That was quite a switch from “cold” to “this is perfect” to “cooking” in less than 3 weeks! I’ve always prefered being too cold to being sweating as hell in bed when trying to go to sleep but when it’s closing to 30 degrees in the bedroom you really do think about investing in an AC. Then you’re reminded how much they cost, the noise
they make and the hose that has to go somewhere and it’s not a good idea anymore!
Fortunately Sam is taking it alot better than I am. He still goes to sleep before 8 and sleeps pretty much all night and wakes up between 6 and 7 ready to rock. But we’ve noticed that he’s way too understimulated at home! Although we try to read to him, play with him or go out walking he still has all that energy that we don’t have.
It’s times like that that you are thankful for kindergarten!!
On friday my sister and brother took me out for a night on the town. 5 years ago this would have included dining, beer, clubbing, drinks, blackjack and a cab home because the last train home is at 1 am.
But things are different now. We still went out for dining and beering then we went to O’Learys at the central train station to get some blackjack in.. but no dice since they didn’t have that anymore! So we took a beer, had some popcorn and then calling it at 22:30. I could’ve gone on and on for a few hours more but didn’t really feel like it. Plus today I can’t spend money on myself without feeling a bit like “should really save this for a baby seat on the bike” or something else.
But it was good fun and thanks for organizing it sis 🙂
Today was Sam’s first encounter with thunderstorms! When preparing to go to kindergarten I noticed it was getting darker in the skies. So I put on his raingear and made sure I had an umbrella and off we went for that 15 minute walk. About 5 minutes in lightning struck about 5 seconds away (because you always count how many seconds away they are right?). The after that it was only 2 seconds away and the rain came poring down! Fortunately we were able to take shelter under some tin roof which made for some interesting noises for him. A few more lightnings and 2-3 minutes later it was ok to continue the walk as the lightning was getting further away. But just like his dad he got more excited than worried over the sound of thunder! I like my little guy, he’s pretty fearless. So far 🙂
Nothing really exciting to report.
Sam is doing very well at kindergarten. Surprisingly well I think! I drop him off at 7 am and H picks him up at 5 pm so that’s a full 10 hours he’s there. But by the time I get home and dinner is over with he’s pretty much ready for bed. And then he sleeps 12 hours until it’s time to do it all over again. But tomorrow will be different ’cause he’ll sleep until he wakes up himself whenever that is nowadays. He definitely sleeps longer in the mornings now than he usually does.
And this weekend we don’t have much planned actually. Neighbors coming over for a quick visit bit that’s pretty much all we have planned. And the F1 race from Monaco of course! And put up the doors for the greenhouse so I can finally say “Done!”.
I don’t think anything hurts more than when your child is in pain and there’s nothing you can!
Sam had a bit of double-trouble this week. On Tuesday his molars started pushing through which apparently hurts a bit. And for Sam it was more than a bit! He couldn’t quite fall asleep at all in the night, only slept for like 15-20 minutes at a time then woke up crying. And on Wednesday Helena stayed home with him and he cried so much he lost his voice. Or maybe it was the cold he’s had for a few weeks now but he couldn’t even cry or scream or anything and that made him even more upset. But it really hurts, holding your son, trying to comfort him when he’s in pain like that. On Thursday I stayed home with him and it got better and by the afternoon I could hear his voice coming back and he didn’t seem to be in pain anymore. And on Thursday night he actually went to sleep and slept for 11 hours!
Today we handed him in to the daycare, no problem at all!
Every morning on a normal working day at 7 am I hand my son Sam over to a woman I hardly know and everytime I get the feeling that I’m treating him like luggage at an airport – “here, take care of this and I’ll pick it up on the other side”. I hope I’m not the only one that feels like that? Because as we understand things this is what you do after staying home for a year?
Ofcourse we can only blame ourselves – if we had stayed in our old 41 squaremetet apartment we would have afforded being home more. Or if we’d lived closer to my family they’d happily take care of him. Bu we chose to build a house and it made sense giving a child the same comfort of growing up in a house like I did. But considering that choice now means we have to check him in at a kindergarten for 10 hours a day I’m wondering what’s more important for him…
Our little boy Sam still isn’t 100% after all these weeks. The burns are almost gone now but he’s still coughing and sliming up the house and last night he even had a slight fever.
