You KNOW it got wild! : A Photojournal from a Week with Grandma and Pepe

Having been in Sweden for a few months now, we are really enjoying ourselves.  But it is tough not having family and friends close by to talk with or just enjoy time together.  I think that is why Lis and I view our time with our visitors as our own little oasis.  Having friends and family visit us creates a place where we can relax and enjoy time with people who have known us since before 2012.

That is why we were so excited when Grandma and Pepe were scheduled to come out.  We had been looking forward to their trip for awhile, but it really couldn’t get here fast enough. 

Not surprisingly, there was plenty of photographic evidence with both Lisa and Grandma taking pics, so the following is a little photo-journal from their trip!

Day 1 - Arrival!

After a really long flight (and short train to downtown), Calvin rewards Grandma with KISSES and SNUGGLES.  I’m pretty sure that the long flight wiped out any and all memories of this first day, so I could literally type ANYTHING here about their day, and they couldn’t argue!

Day 2 - Exploring Stockholm

Calvin had a stressful morning defending his castle against two ogres

We then went off to explore the downtown area and Gamla Stan,  the oldest part of Stockholm

After an afternoon of strollin, Calvin wanted to walk around in a nice park by the water.

Day 3 - Birthday Party!!!!

One of our biggest (superficial) concerns moving out here was that we wouldn't have anyone to celebrate Calvin's first birthday.  Luckily, Lisa is a social butterfly out here and has made great friends, AND Grandma and Pepe wouldn't have missed this for the world.  It definitely meant a lot to us to have part of our family out here for Calvin's big day

Time to slay a dragon!

(once again, GREAT cake lis!) 

What's a playground party without some swing-induced squeals??

I'm pretty sure this is what Leif Ericsons family photos would have looked like

Day 4 - Skansen

Stockholm as a really fun outdoor zoo, Skansen, focused on Scandinavian animals.  Here Grandma and Pepe lie to Calvin by telling him to look at the “puppy” (only word that GUARANTEES he will look at something) that is actually a ferocious wolverine. 

Pepe helped Calvin explore the gnome house in “Lil Skansen”.  This hour of walking around hunched over with Calvin would have hurt more if there wasn’t ice cream and beer directly outside.  NOT Skansen’s first rodeo.

Nothing is more fun than crawling around like a hamster for a little while. Except when 10 year old Swedish kids keep knocking you down…

Sweden joined in Calvin’s birthday celebration by lighting up a pretty good size candle…

Day 5 - We're on a Boat! (Happy Socialism!)

If I'm off of work to celebrate May Day, we pretty much had to go on a boat ride right?

I can't think of a better place to have a nice picnic than the “Swedish Versaille”

I'm pretty sure that Lisa was just imagining being a little girl and playing pretty pretty princess - who knows, maybe my mom was too??

Time to feed some ducks!  This was in the gardens behind the palace, where we found a little stream with some ducks.  We then realized this stream formed the moat that surrounded the dog park - thats some good engineering Stockholm

Day 6 - Livin as a Swede

Lisa really enjoyed being able to show off her day-to-day mommy schedule.  First stop was at the open daycare.  Grandma was able to see a lot of singing, clapping, playing and parachutin’

Naturally, after song time, everyone was ready to enjoy the outside weather.  Time to get your trampoline on

These cherry blossoms weren’t there a week ago and they disappeared in another week.  Made catching them all the better

 Where is Pepe you ask??  Just exploring former Soviet territories (Tallinn, Estonia) and trying to see what he could get away with saying without getting interrogated by the KGB.

Day 7 - Just Chillin

Island livin - Scandinavian style

Pepe escaped from the Gulag and he is ready to swing!  Weeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Day 8 - Going in the deep end

Lisa and I left for Vienna this day but we knew that Calvin was in great hands.  First thing they did was hit up a sure thing!  Singalong time!  Pepe was shocked when a tidal wave of Swedish ladies arrived with their babies (and dads on paternity leave of course) 2 minutes before the singing started.  Pepe didn’t know what hit him

(feel free to play "Where's Waldo/Calvin" for this pic), 

The one “must-see” museum on Pepe’s Stockholm list was the Vasa.  Basically a museum showing the “Titanic” of the 1600’s.  One of my friends sons LOVES this museum, and pretends that he is in “Pirates of the Caribbean” when he is there.  I’m assuming that’s what is going through Pepe’s head as well. 

