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Jul 31, 2012

Three good things – day 2

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I am probably not writing this post at the best time (just after an argument) but I am still going to try and find the best of today. Today’s three good things are:

  • Not feeling too sore after yesterday’s tough training session. I hope this means that I am getting fitter and stronger. There is a woman who usually trains at the same time as me and she has the most amazing muscles – not too excessive but really nicely defined, and I had a bit of a breakthrough the other day realising that the only way to get to that level is actually to train between my weekly training sessions – so that’s my intention.
  • The news that a friend has been accepted for one of the few places on a university course that she really wanted. I am so happy that she has been accepted as she has so many great ideas for what she wants to do with this.
  • Our new apartment, which I visited today for the first time in a few days, as I can really see the progress that they are making on the renovation. I cannot wait until we can make our home there.
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Jul 30, 2012

Action for Happiness

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Source: Action for Happiness website

In a recent issue of Red Magazine, I read about the Action for Happiness website, which aims to “build a happier society”. I’ve only just started looking into the many actions on the website but a few caught my eye, including Find three good things each day and Use positive parenting techniques.

The three good things action appeals to me a lot at the moment, mainly because I know that I have a tendency to moan about things and only to see the negative. (I used to think it was just that I was cynical, but now I realise that it has developed into whininess, which is not a good look.) I’ve become more interested in trying to fix this: I’ve started reading a book on mindfulness and am becoming increasingly interested in coaching and ways to improve my happiness. I definitely would not say that I am unhappy (but who would not want to be happier!) but I realise that I need to find better ways to cope with the stress that everyday life throws at me. Really, fuming and raging about every little thing that goes wrong is not helping.

And now that Little O is a toddler, we are starting to see that trying to diffuse any potential tantrums before they happen is a great tactic. Sometime he does get frustrated or upset or tearful, but if we can find ways to steer him away from unnecessary upset, that can only be a good thing, right?

Three good things

The Action for Happiness website suggests starting by writing down three good things that have happened during the day each night before you go to sleep and then write down why it happened and how it makes you feel. If you do that for a week, the idea is that you start to look at things in a much more positive light.

So, I am going to take action as of today and post my “three good things” each day for the next couple of week. At the end of those weeks, I will aim to link up with a weekly “Reasons to be cheerful” post for the blog hop over at Mummy From The Heart.

So, Monday’s three good things:

  • Little O had a successful first day back at preschool today. His best friend was there when he arrived and the two of them, who had not seen each other for three weeks, gave each other a big hug and then ran immediately off to play. It made me feel happy that he settled back down into “preschool life” so easily after three weeks away. I guess it happened because he is, on the whole, a happy little boy who enjoys playing with other children.
  • Baby E and I had a fun day at a nursery rhymes sing-a-long session. I thought he might have been a bit young but he seemed to enjoy bouncing on my lap in time to the songs and helping me clap along. I was glad that I had made the effort to attend this event not only because it gave me a chance to do with Baby E something that I did with Little O when he was this age, but also because 13 people had signed up for it but only five (myself included) actually went. 
  • I had a great session today with my personal trainer * – it was the toughest I’ve done for a while and was just what I needed. It felt great that we had done the conditioning training today because, much as I dislike it, I know that is what I really need to do and what is good for me. 

There we go: three good things about today.

* Yep, I am that bad that I need someone standing over me and shouting encouraging me to get me training…

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Jul 29, 2012

Photo 366 challenge – week 30

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This has been the last week of summer holidays for Little O; he’s back to preschool tomorrow for three weeks, and then he starts his new preschool at the end of August (incidentally at the same time that we move into our new apartment – not the best timing…). We’ve been having some fun at home on the rainier days and catching up with people when the weather has played ball.

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On Monday we did some crayoning (until it all turned bad and we ended up with crayon all over the tablecloth [sigh], then on Tuesday we did some shopping and found a bargain in the sales: great bed linen for the boys with cars on. On Wednesday, Little O demonstrated his great multitasking skills: reading a healthcare brochure while incorrectly wearing one shoe. (I really don’t know where he gets this obsession with shoes from…)

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The next day we met up with friends at Rum För Barn, the free play area at Kulturhuset. They have changed one of the rooms there and it now contains a pirate ship to play on. This was so exciting for Little O as we have been talking about pirates these past few days, and he got to be a pirate captain. Ahoy there!

On Friday, my cousin and his girlfriend arrived and we watched the opening ceremony. Many, many people have said many things about it, expressed far better than I could, so all I have to add is that it made me feel so proud of my little country at that moment (there might or might not have been a few tears during Jerusalem…). Didn’t we put on a great show?

The weather was great again yesterday, so I got out my new sales purchase: white jeans. Am I made wearing white jeans when running around after two small children? Most likely, but I love them.

And that brings me to today. This morning, Little O broke into the one room he knows he’s not meant to go in as there dwelleth a multitude of packing boxes. Luckily, he only found a BBC History magazine, and we had fun looking through that for trains. Unfortunately, the issue was heavily on Elizabethan history, so no luck on the locomotive front!

