Julian

Today is actually Ava's 5th birthday (what? I have a 5-year-old??), so I realize it's highly inappropriate to post something about Julian. However, since I have been a sloth in recent months, I figure something inappropriate is better than nothing at all, so here goes. And really, I am just compelled to post something about J because he has changed so much in the past few months. I keep looking at him at breakfast (OK, I'm not usually up when he has breakfast, Adrian does that, so maybe dinner is better) and thinking "hold on buster, let me get a good look at you, where'd you put my baby?" In just a few months he has lost all his baby pudge, stopped wearing diapers (except at night -- the fact that he woke up dripping with pee probably suggests that diaper-free bedtime was a bit premature), and started talking about things and in ways that shock me. Like he uses conditional ... and past tense ... and talks about feelings ... and tells me everything he did that day: "First I had breakfast, den I went to cool and had nack, den I payed outside, den I missed you [awww], den mama came, den we had bulle and den we went home." (Oh, and he asks why every 2 seconds, but since that's not pleasant I haven't included it above.) When you still expect your kid to speak in short staccato sentences a la "mama-milk-now" this kind of thing blows you away. About a month ago, Ava looked at me and said "Mom, I can't talk because Julian just keeps talking!" And you know if Ava a.k.a Chatty Pants can't get a word in then Julian must really be talking a lot.

Julian moving out of babyhood has happened right as ALL of my women friends in town (no hyperbole, I swear. Here is the list of friends who have recently had or will have babies: Traci, Karin, Gen, Merel, Sandy, Anastacia (twins!), and Monique) have gotten pregnant or have recently had a baby. Being surrounded by all this babyness has made my own jump from being a mom of a little girl and a baby boy to a little girl and a little boy more real and bittersweet. It's certainly shocked me into realizing I could give away all the baby stuff that's been hanging around -- high chair, changing table, bibs, swim diapers -- since we won't be going down the baby road on purpose again.

I can do it!

This is the week of "I can do it!" in our house. Ava surprised us with some fine swing-pumping skills, casually informing us that she doesn't need to be pushed on the swing anymore. Given the fact I nearly checked myself into the hospital for swing-pushing-induced carpal tunnel syndrome a number of times, this is very good news. She also insists on dressing herself from top to toe, so we have been having a number of conversations about what it means to choose matching pieces. I suppose I should just let her go out in the tulip-print cozy pants, polka-dot top and orange-striped socks, but I struggle. I struggle. I thought she did pretty good here, though I can't figure out why she wanted to wear rain boots on a perfectly nice day:Julian's favorite phrase is quickly becoming "I do it Mama!" whether it concerns cutting up his salmon, brushing "teef," or walking up the stairs. It's almost as if the explosion in his vocabulary and ability to communicate has boosted his self-confidence in other areas as well. He also has a unique sense of style and love of rain boots. Perhaps it's genetic:

My son, the genius

Julian is not necessarily a genius but he is a marvel. He has gone from saying 30 or 40 words to having long, albeit very odd, and very repetitive conversations with us over the last month or so. Usually these are about various forms of cars (lately including the color of the car) or animals (always including the noises they make). Last night when he was in the tub we had a conversation that went something like:

J: "Mama, big cow, moo, tail."
N: "Oh, yes, cows have tails."
J: "Mama, mama! Zeba tail."
N: "Well, zebras have tails too, yep."
J: "Mama, cro-co-di-yul, big tail."
N: "Crocodiles have tails, too."
J: "Mee-ow."
N: "Are you a cat?"
J: "Cat, mee-ow, tail."

...etc. for longer than you'd care to think.

Pictures of the day

Christmas

We had a lovely, quiet Christmas this year. The pro of being abroad for the holidays is that you get to do whatever you want and eat whatever and when you want on Christmas Eve/Day. You're not beholden to anyone else's agenda, traditions or obligations. So to celebrate not having to navigate my dear family's eating requirements (low carb, vegetarian, no red meat for those who DO eat meat, etc.), we had roast beef with gravy and creamed horseradish, potato and mushroom gratin, yorkshire pudding, green beans with bacon and red peppers and chocolate mousse pie. Can you tell I was being reactionary?! The cons of being abroad are not being able to hang out with your family laughing about silly things, and not having said family around to watch children who might be a little crazed from, say, too many presents and too much mousse pie.
The kids were of course very cute opening their presents on Christmas morning. Ava was all about the unwrapping and less about the presents and Julian just ate raisins like a maniac all morning. I offer him raisins all the time, but somehow the raisins that Adrian gave me (yes, he gave me raisins) really floated his boat and he carried the red pot around with him all morning until Adrian finally took it away fearing some, er, repercussions later in the day. Anyway, many of the other pictures involve me having a very bad hair morning so I won't post any more here. Those are Julian's favorite PJs, by the way. He loves them. Those and his Italia T-shirt from my Mom. Choice.
On Christmas day we went sledding, or sledging as Adrian calls it, on some frosty grass at the park around the corner. Being from San Francisco, it would never have occurred to me to sled down some grass, frosty or otherwise, but that's why you marry a non-native I guess and it worked out perfectly. After that we strolled downtown for some people watching and went out for hot chocolate before coming home to watch Peter Pan. It was great day.

