A Fig in Sweden Portland

daddy, read me a swedish story

While I was working this morning (I work a half day at home on Fridays), Lewis took Sophie to the library in town to pick up a few books. Reading is Sophie's favorite thing to do right now. It's the only thing she throws a tantrum about. No complaints here!

These books from the library are written in Swedish, of course. So hearing Lewis make up the story on the fly in English was entertaining for all of us!

In typical family-photographer fashion, I ran and grabbed the camera to capture the sweet father-daughter moment. Plus a few extra of our favorite little person...

 

making grandpa 'Doc' proud

The granddaughter of a dentist has her own little pink toothbrush now and has really taken to the whole teeth-brushing routine. I had to pry the brush out of her hand tonight.

Tooth count is at a whopping 11 as her third molar is cutting through her gums right now. She had a hard time going to bed last night and has been particularly clingy to mommy, but otherwise you wouldn't know her little mouth is going through some trauma at the moment. Our girl is such a trooper.

diy for miss sophie g

Chalk it up to having Swedish winter cabin fever, but I needed to do something about our dining room. I hate the fact that we have this room set aside for once-a-year events. I'd love to turn the whole thing into a play room for Sophie. But then where would we store the huge table (we want to take it back to Denver)?

So I made it my mission yesterday to rearrange some stuff to make space for a little play area. There's this dead area that's about 1 meter by 3 meters. We went to IKEA yesterday and today and bought a play rug and a RAST bedside table that I'm going to turn into a play kitchen. We're also going to hang some curtains across the room, so we can close off the play area when we want the room to look "adult."

Lewis is usually resistant to my crazy interior design ideas, but somehow I sold him on this one. This should keep me busy until the weather warms up...

I hope my play kitchen looks something like these from www.ohdeedoh.com:

or

stepping out in her new shoes

Until... ah, crap!

homemade IKEA baby magnets

I feel like I have already had a productive weekend, and it's only 9:30 on Saturday morning. That's because I *finally* pulled the sewing machine off the shelf and actually followed through on something I said I would do: making Sophie some fridge magnets. She grabs them, runs around the kitchen and living room, and then runs back to the fridge to stick them on. Laughing the whole time, I might add. Who knew something as simple as a magnet would be such a hit!

It took me less than an hour to do this fun animal set. Here's what I did:

STEPS 1-2
I gathered a bunch of old magnets we've gotten from the vet and fast-food places – you know, the flat, rubbery ones. Then, I cut out some animal shapes from an IKEA fabric I had and used some plain cotton fabric for the back. I sewed the two sides together like a pillow and stuffed some filling inside to make it a bit poofy.

STEP 3
Next, I used pinking shears to make the edges look pretty.

STEP 4
And, finally, I attached the magnet by sewing it to the animal shape like a button in a few places.

vad sa du?

I'm not sure how this is possible. We say "Bye bye" about a million times a day. But it seems Sophie prefers the Swedish way of saying it: hej då. She only hears this phrase about once a week, maybe. I can't think of what else she might be trying to say. Perhaps one of her first words is Swedish!

In other news, she had a great time at the birthday party yesterday. She was clingy for the first 5 minutes, but then she was a little social butterfly hangin' with the 2- and 3-year-old boys. Since she's not in daycare, we worry about her social skills. So it was very reassuring to see. I also got some great child-friendly interior design tips (always fun to see other mom's homes for ideas!). I've decided that my project this week will be to make some magnets for Sophie to play with on the refrigerator.

what's swedish for "stride rite"?

Friday's shoe shopping trip was canceled due to the aforementioned toy shopping trip. Plus, dang, do you know how expensive baby shoes are? Like $50.  With every little body part rapidly growing, I thought it was best to delay the purchase as long as possible.

As with most baby milestones, I feel completely in the dark about how to go about this in Sweden. I stopped by the little shoe store in town a few weeks ago to scope out the selection. I think they had about 7 or 8 to choose from. My favorites were from a brand called KAVAT, apparently a Swedish institution in the children's shoe industry. They were also the most expensive. But they had that "we know what we're doing so you won't screw up your child's feet" look. I liked them!

I am now scouring Tradera (like eBay) for some good deals on some gently used ones. Saw this endearing pair – unused from the 1970s! They even have a little Swedish flag on them. Maybe that mustard yellow won't match much today, but they would look pretty cute sitting on a shelf for a bit of a nostalgic look in a nursery. But I should probably stick to searching for ones Sophie would wear on her feet! :)

Recommendations welcome!

i'm a sucker for swedish toys

I went to BRIO headquarters today (20km down the road in Osby) to pick up something for a birthday fika we're going to this weekend. I came home with these little guys for Sophie – a stacking owl and rolling hedgehog. It took tons of will power to stop at two things (but I've made a mental list of things to get on the next visit!).

I find wooden toys so much more creative than plastic stuff. And I know this is going to sound a little sappy, but when I look at them I get a glimpse of Sophie pulling them out of a storage bin 30 years from now and giving them to her own kids. The toys she had when she was a little girl growing up in Sweden...

when sophie's hungry, she eats red meat

There are a lot of things that you do as parents that you said you would never do. Buying red meat and cooking it for Sophie is one of them. But we realized recently that she's not getting a whole lot of variety in her diet (though it's getting better). And now that she's not breastfeeding anymore, we want to make sure she's getting enough iron and protein. Anemia is not something you want to mess with at this age.

So Lewis and I cringed as we perused the meat section this weekend. We decided that the ONLY meat we will buy will be organic. At least we don't feel *quite* as bad that way. I cooked up a meat sauce and froze them in cubes, so we can add a little to Sophie's meals as needed.