We’ve been watching Firefly on DVD. Yesterday we saw Jaynestown. One of the side stories in this episode was about how Inara was hired by the local magistrate to “make a man” out of his 26-year-old son. Inara did what Inara does, and that was that. Afterwards, though, the son was wondering why he didn’t feel any different – didn’t feel any more like a man. I’ve been feeling the same about motherhood.

Somehow I had been expecting that becoming a mother would change me. That I would feel different, that I would feel like I was a different person. Perhaps not overnight… but surely a year would be enough time for any changes to take effect?

But I still don’t feel any different. I don’t feel that my role in life is to be a mother. I don’t primarily identify myself as a mom. My life has changed, of course, in the sense that I spend my time differently, have a different set of priorities, etc. But I myself have not. I am my old self but with new things in my life – not a new self.

Did becoming a parent change you?

Occasionally we buy toys for Ingrid. Not too many, because most stuff that’s out there is not at all appealing. Lots of cheap plastic and things that go beep. Sometimes, however, we find things we like.

But our opinion is not a very good predictor of Ingrid’s opinion. We find something and think, oh, she’ll like this one! If I was a kid then I would certainly enjoy playing with this! And she just goes “meh” and ignores it completely. That’s what happened with a lovely colourful wooden bead frame from IKEA for example. I doubt if she’s even spent half an hour playing with it. In fact we should probably just throw it out or give it away.

Sometimes she’s just not ready for a certain toy yet. That’s the case for soft toys, I suspect. She has never shown any interest in any of her cuddly soft animals.

For quite a while I thought that was also the case for building blocks. We have a wagon with a set of (lovely colourful wooden) blocks. She has shown some interest in pulling the wagon along. She is happy to knock down towers that I build. But she is not at all interested in building anything herself. So I figured that she’s not into building things yet. It’ll come.

Wrong. We’d just given her the wrong building materials. Who wants colourful wooden blocks when you can get rolls of brown packing tape? (After I took this picture she went on to complete her tower of 4 rolls of tape, perfectly aligned, but it got demolished when she tried to pick the whole structure up and carry it away.)

Tape tower	Tape bangles

We’ve started working on the details of our upcoming move. The two most important things to organise are (1) finding somewhere to stay, and (2) moving all our stuff.

Finding somewhere to stay actually has two parts. We are hoping to become homeowners for the first time – we’ve been renting until now. But it’s hard to buy a house from a distance, and it would entail more travelling back and forth than we’re willing to accept. So instead we will stay in a temporary place during our first few months in Stockholm, while we look for a permanent home. We have a temporary place lined up so we won’t be homeless, but we will be living out of suitcases and boxes for some time.

It turns out that the actual move will be horrendously expensive… We’ve found two companies that manage moves between Sweden and England. The first one came up with what I thought was a jaw-droppingly expensive quote for moving our goods and furniture. But they prepared the quote without having seen our current home (they’re based in Sweden) basing their estimate only on our floor area. We have a rather sparse furnishing style so we thought that might be a bit excessive, and contacted another firm for a second opinion. This second firm actually has a local representative in England. Their man came by, surveyed the contents of our apartment, promised us that they would “sharpen their pencils” to give us a really competitive price, and went off to work. A week later they sent us an estimate that was indeed based on a lower total volume (32 m² instead of the 40 m² that the first firm guessed)… but a total price that was 15% higher than the first one. Ouch. (Admittedly their estimate includes a bit more work on their part, including packing all breakables, but still – ouch.)

The first, lower quote isn’t quite high enough to make us throw out all our furniture and buy new things in Sweden, but certainly high enough to make that thought at least cross my mind. However my brain has now been numbed and is slowly getting used to the idea of paying several months’ salary for moving.

We went to Discover in Stratford again, almost exactly a month after our last visit (during the long Christmas holidays). It was interesting to see how differently Ingrid reacted to things, and how different her play was.

Last time Ingrid’s favourite place was a low table with play food and plastic plates-pots-pans. She stood there for a long time, lifting things from one bowl to another, or into a basket that she then carried around. This time the table was still interesting, but her first move was to climb up on top of it, and then hand things to me from there. All other pieces of furniture were also primarily used for climbing, especially chairs of various sorts.

While she was an intrepid climber, she was much more cautious about exploring this time. A low “cave” was too scary to enter alone, and a dimly lit room where some parts of the floor made noises set her off crying. She stayed in the well-lit areas all the time.

It used to be that newspapers published news, analysis and views, and bloggers linked to newspapers and said “have you seen this interesting story”.

At some point the balance shifted. Now newspapers publish news, bloggers publish analysis and views, and newspapers link back to the bloggers.