I make a quip or two on this blog, but quips aside, Adrian and I feel so blessed to have each other as partners and such wonderful, healthy, happy children, and to be experiencing this time abroad together as a family. So far Sweden has been a terrific adventure.

We wish you and your families happy holidays and a peaceful, joyful New Year. We hope you all get to spend time with the people you love. See you in 2009!!

Advent

Advent is here and you can't miss it because nearly every window has either an electric "ljustake" (triangular candle holder thingy) or advent star in it these days. In fact, there are candles and lights EVERYWHERE, including, I might add, in the daycare centers and preschools. Young children and candles don't mix in MY mind, but there are so many darned candles in Sweden I guess you have to start them out young.

The statue in the picture above is of Poseidon on Götaplatsen, just a stone's throw from our apartment. They've been showing a surreal outdoor "Christmas movie" on the facade of the art museum behind him a few times a night over the past few days. The movie involves mermaids singing merry Christmas, trams, crabs and some heavy metal band doing a Christmas tune. I'm not sure I get it, but I like it.

Adrian and I are digging Christmas in Sweden. I love the Christmas markets filled with slightly creepy stuffed gnomes, saffron-spiked lussekatter, pickled herring, sweet-roasted almonds, and glögg (spicey drink with raisins floating in it). Here's me appreciating said glögg (while chewing a pepparkaka) in Haga:
Everything is just so darned cozy right now. The lights, the candles, the shearling-lined boots ... Good thing, because otherwise the fact it's full-on dark at 4pm would be downright depressing. (As an aside, we have been eating dinner around 5:45pm because it feels so late by then. I think I finally get why Midwesterners are famous for eating early.)

Ava's school had their Christmas bazaar today (spelled bazarre, which I found bizarre) and she was not sure about her face-painting:
Otherwise, the kids had a great time (read: ate lots of cookies) and played for a long time in the "pillow room" together, which was very cute. People keep commenting that Julian has really grown. It's true of course (I mean, kids do that), but I think it's more that he's turned the corner from baby to little boy recently, which the picture below captures pretty well. I walked passed him the other day at school and didn't recognize him because he looked too old to be mine!

Julian "I hate my bed so get me out now" Johnson

Look how cute he is. It's so deceiving. Julian, my sweet, good sleeper, has turned into a mad man who thinks bed is for crazy sadists since turning 18 months a week ago. Every night for the past week we do the same thing we've been doing with success for 10 months (say night night, read books, tuck in and kiss). Except that now, instead of rolling over and peacefully drifting off to sleep, he cries for up to two hours in a really pissed off sort of way. Tonight we tucked him in at 8pm. It is now 9:43pm and he is still wailing. Of course Adrian and I are totally stressed out because we really have no idea if we are doing the right thing by letting him cry (we're going in to "reassure" him every 15 minutes or so as the books suggest). He is teething, but he sleeps fine at school, so I don't think that's the problem. I think he's become aware that there is life going on on the other side of the door after he's in bed and that is N-O-T OK with him. Sigh. We spend the first part of evening dreading putting him to bed and the second part stressed out because he's crying. We've been putting Ava to bed in our bed because Julian's screaming and that's not super conducive to getting a 3-year-old to sleep.

She came, she ate meatballs, she left

My Mom is gone again after a very short week in town. And yes, thanks, I did take her to the airport on the right day (at least I think so but I haven't heard from her so ...). Mostly we went for walks around town, drank coffee and generally schlepped her along to school drop-offs and pick-ups, grocery shopping, and playdates in the park. Ava adored having Grandma here and they were very busy with a big box of craft supplies Mom brought. I should also acknowledge my Mom for bringing 51 lbs. of other crap for me with her, including chocolate chips, hot sauce, hair dye, Christmas toys, lots of Amazon.com book orders, and 6 boxes of flipchart pens. Julian was convinced Mom was going to steal him away to California, so he wasn't especially charming until the very end. I told him he wasn't making a very good impression, but he just signed for more cheese. Good thing he's cute.
While Mom was here Adrian and I were able to sneak out to a really nice dinner party on Saturday with my Canadian friend Gen and her Norwegian husband, Tor, and then again to the Bishop's Arms for some quiet beers on Monday night. I think we may be able to do it again in ... hmm, aiming for May 2009.

