I am in love with Pinterest and wasting much time there. Beautiful stuff beautifully presented, and very “moreish”.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I need a better way to store my bookmarks of pretty stuff – decorating ideas, craft project ideas, or just things that are beautiful. I don’t want to blog all of them; I don’t want to save local copies of images that I then cannot trace back to their source; I don’t want to save them in delicious. This visual collection of bookmarks is exactly the right solution.

The Estonian playgroup’s annual summer picnic at Drottningholm. Just like last year a small picnic turned into a full-day project: first packing and preparations, then the picnic itself (which we manage to drag out longer than most of the other families) and then since we’re there we might as well take a quick walk through the labyrinth and of course there’s the large fountain right next to that and by the time we get home it’s 5pm.

Ingrid liked the fact that we were right next to a royal castle. Princesses and other royalty are hot stuff right now, in fairy tales, pretend play and other settings. She asked if we could go inside. Not today, we said, but I think we’ll try and visit one of the royal castles soon.

We are going to have lots of strawberries this year!

Tired. Adrian has been waking a lot at night for almost a week now. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe he’s thirsty because of the heat. Maybe it’s a phase. In any case he’s woken every 2 hours. I’ve got no problem with being woken at three- or four-hour intervals, but two is hard. It seems to interrupt my sleep cycles in a bad way so I feel like a zombie every time he wakes me. The only thing I can think of is putting my head down on the pillow, so I nurse and then pat him to sleep again. It may be that he doesn’t need nursing but I’m unable to think. I sometimes even forget to check his nappy first, so I’ve had to interrupt his nursing, which he is not at all happy about.

I had my hair cut today. I’ve found a hairdresser very close to work whom I really like. While I was on leave with Adrian I went to a salon close to home. They were cheap and quick but the result was not as good. So when I started thinking it was time to get a haircut, with only a few more weeks left of my maternity leave, I decided to wait and then get it done as soon as I was back at work. I hadn’t taken into account all the piled-up tasks waiting for me there so three weeks passed before I got around to it. Now I feel all fresh and tidy again! I like having my hair really short at the back of my neck, otherwise it sort of itches and bothers me, especially now during hot summer days.

When I read my friends’ and acquaintances’ blogs or Facebook entries, it is easy to get the impression that they all lead more productive, creative, relaxed lives than I can manage.

These people have pancakes and fresh berries for brunch on Sundays, while I’m satisfied when we manage any kind of breakfast for all four of us at the same time.

They sew clothes for theirselves and their kids. Me, I’ve had a half-finished simple curtain on my desk for several weeks.

They have lush, beautiful gardens. I have weeds between the strawberries in our planting boxes, and it took me until late May to pull out the remains of last year’s dead flowers from our one and only flowerbed.

And these are people like me, parents of young children, not care-free singles.

But when I stop to think, I realize we have just prioritized different things – or we’re good at different things, or we have kids with different temperaments. Their lives are not “like mine but better” as their Facebook posts may make them seem, just different. They have their own struggles, activities that they avoid because their kids make it near-impossible, things that don’t get done. I’m comparing my average to their best.

The mum who manages pancake brunches, despite two kids? Spends an hour and a half putting her kids to bed at night. She hasn’t found the secret for frictionless life with kids, either.
The one who sews for her family? Never reads any books. Sewing is her hobby, whereas mine is reading books. I wouldn’t trade one for the other.
The one who gardens? Doesn’t cook much. I’ll take a good home-cooked dinner over a lush garden, every day.

After three days at home I am starting to feel like I’m on vacation. The hot and sunny weather outside makes it feel like high summer. I’m forgetting work, shifting into a different gear. Gardening, playing with the kids.

Dastardly roe deer bit off two of my tomato plants, leaving little more than a stump. The third one they didn’t touch. Now the two mangled ones look like they might survive and grow some new branches, so we’re doing our best to protect them. Yesterday we bought nylon netting that I hung over the planting beds. The ones housing strawberries had netting already since last year; now all the veggies are protected, too. (In addition to those unfortunate tomato bushes I have planted some butternut squash as well as peas.)

I hope the deer don’t eat gooseberries. If they do, we will have to put up something more extensive and less discreet, an enclosure of some sort around the entire kitchen garden.

I realize now that I have no current photos of the kitchen garden. It is almost, but not quite, light enough outside that I could take some now, at 10pm. Three weeks to go until midsummer.

Today is the first day in a 5-day holiday in Sweden: Ascension, then a so-called “squeezed” Friday (a single working day sandwiched between two free days) on which most people stay home from work (either flexing or taking a day’s vacation), then the normal weekend, and finally National Day on Monday.

The weather being fine, we made a short cycle trip. We cycled to Gåseborg, an Iron Age fort on a hill on lake Mälaren. It’s a nice bike ride: first along cycle tracks running next to streets, then in the woods. And then a short climb to the top of a rocky hill with grand views. We had a picnic lunch and climbed a bit on rocks and stones and then cycled back home. Adrian had nice naps in the bike trailer both going there and coming home, and on the way back Ingrid actually fell asleep, too.

They keep each other company in the trailer. Adrian in particular is much more contented in the trailer when Ingrid is there next to him. When he fell asleep, his head leaned onto her shoulder, and it looked very cosy.

We did a similar bike ride to the same place two years ago, a bit later in the summer I think. I was sure I’d written a post about it at the time but now I cannot find it, so I guess I never did.