Manic weather

The weather here never seases to surprise me. Today it's completely manic. Very windy, snowing one minute (so you can hardly make out the house on the other side of the street) only to be sunny and blue skies a little later. Guess what weather it was at pickup time?..

Today I felt like looking up a Miss Hooley (Balamory) sequence to announce: "It's a winndy dey todey!"

On our nearest bridge this morning. This lorry blew over. (Photo: B B C)

J and I have been in her room most of the day, she busy with just about every toy in her room. me flopped on her bed watching the weather outside, drinking ca 200 cups of pretend coffee.

One minute sunny and blue sky, this is what it looked like when we headed out for pickup. 10 minutes later J and I stood at the school gate with half an inch of snow on our hats!

Comment of the day: C has had a difficult time at school lately having been asked to look after another Swedish boy, which briefly described has not been his choice of friend, nor a very good one. I've been working very hard with him to let him understand that he is not responsible for another child, but that he should be playing with children of his own choice and who are nice to him. The Head of Early Years at school was as shocked as me that the teachers have told C to go and sit with this boy, who only wants to sit on a bench. (This has been going on for 3 months..) Anyway, he has been practicing running around playing with other children at school breaks this week and today he came home and told me that: "O and C (two girls) told me today that they love me and that we are like a family. Nar de sa det mamma, blev jag sa glad att jag nastan borjade grata, men det gjorde jag inte." (when they told me that, I was so happy I felt like crying, but I didn't)"

Min plutte!

2 1/2

Meet my daughter, 2 1/2years old.

Best friend: Big brother
Afraid of: Unknown sounds. "E de? it's pooky.."
Not afraid of: Our cat and other children (when accompanied me to pick C up from a birthday party, she threw herself into a balloon fight with the boys)
Hates to: wash her hair.
Favorite drink: Hot chocolate.
Favorite food: anything with ketchup..but tomato soup is a nice variation..
Favorite tv show: In the Night Garden
Favorite book: In the Night Garden..or Totte or Emma..or Ellen.
Favorite film: Right now "Flushed away.." before it's been Emil for just about 2months.
Favorite song: Rod rod rod e mossan pa mitt huvud...

Can't live without: Books
Always loved: Music (I couldn't listen to music while working when she was in my tummy, she went mad kicking away in there!)
Always loved II: Speed, "faster pappa, faster!" is what she says going in the car.
Sleeps with: Dora, Spotty Cow and Pink Cow.

Here I tried to "interview her", but she was more interested in an elastic band..

...so I gave up.

Typical things she says:
"Laaligt pa den mamma" (don't know what it means exactly, but she is very content when saying this)
"De e haaligt idag" (we always hear this several times a day)
"askling...." (darling)
When asked where daddy is, she goes: "Pappa grejar sladden" (daddy fixing the cord..)
She has also started to give me instructions:
"Akta mamma, inte klammel dig..." "Siktit mamma, inte lamla" etc.
"ta de mamma?" (Star det mamma? *Does it say, mummy (text)?)

Rain, rain & some more

It's been absolutely pouring down today, so to have something to do indoors, we did some re-organization of J's room, just to get some excitement to our day. It worked a treat and she's been in there almost all day when C was at school.

Today, I've been on the phone a lot. First to O, then to school feeling like a complete wimp for starting to cry when speaking to the head teacher of early years. Oh well I have to stop fretting about that, at least she got he message and thinking about it, at least I didn't sob uncontrollably, it was more like talking with a very big lump in my throat...
After school we went to the park, to let the children run off some steam. Not surprisingly we were alone, so they had the whole play ground to themselves.
It's nice to have someone else to push J's swing. C was goofing around while pushing her and she was laughing hysterically.


After 30 minutes C announced: "Mum, I'm worn out!"

Mission accomplished.

Conservative son

C without his 2 front teeth

Today it's all been about talking on the phone to gas companies and it's kind, constantly repeating my account number and being sent back and forth between people, every time with the extra connection to an automated voice asking me to press in my account number "for us to be able to find the right team to help you"..

Part from that, there was quite a big doze of sand pit manners at the school gate today. I don't understand where grown up women find the energy to make other's feel bad. I must say, I am constantly amazed by the female side of the human species. I just don't get women as a group.

