Mama time

James decided that we should both take Augie to preschool today. We awoke to blue skies, James was in a frisky mood, and he wanted to see what would happen if we took him together to school, told him we loved him, and saw him on his way. I was dubious about this being a good idea. In fact, my words to James were, "that's a horrible, horrible idea."

You know what happened? Two out of three of us with tears streaming down our faces, one of us screaming. An experiment not to be repeated.

They say that Augie is sort of off-and-on all day; he'll be fine for a while, then upset; he clings to his blanket the whole day. But yesterday when I picked him up he only whine-cried a little bit, then was up and about happily exploring while I talked to one of the teachers. We're working on devising a schedule that will help him adjust better.

On a lighter note, after we dropped Augie off James and I parted ways, and I walked around Norra Djurgården - a national park that stretches from downtown up to the university, where we're staying. There's major development going on in a section of the park, closer to town, with hundreds, maybe thousands, of housing units being built. We're considering buying there, though at present all the good units are taken (or are too expensive for us). It seems like a perfect mix of city and nature (as it sits in a national park, most of the area around it will never be built up), so we're scouring the available units (it seems like each building is represented by a different realtor, so it's tedious getting all the information together). If it works out, it would be about a 15-minute walk to work for James, a 10-15 minute subway/bus ride into the heart of Stockholm, and minutes away from expansive parkland and the sea. Too good to be true, huh?

I found a cafe - Selma Deli - in one of the new buildings and stopped in for a rest (have I mentioned how exhausted I get these days, with little Queequeg growing inside me?). I think it was the first time I've had quiet cafe time since before Augie was born, and I felt a little space inside open up, like I was getting a little taste of the Jodi who used to prowl the open road and listen for the soft whisper of inspiration. It's amazing how healing and restorative these snippets of self time can be.