Food Waist

Sorry for the long pause. It's been, in some ways, quite a tough month.

Something about the end of winter - I've become more Swedish in that sense. When the first rays of spring sun come out, I'm not standing askance and looking wryly at the desperate Swedes standing pathetically out in them, almost lapping at the air to extract the warmth. Rather, I'm there with everyone else, strung out like sun-tolerant vampires and feebly glad to have made it through the dark months. Instead of struggling through another bitterly cold, gloomy day, you can wash up on the shore of spring for a bit, and take a breather.

F continues to be a bit over two. Last year, she was pretty cheerful most of the time, easy-going and playful. Now, she's either like that but ramped up to about thirteen and extremely insistent that I join her, or she's lying bonelessly on the carpet, screaming. She lies in bed in the morning saying "Come on, Daddy! Open the door!" even though she's quite capable of getting out of bed and doing it herself. She'll demand specific foods, then shun them if they're produced.

Given that I have the heart and soul of a labrador, it's not really surprising that I eat everyone's leftovers at home. This is starting to tell, rather, especially at the moment when F's appetite is pretty capricious. If I cook fishfingers for lunch, I have to try and guess how many she might eat, factor in how I want, then cook the total. There's always one more than I can comfortably eat, maths is not my strong point. I feel a little heavy these days.

Even though I balk at eating, say, a half-platched bowl of yoghurt containing soggy Special K, I still feel terribly guilt throwing it out. But what else can you do? Sack after sack of perfectly edible grub is tossed either down the hatch in the hallway or the one in my face. Neither feel like good solutions.

To compound this, F has decided sharing can be fun.

"Please can you pass the blueberries," I asked her at breakfast.

"Lots and lots!" she said, and kept passing big, mildly crushed fistfuls to me and sniggering.

I know I shouldn't complain. But V did more or less the same last night. It was National Waffle Day (how I love Sweden) yesterday. V's appetite is a bit all over the place right now, so she ate half of one, then tossed the rest over to me. I must have looked a surprised, because she explained that she didn't want it slightly defensively.

"You don't have to eat it," she said. Of course I do, you've put it on my plate! Don't you know what happens to people who don't clean their plates? They get no pudding! That's what I was thinking, anyway. I couldn't say anything, there was too much waffle in the way.

And why is V's appetite all over the place, you might ask? Ah well, there's a thing.

Här kommer en till.

Pappagris

I seem to have become indispensable.

F's morning chorus starts with vague murmurs that gradually mutate into a two-tone cry of "Mummy! Daddy!" like a clingy ambulance. That doesn't mean she's awake, though. If you fall into that trap, you get crossly told "Nej! Sleeping," as she rolls over and pulls a stuffed bear over her head.

You know when she is awake, because the two tones become one. "Daddy daddy daddy, daddy daddy. Daddy! Daddy daddy. Pick up." Then it's mummy's turn to roll over and go back to sleep, and I can go and make breakfast.

Daddy must also come and play. And hold her hand. And this morning, come and watch her watching the iPad. And run and get her paper and crayons. And get a glass of milk. Daddy must not, on pain of screaming death, be on the computer, talk to mummy, fold laundry or do cooking until instructed so to do.

It's sort of fun being in demand? Up to a point. That point being the point at which you need to do any chores, or even (god forbid) entertain yourself in any way. There's only so much rapt beholding I can manage before even the joy of seeing toy cars being repeatedly extracted from a smurf mushroom house palls. Five minutes, in all honesty, is the absolute maximum, and that's when it's still seven in the morning and I can stare into the middle distance for weeks without seeing anything.

It's certainly not fun seeing how rude F is to V at the moment. "No! Vill inte ha mummy! Mummy is bleh!" is a typical rejoinder to an offer of a kiss or a cuddle. She can be pretty chilly for no reason to either of us, but V definitely gets the worst of it. There's nothing much behind such vehement rejection, no more than there was behind the expertly executed right hook to the jaw she gave me last week. She tearfully went straight to the naughty chair all by herself when she saw my face after that particular stunt, which rather tore the heartstrings out of my ire. Canny wee lady, her.

Knowing that she just hasn't got the hang of the polite no just yet doesn't help it feel less personal, though. And her polite yes is no better. Asking her if she'd like some breakfast gets the most sullen sounding 'yeah' I've heard from anyone outside their teens. Then you have to dash through the obstacle course of her wildly flip-flopping demands (Butter on the bread! No butter on the bread! Milk! Red milk, not blue! In the other glass! With the pink bib! Too slow - give me yoghurt now!) to make sure she eats anything.