C had a really good day today and he was practically shining coming out from school. In the evening we read Aladdin again and he did some more thinking about kisses. I asked him if he had kissed his favorite girl at school (as he was quite the Casanova by the age of 3 having one girl friend on the morning session at nursery and another one in the afternoon!):

"No, I don't think we are going to kiss until we get married."

Out and about

We started our outing by getting into the car and driving past a couple of flats for sale. C thought we had a very strange way of driving to the play ground and was constantly asking how many minutes was left on our journey, so not really that much room for counting windows and checking the prospective new home from every angle.

When we arrived at the park, I took a little tour by myself to the cemetery. While there I realized that it was a long time since I was on my own on a cemetery, I have always loved doing that, so this was my little treat to myself.

Pure magic to me.

I wonder how long I stood watching this tree?

When I joined the others at the playground, C and J were in full swing

It's a beautiful playground and the setting is fantastic.

J, a bit small for climing ontop of the big climbing frame did good use of the slide.

A happy girl
(well at least until we were leaving, our departure was as usually accompanied by her primal screams).

Jumping around on spots on the ground.

Ah, relief!!

J in the car

Last night a burglar alarm went off in our immediate area. After 1h we called the police to check if they could do anything about it. It seems they had other things to do, so followed did a night with absolutely nil amount of sleep. J miraculously slept through the night, but C woke up and came in to us. I tried to sleep with a pillow over my head and he kept laying himself on top of my sound barrier, so I constantly woke up of thinking that someone tried to suffocate me.

At 2pm today we had enough of the beeping, called the police a 2nd time, this time with the details of the vehicle and went to an indoor play center. When arriving back, it was with agony we drove into our street. It was silent. The car, which made such noice for 17hours had finally been towed away. *aah!*

Comment of the day: C, when reading his bedtime story Aladdin and he kissed Jasmine: "Mamma nar jag ser pa film tycker jag kisses (pussar) ser ackliga ut, men pa riktigt e de ganska goa" (Mamma, when people kiss in movies, I think it looks discusting, but for real they are actually quite yummy)

Tjohoo! I have got a new camera!

Here I am testing my new camera! Whehee. Being the non technical wizz I am, it meant shooting a couple of pictures from bed, where I have collapsed.

O has persuaded me to watch a Gordon Ramsay series, I am not convinced, but we'll see. *I have chocolate, so how bad can it be?*

Against the elements

Yesterday was a weird day, the weather was definitely not on my side. In the morning, getting to the car, it was quite a nice morning, but when trying to get to the car from Cs classroom our of nowhere came a snowstorm! We waited under a porch until the worst had passed and when we got to the car, it was snowed over! Well, I didn't have to dig it out, but the windows were completely covered. 2 minutes after we came home J pointed at the window, exclaiming. "Mamma, sunny outside!"

And indeed it was. A day perfect for cleaning, I love early sunny spring days, I would say they are the only days when I truly prefer to do cleaning to anything else.

When it was time to put coins in the parking meter again, I placed J in the window, so she could watch me and went down. The very second I put my foot on the street, the heaven opened up and I had the pleasure of doing my meter run in torrential rain and consequently was completely drenched after my little trip across the street. J thought mummy looked very funny running around in the rain.

When I was back up in the flat, the wind stopped again and the sun was shining again. From a blue sky.

Weird.

Wordless Wednesday - Ordlos onsdag

More Wordless Wednesday contributions can be viewed at Nejma i Marocko

A Perfectly Ordinary Day

Today started as as most Tuesdays with the shock of getting up at 6.30. No, getting up is not the shocking part, but to get myself and the children ready and out on a certain point in time is seriously challenging for me after 1year at home with them.

So this morning wasn't very different from my other Tuesdays, it all went fairly smoothly until we had found our way down the stairs and had been running towards the pay and park-spaces by the park.

Our car wasn't there. I tried not to sound stressed out when gently asking C if he remembered where daddy parked the car yesterday? He didn't remember. Silently I was cursing my husband for parking totally willy nilly and not informing me and myself for not having any mobile phone, so I could call him and ask. After some searching back and forth I noticed the car..on our street, opposite our main door. *gaah, we made it in time, though*

The main part of the day was spent trying to keep J happy while working, but to be honest, I spent most of the day drewling over properties.

After pick-up we went shopping and to get J up the stairs I bribed her with sweets *I had 3 bags of shopping, Js school bag, gym bag and a number of hats in my arms *ok 2, but they felt as if multiplying with every flight of stairs I manged to climb* ...

