Slowly but surely, it is coming together

Today is our 3 week anniversary in our flat and slowly but surely, it is coming together and is starting to look like a real home! For the past couple of weeks we have done a couple of ‘DIY and home decorating trips’ out here in the north-western suburbs of Stockholm and we now have lights and curtains up in most rooms, a bunch of pictures on the walls, and most of our stuff and clothes and such have been stowed away. Makes such a difference to have all our belongings organized in a logical place where they can actually be found, especially in the morning. When we first moved in; every day started with a little treasure hunt to find clothes, crockery, toiletries etc but now we are kind of getting the hang of it and we can spend our time hanging out with Ethan over a sit down breakfast instead, which is really nice!

Our last trip to IKEA was not so nice though. I could even go out on a limb and call it ‘a new-ish parent-couple’s little slice of hell’, a.k.a. the dreaded ‘terrible twos’! Yep, we’ve reached that stage now, we have arrived!

So, joy of joys, on Saturday we decided to take the bus over to IKEA to buy a few bits and bobs that we needed, like light fixtures for the bedrooms, curtains for Ethan’s room, an ironing board, photo frames… you know, easy-to –pick-up small stuff. Easy-peasy we thought. And it would have been if it wasn’t for Ethan’s love of pushing things with wheels around. Right at the entrance they had yellow little trolley-type push thingies for customer to borrow and take into the store. Ethan obviously wanted to borrow one and push it around. Fair enough, we thought and let him have it.

The only problem was that it was taking forever and a day for him to move forward down the maze that is IKEA so after awhile we had to move on and take it off him. Ethan did not approve and laid himself down in a starfish position in the middle of the store, crying his eyes out. We picked him up and moved forward in the store. That would have been well and good, had it not been for the fact that IKEA had kindly lined up these yellow push thingies all the way down each lane throughout the whole store! So, in other words, every 50 feet or so when Ethan saw a new push thingy, he wanted one and he would not stop until he got one! After numerous battles we made it out of the store and home again and in the evening we were just cranky and exhausted. But the lights and curtains turned out nice! ;)

Overall though; we are loving our new place and it is just so perfect for us! It is such a difference from all our previous flats we have had in Ireland and the UK and the standard of living is just light years ahead! Just the fact that you get even heating 24/7 without even paying for it is amazing! We are obviously used to it from growing up in our previous respective home countries but after living in the UK for a few years I think our expectations on standard of living has just been lowered a bit. Now, Ethan can run around in just his nappy at any time of day and not get cold feet and we don’t have to worry about if he is covered up in his crib or that he will be cold in the middle of the night because the heating timer is turned off and the heating drops. Both Swedes and Canadians in Sweden and Canada probably take this for granted, as you should, but for expats like us, we are still amazed!


This girl here is also amazed by the über-classy lunch establishments Sweden has to offer: