Sick wee bugger

Wee one had fever last might so Dean has been home with her. She has not been a ray of sunshine, so he was fairly exhausted when I came back from work. They went swimming though in the afternoon (no fever then). Katie was happy, apart from when there was a queue to the hot pool. Fair enough!

Mum & Dads little helper

You know when you are in a rush and you are sure that the keys where on the table just a minute ago... With a Katie in the house you are screwed!!!!

After searching for about 1/2 an hour we finally found them safely tucked away in the garage...

Helping Mum & Dad cook tea used to be a favourite passtime but breaking spaghetti into small pieces and throwing them into (or in the general direction of) the sink is much more fun these days...

Thank you!! :)

Not really Katie-news, but I would like to thank you guys for my wonderful presents and happy birthday wishes!! (Sorry about the delay too! )

I love the bag, very summery too (I can't wait for more sun...)!! Katie loves the book about the other ark, and we have to read about polkadot piffles (in quarrelsome pairs), marmalade mammoths and sabre-toothed mice, and dirty old dinosaurs (not very nice), all day long... :)

And the CD is great (especially song 11 ;) ). Our CD collection needed something new, we are very tired of listening to the same CDs in the car going to and from work everyday, so it was great!!

Dean got me a cool green pulswatch and a training T-shirt. To go with the Pilates ball I got for christmas. Now I just have to start training too...
No, I actually got started a week ago, but then the whole family got a cold, and now Dean is busy doing last minute training for his race. But from next week on, I will get training prority. Or maybe we can go out together, and run around with Katie in the pram.

Dean went to the AC/DC concert last night. I thought that I would have a nice night too myself once Katie had gone to sleep. Except that she had no intention whatsoever of going to sleep. We ended up going to bed both of us at eleven...

Good night for now!

Breakfast

D: "Do you want porridge with a little bit of jam or a sandwich with a little bit of jam?"

K: "Jam"

Clever clogs

I forgot to mention last night that Katie counted to 10 for the first time. We had finished reading Hairy Macleary and I was going to turn the light off so she could go to sleep. I was trying to put the book away but Katie kept grabbing my hand and getting mad when I took it away. In the end she got hold of my finger and started counting the pictures of other hairy macleary books on the back cover. There were only 6 pictures so a few got counted twice! She got the numbers in the right order but it was a bit of a mixture of English and Swedish.

Blog termination effective immediately

If we don't start seeing some comments...

After about a month of blogging and nearly 100 views there hasn't been a single comment on anything that we have written. Interaction is the name of the game here. It ain't hard - just click comment at the bottom of the post and up pops a text box where you can write something witty or half witted. No user IDs or registration are required - you can either choose Name/URL (and just not worry about the URL bit) or if you really want to KISS then choose anonymous from the drop down box...

The student becomes the teacher...

Katie's speech has been coming on in leaps and bounds over the last few months but she hasn't fully understood that she is speaking two different languages yet. She was standing on a chair helping me make tea tonight when I asked her if she liked rice. She replied "No Dadda, not rice. Called ris (swedish for rice)!" clear as a bell. It's a bit hard to explain to her that she is both right and wrong at the same time!

Wake up and smell the roses

Here is that vallentines day photo of the flowers that Sara was talking about. When your nose is full of snot you have to get really close to smell them!

I was out skiing today doing the 52km Bessemerloppet ski race. I had to leave fairly early in the morning to get there and managed to wake Katie with all my rustling around right before I left. Not popular with Sara! Especially since she turned out to be a bit hard to handle today.

Valentine's day

It took two hours to put Katie to bed tonight.
We are both exhausted.
Therefore, posting a photo of the very nice flowers that Dean bought for Valentine's day will have to wait until tomorrow. He even ordered them on Thursday. How incredibly organised of him! (However, would have given an even more organised impression if they had not been handed over with the sentence: "Sorry, the card is blank, I have not had time to write it.")
But the flowers are lovely!!

Slightly repetitive...

"Katie, shall we put on this T-shirt?"
"No."
"But Katie, you need to wear a T-shirt, you'll get cold otherwise."
"No."
"OK, but what about this one, with a cat on? Can Mum put it on?"
"No."
"Katie, do you want to wear this one or this one?
"No."
"Are you not going to wear anything?"
"No."
"Can you only say no?"
"No."

Placid Katie

I dont really know what the lady downstairs is on about. Here you can see Katie taking it easy, laxing out on the soffa after a hard day at kindy.

Reading George Bush style (upside down)

The war cry!

Checking the landing zone...

Take off!!!

No old ladies where annoyed taking these photos - It was the middle of the day and she was out!!!

Destructicon

I was going to upload a bunch of new photos yesterday but the card reader on our computer is playing up. I asked Sara about it and it turns out Katie has been playing with it, pulling cards out and putting them back in again. She has previously pulled a small SD card out and put it into the larger CF slot. It took several minutes of holding the computer upside down and vigourously shaking it to get it out...
I cann't hear anything rattling around in there now so I'm working on the assumption that it is beyond rescue this time! Now I have to go and find the bloody camera cable hidden away somewhere...