Feeling very smug having planned something else then sausages and beans for Tuesday dinner, I put the lovely beef steaks with tsatsiki cheese in the oven. 30 minutes later and with really hungry children waiting by the table, I realized that I my supposedly lovely gorgeously smelling beef steaks smelled rather odd. I had forgotten to take out a plastic (but coloured in the same colour ans the foil tin..) styrofoam which they lay on, having now been roasting away together with the steaks and actually was completely glued to them.

Kids had tortellini *thank goodness for 1minute cooking fresh tortellini!* and I had nothing.

C had his homework. Thank you teacher, he spent 80 minutes carefully colouring 18 dots,17 triangles etc on different animals. The last one I did with C counting *it was 40 minutes past bedtime and C was practically falling off his chair*. He was a bit upset with the result, so I had to write a note to the teacher saying "mummy coloured in some of the pink clouds...* so understandably not as neatly done.

Then it was time for bedtime stories..

Js Midnight garden, around 16 pages who goes like this:

"Makka Pakka
Akka Wakka
Mikka Makka Moo

Makka Pakka
Appa yakka
Ikka akka ooo

Hum dum
Agga pang
Ing ang ooo

Makka Pakka
Akka wakka
Mikka makka moo"

and then to C's room for a Dinousaur fact book session, 20 minutes of reading names like:

Chin-shak-iang-o-sau-rus

A perfectly normal day...time to get get some energy for tomorrow. Please God make my tv connection work tonight *J managed to switch off the whole tv-computer thing earlier today*

Clumsy me

I am usually a clumsy person, but the past week I have exceeded myself.

Last week, when I was alone with the children and I was clearing the table for dinner, I was stupid enough to place my laptop on a tin on top of the dining table. There was room on the side of it, but I decided *no obviously I wasn't thinking at all, so no decision making there* to balance it on top of the tin. It was a 10inch long tin and the lid was securely fastened, or so I thought. Half way through the dinner, I caught a glimpse of my new red friend starting to fly through the air, the lid having slowly slipped off creating a 10 inch long slide, just so it reached the edge of the table and the laptop crashed to the floor. Screen broken.

I was so incredibly angry with myself, I still saw dots flying in front of my eyes when going to bed, even though I took my blood pressure medication. Who on earth puts a laptop on top of a tin jar??!!

But that was not enough, on Saturday it was EFIT day and when I was in the middle of it, just about to take a picture of my steroid drops *hm...come to think of it, it suited me right!*, the camera just slipped out of my hands and banged the floor boards. Now it is also dead.

And new products arriving next week at work. *Great*

Since I now have no camera, here is one of the pictures I took this weekend. J got a big girls bed, or actually we just took down one side of her bed, but she found it really exciting and realized her bed was brilliant for jumping on...(dressed in her lovely new clothes from Styrox)

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!
I know I am seriously screaming here. O just fixed my laptop. Minutes after I posted about my clumsiness. *Maybe the official humiliation was my absolution*

*How great is this man?? Sony told us they would charge £500 at least, so we realized that option was out, my laptop was gone.

*huge, HUUUUGE sigh of relief!*

*ah, this is a GOOD day!*

Party Marathon

I should not complain, before moving here and with C not attending any school, birthday parties were rare and far in between, but 3 parties in 3 days? He *and we* are now exhausted.

I have started thinking of Cs birthday party (in April) and what to do. I was thinking of getting this cake. Incidentally O grabbed a family magazine from the toy store where there were lots of different venues to choose from. I am appealed of a farm party. Ride a donkey, *typ*.

Part from toy store visit, back and forth to party, Starbucks, play ground and a couple of rounds with the car to view potential areas to buy in, I have been working and this evening is serious financial migraine meeting. *ugh* Well, it has to be done, I don't think it's too bad, but we have far to many parking penalties in our pile of paper to go through to make it the most romantic of Sunday evenings.

Friday Dreamin

Friday was spent more or less in a rush. Working, then rushing C from school, home to change and then to a birthday party. Who plans a birthday party for 18 5y-olds on a Friday evening?

Before, I have never been too excited about 2 storey apartments, but now I am warming to it.

