It should have been difficult. Six hours on the train with a nine-month old, four days with lots of activity and other babies, three nights without Erik. The facts made it sound tough but it was probably the easiest few days of my maternity leave. Ten days ago, Vesna, Minja, Sigrid and I went to Västerås to visit Célia and her new baby Zoé. What I learned was this: it maybe doesn’t have to take a village, but a village sure as hell helps.
With two babies (9 and 10 months), two unwieldy carriages and a weekend’s supply of diapers, Vesna and I were sure that that we were in for a rough journey. Aside from the baby-hostile design of the trains and a stressful switch in Stockholm, the trip was actually very nice. When our two spirited girls weren’t keeping each other entertained, they were distracted by the other passengers, the window, their food. Sigrid especially loved sticking her face between the seats to peer at the women in back of us. They were equally delighted to chitchat with her and even held her while I went to the bathroom. (On the way back she got a pimply teenager with headphones – not quite as fun.)
Once at Célia’s, Sigrid and Minja played and played some more. Since they required the occasional referee and couldn’t change each other’s diapers, Vesna and I weren’t totally off duty, but it was about as close as I’ve come since having a baby. Celia, Vesna and I could sit and drink coffee and eat cake like we used to do in Malmö and Sigrid and Minja were content for long periods of time looking through the kitchen drawer, or playing with the plastic bag holder. The way they entertained each other, even kept each other in good moods, and wore each other out so that when they went to bed they basically fell right asleep, almost, almost, made me wish for twins.
But what I wish most is that I’d had a kind of twin mom this year. It’s been great to be on maternity leave with one of my closest friends and Vesna and I have certainly seen a lot of each other, but this trip made me realize how incredible it would have been to actually live with another mom who had a baby the same age. That may sound strange, but the ability to help each other, laugh with each other, scream in frustration to each other, to just be there with each other, not just over lunch, but 24 hours a day was incredible. Not such a novel idea, really, when you think of how many cultures have a more communal approach to child-rearing. (Note to self: switch cultures before having next baby).
Alas, my little girly trip came to an end and Sigrid and I came back to an empty apartment (Erik was away too), which felt all the more empty after four days of friends. We were decidedly grumpy for a day or so until we found our two-some rhythm again. Then daily life took over, with its swine-flu vaccines and its ear infections and its throwing up and its walks and naps and baths and diapers. I love my time with my girl, I love my time with my little family of three, but I still can’t quite shake the feeling I had after four days with friends. I’m craving more people around. I’m aching for a village.
On Wednesday we fly to America, and if it’s people I want, I’ll have my fill. The burning question is this: after a month surrounded by friends and family in America – a month consisting of two major holidays and one wedding — will I be longing for the relative quiet of Malmö or not? My heart is telling me I won’t want to leave America but past experience tells me I have two homes and it feels equally good to return to each.
Right now I don’t have time to ponder. I have to pack, attempt to administer acid penicillin, and run to the toy store for some plane goodies. Sigrid won’t have another baby to keep her company, but with a few plastic beeping things and some kind stewardesses, I’m hoping the plane ride will be pleasant. If not, there will be arms aplenty to comfort us on the other side.
Filed under: amy på 'mom'ska
I’ve been busy, not blogging. We were away for four days (post to come) but mostly we’ve been busy doing this (trying to enjoy it while it lasts):
Filed under: amy på 'mom'ska
On Wednesday I began my day like a working mom. I got up, showered and left the house at 7am to attend a vaguely workish event. Instead of biking to the train station and commuting to my office, I biked downtown to listen to a panel discussion on the effect of the economic crisis on advertising and the future of print and digital ads. The discussion was good, but it hardly mattered. They could have been debating the future of excel documents and it would have been hard for me to wipe the grin off my face. It felt not a little fantastic to step out of my maternity leave and experience an hour or so of professional Amy.
An hour or so.
Here is the thing. I am almost ready to go back to work. I wish I could say that I wasn’t, but I am. I feel guilty for not wanting to be a stay-at-home mom, I feel a little surprised, but the truth is, I’m looking forward to being back in my professional role.
Here’s the other thing. For an hour or so.
I am lucky enough to live in a place that didn’t force me to choose between going back to work after 12 weeks or giving up my job. I’ve had a nice, long, paid time with my baby. Still, it’s not enough. Whether it’s 12 weeks or 52 weeks, eventually you make that switch from stay-at-home to working mom and have to battle all the emotions that come with it. Guilt, melancholy, jealousy, heart-wrenching confusion …relief.
Relief, because staying at home is hard. It can be boring. And stressful. And alienating.
