Ethan 20 months

Cool Ethan

Farmer Ethan

Eating Ethan

Leisure Suit Ethan

Inside El Flaterino - Part 1

Shh!

Ze living room

Where "bapisch" is had every morning

View from the front door

Utensils

Ethan's room

Fish-spotlight in Ethan's room

Ethan's toy croc lurking on the hallway floor

The 'Irish Corner'

The 'Irish Corner' again

Candle holder on the balcony

Milestone time for ’H2’!

I guess we haven’t kept you all up to date on ‘Baby H2’s’ development lately but since the move to Stockholm, Shaena has had 2 appointments with a private midwife and all is good! Baby H2 is healthy, growing and has started kicking quite a bit. H2 was not too happy when the midwife snuck up on him/her to listen to his/her heartbeat and hence, gave the stethoscope a good roundhouse kick. That’s my boy/girl! ;)

Tomorrow we have an appointment for our second scan, and remembering from when we did this with Ethan, this was and is the really cool scan where we could potentially find out if it is a him or a her! Very exciting times for sure!

As some of you avid readers already know, Shaena and I a) are not very good with surprises – we like to know!, and b) we enjoy planning and researching before doing, so hopefully if all goes well and baby is turned the right way for the occasion, we may be able to narrow down our search for an awesome baby name to just one gender.

We started a comments string on Facebook the other day to get name suggestions for a boy, as we already have our girl’s name picked out, and definitely got a few good suggestions. Harry Harrison-Helin was not one of them. At the same time, we also found an awesome baby name website for hillbilly names called
www.redneckbabynames.com! Check it out and turn on your speakers! It’s a hoot!

Our top picks for boys names from Redneckbabynames.com:

1. Erk
2. Cletus
3. Jim Bob
4. Jock Jake

Actually; why don’t you, dear reader, go and find your favourite redneck name and post it as a comment? Would be really interesting to hear what you think and maybe, just maybe if the stars are aligned and if the magic eight ball says so; you may be able to sway us towards the Redneck or Podunk name of your choice! ;)

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:

A typical Saturday morning at home

Ethan and his dad

Moving out

How hard can it be to get from Stockholm to Oslo and back?

For those of you who did not instantly see the obvious connection between below zero temperatures and cutting Ethan’s hair for the first time in the video below; let me lay it out for you: It is cold in Stockholm right now. Really cold.

It started snowing last Friday, or Thursday evening really, and it just kept snowing and snowing. Early Friday morning when I woke up and got ready to head out for work, it had snowed quite a bit and was pretty nippy outside. I had a meeting scheduled in Oslo, Norway on Friday afternoon so my colleague and I had agreed to meet up at 7.15am in Stockholm city to take the air coach out to the airport together.

Just by looking out the window I kinda saw where this day was headed so I packed an extra pair of socks as my ankle-high black business leather shoes wouldn’t do me much good when trekking through a feet of snow. I headed out the front door and down the stair and my feet just disappeared! Great start. Then I made my way over to the bus stop where I waited for a bit with a few other people before this guy (who looked like a full-on mountaineer) walked past and told people that all the busses in the county were cancelled due to the weather. Great. So, my fellow passengers and I started walking like lemmings down the road to hopefully make it to the train on time at least. We only made it to the next bus stop before a bus came and picked us up after all and took us to the commuter train station. Phew!

The commuter train was delayed of course but I had kind of expected it would be. Luckily it showed up after just a few minutes and I was on my way, thinking nothing could stop me now. Well, it could. Signal errors and frozen whatevers made the train go really slow and stop every 50 meters. Finally, and slightly delayed, I made it to the bus terminal in Stockholm city where we boarded the air coach.

