Birthday party morning

Just a couple pics to tide you over until tomorrow (I hope!), when I can post more about Augie's second birthday (two days after his actual birthday). He loved his gift, and we had a fun time with friends. But I'm using my remaining energy tonight to write him a letter.

Happy 2nd birthday, my love!

Augie turned two today! Wow! Two years of loving and being continually amazed by this beautiful little tyrant who runs circles around me, who exhausts me, who fills me with joy and wonder with his own joy and wonder. He's such a funny little boy - he's such a little boy. He's not a baby anymore (though of course he will always be my baby).

We've decided to spend the entire weekend celebrating him. Today was just the kick-off - a couple small presents to get him started. Tomorrow we'll do fun things and give him his big gift, and then Sunday we'll have a party with friends. I can't wait to share all the merriment with him (and with you!).

When he got home from dagis (where he ate 4 servings worth of lunch!) this afternoon he took a short nap, and then we cuddled on the couch to read.

After dinner we gave him a small gift - a star box (he is so into stars right now - or, as he calls them, twinkles) filled with dark chocolate squares: 

After dinner we went to his room to open a couple presents. The bag around his neck was a gift from Auntie Tina - he keeps growing like a tiger and pointing at the tiger on the front:

An airplane from Ah Mah and Granddad - he loved it!

(Email subscribers, click here to see a video of him playing with the airplane)

He knows that bags are for going out, so he picked up his airplane and ran for the front door. I helped him put on his boots and we went for a walk through the building:

Quickie update

Not much to show you - haven't been taking pictures lately and have been absolutely exhausted. Pictures below are leftovers I found on my phone.

At a park yesterday, Augie pointed to a statue of a naked woman (let's say a goddess) and said, "Mama!" Then he pointed at me and the statue and said "Two mamas!"

Had a follow-up appointment today for Leif's laryngomalacia; turns out there wasn't much reason to go. She offered to do another procedure to check out what's going on, but at only three weeks after the first procedure, it's unlikely there would be any change - and I'm not letting stick a tube up my baby's nose unless it's necessary! She reiterated that as long as he's gaining weight and we aren't worried, he's fine and there's no cause for concern.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers! This is the first year ever I've done absolutely nothing to celebrate, and I feel the worse for it. We were invited to a dinner on Sunday, but that's the day we are going to celebrate Augie's birthday. He turns two tomorrow! Holy shit! We're having a few of his friends over for cake and toddler mischief Sunday afternoon. We'll also try to do some of Augie's favorite things this weekend - go to a construction site, ride bicycles, dig in the sand, and eat waaay too many olives. And on Saturday, Leif will be two months.

Okay, here are the remainder pics from my phone. Hoping to get much better pictures to you after this weekend.

Screens? No thanks

In yesterday's post, I forgot to tell you why I thought Friday and Saturday were so horrible, but Sunday was so much better.

Augie had been playing two little games on the iPad for a couple weeks - two innocuous, not-stupid-kid-game type of games - he'd play for a few minutes and then get bored and moved on. And then we (and by "we" I in no way mean "we", but one of us in particular) started to show Augie videos on the iPad, and then introduce him to really stupid games - and suddenly Augie was asking for the videos all the time. Rather than limiting his screen time, we (read note above) just kept giving him the iPad. All was well and good when he had it, but as soon as it was taken away, he started crying and whining and begging to nurse, and he would not give up. And this pattern would repeat over and over during the day. It was ugly.

Saturday night we talked about what role we wanted screens, and specifically the iPads, to play in our family life, and we (this time I really mean we) realized that we don't want any screen time for our family - at least when we're all together and interacting with the boys. Not for us, not for them.

So Sunday morning, neither of us got our iPads out, and when Augie asked for fish or monkeys or buses (games and videos he likes), we deflected and moved him on to something else. He didn't have a single meltdown all day, and he didn't ask to nurse except at his normal times, and he finally took a nice long nap.

Could be coincidental, could be causal. Either way, the iPads are on the shelf when the kids are up.

Unrelated to this post, here are a couple bed pictures:

Leif and I took a lovely long nap together this morning, and then in the afternoon he put himself to sleep for a second (considerably shorter) nap. We've been struggling with his sleep, but today I paid close attention to the clock to make sure I wasn't keeping him awake too long and getting him back to bed at the right moment, and that's when he put himself to sleep. It's so hard to figure these things out at this age because they change so frequently - just as soon as we've figured out his sleeping/waking patterns, they change. So I figure by the time I get us settled into a routine, it'll be obsolete. 

