pappa´s home!

zoe definately missed papa while he was in scotland and has been sucking up as much daddy time as she can get since he came back. she loves helping him with whatever she can. thomas bought a very sharp, fancy, ceramic kitchen knife while we were in prague, and decided to let zoe use it! (mommy could hardly watch). but really, it is better that he lets her use it with him, than come in the kitchen to find her trying to use it herself, like we did the other day. scary! good thing the kid has serious hand control beyond her years...
and of course what could possibly be better than some after breakfast snuggles with papa? she sure loves her papa. everyday she asks, "var är pappa nu?"(where is papa now?) and of course i tell her he is at work, and she often says, "jag saknar min pappa. han är så fin" (i miss my pappa, he is so great).

princess zoe

sometimes she just charms my socks right off!

girls play while the dad´s away!

daddy and farfar went off to scotland and left us girls home all alone. but while the papa is away, it is up to the girls to play. so play we did. we had at least one painting party everyday. i love how zoe sticks her tongue out of the side of her mouth when she is really concentrating, it is just too cute.
we also baked. we did not have any chocolate chips (sob, sob, poor us), so i smashed up a couple of chocolate candy bars instead. however i read the recipe wrong.
turns out there was a lot more chocolate involved than i thought. the picture with the recipe looked like normal chocolate chip cookies, but only after i was halfway through did i realize that the cocoa powder was going to make them VERY chocolatey! luckily they were yummy anyway. zoe had fun digging in the cocoa powder box.
one day i was busy doing laundry or something downstairs and it seemed way too quiet, so i hurried upstairs to find that zoe had spilled her watercolor paints water cup over the kitchen floor. however, no problem mama, i´m cleaning up själv! such a sweetie, but i do not want to know how many poor trees this girl has killed so far in her very short life. PAPER, PAPER, and more PAPER!

bye bye summer

summer is definately over time to bundle up and enjoy the cosy fall weather.

another chef in the making...

lately zoe has been insisting on helping with everything in the kitchen, especially cooking and playing with water in the sink. not sure how but she somehow considers pouring water all over the sink area, doing the dishes. at the moment her favorite is cooking pasta. does a good mother let her three year old stand next to a boiling pot of water? who knows, but i do!

first contact...

today was the day we made first contact with munchkin #2! (okay aside from the million and one punches and kicks it has been sending my way the last few weeks). they have changed the system here in sweden, so they do not even listen to the fetal heartbeat or anything until after the ultrasound. there is one ultrasound in week 18 provided in the swedish prenatal care system, at least where we live. so this was it, first time we had some proof, besides my vomiting, that we are in fact expecting! yipee! here it is. it is laying head down in the shot and and you can see the spine and arm, thought it was actually a pretty good shot, you can tell it is a little baby.
they also measured, so now we have an official due date, the 20th of february, 2010, meaning i am 20 and half weeks pregnant. we made it over the halfway point! this just makes it all seem so much more real. we did not however try to find out what we are having, looking forward to a surprise in about 20 weeks.

time to get rid of some old sh**

about 6 years ago our sewage line started backing up. so we had some guys come out to clean it out. they cut all the roots and filmed it, said that we would be lucky if it lasted 2 or 3 more years, and that it was time to get it fixed. well, a couple of weeks ago (6 plus years later), it started backing up again. so we figured it was time. of course the weekend we chose to do this it rained cats and dogs, and was windy as windy can be. lucky for me, being pregnant was a great excuse to not help and remain indoors! i ran outside on the occasional moment it stopped raining and grabbed a shot or two of their progress. we also took advantage of the fact that we were diggin right next to the house and so put in some draining sheets against the basement wall as wel. here is thomas removing the old sewage line.
and here he is smiling because you know it just smells so good.
the digger looked like it would be a fun toy to play with. but luckily niklas actually seemed to know what he was doing, where i think we would have caused more damage than we fixed had we done it all by ourselves! thomas put in the new sewer and gutter drainage lines, and niklas filled it all in. and we now even have a doublewide driveway which is nice.
zoe decided to help out too. that kid can move dirt pretty well for a three year old!

baking with the ladies

my friend jessica mentioned a site called allrecipes.com once, and now i am addicted. the other day i was craving cookies, and well, since i am yet to find chocolate chips in the grocery stores here, i just typed in cookies and it came up with a yummy sugar cookie recipe. so i gave it a shot. it was perfect for the girls to roll out and cut out shapes. i had recently found some great shapes at ikea, including a hedgehog (thought of you efrat!), which i adore.
so we invited over maya and monica and had bit of a baking party. the girls had fun, but maya´s heart was just not into after awhile. but zoe managed to hang on until the end...
or till what we thought was the end. turns out the girls had grabbed a hug chunk of dough and were playing with it on the newly apolstered (sp?) couch! upon my commanding zoe to return the dough to the kitchen, she ran upstairs to her as quickly as she could, small fists tightly holding onto the dough with dear life! in the end i actually had to pry the dough from her hands. luckily maya and zoe quickly recovered from their tears, and even managed to a bit of watercolor painting. monica and maya had brought zoe some long sought after watercolor paint. tack så mycket!
here is a shot of zoe practicing her painting talents this weekend, thank goodness for indoor activities when it is raining cats and dogs outside!

zoe wants to roll too daddy!

after thomas got his bike it basically rained everyday, or he got home from work after dark. friday he finally came home at a decent hour and it wasn´t raining so he finally got to take his new baby for a ride. zoe has been insisting papa take her for a ride, and explaining to her that she is too small just is not going over well. so finally we let thomas take her for a ride like this, bottle and all. no, just kidding, but she did finally get to sit on the bike which has quieted the screaming insistance to ride anyway. thank goodness.