Anika's 1st Birthday

Happy Birthday to our little girl. Now I realize I'm a little late since her birthday was a couple of weeks ago, but I still wanted to share her celebration. Here she is on her big day....

She's come a long way in one year.

She is a fun little girl who we enjoy so much and lovingly refer to as Destructo.

Why?

Well, because she destroys everything. She likes to empty ever drawer or cabinet she can get into, which is quite a bit. She is a climber too. Amazing the things she is able to get on top of.

I know we should child proof things, but its not our house and we are leaving so soon. So right now she keeps me busy and gets me to exercise by chasing her around.

She's not walking yet, only a couple of steps at a time ... IF you can convince her to try.

Our drawers are no longer organized, things come out and we just toss back in.

She's obsessed with Brodrick's shoe basket. Pulls it out and throws every shoe out. She could do this all day.

And heaven forbid she gets a hold of a tissue or paper of any sort. She will shred it.

*sigh*

But, even with her destructive tendencies, we still love her to pieces and can't imagine life without her. She adores her big brother, even when he steals toys out of her hands and pushes her over. I guess that's what big brothers are for.

Since we didn't have any real family to celebrate with, we invited some of our Danish family over for a small party.

Here's Broderick and Sanne (our babysitter) helping with the cake. She ate it very ladylike, just a little piece at a time, not making a mess at all .... until she threw it on the floor.

Here's the cake, this is the first cake that I decorated and cut out myself. It was a lot of fun and you could even tell what it was supposed to be. What? You can't tell? Its a dog people!

Here's Anika's little cake:

The Danes liked the tradition of giving the 1 year old their own cake to destroy.

Our neighbors were at the party. Anika loved their baby and kept pulling out the pacifier and gently putting it back in.

Broderick was right there to help her with her gifts, and you can see Grandma and Grandpa Schmidgall made it to the party via skype (on the computer in the background).

Here she is with Kirstine (her danish Grandma).

She loves riding her wheely bug. Her legs aren't quite long enough, so we have to push her around on it.

(hey - more exercise)

She has had quite the first year...

Born in a foreign country, she has already been to 11 different countries. (What?????) She has been such a trooper with all the travel and strange beds, and it is such a tragedy she won't remember any of it.

She has been a healthy little girl too, she has never had to go to the doctor for an illness. (mommy is very thankful for this, since our doctor doesn't won't speak English to me).

Anika, we love you so much. We are so thankful God has given you to us. You brighten our days with all of your smiles and giggles and we can't imagine life without you.

A Difficult Language

Since living here, I regret not learning the language better. I mean, I can survive when I'm forced to speak the language, but by no means am I fluent. Brad is WAY better than me, but even he has difficulty understanding when people speak. Broderick is doing well. He'll suprise us often with new phrases and words and his teachers say he understands everything they say to him.

Its not because we're slackers or we haven't tried .... this language is hard. They talk like they have potatoes in their mouth, and I'm not being mean when I say that. Even danes say they talk like that.

Its extremely difficult to pronounce and things that I think I'm saying perfect, they give you a blank stare. They correct me and I'm thinking ... yeah, that's what I said. Clearly (or unclearly), its not what I said.

Let me give you some examples:

In our phonetic English, we would say: Bron-der-slev ... exactly like its written

How its really said: Broin-er-sleu ... or something like that because apparently I still can't say this name.

This is a grocery store here.

Looks like: love-berg

Correction: Lyoo-bee-ya ... again - or something like that because I'm probably still saying that wrong.

This is where Brad works.

Looks like: PETER-shobb

Correction: Pellers-HOPE
... and the accent is on the hope - very important.

And as far as this street sign is concerned ...
we won't even go there.

See, so there are some difficulties - correction, there are a lot of difficulties. But - it has been fun learning a new language. And we have been so fortunate that so many danes speak great English.

Sadly, after all this work... in a matter of weeks, we won't need this language again.

I have fantasies of working in the hospital again and suddenly there will be a patient who only speaks danish --- then it will be Megan to the rescue. But lets be honest ... the chances are very slim. Like I said before, most of them speak great English.

So my danish friends ... you'll have to help us keep up our skills.

Grocery Shopping

Before we leave here, I thought I would share a little about grocery shopping over here. In a lot of ways, its very similar and you can find many of the same things that we would have in the states.

In other ways, it is very different. Things are overall healthier here. Not nearly so many preservatives, not very many "convenience" foods, and things aren't as processed. What does this mean? Well, on the up side, it means we eat healthier overall. Obviously, things are more organic, less additives, this is better for you. On the down side ... you have to go grocery shopping every couple of days. Things just don't have the shelf life that they do back home. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I mean, do you really want bread that is still soft and fresh after a week? When you think about it, its just not right. BUT, it is convenient, and its sometimes annoying when things go bad so fast.

