has to go to bed. So if he doesn't take a bath he shouldn't have to go to bed, right? Sadly Dan's parents don't use that logic. So there's a big I don't want toooooo take a baaaath-dispute before we actually get him into the bathtub. But then he suddenly loves it. Go figure. Daniel talks and chirps his way through bathing. The only not so fun thing is washing his hair. I've heard that's a universal thing though. Then there's the big I don't want toooo get out of the baaaaath-dispute. Which we solve by talking about his fingertops that are wrinkled like raisins. I am really interested in seeing what they look like. Really. And we try to figure out if they really are raisins or fingers. The other day Dan pointed at me (mom) and said mom your forehead looks like a raisin... Who ever says that it is so refreshing to talk to kids cause you hear the the truth from them is lying. I didn't feel anything remotely close to refreshing...

It's pretty amazing how big a mess a little person can make. It's even more amazing how long time it takes for the parents to pick the stuff up. We live in a two storey house with all the bedrooms upstairs. So Daniel likes to play downstairs since that's where the rest of us are most the time. He has toys in the TV room stored away in drawers and boxes. Lots of toys. Still it takes him less than ten seconds to pull all of them out on the living room floor. He's just as fast as Lucky Luke. He hasn't learned yet how to clean up the mess he made, so I get to do it. A friend of ours gave us a piece of advice last year in the US to pick up the toys only once a day. That's great advice. I can't do it though.

We seem to have two extremes. We either pick the stuff up before Daniel is done playing with it or we leave it there for the next day. Why bother since he's going to have the same stuff on the same floor the very next day again, right? It's not like the Cleaning Police is going to come and arrest us. So we live in a constant mess. And that's no fun. So I pick the stuff up and put it where ever I think it should be. Daniel has his moments of clarity and seems to "remember" or know where his oh so important keys or teddy bear or what have you is. Most of the time he has no idea. Idea or not, he still tries his hardest to "remember". He has started saying out loud " Think, think, Daneil" and taps his finger on his cheek. Cute. (He calles himself Daneil, he can't seem to get the letters out quite right for the moment.) And off he goes and finds the keys or the teddy bear. Amazing.

So I've decided to do this in English instead. I apologize for all my spelling mistakes to start with; it's been a while since I actually wrote in English. I want to write about Daniel and the rest of the familys life in English because English is the common denominator for Marc and Hanna's families, and our friends know English as well, so there you go! That means that I'll have to do the introduction one more time, so here it goes.

This blog is about Daniel Johnson, 3 years old in June 2007. Daniel's mom's name is Hanna, she is 33 and Finnish. She lives in Sweden since 1996 and works at CityMail. Daniel's dad is Marc, he is 45 and American. He lives in Sweden since 1987 and works at CityMail. Daniel has an older brother, Nicholas. He is 12 and lives with us every other week. The rest of the time he lives at his mom's and his other little brother, Samuel, who is 9 months older than Daniel.

Hanna is going to do all the writing. We are a trilingual family. Hanna speaks Finnish with Daniel, Marc tries to speak English (he kind of forgets and speaks Swedish instead sometimes) and Nick speaks Swedish with Dan. Daniel goes to a Swedish-speaking kindergarten (which he LOVES) so his first language is Swedish. He's arguing with us parents about what things are really called when we say the Finnish and English words and he wants the Swedish words.

Daniel is in the I-know-best and I-want-to-do-it-myself stage in his life. It's cute for a childless bystander. But most of the time it's not that cute for a parent. You just know that the milk is going to get spilled because he wants to pour it himself, or that he puts his feet in the wrong shoes, or that he's going to wear the rain jacket  in sunny weather. It's draining for the parents. But encouraging at the same time; we're actually raising a person here who eventually will get it right with the shoes and the rain jacket. And what's a little bit of spilled milk in the big picture anyways? Daniel's  got a personality of his own and a will of his own and we love it. Sometimes it just wears us parents out for a little while. I think most the parents in the world feel the same at some point.

Feel free to comment this blog! You can do it in any language you want, but we only understand Finnish, English and Swedish fluently ; )  I'll put some pictures in here as well so you'll see who we are.