We’ve gone from winter to summer in less than a month. Dandelions, daffodils, cherry trees and the first lawn daisies all blooming at the same time as the last scillas and anemones. Weird. I feel like I have been cheated out of a spring.

Finally, finally a spring weekend!

We brought up the garden furniture from the basement, and the outdoor drying rack, and the Crocs and the water guns. Eric inaugurated the drying rack; the kids had fun with the water guns; I had fun spreading manure in the hedges.

I was out all afternoon – no hat, no warm coat!

Tomorrow I’m packing away the woolly hats and snow suits and winter boots.

After about a week of sustained cold weather (below –15°C) we’re reaching the limits of our old house’s capability to hold the warmth inside and keep the cold out. The temperature in most parts of the house is now down to around 17°C. On the floor, in the chilliest corners, it’s more like 10°C.

For next year we really need to buy a tile stove. For this year, it’ll probably be another electric heater. Or maybe not, because the weather report promises warmer weather from Saturday night onwards, and the house has been quite OK during most of the winter.

Washing dishes, with hot water, becomes an unusually pleasant activity in this kind of environment.

In other news, Ingrid has done the thing that most kids do once and never again: licked a cold metal bar. Blood and tears. (What is it that makes freezing cold metal look so lickable?)

Yesterday I learned what light pillars are and how they arise. According to the news, these could be seen in several areas in northern Stockholm yesterday – and, luckily for us, also from our living room window. Quite cool, and pretty as well. I only managed to catch the brightest ones in the photo but in reality we saw several more. They came and went, brighter and weaker, as the air moved.

(It may seem from the photo as if the pillars are above the street light, but that’s just because they were in the same direction – in reality they were much farther away, above some unknown light source.)

Tuesday: rain, +5
Wednesday: rain gradually turning into sleet, 0
Thursday: snow, -2
Friday: snow, -2
Saturday: clear, -5
Sunday: clear, -13

Some interesting weather seems to be heading our way.

… and two women. (In reality there are a few more women in our office but on this day they must have been camouflaged.)

My best buy during my time on maternity leave with Adrian was my shopping trolley from IKEA. I wouldn’t call it life-changing, and it doesn’t rank quite as high on the awesomeness scale as baby slings, but it made a big difference: it let me get things done with a lot more ease.

Now that I am back at work, transporting kids and things is still a major part of everyday mothering. This season the challenge has grown because they need to go to different places: Adrian is still at nursery but Ingrid goes to school. Ingrid transports herself, really, but she is not old enough to do it all on her own, so I get to do a lot of walking.

On a normal Friday afternoon I spend just about two hours walking back and forth across Spånga. Train station, school, other school, nursery, supermarket, other school, home.

Spånga is full of hills, and this has been a rainy autumn. So this season’s best buy is a rain coat. Not a waterproof jacket but a proper coat in rubberized nylon that reaches down to my knees and keeps me drier than an umbrella. Just like the trolley, it is not life-changing but it makes daily life a lot easier. No more struggling to push a stroller up a steep hill with one hand, while holding my umbrella with the other (and a bag of groceries with the third).

A lot of mothering seems to boil down to having enough hands. I’ll buy anything that frees up a hand or two.