1.
Spånga is colder than central Stockholm. Most days the difference is a couple of degrees Celsius. For a good while I thought I was imagining it, or that it might be because I am in Spånga during morning and evening, while I’m in the city during the day, when it’s obviously warmer. But then we had about a week of near-freezing weather and I realised that it really is colder here. Every morning I’d go from the snow and ice in the streets of Spånga to the wet streets of Stockholm city. Here the ice never melted, even during the day, while in Stockholm it never froze, even during the night.

2.
Our house is badly insulated and generally kind of cold. I now understand why the previous owners put in three indoor thermometers, and that’s just on the ground floor. But what I don’t understand is why the thermometers seem unreliable. The one in the living room almost always says something like 17.7°C or 18.1°C. But sometimes that’s so cold that my fingers are stiff and it’s hard to type, and then the day after it feels quite OK. It’s not just me – Eric feels the same.

3.
Ingrid, on the other hand, is almost never cold. I am wearing a t-shirt, a fleece sweater, trousers or long fleece skirt, and woollen socks. Ingrid walks around in panties and socks. When we go out and I offer her clothes, telling her that it’s cold outside, she generally refuses most of the clothes and tells me “want be cold” (“tahad külm oleks”). It’s not uncommon for her to wear nothing but her indoor clothes plus a pair of boots, when we come home from nursery. On the other hand, when I tell her that it’s wet outside, she accepts that as a valid argument, and will put on her waterproof trousers or rubber boots. For a while I was losing hope that she would ever put on her snowsuit, and she probably wouldn’t have done it for the sake of the temperature only. But now she has found out that snow on bare hands is not pleasant, so when there’s snow outside she actually accepts snowsuit and mittens.

4.
A sledge is essential winter gear. I had thought of sledges as toys but they are also an important mode of transportation. We hadn’t realised that, and had to buy one really quickly when the snow came, because taking Ingrid to nursery in her pushchair through mushy snow was hard work.

5.
Speaking of essential winter gear, Smartwool makes the best woollen socks. They have sporty models and dressy ones, simple gray ones and colourful striped ones, high ones and low ones. (I like these best.) Nice-looking, comfortable, neither itchy nor scratchy, really durable, and can be machine washed on a normal program with the rest of our clothes.