As I posted the other day Sam have been ill for a few days but on Saturday he was getting better and didn’t have any fever or throw up or nothing. But we saw already on Friday that he was getting more and more cranky and needy. Maybe it was for all the extra attention he got when he was ill and the fact that he got anything he pointed at for those 3 days, but he’s has been annoying as hell all weekend. Or maybe it’s a phase, we don’t know, but no matter how or who we ask the answer is always “that’s normal”. So I took him to kindergarten today to see if they can straighten him out and 2 hours in and they still haven’t called. But it’s hard to be home with home just because he’s cranky and bitching about wanted to be carried around all the time just because he can’t be arsed to walk himself.
And it’s particularly hard for Helena. I don’t know if it’s the maternal instinct or if it’s the fact that 9 times out of 10 it’s her that he goes to but she gets really stressed out with all this. Or maybe I’m just better at ignoring it but if this is the way he’s gonna be from now on I don’t know how we’re gonna get through it. But as always people adapt so hopefully he or we will.
I’ve been working at Thomas Cook now for three days and I can’t really say I’ve been all that focused. Because kindergarten called my wife during lunch on wednesday that our son Sam had a 40 degree fever and we should come and pick him up. Which she did.
And he’s spent 2 nights throwing up (we ran out of clean sheets at about 3 am this morning) and a fever that we give him some pills up his ass for and he’s almost normal again for a while. But basically he’s back in the soffa watching TV with that “I’m too tired for this shit”-look. And it’s really painful for us to go through this again, it wasn’t that long ago.
But when you go online and you read about shit like this and you’re reminded that we’re pretty lucky it’s only a fever and some vomiting, it could be a helluvalot worse.
Sam has managed to get over it, it’s been two weeks without a pacifier now and he’s doing pretty good. However, the staff at the kindergarten noticed that he had trouble going to sleep after lunch so they ended up sitting next to him so he could feel calm enough to go to sleep. And unfortunately that has resulted in him demanding we sit next to him while he’s going to sleep at night. And that’s just not gonna work so we’re now trying to be harsh and just leave the room even though he’s having a fit. It’s tough and we’re not sure it’s the right thing to do but we really don’t want to sit there for 30 minutes holding his hand. I mean I could do it now and again but we can’t make it a habit for him so he can’t fall asleep if we’re not sitting right there with him.
But it’s just hard to say no to him cause we love him so much and he sounds so very needy 🙁
After having talked to my boss to be, my teamleader to be and a woman from HR I’m very hopeful that my new job at Tomas Cook will kick ass. Because it’s a job that I really enjoy doing and do well. It’s webrelated but I also get to explore the business intelligence side of Sharepoint which I haven’t really done that much earlier. I get a small salary increase, I liked the offices and I like the people. So everything felt awesome when I went there to sign the papers.
That’s when “I knew there was a catch!” kicked in. They have a strict cell phone policy. Namely … iPhones only! I can totally go onboard and support a decision to only have one type of phones to make it easier for everyone’s jobs. At the lawfirm we had Blackberrys only – for security reasons. If you bought your own phone that was OK but don’t expect to get your mail on it. At Carema we had HTC only, but if you bought your own phone you got no official support for it but you could still use it. But here it’s strictly iPhone. I felt like a sell out accepting that but I really wanted the job. And it’s not like I haven’t had an iPhone before. But now I have to pay for apps again and shit like that. And having invested in Navigon for Android you can guess how happy I am about that!
The only other downside is their location. Their office is in Stockholm, but not in the centre but a bit off (Marieberg) so I’ll be 5-10 minutes late every morning since I drop off Sam at kindergarten. And I’ll need to go like 10 minutes earlier to make it home earlier than 6:30 and considering Sam goes to bed between 7-8 that’s pretty important to me!
But still, this feels like it could be one kick ass job!
By the end of today I should have a new job signed and done. Although in sweden you have a 6 month grace period when it comes to employments and during that period the employer as well as the employee have full legal right to just say “nope, it’s not working out” and you’re off the legal hook. So as fark as “signed and done” goes there’s still no guarantee. We’ll see later today.
But Sam has really adapted quickly to life without a pacifier. It takes a bit longer for him to realize that he’s suppose to go to sleep now without it but once he does there’s no problem at all. Even at kindergarten it’s working out nicely. So all good on that front too.