At the airport, we jumped through the normal hoops of airport security procedures and then quickly headed over to our gate where we soon found out that our flight was delayed as well. Great again. At first it was delayed for just an hour, then it went up to three hours which would mean that we would fly out at noon and our meeting in Oslo city was at 2pm. From having lots of time and good margins, we were suddenly very tight for time and felt we may or may not make it to the meeting. At 11.30am we got to board our flight and obviously thought it would take off shortly after. But no! Once everyone had boarded, the aircraft had to queue up for de-icing as they’d been on the ground in the cold weather for so long. At this point we realized that this was going to take a fair bit of time and that we would most likely miss our meeting but as we had already boarded the flight and were sitting on the tarmac, there was no way they were going to let us get off.

At 1pm we finally took off and by this point, with a 50 minute flight and a 1 hour bus ride to Oslo city, common sense told us we would not make our 2pm meeting. The good thing is that the flight between Stockholm and Oslo is very quick… In fact; it was so quick so the flight attendants only had time to serve their complimentary cups of coffee and tea between seat rows 1-14 and 19-32. We were sitting in row 17. At this point we were just laughing at our misery and knew that this whole trip would be a tremendous waste of company money and that there was no point for me to even leave the airport as the flight back departed at 5pm. My colleague stayed on till the Saturday so for the next part of this miserable journey , I was flying solo:

The flight home was delayed of course. When I, tired and a bit grumpy, landed in Stockholm again, Shaena had used her cool public transport iPhone app to find me a quicker way home by public transport. That was all well and good and would have worked out really well if it wasn’t for a freakin’ truck that was blocking the freakin’ train tracks(!) for the train that I was supposed to take as a first leg on my alternate route home. Unbelievable! So, I hopped on the air coach back to Stockholm city, which was a pretty smooth ride to be honest, and then walked across the street to the central station where I hoped to catch the commuter train back to Kallhäll. It was delayed of course. Just before 9pm I was back at Kallhäll station hoping that the buses would be running again at least so I wouldn’t have to walk the last bit home. It was not looking very hopeful. Buses were driving by but all their signs said ‘Out of service’ so finally I just took a taxi the last little bit.

To sum up; here’s my daytrip to Oslo in brief:

Left home at 6.630am --> Waited --> No bus --> Walked --> Bus --> Waited some more --> Commuter train that stopped everywhere --> Waited --> Air coach --> Waited --> Waited some more --> Boarded flight --> Sat on tarmac --> Realized the meeting was now definitely not going to happen --> Still had to fly to Norway as we had already boarded the flight --> Did not get a complimentary cup of coffee on the flight --> Expensive cup of coffee at the Oslo airport --> Waited --> Boarded flight home --> Truck on train tracks so alternate quicker route home was a no go --> Waited --> Air coach --> Waited --> Commuter train to Kallhäll --> Waited -->
Taxi --> Home after 9pm.

This guy thought it was pretty cold outside yesterday as well:

Snowed in in Stockholm

Alrighty amigos y amigas, the radio silence is over!

For the past 2 weeks we have ‘planned and executed’ the last phase of our move to Sweden and we are now finally in our new IKEA-digs in Kallhäll, Stockholm, Sweden! Thank you all for your patience and for phoning and messaging us, asking for blog updates! We appreciate that you are interested in finding out what this crazy bunch is up to! So, let’s recap, shall we?

Monday (2 weeks ago)
Monday was the official moving-out-of-our-flat day when the movers came and cleared out all our furniture, keepsakes and knick-knacks. The guys from Britannia Movers entered the flat on Monday morning and instantly blitzed every room with cardboard boxes, wrapping paper and packing tape. In the words of a news anchor or crime reporter: “The attack was deliberate, targeted and well planned.” It was really an experience to watch them work and how even the tiniest item was carefully wrapped and put away in (mostly) labelled boxes. The loading of the moving van was a side-show in itself. Boxes and furniture were stacked like Tetris blocks from floor to ceiling. Very impressive to observe! For insurance purposes, we were not allowed to help so we just had to stand aside and watch the guys do their thing. I guess that in itself wass a luxury but it felt a bit weird as we have always been used to doing everything by ourselves.

