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! 

Just an ordinary week

Life is not all holidays, big dinners and trips. After Christmas and New Year, life has now settled back into normality. So, what does that entail in the world of Tage? Let’s take a look...

Keeping up with current affairs is a must. Here an apparently rather amusing article about the new party leader for the Swedish Vänsterpartiet, 'the Left Party'.

Other fun activities are: Trying on mum’s hat…

Trying on mum’s shoes…

(There was also trying on of mum’s gloves, jacket, socks but I’m guessing you get the picture.)

Hanging with friends. Here in a car (which thankfully had two steering wheels) with friend Charlie.

A mobile phone tutorial with Lisa.

Drawing.

This year is not as snowy and wintery as last year but it has at least been enough snow for some fun outdoor adventures. Snowy walks.

Sledging.

After snowy adventures a cup of hot (or in Tage’s case a moderately warm) chocolate is what you need to get the energy levels back up.

Helping out in the kitchen baking focaccia.

And of course some good old-fashioned messing about!

I know some of you have been trying to comment without success but hopefully it should work now!

Christmas No. 2

And so we celebrated.  For days. A visit to the family in Cornwall is never dull. There was food, wine, good company and most importantly for Tage there was a lot of attention from his aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, neighbours, random couple down the pub, dogs… basically everyone. 

The anticipation was high and it was difficult to stay away from the presents until it was officially time to open them.

In a break from all the festivities Tage took the opportunity to fix grandma and grandpa’s computer (like father like son…)

As the McWilliams quartet got ready for their church performance, a regular feature at Midnight Mass, Tage got to learn a thing or two about brass instruments. He even managed to get a tune out of Maggie’s cornet.

In true McWilliams fashion presents were opened at midnight on Christmas Eve, which is an excellent tradition as it combines the Swedish Christmas normally celebrated on Christmas Eve and the English on Christmas day. Tage was a little bit tired but opened a couple of presents before being put back into bed.

The rest of us carried on opening our presents.

In the morning Tage had plenty more energy for the remaining pressies.

Thank you all for the lovely presents both to us and for Tage! The family’s favourite has no doubt been the Rastamouse dvd. For those of you that have not yet experienced it, you better get a move on!

Christmas dinner was, as always, a big success.

There was also time to say Happy Christmas to grandma’s chickens. Tage stayed a safe distance from Dinner, Dinner and Dinner (well, in fact the names of all of grandma’s chickens…)

If anyone was worried that Fluff-Lasse had to celebrate Christmas on his lonesome I can reassure you that he had a swell time with our friends Anne and Andreas who were house and cat sitting whilst we were away.

Back in Sweden we celebrated the start of 2012 in style with some friends in Stockholm. Tage looked amazed at all the fireworks and had loads of fun with his friends Gabriel and Jonah. Our hosts had cooked us a lovely three course dinner but Tage spent most of the evening eating a giant apple about the size of his head. To be fair he got through half of it over the course of the evening.

After partying hard Tage was rather tired the next day and while we enjoyed a long walk by the sea he was sleeping nicely in his pram.

Happy New Year everyone!