And now it’s easter weekend which is 4 days off from work and we’re taking that opportunity to force Sam to live without a pacifier. About 24 hours in and so far he’s doing well and accepts it that we reply “gone!” whenever he says “app” (the swedish word for pacifier is “napp”). Fortunately for us he’s never been that obsessed with having a pacifier. Actually during his entire first year he was always spitting it out so we really never even should’ve started using one. But we’re weak 🙁
This parenthood thing really does suck sometimes! Right now we’re having issues with Sam that we have no idea how to deal with. He started feeling sick last week, probably got the some stomach flu and that started on Thursday. Since then he barely eats anything at all ever. And he can get a fever for no apparent reason at all. We thought he was good to go back to kindergarten but then on monday night he started crying and then threw up. So I was home on tuesday as well and H took over on wednesday and today he looked and felt fine enough for kindergarten again. It’s just so worrying as a parent when your kid get sick like that and gets a fever when you thought he was OK. But during the days that we’ve been home with him he’s been very bored at home so even if he’s not 100% I’m still sure he’s better off at kindergarten than another day lying in the soffa watching Nickelodeon and playing with the same toys and cars that he’s played with for over a week. But what’s up with this “don’t wanna eat”-thing. It’s not that he’s just protesting or anything, he’s just not hungry.
But then he says something like “sit close” and his smile and it’s all worth it!!!
One thing noone told me about being a parent is how tired you are and feel it’s ok to go to bed at 9 pm. Me and Helena have done that basically every night for the past 2 weeks (except the weekend) ann we feel it’s totally ok. But I also feel we’re missing out on alot of “us” time. I remember when I used to play WoW to 1 am every night, go to bed and up at 6 again, that’s right now not even conceivable how that would work!!
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Time to post some pictures. I haven’t done that in a while so there is alot to post.Here we have pictures from when we went out to have some fun in the snow, going sleigh riding down the slopes and whatnot.
Here are some pictures from Sams 2nd birthday which we celebrated a little bit but since it was a normal weekday we didn’t have much of a party, but enough for him to know it was a special day.
Here are some pictures from the real birthday party we had on Sunday.
Password is the name of my current employer.
Yesterday we had a birthday party for Sam. We were a bit unsure if we should invite family or friends with kids he can play with. Because after all it is his party, not ours. But we eventually decided to invite “people he likes to be with” which included my sister, mother and father and same for H. And some other friends and neighbours with kids. So about 20 people all in all. And our house suddenly felt a bit small!!
Yesterday we took Sam to the doctor again to have another look at his eczema / allergies. They quickly said “that’s not normal!” which is a good start in our opinion! Although they don’t know if he’s allergic to anything and the state he’s in right now there’s no use doing one of those prick tests. But we got more penecillin and 3 more creams to use on him and some histamines to stop the itching.
And we’ll be doing that for 2 weeks and we’ll go back for another visit to take a blood sample to see if they can figure out if there’s something he’s extremely allergic to. But until then it’s just “keep on going as normal”. I’m just happy he seems unaffected by it!
Today I’m a really, really REALLY proud dad. Why?…
Watch this and this ! It took me almost two years but it’s finally done. My son now finally knows which one of all his cars is the worlds bestest car!!
🙂
So it seems that my worries wasn’t in vain – my son has indeed inherited my eczema. It’s not a huge surprise since it’s in the genes on my side. And on every checkup I’ve made it a point to tell them I’m concerned he’s inherited it and that the dry red hardened patch on his throat may not only be dry skin but actually eczema and everytime I’ve been told it’s normal. As late 6 weeks ago we were told it’s normal by the pediatrician. 2 1/2 weeks ago we were told it’s not normal but probably a result of the tonsillitis. And now after 10 days of penicillin it’s still bad and we saw a doctor on tuesday who said “no this is definitely eczema, I’ll send you to a specialist”. And I got the “no shit Sherlock”-feeling I hate.
And then it gets worst when I tell people it’s eczema and we’re going to see a specialist, I’ve always gotten a “well good it’s nothing bad/worse than that”! It’s like people don’t know what it means! It’s a life long suffering with itching and scratching and bleeding and creams!! I’m really happy it almost went away when I hit puberty but it’s come back in the past few years, so yeah, I still have to use prescribed creams and stuff all the time. So you bet your ass I hoped it was something else like chicken pox or something like that that would be bad for a week or two and then it’s over, or even something else that there’s a cure or treatment for, but eczema, you’re never gonna get a treatment for that (unless there is some huge advances in genetics!) so that’s a life long issue to deal with, one I hoped my son wouldn’t.
