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Apr 20, 2013

A week of change

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An English Mamma in Stockholm: First day at dagis / förskola / preschool

First day nerves?

Hectic would be the word for this week. Or perhaps draining, or maybe even exhausting.

Monday was a normal day: up early, off to work for 6am, finish work at 2pm, home, change for the gym, an hour’s training, home, dinner, play with the boys, get the boys into bed, and then fall into bed myself. The only difference was that my mum was looking after Baby E, as Husband started back at work after two months of paternity leave.

Tuesday, however, was where things started to get chaotic. Up at 5.30, log on to work from home, computer gets slower and slower and slower, until it takes 5 minutes to switch between Word and Excel. Stress levels rising, 6.45 is the deadline and it is drawing near, call a colleague to help me. Log off at 9am, corral the boys, bundle their octopus-like limbs into snowsuits (yes, spring still hasn’t really sprung here and we’re still in winter gear) and rush out the door. Arrive at förskola at 9.30am for inskolning (a three-day introduction process) for Baby E. Spend the next five hours at preschool with him, bundle him back into his snowsuit, walk across to Little O’s group, get him into his winter outfit, rush back home, in the door, boys to my mum and then log on for another five hours of work, interspersed with the boys’ dinner and their bedtimes. Crash in bed around 10pm.

Repeat process on Wednesday and Thursday – not forgetting to head to the BVC on Wednesday after preschool for Little O to have a three-year check-up and Baby E to have his MMR shot.

I’m exhausted after just typing all that.

And then Friday: wake at 4.45am (no idea why…), up, log on, work three hours, get the boys into winter gear, off to dagis – it’s all sounding quite familiar now, isn’t it? – and then “Bye bye!” and hand Baby E over to a member of staff, a kiss on the cheek, a wave goodbye and he settled in for a day at förskola on his own. And when I went to pick him up at 2.30pm, they said he had had a great day, had ate and slept well and had not been upset when I left. Perfect.

Now we have a couple of weeks with shorter hours, to ensure that he settles fully in. And then we’ll have two preschoolers. How time flies.

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Jan 21, 2013

Back to work outfit

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Back to work outfit

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Jan 8, 2012

Photo 366 challenge – days 6-8/366

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So, I checked out the 365 Project website and decided that it’s so easy to upload photos there that I will do that as well. But I still want to post my photos here, firstly as a record of the year and secondly, so that I can write a little more about what we’ve been up.

The past few days have been about the long weekend: Epiphany is a public holiday here in Sweden (although there is no specific celebration for it and most of the shops are open) and the Thursday before is a half day. So, Husband took Thursday off work and has been enjoying a four-day weekend (well, almost – he always heads into the office for a few hours on Sundays anyway) and I finished up work at lunchtime on Thursday and am now on maternity leave. I don’t think I’ll realise how strange it will feel again until sometime halfway through next week.

We’ve celebrated the long weekend with walks in the park, trips to the playground, brunch with friends and, for me, some big-time sales shopping!

Day 6:

Photo © English Mamma

This will probably constitute the only piece of relationship advice you’ll hear from me: if in doubt, choose the clean freak! Yes, Husband’s obsession with cleaning can be annoying from time to time, but the major plus is that by the time I have thought “Oh, it looks a little messy around here”, he has the vacuum cleaner out and is dusting the skirting boards.

Day 7:

Photo © English Mamma

Hello, belly! Putting my feet up after a morning spent (well, actually I only managed an hour) of sales shopping.

Day 8:

Photo © English Mamma

“Cars, cars, bilar (the Swedish for cars), bilar, cars” – that’s what I’m hearing hour after hour at the moment. Cars are the new thing, followed closely by “choo choos” (trains, sadly, and not Jimmy Choos…).

Click here to check out some others’ Project 365 photos in the linky that The Boy and Me has set up:

TheBoyandMe's 366 Linky

And here are my photos so far on the Project 365 site.

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Dec 18, 2011

Learned this week

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This week, I learned that:

  • bending down can earn you a short, sharp kick to the ribs (ouch!)
  • third trimester tiredness will kick in anyway, despite you taking iron supplements
  • baking macarons is challenging but as much fun as I hoped it would be
  • the decision to stop work three weeks before the due date was a good one after all!
Filed Under: Pregnancy, Tidbit · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
Nov 16, 2011

The Gallery – 11.11.11

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Well, Tara set a great prompt for the Gallery this week: photos taken on 11.11.11 and she even kindly gave us a little extra time.

I decided to participate in this Gallery, my first for quite some weeks. I’ve just been so bogged down with work and rushing hither and thither and not really getting anything done, but now I can see light at the end of the tunnel and it’s starting to calm down a little on the work front (most important discussion today: where to have our team’s annual Christmas lunch!).

So, here it is: A day in the life of English Mamma on this very mathematical and symbolic day – just a shame that I did not do anything more mathematical, symbolic or symmetrical with it!

Photo © English Mamma

They were testing the Christmas lights on my walk into work, so I snapped a quick shot in the 4.45am gloom (yes, I chose to “celebrate” the special day by starting work an hour early – don’t say I don’t know how to party…).

Photo © English Mamma

Grabbed a well-deserved coffee on my way back home – a large vanilla latte with skimmed milk – delicious.

