Summer holidays!

Summer's gotten off to a flying start and we spend our days doing all those holiday things one's supposed to do; swimming, eating ice cream, picnics, cycling trips, going to the Toy museum to see a magician's show and hanging with some odd stone penguins.... Fab!

Tomorrow Tage and his mum is setting off for a road trip down to grandma and grandpa on the lovely island of Öland. John has to stay and work for another week before he can join us. 

Last day at nursery

Yesterday was the last day at Tage’s nursery Igelkotten (the Hedgehog). We are very sad that they are closing but instead of being gloomy about it we can take the opportunity to enjoy some excellent photos taken at nursery during his first year.

Tage has made many new friends during his first year at nursery but no one is quite like Malin. And Tage knows how to treat a lady.

Fancy dinner

Fun in the playground

A spin on the bike (….and still being cool enough to show your mates some respect).

Now we look forward to a lovely summer holiday with lots of fun in the sun!

New Arrivals

Our new ducks have arrived making the bottom of the garden a much livelier place. We picked up Börje and his three ladies a couple of weeks ago and they have settled in just fine.

We are spending a lot of our time at the moment staring at these funny creatures whilst they waddle around in their pen, jump around in the water or just hang by the poolside.

Tage is quite excited and makes sure he waves through the window and say ‘Bye wawa’ every night before he goes to bed. Even the cat is finding the ducks intriguing but probably for an entirely different reason.

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As if this was not enough we have also seen the arrival of something that we (Tage’s parents) are very excited about and hope will revolutionise our lives: a robot lawn mower. I could put a picture on here of the new mower but to be fair, who really wants to see a picture of one?

As you see these are exciting times! 

Tage at work

Spring is a busy time in the garden. Thankfully Tage is a very helpful boy and gives his parents a hand and with the help of his brand new watering can and his own wheelbarrow we have managed to get potatoes, flowers and seeds in the ground. 

We have also been working hard on John’s quest for British TV. Tage’s granddad came up from the south of Sweden with his chain saw and together we managed to fell two massive (and I mean 20m high massive!) trees that stood in the way of BBC. It was a lot of work getting rid of all the branches so we hope it’s going to be worth it!

And of course, sometimes it’s nice to just hang in the garden and not do any work at all.

Tage’s birthday, the sequel

Having family in two countries can have its advantages, especially when it means two birthday parties. On Saturday we celebrated Tage in Swedish style (which to be fair is pretty much the same as the English). With his grandparents visiting from southern Sweden, cousins Ella and Alfred (with parents) as well as friend Malin from nursery Tage had another day of presents, balloons and way to much sugar.

Tage is now very good at blowing out candles after much practice

Now we're definitely leaving it for another year before we celebrate another Tage-birthday!

Planes, trains and automobiles.

Back home after our trip to the UK all we can do is to conclude that we had a jolly time.

First stop was Hackney where we finally got to see Auntie Carol’s lovely flat and Tage got the chance to draw a nice abstract painting onto Carol’s new beanbag which had only arrived 5 minutes earlier!

Whilst Tage’s dad went to Bristol for a stag do, me and the young man opted for a nice country break in the lovely Gloucestershire countryside and at Casa Andrea. Here we enjoyed the views (and cold winds), posters of tractors in a local pub, had a go at the swings in the garden and generally just had some fabulous country fun.

Next stop was Cornwall. Ah lovely sunny Cornwall…well not quite, it pretty much rained the whole trip but we did manage to have a lovely sunny day in St Ives where we even got to hang on the beach. 

Between the showers there were still plenty of fun to be had such as investigating the new World Heritage Site Heartlands with Uncle Tony and granny.

As Tage’s birthday was only a matter of days away (actually yesterday!) granny put on a grand birthday party with plenty of food and presents! As Auntie Marie was much more on the ball with the camera at this event I will use some of the lovely pictures she took. Thanks Marie!

We made a last quick stop in London again on the way back but we must have had so much fun that I didn’t have time to take any pictures. Anyway, thanks all you lovely friends and family for making our trip so great! And for those of you we didn’t manage to catch up with this time I’m sure we see you soon. 

Words a-plenty

It’s been a little while. That’s the way it goes sometimes. We’ve been busy with colds, colds and colds. At nursery the viruses spread like wild fire. Apart from that life carries on at a gentle pace. Tage is growing and seem to be too big for all his clothes. Emergency purchases of new winter shoes, tops and trousers will hopefully keep us going for a while.

The biggest change, however, is on the language front. Tage has always had a lot to say and now we’re slowly starting to understand what that is. The favourite word is Tractor or 'Tactor' as it’s pronounced in Tage language. There is always a good time to talk about tractors: at dinner time, during little jollies out (when all vehicles are ‘tactors’) or first thing in the morning as it is not unusual that it’s the first word we are greeted by when entering his room in the morning.

There is also Wow! John, who arrived home from a work trip to Gothenburg, was very pleased that the reaction from Tage over the present he brought back was: Wow! Unfortunately the fact that a heavily soiled nappy the following morning received the same wow-treatment put a slight damper on the excitement over the present however.

Another word, which is actually not so much of a word but rather a song, is banana. Have a look.

So here we are, happy in our little world talking about tractors, the wow factor and bananas. Not bad really!

Tage says no

It appears Tage has quite a mood.  It also appears that when things don’t go his way he happily displays it no matter where we are, at home, at nursery, shop, baggage reclaim at the airport… We understand this is completely normal for his age but as first time parents it is still a bit of a shock to the system. We have now become experts at the process:

Generally it starts with a disgruntled look on his face and then spreads with the speed of light down to his two little feet and the stamping commences. A lot of stamping. If his attention has not been diverted by now the whole of Tage’s body gets involved and with arms flailing, feet stamping, face scrunching and voice hitting some high notes it is all quite spectacular. It is often quite hard to keep a straight face and not laugh but it is very sweet, well, most of the time at least.

 When these angry spells started in real force at a regular basis about a month ago we started to think we got the wrong child home with us from the UK. We looked closely but it did appear to be our Tage. Just an angrier version. We have, however, worked up a strategy of defence against these attacks. The key is distraction, distraction, distraction. Tage has therefore become much more involved in the general routine of things at home. 

He is now very handy at helping with sorting the recycling. He washes up. 

He helps with the cooking. Here working on a special dish of yesterday’s gnocchi mixed with unpeeled onion (just in case it didn’t quite work I cooked something else).

And if all else fails there is always dancing!