SKYNI

The kids had a Halloween party in their school last Wednesday. It was really nice as it was Jonathan’s birthday as well and his class had a mini disco. Jonathan was dressed in his Transformers outfit and he was so proud of it.

Linn, on the other hand, was ashamed of her outfit and wanted to dress like a princess, just like all her girl classmates. It’s funny that when you are a kid, you want to dress like everyone else and when you get older, you want to stand out.

She was really not so happy in her outfit but we loved it.

Our boy celebrated his birthday recently and we had a mini party at our new home. Jonathan was really happy and was very appreciative of his presents.

I can’t believe he is already 5! He is so innocent and sweet, always seeking our approval and confirmation that he is ‘a good boy’.

If only you know that we love you so much Jonathan and you are our great little boy! We are so proud of you.

Nicke and I went on a mid week break to Venice last week. I have always wanted to visit the city before it sinks. It was nice and sunny and we had a really wonderful 3 days trip, just pure indulgence on food, wine, cheese, gelato, cafe and simply beautiful architecture. We didn’t bring the kids as they would be complaining about the walks and Venice is definitely not a child friendly area. Thanks to my wonderful mother in law who helped us looked after the 2 precious during our short break!

The food was not as great as we hoped it would be. It was ok as we tried our best to avoid the Tourist Menu. My other complaint is that the city is really too touristy.

Didn’t do much shopping. My dear husband deliberately avoided Miu Miu and steered me to United Colours of Benetton instead. 🙁 Would have seriously damaged his wallet.

We had a really great time.

If the Terrible Twos are not enough, the Terrifying Threes can really drive you utterly, completely insane.

Linn not only defies all rules and instructions, she also doesn’t seem to care about the consequences. When she is told that she need to put on more clothes to keep warm, her answer is that she wants to be cold.

When I lose my patience and started shouting at her, she told me that ‘I cannot hear you’. She then tells me sweetly that she doesn’t like to be shouted at. If I want to talk to her, I will need to speak to her softly and slowly. Giving her a good spanking will be out of the question in Sweden.

I must say that she has adopted a very good selective hearing technique at her age. Now, I wonder where did she get that from 😉

I ‘wrote’ too soon. It started snowing last night. The kids are really pleased!

Some pictures of our new home. We didn’t have much time to do any renovation or even paint the walls. Plus it is really difficult with kids running around. I guess we will do it next summer. 😉

I must say that the autumn colours are just breathtaking! Even the kids find it very interesting

It is alittle difficult to set the new routines as it really depends on the weather sometimes. The autumn weather is unpredictable. The temperature drops below 0 degrees at night. You can wake up to a nice bright sunny day but it is freezing outside. The breeze can also be very very chilling. Some days, it can just be raining all day and making it really frosty outside.

Try dressing the kids in 3 layers of clothes (long sleeve t-shirt, jeans, indoor jacket and outdoor jackets), not forgetting gloves, winter cap and boots, and then get them out to walk across 3 football fields at 8 am every morning. All i can say is that, the cold walks definitely wake me up.

I walk to my Swedish class in the late morning and that takes me about 30-40 minutes. The classes which take up the entire afternoon have been quite interesting so far. More about that later.

And then i pick up the kids on the way home from school. The kids don’t seem to mind the cold so much and they are doing ok at school. The thing that amazes me is that despite the cold, they are mostly outdoors in the playground!!! The temperature seldom rises above 10 degrees during the day time.

But here’s a picture of them taken by the school.

We come home, have dinner, have some family time and then put the kids to bed at 8 pm.

Maybe we will have to change the logistics when the weather becomes colder. I don’t think we will be able to walk across 3 football fields twice everyday. On really bad weather days, we have to rely on Nicke to drop and pick them up from school.

‘Hopefully, Not for a long long time!’ That will be my answer if anyone asks me if i would like to move again. It was a really tiring experience.

We were fortunate that my mother in law was here to help us. Neither Nicke and I have set up a home in Sweden before and it is definitely very different from Singapore.

Everything went pretty well except that we cannot move our double bed upstairs. It is either tearing down the stairs or sawing our double bed into 2. We had no choice but to get rid of the bed. I was told that Swedes usually buy 2 single beds and put it together as they will not be able to carry a double bed upstairs. It’s not so simple as the mattress sizes are very different from Singapore. Even pillow sizes too,

Prior to this move to Sweden, I have never been to Ikea. and I have been there thrice in the past three weeks! I don’t think i can apply for a job in Ikea. I can barely put a table together!

Well, at least the kids are happy. They really enjoy going up and down the stairs and watching the fireplace. I think they are happy to see their toys and bed finally. I, however, am not too thrilled about picking up the apples that keeps falling from the apple tree. We don’t have a blender and too many apple pies can make you very fat!!! I am considering putting a sign that says ‘Feel free to help yourself to the apples’.

To Nicke’s dismay, we have some technical trouble. Our internet is not working very well and our home laptop broke down. I haven’t been able to respond to emails and check facebook regularly.

On top of the hectic move, I have started my swedish classes!

Hur mor du?

We have been really busy with the move but after more than 10 days of trying to set up the new house, we can now say that we are finally settled in.

The only thing is that our internet access is very unpredictable due to the infrastructure. Hence this very very short post.

I was reading the article in Marie Claire and started to think about what I would tell my teenage self. I guess these will be my top few…The entire list will put you to sleep…:)

1. It will be more interesting to take time to discover more about yourself, build your own individual style than to follow others blindly.

2. Enjoy frivolous romances but that is not love. Adult relationship is alot more complicated, intense and definitely not ‘happily ever after’.

3. Your life is not determined by the A’levels. Some of the more interesting people you will meet may not have a degree. In fact, no one (ok..maybe your first employer) will ever ask you about your education!