Photo © English Mamma

Back at home and on to the thrill of laundry day, and in a communal laundry room, no less (see how rock ‘n’ roll my life is). I have to say that I love this invention though: a drying cupboard that blows warm or hot air over your clothes as they hang on racks. Sweden cannot be the only country to have them, surely?

Photo © English Mamma

Back up in the apartment – a treat of a scone with butter and jam saved from my trip to the coffee shop. The text on the bag claims that Voltaire drank 50 cups of coffee a day. Not sure how much I believe that…

Photo © English Mamma

Logging on for a couple more hours of work while Little O slept. The preschool was closed for a planning day – hence my crazy starting hour, so Husband could stay home in the morning and look after him and then head off to work in the afternoon while I took over.

Photo © English Mamma

The highlight of our day: a playdate with Little O’s friend who goes to the same preschool. The boys fought over this car for most of the time (which probably explains Little O’s smug look that he’s in the driving seat). Each demonstrated their own technique for getting his way. Little O favoured pushing his friend in the face, while his little comrade opted for hair pulling. And these two are good preschool buddies!

And there draws an end to this most symmetrical of days.

Head over to Tara’s place and see what the others got up to:

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Oct 29, 2011

Week 27 – spotty

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Photo © English Mamma

How far along? 27 weeks and 3 days

Total weight gain/loss: I’m very confused as either my weight is fluctuating randomly or our bathroom scales are highly inaccurate. The midwife calculates that I’ve put on about five kilos (and was happy with that) but then again I was fully clothed (minus shoes) when she weighed me.

Stretch marks?: None yet, but seeing as I cannot see my previous set, and as I guess that’s where more will arrive, it’s hard to tell really.

Sleep: The old cramping in my legs has started again – ow-wweeeeeeee. Around 4am this morning, I woke in a panic, shouting instructions to Husband on what he should do (“Foot, cramp! Pull my foot! Now my leg! No, the calf, the calf! My foot!”), which is really when our communication issues arise, him being half asleep and screamed at in not even his second but third language – poor man… And the cramps started in the middle of a horrid nightmare, so I was WIDE awake by the time we’d sorted out my leg. Off to the pharmacy this afternoon to purchase magnesium tablets.

Best moment this week: Leaving work on Friday afternoon! (See below)

Worst moment this week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at work this week – incredibly busy week at work, full of timelines and deadlines and stress. My face has broken out in a delightful stress rash that lingers still. I’m all itchy and lumpy and bleurgh…

Movement: Yes, lots, and now clearly visible externally. I have no idea what is going on in there but I think we have another active one on our hands!

Belly button in or out?: Urgh, half out.

What I miss: A ginormous glass of red wine on a Friday evening…

What I am looking forward to: Calmer weeks at work from now until my last day!

Milestones: I haven’t had the chance to look at any of the “this week, your baby is…” type emails that I get, so I have no idea what milestones I should have been aware of. It felt on Friday afternoon that getting through this week was a milestone enough…!

Filed Under: Post, Pregnancy · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
Oct 12, 2011

Living for the weekend

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At the moment, I am just counting the days and hours until the weekend rolls on. The past few days have been manic: Friday, I flew down to Copenhagen and worked from our office there for the day, did a presentation, met up with Husband and Little O, jumped on a train and then spent the weekend with the in-laws in southern Sweden. We flew back Sunday evening, then it was up early on Monday for the usual work/preschool collection/afternoon with Little O/crash out at 8.30pm routine. Yesterday, I flew to Oslo for the day, did the same presentation as in Copenhagen, spent the rest of day in the office there, flew back yesterday evening after Little O was in bed. Today, up early and into work to do the same presentation and then the same routine as Monday. Tomorrow, it’s another early start, a flight to Helsinki, doing the same presentation yet again (fourth and final time), spending the rest of the day working from the office there, flying back in the evening after Little O is in bed. Then Friday will be presentation-less (hooray!) but the same tight routine as Monday.

So, yes, Friday evening and an hour at the hairdresser, followed by date night on Saturday… well, it cannot come around fast enough for me. And the added bonus about Saturday is that it was Husband’s idea – and this means he’s fulfilling his part of the bargain for Karin’s Relationship SOS Challenge over at Cafe Bebe without even knowing it.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to bed. Zzzzzzz…

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Sep 20, 2011

Relationship SOS challenge – the date

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Photo by Arty Smokes (deaf mute) via Flickr (Creative Commons)

I know, I know, I should have written about this an age ago… Damn you, real life, getting in the way!

While we were in the UK, we went on our proper date, as I promised that we would as part of the Relationship SOS challenge, set by Karin at Cafe Bebe.

We ended up not staying out for too long, but we had a lovely evening. We were very good and did not talk too much about Little O or gyermek, although I must admit that most of the meal was spent discussing work issues as we’d both spent the previous week before our holiday working flat out. We pretty much had the restaurant to ourselves – the advantage of dinner on a Sunday night in a seaside town out of season.

And it seems as if Husband has taken the idea to heart and suggested that we have a meal out or even go and see a film (in a real cinema, no less!) on Friday. Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to get a babysitter, but it’s the thought that counts. (And I will make sure to remind him of that thought in due course!)

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