After such a fun day, Calvin rewarded Grandma with some attack kisses!

Day 9 - Kulturhuset

During their Saturday morning stroll, they found a 10K road race.  Pepe taught Calvin to applaud the runners as they passed (the kid LOVES clapping).  Good strategy for future race days!

We've always loved the main library here, the kids area is basically a big indoor playground.  Grandma just had to make sure that bigger kids didn't knock Calvin down.  Not sure if they tried to read any Swedish baby books or not...

Kulturhuset: Kid tested, Pepe approved

Day 10 - Strolling HARD

Sunday morning, Calvin got up nice and early (I’m guessing), so they decided to go feed the ducks.  They didn’t realize that this was no “Slater Park” duck pond and that these birds wanted their breakfast.  After escaping from what was turning into a Hitchcock movie set, they channeled their inner euro and hung out at café’s for a bit. 

When we got back from Vienna, we decided to go on a walk around the water.  The walk that afternoon couldn’t have been more perfect.  The weather was great, the dogs were sniffin and Calvin was a happy boy.  Lisa and I both loved seeing the excitement in my Mom’s face as she described to us all the fun things that they did over the last few days, how much she loved spending that time with Calvin, and how they took full advantage of the family-friendly infrastructure in Sweden.  So during the walk we went up the lake and ended up hanging out on a pier for awhile. The pier had stairs and a ramp, which meant that Calvin was the happiest boy in the world.  We spent over an hour (adults rotating turns), just holding his little hands as he went up and down everything that he could.  Just a great way to spend the afternoon.

Day 11 - Great memories....

Calvin had SO much fun hangin with his Pepe and Grandma that he just couldn’t handle it Monday morning. 

Overall, I know we all had a great time and really took advantage of everything we could.  We had looked forward to this week for a long time, so it was tough that it went by so quickly.  But we are really lucky that Grandma and Pepe (with Laura next time!) will be able to visit us again so soon and we have already started to prep for that trip.  Until then, we will have a lot of fun skyping on the weekends. It’s really funny to watch how excited Calvin gets when he hears the skype noises start – he LOVES himself some skyping time. 

Couldn't have asked for anything more.

Almost forgot we moved here for my job!

Lots of people have been asking how I have enjoyed my job here so far.  I haven’t talked about it much – mostly because, like any job, its pretty boring to read about.  If you’ve read the “sun” blog, you know that I’ve been working a little later than normal lately.  But the last few weeks have actually been pretty fun. 

When I was offered the job, I was told that it would give me great visibility throughout the company.  This has definitely been true on this latest project, where I have been building the Services presentations that will be given to the Ericsson board (services is pretty much anything from Ericsson that does not involve telecom equipment).  I did a quick check the other day, and the board includes the former CEO’s of Volvo and Electrolux (same gentleman), DirectTV, British Telecom,  the founder of Vodafone, and most impressively, a member of the Advisory Board at University of Rhode Island (rhody in da house!)    

Needless to say, putting together a board presentation gave me and my manager reason to talk to people throughout our organization.  While normally I work closely with the strategy managers in each product area, now I was part of the working meetings with the heads of each product line.  We only have 3 of these lines in the Services business, so they are pretty busy folks.  Once we worked out all the details with this team, we then moved on to have even smaller working meetings with the head of our Services team. 

Services generates over 40% of Ericsson revenues, so it was even harder to get time with him.  When we did, it was my manager and I, the Services CFO, the Services head and one other member of their team.  It seemed like a very closely knit group that was more collegial than I had expected – they even managed to take a fun little dig at me when talking about the impact of currency fluctuations caused by the banana republic that they do business with (‘merica), followed by a wry smile.  We spent this meeting talking about how the presentation we had originally pulled together matched what the head of our group wanted to present to the board.  In general we were very much in line, but the hard part was finding the balance between granular details and high-level strategic views.