4. You will not always get what you want in life.Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.

5. Your parents and sisters will mean alot to you in time to come.

So what’s yours?

I must say that i really miss one of my favourite festival .. was really craving for mooncakes this week!

I tried to find one in the Asian supermarket and the only one i found is a DURIAN mooncake!

Sorry…i don’t miss that disgusting fruit at all!!!

Nicke is away in Finland for the entire week and this leaves me home alone with the kids.

The stressful part is to drive them to and from school in the busy peak hour traffic and also parallel park on the narrow street where we live. (Yes, I am still bad at parallel parking after 20 years of driving). The Swedes are very very courteous drivers. It’s amazing that they immediately slow down and let you in when you signal that you want to switch lanes. I try to stay focus by staying on the right side of the road. However, parking is not cheap in Stockholm. It costs SGD 3 per hour between 9 to 5 pm. That is why I insisted that Nicke takes the car to work and pick up the kids instead of leaving the car with me. 🙂

The kids are happily picking sniglar (snails) from their outdoor trips with the school. They show and give them to me everyday when I picked them up from school. I can’t help but think of escargots when they put them in my hands.

Today, while driving the kids home from school, I commented to Linn that her friend’s mom is very pretty. Her surprising answer is that ‘I don’t think so. I am pretty too…just like you!!!’.

My dear Linn, all that sweet talk will not earn you more sweets.

We attended Mika’s and Eleanor’s church wedding last Saturday. It was really beautiful.

As we were leaving, Jon turned to the empty church and asked loudly …

‘Hello! Is there anybody there?’

We can’t help but smile. 🙂

Nicke and I started a course organised by the Autism Society for Small Children last Thursday. The course is conducted for parents who recently received their child’s diagnosis and to help them understand more ASD. It also creates an opportunity for parents to meet and get together for sharing and bonding.

It started out like AA where you introduced yourself and tell them about your child with autism. Some parents broke down as they described their journey so far. I can see the eyes of despair and sadness when they talked about their child. None of us have ‘chosen’ to be in that room. I too have cried buckets in the past 3 years and I still do. I worry incessantly over Jon’s future and how he will be able to look after himself in the future.

Nicke said that we despair because of our shattered dreams for a child. Jon does not have such dreams and maybe, he is just happy in his own ways. So instead of being sad for him, we now just focus on understanding him better and make him happy.

From time to time, I will check with the kids on how they feel about the move to Sweden. Jonathan says he likes ‘Sweden’. But Linn says that she wants to go back to Singapore. When I probe further to find out what exactly she misses, she says that she wants to go home to Anan and she misses him. He is her best friend!!!

So maybe it is just Anan she misses and not Singapore.

Nicke and I have finally started to give candies to the kids. But they only eat candies on Saturdays. This means that they have to be good for the rest of the week to earn their candies for Saturday.

Last night, in an attempt to get the kids to finish their dinner, i made a mistake by saying that the kid who finishes first will get a lollipop. Jon was motivated and he ate up everything on his bowl immediately. Linn did not care and chose not to finish her dinner.

When Jon tried to claim his reward, Linn casually said : ‘Mummy, it’s not Saturday today and so Jonathan cannot get candy’.

!!!!

Ever since I have been here, i have been doing a lot of shopping. The kids need a new wardrobe since their clothes in Singapore consists of largely T-shirt & shorts (Jon) and dresses (Linn). Most of their clothes cannot be worn in Sweden. Well, maybe for summer but their summer is mostly about 18-25 degrees.

The autumn weather has been quite kind to us. It has been about 10-15 degrees everyday. At night, it drops to below 10 degrees. Here’s a joke i heard. A man was asked for his opinion of the swedish weather. He commented that he only experienced 2 weather – the Green winter and the White winter. The green one is alot kinder and prettier.

The kids have been obediently putting on their clothes. We just keep layering them to keep them warm. It is not exactly fun buying all these kid’s summer,autumn,winter clothes as they can only wear them for THAT season and they will outgrow it in the next season. Poor Linn, i see that she will be wearing alot of hand me downs. And with my rigid ‘washing’ schedule in the service apartment, i have to buy even more clothes for now. Fortunately, swedish kids clothes are really colourful and nice.

As for me, that’s a different story.

Thank God for H&M!

Nicke organised our first family weekend trip last weekend to Mariehamn, the largest monolingual swedish municipality in Finland. We took one of those Viking cruise out on Saturday morning and came back on Sunday evening..The 8 hours cruise ride (to and fro) was interesting as most Finns and Swedes do this to get completely slosh on duty free alcohol and they are there mainly for duty free shopping. Our Singapore version is the Star Cruise where there is alcohol, entertainment and gambling.

Of course being responsible adults, Nicke and I hung around in the family restaurant area which has 2 good size playrooms for the kids. The kids had a great time whilst Nicke and I had really good views of the beautiful archipelago.

The city of Mariehamn is dead quiet. I don’t think I can live here. We were there on a Saturday afternoon and the streets were really empty. Maybe the 11,000 inhabitants were out in the bathhouse in Mariebad or at their casinos!

Jon and Linn loved the bathhouse although it was still cold at 22 degrees temperature. A bathhouse is actually like a ‘country club’ with good swimming facilities and nice water slides for the kids. It costs SGD10 per entry. The only thing is that they heat up the water (A LITTLE). The bathhouse was really crowded!

It was a nice getaway and and we really enjoyed it.

Thanks for all your kind comments. We haven’t moved in yet…these were the pictures posted online for the sale of the house. Based on what we saw online, we went to view the house.

Fortunately, it is close to what we saw online but it really isn’t very big inside. We have seen houses that have more deceiving pictures.

Let’s see how the house will look when we move our ‘kids friendly’ ‘furniture into the house.