My Emil and Ida

Ida and Emil

"Emil in Lonneberga" is the quintessential Swedish dream of any Swedish expat. This is what we in our darkest moments feel that our children don't get to experience. That it is farmer's living made romantic in early 18th century doesn't matter when it comes to an expat's bad conscience.

So I guess that Swedish expat children probably get to see so much more of the Astrid Lindgren's movies, made in the 60s and 70s and watched by their parents when they were children, than children living in Sweden today.

Today, C and J was playing Emil and Ida. C was examining J as if he was a doctor *this looses it's point when translated, so I am not even going to try* :

C: "Sag aaah"
J: "aaah"
C: "Du har typiskt"
J: "Oh nej!"
C: "Johoru, forst blir du bla i ansiktet och sen dor dina blommor!"

Who are you?

If all of the desserts listed below were sitting in front of you, which one would you choose? (sorry, you can only pick one!)

Pick your dessert and then look to see what psychiatrists think about you.

Here are your 8 choises:

1. Lemon Meringue
2. Angel Food Cake
3. Brownies
4. Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Icing
5. Strawberry Short Cake
6. Chocolate on Chocolate
7. Ice Cream
8. Carrot Cake

No, you can't change your mind once you scroll down, so think carefully about this choise..

OK - Now that you've made your choise this is what the research says about you:



Scroll down - no cheating!













1. Angel Food Cake
Sweet loving cuddly. You love all warm and fuzzy items. A little nutty at times. Sometimes you need an ice cream cone at the end of the day.
Others perceive you as being child-like and immature at times.

2. Brownies
You are adventurous, love new ideas, and are a champion of underdogs and a slayer of dragons. When tempers flare up you whip out your sabre. You are always the oddball with a unique sense of humour and direction.
You tend to be very loyal.

3. Lemon Meringue
Smooth, sexy & articulate with you hands, you are an excellent after-dinner speaker and a good teacher. But don't try to walk and chew gum at the same time. A bit of a diva at times, but you have many friends.

4. Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Icing
Fun-loving, sassy humorous, not very grounded in life, very indicive and lack motivation. Everyone enjoys being around you, but you are a practical joker.
Others should be cautious in making you mad. However, you are a friend for life.

5. Strawberry Shortcake
Romantic, warm, loving. You care about other people, can be counted on in a pinch and expect the same in return. Intuitively keen. Can be very emotional.

6. Chocolate on Chocolate
Sexy, always ready to give and receive. Very creative, adventurous, ambitious and passionate. You can appear to have a cold exterior, but are warm on the inside. Not afraid to take chances.
Won't settle for anything average in life. Loves to laugh.

7. Ice Cream
You like sports, whether it be baseball, football, basketball or soccer. If you could, you would like to participate, but you enjoy watching sports. You don't like to give up the remote control.
You tend to be self-centered and high maintenance.

8 Carrot Cake
You are very fun loving person, who likes to laugh. You are fun to be with. People like to hang out with you. You are a very warm hearted person and a little quirky at times.
You have loyal friends.

So...who are you?

This is me:

Brownie, a dragon slayer?

First outing of 2008

Today C and I went to our first movie together at our local cinema center. I think I was as excited about it as him. The thing that really amazes me with a smaller city like this is the space and lack of people. Everyone at the movie had a row to themselves, nice and quiet. Spacious and clean. You really appreciate those things having lived in a big and bustling city constantly congested with people and cars.

I felt quite an old lady, when we sat in the cinema, I thought *wow, just the same kind of seats there was in San Francisco when we were there in 99, the ones where every row is so elevated that you never risk not seeing the screen just because someone tall is sitting in front of you. As I was thinking that I realized that I actually had not been in a proper big cinema in ...6years? and maybe all cinemas look like this nowadays?

Old lady warning no 2 came in shape of a virtual heart attack when the trailers started and the volume was turned on "properly". I sat there for a couple of minutes thinking I had to tell someone that something had to be done, but noone else reacted.

We saw Alvin and the Chipmunks. A lovely little movie, I also sat there drooling over the nice decor, and by this I do mean the interior design of their home and nothing else. That was spot on for me.

Complete IKEA usage

What better way of getting use of a bookshelf you don't know where to place, a couple of blankets and a fish mat than pretending it's a hotel?

Note J laying patiently waiting for the sound of morning, exclaimed by C: Caquadoo-del-doo!