After updating the presentation to reflect some of these changes, Services management was walking through the presentation with the CEO of Ericsson.  I wasn’t able to be part of that meeting, but within an hour my manager was emailed with direct comments on our deck from the CEO.  His target for the presentation was slightly different from what the Services goal was, which required another few nights of updating things.  Once we get to this level, pretty much any comments are not requests to be discussed, but line items to be completed.  At the end of this batch of revisions, we heard that our presentation was the best of the 3-4 presentations being given to the board, which pleased a number of people, including my boss, my bosses boss, my bosses bosses boss and the CEO. I'll take it.

Overall, being part of small meetings with so many of the top folks in the company is interesting.  Even when I am dealing with just the top management at Ericsson, it is fascinating to see how each tier has a different point of view on what is really important and needs to be stressed to the board.   Hearing how each group thinks about things,  how they wants to present things, and what they feel is relevant to the board members is something I wouldn't be able to experience at many places. 

When I was in consulting, I did a lot of really interesting projects, but mostly interacted with mid/high level managers.  I figured that when I left consulting to go to a corporate gig, I would lose that management access, but instead, even at the earlier stages of this project, I was dealing with much more senior executives.   It really has made the last few weeks fun, even if I have seen a few too many Swedish sunsets from my desk…

Topics that I don't care enough about to give full articles...

I’ve tried recently to put out a lot more blogs, but my queue is still building up, so I figured it was random observations time.  As usual, just a few little things that have jumped out at me, but are not long enough for full-length blogs.

Linguistic Oddity #1 - Pie v cake – When we were having a few meetings discussing the presentation we were building, I kept getting confused with everyone talking about cake.  It was “cake this” and “cake that” and, because we have pastries delivered to the office every other week, I was getting pumped up.  Then I realized that they all substituted “cake” for “pie” when discussing pie charts – “we need to get a bigger piece of the cake” instead of “we need to get a bigger piece of the pie”.  Just a slightly different take on it, but it really threw me for a loop.  Thinking about it, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen many “pies” available at the bakeries here, just various sorts of cakes, tarts and pastries.  So maybe the “pie” analogy just wouldn’t make sense here.  Regardless, this will require more visits to the bakery to investigate further…

 Linguistic Oddity #2 - Question Marks  – Normally when talking about an issue, ‘mericans say “well, that is the question”.  Here though, I’ve heard numerous folks say “well, that is the question mark”.  Just a fun little discrepancy there.

Linguistic Oddity #3 - Facebook “Assault”  – I overheard my coworker (mid-30s single Greek/Swede guy) talking to some folks the other day.  I initially started paying attention when he started explaining how he was “assaulted” the other day, then became perplexed when he explained that people “liked” it afterwards without knowing.  He then repeated the story to someone else how he had been “Facebook Assaulted”, and someone had posted a fraudulent status that garnered a number of likes from his friends.  No one else had batted an eye during this, so I’m not sure if this is a Swedish thing to use “assaulted” (actually a little more graphic verb) instead of hacked, but I don’t like this oddity as much as the whole pie vs cake thing. 

Dogs -  In the US, you would only see a dog off it’s leash in public when at a dog park.  NOT HERE – it’s everywhere.  In the park, on the running path, in the middle of the sidewalk, crossing the street, there are no limits here.  I’m not sure if they just spend all winter just training their dogs to not leave their side or what, but I know that if Darby (Bessie loves food too much) is off her leash for 2 seconds she will sprint after the nearest duck/rabbit/squirrel/shadow and we will never see her again.  Give us one more winter I guess

Pocket squares – All the euro-guys at work wear pocket squares in their suit jackets.  I realized that my suit jackets looked really, really plain, so I added that little item to my birthday list for this year.  I’m in the fashion capital of Scandinavia – I need to step my game up.  

Live odds during sporting events – When I’ve watched hockey or fotbol on TV and I’ve gotten confused at the sports ticker on the bottom of the screen.  It popped up every few minutes, but the scores didn’t really make sense to me.  That’s when I noticed that they were sponsored by betus.com, livesports.com and a few other online betting sites.  Evidently these were the live odds offered by the online gambling companies.  So if the original odds have Stockholm as the big favorite against Helsinki, but then Helsinki scores a goal, they will update the odds in real time so that degenerate/awesome gamblers can put more money down.  I love it because it is so different from the US method of trying to pretend that sports betting doesn’t exist or that it is the end of pure sports or whatever.  Unfortunately I don’t know enough about soccer or hockey to take advantage of these bets and pay off calvin’s college fund, but if I see these things on during an American football  broadcast, I am IN!

