Lydia has been wanting to go to fritids (after-school daycare, where the kids stay at school after class hours, and get to play and have fun) for ages, and we’ve finally gotten around to getting it set up so that she gets to go, starting tomorrow afternoon. Since there aren’t enough English-speaking kids in the kommun for her to be able to get home-language instruction, the principal of her school decided that we could use “practicing Swedish” as a reason for her to be able to attend fritids (you can’t just send your kid there, and since I don’t work outside the home, we needed another reason). Not only does she get to be a fritidsbarn now, but the kommun is going to pay for it, since there’s a Good Reason for her to be going. Not bad, eh? Lydia’s really excited about it, and she’s been wishing the weekend away for the past couple of days because she wants so much to start. She’ll be going from 1pm until 4pm Monday, Thursday, and Friday, which seems like just the right amount of time.

I talked to my mom on the phone this evening, for the first time since she went home nine days ago. The trip back to the States went well, and she’s been getting settled in without too much jet-lag trouble. She told me that Olof’s mom had given her a bit of the third-degree about my sordid past while they were driving out to the airport on the night she left. Well, it’s not quite that bad, but apparently she was concerned about what the situation was with Lydia’s bio-dad, and a little worried that I might just take off with Tage (as I presumably had done with Lydia) if the going got tough. Mom said she gave her a few of the details about Marcus and his so-called fatherhood, and assured her that if he had been even slightly interested in being an active, interested parent that there is no way I would ever have taken Lydia and moved halfway across the world. I hope that did a bit to ease her mind (it honestly had never occurred to me that she would be worried about such a thing, but in retrospect, it makes perfect sense), because I hate that thinking of the possibility may have upset her.