Luckily it's balanced with occasional displays of extremely generous affection, which leavens what might otherwise be bitter bread. "Mmmmm, nice warm daddy," for example, with a big pressing cuddle. Or "I'm stroking mummy's hair," whilst curled up on the sofa. So if it's tough work right now, at least it's very rewarding.

Eat Your Browns

"Go on, just try a little bit."

"No fank you."

"Go on! It's nice! You like it!"

"NO! Will inte! Will har den här!"

"You've finished all of that, there's no more. Come on, try this."

"No! NO!"

"Look, here's just a little tiny bit on a fork. Put that in your mouth and taste it."

"BLERGHHH NOO ARRRGH WAAAAAAA"

This would be an entirely standard mealtime conversation with any toddler, certainly, And therefore unremarkable, bar the facts that

• I'm offering F chocolate cake 
• She wants to have more boiled carrots instead

There is no pleasing some people.

The Lessons of January

F is getting stroppier by the second. Her favourite words at the moment are:

• No! 
• Inte!
• Stop it!

And her least favourite things at the moment are:

• Not getting what she wants on demand
• Getting what she wants on demand
• Not knowing what she wants 

Last week was her birthday. The tally of tantrums got too many for me (F currently counts by saying "en, två, many" which is about right), but included such classics as her cousin V being offered some birthday cake, Daddy sitting next to her on the sofa and anybody looking at her new toy cars.

This is tiring. Ignoring the tantrums, which are at least mercifully short-lived on the whole, takes the shine off my otherwise cynically blackened sunny disposition. When your daughter is as likely to respond to an offer of play, food or attention with room-engulfing mood disintegrations, its hard to know what to do with your time.

We all have terrible colds on top of this. which hasn't helped. And it's either raining, snowing or the middle of the night in Gothenburg right now, adding seasonal cabin fever to the stew. Why on earth I think this is a good time to press ahead with potty training, I've no idea.

J: Would you like to sit on the potty?

F: No! Inte! Vill ha en bottle of milk!

J: That's not on offer right now.

(Mummy, who is in the bathroom getting ready for work, moves the potty a quarter of an inch with her foot as she moves past)

F: NOOOOOO! Det är min potty!

(Divers alarums)

V was doing the run-up to an opening night over the weekend, Dagis will not accept a child who is either febrile or was febrile yesterday, I've been at tantrum ground zero for five days. We tried combating the cough and fever with medicine. F has learned that medicine tastes vile and can be spat vigorously out. When I started coughing the day after, she nodded wisely and suggested I have some medicine for it.

As an aside, Dagis is getting on my wick at the moment. (This is not hard, all tantrums and no sleep make Wick a long chap, and it's hard to stay off him.) One of the teachers insists on speaking English to F although we've said we prefer them not to. Fair enough, F's Swinglish probably means that's needed. But having tasked us to weaned her off her dummy (about 90% done although she still sleeps with it) and in a rather patronising 'we know best' manner I might add, F seems to have it every time we pick her up. I don't know if this is mere testament to just how stroppy F is or whether they just need a kick in the pants, but there's a parent teacher night coming up soon and I'm looking forward to snarling all through it.

Anyway, after five days in a row of being home to take care of F and her hacking cough, I'm fairly rock-bottom-y. Back in class today, I fell asleep on the tram on the way in, whilst doing a writing exercise and then on the tram home. Snoozing before, during and after a lesson is not indicative of a ready-to-learn state.

Immediately afterwards, I picked F up and took her home and she helped me cook dinner. Egg fried rice with beef, which she was very excited about until I added her beloved plain rice to the wok, at which point she wanted a bottle of milk instead. Once I'd finished ignoring this volte face and eaten my food, I made the bottle of milk, at which point she got into bed and wanted a night night story instead. Once I'd got her into pyjamas, cleaned her face and teeth and read a book (twice) to her, she wanted to get up and play instead. Once I'd put her back to bed, turned out the light, sung to her and said goodnight, I got to listen to a steadily cresendo of "daddy daddy daddy" for an hour and half, culminating in a shriek, then a surprisingly polite and calm request for the bottle of milk again.

I mean, ever get the impression you're being played?