They also dragged all kind of things out on the floor playing skeppsbrott, *you are not allowed to touch the floor, but jump around on different items jotted around the floor*

Me, mostly working, O getting the last Christmas boxes out of sight.

My 6 month itch?

I am the first to admit that our current choice of home doesn't really measure up to our expectations. But, if you consider that our inital plan when moving here was to buy a big house in this part of the country and to renovate it and hopefully make some money, so we put an offer in on a gigantic house 1h by car outside our new home town, but we pulled out due to, well basically it was a dump we decided to move here anyway..and we now live in a rental flat on the 2nd floor, still waiting for the key *not passively I might add* to the gorgeous private garden on the other side of the street, 6months after moving in. We are renting unfurnished and the landlord is still using the only large storage space in the flat for himself and since October we live under a partyboy out of any league I've met before. He starts his partying around 1am and usually finish around 5-5.30. He usually doesn't choose his partying nights at weekends, but can just as well be a Sunday or Tuesday. This morning O was up with J who, understandably was up between 3 and 5..

*My itch to go has started again*

Next move would be to buy something, but our months of city living (and C starting a good school) has made us realize out of town is out. Having started a company we are not exactly swamped with mortgage lenders throwing offers at us, so ideally we should be staying put for for another year, but..well,we have started thinking of our next move and we are not exactly known for miss an opportunity.

So, I have been thinking today of all our homes and here it is. In 12years we have been living:

Ok, my house wasn't this picture post card, but it's similar. I lived on top of a tobacco store and my brother next door on top of pet store.

My first flat, a 1bed 1st floor flat of 49sqm in western Gothenburgh, Sweden.
Reason to move: Getting something together.

Our first flat together, 3bed top floor beautiful flat of 105sqm in central Gothenburgh*although a tad expensive..* I have been missing this flat a lot during the years to come. It was being refurbished and I got to choose all the wallpaper and styles and it was all included in the rent.
Reason to move: A bit too expensive.

Not our house, but the same street

A dormer (vindsvaning) 1bed flat of 92kvm in eastern Gothenburgh.
Reason to move: I got a job on the other side of town, however having lived in Big City it feels a bit riciulous to find that kind of distans an obsticle. plus we realized that we wanted to go abroad and didn't have to hang onto a first hand rental contract.

A 2bed strangely patched styled flat in central in Gothenburgh 80kvm. 3minutes walk from work. That was nice. We also had a very nice Christmas in that flat.
Reason to move: After some half hearted jobhunting in San Francisco, we decided Stockholm was the correct move for us. I got a got a job there.

Studio Flat of 30kvm in central Stockholm on the fourth floor without lift with shower in the basement! This was a temporary solution as we were going to sub-let a 3bed flat, but the owners had not gone on their trip yet..
Reason to move: We were told by all our fellow Stockholmers that we were crazy to pass on a first hand flat, so we gave up on the beautiful sublet (mistake)

2floored flat in large villa in very nice area of SW Stockholm.
*Reason to leave: Horrible landlord who constantly walked into our flat whenever we weren't home. They lived in the house as well and his wife threw a tantrum *this still scared me to this day thinking of that absurd moment* when I couldn't attend their barbeque because of a very bad migraine *truthfully I had one...*

Googling on the area, the first picture I found was actually of the house we lived in, it was just behind the tree on the 1st floor.

1bed flat of 50kvm in very small village in the country side north of Stockholm. A very standard flat by Swedish standards, I cannot begin to tell you how booring it was to live there. We didn't live in the idyllic village, but outside. The little community of houses had their own news paper and if you entered the communal laundrette without taking your shoes off, chances were high you would get some bashing in the local paper..
Reason for leaving: Moving to Big City abroad

Not our house, but same street

2bed flat 1st floor flat of ca 40sqm in very hip part of City. We didn't have a clue of what was hip or not when moving there, it was simply the only area we knew. All Swedish tourists come to this area. I walked to work and we enjoyed all the take aways, shops and cinemas of the area. We loved this flat and the area.
Reason for leaving: My brother joined us and we decided to try some co-living.

3bed flat in the Western part of the Big City. 1st floor, ca not sure of size it felt very small, maybe 70sqm? A bomb went off 2 blocks from our flat.
Reason for leaving: I was pregnant.