Boring: there was the day last week when I ran out of ideas at 4pm, brewed a pot of coffee, drank a cup, and somersaulted across my living room floor in a desperate attempt to entertain Sigrid. Stressful: attempting to do laundry in your allotted time, getting a baby to eat when she’d rather cry, trying to establish a nap routine, praying you can clean the shitty bum before she decides to crawl away. Alienating: when the car ignition outside the window transforms my mamma-contentedness into a longing to be out there, in the world of grown-up activity, where cars are started and errands are run.
And then there are, of course, all the other times. When I choose to not stress about routines or getting Sigrid to nap in her bed. When I sweep her up in my arms and place her next to me in the bed and settle down with a good book, despite the dishes and the blogging and the laundry that should be done. When I stroke her hair, or make her laugh. When I pull her to me, “hugs”, I say and she wraps her arms around my neck. When she claps.
This is when For an hour or so comes in. Yes, I want to go back to work and I don’t want to be ashamed of that. But what I really want is to just have a little of that work world, just a few hours or so a week. Enough to keep me inspired and creative. And then I want to come home and clap hands with Sigrid.
For an hour or so isn’t possible. In reality it will be 40 hours or so, with the commute, 55 hours or so. When I think about that I get stressed. When I think about that and look at her sweet sleeping form next to me, as she is this minute, I die.
In less than a month we go to America and stay through Christmas. When we return, it’s time for my handover to Erik, who will begin his 6 months or so of paternity leave. Less than a month left of my maternity leave in Malmö. Soon I will be back in the world I visited briefly on Wednesday and the thrill I felt at adult ideas and conversation will fade. I will like being at work but I will be rip-roaringly jealous of Erik’s days at home, no matter how boring, stressful or alienating.
Then I’ll remember the song I used to sing to my baby. When Sigrid was a few months old and we had one of those tough days where she just couldn’t be put down, I used to hold her to me and sing:
I bet you I’m going to miss these days
When it was just you and I
When it was just you and I
And all you would do was cry
I bet you I’m going to miss these days
When it was just you and I
I bet you I’m gonna want back these days
When it was just you and I
When it was just you and I
The time, it surely did fly
And I bet you I’m gonna want back these days
When it was just you and I
Sigrid, thank you for every one of these hard, tedious, upside-down, funny, beautiful, just you and me days.
Filed under: amy på 'mom'ska
As Halloween isn’t a huge holiday over here, I’m going to have to try extra hard to make it special for Sigrid in the coming years. I’ll gladly take on that responsibility, because no kid who can have Halloween should miss it. What is better than magic and candy and costumes and fall? Very little, I’d say.
To kick off a lifetime of what I hope will be happy Halloweens for Sigrid, I held a brunch party today. There was roasted butternut squash, zucchini muffins, maple cookies, warm apple cider, candy, fellow Americans and one very cute (oh, sorry, very frightening) spider crawling around the floor.
Filed under: amy på 'mom'ska
When I look at my eight-month-old daughter she seems big. She is big. She cries big. She laughs big. She exudes big energy. I look at her and I don’t see her ending at the contours of her body. I see everything that is Sigrid, which, right now is everything. She is sleepless nights. She is early mornings. She is evening baths. She is smiles, hers and mine. She is narration. She is food. She is trees and ducks and sky and birds, because I see all of these things to point them out to her. She is my bedroom window, because it was nothing before it was Sigrid’s lookout. She is avocados. She is fake sneezes. She is walking. And she is all the things that aren’t. She is the movies because I can’t go to them. She is the email I can’t answer, the call I can’t make, the magazine still waiting to be read. She is the baby in my stomach and the toddler she’ll be. When I hear her speak, I hear her babble as well as the words that will come. When I see her crawl, I see her steps. When I give her her bottle, I see her holding a cup.
She has destroyed, yes destroyed, the world as I knew it, and built up a new one with her two chubby hands and ten razor sharp nails. She took 29 years of my life and made them a blur. I have never been so unsure, so weak and so strong. She is paradoxes.
When I sat in her room yesterday, the sun came in and threw our shadows on the wall. Me: long and lean and grown. Her: round, soft and small. Sigrid, Sigrid, Sigrid. You are a giant and I am tiny before you. And yet you’re not. You are none of the things I read into you. You are you. So little, so little, so little; and so good.
Filed under: amy på 'mom'ska
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- oh, hello
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- woops!
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- over here
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- no, over there
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- and now for my morning yoga
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- ohm?
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- stupid landline
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- I’ll just rest here for one sec
Filed under: amy på 'mom'ska
Things around here are in full fart. And before you start sniggering, what I mean is that there is no stopping Sigrid these days: one minute she is sitting on her play mat, the next she is stuck under the chair. Full fart is Swedish for full speed.
After what seemed like eons of frustration, Sigrid started creeping a little over two weeks ago. Today, she crawled. I didn’t even notice it at first. What I noticed was where she was headed. While I was busy checking my email, she was on her way under the fireplace (there’s a little hole there for keeping logs). I jumped up, picked her up, and turned her around before I registered that she had actually been crawling into that small, concrete hole.
