Charlotta Sandberg

I love the Gothenburg artist Charlotta Sandberg and keep walking by her gallery off of Linnegatan to oogle her watercolors and lithographs. I'm slightly besotted with her piece Red Deer Hill (above). I am such a sucker for orange and red.

Happy 4th birthday Ava!

Ava's birthday week started off with a bang on Sunday. We had 7 kids over for an afternoon of cake and running madly around the house, and the kids didn't disappoint. By the end there was cake smeared everywhere, Ian (Ava's friend from school) was walking around with a box on his head, Julian had peed on the carpet, and Ava was wearing every piece of princess jewelry she owns and shrieking with delight as people chased her around the house. Julian also enjoyed wearing Ava's new tiara (not sure how he managed to get away with this by the way) and pushing her pink princess roller thing around the house.

Ava's teacher Courtney is very into birthdays and so when I arrived yesterday at school for snack time Ava had a birthday cake hat on and was wearing a pin that said "I'm the birthday girl." Apparently they sang Happy Birthday to her 10 times yesterday, and I have to admit she seemed a bit blase about the song when they sang it again at snack time. Then for dinner last night I told her I'd make whatever she wanted and she chose "cheesy noodles that you can put on your finger" (that would be penne to you and me) and so that's what we had before opening presents and eating some leftover cake. All in all I am pretty confident she felt princess special all week.

Now Adrian and I just have to figure out how to handle the princess when she melts down every morning when she's getting dressed because she REALLY wants to wear a skirt and sandals WITH NO TIGHTS and she HATES WINTER. I mean, I totally get it, but you gotta put on the tights, kid.

Stadsbiblioteket

I am starting to think they're going to ask us to pay rent at the library because we are there so often. The main city library (Stadsbiblioteket) is around the corner from our house at the top of the Avenue and has a terrific kids section with a surprisingly large selection of English-language books (in the second picture above you can see the 3 red "bins" of English books). Good thing, because English kids' books are not that easy to find and when you do they cost about $20 a pop. The one book I haven't been able to resist buying is "Boo and Baa Have Company" about a pair of sheep who try to tempt a cat out of a tree. Ava and I laugh and laugh at the pictures and the oddly literal translation from the Swedish. It's so good.

I read the kids English books, but I'm always grabbing the Swedish books for myself because they are pretty simple and because the illustrations are wonderful. My favorite illustrator (and OK, he's actually Finnish, but close enough) is Olof Landström. He does the Boo and Baa books but also a series of books with a naughty pig named Benny that are fantastic.

I can't really get into the whole Astrid-Lindgren-Pippi-Longstocking-thing and am secretly glad there aren't many Pippi stories translated into English at the library because I think she's more weird than she is cute. I mean what's up with that hair anyway?

Professional Women's Group

I drew this yesterday for the Professional Women's Group meeting I went to last night to, literally, illustrate what graphic facilitation is all about. Thought I'd share.

10 Things I Love About Sweden

My list. I'm not going to mention "free" (you should see the tax bill) daycare and medical care since that's just too obvious, although they are pretty darned great:

1. The absence of Starbucks and Wal-Mart
2. They burn all their garbage and feel good about it
3. Seeing groups of men on 6-month-long paternity leave pushing strollers down the street
4. The state has a monopoly on the sale of alcohol and the "Systembolaget" stores are actually sort of classy
5. People sit down and drink their coffee IN REAL MUGS
6. Crazy wallpaper. Flocking, embossing, shiny, paisley - you name it, they do it
7. Ikea -- it's a day out!
8. You can do lots of fun things with your phone, including buy a tram ticket, get a loan or donate to charity
9. Everything and everyone is on time
10. Lots of water. No drought here, my friends

Bunnies and Lions

Yesterday Julian became a Bunny. He joined the Bunny classroom at ABC Preschool, the same school where Ava is a Lion. The classes are divided by the year the children were born (i.e. all 2005 kids together, all 2006 kids, etc.), and I suppose "Lions" sounds better than "2005 room." For some reason the Bunnies are comprised of kids born in 2006 and 2007. Not sure why they have the biggest age range for the kids where the age range makes the most difference ... and I'm not even going to ask. I think the answer would be something like: it just IS that way. And it's the BEST way, because it is that way. This, in my admittedly still limited experience, is the dark side of "the Swedish way." It's sort of an unquestioning commitment to the way things are done, regardless of your opinion of it.

I'm beginning to understand why Swedish women are ranked as the most trendy in the world -- in the literal sense that they follow the fashion trends like lemmings running off a cliff. Sometimes I feel like a telegram was hand-delivered to every woman in Sweden reading:

Skinny jeans and black boots still in. Stop. Huge scarves to be added to wardrobe, preferably in white. Stop. Keep wearing black and gray everywhere else unless forced by foreigner to do otherwise. Stop.

And God help me, today I wore exactly that!

Pictures of the day