Yesterday afternoon Tage was sitting at the table building a “super-fast talking car” from Legos while I kneaded a batch of bread dough then set it aside to rise.  As I covered the dough with a dishtowel, he asked, “Why are you making bread?” “Because we’re out of bread,” I answered, “and I thought we… Read More Yes, but does it come with smug self-satisfaction in every bite?

I’ve always been a sucker for a good nap, but since I’ve been pregnant I’ve turned into an absolute sleep junkie. For the past several weeks I’ve been sleeping ten or twelve hours a day (not at one stretch, but that’s still a lot for me), and nearly every waking second I’m thinking of my… Read More A post before sleeping …

We had our second appointment with the midwife yesterday, and all looks well.  We got to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time, which was something of an anti-climax after seeing the baby on the ultrasound and feeling it kick the living daylights out of my bladder for the past few weeks, but I… Read More Gestation update

For reasons known only to him, my husband came home the other day with a “value pack” of sugar. That’s six two-kilo bags, or more than twenty-five pounds of sugar. Even with Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, that’s one hell of a lot of sugar. I vow, however, to rise to the challenge… Read More Carb overload

I am at my wits’ end with Lydia and her smart mouth. She’s just completely worn me out with all the yelling and shrieking and accusing and eye-rolling. I don’t want to live like this even one day longer–and I’m guessing she doesn’t, either–but how do we stop it?

This past weekend I made a whirlwind trip down to Stockholm to attend a going-away bash for a friend who is moving back to South Africa. I had half-expected to feel a little subdued the entire evening, considering that my big belly and I would be abstaining from anything stronger than Pepsi, but as it… Read More Bright lights, big city

“I was wondering if we could get me a robot,” Tage says. “You know what it can do?” “What can it do?” I ask. “It can dance and say, ‘Oj.’” “Sounds like a robot worth having,” I agree.

For the most part, fall is a non-entity in northern Sweden. The month or two that is the glorious Swedish summer, passes with little fanfare into long, long winter. Every few years, though, we get an absolutely gorgeous autumn, with crisp-but-not-too-cold temperatures and weeks of bright, changing leaves. This is one of those autumns, and… Read More Photo spam

If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you’ve doubtless noticed that I post many, many more pictures of my younger two kids than I do of my eldest, Lydia. This is not because Lydia is any less cute than her siblings–quite the opposite, in fact–but rather due to her being in the third… Read More The rarely seen first-born