Gratitude Sunday

It's March. It's the first month of spring. But it feel like spring only in the middle of the day, when the sun is warming. The nights have been colder than usual: -20 degress Celsius tonight (-4 F). Despite the cold weather, there are so many things to be grateful for this week. I'm joining Wooly Moss Roots in Gratitude Sunday.



- The first spring flowers outside our house. Snowdrops and winter aconite.
- The end of the pregnancy is coming closer: soon our baby is here!
- I've been outside, sitting in the sun, twice this week! All in all I've haven't been outside this many hours since two good days I had in the beginning of August. Yeseterday we went to the lake with my mom and her cohabitant/boyfriend (what do you say in English?). People were iceskating and skiing on the lake. I sat on a chair and just relaxed.
- I've been sewing and I've finished a couple of things I was working on. Feels good.

Photos above are from Sunday by the lake :) Me relaxing in the sun, Nora eating sausage, and Nora + Magnus + my mom walking on the ice.

Spring, sun and fir cone animals

For the first time since I don't know when, I've been outside for more than 15 minutes. It was W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L!



The morning was cold but beautiful. It was -9 degrees Celcius (F = 15.8), but it soon rose and after lunch it was warm and nice in the sun. Snow was melting and Nora and I were bored inside our flat. I asked her if we should go out. You should have seen her expression - I haven't suggested going out for many, many months because of pain and the cold weather. Of course I can't walk or play, but at least it was warm enough to sit in the sun while Nora played.

We made fir cone animals and played with them.

I always think it's so funny when people say "when I was little we could play with anything. We made animals out of cones. But children today ..." and then they say what they think "children today" only do (and that more often include a screen than cones and sticks and twigs). In some ways they might be right, but what I think is so fun when they say it is that they can be 20 or they can be 80. People said so also when I was little (and I disagreed because I've always been playing with nature finds). And, I actually don't think there's any time when everyone made and played with cone animal.

Most important of all: if children always sit in front of a screen and never play in nature, well, who's fault is it? Instead of complaining about what children do and don't, take them outside and play with them!

It's now soon evening and Nora and Magnus have made a broccoli- & feta cheese pie which is in the oven at the moment. Friday is the day when Nora decide the menu and cook with one of us. This year she's so far chosen to make this pie 95% of all Fridays (I think we've had one exception or so ...). I love the idea of including her in the planning, shopping and cooking - but I honestly don't like eating the same pie every single Friday ;-) But then, on the other hand, she doesn't always like what I cook on, let's say, a Monday.

And I feel like my batteries were loaded a bit in the sun and the fresh air. I so needed it. Spring, please come! And baby, too!

Shared at Friday's Nature Table :-)

History, churches and the countryside

I grew up in southern Sweden, but moved to Uppsala (one hour drive north of Stockholm) ten years ago to study at the univeristy. A couple of years later I met Magnus (2004). We lived in Uppsala until 2007 when we both had jobs in Stockholm and decided to move there. We rented a house for a year, then we bought the house where we still live. It's situated halfways between Uppsala and Stockholm (as that's what we could afford - both Stockholm and Uppsala are too expensive for us), next to Arlanda international airport. We moved in here 2-3 weeks before Nora was born, so it took quite a while until we began exploring our surroundings (except for our closest neighbourhood - having a dog makes as get to know all streets and trees and paths close to home). Only six kilometers from our house is Sigtuna, Sweden's first town (now a small, cute "town" with 10 000 inhabitants). We often go there as it's very beautiful, and also because they have several really good cafés. There's a lot of "history" in this area, many old churches and also rune stones from the vikings. In an attempt of getting to know the countryside + a bit of history, I decided that we'd go visit the churches around where we live and also bring Zam and go for a walk at each place. Today we went to Odensala church.




The oldest parts of the church were built in 1100-something. It has a lot of beautiful paintings inside that I was looking forward to see, but unfortunately the church was closed. (Here you can see panaroma pictures from inside the church.) They have begun to lock the churches in the countryside when no personell is there, as they've had problmens with thefts. That's so sad, in many ways. We had a lovely couple of hours anyway. We looked at the church from the outside, we tried the swings, Nora picked two flowers, and we went for a walk.








(Do you see the airplane?)

Hunting: Spring flowers

It was a day with sharp spring sunshine and birds singing. We went for a long walk, brought biscuits, water and an apple. We were on a spring flower hunt.

Here's a tussilago. (Names in Swedish.)

Going out

The last few days have been a little bit warmer, just a few degrees below freezing point. Today we decided to spend more time outside, Nora and I, and I'm sure Zam agreed. It could have been a cozy, relaxing walk, but unfortunately it wasn't.