In hindsight we’ve realized that the guys were just a little bit too efficient as they should have documented everything they wrapped and packed in an inventory, which they didn’t, so when we got the stuff delivered at our new address in Sweden there was no record of what should or should not have been delivered. We are still trying to work out of we’ve received everything. Naughty naughty!

Shaena started feeling really unwell on the Sunday night (turned out later on that she had a bad case of Tonsillitis) so she was of course happy that we had these guys doing all the legwork. Speaking of being awesome and doing all the legwork; while the moving guys were working away clearing out the flat, we also had our Lovely Lesley deep cleaning the kitchen for us. Lesley is an amazing cleaner and had kindly helped us to clean our oven and our kitchen! She did a fantastic job and the oven and the kitchen looked as if it had just been installed!

When we were done for the day we took a taxi over to Jen & Mike’s with all our suitcases as they had kindly offered to house us for a couple of days before flying out on the following Thursday. Thank you very much for that guys, and Jen; in Mike’s absence you held the fort awesomely awesome and were a great hostess!

Tuesday – Time to get the place spit polished!
Once the flat was empty it was time to get the rest of the flat spit polished so I headed down Tuesday morning to start scrubbing the walls with Lesley’s miracle cure for stains and dirt; a mix of bleach, water and Fairy. Worked like a charm and once the walls were sorted, cleaning the floors and carpets was a walk in the park. Where was Ethan throughout all this you ask? At Amazing Anne’s of course! :) We are going to miss her!

Wednesday - Flat inspection day.
As we had rented our flat from a letting company, it is customary to do a move out inspection in the flat with a property manager before handing over the keys to that all parties can review any dents and scratches. We hope and think we passed with flying colours but I guess we’ll find out eventually if we get our full damage deposit back or not.

Thursday - Leaving on a jet plane…
With our one-way tickets to Stockholm in a firm grip, we headed out to Edinburgh airport for the last time. Definitely a bittersweet feeling to board that plane and leave the United Kingdom as we have really enjoyed our time in Scotland but we know we are leaving for greener pastures and that it’s all for the greater good. Flying with a fully developed, aggressive Tonsillitis is not pretty or pleasant and Shaena looked like death on the 2hour and a bit flight over but we made it over in one piece. At Arlanda airport we had a rental car waiting for us (and thank Jebus for that!) as we had over packed on purpose just in case the moving van would be late, get lost, stolen, torched, or all of the above. It was also great having a car to schlep us around for the first couple of days in Stockholm! It just made things a lot easier. The rented station wagon took us to our Swenadian couple friends Erin & Svante’s south of the city, who had kindly agreed to take mercy on our homeless souls for the next few days before we got the keys to our new home.

Friday – Contract signing day
On Friday morning, Ethan and I took the train to Solna just outside Stockholm city to the property management company’s office where we had an appointment to sign the contract for the new flat. Even though we knew we had already secured this truly awesome flat, it was nice to meet our property manager in person and go through the contract and sign it. It just made it even more real. Ethan helped by creating a post-it note drawing through stabbing it with a pen repeatedly. The property manager said she was mighty impressed of course, but secretly she probably thought: “Oh God! Those poor freshly painted walls!” After the appointment we over to my office just to nip in and say hi and bum a cup of coffee. By this point I could not wait for Tuesday and my first day in the office! Kind of like waiting for your first day in school and I was very excited to get my teeth stuck into this new challenge!

Saturday – ‘Fika’ and belated Christmas present opening at John & Mikaela’s
We decided that we had been jetting around, getting things sorted and organized enough for a couple of days so Saturday was kind of a day off for us where we had nothing on the to-do list. We drove our trusted rental over to my brother John and his girlfriend Mikaela’s for a ‘fika’ (a Swedish expression for when you sit down to have a cup of coffee and assorted coffee bread). John had brought Ethan’s Christmas presents from Grandma Gertrud and Roland’s up north down with him when driving home after Christmas and Ethan finally got to open his gifts. He hasn’t quite figured out how to open gifts yet so we did most of the opening but he really liked his new fleece coat and new books!

