A bronze in sailing.

The team of Fredrik Lööf and Anders Ekström received a bronze medal today for sailing.

A silver in horse jumping.

Rolf-Göran Bengtsson received the silver medal in horse jumping or whatever it is technically called. :)

Just plain nasty.

This morning.. some time after breakfast..
Leia had just crawled into the living room from the dining room.. she started gagging and coughing.

She opened her mouth and threw up.
It was mostly saliva and a few white chunks of her baby cereal.

I cleaned it up and was holding her and all of a sudden.. a piece of grass poked through her little lips. And I pulled.. and pulled and pulled it out.

It was 3 inches (7½cm) long.. :/
No wonder she gagged and threw up. :/

Wrong bus.

Leia was a much happier baby today and back to her normal silly self. :) Not sure what was bothering her yesterday but today she was lots of fun. :)

She is becoming more cuddly and reacts more to what Fredrik and I do and how we react to her. She loves for us to watch her and she loves our attention. She likes to see our reactions to things she does. :)

Fredrik started taking the bus to work today!
We decided it was for the best. Gasoline prices in Sweden are ridiculous at over 9$ a gallon! Travelling to work, he probably easily spends 300$ a month on gas. His bus card is about 120$. That is a lot of money to save. The bad thing is that.. the buses don't go as often as they should.

But on the way home Fredrik got on the bus with the number to go to Åmål, but the bus didn't go to Åmål, it went to Billingsfors. :/ :D He wasn't very happy. :/ So he found a bus that went back to Bengtsfors and then he drove his work car home. Hopefully tomorrow he can figure out what went wrong.

It has been a pretty quiet day otherwise. :) Fredrik did enjoy taking the bus though. :) Just have to figure out which one he needs to take to get home. :)

How was your day?

Horrible.
But thanks for asking.

I just sneezed 3 times. :/ And the last one hurt. :/

Leia screamed all day. :/ ALL day.
Fredrik said she was moody this morning when he got up with her, and I guess she stayed that way all day. :/ She would drop a toy and scream, she would.. slip on her pants while crawling and start crying.. It was just awful. :/ Not a fun day.

I decided to take a walk. I needed to get out of the house. So we went to the greenhouse nearby. It was the closest place to go to get back in good time for her 2nd nap (which she didn't take today). But we spent some time there talking to the owner. The little stores near our house have watched Leia grow up. :/ :) One of the cashiers at the tiny grocery store always comes from around her register and pokes and talks to Leia. :)

But I bought some plants and two.. krukor.. ahh.. the word in English.. :/ a flower pot (thank you Fredrik!) .. I kept wanting to call it a pot holder. :/ But anyways.. buying something when you're having a bad day always makes you feel better (that and chocolate). But not like it was ME having the bad day, but.. if Leia has a bad day, then I have a bad day too.

She screamed if I held her, she screamed if I sat her down, she screamed if I put her in her high chair, she screamed if I gave her a toy, she screamed if I took away the remote control from her little fingers.. It was a super-fun day !!! :T

But when she took her morning nap, I carried the (heavy) coffee table from the guest room into the living room.

Leia's side. Books on top and then in the drawers are some toys.

Our side. Mommy's laptop and the remote controls.

The thinner bookshelf.

I'm anxiously awaiting our new chair to be delivered. :))

The wider bookcase.


We really regret not having bought Lori's couch. She offered it to us at an unbelievably awesome price, but we didn't think it would work in the room ... but now we wish we had taken it. :/ We need a bigger couch. We need the sitting room. :/ And we need something in front of the radiators to keep little fingers from getting burnt during the Winter months. :/ But too late now, she has already sold it to a neighbor. :)

Fredrik's workmate, Owe, had their baby.. well his girlfriend had the baby.. but anyways.. it was a boy. :)

And my bestest friend ever, Carie, is having a.. GIRL! :)) They found out yesterday. :)

Ehhh.. it is late now. Fredrik and I had a movie night, but we got started late because we wanted to catch the reruns of some Olympic stuff that we missed during the day.

So it is bed time.. and some hope for a happier baby tomorrow. :(
It is very tiring when she is cranky. :/

A delicious dinner.

We had a fantastic time at Lori and Kent's house yesterday. :) Lori fixed some delicious ribs, which she thought was too salty, but they were delicious. :) It was great to chat and share experiences about living in Sweden. Chat about life. It was fun to be social. :)

We brought home some of their furniture and it looks great upstairs in the hallway. :) Now we just need our new chair delievered from MiO. And Lori gave us some A&W Root Beer. Yum!! :) A whole case of 24. :)) You can find it here and there in a grocery store if you are lucky, but only individual cans. She had some from the US and gave me some. :) Very nice of her. :)

Lori, Bonnie, and Kent. Roger was out getting some air. :)

I can't believe I didn't take more pictures. :/
Leia got to play with a dog for the first time. :) She got some doggie kisses and she absolutely loved it. :))

Fredrik took this picture yesterday of the sunset. :) The sky was beautiful.

Uh-oh.

Leia's new favorite "word" is "Uh-oh." :)
We went grocery shopping today and she said "uh-oh" through the whole store. :) One time when I was washing dishes and she was sitting in her high chair in the kitchen, and she dropped something and she said "hey-ho." :/ :))) Close enough. :)

I think it was yesterday and I dropped something on the floor while feeding her (a papertowel or something), and I reached down to pick it up. At the same time, she leaned over to see what fell, and she lightly bumped heads and we both started laughing at the same time. :) We laughed so much that Pappa had to come see what we were doing. :))

So now if I lean my head to hers, she will lightly bump heads and start laughing. :))

Some pictures from yesterday:







And some pictures from today:

We've noticed that.. one she notices the camera, she makes the same face, so I have about 30 pictures from today with the same expression. :/ :) They all look the same.










I'm not sure about that last one there. :/ :)
We think her teeth are bothering her a little.

And yes, she is in her walker again. She goes around and around and around between the living room and dining room.

She is walking. :) She is venturing from the furniture. :)
She will walk back and forth between the coffee table and couch. :) And when she wants to try to walk, she will let go of the couch and stand there and bend her knees a little and get momentum and either take a step and fall or take a couple of steps and quickly grab the nearest furniture, etc..

But we have officially documented that she has taken her first steps. :) She does it purposefully. She is trying her hardest. And she loves every minute of it. :)

She is eating better, which we are very greatful for.

On Thursday, our American friend Bonnie, and her husband, Roger, stopped over for several hours. It was great to sit and chat and we had some lunch. They had a dentist appointment in town and wanted to bring me some English books (Daniel Steel), about 30-40 books! How awesome! It was great to have some visitors and be social. :)

I made tons of cookies today and some chocolate covered strawberries. :) We are having a dinner tomorrow with Bonnie, Roger, and another American, Lori, and her Norwegian husband Kent. We'll have a BBQ and have ribs, corn on the cob, potato salad.. all the works. :)) Lori and her husband will soon be moving to Norway to be with Kent's mother, so we won't get to see them too much in the future. :( But we are definitely looking forward to tomorrow. :)

Since Lori and Kent are moving, they are selling some of their furniture, so we bought a few things from them, two bookcases and a coffee table. We'll be taking a trailor tomorrow to bring everything home.

But now I want to get to bed.. It is almost 22.00 now and I'm pretty tired. :P

We're having fun watching the Olympics, even though the wrestler had his medal taken away because of having left his bronze medal on the podium. Everyone here is supporting him 110%. If anything we can hope this will better wrestling for the future. (It is a very corrupt sport.)

Goodnight!

First blood.

Leia had her first.. accident today. :/

She was crawling over Mommy's leg and she.. went downwards very quickly against the floor and hit her new teeth against the hardwood flooring.. :/ Her lips were swollen and she had a little blood. And of course she screamed, but she got over it fairly quickly. :)

I think.. her gums just got pushed back and her tooth came through the gums more and that is why it was bleeding. And she might have cut her lip, too, on the teeth.

She was soon chewing on her toys, so no permanent damage. :)



And yes, that is a picture of Leia in her walker (going backwards).. she hasn't used it in ... 3 months or so and now she wants to be in it. Whatever. :)

And a blurry picture of her teeth. Blury? EHhh.. whatever.. I'm tired.

A disappointing bronze, Sweden's 3rd.

Sweden won a bronze medal today, which probably should have ended up being a silver or gold. Ara Abrahamian won the silver medal in the last olympics but this year, after a few bad calls, strange wrestling rules, and a bed ref ... he lost his match and had to play for the bronze medal instead of the silver/gold.

He left his medal on the podium in protest.

10 months today.

Today is Leia's 10-month birthday. :)

And a picture of Leia enjoying her bath time with Pappa. :) She is fine with him feeding her now. We didn't give her the option of having me and she took what she could get. :))

She slept until 07.30 this morning. I had to wake her up. :) We didn't complain. :/ :) And she slept well today, too. I even took a nap. I fed her and put her in bed and I went and got in my bed, and she slept for over 2 hours and I slept for almost 2 hours. Very nice to just put her in bed and let her fall asleep herself. :) I surely thought she would scream to be taken out of bed but she slept. :)

I think she is.. getting used to the idea of what she has to do each day. She starts to complain when it is food time or bath time. We think she knows when something is supposed to be happening.

She was a good baby today. :) Very happy and easy to take care of. :) I wish all the days were like today. :)) She is even eating better. We give her some of my homemade bread to play with and sometimes some slices of cheese. She will eat it and play with the bread and she is so distracted that she is eating anything that we offer her. And she gets lots of good things from the bread and cheese that a growing baby needs.

We ordered the chair! We did that yesterday. It will take 4-5 weeks for it to show up. :( Ugh.. didn't think it would take that long. We narrowed it down between two completely different types of material, and the colors were also completely different. One Fredrik prefered and the other I prefered, but we both liked both of them. We ended up going with the one I prefered, but now I worry that it was the wrong choice. I prefer the texture of the material, but I am afraid the color is too light. But too late now.. :D But we love the chair though. Derby The material is.. softer than what is shown. And we got a cream color with a bit of beige if I remember correctly. The other one we thought about was a tan color and we thought the other color would match our other furniture better if we ever wanted to put it in another room. And we had to consider present wall colors and future wall colors. Blah blah blah... Can't wait until it shows up!! And the material is removeable and machine washable, so that is also very nice.