Command

F isn't very well again, she's got some cold or other. Twin green streaks from her nostrils, mild fever, a bit shivery. Nothing serious. So she's been curled up on the sofa with me watching The Little Mermaid in Swedish. Den Lilla Sjöjungfrun - The Small Lake Maiden, according to Google Translate. No cigar.

At some point (around Triton's destruction of Ariel's collection, iirc. Not that I was watching avidly or anything), she got bored and wandered off. A few minutes later, she appeared again in front of the TV, holding a plastic matching shape from one of her toys, a green star with Donald Duck on it, and started waving it at me and then the TV.

This is a surrogate for the tv remote, which she grudgingly concedes she's not allowed. The Duck is her new favourite - waving it in front of my line of vision is an indication I should put Donald on. No alternatives are acceptable.

It's hard getting used to having a tiny person who understands what's going on and knows what she wants. We were out for a walk a few afternoons back, wondering what to do after eating lunch. "I bet she'd like some carrot cake somewhere," I said to V, on my way to suggesting fika somewhere later on.

"Car ca'?" said F immediately, perking up and then throwing a massive tantrum because we then walked past a cafe she knows sells it instead of taking her in.

Being raised bilingual has this disadvantage, that we won't have a secret language. My parents used French until we started secondary school. F doesn't speak French. Nor does V. And I'm not sure what I can do to that language counts as speech, exactly. We can spell things out, I guess, but that won't last forever. I mean, it took our old labrador Rocket about two weeks to work out what W-A-L-K meant, and he was thick as a post. Adorable too, but even so.

She still doesn't speak much, mostly using single words and pointing. Or clinging to whatever surface is available if she doesn't agree with whatever course of action you've just suggested. Trying to prise a 12.6 kg baby from your facial hair in an attempt to put her on the changing table is increasingly quite a feat. She can virtually pull a headstand in midair to avoid being put on the floor. It's like trying to push repelling magnets together.

Her newest control method for parents is to grab your finger and then put it on what she wants. Particularly on the iPad, where even though she knows how to do a jigsaw puzzle by dragging and dropping pieces, she knows it's faster if you do it for her.

-

I dreamt of dusting last night. I fear for my mental health, the war on housework is taking a toll. And I would take lakes of burning fire and demonic hayforks over matching socks. In fact, a classical hell holds no sway with me. An infinite pile of near-identical once-black socks, that would get the old fear of death going. There's probably a pun about emperilling your mortal sole in it for those with a penchant for such things.

Ah well. You should always follow your dreams, I suppose. Back to work for me.

-

More Recent Frejish: -

Murmur - put the The Little Mermaid on, Daddy
Pra' - I will now consume your expensive restaurant prawns, Mummy
Mor peeth - More please, although you only get the 'peeth' by prompting and witholding at the moment
Gum - Strawberries, hence, I like this food. Short for Jordgubbar, I think. Not to be confused with
Gom - Gollum

Walk On

This has been an exhausting month. Hence the lower than usual number of blog posts, I guess. Nobody is likely to read 'o god I'm so tired' over and over again.

F can walk. Also climb, run, and spin on the spot until she falls over whilst chanting 'go go go!' About two months ago, F would only walk if she could hold on to both my hands and use me as a giant walking machine. I'm convinced that the popularity of giant walking machines in sci-fi harks back to our childhood memories of being walked about by a seemingly omnipotent parental figure, as a passing note*. But back then, I'd have given my eyeteeth to get a reprise from perpetually zimmering her round the world.

She started walking properly around a month ago, roughly. And in a few short weeks, this is now how she gets everywhere. She can stand upright from prone unaided, occasionally with a bumped head and a sorrowful look. I'd never have thought this would be more tiring, more nerve-wracking and more trouble than being constantly called upon to ferry her about. Which I still am, of course - walking is all well and good for fifteen minutes or so, then you need a horsey ride. Or a lift over a wall, or up a slide, or something, and god help your dad if he doesn't deliver pronto.

But if all the backache is a bit better now, thanks, the mental torment of walking into a room to find her teetering upright on the edge of the sofa and clearly contemplating a stage dive on to the corner of the coffee table is much much worse. I know I can't fling myself four metres accurately in the split second it will take her to topple. I also know I will almost certainly try if she does. And almost certainly make things worse, of course.

There was one blissful afternoon a few weeks back, at a friend's outdoor birthday party, when F first exhibited the independence that comes with independent motive ability. Once we arrived, she instantly buggered off to play with her friend's toys and relatives and left me feeling a bit spare. It reminded me of the teenage parties I'd gone to with girlfriends who weren't all that keen to remain such. "Take my coat, see you in five hours," that kind of vibe.

Once I'd relaxed, it was great. F would swan past riding a toy car or clutching a ball from time to time. From the safety of a deckchair, I could monitor her whereabouts and rescue her if she was wandering too far off. In a nice safe enclosed garden area, this was fine. Somehow, in the comfines of our flat, it's not - she gets out of eyeshot all the time.

I need to get used to this. I can't. There's a razor's edge between concerned parenting and becoming a one-man Nanny State, and it's a razor I'm slowly sawing myself in half on.

-

Bra adverts (bradverts?) irritate the hell out of me. They aren't marketing anything I'm likely to buy, and yet they're entirely designed to grab my poor, libidinous male attention. Manttention, if we're coining new words today. It's hardly difficult to get the lizard in my hindbrain to blink, so to speak, so it's inordinately aggravating to have that reflex manipulated by some lazy creative design nob lounging about in his relaxed penthouse office somewhere in Shoreditch.

Nothing about them really makes sense to me. If they want to sell to women, why have all the models got such provocative poses? If they want to sell to men, why are the models still wearing the bras? I 'm familiar with some of the theories touted about to explain this. That women apparently like to buy stuff they see on successful/attractive looking women and that men will basically buy rotting meat if you lean some on a partly-clad woman. But it all strikes me as the kind of reasoning put about by people, mostly men, who need to justify spending their client's budget by hanging out at underwear model shoots.

I am doubly annoyed that such ads work well enough that it annoys my wife when my hapless gaze falters on them. I'm trebly annoyed when they almost have my daughter's name printed over the pouting tresses of some artlessly posed harlot in a two-piece. Thanks very much, bra manufacterer Freya, for the awful dints you've delivered to my parental peace of mind with your recent carpet bombing of Gothenburg's tram stops. It's been the mental equivalent of a pogo stick to the balls every hundred yards on a daily basis for over a fortnight.

-

We took F to Liseberg, the local Alton Towers Analogue, today. Today was Swedish Mothers' Day, and was lovely sunny weather. Sunny weather does to Swedes what a swift kick to the bike does to wasps - they come seething out in an agitated state, determined to get satisfaction.

Even if I hadn't had the mental equivalent of a pogo stick to the balls every hundred yards on a daily basis for over a fortnight, after a month of being slowly sawn in half by giant razor, taking your speed freak and strong-willed daughter to an amusement park for the first time in her life was going to be a shattering event. Not for the first time, I am reminded that parenthood is the brick wall that just keeps on hitting.

*In my current, depleted state, if I was a mech, I'd be an Urbanmech. Bonus nerd points if you understand why this is funny.

Feeding Time

F's Sausage 'n' Pasta

Ingredients

2-3 frankfurter-style sausages, chopped into bite-sized pieces
1 medium onion, chopped or sliced
Olive oil for frying
2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
2 mushrooms, finely diced
1 carton of chopped tomatoes (390g or similar)
2 tbsp white wine (there's a kind in Sweden that's for cooking and has no alcohol in it, but whatever)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 vegetable stock cube
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 dl hot water
1/2 can of sweetcorn (about 75g)
Pasta, as much as you like

Method

1. Put Peppa Pig on.
2. Take F back into the sitting room to watch Peppa Pig.
3. Fry the onions until soft in a large pan over a medium heat.
4. Repeat step 2.
5. Add the sausages (really any kind of sausage would do, I think) and continue to fry until they've gone good and brown. Or until you need to repeat step 2 again. Or until you need to explain to F why hot things mustn't be touched.
6. Add the garlic and mushrooms, fry a little longer whilst stirring.
7. Put the water in a little jug and mix in the stock cube. If you've just discovered the mushrooms in the fridge have sprouted white hair, as I did this morning, you can crumble in some dried mushrooms too. Chanterelles are good.
8. Remove the glass tumbler you left on your desk last night from F's possession and explain why crying isn't going to get it back.
9. To the pan, add the chopped tomatoes, white wine, vinegar, thyme, oregano and paprika. Once this is boiling, which won't take long, stir in the tomato paste and the stock.
10. Pick F up, show her what you're cooking, explain it isn't ready yet and repeat step 2.
11. While you're repeating step 2, change the channel, because PP's theme song is probably giving you what feels like a brain tumour by now.
12. Reduce the sauce for at least ten minutes, until it's got a nice syrupy gloss to it. You can cook the pasta at the same time, depending on how long your pasta takes. Fusili and penne work well. You can also change nappies or remember that there are no clean toddler tumblers to hand and do some washing up.
13. Just before serving, stir in the sweetcorn. F doesn't like it cooked, nor do I.
14. Be aware as you serve that there is now at least one stuffed toy placed somewhere near your feet.
15. Pour the sauce over the pasta, slice some fresh cucumber or salady stuff to go with it, em-bib F and lay the table. By the time you've done that, it'll be cool enough to eat.

Serves 2 with at least one portion for leftovers, probably more if I didn't eat such large helpings. So probably 4 overall. For the complete experience, F suggests holding a fork in one hand and taking 45 minutes to pick out and eat individual corn niblets with the other.

And you should of course be wearing your new white cotton dress, because tomatoes.

Sickie

Having tried illness and decided that it wasn't all that bad, F went for another bout this week.

Nothing as serious, just a snotty nose coupled with a brief but high fever. And lots of enfeebled wails. And the same insistence on lying on top of mummy on the sofa, eating only the best raspberries and orange juice. I'm not exactly sure when she started feeling better. I have the impression it was some time before she started asking for V's china puffs* and she'd been getting away with a spot of light acting for a bit.

Summer is here. Early, as part of the balancing act that is still inflicting late snow on parts of the US. Our balcony is an excellent sun trap of which F is very fond. She stands in front of the chairs out there yelling 'uh uh uh' until I pick her up as indicated and sit next to her, explaining the windows and the thermometer over and over.

Adult chairs are a big draw at the moment. Adult most things are, of course, which is why I eat more of the food I prepare for F than the stuff I make for me. It's all the same, to be fair, her portions are just minced finer. But she'd still rather eat forkfulls of daddy's quiche lorraine with daddy's fork than touch any of the identical stuff in front of her. Eating it while sitting next to daddy on a grown-up chair was an added requirement the other day.

Actually, I forgot to mention the 'eating with forks' thing. It's about a month now since she suddenly started eating perfectly with a spoon as though she'd always done it. For about four months, she'd been eating whilst holding one, occasionally using it to bless the mouthful she was about to take like some miniature podgy bishop, but very rarely trying to eat with it. Then one morning over porridge, some internal revelation struck her and pow! spoon all the way. Fork followed soon after, although that's still mostly in crosier mode right now.

She also walks. Three or four times in the last few weeks, I'd come into a room to find her standing in the middle. She'd immediately sit down and deny all knowledge, and she still has a preference for having a parent's hand to hold (two for outside). Whenever she started this surrepticious practice, it's certainly paid off. She toddles about independently more and more every day.

I must be tired at the moment (actually, I know damn well I am) - all these milestones would have prompted long and gushing blogs before. Now I'm so swamped in astounding newness, it almost gets a bit ho-hum. Her vocab in Swedish and English is a couple of hundred words, although only in comprehension, she isn't talking very much yet. As with walking and spoon use, though, I suspect she'll start very fast once she finds a use for it. Right now, she can get her demands across perfectly well through the international language of pointing and stropping.

God help us when she can explain what the yelling means in more detail, I suspect. Parenthood is quite relentless, I do feel fairly worn out at the moment. The endless tide of housework, the insistence of routines - although it's good to always have something to do, it's tiring.

As a kid myself, I never understood why parents were so boring when they got together. Sitting down and talking? Given that they could go out and do whatever they wanted whenever they liked (it seemed to me), I didn't understand why they wouldn't be riding bikes round and round the block forever. Or why they'd want to drink coffee. Or sleep in. Or watch the news instead of cartoons.

Funny how times change.


*chocolate covered rice sweets, for those in the UK. The packaging has coolie hats on it, which is unusually un-PC for Sweden. It's one close step away from calling your confection a 'chinky gay'. 

Fever

Inevitably, F succumbed.

What a relief! I've been dreading this moment for ages. After her first minor flirting with illness, way back when, she's been relentlessly healthy. So much so that I kept thinking whatever got to her first would be double-extra-grim. Pea soup off the walls, frantic screeching at all hours, a frenzy of health care professionals whizzing in and out of the flat with drip stands, EEGs, etc.

Nope.

F sat down in the middle of the floor yesterday afternoon, looking a bit flushed and confused, and sobbed miserably a couple of times. She was trying to play. All the usual stuff was there - the gaudy aeroplane, a scattering of poker chips, three or four opened and discarded books and some dominoes. But she just couldn't get anything to work right.

She was burning up, but other than being a bit weepy and tired, she was fine. She spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping and watching TV on mummy, then woke up and marched me relentlessly round the flat with the 'plane, screaming every time it collided with anything. That was quite a lot, she doesn't really steer, and the screaming was to indicate to me that I needed to make a course correction. That's no way to fly, I kept telling her, you should scream earlier. But she wasn't in a listening mood.

She woke up today after her usual twelve hour sleep, still feverish but entirely perky. And now very much of the opinion that her morning and afternoon naps should be on the sofa whilst watching TV. I explained that wasn't going to happen (tantrum) and indicated that if she didn't want to go to bed, she could carry on playing (tantrum, no I should remain on the sofa so she could sleep on me), but I did give her orange juice instead of water to drink.