Sunday – iPhone 4 secured!
After about 2 years of persuasion, black mail, scare tactics, sales pitches, Chinese water torture, white noise, sweet talking, negotiations and deliberations; Shaena finally got her iPhone 4. As per usual, we’d done thorough research and had a pretty good idea of what kind of deals and plans were available and when we walked in to the 3 store, it was over and done with in a matter of minutes. I have to admit though; the iPhone 4 is absolutely amazing! It is so powerful and intuitive it is almost scary and some of the apps available are real lifesavers. For example; Shaena has downloaded an app that can give her exact travel instructions and directions for the Stockholm public transport system, which means that she’ll basically never get lost and can get around Stockholm so much easier when she is out and about by herself. That combined with Google Maps which functions as a GPS for walking and driving, and a constant internet connection where she can play YouTube clips to keep Ethan entertained when he is getting cranky before meal time = success!

Since we knew that we were going to have a super busy week ahead of us with getting the new place sorted and with a new job and everything, and as Shaena was still not feeling well, we decided last minute just before the weekend that it would be a good idea to get a pair of extra hands for the week to come. Therefore, we came up with a wild and crazy idea to fly someone over to help us for a few days and asked my former Swedish work colleague and now full time nanny/childminder in Edinburgh, Antonia, to fly over and stay with us and be Ethan’s nanny for a couple of days. Antonia already knows Ethan and was delighted to get a gig back home in Sweden for a week. We booked her on the Sunday morning flight from Edinburgh to Stockholm with a return flight on Friday morning and before we knew it, we were out by Arlanda airport again, picking up a Swedish nanny! Imagine that!


Monday (One week ago) – What better way to spend a Monday afternoon than by queuing at the tax office?
As I’ve been away from Sweden for so long, Ethan has never been registered in Sweden and Shaena is not yet a Swedish citizen or resident; we were required to register with the tax office in Sweden to let them know that we are back in the country with the intention to stay for longer than 1 year. The way it works in Sweden is that you, as a resident or citizen, have a ‘personnummer’ (social security number) which is attached to absolutely everything from your video club membership registration to your taxes and benefits. If you are away from Sweden for more than 1 year you have to re-register to get back into the system in order to get access to social insurance, etc. So we did.

The tax office in Stockholm city centre is a busy place, let me tell ya! There were about 60 people in queue in front of us and we patiently waited while the digital number board slowly moved upwards from numbers in the 20’s and upwards to the 70’s. It took a long time and the tax office is not, as you can imagine, the cosiest and most inviting place ever but once it is done it’s done and hopefully we’ll get registered back into Sweden without a snag.

Tuesday – The Big Day! Moving in day and 1st day at work!
It was finally here, the day that all the planning and organizing had been leading up to. Tuesday the 1st of February. This was the day that we moved into our new flat in Stockholm and also the day that I started my new job in our Stockholm office, so lots of nerves as you can imagine! Almost a bit surreal to think that we were finally here and that everything had worked out so well this far. This day had been mapped out and planned with military precision to ensure everything would fit into place without any major glitches. Major Glitches! (thought I’d throw in a ‘How I Met Your Mother’-joke for those of you who appreciate that show.)

The moving company in the UK had told us that they would deliver first thing in the morning and that we had to be at the apartment, keys in hand and make sure that their path would be cleared from snow and such. As we only got access to the flat keys the same morning, we had asked our friend Lasse to do us a favour and pick the keys up from the property management company and drive them out to the flat so that Shaena, Ethan and Antonia could focus on getting out to Kallhäll and meet up with the moving guys and stall them, if needed.