What a s*&t show

Thank goodness the weekend is over! I never thought I'd say that, but man - what a shit show! I'll spare you the details and just give you the summary: whining, uncontrollable body-shaking crying, begging for "nurses", refusing naps, not nursing, too much nursing, early wake-ups, late bedtimes, and double meltdowns. Augie wasn't in school on Friday so we were all home together, and Friday and Saturday were messy. At one point Leif was crying so hard that I was minutes away from taking him to the hospital (James put him in the Beco carrier and he fell asleep within minutes and was fine). Just nasty days. Today, however, was great; no whining or crying from Augie, both boys fell asleep for long morning naps (Leif even put himself to sleep for a little bit), then we went for a lovely family walk to a church to listen to some music in the afternoon and enjoyed a quadruple-chocolate treat on the way. It seems that all of a sudden, when Leif gets overtired, he just loses it and screams in the most heartbreaking way, his whole little body shuddering and screaming for the end of the world.

This is from the end of the day Saturday; I actually think this photo makes me look good considering the state I was in:

But we woke up on Sunday and had some of this:

 Looking at Mama during tummy time:

This is what the end of tummy time usually looks like:

Sharing our mega-chocolate treat this afternoon (Augie ate half of mine):

While we were at the concert in the church, I was trying to distract Augie while we were in the children's alcove and I pulled over a big pile of wooden puzzles - everyone turned to look at me. I was so embarrassed!

Sleepless day

Ugh - rough day around here. I spent the entire day trying to get Leif settled into a real nap - he took a bunch of 20-30 minute catnaps, but never settled into his usual 3-hour nap (he usually takes one or two during the day). I took him walking three times, but he either didn't fall asleep or woke as soon as we got home each time. And Augie didn't nap at dagis at all, so he fell asleep in the stroller on the way home and took a nap from 4-5:30pm. Lucky for us, he still fell asleep at a reasonable bedtime (8:15 or so). Unlucky for us, Leif's fantastic nighttime sleep pattern seems to have ended; he was going 5-9 hours for his first sleep, as I said, but now he's back to 3-4 hours between wakings all night long. I'm desperately hoping this is a growth spurt which makes him wake and feed more often, but I have a sinking feeling it's just the new normal.

As James was walking to dagis to pick up Augie, he ran into the mother of one of Augie's schoolmates. They had a nice chat, and then at the end she got really awkward and asked James to look at her daughter's face: there was a big gauge on her cheek where Augie had scratched her. Apparently this happens regularly, and the teachers usually miss it happening. They've assured us that his aggression is normal for this age and developmental stage, but we're pretty upset that our son is picking on someone so much. We're going to try to go to the same playgroup tomorrow afternoon so that we can see them together and step in if (more likely when) Augie gets aggressive and teach him that this is not appropriate behavior. We're really hoping this behavior stops soon...

On an entirely cuter note, look at this guy:

He's actually sleeping in this picture, with his eyes open. He does it all the time, and it's creepy;

He's beginning to be able to find his hands fairly often, and when he does, much smacking of lips adn sucking of fingers can be heard:

Big boy

Leif had his 2-month visit with the pediatrician today. As expected, he's a "fine young boy." And he's big! He's 24 inches long (61 centimeters) and 12 pounds, 13 ounces (5.82 kilograms). He's still climbing the growth curve, so there's no worry that his funny breathing is holding him back.

Our evenings have gotten a tiny bit better (last night both boys were asleep by 7:30!), but now Leif isn't sleeping as long overnight - he's only been going 3-4 hours between feeds. Hoping this is a growth spurt and he'll settle back into the 5-9 hour stretches we were having.

Playing in the yard

Not much to report the last few days; haven't taken any pictures, partly because the days have been hum-drum, but also because there's not much light for taking pictures. The sun rose today at 7:48am and set at 3:17pm: it's dark. And I read somewhere that this November is setting a new record for direct sunlight: there's been less sunlight this November than in any other Swedish November in recorded history. Ugh.

So here are a couple pics from the weekend, when we wandering around Gamla Stan again.

Where we are, who we are

I haven't really shared much lately about what the boys are up to or what's going on in our lives; just the snippets I happen to have taken pictures of, which miss about 99.99% of our days - and our lives. Here are a couple quick updates:

• Leif's laryngomalacia continues, but we think it's the slightest bit better in that there are times when he's taking deep breaths but he isn't squeaking or retracting, and we think he's doing it less ("doing it" meaning making the squeaky stridor noise). We have a follow-up appointment next week (the 27th I think) with the ENT doc to see how he's progressing
• Leif's sleeping remains mixed: he usually sleeps 5-9 hours for the first stretch, and we still have a difficult evening, but it's ever-so-slightly better than it was before
• Leif's beginning to open up to the world - he's smiling a lot when he's awake (he's so handsome!), and his body is slowly beginning to unfurl. 
• This one is really exciting: Augie peed in the potty today! It was the most intentional effort he's put into using the potty. We were in his room and he was naked after his bath, and I could see that he was getting ready to go - spreading his legs, looking down, grabbing his penis - so I said, "Augie, let's use the potty!" and he ran to his little potty and did his half-squat in front of it, aiming and waiting. Nothing happened and he looked up at me, worried. "Stuck!" he said. I grabbed a book and started to read to him, and then he peed! As soon as he was done, he picked up the bowl of the potty and said, "potty!" and handed it to me, then he ran to the bathroom so we could dump the pee in the potty. We're especially happy about this because we haven't done anything at all lately to train him. We've talked about the potty and let him watch us use it, and kept his potty out, but we haven't pushed it at all. Maybe he sees someone at school using it?
• Augie is talking, talking, talking. It's wonderful. He's speaking both English and Swedish, and some English words he pronounces as though they are Swedish. He finally started saying his own name a couple weeks ago, though it sounds like "Ah-gist", without the rounding of the mouth to get the "au-" sound. He knows to pluralize things with an "-s", and he sometimes pluralizes the verb, too. He's regularly putting together sentences with 3 or more words. He repeats the last word of almost everything we say. And what do you think his favorite word is? "No!"
• Augie seems to be loving school, though he's back to napping in the stroller at dagis; his favorite teacher, Åsa, has been sick and away from school ever since Augie napped on the mat, so he's gone back to sleeping in the stroller. We hope she will be back on Monday!
• Augie can be very helpful when someone is sad or upset. His friend Nils fell at the playground today and started to cry. Augie looked at me and said "sad." Then he looked at Nils's mom adn said "napp" (the Swedish word for pacifier), as he knew that napps usually make sad kids feel better. When Leif was crying earlier this evening, Augie came in from the other room carrying a paci for him. 
• Augie is started to play with other kids, rather than just beside him. At the playground this afternoon, he ran around with Nils; when he first saw him, he ran up to him and tried to belly bump/kiss him (not really sure which he meant to do, or both). They ran around together, laughing, and when Augie ran to do something like swing, he'd point to an empty swing and say "Nils swing."
• Augie loves new people. The other week he ran up to and hugged one of the barristas from our favorite Italian coffee place when we saw him on the street (I didn't even know Augie had ever seen/recognized this guy!), with a giant smile on his face. James has a student visiting from Princeton, and he spent all afternoon asking her to push him on the swing, push him in the stroller, read him a book, etc. 
• We've asked a wonderful woman we met a couple months ago, Julie, to come over once a week to hang out with the kids and help us. She came over for the first time on Friday and it was great - Augie loved showing off his toys to her and running around with her; she was great with Leif, even when he was crying, and we felt totally comfortable giving him to her even when he was crying so we could sit down to dinner. Having her here meant we could comfortably take showers, make dinner, and eat it; beyond that, she and I sat on the couch (while Leif napped in my arms) and talked, talked, talked. Unfortunately, she's going back to the US in December, but we are so glad and lucky to have her here with us for the few weeks she's still here. 

That only begins to tell you all that's going on, but at least it's something. 

We're trying to get Augie involved in more household tasks, so that he can contribute and feel a sense of accomplishment in helping around the house, and also so that we can get more done (it's easier to wash the potatoes if he's actively engaged in helping to wash potatoes, rather than jumping on the couch). One of the easiest things for him to help with is the recycling, a job he relishes. He's also been keen to help with scraping his plate after dinner and putting his clothes in the hamper; ironically, it's us who have to remember to involve him in these tasks (you'd think we'd be happy to have a baby slave!).

Tiger pants

Just some photos from the last week we found hiding away on our iPads.

I feel like my life is one big baby pile:

Hanging out in Augie's room:

The brand of diapers we've been buying here (Libero) recently introduced these super-fun animal print diapers, and they are such a hit in our house! It used to be a challenge to change Augie's diaper, but now that he can be a tiger or a zebra, he wants us to change him! He comes home from dagis and rushes to the diapers in his room, pulls a tiger down, and lays down for us to change him. What a genius move from the diaper company!

Wednesday family day

Augie is home from dagis on Wednesdays now (we can only have him there 30 hours per week, so we're doing four longer days rather than five shorter days), so James is taking paternity leave on those days and we're having family time. Today we went to a park in the morning and then the public transportation museum in the afternoon. Everyone is appropriately worn out!

Watching a backhoe digging at a construction site:

Eating his creation:

 Hmmm, not so tasty:

Demonstrating his quick-chop technique:

Taking a ride at the transport museum (Spårvägsmuseet):

Testing out Dai Dai's side of the stroller: