A better morning!

Leia screamed until 21.00 last night. At that point, when I put her to bed she fell asleep and didn't make a peep the rest of the night! I went in to wake her up at 08.00 this morning, and she was laying in bed, stretching, with a smile on her face. :) She was well rested and happy.

She has been happy all morning. She found "treasure" in the kitchen. And she played with my stainless steel IKEA bowls much of the morning and she thoroughly enjoyed herself. :)

She wouldn't eat any breakfast, one look at the different brand of gröt and she wouldn't take one bite. She drank her milk and took a couple of bites of toast from Mom and Dad, but that was that. She did eat a banana though for mellanmål, something she hasn't done for awhile.

She has been napping for about 2 hours now. And we are hoping she will still be in a better mood when she wakes up. :)

Her behavior was completely different today. And it is a little scary almost how she can so quickly go from one extreme to the other. When she dropped something today or it didn't go exactly where she wanted it, she would just say "Uh-oh" or "oj" and continue. Yesterday she would have screamed for one hour instead.

The only little tantrum she had this morning was when we were brushing her teeth. She *loves* to brush her teeth, and when I turned the water off and took her tooth brush, she had a "normal" baby tantrum that easily passed over.

Sure we can deal with tantrums and a grumpy baby.. but when that is ALL you get for such a looong stretch of time - it can really tear you down.

Last night when she wouldn't stop screaming, I would hold out my hands and ask her if she wanted to sit on my lap. She started hitting me and scratching me in the face. Then Fredrik would reach for her and hold out his arms, and she went running away from him and pushed herself against the wall and held out her arms so he couldn't get close to her. It was as if she was afraid of us or didn't know who we were. And that isn't exactly a fun thing to experience as a parent.

But we are so happy that she was at least happier this morning - even if she has a bad afternoon, it will make it easier to deal with since we had a nice break from that behavior this morning.

Pictures.

Even with Leia being extremely difficult to care for this week, I did manage to take a few snapshots here and there inbetween tantrums.



























Today there was a market in town. Fredrik asked me if I'd like to go, so we took the walk into town and looked at the same stands that are there for every market. We bought some more cat stickers for Leia and another sticker book. And a little bit of cheap candy. It was SO incredibly crowded.. :/ Leia was very cranky while we were there, but we stuck it out and ignored* her and tried to enjoy ourselves anyways.

Some pictures of town:















Leia completely hates swinging in the swing now, so instead we let her go down the slide a couple of dozen times, which she thoroughly enjoyed.

We try to start each day fresh and new, hoping that it will lead to a happier baby. Seeing as for a couple of hours this morning Leia was perfectly fine and happy, but it quickly turned and went downhill. So here's to hoping that tomorrow will bring a slightly less cranky baby (because we would be fine if that is what we could get).


* This does not mean we ignored HER - but her tantrums......

Patience.

Leia is drawing our patience thin.
We are completely tired of her and her behavior.
All she does is scream all day long.

For awhile it had gotten better, then it was slowly going downhill again, and now it has hit rock bottom like it has been most of her life.

She just screams all the time, she is angry and aggressive.
We honestly don't know what to do about it.

About 2 weeks ago she started coughing and it slowly kept getting worse. On Tuesday they called me after a couple hours of daycare to come and pick her up, because she was just coughing all the time and I don't think they wanted to deal with it. So we kept her home last week and told them she'll come back after she stops coughing. Fredrik called the BVC and the nurse called Leia's pediatrician and he gave her a prescription for some cough medicine. It has gotten a little better, and the cough is much looser, which doesn't really mean anything - because we want to know why she has the cough in the first place.

So she is coughing and gagging .. and screaming.
She is sleeping a lot.. But last night she didn't sleep at all, she tried - but kept waking up every 10-30 minutes standing in her bed screaming like crazy.

She won't eat anything. She acts hungry, and she is hungry - because she tries like mad to climb into her high chair (barnstol), but she won't eat anything. The "good days" are the days I can get her to drink.

She has had one tooth poke through the top, and the other 3 front ones are looking like they are trying to come in as well. Which makes her angry and all that. But she is just SO excessive. And I don't get a break from it at all, and Fredrik gets a bit of a break at work. But we are so tired of it. She is NEVER happy. She just walks around screaming.

She'll hand me something and I don't know what she wants me to do with it, so I'll just do different things with it. She starts screaming because I'm not doing the right thing and then she grabs it from me and then throws it at me very hard. She is incredibly aggressive with us and very violent. Sometimes what she throws is books, and it can really hurt. :/

Most of the time she is laying on the floor screaming non-stop. On Friday she screamed from when she woke up in the morning until her nap (4 hours straight).

We try to ignore her, seeing as we can never satisfy her.
But it is getting past the point of being over stressful for us.
It is giving me horrible headaches and making me on edge.

We don't mind her having a bad day or whatnot, as everyone does. And of course she can't express herself -- but we can't deal with her any more. Anything we offer her or give her she takes it and throws it at us.

Even though we have beautiful weather, we have to keep the doors shut, so as to not let everyone hear how loudly she is screaming. We are secretly hoping someone will call Social Services, so maybe Fredrik and I can get a break, and she can scream in someone else's face for awhile. (I have a feeling they would return her very quickly.)