Let me tell you; it was not needed. Despite being sent detailed directions, a picture of our new house and the newly developed road as well as a screenshot from Google Maps, the moving guys arrived at the flat around 4pm that afternoon only to realize that their 18-wheeler would not fit on the newly developed residential streets around our flat and had to figure out a way to get the stuff offloaded and transported the last 100 or so meters up to our flat.

So what do they do? Well, let me tell you: The administrator in their UK branch office had the audacity to phone Shaena in the middle of all of this to suggest that we should find and hire a local moving company to transport all our stuff the last little bit! Shaena responded by saying: “You gotta be kidding me!” and after a bit of jigging around, they managed to find a van that they could load our stuff onto and that would fit on our narrow streets. After 6pm, all our stuff were safely (bar a few breakages) in our new home. All in all a very long day but the help from Lasse and Antonia definitely made things a lot easier! A letter of complaint to Britannia Movers is being typed up as we speak.

…Oh and when Shaena, Ethan and Antonia got to the flat early in the morning, the management company had mixed up all the keys as well so instead of #39 we got the keys to #35 and another new neighbour had been given the wrong set of keys as well… honest mistake I guess and the management company came out as quickly as they could to rectify the situation. Meanwhile, while all of this above was going down I had a fantastic first day at work and for the first time in a very long time I felt really energized at work! Great feeling and I am very excited about the weeks and months to come!

Wednesday – IKEA, we love thee!
Not only had we just moved in to the most amazing flat in the history of flats; when Shaena and the guys walked through the door, IKEA had also kindly left us a 3000 SEK (£300) gift voucher to spend as we please in one of their stores. Not what you’d expect when you move in to a rented flat, eh! With no time to waste; Shaena, Antonia and Ethan headed over to IKEA (which is conveniently located just 15 minutes away by bus/train) to shop, shop, shop! They came back with some really nice stuff to make our home look pretty. Thank you IKEA!

Friday – Opening of the time capsule from John’s storage
Whilst I’ve been away abroad, my dear brother John has kindly stored some of my belongings from my previous flat in Stockholm and on Friday evening John, Mikaela and little Elias came by to drop off these ‘banana boxes’ containing my stuff. I had completely forgotten I had so much stuff left here in Sweden and funny enough, the crockery and pots and pans I had had in storage kind of filled the gap of what we were missing, like a full set of wine glasses and way too many drinking glasses. I also found an old VCR and a flatbed scanner as well as my very old HTML-books from when I first learned how to build websites… and my old ‘Homer Simpson “Doh!” poster’ and school photo books from high school! You know; essential items that a flat nowadays just cannot function without.

Saturday – More unpacking and organizing
Saturday was mostly spent unpacking and organizing and the flat is really starting to come together and look really good! Still a bit of work to be done of course and we still have to fit a few light fixtures as well as install curtain rods and hang curtains but it already feels like home. We love everything about our new home, its surroundings and how well thought through everything is inside the flat as well as outside. We love how the BoKlok concept makes it so easy to live in a child friendly as well as energy efficient environment and how the surrounding area is already fitted out with numerous playgrounds and recycling stations. One step for man, I guess!

Sunday – Swim time!
…and by the way, this is a very long blog entry! ;)
Yesterday we decided to just take a day off from unpacking and organizing and headed out for an afternoon at Eriksdalsbadet, which basically is a huge complex of swimming pools. Someone recommended their kiddy pool section to us and it was really nice! It took Ethan a bit of time to get used to the water and get used to walking in water and on the tiles as he has only been to a swimming pool when he was a bit younger and didn’t walk. We had a great time splashing around and when we were all lookin’ like prunes, we got up, got dressed and headed over to Pizza Hut where we met up with John & Mikaela for dinner.

Monday (present day)
Today was the start of another work week (stating the obvious here) and again, could not be more excited to go in to work!

If you made it all the way through this blog entry in one sitting; well done to you! Pictures to follow…