I called Erik to tell him the news. “I guess this is the end of any peace we’ve had,” he said. “We haven’t had any peace since she arrived,” I countered. It’s true. From the moment Sigrid came out, she has been going at full speed. I am reminded of this every time I meet the other kind of baby. The peaceful kind.
Yesterday I had plans to meet a friend and her 9-week old. When I called to say that Sigrid and I were ready, she said that her son was sleeping. “Oh,” I said, “do you need to wait until he wakes up?” “No,” she assured me, “I can get him dressed while he’s sleeping.”
What?
Yeah, so not my baby.
Which is why, when people say it’s gets harder when they start crawling and walking, I can’t identify. Ah, you had one of those calm ones, I think. For me, it’s getting easier and easier. Where her energy used to translate to crying and wiggling and flailing and trying to MOVE dammit, it now means at least partly independent play and unending curiosity. Where I used to have to hold her and soothe her for large chunks of the day, I can now empty my kitchen drawer of every plastic utensil and she’s happy.
A change of environment helps too. Unless, of course, the new milieu I provide her with is the c-r-i-b. Oh, your baby just cuddles his teddy bear for a while and then goes to sleep? How sweet. Mine rolls and rolls and does down-ward-facing dog, and sits up, and pulls up, and rolls some more and throws herself at her bars. If her crib is her cell, she’s one of those inmates that has established an intense work-out routine to prevent themselves from going mad. Today she’s wearing black and white striped pants, which during her pre-nap protestations, made me feel even more the cruel warden. But how many wardens do you know who throw discipline to the wind in favor of a cuddle, or stroke their inmates’ heads and sing “Itsy bitsy spider” until sleep comes? None, Sigrid, none.
Last night, Erik’s mom was here while I gave Sigrid her bottle of välling* before bed. She was surprised at the way Sigrid sipped, then looked around, then sipped, then “talked” to her pappa, then sipped some more. “Sigrid, many babies would fall asleep while getting their bottle,” she jokingly chastised. Full speed babies don’t fall asleep easily. They need extra help winding down. The upshot of that? The feeling of accomplishment and love when their crazy little bodies finally give themselves over to sleep in your arms, or nestled next to you on the bed.
If I seem like I’m comparing my baby to other babies a lot, I am. It’s inevitable. I now run in a very baby-heavy crowd and comparisons loom around every conversation corner. But, let me make one thing clear, the comparisons do not make me unhappy. I used to get stressed out about the differences or wonder why I didn’t get one of those “get dressed while sleeping” babies. These days, I look at Sigrid’s kinetic personality and think, there you are, emerging.
Now hurry up and start talking to me so I can get to know you even better. But slow down too, so I can linger a little while with you asleep in my arms.
* Välling is a Swedish phenomenon that I could write a whole post about. It’s basically very nutritious liquid oatmeal that many babies get before bed. Or, if breast milk is baby heroin, välling is baby methadone.
The calendar says it’s still summer; the leaves disagree. Summer is over, fall is upon us. Thank God.
Never do I feel less Swedish than in the fall. I’ve mentioned the Swedes’ love of summer before. Let me repeat. Swedes love summer. They love summer so much they pretend it starts in May, when they whip out their bathing suits. They love it so much they pretend that the weather was great even when it wasn’t. Because were we to admit that a Swedish summer wasn’t perfect, there would be a national identity crisis. (But…but…Swedish summer is magical!)
Despite the general obsession over summer in these northern climes, you won’t find me lamenting the cooler air and looming darkness. It’s not that I don’t like summer or deny that a perfect summer day in Sweden, with its manageable heat and late night sun, is just about the most perfect kind of summer day, period. I do like summer, but I love fall. Tank tops and salads? I’m not so excited by them. I’m a sweaters and stews kind of girl.
There is no time of the year I’d rather be outside than early fall and this year I have the ability to be outside every day and a charming little companion to be there with. Sigrid and I, both happy to be free from sweaty days and strong sun, are taking advantage of the crisp and clear weather. We have a lovely new routine, she and I. After our morning nap (I say ”our” because I usually go back to bed with her), we get dressed and go to the bakery, where I get a coffee and a bun. Then we head to the park for a little picnic and some swing time before lunch. It isn’t much but it’s a perfect little ritual that I intend to do as much as possible before the winter sets in.
It’s autumn. I’m happy. This is starting to get fun.
