I was up until the wee hours this morning looking online for airline tickets for my mom’s visit at the end of the month, and didn’t get to bed until 4:00 am. I really, really did not want to get out of bed when the alarm went off at 7:30. But get up I did, and got Lydia ready for school and out the door before settling with a cup of coffee in front of the computer to check my email and do a few other tasks.

Waiting for me in my email inbox were the confirmation email and itinerary for the ticket purchase. I was happy to see those, as I wasn’t 100% certain that the purchase would go through using my Swedish credit card. All seems to have gone well, though. No doubt I’ll be driving myself crazy worrying that something’s not right until we pick her up at the airport.

At 10:45 I left the house and walked in the rain to the bus stop so I could meet up with my book group to go over our presentation before our class started at 12:30. As it turned out, we didn’t get so much prep work done, but we did have a nice forty-five minutes or so of chatting and cracking each other up with the many little experiences that we share as American women living in Sweden.

Even though I’m not a very social person, it is really nice to be building a group of friends up here. I’ve never been very good at making friends, which made it doubly hard to leave the great group of friends I had made in Stockholm It’s hard for me not to be jealous when I hear about them getting together and having all sorts of fun without me. I wish I could get down to Stockholm more often so I could join in some of that fun, but it’s just so far and so expensive and so impractical to travel too much between here and there.

The big excitement of the day is that Tage finally walked on his own! For months he’s been walking around holding on to whatever’s handy, but he’s been hesitant about letting go and taking those steps without some sort of support. I guess he must have decided that today was the day, though, because he didn’t look shaky at all when he was standing and walking. I think it might still be a while before he walks more than he “scoots,” but at least now he knows he can do it.

Well, I think I’m off to bed, despite the early hour. My pillow is singing a siren song that I’m powerless to resist.