Taking Steps

"Right, okay, if you're not going to put your toys away, you can sit on this chair until you decide to behave." I think I probably threw a "young lady" in there somewhere for good measure, just in case I wasn't sounding enough like a huffy teacher.

F is generally pretty biddable, but had decided the collection of toy ketchup bottles she'd brought to the loo this morning was going to stay there unless I wanted to move them. When I disagreed, we had a battle of wills for the next hour. Fifteen minutes of screaming reduced me to trying the only parenting trick I know, which of course I learned from obnoxious junk TV.

Supernanny was actually on TLC earlier, bullying some grotesque American family for your entertainment. Look, the program (all programs ever on TLC, in fact) seems to say - your family isn't this insanely screwed up. So you must be good people and should feel good about yourselves. Stay tuned, Burkina Faso's Celebrity Next Top Wig Maker coming up next!

Seeing the show at least reminded me that I was doing the Naughty Step thing right, anyway. I wasn't convinced. Not least because we live in a flat and don't have any steps, the corner chair in Mummy and Daddy's room had to suffice. It was the most boring place I could find, although I did have to remove three Scandinavian-knit jumpers, a replica viking sword and a giant yoga ball from it first. What an interesting house we have.

F went through every classic manipulation she could find: -

• Telling Daddy to go and clear the toys away for her
• Turning entirely boneless with rage and sliding off the Chair like a paralyzed eel
• Stopping crying and until I came to look at her again, then picking up where she'd left off
• Getting off the Naughty Chair to play chess* when I wasn't looking
• Claiming she actually quite liked the Naughty Chair and was going to stay there indefinitely
• Playing with a nearby clock until it was removed (I didn't think of it as interesting enough to remove it in advance)

I left her to it for the most part. Which is hard. Basically, I don't really care about the toys. It's the principles at stake! I told you to do this one tiny thing, little daughter, and now I shall put us both through emotional hell until you concede I was right! It's for your own good! It certainly wasn't for mine, I'll tell you that. If F could see how much guilty remorse I was having to mask by hiding in the next room, anxiously Googling the authentic method of the Naughty Step, she'd have cracked me in minutes.

I went back in to try and start a reasonable conversation in the occasional lulls. Which would go fine until I reintroduced the whole sorry 'pick up your toys' thing, and then we'd be back to square one and redoubled weeping. But after a mere hour of fairly continuous wailing, she suddenly tried a new tack. Earnest smiles through the grubby tears:

"Feya be happy now, cuddle daddy."

"Oh good!" I said, and then suspiciously added "so will you pick up the toys?" because I wasn't born yesterday.

"Yes. Cuddle cuddle."

Maybe the day before yesterday. She'll have worked out how to beat this new parental ploy in a week or two, doubtless. But I'm chalking this round up to me.

*Her opening moves consist of throwing everything she can't get to work or doesn't like the look of off the board and then holding up the King and chanting his name proudly, which I believe is called George Osbourne's Gambit.

2014 Calendar

Happy New Year! Hope you had good ones. 

By way of a slightly late annual review, here is a selection of pictures of F doing F-type things all through 2014. She ages at a rate of about half a month per picture. I've got too much of a headcold (and too much post-Jul gastric sluggishness) to write more at the moment, but expect business as usual throughout the coming year. 

 

 

Advent

Holidays! Finally. Dagis finishes up by sending F home with a fresh set of heavy colds, and the cheery Jul announcement that we may all have lice by now.

As my school term finished with a national test, the relentlessly depressing grey of the Gothenburg winter suddenly bloomed into festive market season. Glittering stars everywhere, musical neon windmills and whalesong tree decorations in Brunsparken, Santa hats for all. Tomte hats, sorry. Although tomtarna are also the elfish helpers here, which I find confusing even if they do wear the same hats.

"Is Santa coming to visit you at Christmas, F?"

"Yeah."

"What's he going to do?"

"Bing pents. Feya vill ha en car." F's Swinglish is more and more fluent. I can't tell if she's trying to say the Swedish - jag vill ha (I want to have) or the rather more oracular English "I will have", but the end result is likely the same.

-

We have tickets for the Opera's Luciatorget. Well, I'm getting in because I'm performing. F and V have seats as a result. Let's say tickets, it's easier.

I'm reading a translation of a classic Swedish Jul poem, Tomten. Not technically Santa or any of his elves in this context, but an older sprite rather like a house elf. The one Coke stole the whole Santa look from, in fact. We don't have them in the UK, so there's no equivalent. This has made the translation difficult. So difficult in fact that the original translator has basically given up in places, and abandoned niceties like rhyme or actual meaning. I spent four hours trying to improve on it the previous night.