Grandma's here

My mom arrived on Wednesday night. She did not arrive on Tuesday night, which is the first night I drove to the airport to pick her up with Ava in tow. It took me two hours (and three separate trips to the news agents for a hot dog, chocolate bar and juice box for Ava) before I asked Adrian to call Wilbur to see if Mom had missed her connecting flight from Frankfurt to Gothenburg. Nope, she hadn't missed it, she just hadn't LEFT San Francisco yet. I'm not sure how I thought a plane that was leaving SFO 6:30pm on Tuesday was also going to arrive in Sweden at 6:30pm on Tuesday. I suppose it might have been wishful thinking that I'd get her an extra day. But now she's here (and I really know my way to the airport) and getting to see our life in Sweden up close. She even got to see Julian projectile vomit today just as we arrived at a picturesque waterfront path and were preparing to take a stroll amongst the fall leaves. Lucky lady!

Puddles

Day 1: Julian in heaven at Näckrosdammen Park around the corner from our house. Note lack of proper Swedish rainplay attire. Bad Mommy.


Day 2: Properly outfitted like a good Swedish kiddie. Good Mommy.

Out and about

Ad and Ava at the ever-popular petting zoo in Slottskogen (above).
Ad with the kids (in dashing life vests) at Maritiman, the "museum of floating ships" on the river, where Ava got to go in a U-boat and Julian got to almost fall in the river multiple times.
Julian and his girlfriend and classmate Milena by the penguins in Slottskogen. She was the lucky recipient of his first kiss (otherwise known as the let-me-suck-your-nose maneuver).
Having a cuddle in Gränna, a small town on Lake Vättern (about 1 1/2 hours from Gothenburg).
Walking the catwalk in Jonköping.

In-Schooling and other good stuff

I have three pieces of good news to report. First, the kids started in-schooling yesterday, which is the process of getting them used to going to school. Both of them start with one hour at school with mom or dad, then work up to a full day over the course of two weeks. So civilized. And might I note that people get paid time off for this here. Extra civilized. Since Ava and J are at different schools I've been going with J and Adrian's been taking Ava. Today Ava "threw a party" in the play kitchen at school and invited all the other kids. I don't know WHERE she gets it. Must be Adrian.

Here's Ava heading out to her first day at ABC Preschool:

And here's what happened to the school after Julian's first day:

No no, just kidding. This is the view from our front balcony of a building on our street that caught fire Sunday night. We woke up to plumes of smoke and the kids went to school smelling like BBQ. No one was hurt in the fire, luckily.

The second piece of good news is that I have had a good response to my hi-I'm-Nevada-from-SF-and-I'm-a-facilitator-and-might-you-have-work-for-me emails. I'm meeting with the heads of a facilitation and training company with offices in Gothenburg and Birmingham on Friday to see about working together and I'm having coffee next week with a woman who runs a small consulting business here in town as well.

And finally, I've finally been assigned a Svenska for Invandare (Swedish for Immigrants) spot. These are the free Swedish classes offered by the state to all immigrants (that's me!). I'll start prataring Svenska 3 hours/day on August 18.

Mersea girls and boys

We just got back from a lovely week visiting Adrian's family in southeast England on Mersea Island. You just gotta love England (when the weather is nice). I mean, there are the cute accents, the good Indian food (sigh), all that brick, those pubs ... and the mere fact that a city like London exists should give people of the world hope. But what gets me every time is all that darned history in such a small place. It could give a California girl a migraine. I mean, Adrian's college at Cambridge was founded in 1348, for God's sake! Speaking of, here's a picture of the dining hall at Caius where Ad used to eat meals:

I know, it looks just like the Berkeley cafeterias, doesn't it? So weird.

For Ava, the best part of England was spending time with her cousins, especially Vikki, Anna and Tom. (In the pic above, it's Vikki, 14, on the left and Anna, 10, under Ava.) I couldn't really tell if Ava loved the cousins themselves or the idea of cousins more because the whole time she kept finding way to work the word "cousins" into the conversations e.g:

Mom: "Ava, do you want fish and chips?"

