Not satisfied with recklessly endangering my own children, I am planning to put all of Ingrid’s friends in mortal danger on Sunday during Ingrid’s birthday party. I will be giving them all whistle blowers (gasp!) – thereby totally violating important safety rules, I’ve now learned from The Telegraph.

The EU toy safety directive […] states that balloons must not be blown up by unsupervised children under the age of eight, in case they accidentally swallow them and choke.
[…]
Whistle blowers, that scroll out into a a long coloured paper tongue when sounded – a party favourite at family Christmas meals – are now classed as unsafe for all children under 14.

Any parents who object better not bring their kids here.

Raised surface! Near stove! Knives! Power outlet! Glass items!

Today I found something I did not know I needed: SubtlePatterns.com. The moment I saw it, I realized that this is what the blog design has been missing.

Sundays. I wonder what other people’s Sundays are like. Or Saturdays, for that matter. For us, they almost always fall into one of two categories.

There’s the active Sunday when we go places, usually someplace outdoors, or some child-oriented place like Junibacken, or errands in the city, or maybe, very occasionally, a museum. With two kids in tow anything like this becomes a full-day project. We start packing and preparing as soon as we finish breakfast, and get back home just barely in time to mix up something quick for dinner. Pasta and a tin of tomato sauce is the usual solution, or something equally unambitious. By the time we’ve eaten, I am usually knackered, and looking forward to Monday when I can rest and recuperate at work. Which feels sort of backwards.

There’s the get-things-done Sunday when we mow the lawn or lay paving stones or carry furniture from one end of the house to the other. One of us works while the other tries to keep Adrian out of the way. Who takes what role depends on the job, and we usually switch throughout the day. Ingrid spends most of the day complaining about boredom. At some point during the day one of us takes both kids and goes to the supermarket, or drops Ingrid of at a friend’s, to try to minimize the complaining. On these Sundays we are more likely to plan and cook a proper dinner, usually even something slightly more fun and elaborate than the usual weekday fare.

My dream Sunday starts with a fine Sunday breakfast and ends with a fine Sunday dinner, and in between the day is both restful and fun. But in reality there is no way I can fit all of those things into a single day.

Somewhat tired for no particular reason. Well, a bit of autumn darkness, the tail end of a slight cold, and a few nights of not-so-great sleep. Thus, no inspiration for blogging.

This morning Ingrid and I ran across a horse chestnut tree with an abundance of fresh shiny chestnuts underneath it. We picked a bunch, and made chestnut animals.

Ingrid made giraffes

and a two-headed monster.

I made sheep and hedgehogs and pigs.

Eric made a creepy-crawly.

It’s been warm and sunny for several days now and I’d been keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that this luxury would last until the weekend. It totally did; we had t-shirt weather today. After a week of sitting in an office in front of a computer I was itching to spend some time outdoors so we cycled to Ursvik and then to the Mulle Meck playground.

The Ursvik recreation area is a corner of the Igelbäcken nature reserve, a pine forest with running tracks, picnic spots, and – of most interest to us – a mini obstacle course for kids. There are tree trunks to balance on, rope nets to climb, hanging bridges and so on.

The course is almost (but not quite) too easy for Ingrid. But luckily a tipspromenad quiz had been added since our last visit, with a question next to each station of the trail. The questions were nicely printed out in big type so Ingrid could read them herself, and mostly at the right level of difficulty for her to answer them, too. Ingrid was racing me from one station to the next and never even thought to complain about tired legs.

The Mulle Meck playground has been one of our favourite weekend spots since we first discovered it, shortly after moving here. It is a playground with an attitude. The equipment and decorations are all inspired by a series of books (which we haven’t read and which frankly seem to educational for my taste) about some inventor or tinkerer, so gadgets and engines are a recurring theme at the playground.

It’s a playground that isn’t afraid to be hard, knobbly and slightly dangerous. Whatever isn’t made of wood is made of metal or concrete. There is a cable ride with a serious bounce at the end, and a “don’t touch the ground” trail out of engine parts and chunks of concrete. The most recent addition is half a ship and a shallow pond – shallow enough that there is no danger of drowning, deep and wide and enticing enough that almost all kids who go near it will end up with their feet wet. As a parent I guess you’ll love it or hate it. It seems that many love the place; often it is really crowded.