I soon realised Nora hadn't recovered 100% yet, she was still coughing a bit and more tired than usual. She wanted to go there so much, but once we were there she was too tired, and there was a lot of whining. Zam, on the other hand, was so happy, and very frustrated with Nora's slow slow walking. And I was somewhere in between, suggesting Nora should sit on the sledge, but she didn't want to. She wanted me to carry her, and when I said no (I was carrying a bag, holding Zam and the sledge) she prefered walking herself.



We had a little break, and it was nice. Nora and I had some biscuits and Zam was chewing on a stick he found. The birds were singing, you know that song you hear when it's still winter, but the days are longer and brighter. Then a small stick got stuck in Zam's throat. As you can imagine, he panicked. I must say I was quite afraid there for a while - we were out in the middle of nowhere and what would I do if he couldn't get rid of it himself? Finally he did manage to cough and throw it up (together with some food and blood). He was crazy for a while after that, shaking. Nora and I sat down to pat him, then we walked back to our car and went home. Zam didn't eat at all until late evening, perhaps it hurt a bit. His fine now (sleeping under our bed, which is his favourite spot during the night).

Visiting our story tree

Visiting our favourite tree, the story telling tree. This time she sat on my lap and I told her a story about an elephant family and a snail, celebrating Christmas (all at her request).

Swedish childbook - Mamma Moo

Mamma Mu (Moo in English) is another favourite here. Perhaps you didn't know, but she's acutally our neighbour. I'll show you ...



Mamma Mu is a very unusual cow. She's definetely not eating grass all day long, like the other cows. Instead she's very curious and playful. With her friend Kråkan (Crow) she learns how to ride a bike, to go on the swings or to build a tree house (however Kråkan wants her to behave more like a normal cow). The books are written by Jujja and Tomas Wieslander, but it's Sven Nordqvists illustrations that makes them stand out. They're detailed and funny.



I said she's our neighbour. Well, at least according to Nora. She wants to show you Mamma Mu's tree house. It's just a few minutes walk from our house.



And behind our house is a farm. They have sheep and cows. That's where Mamma Mu lives. To the right, high up in a tree, lives Kråkan. You can see the farm on the top photo (below this text) and if turning around you can see our house, as on the bottom photo, almost hidden behind the trees. We hear the cows and sheep from our garden and every night Nora asks if Mamma Mu and Kråkan are asleep already. I say they are.

walking

I've always loved being out in the nature, and so does Nora. Since we have a dog, our toller Zam, we are forced to go out no matter the weather. And that's a good thing, because I realized that once outside, the weather is almost never as bad as it seemed from the kitchen window. As most parents know, water is very interesting for little ones. To hear the drip-drop sound from the rain, to jump in puddles, to make mud cakes ...



Sometimes we are in a hurry, but often we have time to look at all small things, to make sheep out of pines and sticks, to watch a caterpillar cross the path, to examine a mushroom (but the one on the photo is a no-touch one, we only look).



While walking there's time for Zam, too. We make tricks, we hide treats (look in the tree).



Time for all of us to play.

And sometimes I feel a bit stressed, I say "come on, let's go", but then I ask myself why I'm in such a hurry. Are we heading anyway? Do we have an appointment? Are there more important things to do somewhere else that have to be done right now? And most of the time, the answer is no. No, we don't really have to hurry because most things can wait another ten minutes and we, Nora, Zam and I, will stay more peaceful if we have the time to play first. Hurrying is, often, just a bad habit.



Picking flowers is a good habit. At this time of the year we often have fresh flowers on the table, thanks to Nora.



And this is our favourite spot. Right under the oak tree there are two stones and when passing by we always sit down for a while. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we sit in silence. Sometimes I tell Nora a story, it can be about a tiger (her favourite) and his friend, the elephant.

Let your child be the photographer

Now that most of us have digital cameras and it doesn't matter if it gets a little crazy or the photos are not so good (fingers in front of the lens for instance) and you also can directly see the result, there's nothing that prevents that children make photos. I got my first camera when I was seven years old, a simple inherited one, but I was so happy. At that time, of course, there were no digital cameras and I always had to think about the cost of developing the film. I've always thought that everyone has a camera (except very small children), even if it is a simple one. Imagine my surprise when I met my husband and he said he never owned a camera. Never.

I didn't give a camera to Nora and am not going to do it in a long time, but yesterday we went out and photographed, and she had (under my watchful gaze so that she would not drop it) borrowed my little camera. She's made all the images in this post. (And yes, I have chosen the best. There were a bunch of little fingers in the way on some of them too.)



I give instructions ... and she is photographing