I don’t know if we’re just too paranoid or obsessive but it would be such a relief if he could just wake up one day and feel normal. We know it’s probably the normal RS-virus that every kid gets in kindergarten but that doesn’t make it any easier on us or him 🙁
On friday me and Helena decided to have a small BBQ with our small grill. What we didn’t really think about was that our son Sam have on multiple occasions used that BBQ as a tool to stand up. And for a few seconds I took my eyes off him and watching 2 1/2 Men on the TV and when my eyes went back to him he was just reaching for it. I yelled at him and ran as fast as I could but it was too late. He got burnt! At first we didn’t think it was that bad but when the swelling really kicked in we knew we had to see a doctor. So in to the ER where they bandaged it up in a nice neat package and we got an appointment Tuesday morning to see the burn-specialist that’ll take a better look, but they weren’t the least bit worried about it, they said he’d be fine. Unfortunately until then he’ll have a stump at the end of the left arm, as he’d lost his hand in an accident. It looks worse than it is, or so they say.
So those few seconds were all it took. After spending the winter looking after him like a hawk so he wouldn’t get burn on our indoor fireplace only to relax for a few seconds.
And you’d think he might have learnt something? Not, on Saturday morning he was all over that BBQ again (which ofcourse wasn’t lit)!
Sometimes being a parent sucks. Right now it’s trying to comfort our little boy who caught some bug at kindergarten and is now down with a cold. It’s so difficult when he’s to young to understand or to be reasoned with, trying to tell him he just has a cold and it’ll pass in a day or two, all he knows is he doesn’t feel good and he doesn’t like it.
But it’s kinda expected now that he’s in kindergarten. I got a little bit of a cold but not as bad as Helena that was totally out on monday. And ofcourse we didn’t help by exhausting ourselves on saturday..
This is the real first day of my parental leave! Helena has gone back to work now and I’m left solo with Sam, looking after, stimulating and feeding him as best I can and taking care of the household.
I’ve been way too busy in the past weeks to call this a vacation! My sister Amy with her family of four very well behaved kids and a hilarious husband was here in Sweden for a few weeks and I got to see them quite a few times, including a 20 hour cruise we took again (this time without the bad food that had me in bed by 20:30 last time!).
All in all, life is good right now 🙂
I’m officially on vacation right? I certainly haven’t noticed since I’ve been busy doing all those things I never had time for. Some of those things have been caught on camera and I’ve done some updating of my photo gallery.
1 – Midsummer Weekend with Helena’s brother and his family.
2 – Putting our pontoon back into the lake.
3 – Taking a stroll in Lövhagen with my family.
4 – Going to Kolmården with our neighbours and then a visit to the icecream restaurant in Söderköping.
And ofcourse some updates to my gallery dedicated to my son Sam.
Here’s hoping next week will be a little less eventfull!
Today is day 4 (of what, 190?) at home with my family. Although it’s been a weekend so it doesn’t feel as strange yet. Maybe it’ll hit next week when I haven’t logged in and checked the status of my Sharepoint farm at work 🙂
Biggest problem so far has actually been the heat! Our son really doesn’t like the heat we’re having now! He can’t sleep and is just grumpy all the time. So we’re thinking of a small air conditioner unit here if this goes on. Which based in the weather reports it will.
Other than that, we’re BBQing, watching movies, doing some home improvements and in 3 hours we have the Formula 1 race from Silversone (been there!).
And now I’ve finally worked my last shift at work for all year. No more work for me! Now it’s all about Sam!.. and Helena. And the house. And then me 🙂 And it’s gonna be good!
One thing I’m hoping to do is redesign this place again, it’s been a while. And I’ve had to transfer the site back to our NP.com server. The photo-section will probably be offline for a while but should be ok in a few days.
Take care!