See what everyone else has been up to over the past week at The Boy & Me:

TheBoyandMe's 366 Linky

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Jul 25, 2012

Tweed and cream

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Tweed and cream

Oasis summer dress
oasis-stores.com

Jimmy Choo kitten heels
saksfifthavenue.com

Chloé leather handbag
$960 - net-a-porter.com

Michael kors watch
michaelkors.com

Stila eyeshadow
stilacosmetics.com

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Jul 23, 2012

Photo 366 challenge – week 29

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The past week was week 2 of Little O’s preschool holidays, so we’ve been out and about discovering new things to see and do in the city.

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We had fun in the bath with ducks and squirty pigs and seashells, then hugs with Little O and Baby E. On Wednesday we visited the Transport Museum for the first time and Little O loved it so much that we bought an annual pass. It’s perfect for a rainy Stockholm day with train-obsessed toddlers.

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The next day we took a trip to Lidingö to Millesgården, a sculpture park and art gallery that I have been wanting to visit for a long time. Unfortunately, it proved to be the most pushchair unfriendly place in Stockholm! Still, it is beautiful there, with wonderful views back across the city, and Little O loved splashing in the pool and getting soaked!

The weather held up on Friday too, so we hopped on a bus to the embassy area and then walked out, past the telecom tower, over the bridge onto Djurgården, kicked the football around a bit and then met Husband for dinner at Ulla Winbladh, a fantastic restaurant that we’ve taken Little O to once before.

On Saturday, Baby E turned six months old. I cannot quite believe that he’s this old already. The time certainly is flying by. He seems to have decided to celebrate his first half year by teething, s we’ve had some tears at bedtime, but nothing that a little Bonjela cannot solve.

And on Sunday I baked Mellow Mummy’s wholemeal pear muffins – delicious! I adapted the recipe a little, using only half the sugar in the recipe and substituting the rest with granular stevia, which I found in the supermarket. As the recipe called for soft brown sugar I was a little loath to swap all the sugar for stevia the first time, but I think they turned out pretty well using half and half.

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Jul 19, 2012

The Gallery: Planes, trains and automobiles

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One of our trips out this week fitted in perfectly with Tara’s Gallery theme for the week: planes, trains and automobiles. I would like to be able to say that we took a taxi to the station, a train to the airport and hopped on a plane to somewhere tropical, sunny and exotic. Unfortunately, Little O, Baby E and I just hopped on a bus and crossed a small amount of water to go to the Stockholm Transport Museum (Spårvägsmuseet) on Södermalm.

We ended up staying more than four hours as Little O just loved the place. So much so that I went directly to the entrance desk afterwards and bought an annual ticket as I suspect that we’ll be making more visits there, especially on days when the weather is a little iffy.

The place is great: it has buses, trams and trains from the last 19th century right up to a replica of the tram put into service in the city in 2010 and you can climb onboard around half of them. They also have some different interactive bits and pieces (pretend to drive a bus or train, dress up as a conductor etc) and Little O’s favourite part, a large model train set to play on. Plus, for 10kr you can take a ride on the mini train that goes around the museum.

Driving a T-bana train

I definitely think we’ll be going back!

* * * * *

Now take a look at the other Gallery entries this week:

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Jul 17, 2012

Chatterbox

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Our little chatterbox

I know a lot of people have said that once their toddler started talking it was like a switch and that they did not stop, but wow! Little O has taken a massive (mahoosive, ginormous, incredible) leap in his language skills this past week or so. He can now put a few words together into simple phrases and is copying so much of we say and now retaining these words too.

This has taken a huge weight off my mind, as I had been quite concerned about his language development in recent months. But now I can take a sigh of relief and just enjoy the funny things that he is saying.

On Sunday, out on a walk I saw a slug and pointed it out to him and then noted in an aside to Husband that it just taken a poo, forgetting that toddler ears hear so much and toddler brain can understand so much too. Little O crouched down, waved at the slug and called out: “Bye bye, poo!”

Earlier in the week I had taken a daytime nap owing to this summer cold that Little O has kindly been sharing around. His toddler brain went into overdrive and when I got up later and came back into the living room to see him and my mother-in-law, he had put two and two together and made five. He jumped on my lap, pointed at belly and shouted “Mamma baby!”. And today he went one step further in his toddler reasoning, poking me in the boob and declaring that that was also a “Mamma baby!”. Oh dear…

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Jul 15, 2012

Photo 366 challenge – week 28

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Little O has been off preschool all this week (and will be for the next two weeks as well), so he decided to celebrate this by coming down with a cold and fever, which he subsequently gave to Baby E, who gave it to me, and now my mother-in-law, who has kindly come to stay to help out for a few days, has got it too. I think the saying is “it never rains, but it pours”, which is also pretty weather-appropriate too at the moment.

The beginning part of the week was quite slow: playing with Duplo at home, a trip to a local park (and an investigation of bicycles by Little O) and the making of baked blueberry cheesecake (with stevia and gluten-free biscuit base). Then it was a visit to an interiors store that is closing down (my suggestion vetoed by Husband) and discovering that Baby E can hold the bottle himself (he’s so much more dextrous than Little O was at this age but so much less physical – so interesting the differences between them). Saturday night, Husband and I had a rare few hours out on our own – sitting under the awning of a near deserted bar and drinking red wine as the rain poured down. Then today a scratch dinner of leftover bits and pieces from the fridge – yum!

See what everyone else has been up to over the past week at The Boy & Me:

TheBoyandMe's 366 Linky

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