Pre-race research

Dean is sitting here on the couch, after putting MiniMcG to bed, reading a 78-page-PhD thesis.
It would make sense to think that he is working.
But he is not.
The topic of the thesis is "Investigation of the most essential factors influencing ski glide."
Dedicated?

At Sara's brother and his fiancee's house

Had a great day visiting my brother Magnus and Ylva in their new house.
We were naturally very jealous. Anything larger than 65 sqm with a lawn make us green of envy. The house was light and very nice.
And they have a cat, and animals (especially cats) are Katie's obsession. She laughes uncontrollably. And the cats are scared out of their wits. Fair enough, she is a bit scary. ;)
(And if you are wondering, she has a lolly in her mouth...)

Its mine and I want it!

Today we had to go up to ICA Maxi, a big supermarket and sort out some food and nappies. Katie was her usual helpful self getting dressed. Sara ended up holding onto her, putting her pants on while I tickled her. Once her pants were on she was happy enough and danced around the flat until we left.

When we got to ICA and packed her up out of the car, she had two dummies in her hand. I asked her if she could give me one to leave in the car.

"No! That is my dummy. Katie wants all the dummies!"
It wasnt a fight we could be bothered taking tonight so she got to have both of them!

We spent the remaining time at ICA quietly purusing the various produce available - In our dreams. In reality we spent the entire time trying to get through as fast as possible so that we could get screaming Katie home to bed.

Night Owl (if she had her way!)

Sara and I have come to the conclusion that Katie is probably a night owl being made to conform to norms of every day life. The alarm clock went off at 0645 but had absolutely no effect on her. I tried to wake her up nicely for a few minutes before going to have a shower. In the end, Sara basically had to hold her upside down to get her to wake up. She didnt have much to say today but when we have woken her up on previous occasions and asked if she wants to get up and start getting ready for Kindy she has replied "No", "No, go another day" and "more dark". She pretty much always comes around is in full swing by the time we head out the door.
Apparently she has been crazy at kindy the last couple of days running around, playing with everything and generally getting up to mischief. Aunty Carin picked her up today which was extremely popular. By the time Sara and I got home from work Katie was starting to hit the wall and by the time 1830 rolled around she was fast asleep in bed!

Hate to think what time we are getting up tomorrow...

Good girl!

Dean and I are mighty impressed. This is what happened:
Katie drank some water, and then unfortunately (rather common occurence really) spilled on herself and got the T-short wet.

"Take off!" she said. So we helped her take it off.
Next thing she leaves he kitchen, runs to the lounge and gets a new T-shirt from the drawers and brings it to the kitchen for us to help her put it on. She eats a bit more. Then afterwards we tell her to wash her hands, which she then does, turning the tap on and off and properly washing her mouth and both hands. Dries the hands on the towel, then bends down to pick her clothes up and goes and puts them in the washing machine!

Without us saying a thing. Is she well-behaved or what?

(I am trying to focus on this rather than that it tokk about an hour and a half to put her to bed tonight...)

Noisiest girl in town???

We had a couple of mates over for brunch today. As usual it involved a fair amount of panic cleaning (push all of the stuff on top of the drawers into the drawers, put all remaining clutter in the bedroom, close the door and hope that nobody has any reason to go in there...). As usual everything was done just in time and people started to arrive. The doorbell rang and Katie raced away to see who was there. Turned out to be her mates J and C. Katie was really happy! Then the doorbell rang again...

Expecting more friends I went and answered. Turned out to be our neighbour from downstairs. I dont really remember everything that she said but the gist of it was that she thought the level of noise coming from our flat was unacceptable. I was a bit shocked at the time and just stammered out that we would try to keep it down. After a couple of minutes though I started to wonder what the hell she was actually on about. We dont play loud music, we dont have a beefy sub woofer hooked up to the TV and we dont have parties all night long. The only thing left is Katie! I know she isnt silent but is she really that bad?!? All in all I reckon she is moaning for the sake of moaning and have little time for her petiness. We have moved a carpet into Katies play area to dampen things down a bit and will continue to tell her off for throwing stuff on the floor but she wont be wrapped up in conton wool and she wont be stopped from singing and being a kid! Come on what do you expect, she isnt even 2 years old yet! This is an appartment complex, not a retirement village! To be continued.... (probably)

On a brighter note you can see that Katie's fashion sense is really coming along. I told her to get dressed for Kindy on Friday and she ran away to the drawers and pulled out this outfit. Even I with my complete lack of fashion coordination could see that this dress probably didnt go very well with the clothes underneath. She got mad when I tried to suggest something else and who am I to stymie her style anyway?!? Besides, It wasnt me that had to look silly all day!

Right, it's 2300 so Im off to crank up some AC/DC and really give the neighbour something to complain about!