3bed flat Garden Flat with own studio flat thing (120sqm), in SW part of Big City. This is were C was born (well not in the flat, but we lived there when he was born). This is also one of my favorites.
Reason for leaving: Thinking we should live in the country side now that we were parents. So, SO wrong!! Also we bought our first home and since money wasn't exactly flowing we ended up 60miles outside of Big City. Why, we LOVED it there!

Our mini living room. We installed the wood burner, laid the floor, repainted. It was small, I hated the town but it was ours.

3bed semi of 69kvm in small town where they generally didn't like people from other parts of the country. Imaging how nicely we melted in there.. Longest stay in history, 3 years. We started our company and J was born while living there. We changed every inch of this house.
Reason for leaving. 1 million, I can now say I know what racism is like. It was terrible there.

4bed house of 160sqm with annex, playroom, own driveway lovely garden in favorite outskirt area of Big City. Reason for being able to rent it, they were building a house next door....
*Reason for leaving: Well, the patio and utility room flooded everytime a little rain fell. After this rental experience I am also now a firm believer of ghosts.

5bed superexpensive house down the road from the earlier one, of 180sqm on private road with a football pitch sized garden. We cried every time the rent was to be paid, so we started looking to buy again and that's when we got the idea of moving north

...and here we are.

So..should we stay or should we go?

Yes! I made it

this week as well! :)

Today I have sort of snapped out of it, the blues. I think.

Pepping myself with positive thoughts (this usually is the case on Thursdays, but hey it could be permanent), I've been thinking of all excersize I get from carrying J up and down the stairs and all the car strapping.

We have had a celabratory mood here at home, the children (and me) desperately trying to stay awake until daddy is home, but J didn't make it. She had a very brief nap today, so awake almost all day. She must have been very tired this afternoon, nodding off while playing *?* because she told me every other 15 minutes "J vaken igen!" *J awake again*...

C asked me today when I was going to get "giggnut", which I realized after some quizzing, was pregnant. Curious to what his view on the whole fertility part of life is at the moment. You get giggnut by saying "I want a baby one million hundred thousand times."

Will start posting pictures again soon, it's just that we moved the TV from the living room to our bedroom on Monday evening realizing afterwords that the only thing being able to work as server needed for the TV was my new red friend and I have been to desperate on TV watching to dare pulling out the cords, using my laptop and then try to get them back again. *so much for my degree in computer science..*

This should be a Wordless Wednesday

but I don't have any photo..

This day has really all been about surviving my daily Bean moment.
Imaging yourself wedged in the back seat of a 2door saloon car trying to get a non-cooperating 2.5year old toddler into a rear facing seat.

3 days a week I have the pleasure of doing this performance for smiling walkers-by, not once, but 4 times a day, unless I decide to go grocery shopping or some other pleasurable task, by which my backbreaking *not to mention patience tampering* excercise is up to 6 times.

So shopping is out.

Now, J also has added the habit of falling asleep in the car on our way to pick up in the afternoon. She is like a big bag of beans and she doesn't move a muscle neither while I try to wake her up, nor when I try to flop her into her car seat.

Add to this, an absolute freezing cold wind that makes you cold to the bones and a wind that knocks the buggy with your sleeping toddler over, not to forget slams the car door straight over your legs if you try to keep any dignity in the whole strapping kids in car seats by keeping one or two feet on the ground.

Well, I am just full of positivism today. Hope you've had a good day.

PS. I just called O talking to his voice mail, saying "Bingo, children asleep at 7.40! only to realize that snooring C is now awake again and J is screaming in her bed "sleeping is booooving" and upon being tucked in she screams "Neeeej taaaaack!", which means "No thank you".

At least she is polite.

Back to school

I must admit, I heavily dreaded today. I thought all exhaustion and confusion of the "starting school angst" I had before Christmas was going to start all over, but to my surprice it all felt quite familiar and reassuring. *gosh, I don't really recognize myself*.

I have to admit it, I want routine. Even the grumpy janitor was a nice and familiar face. Waving to the lollipop lady and my little chat with the teacher at the end of the day did the trick for me, although today it was a very brief one as it was pouring down.

Last night C was sure his beloved teacher wasn't going to recognize him without one of his front teeth. He told me, he might have to present himself with his first and sir name. :) He was very surprised that she new very well who he was and..since he was off sick the past 2 days of last semester *this word I always have a hard time with me, since it means holiday in Swedish*..anyway, he got his Christmas present today, which was a very nice treat.

