In my last post, I wrote about a rather sedate spring tradition in Sweden. This weekend, we attended one of the quirkiest traditions we've heard of: the spring cow release, or kosläpp.
Miscellany
Some Thoughts on the Postpartum Period
Little Bing-Bong is ten days old today. We've been home for eight of those, adjusting to life as a new family of five—mostly this means adjusting to being the mother of a newborn again. I was inspired by this post on one of my favorite blogs, Reading My Tea Leaves, to share with you what this...
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
As you might have guessed, my silence this last week has been due to the fact that the baby has arrived! In fact, she came just a few hours after I published my last post.
Scenes From My Mind (and My Home)
I'm making a bit of a departure here in today's post. Generally I try to write about something in particular—at the very least so that I have a sensible title line for each post—and usually, something that fits in with themes I generally cover on this blog. But today I'm going off script (or, more aptly,...
Alternative (and Free) Souvenir Ideas
Slipping away to some exotic or culturally rich location for a vacation is wonderful; bringing home souvenirs from that vacation, which jog travel memories and help the vacation last longer in your mind, is also wonderful. But that doesn't mean you have to stop at those kitschy, overstuffed bric-a-brac shops and pony up for some mass-produced (and questionably...
The One Thing I Always Wish I'd Brought With Me On Vacation
We're having a great time in Spain so far: it's been sunny, warm(ish), and we've spent our days walking, playing, and eating. This is EXACTLY what we came for. But there's one thing I forgot to bring that I'm kicking myself about...
The Third Trimester of My Third Pregnancy in My (Late) Thirties
(Nota bene: the pictures in this post have almost nothing to do with the content. This is mostly because my husband refuses to take pictures of me, also because I find selfies to be too self-aggrandizing to bother taking any, and because it's winter in Sweden and the light is shit.) I'm just over 32 weeks into this...
Let's Talk About the Moon
For some reason, I've got it stuck in my head that I'm going to teach my kids, from the very beginning, about the stages of the moon. I think it would be so cool to hear a tiny human voice say, "Look mama! A waning crescent moon!" With that in mind, any time we see the...
My Secret, Irrational Hatred of Something Totally Benign
I have a confession to make. There's something that I have an unreasonable and rather passionate dislike of. It's something that has no real effect in my life (except to make me cringe); has never done anything rude, unkind, or unfair to me; and is in itself rather innocuous. And yet, every time I see it,...
August's Haircut
Last week, our neighbor, Agneta, pulled a coup we never thought possible: she got the boys' hair cut. We didn't think Leif would be much of a problem, but August has always disliked both change and any sort of meeting with a hairdresser/doctor/nurse/dentist/you get the idea. We had a rather tragic attempt last summer when we...