Don’t know when we’ll get an appointment to see the specialist or even when we’ll be able to test his allergies. Worst case is that he’s as allergic to fur as I was and we’ll have to get rid of the cats.
Sam is pretty pissed nowadays. The most frustrating thing for him is he want’s something and he says it, he points to it and we, being the totally oblivious parents that we are, have no idea what he means. At the dinner table he can point at something and says “ia!” and we’re sitting there guessing at everything that’s on the kitchen table and after the 10th guess he gets upset and frustrated and then it goes downhill after that.
He understands what we’re saying most of the time, you can clearly see that. We just wish we could understand him better and what he wants. As it turns out he’s had an infection in his throat (tonsillitis) for weeks without us knowing that it was something medically wrong with him. In our defense we took him to the doctors before Christmas and they didn’t think it was anything serious, it was last Monday that they actually did tests and since then he’s been on penicillin and he’s getting better.
But he still gets upset when we don’t know what he’s talking about. Then again who wouldn’t…
So did you have a merry Christmas? .. I certainly did! I really love Christmases like this!
First we had a small little present opening at home and I got an electric toothbrush from my lovely wife! The story behind that is that I’ve always prefered electric ones, it just feels better afterwards. But during our very nice romantic weekend after we got married I lost mine. And I never really put a high priority on it (the Samsung Tab was much more important!!) but now I got one again!
Then we got into the car and drove 3 hours to her brother’s place and celebrated Christmas with his family. Lots of people, lots of food, lots of fun and lots of presents (with 3 small kids there it was plenty of toys!)! And that’s when my wife surprised me again! Not only did she remember me saying “I want that for Christmas!” when I saw the TV trailer for “Uncharted 3” – but she went above and beyond and got me the special edition of it!!
The day after we had some breakfast and that’s when the only bad thing that happened all week happened – Helena got some food poisoning with all bad stuff that comes with that. And then we got into the car to drive 3 hours to my parent’s place, stopping every 30 minutes when H felt a bit queasy.
But when we finally got there she slept for 2 hours and it was all good. Then it was the same story, lots of people, lots of food, lots of fun and… ok maybe not lots of presents since we had agreed to play the Secret Santa game. I don’t know who was my Santa but that person bought me two whisky glasses, really nice so thank you for that! Then it was time to play some games… first it was the social version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and that didn’t work out since we improvised the rules because the rules that comes with it only applies when playing 2 people and we were four. But I still think it should have been “last man standing” (which ofcourse was me) but nope. So then we moved on to Scrabble and on the second word we got into an argument about the rules. And when it was really close towards the end we got into an argument what happens when challening someone that puts down tiles that make 3 words at the same time.. but in the end I won again. I have really no clue why I win Scrabble so often (in english)!
Anyway, then we stayed the day and after breakfast (without the food poisoning) we got into the car and drove 1 1/2 hour home to calm down, get organized and start putting batteries in everything our son got… oh the noise!!!
So this weekend we’re going out fishing for crabs! Yeah, I know, I don’t even eat crabs, but what tha hell, I’ve never done it so here goes! Then on saturday we’re gonna have a gettogether with alot of our neighbours and eat those poor crabs (or in my case shrimps). And then on sunday we have a relaxing day with Formula 1.
And Sam is spending the rest of today with my parents and tomorrow morning my sister AC takes over until we’re picking him up in the afternoon. We’ll see how long it takes us to really, really miss him and want him back. But we’ll probably have our hands full with crabs by then 🙂
Have a good one!
This week I’ve been with Sam to his new kindergarten for 3 days, spending time with him from 9-15. And I gotta say I should’ve spent this much time with him before! When I was home with him for 8 months I never really REALLY spent time with him compared to now. And the big thing is that when I’ve been at the kindergarten I haven’t had the option of doing anything else than being with him. Not watching TV, not checking my mail, not playing computer games, not cleaning the house, making dinner, mowing the lawn etc, there’s always been something else to do. But for these 3 days there’s been nothing but him. Which has been great cause it feels like I love the little guy much much more now than I did 3 days ago!
But tomorrow I’m leaving him at 9 and going home. If he’s ok being there all day I’ll pick him up at 4 and same thing on friday. Which means I’ll have 2 days of me-time. But considering how many days of vacation I’ve taken this year that’s not alot. But I’ll take it!! 🙂
I got another small vacation coming now! After working for 2 weeks I got 2 weeks off. The first one will be spent trying to keep Sam entertained and stimulated which is getting harder and harder all the time it seems. Can’t wait for him to become a slacking teenager lying in the couch watching bad TV… just like his old man!