I've had to learn to make a lot more things from scratch too. This has been really good for me. Simple things like cream soups they don't have, I never realized how many recipes have this in there. So I either make them from scratch or don't use the recipe (which usually aren't the healthiest anyways). Ranch dressing ... pumpkin pie ... cranberry sauce ... yellow birthday cake ... stuffing  ... the list goes on. I've been forced to be more adventurous in my cooking which I may have never done if I wasn't forced too. But I've learned some things aren't that hard at all and like with the soups, you can control the sodium and things like that.

Let me introduce you to, what I think is the Danes' national food ...

This is rugbrød. A very heavy, dense, fiber-filled, earth tasting, disgusting, healthy rye bread. Danes live for this bread. I mean they really live for this bread. The love it, they defend it, and they are highly offended when us white bread loving americans aren't crazy about it. (Admit it danes, deep down, you are offended). They give you this look and pause and say, "BUT, its SO healthy." That may be, but I really do think you have to grow up on it  to love it. I try to defend myself by explaining we like to eat something called whole wheat, but I don't think that counts. To them its either rugbrød or white bread.

Ok, Ok, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on it. When Oprah was in Copenhagen, she loved it. And my parents are crazy for it too. I will admit, If you get it fresh from the bakery, its a lot better than the regular stuff at the grocery store.

They have some produce here that we don't have (or at least where we're from). Here's a few examples ...

This is sharon fruit, it comes from Israel.

Honning melon - Broderick LOVES this.

We have a lot of produce from Cuba. I think this is strange for me to see since nothing from Cuba is allowed in the states.

I think one of the biggest differences would be the cereal aisle. There's not near the choices here.

Above, here is the cereal at one of our larger grocery stores.

Below, a portion of a typical cereal aisle in the USA.

And the majority are corn flakes. They only have a few sugared cereals. The equivalent of frosted flakes, Smacks, and cocoa pebbles.

Check out the difference in our snack food aisles.

Denmark:

USA:

And we wonder why americans are overweight. haha.

Groceries are a bit more expensive here as well. I would say we spend about double of what groceries cost back in Iowa. For example, when you're buying milk, you're lucky if you can get it on sale for about 1$ for a liter, that would be about 4$ for 1 gallon.

But its still much cheaper than going out to eat. If you want one of these:

You'll spend about 8-10$ and there's no free refills.(ahhh, we miss those.)

They want you to eat healthy, so they make you pay for unhealthy choices. But its not like, drink water, it's free. No, they charge you for water too. So we eat at home much more than we did in the states, also a much healthier option typically.

Just like they tax you for unhealthy eating choices, they tax you for non eco-friendly choices. You have to buy your grocery bags at the store, so (if I remember) I bring reusable bags to the store with me.

I hope I don't sound negative on Denmark. We love it ... but ...it is not an inexpensive place to live.

Valentine's Date ... a little late

We finally got to have a date last night to celebrate Valentine's day. Brad was in the US on the actual holiday. Last week we had a babysitter lined up but there was a snowstorm, so we finally got to go out last night. It was so nice to have a night out with my sweetheart. I love you Brad!

Saying goodbye to the paci

See this image?

This is no more.

We (and Broderick) finally decided to get rid of his sut (paci). He's 3 1/2 years old, so I think he's old enough. You know, before he's got buck teeth and needs years of orthodontal work. I never thought MY kid would still have a paci at this age. (I thought a lot of things about kids before I actually had them though.) He didn't use it a lot, only to sleep. But ... it was so convenient ... so I blame me as much as I do Broderick - he LOVED his sut. I loved knowing that no matter where we were - home, airplanes, hotels, etc - if he had it, he would fall asleep. Loved having that.

Here in Denmark when you stop using your pacifier, they have 2 traditions. Either you put it in an envelope and mail it to Santa Claus or you hang them from a sut trae (pacifier tree). They have real trees where they do this and they are covered in pacifiers, but our dentists office has a fake tree.

We went to the dentist's office today and hung his pacifiers on the "sut trae". You put all your pacis in a bag and they put your name and age on it and hang them on the tree. Then they let him pick a "prize" and gave him a diploma. Before we went there, I asked him if he wanted his sut one last time.

He said, "No mommy, I don't need it." I was so proud of him.

Then he bashed his head on the car door and starting bawling. And then he wanted his sut.

But only for a minute, and then he said again, "NO mommy, I'm all done with this." Hanging it on the "tree"in the office. What a big boy. His diploma for graduating from using a pacifier.

And he went to sleep tonight with no crying. He said he was sad, but that was it.

I think he'll be ok, he still has his blanket.