Using the bottle as a brush, she painted most of it under the coffee table, except what she got in her socks and mummy's hat, so I think she's probably better. I wish I'd had it that easy.

Vomit

It was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose. Of all the bodily fluids I've had vented on me, this is still the one I dread most. The smell, the instinctive gut reaction to copy the action, the howling.

Lucky, I suppose, that it was just me vomiting and not F.

There's a bug in town at the moment. V had it earlier in the week (and is still recovering, grimly), yesterday was my turn. F didn't seem unduly bothered by the fact that daddy couldn't get off the sofa without changing colour. She just left me there and occasionally bought me things to read or do. Nothing to help your roiling intestines like being smacked in the face with a copy of Den Här Lilla Grisen, I find.

The actual vomit didn't happen until late in the day. I thought I'd got away with it, but no, round five o' clock I had to flee to the bathroom. F followed me in some distress, making 'oh no, daddy! what is this! what is this dreadful happening!' noises. She undermined this touching concern by then craning her neck interestedly to see what was in the toilet bowl and saying 'oo!'

The second set of heaves hit me while I was trying to feed her. I was already anxious that I was a walking plague pit, smearing germs on everything I went near, so I'd been extra OCD about preparing her food. Having to dash out as she ate it was a bad moment; she shouldn't really be left unsupervised in her high chair, for example, but she can't quite squirm out of it yet (as far as I know). So leaving her there for a minute or two was probably more child-care-conscious than spewing into her dinner.

I tried to reassure her I was okay inbetween retching. It is a low moment in anyone's life when you're incapacitated by illness but still more concerned with someone else's well-being. "Bu?" called F from the kitchen, sounding a bit anxious. I wiped my face and hurried back, but I needn't have worried. She'd just seen a bird at the window and wanted me to look at it.

Febrile and slightly confused, I tried to have an early night but really just rolled about in a twist of blankets, alternately shivering and sweating. My fever broke at about three in the morning, loudly enough to wake me out of the half-sleep I was in. It was almost as though I was getting an after-action report from my immune system.

"Yeah, so, what we've done is, we turned all the heaters up to full to blast the bugs out, so you'll need to top up your wet and dry fuel reservoirs, not much left there I'm afraid. Sorry about the smell. Your throat's taken a right pounding, all that coming and going, so you'll want to take it easy on that for a day or two, just until it's settled, and you'll probably find a lot of dead bugs gathered in your kidneys, so if your lower back feels sore for a while, no worries, that's all normal. Bill's on the kitchen table, give us a shout if there's anything else you want done. We'll let ourselves out, cheers!"

We now wait the likely horror of F getting the same bug. I can't see her being quite as equitable about that, somehow.

Reading Age

F is almost fifteen months old. She can read, apparently.

Through the rosy tint of fatherhood, at least. She has been particularly interested in her alphabet books in the last week or so. And I was getting over-excited about the fact she was pointing to the letter O, just as I'd been patiently doing on demand six hundred times in a row, and saying 'O. O.' Except she was also doing the same for the letters G, Q and D, so maybe not quite there yet.

But yesterday we went over to V's workplace, the logo of which is a large, stylised capital F. And apropos of nothing, F pointed to it and said 'Effffvvvvv' very emphatically.

I give you, therefore, Ladies and Gentlemen, the amazing reading prodigy that is my daughter, and damn you all if I look like the preeningly proud parental idiot I most certainly am.

She also counts, very enthusiastically. She counted the first star in 'Mumin räknor stjärnor' about fifteen times before moving on to the next one this morning. Whichever language 'bam bam bam bam bam' is, I'm not entirely sure it counts.

Ho ho.

-

It's been sunny and warm all week. This brings winter-crazed Swedes flocking out of homes and offices to lie over any available pak bench like IKEA-themed Dali clocks. For the first few moments, at least, then they get all organised and picnicky.

This means we've been out in the parks even more than usual. Plikta is my favourite, up in Slottskogen, where, amongst other incredible constructions, there's a gigantic exploded whale to climb around in, tiny working construction diggers, a set of descending waterways with drains and paddlewheels and a fifty-metre-long tunnel slide.

Of these manifold joys, F's favourite is a concrete step. She ascends and descends over and over, screaming at me and slapping me away if I try to help when I'm not wanted, or screaming and slapping at me if I don't help when I am. It comes up to her waist, and it's about three metres away from a set of much lower steps that she can get up and down perfectly easily. No challenge there, I suppose.

-

I put fruit in the porridge this morning, blueberries and chopped grapes as I have most mornings this week. For some reason, she took against this particular blend this morning, and I had to wash all the porridge off again before she'd eat it.

I suppose if you're going to be a genius, you're allowed to be particular about some things.