Every day in Sweden has a name or two attached to it. People celebrate their namnsdag (name day) with a small gift, a little cake, or a simple acknowledgement (“Hey, it’s your name day, congratulations.” “Yeah, thanks.”) Erik’s name day is May 18th. Amy, much to my chagrin, doesn’t have a day on the calendar, but luckily my last name (Leo) is also a first name, which is honored on June 28th. Today, September 15th is Sigrid’s name day. Here is what it says in the paper:
Sigrid comes from a combination of two words with the meanings “victory” and “beautiful, loved.” In Sweden there are 5,620 women with the first name Sigrid.
Since Sigrid has zero idea that it’s her name day and since she can’t yet eat cake, we’re not really doing much beyond congratulating her. But here, on her very first name day, I thought I’d tell the story of her name. It’s not so exciting, but it’s her story all the same.
How far back should I go? I had a wedding dress and baby names picked out when I was six, but let’s skip those early ideas and start with Erik and me. We were the kind of dorky couple that started talking about baby names on like our second date. For the first couple of years, we had it in our heads that our daughter was going to be named Astrid. Then I discovered the Swedish name Moa. Then we thought Alice Moa. For a while I switched to Majken (pronounced my kin, with the emphasis on ‘my’) and there was always Agnes.
Despite our lovey dovey daydreamy conversations about our future daughter, I secretly thought that when it came down to it, I’d choose the name. Not so. I was surprised to discover when I was pregnant that Erik really cared, and that unlike dinner decisions, I couldn’t just railroad him on the name front. Hazel or Harriet, I’d say. No, he’d say. How about Marnie? I’d suggest. Is that a real name? Erik would counter. At one point I tried to convince him that Peregrine would make a great name (We could call her Pip!) but he would not take me seriously. I downgraded it to a middle name but still, no dice.
By the last month of pregnancy we had a list of about 10 girl’s names, some Swedish, some English. Sigrid was one of them. I had suggested it early on in the pregnancy and Erik immediately loved it. I knew it was a good option but it kept getting overshadowed by whatever new, snazzy name charmed me that week. Most of those other names exploded on the scene and then faded. Sigrid stuck stubbornly around, all proud and pretty. In the end, we had two names. I loved them both but voted for the other. Erik fought for Sigrid. Eventually, I agreed with him. Eventually, I couldn’t imagine anything better. Sigrid. Sigrid. Sigrid. Classic, strong. Not weird, but not common. Swedish, but pronounceable in English. And finally, the clincher for me, the thought that the lovely sophistication of Sigrid could be shortened to the warm and casual Siggy.
For 29 years she was everything from Abigail to Zoë. For nine months she was Bobo. But the moment she came out, all of those past ideas were erased and she was no one except herself. Sigrid Lucille. My crazy Siggy-Lou.
Happy namnsdag, my love.
Excuse me, I have been busy grandparenting. My mom was here for the month of August and my dad came for the last two weeks. I thought that having my parents here meant I’d have more time to email, blog, take baths, etc. In reality, though, when my mom and dad are here, I want to soak up the visit and not run off for alone time. The days went by in a blur of fikas, walks, and playtime with Siggy and the nights were full of dinners, bedtime routines, and episodes of The Wire. It was a good month.
One of the things I am happiest to give Sigrid is two sets of extremely loving grandparents. Two grandmothers who will relish her personality, her opinions, and will talk, talk, talk to her. Two grandfathers who will joke and laugh and basically do anything she ever asks. Four amazing grandparents with two very different situations.
If we stay in Sweden, Erik’s parents will get the luxury of casual visits with Sigrid. She’ll get to go to their house for an afternoon, be babysat by them when Erik and I need a night out, be picked up by them from school. They’ll get to see her soccer games or her dance recitals or her art shows or whatever else she fills her days with.
My parents will get the longer, more intensive visits. They’ll get to kiss Sigrid goodnight and good morning many days in a row, multiple times a year. They’ll get to arrive with their luggage and gifts and hugs and mess up the hum drum. They’ll get to be a special place to look forward to going every year.
Yes, I wish my parents were nearby, but I have no doubt that they will be loving, loved and active grandparents anyway. This last month only confirmed that. This was my parents’ third visit since Siggy was born. The first one was a meeting, the second one was a check-in, but this one, this third one, was the real beginning. By the time my parents headed back to New Jersey, they felt that they really knew my daughter and that she really knew them. During the month they saw amazing moods, bad moods, favorite foods, hated foods, attempts at crawling, diaper rash. They heard laughing and screaming and laugh-screaming and babbling. My mom and Erik will never forget “The Night that Grandma and Pappa Babysat” (hint: it wasn’t a raging success). I will never forget coming down the pier after a late summer swim and seeing my dad and Siggy playing under the beach umbrella. It was sad as always to say goodbye but we had a nice, long time together and we were all satisfied. I know there will be visits in the future that are more fun or active or exciting, but I will never forget this first of many summer vacations, where the bond between my baby and my parents was so completely solidified.
Oceans be damned.
