Happy Mother's Day

Today is mother's day here in North America. In Sweden mother's day is on the last Sunday of May and in the UK it falls on one Sunday in March I can't remember which.

Funny story about the UK mother's day. As you may or may not know I lived for some years in the UK. I spent about a year and a half in Brighton first studying for six months, then bartending and living in a hostel for about a year. It was fun. Then London for six months and then Sweden for six months and then back to London for a year and a bit before moving here.
I have never been good at remembering such occasions as mother's day or father's day so I usually went by the advertisements for flowers that tend to show up a couple of weeks before the event. So my first year in England I did just that. It's early March and everywhere signs for mother's day are showing up in flower shop windows so I promptly buy a card for my mom write something sweet in it and send it off thinking I've been good and have done my duty as a good daughter. A couple of days later I get a phone call from mom asking me why I'm sending her mother's day cards in March when mother's day isn't until May. Well I told her I like to be early so I'm just making sure she'll have her card on time. I ended up having to send her another one in May anyway.

Because mother's day here in Canada and in Sweden both fall in May just on different Sundays I have been told I will not get to celebrate both since my hubby is clearly too cheep and too lazy to do special treats for me twice in one month. Father's day is another thing though. Father's day here in Canada is in June. I know this because W was born on Father's day thereby saving me the hassle of having to buy something for hubby since I had already given him the ultimate present. About four months later we went to Sweden to show off our new baby and have him baptised. It was November and we scheduled the baptism for the 10Th which was a Saturday since the church had decided to do baptisms on Saturdays rather than Sundays. We get there and what do you know father's day in Sweden is in November. The 11Th of November that particular year so apparently we have to celebrate both. Now how is this fair. W is born in June so both Canadian and Swedish (and UK's for that matter) mother's day are gone but hubby gets 2 father's days!

Well today is my second mother's day. Last year I got a flowerbed with a flower and this year I got a beautiful homemade card from W.






So to all mother's and grand-mother's Happy Mother's Day! May you be pampered and loved all day (and everyday).

Woow-eeee!

In the past couple of weeks W has gone from sweet little boy to tape recorder. He hears everything I say and he repeats it back to me (us). This is awfully cute most of the time. He's gotten so good at the communicating business that it sometimes hard to understand that he understands us so well. I swear he understands French a lot better than me already the little bugger.

Watching Sesame street in the comfy chair.

Anyways, in the beginning of December to get into the Christmas spirit we started watching the advent calendar on SVT online (Swedish TV) every day and J started watching "How the Grinch stole Christmas" with him. At first we weren't realizing that we were actually making him watch TV since all we were doing was watch YouTube. But now we know that our plan to keep him TV free at least until he's 2 failed.

We console each other and try to make ourselves feel better by saying things like: "He only watches movies and limited clips we show him, not any TV", "We always watch it with him, so if he has questions or he points to anything we can explain to him" and "We don't use it as a babysitter". But I think we both feel a bit like failed parents.

At least he's got a healthy snack!

The good thing about the things we make him watch is that he loves it. He asks constantly for "the Goou" (the Grinch) and "Woow-eeee" (Wall-E) and the other day when he realized that there's a picture of Elmo on his diapers he pointed and said "La La La" (as in "Elmo's Song").

He has also as you can probably understand graduated from "Feist on Sesame Street" to "Wall-E", "101 Dalmatians" and "Howl's moving castle". He even watched an episode of "Sesame Street" since we just got PBS.

So cute my little man.

He's talking up a storm now, he repeats everything. J taught him to say "kickass" the other day so he's now walking around saying "kickack". It's fun when they start talking. I can listen to him all day. He's so cute, and he's got the cutest voice. Unfortunately most of his words sounds the same, they all sounds like "Bambe" bambe, means water, Bamse, blanket, poopoo and many other things so sometimes you have to guess.

Tomorrow we're off to the museum with Julie, we're gonna see the Warhole exhibition before it leaves Montreal on January 18. I think W will like it but we'll see tomorrow.

Playing in the snow

Don't know what to think of this new year yet. So far it's been a bit up and down. It's been very cold too.

Since I hadn't taken W out in like over a week or so to play I decided to take him to the park even though it was like -15°C (that's 5°F for all of you who know that scale better). I could not feel my toes when we got back in and W had deliciously red cheeks. We stayed out for like 15 minutes all in all and I swear it took longer getting dresses and undressed before and after. That's life with a toddler.

I finally booked mine and W's tickets to Sweden this week too. We're leaving here on January 29th and land there on January 30th and we go back on February 9th so mark your calendars and send me your requests for days. I'll be making our schedule shortly and I would really like to squeeze as many of my lovely friends in there as possible.

I'll leave you with a browsing tip and an old photo of W from last winter since I didn't have any recent ones of him sitting in snow.