While I stand in the wings, theatre staff dancing round me in polar bear costumes, V is dancing an entirely different dance in the auditorium. F is high on gingerbread, handed out free in the lobby beforehand, and sits still for about three minutes before wanting to run all round the theatre shouting excitedly. When I see them after the show, F is still doing this (although it rapidly degenerates into crying because the queue for the saffron buns is too long) and V looks like she's run a marathon.

I get my chance the following day, during Hagakyrkans Lucia concert. Actual tickets this time, courtesy of Mormor, who won them in a lotto at the christmas market where we accidentally stole the wheel of cheese. Long story, obviously.

Haga is the church we were married in, it's got a lovely old-fashioned wooden interior. The pews have little doors at the ends. F likes little doors. You can say "bye bye!" to pappa and close them behind you, then shout "hej hej!" when you come back in. A breezy church lady whisks past us smiling and stops, as though incidentally, to mention that there's a fully loaded creche room just off the nave where you can take restless children. I'm sure it's coincidence. I'm sure F didn't open the pew door into her shin.

When the lights dim and the candles come up, and the ethereal choir of white-gowned children float down the aisle singing Santa Lucia, F stills and points, and silently bobs about to get a good view of the Lucia Train as it passes. I am an embodiment of glowing paternal pride. Fifteen seconds later she's screaming in the face of a toddler in the pew behind her, who has dropped his toy cow next to her and has the temerity to want it back. We spend the rest of the concert driving wooden cars up and down the wheelchair access ramp out back.

-

V has booked us an overnight boat trip to Denmark to mark the beginning of her holidays! It's the middle of the week, the ferry is nearly empty, and F has the rule of the play area.

Although the plastic slide and Harry Potter Lego display are big favourites, the main attraction is the skiing arcade game in the middle of the games room. F stands on the skis, slapping the flashing buttons and saying Oo. Until mummy pays for her to have a go, then she skidaddles dismissively. V dutifully attempts the race in her stead and comes 5th. Out of five.

The ferry marks F's most conscious introduction to restaurant eating yet. She is very impressed with the buffet. You can see her thinking 'I get to choose what I want? And I don't have to eat the rest?' Mainly salad with a token sausage, followed by a large tub of Mr Whippy from the ice cream station, then.

After the ferry comes the swimming. The hotel in Frederikshamn has a huge pirate-themed water park, complete with tropical thunder storms, an outdoor whirlpool and a giant waterslide you ride inflatable rafts down. Also, because luck is fickle, two coachloads of teenagers trying to pull each other in the bubble spa.

F plays very happily for two hours in the kids area, which features a spurting whale fountain that looks cute until you realise it's hopelessly beached and not going to live long. We try her in the shallows of the wave pool, but by then she's tired, and an ill-timed thunderous wave storm puts her off.

She shares our hotel room very happily. Also all of mummy's chips in the restaurant. We were worried she'd be restless, but she's all played out after the water park and ferry trip. This does mean we have to go to bed at 1900 too. It's been a while since I did that; after an hour of sleep, I get up and go and read downstairs in the lobby (Brian Aldiss, Greybeard, very good) until I'm tired enough to sleep properly.

The morning after she eschews more swimming for lying in the cot between our beds, watching Cars on the iPad and eating cashews from a can. Between that, the breakfast buffet and the Julbord on the ferry home, she settles into a hotel lifestyle pretty fast.

Two days later, I'm kicked off the computer. "Pappa go kitchen. Cook! Feya hungy," she tells me. This is mostly a ruse so she can play on my spinning office chair, but she follows it up by standing in the kitchen door and setting out the menu.

"Ish ingers! Peas! Vill ha glass a milk." Sweets to follow, easy on the going easy. Have it sent up to the penthouse, put it on my bill.

-

Currently, with the official Swedish Christmas now three and a half hours away, we are sprawled on the floor after a day of cleaning. Well, V is. I'm helpfully writing about it instead. F's main present is being assembled, and the screws don't fit properly. Glue bottles, assorted ratchets and impatience are accumulating around us, under the fixed stares of a half-dozen painted tomtar. The pastry crust on my mince pie is as ragged as our tempers, there are two kilos of meatballs to fry tomorrow morning before the family arrives and there's nowhere left to hang any washing.

Ho ho ho.