Ava: "Actually, my cousins like pizza."

Regardless, it was great to have Ava and Julian spend time with the whole of Adrian's family, who came down to Mersea for his mum, Jenny's, 70th birthday. I love this picture of The Johnson Men (L to R: Adrian's brother Martin, his son Tom, 15, Julian and Adrian):

Aside from Mersea, we spent 1 day puttering around Cambridge checking out Adrian's old haunts, and met up with "Big Phil" and his wife Jen and their cuties Anna and Ben in the evening. The girls got on like a house on fire and if we stayed any longer I'm sure Ava would be wondering how she could make Anna another cousin. Here's us at the cute pub in Orwell, their village:

The day before we left Sonja and I took the train into London (ah, the smell of the Tube!) and did some more puttering around Covent Garden; checked out the National Portrait Gallery (I just don't get how Henry VIII was supposed to be so handsome. Just do NOT get it); saw Dirty Dancing the musical along with 1,243 other women, most of whom were on bachelorette parties (or "hen dos" as they say in England); had fabulous Indian food (sigh); bought English novels; and had lots of coffee. It was a perfect sister day.

Mama

Julian can say "mama" now, and he'll sort of rub his head on my shoulder and say "maaamaaa" or teeter around me saying "mama, mama" over and over. He's pretty much heaven at the moment, except when we put him in his crib to sleep and he tosses his binkies out one by one and then wails as he looks down at them through the prison bars, I mean crib railings (PLOP... PLOP... PLOP... waaaaaannnhh).

Coolest place

It was an eventful, if rainy, weekend. There was Midsommar, a big deal in Sweden that requires people to eat copious amounts of potatoes, herring, and strawberries and dance around maypoles, preferably with flower wreaths on their heads. Then Adrian turned 42 (Happy Birthday Honey!) and Julian went from taking 1 step to walking across the room within 24 hours. Love that little Frankenstein walk they do!

And then we went to the coolest place today called Nordens Ark, a wildlife sanctuary for endangered animals about an hour up the coast from us. Now I know it doesn't sound exciting, and I was fully prepared for a sort of lame day out, but even in the drizzle it was amazing. It's a huge, beautiful park cut out of a forest and filled with tigers, wolves, wolverines, snow leopards, owls, otters and reindeer (see picture of sad, creepy-looking one below. I guess they mate in the spring and then give up all pretense of trying to look attractive until next year).

The kids, fully decked out in their awesome Swedish rain outfits (so practical, do they have these in the Northwest?), loved it.

Little Man Walking

Happy first birthday Julian!

Well I can't believe that Julian is 1. Where on earth has the past year gone? I think it might be hiding under a pile of Cheerios, cubed cheese and bits of grape somewhere. It certainly has flown by and suddenly we have these 2 little people in our house -- Ava in her all extraverted grandeur and Julian in his sweet and fine-featured intensity. Man do they keep us busy, laughing, confused, alive and begging for mercy. So happy birthday Mister Man, I'm so glad you loved your Swedish carrot cake!!

Quickie health report: My bapck is 95% better. Hurray! Thanks to:

• Sonja for letting Julian smear cheese into her hair while I laid on the floor
• Dr. Doust for the acupuncture, trigger point massage, manipulations, ice, heat, lydocaine patches and whatever else he did to help me recover
• The Swedish nurse who, when asked what we should do if I didn't feel better in a couple of days, simply said "you will" like a wise sage and walked out the door
  

You have to love 3-year-olds because when Ava saw me clutching my back in pain she looked really worried and said "I don't want that to happen to ME!" Indeed!

Julian a.k.a the one-toothed wonder

Julian, in all his 1-toothed glory, turns 1 next week. He has started doing some of those cute 1-year-old tricks, like pointing (primarily to trees, which makes me wonder if we had a life that was a little TOO urban back home that he thinks trees are so darned unusual); playing peekaboo; and touching your nose when you touch his. He's also (finally) crawling well, in addition to cruising around like mad. We've discovered this sort of funky playground nearby that is mostly hard-packed dirt with a little sand over it, and he's totally happy crawling through the dirty sand, eating a little now and then, digging with his shovel, and shouting about this or that. He also loves balls. So dirt, shovels, and balls are IT right now. Of course we think he's the cutest, sweetest little boy ever :)

Oh, and don't even ask me about the position of these photos. I've been trying for 10 minutes to put them in a nice row at the top!