We get very jealous of other parents. Their children sitting still or happily playing .. and then we can't go anywhere because Leia screams no matter what happens. She won't play with her toys or look at her books. She either stands and screams or lays on the floor and screams.

Forget about my Spring Cleaning task - I can't even keep up with the normal housework when she is home from daycare. Now she is home from daycare and I can't keep up with anything.

She is a horror.

Reading in the tub.

Videos.

I have many videos that I haven't had a chance to upload for different reasons. One because my computer died and I lost track of things I was doing. Another reason because Fredrik's computer died and we lost the program that we used to make the videos lesser quality so they can upload. So I hope to go back and put on some videos that I was hoping to share.

Here is one for starters:

December pictures

A bit late, but here are pictures from the month of December.

And then some pictures from Christmas as well.


I don't dislike Fotopages at all, but I think I am going to continue picture archiving with a different website. My friend Carie is using one that seems pretty nice so I am going to take a look at that one. :)
With Fotopages I can only upload 6 pictures at a time, and when you have 300-500 pictures for one month, that can be time consuming. :)

Baby rake.

Leia *loves* to play with the rake. So we decided to get her one of her own. But she still prefered the bigger one. :))

Teething.

Yeah.. :/ Leia is teething and it is pretty bad. :(
After her nap yesterday, she was really warm - so I took her temperature and it was about 101.7 degF (38,7 degC). So we gave her some Baby Tylenol and it went down without a problem.

She won't eat much of anything at all. :/ She'll eat about a ½ of a banana, and a rice cake here and there. And some cheerios, but she isn't eating much more than that right now. Even after giving her some baby orajel, she still doesn't want to eat. :( So we hope this quickly passes for her.

She has a horrible, horrible cough too. :( So things aren't too fun for her right now. :( Her throat gets really dry and she has a dry cough. It gets so bad sometimes that she starts gagging. :( Fredrik will call the BVC tomorrow and see if there is anything that we can give her to help.

She will drink milk, juice and water without a problem, so we are encouraging as much of that as possible.

Leia made a few Easter things at daycare last week. :) Here they are:





Thumb-print chicks in some grass. :) And then the egg shell has some seeds in it and it was supposed to grow - so said Leia's daycare teacher, but nothing has happened so far.. :/ :) She also colored a few pictures as well.

And as per Swedish Easter tradition, some branches with colorful feathers, to welcome in the budding trees of Spring:







This is the first year that I've ever done the branches ... my husband thinks it is silly.. :P But this year I didn't give him a say in the matter. :)


Today we did go to Töcksfors, and even though Leia was under the weather, we had a fantastic day! :) Leia slept in the stroller most of the time we were there. But if we stayed in a store for too long, she would get warm and start coughing a lot and wake up. :/ But we kept her asleep and we enjoyed our day. :)

We had nothing else to do today, so we decided there was no use to sit inside by ourselves. Not saying that going shopping was the best solution, seeing how crummy the economy is and all.. But like I said - we wanted something to do and we had a nice day. :)

We bought a final gate for the house. We put it between the kitchen and stair hallway. That way Leia can run around inside and we can keep an outside door open without worrying about her leaving the house. It will give her more freedom downstairs. She isn't so thrilled about it right now, but hopefully she'll get over it soon enough. :)

Fredrik bought me a present too. ;) Always nice. :))
I wanted a bag to take with me on our trip to the US. Since we will have a bookbag and baby bag full of extra clothes for the 3 of us, and tons of baby items - I wanted a small purse to go over my head that would be easy to carry around and keep track of all of our tickets and passports, etc..

We looked for little toys or things to take on the plane with us for the flight. I thought that stickers would be good for her. So I picked out cat stickers (she *loves* cats) and a sticker book. We also bought a set of stackable cups. Won't take up much room in the luggage, and she loves to stack things, so hopefully we can keep track of those on the plane and she will find it entertaining and it will keep her busy.

We also bought some American items at one of the grocery stores there. Not as much as we would have liked seeing as everything is sooo expensive (import taxes), but we bought some favorites. :)

Fredrik and I had a movie night tonight and watched a Western with Clint Eastwood. The Unforgiven. Great film. :)

Tomorrow Fredrik goes back to work, Leia goes back to daycare, and I will continue Spring cleaning and try to start studying for my Swedish driver's license.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Yesterday we spent some of the day in Nössemark and had Easter dinner with Leia's Farmor and Farfar, Aunt Anna, and cousin Kalle. We had ham, homemade meatballs, little sausages, homemade bread, cheeses and potatoes.

Today we are having an easy day. Cleaning up from Friday's mess (Farmor always brings lots of things that we have to find places for). Tomorrow we are planning on going shopping in Töcksfors, near Norway. We aren't sure yet if we are going.. Leia has been a little weird the last couple of days. She is coughing a lot, and her nose is runny, and she is a bit moody. We think it is a growth thing. So we'll see how she is feeling tomorrow.

Cousin Kalle.

On Friday Leia got to meet her one and only Swedish cousin, Kalle (a week shy of turning 2 years old), for the first time. They were both a little shy at first, but they opened up a bit to each other as time went on. :)