J had a bit of a shock with both daddy and brother away and she has asked me just about every 3rd minute of the day where they were.

The other big thing of the day was Cs fascination with his new jumper. He only wore his shirt last semester and today I put his jumper on, which seems to really have made an impression on him. "Mamma, all day, when I looked straight ahead I thought that I didn't have any jumper on, but when I looked down, I realized I had my jumper on!"

I must admit I am a little bit like that myself: everytime I am to jump into the shower and I catch a climpse *due to practically racing past the mirror* of my post-2pregnancies-including-1ceacarean-tummy I think the same thing.. *gaah*!

PS. For anyone loosing sleep over my steroids dilemma, it should be fine taking these drops. We'll see, will try that for a couple of weeks.

I am a bad bad person

all day I have been quite stressed out thinking of how to prioritize our lives.

The only thing that made me laugh out load what hearing about my mother in law's pathetic day. *feeling a little bit ashamed*, but she is not the nicest person around, well she is not even around, but you get my point*

C's been to a birthday party, J has been wandering around the flat having tantrums every other minute, only to give me a sunny smile the next exclaiming "Alskling, vilken laalig dag!" (Darling, what a lovely day!)
*Ok, so she also made me smile*

The shortest post ever, but I had to come here tonight even if I don't have anything to say. ;)

Swedish vocabulary lesson no2: "Gilla läget"

I saw my first local ENT specialist today. He was a very nice man and he confirmed my symptoms. I did not, however have any cyst in my sinus, it has just collapsed, hence the feeling that someone sitting on my face. And the pain in my teeth is very correctly "something lying on top of them".

So now, the verdict is to try steriods for 5weeks and if unsuccessful it's surgery again, but after leaving the ENT surgery, I realized that I've read that steriods raise the cortisol levels in the body and that, I already have to much of, so I am not sure how well that's going to go down with the endocrinologist. The prospect of sinus surgery is, *how shall I put it*, challenging my outlook on life at present.

So, the Swedish expression of today, which I am going to teach you is "gilla läget" pronounced "yiller leget" *with a silent british r and the first e of leget pronounced like "level or everest". It means, that how booring or bad a situation is, you just have to adjust, you have to find a way to like it or to see it in a positive light. Gilla means "to like". *I am not adjusting very well at the moment, but I aim to..*

Yesterday we decided to kill some waiting time by going to..guess.. IKEA. O has been playing the hulk the past couple of days switching our bedroom into office and vice versa. This meant moving 6 double IKEA wardrobes and similar amount of chester drawers full of things, but the result is very nice and spacious (we now have a bedroom of ca 40sq meters). This all thanks to our partying neighbor above our former bedroom, who have started a habit of partying until ca 5am a couple of nights a week (he started in October and we just had enough around Christmas time.

We just HAD to have a picture to match our new room, so when going to IKEA we decided to buy the picture above.

Just before getting to the checkout O had a feeling he should double check the picture, which was rolled up in a box. I am very glad that he did, because he realized that we had the wrong picture in our box..fancy coming home, hoping to put that chic touch to your new bedroom and this is what you've bought, a 2m*1.40m sized world map..:

Happy New 2008

We sure have missed most of the happenings since moving to our new town. I only heard the Big Show in the end of summer, we have not been to the Winter wonderland only minutes away, neither have we heard much of the renouned street party going on a couple of streets away for the past evenings.

But we did catch a glimpse of these fireworks last night from our kitchen window. I tried to wake up C as promised, but it didn't work, so O carried him to the kitchen and he looked with big eyes at the fantastic fireworks while we whispered "Happy New Year" to him.

We might just as well have shouted like everybody else, because J soon realized something odd was going on, so the first 30 minutes of 2008, we both spent with a child each, singing and soothing. I joined the people outside and sang Auld Lang Syne for C as he went back to sleep.

We then went to bed and made some giggling new year resolutions. *They are seriously so booring that I thought they would do perfectly well as a post on its own on the blog, but O had me promise not to tell..*

We then fell asleep to the sound of a celebrating city, there was an open air concert with someone singing Pink Floydish music.

I actually felt really good. A good start to a new year.

PS. I am feeling a little stupid not having seen some of your comment earlier, I had mistakenly switched on "moderate comments". Here I was thinking I was moaning into outer space with noone listening and I have had very caring and kind comments. Thank you, guys!