And after that he’s gonna be starting kindergarten. And this time a real kindergarten! Not one made up of some barracks and people picked from here and there, no this is a real established kindergarten that’s a few hunder meters from the house. Which will make dropping him off and picking up a bit easier. I’ll be with him the first few days at the new kindergarten so he eases into it a bit and by thursday I’m counting on dropping him off at 9 and go home to just slack and slack all day for once! I am after all on vacation!
Unfortunately we’re in a bit of a Formula 1 drought because the crews needed a vacation too after two back-to-back races and just when it got interesting as Ferrari are getting their act together 🙂
Last weekend we went to Eskilstuna Zoo along with Helenas brother and his family. Last time I was there was over 20 years ago. And I hardly remember anything about the Zoo itself except the “Fantomen”-cave. But the memory I had of the theme park was that it was big. But I knew my memory had to be wrong since it’s too small of a town to have a big theme park like “Gröna Lund” in Stockholm or “Liseberg” in Göteborg.
And after a 1 1/2 hour drive in the heat (our AC in the car isn’t fixed yet) and with a screaming Sam we finally arrived. And as expected the theme park was really really small. Big enough for Sam for a few years I guess but not much for me. And the Zoo part? Well we didn’t see much interesting stuff, mostly stuff we’d already seen before. And Sam wasn’t at all interested in the animals. He has a weird fascinating in pushing things – the pram, chairs, cleaning carts or anything else with wheels. And as usual in places like this the prices are doubled for even a small cola!
But I still think it was totally worth the trip! Firstly it’s always good to get away for a day. And we got to meet Helenas brother and family again. And she had fun. So even though I missed the F1 qualifying (thank good for our digital recorder) it wasl totally worth it.
Here’s a little recap of what went down last weekend.
We started the weekend off on friday evening with a nice dinner in front of the TV with wine and beer, some cookies and cheese but went to bed early since we knew what a big day we had ahead of us.
On saturday morning my sister AC arrived to take care of Sam for us. We love the little guy but to really relax we needed someone to “off-tank” him (all you Warcrafters now what I mean). We suited up, took some photos and headed into Stockholm. Since we didn’t know exactly where we were supposed to be (Stockholm’s city hall is a big building!) we went a bit early. After doing some recon we sat down for some coffee and a muffin and a nice lady at a table next to us wanted to take some photos of us with our camera since she thought we looked like the cutest couple ever. And then my dad called my to ask if they could stop by so we had to tell them that “nope, because we’re in Stockholm getting married” which they had no clue about. At first he wasn’t sure if I was being serious or not but soon realized I was.
After that I took some nice photos of Helena by the water with the wind all over her dress! Then we went in as instructed 15 minutes before the service and it was totally packed! We thought this is where people went that didn’t want to have a big wedding but we were wrong – almost everyone had their families with them, all dressed up and wedding dresses and tuxes, made us feel a bit under dressed. And when it was finally our turn it was over in 5 minutes. Just a quick “do you” and “do you” and some text that I don’t remember that much about. And fortunately one of the assistants helped us by taking some photos of us, even though she wasn’t that camera savvy so half the photos are out of focus.
After the ceremony we got into the car, texted all the people that should know we got married and then drove off into the sunset… or to Norrköping where we had booked a suite with their “Love”-packaged. Got champagne on ice and fruit and chocolate, that was really nice. After winding down and walking around the city for a bit it was time for dinner which was at their local pub. Not really the fanciest place to have a post-wedding dinner but it worked for us. Then enjoyed a drink in the bar and then bed time. Yeah, I know, we actually go to bed early nowadays. But we slept really late on Sunday 🙂
After we finally got up on Sunday Helena tried out their Jacuzzi while I was just l laming around just enjoying not being stressed or worried or entertaining Sam or anything, it was just us! After we checked out we went to Söderköping for our annual visit to the ice cream restaurant. Then we drove to Huddinge hospital to check up on a friend of Helenas that had a daughter a few weeks ago. She was tiny as hell but she was born way WAY premature so not surprising.
Then home again and take care of Sam so AC could get back to her real work.
So that was our weekend. Except for the mediocre dinner it was awesome!!!
Pictures are here by the way.
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