Although it’s 16 days until I go on my parental leave, only 12 of those are days I have to spend at work. And believe me, I am counting every hour now! Still not sure how it’s gonna go with me and my son when Helena goes back to work on august 1st…
And stockholm is back to it’s normal self now after a few weeks of crazyness with this royal wedding and all. I’m not a huge fan of monarchy but I ended up watching it on television anyway. And it was cute and all but a bitter taste that most of it was paid by us the taxpayers and no matter how hard I try or how much money I spend on my wedding… what are the ods I can close down stockholm like that when I get married!?
So now I’m 35 years old. I dunno why but that most definitely feels like a limit where you can blame “immaturity” anymore without sounding silly 🙁
But as far as my life goes, it’s certainly picked up in the past 2 years going from “sitting home alone (but far from lonely) playing my computer games and watching my movies” to “sitting on the terrace of our lovely house with my lovely fiancé listning to our lovely boy not wanting to sleep”.
Life is pretty good to me at the moment. Unfortunately it’s not as good for everyone 🙁
In 37 days I’m going on a 7 month parental leave. Add one more month of vacation and I’m gonna be home for a long long time!
I know I shouldn’t amp up my expecations since I’m bound to disappointed but.. 8 months with my little boy. Learning him to eat solid(ish) food, learning him to walk and maybe even talk a little bit. It’s gonna be great! I just hope we don’t suffer too much economically because of it.
We got our permit to put the roof up over 1/3 of the terrace so I’m busy doing that. And Helena is busy taking care of the rest of the house, our son and planting all the flowers and trees and stuff we bought yesterday for approximately 10.000 swedish crowns!
Man it’s gonna look good and smell awesome when we’re sitting under the roof on the terrace with the BBQ on and the rain is falling down again!
I’ve also updated som photo albums:
The terrace-build, although not 100% up to date after I’ve started with the roof.
Our new carpark with the bricks that the Irish guys put down for us.
Our latest family get-together for my father’s birthday.
And as always added some photos of our wonderful son Sam.
The terrace is done!… almost. I’m waiting for the council to give us a permit to put the roof up. It seems that since we can use it as a storage if we put a roof on it we need permit. Isn’t that typical sweden, you can’t get any luxury without paying the government their piece of the pie!
Anyway, we’ve had a BBQ with our neighbours across the street and Helenas has spend some days just slacking in the comfy soffas we bought. We’re also waiting on Mio to deliver the outdoor dining table and chairs so we can have more guests!
On top of that (!) we’ve had bricks put on our driveway. Cost us 80.000 swedish crowns but it’ll be worth it. We hope. Won’t know for another few years since it may get completely screwed up when the ground settles a bit.
We’re doing so much on the house now which is kinad rediculous considering I’ll be off from work from july to the end of the year and have plenty of time then. But I want that time to just enjoy our nice home and play with our son!
When I get off work on wednesday july 7th I’ll be starting my almost 7 month long parental leave and I’ll get to spend as much time with my son as I possibly can. Ofcourse I have no ambitions that I will have time or energy to have time to do anything else but spend time with my son, I do ofcourse hope that I’ll have some time between naps to do some things that I want, like catching up on the latest season of “24” or something.
But I can’t imagine what it’ll be like. Not only have I no clue what it’ll be like being with my son, but I have never been home for that long – ever! I had a 4 week vacation once but that’s as far as I’ve gone without working since I was like 14. But now I’m gonna be home 7 months. Yikes!!!
Let the countdown begin!
My new life as a homeowner and father is progressing pretty well. My son is growing well over the curve and our house is still standing!
The biggest effect has actually been my abstinence when it comes to buying new toys! A year or two ago I wouldn’t have hesitated to buy a new toy like a new graphics card or camera. But for the past months I’ve given it a second, third or forth thought and decided that my money was better spent elsewhere.
Until now!
After spending easter weekend with Helena’s family I got inspired to buy a new real digital camera, not a small cheap one we already have. A real one this time. We’d already decided we needed one and was gonna wait until summer but after that weekend and realizing how many photos we’d miss out on of our boy growing we decided to buy one now on credit. A Canon EOS 450D with a normal 18-55 lens and a 55-300 zoom lens. With accessories and stuff it ended at about $1300 but totally worth it!
Or what do you think?