Decks – Now that it is nice out, a lot more restaurants offer seating outside.  By that, I don’t mean that they just toss a few tables and chairs out there – I mean that they build a whole deck, taking up 90% of their sidewalk.  I’m assuming that this isn’t the first time they’ve done this, which means that they must rip down the decks come Sept/October.  These guys LOVE the outdoors once it gets nice out!

Blankets – Along with the whole “outside seating” thang, it’s also been interesting that each bar with a  deck has a pile of blankets available for patrons.  These were available in the winter, but honestly, who would sit outside in the Stockholm winter.  Now though, if the sun goes behind the clouds, the blankets are “really comfy cozy!” (according to lis)

Hockey Sticks – I know that I joked when we first moved out here that I was going to get big into hockey and that Calvin would become a gretzky-style star.  But really, these guys LOVE hockey.  Even now in the summer, I see people walking around with hockey sticks (usually the plastic ones).  Doesn’t matter if it is on the Ericsson campus, at the café or in the subway.  Young, old, guy, girl no difference – they are always ready if a faceoff challenge occurs at any point.

Night-time sunburns are the worst

One of the more interesting parts of Scandinavian weather (narrowly beating out april snow storms), is how light it gets in the summer.  We are still over a month away from summer solstice, but the sun now rises at 4am and sets at 9:30pm.  At the peak on June 21, the sun will rise at 3:31am and set at 10:08pm.  When we first got here in January, this seemed like the greatest thing in the world, but now we are starting to see a few flaws in the plan.

1)      The obvious issue is how to put a one year old to sleep when the sun won’t even set for another 3 hours.  Luckily for us, Calvin trusts his own internal clock, so goes down every day between 6-7 without much of an issue.  We did have to buy some heavy curtains for his room so that the sun didn’t blind him when he laid down, but outside of that we were good to go.

2)      The flip side of the issue is how to keep an infant asleep until a reasonable hour in the morning.  For months, Calvin had us on a schedule of waking up between 630-7am, also like clockwork.  This worked great – right around when we were ready to wake up for work anyways, so he and I were able to have some morning playtime.  Within the last few weeks though, he’s started getting up earlier and earlier.  I think he hit 5am a few times last week.  I’m ready to buy some extra blackout curtains and double up on his room.  But if anyone has any suggestions, hit us up in the comments.

3)      A compounding issue for (2) is that Lisa and I do not have the same internal clock that our son has.  We are very much sun-dependant and find ourselves staying up a lot later than normal.  I’m actually writing this blog in front of the open window, just cause the sun is so nice right now.  It’s quarter of 9.  I will not be ready to go to bed in an hour or two.  This would be fine if it was us two years ago, but our unsnoozable alarm clock keeps getting up earlier!  

4)      All of these issues were probably expected or could have been foreseen.  The one real curve ball has been how the sun affects my work day.  The last few weeks have actually been pretty crazy, and I’ve been working a lot later than I had been in the past.  It’s been a really interesting project and I’ve enjoyed the work, but I realized that I haven’t been getting that “I need to go home NOW” feeling that I would normally have expected.  At first I chalked this up to the free coffee that I drink constantly, but last Tuesday I had a revelation.  It happened when I was finishing up a few slides at night and I had to keep moving my chair to block out the sun setting in front of me.  Once I realized that the sun was setting I started thinking that it was time to pack up soon.  Then I snapped back into reality and remembered that if the sun was setting while I was at work AND I was in the middle of a Scandinavian Summer, I was there WAY too late.  It was about 9:00, and I JUST realized that I was working later than I would have preferred.  I never understood how sun dependant I was until then.  It really affects your attitude throughout the whole day.

 (picture of my building during the working day)

(JUST KIDDING - it was 9pm and the sun was just setting)

And yes, I will post a response blog to this mid-december when the sun sets at 2:30pm or something crazy.  At that point I’ll probably write about Calvin sleeping for 18 hrs a day and needing to leave work by 3pm….  

