Leocollage

Vår fina Leo är tre veckor idag och bara jättego'! Min man har klistrat ihop lite nytagna bilder i ett collage! Den ska printas ut hemma på skrivaren och sen snigelpostas till hans släkt i Ungern.

I skrivande stund ligger Leo i den superba Chicco-stolen och för diverse oljud. Det här med bajjsande verkar vara en ansträngande syssla - tarmarna är nog inte igång helt?! Ska ta upp och vagga honom, ev ge honom babymassage samt ge Minifom inför nästa amning utifall han har massa bubblor i magen som plågar?!

På äventyr med två småttingar?!

I em ska jag rulla ut med stora syskonvagnen (vi kallar den "traktorn") och mina två småttingar på 1,5 år (Anthea) och tre veckor (Leo) för första gången - helt själv! Det bär förmodligen av till närmaste parklek så Anthea får utlopp för sitt ouppdämda lekbehov. Tanken var ju egentligen att hon skulle gå på dagis vid det här laget, och leka med alla dagiskompisar några timmar om dagen. Men hon har inte fått plats förrän i slutet av augusti, så tills dess är vi hennes lekkompisar på heltid. Det är ju supermysigt vara med Anthea och upptäcka världen tillsammans med henne, däremot gäller min oro amningen. Bebisen ligger visserligen och sover för det mesta men ammas måste han ju och då kan jag ju inte direkt störta iväg och rädda stortjejjen om hon skulle hamna i trubbel. Ska jag remma fast henne i vagnen medan jag ammar?

Our hood shaken by an earthquake!

Probably most people prefer blog entries introduced by tempting headlines before those with simply plain text. Still I've been resisting to use them as I've considered them superfluous, even glaring. Don't know why. However, through my daily blog reads I've learned to like them and understod that I need to have them too in order to make my blog more interesting. Though making them catchy doesn't seem to be easy. Another change I'm thinkting of is writing in Swedish instead of in English. It's fun with changes!

Back to the headline of this entry. Yes, it's true that an earthquake shook our neighbourhood. It was on Thursday early early in the morning that there was an earthquake, of size 2 on the Richter scale, with its epicenter about 500 meters from our home. The earthquake could be felt on a 5 km distance though either my husband or I felt it as we had just fallen a sleep very deeply. One good thing about living in Sweden is the rare occurence of nature cathastrophies so earthquakes aren't usual here, especielly not in the Stockholm area.

Easy second baby

I'm sweating and have a temperature of 39 degrees! I should lie in bed with my baby, relax and try to breast feed him as much as possible. I've caught a breast inflammation which is hurting a lot, but I'm too boored to stay in bed! I'm starting to understand the meaning of: "It's never the new baby who is the problem". Little brother Leo just eats, sleeps and poo-poo, besides this he needs some love in order to be completely happy. Big sister Anthea on the other hand needs so much more of everything. She's of course uncomfortable with the new situation so she needs much love, attention, patience and security. And then the parents, we need to get used to the new chaos we're thrown into and learn how to keep two small kids happy. It's good to use a large portion of humor in trying to cope with the new situation! But what would this situation look like if we wheren't still in love with each other...

Second Flower Basket Shawl

I've now knitted the same object twise for the first time ever - it's another Flower Basket Shawl!! I blocked and finished it as we where back with our little Leo from the "horror-delivery", see more in below entry. I now understand why my body was acheing so much the last months of the pregnancyand why I started to feel really uncomfortable at the end. I was actually carrying around two more 1-litre milk packages than during my last pregnancy, Anthea only weighed about 3 kg. The FBS projects became my salvation and gave such alleviation - knitting them was my therapy, my meditation!!

Next up're old abandoned projects. First I'll be picking up an old Trellis cardigan project that I was busy with last August.

Leo

After a complicated delivery our five kg baby boy was born on the 7th of May at Karolinska Sjukhus in Solna!! At first his condition seemed so serious he was taken into the intensive neonatal division, which is among the top best neonatal divisions in the whole world! Here he had to stay for two days while he was thoroughly examined. Their safety margins are really high so we could be really safe they wouldn't miss anything serious.

The examinations indicated that his condition wasn't so serious after all and the following three days he was under surveillance at the family neonatal division where me and my husband where offered to stay together with him in a really fancy modern two bed room. We where then sent home but will be giving him some medicin for a few weeks before the finishing check-up. The doctors're really satisfied with his condition and the nurses talks about a "sunshine story"!

However, we are so glad to be home with our "little" lionlike boy. He's red haired, has really strong arms and an impressive chest and at the same time the calmest and softest face. We're seriously thinking of naming him Leo!

Reiterations

In order to take on and complete a knitting project successfully I've learned to know that I need the knitting project to be a bit of a good challenge to me, something that gives a learning experience. Not that the pattern should containg anything indistinct but if I get too boored i tend to leave the knitting project for "tomorrow".

I sense I've learned to know the pattern of my current knitting project too well. I don't make anymore mistakes but just knit mechanically. There's nothing new about knitting a Flower Basket Shawl anymore. However, as I've managed to reach to repeat number seven (out of the nine I intend to make) I'll most likely finish this time! Especially since I need this project so badly in order to distract myself from the looong waiting on my son-to-come, I'm twelve days overtime today! But I'm afraid that this will be the last Flower Basket Shawl in a very long time and still I'd like to have one more in a beige type of colour, as on the picture of the pattern.

More names

I'm boored of waiting, because the baby seems to have no intention of showing up - not what I've sensed anyhow. My only functioning distraction is the second, in short time, Flower Basket Shawl that I started on yesterday. It's also in Garnstudio's alpaca as well as within the lila-plum scale, but this time in the much brigther colour 2920. Today I've come to the middle of the third repeat and it's still slow therapeutic knitting. But, I'm a bit faster than with the first FBS as I don't have to count stitches any longer.

More names to list of names for the baby-to-come: Edward, which means watchman and wealth, or Edwin, which means friend and wealth. These are more my husbands favourites though. I also have favourite names that my husband isn't too fond of such as Georg, which means farmer.

Maybe another Flower basket shawl

Today I went to see my midwife at the Mother Healt Center, at Serafen next to Stadshuset, for the last time. As in my case, in Sweden this midwife is typically not the same midwife that's actually going to assist the mother in giving birth. We did the normal routine examinations and everything looked normal, but she could establish that the baby is much bigger than my daughter was. She believes he's a 4 kg heavy baby. Anthea only weighed 3.1 kg. As I'm seven days overtime she also booked an appointment at Karolinska Hospital in Solna for a "forced delivery" on the 6th of May in case I won't get started naturally.

After a Moussaka lunch at a nearby coffe place we took the city bus to Stickbutiken at S:t Eriksplan and did some serious alpaca yarn purchase as I'll be needing some knitting projects in case the waiting gets too unbearable... I came out from the shop with some balls in colour 6306 (Petroleum Blue) for a baby cardi, possibly this or this, or this baby overall. Also some balls in 2920 ("Cyklamen", don't know it in English) and 0302 (Beige) for possible new shawl projects, maybe another Flower Basket Shawl.

Boob shawl

Voilá, here's the finished and blocked version of my first Flower Basket Shawl. It certainly did grow with the blocking into a size that will be perfect with my new Boob-dress (a special breast feeding adapted dress). I'll have to wait with trying it on till my belly's gone and perhaps I'll post a picture of me wearing it further on.

The sun is shining! But it's still only april, and as we Swedes like to say: "april-weather is never to be trusted". So we're going for a long walk today in order to capture the fantastic spring weather - tomorrow it may be snowing! And best of all, when I strain myself abit the likelyhood that I'll give birth sooner will increase!!! Today - 5 days overtime...

Names names

We've done some further name pondering for the little baby-boy-to-come. As my husbands and daughters names starts with an A we'd like our sons name start with an E, like mine does. Thus we've considered Émile or Emil before and when my husbands father mentioned this name the other night this name was brought to the fore again. The more we consider this name for the baby, the more we like it...

A Flower Basket Shawl

I've finally finished knitting my Flower Basket Shawl though it's still un-finished and un-blocked. The FBS project has been perfect in soothing my restless mind when passing from the planned birthdate to overtime. Now I'm 4 days overtime and if the baby doesn't determine to come soon I'll desperately need to throw myself on to a new knitting project meanwhile I'm waiting. I've no clue what to knit though... I need something that I can finish in just a few days.

The shawl turned out to be pretty small despite my two extra repeats and loose knitting style so I'm really curious to see how much it'll grow with the blocking. I'll pin the wet shawl up on our living-room rug tonight when Anthea has gone asleep so that I can leave it there to dry over night.

Janos of Spain

Grandfather of Anthea came this Wednesday from Spain, where he lives a grand life as a pensioner. He's here to support us with Anthea when we've to go to the delivery and the days after. He's really taking an active interest in everything about Anthea as it was a long time since he saw here and Anthea seems to like him a lot, which is great! I apprechiate the extra help now since I'm so heavy, I'm two days overtime already. But I'm so annoyed that the baby won't show up, though not surprised as Anthea also came overtime. Still I've tried to convince the baby that the sun and the spring actually has finally arrived out here but he doesn't listen so I guess he still likes it better in my belly...

Yesterday the whole bunch of us went to a park nearby, Rålambshovsparken, and Anthea had the opportunity to play as much as she wanted in the "parklek" of this park. "Parklek" is a great service from the Swedish government especially to us inner city citizens! Besides a playingground there's normally a building in connection to it where it's possible to change dipers, shop coffe/tea, cakes, ice cream and some even have hotdogs and hamburgers for sale to put on an outdoor grill. We stayed at this "parklek" from late morning to early afternoon and I managed to do some knitting while watching Anthea play.

I'm slowly proceeding with the FBS but decided to go for two extra repeats. I did some googling yesterday on other bloggers who's done the FBS and noticed that many commented on the size - they meant that the shawl's a bit smallish. As I'm knitting with needles size 4 and the patterns suggests 4.5 I thought I really need these extra repeats. This shawl is my little project as I'm w-a-i-t-i-n-g for my life to move forward to the next level and the new role that it involve, being a two-childrens-mother! It's kind of exciting to see if I manage to finish this project before the delivery...

Another name to the list

Husband came up with a new name suggestion to our list with interesting boy names for our son-to-come. It's actually on top of our list currently because we think it'd fit perfectly phonetically with the other names in our family. The name is: Elliot

Elliot has religious origins as it's a English version of the religious name Elias, which means "Jahve is God". We are really the most non-religious people and to name our son with a religious name would feel kind of uncomfortable. But we think Elliot being just a version of Elias has developed into an own name and thus we believe we'd feel okay with using this name. Well, we'll have to see what we think when we meet our little guy!

Small progresses

Here's where I've reached with my Flower Basket Shawl, soon finished with the third repeat (out of seven). It's slow therapeutic knitting!! I'm making sure I follow the pattern correctly through counting stitches every even row. I'm tending to miss YO:s in this pattern but I'm getting better at it! What I've accompolished so far looks beautiful already which makes me inspired to get going every possible minute I get. Though not when Anthea's around as my capacity to do many things simultaneously is limited and this project demands concentration...

Favourite aunt Anna, or "Nanna" as she's called by Anthea, came to see Anthea yesterday and they played together the whole afternoon. Here they are surfing google for various pictures of animals that Anthea loves to see. Here she expresses that she wants to see butterflies. She's so pretty when she scratches her head like this to illustrate butterflies, they haven't got any "name" yet. Other favourite animals are penguins (g g), especielly Pingu, dogs (vo vo), cats (mjau or ka) and birds (pi pi).

Knitting again

21st of April is approaching rapidly - it's only seven days left to the planned birth date of our son-to-come!!! I'm counting days - no longer weeks or months! Of course it's likely that I'll have to add up to fourteen days to this date, I did so with my first. But as I'm waiting my second and it's close between them (one and a half years) the chances are greater that this baby will come sooner.

I can visualise having our baby at home now! This positivism has spread also to other areas of my life: I've started to knit again!! Even though I shouldn't during this last period of my pregnancy due to the risk of getting "karpaltunnelsyndrom" again. But as it's so little time left I feel the potential problems can't develope into something serious.

So, yesterday I started my first Flower Basket Shawl. The picture to the right does unfortunately not represent the colour I've chosen correctly. It's a Garnstudio's Alpaca yarn in plum colour nr 4400. When starting up this shawl project I had great use of the FBS Cast on Tutorial. Now I've come to the point where I'll be doing my first repeats. I'm knitting while Anthea is asleep or out with her father, but in the evenings I'm too tired to go into advanced counting or pattern reading. However, it's fun knitting again even if a strange feeling of bubbling slowly is creeping up my right hand...

