I’m a big fan of babywearing and I’m a bit sad that I’m not slinging Ingrid any more. (Some time this spring she decided she didn’t like it any more.) But I still get a warm fuzzy feeling when I see another baby sitting in a pretty woven wrap or a cuddly stretchy one or a comfortable ergonomic carrier.

When I was out with Ingrid in a sling and we met other parents doing the same, we’d always smile at each other. Sort of like a secret handshake. Now I still smile at such parents whenever I see them, even though they don’t notice me.

Parent hack #1: Store bibs in the kitchen (or a dining room, if that’s where you eat).

In London all we had was one large room that served as kitchen + dining area + home office + living room, plus a separate small bedroom. In our new house we actually have multiple rooms. This is a novel experience, and one I will have to get used to. (We intend to fight it, though: the wall between the kitchen and the living room will come down soon.) This means that we suddenly need to think about what room we put things in.

We used to store bibs in a dresser with all the rest of Ingrid’s clothes. But the dresser is in the bedroom, which is at the other end of the house from the kitchen. So before every meal one of us would walk all the way to the other end of the house to get a bib for Ingrid. Until finally a light went on, and I moved the bibs from the dresser to the top kitchen drawer, next to the cutlery.

Parent hack #2: Use empty cereal boxes as drawing paper.

Ingrid likes drawing. Actually mostly she likes to watch me draw, and occasionally she does some brief but energetic scribbling. We used an ordinary A4 pad of paper to begin with. But her scribbles often ended up outside the paper, or the paper got wrinkled by her vigorous actions, so I figured we needed something bigger. The only large piece of paper I could find was an empty box of HavreFras, that I split open and flattened. It keeps its shape a lot better than plain paper – not only during drawing but also when I fold it up and tuck it away between our drawing sessions. Now I keep all our cereal boxes, and sometimes find myself thinking that I should finish that cereal so I get a new box to draw on.

Parent hack #2b: Draw on a carpet.

Despite the larger surface, Ingrid’s scribbles still often veered dangerously close to the edge, and I had to scrub crayon marks from the floor. Then a few weeks after we’d moved we finally unpacked and unrolled the carpet, which covers most of the free floor area in the living room. Naturally we ended up sitting on the carpet and drawing on our cardboard box (something you couldn’t do with a plain sheet of paper). And I realised – crayons don’t leave any marks on a dark carpet! You’d have to really work hard to make a mark of any sort with a crayon on a soft carpet. As an added bonus, dropped crayons don’t roll as far on a carpet as they do on a bare floor.

In English there is the concept of “the terrible twos”, lasting from before the 2nd birthday until after the 3rd birthday. The Swedish term is more evocative – “trotsåldern” or the “age of defiance”.

While there is nothing terrible about Ingrid’s behaviour, she has definitely become more oppositional and negative recently. Quite often her first reaction to whatever I offer is no!, only to make an about-turn seconds later.

H: Kas sa tahad piima?
I (angrily): Inte piima!
…10 seconds pass…
I (giggling): Ikka piima!

H: Do you want some milk?
I: Not milk!
…
I: Yes milk!

Or how about this, more enlightening example:

H: I’m going to take a shower. Do you want to shower with me?
I: Not shower!
H gets into shower.
I (crying): Shower!
H: Do you want to shower?
I (running away angrily): Not shower!
H turns on the water
I (crying): Shower!
H: Shall I take off your pajama top?
I (angrily): Not shower!
H (finally understanding): Can you take off your pajama top yourself?
I takes off pajama top with just a bit of help and holds up her arms to be lifted into the bath, and continues to shower happily.

It’s all about independence. Apparently, sometimes even offers of milk insult her sense of independence.

No, we haven’t lost our internet connection again. I’m just too busy to post. With Ingrid’s nursery start, the aftereffects of the house move, the build-up of stuff to do after our vacation, the need to buy the next size & season’s worth of clothes and shoes for Ingrid, I’m swamped. The nursery start is the biggest culprit: for a week both Eric and I were working, but Ingrid was only at nursery for 5 hours or so, which left me trying to squeeze a full day’s worth of work into 4, and Eric working late nights. I’ve got just enough energy to keep all of us fed and clothed, and the dishes and laundry done, but have got little energy or time left for blogging. It doesn’t help that Ingrid is sleeping like crap just now.

Back soon, hopefully.

When I got up this morning the thermometer on the bedroom wall read 15.7°C, and the kitchen was no warmer. By the time Eric had left with Ingrid to take her to the nursery and I had started working, the living room temperature had risen to 17.5°C. Cold enough that my fingers were too stiff to type comfortably.

So I turned on the heating. It’s only September (barely!) and the heating is already turned on. The heating bill for this house is going to be enormous!

Salon, my favourite online magazine, has started a new venture titled Open Salon. It’s a sort of a blog portal. I’m always on the lookout for great reading material, and this seems to be a very promising concept: content created by a wide range of people, but filtered by a human with some taste and discernment. I hope it continues as well as it’s started.

In fact the paragraph above is just an excuse for these two links, which I just couldn’t resist posting: chemistry and From the mouths of babes.