Knitting teacher

I wasn't slow to bite the bait when I was contacted by Folkuniversitetet last week regarding teaching English speaking beginners in knitting this autumn! I'm honestly not a proffessional teacher or knitter, but I truly enjoy supervising besides practicing my English which I had the opportynity to use more frequently when I was doing some IT consulting in UK and France a few years ago. And of course I enjoy knitting a lot. Already in the mid 80s I was hit the first time by knitting euphoria, I was knitting practicly every possible minute of my day including short breaks between school lessons. And ever since I've had more or less intensive periods of knitting and have tried everything from simple sweaters to more advanced lace and cable patterns. So, yesterday I met the people at Folkuniversitetet and we discussed the practicalities and agreed that I'll be holding a course in "How to knit a simple mohair shawl", assuming there will be enough interested participants, once a week over a three week period. The salary isn't high but it really doesn't matter as it's going to be more of a fun thing for me!

Getting ready

Now baby, you're really welcome to our family, any day you like! We've assembled the cradle, washed the baby clothes, bought a new strolley and so on. AND, now I've packed the bag I'll bring with me when it's time to go to the delivery using this Maternity Ward List:

• Mother healt center journal and a peronal ID card
• "How I wish to give birth list"; how I want to have alleviation of pain during the delivery,
  special monitoring of the baby during delivery etc.
• 2-3 sets of baby clothes and possibly a blanket.
  Warm clothes and baby safety arrangements for home transportation
• Comfortable clothes for me, including breast feeding bra, slippers and possibly a dressing gown
• Toilet bag
• Fruit, candy, energy drinks/coca cola, book, magazines.
• Mobile, camera, movie camera and battery chargers.

Still "the health care chrisis" is out there, somehwere. I know, I know ... I shouldn't worry about the problems with being forwarded to another hospital when it's time. But, it's difficult to avoid the facts! The newspapers constantly writes about the healt care chrisis when it comes to for example the limited amount of maternity ward rooms. Especially spring time according to my midwife... but what does it help me now?

And oh yes, there is really nothing I can do about it through worrying and actually I don't too much. But, I can't help but feeling a bit ironic about my situation when I for example read today, again, in one of our local Kungsholmens news papers about: the hospitals, among which my hospital was mentioned, who's sending out an alarm - they mean that the current situation involve jeaopardizing the mothers and childrens saftey! They say that in May there'll be 140 more mothers who will give birth than planned. Already in March 92 to-become-mothers where turned down (and assumingly forwarded somewhere else) from Karolinska (where I belong). E he he, what can one say? Always look on the bright side of life ... ta, dam, ta, dam, da, dam, da dam... perhaps?!

Eating and breathing

The web magazine Knitty's Spring issue was published today stuffed with free knitting patterns! I liked specially the mens pullover Jamesey and the scarf/necklace Nagano sacura, but I would likely not knit any of these, at least not in the nearest future.

I love all kinds of pirogues and tonight I tried to make Chilean Pirogues, Pitingas Empanadas, for the first time. They where each stuffed with minced lamb mix containing onions, red chili pepper etc, one olive, one wedge of a hard boiled egg and a few raisins, according to a recipe in Kärlek, oliver och timjan (Love, olives and thyme) by Anna Bergenström. I baked and served the ugliest ones tonight and freezed the rest unbaked, also according to the recipe. I've tried them before at different occasions, once at a Chilean familys place, and they turned out to be as good as I remembered them!!

Anna Wilsby writes about her popular propfylaxis method "Anna's prophylaxis" in the book Innan du föder (Before you give birth). Lately my husband has read loud to me from it almost every night. It is really fruitful reading and we feel much more comfortable in front of this delivery to come! It goes through mental goal focusing, relaxation, breathing, how the partner can coach through the delivery etc. I can warmly recommend this book!

Women and men

My finest came home with a bouquet of these and said he had enjoyed his day at town on his own! He visited a few shops at Hötorget and enjoyed a special oriental burger at Hötorgshallen, then took the tube to Södemalm visited some more shops and finally enjoyed a cappuchino at our favourite café ... but he didn't find anything for himself! We men and woman are so different. If I'd have had a day of my own at town (and had the energy for it...) I'd come home with a nice spring blouse, new make up, perhaps a new bag or some other accessories, chocolate, new toys and clothes for Anthea and the baby to come ... and oups forgotten bo buy something for my beloved one. Still he's the most important one to me!