Jonathan's One-liners

If you've known me longer than 5 years, you might have noticed that my long-term memory is atrocious.  Friends from high school have recounted entire conversations and events that I have had with them and all I can do is tilt my head and wonder, "Was I even there for this? I have zero recollection of what she is talking about."  I feel bad about not being able to remember the most intricate details and history of certain portions of my life but I have found that journaling and taking pictures help capture some snippets of memories.  When I was in Brunei, I kept a super detailed journal on the internet.  The website eventually went belly up as the creators stopped supporting it and as a result, all of my Brunei documentations are lost in the etherworld.  At the time, I didn't bother trying to commit certain things to memory because I thought, "I'll just look back at my online journal and it will jog my memory of all of this weird stuff."  Sigh...

So, whenever I remember exact words that are spoken to me or exact moments in time, it must be because they have left a lasting impression on me, somewhere in my brain.  Some of the funniest things I've ever heard of in my life have come from my best friend, Jonathan, who also happens to be my husband.  In fact, his ability to deliver those quick witted one-liners was what first attracted me during our initial meeting in grad school.  He could do what I wanted to do (but never could) -- in any situation, most unexpectedly, he can deliver a clever comment that can make you smile or laugh.

Most of these might not be funny to you because, like anything spoken, it's really all in the delivery.  But I thought I should write them down just to be sure that these gems don't get lost in my clouded memory and forgotten.

1. Jon was living at 1224 Sanden Ferry (in the basement) and I wander into his room where he is taking a drunken (?) nap.  I ask him what time it is and he snaps awake from his stupor and says, "Time to make some bad decisions." And he heads past me out of the room.  He was right :-)
2. Jon discovered that his mom doesn't have Microsoft Office on her home computer so she can't open any document that he sends to her. During their conversation, he pretended to be her, yelling at him, in a thick Southern accent, "You and your fancy-pants Word documents being all fancy and stuff."
3. "Good team work here baby, now let's just hold each other to it using general shame tactics."  Jon's challenge/threat to me about our goal to not use Facebook or Twitter when Calvin is awake so we are mentally present for all of his little and big moments in life.  
4.  Jon was washing his face and I dipped my toothbrush into the water to brush my teeth and said, "Geez! This water is cold! How do you wash your face in this water?" to which he replied, "Cause I'm a man, Lis."
5.  When we moved into our new house in Atlanta, it came with a big stainless steel grill on the back porch.  I tried to lift the lid and said that I was shocked by how heavy it was.  Jon just looked at me and said, "This is a man's grill! Don't worry Lisa, I'll be the only one lifting it."

I know that Jon says something funny every day so I know I'm forgetting a whole bunch, but those are the ones that stick out to me the most. I think I'll just write them down (somewhere) in the future so I can look back on them and laugh all over again.

You make my world so much more interesting...
my partner in crime, love and well... everything

Calvin's new preschool -- a comparison between US and Swedish daycares

New preschool!

I blogged previously about the nightmare that is the Swedish daycare/preschool application system in Stockholm but in case you forgot about it, you can read all about it here and here.  Aside from the website stockholmstad.se  being almost completely useless and user-hostile, I managed to submit Calvin's application to preschool for August 2012.  With this system, there is no guarantee that you will be placed in a preschool near where you live, just "somewhere in Stockholm."  OK -- well that could easily be 45 minutes away by public transit.  Naturally, we would all prefer one within walking distance of our house so we can just walk the little guy back after a long day.  Since we are only enrolling Calvin part time, I would prefer not to have to commute an hour each way so I can go back to the house to work on my consulting projects.

Needless to say, we were thrilled (or hesitatingly optimistic) when we received a large packet of information in the mail.  ALL of it was in Swedish (of course), so with the help of Google Translate and a Swedish friend, we figured out that we were accepted to a brand new private preschool on our island -- about a 10 minute walk from our place.  PERFECT!  We were invited to an open house so we could meet the teachers and find out what is expected of us as parents.

Joann and Dave were in town for Calvin's first birthday, so I brought Joann with me since Jon had to work late.  I wanted to have her perspective on the place and she witnessed firsthand what we went through with the nannies back in Atlanta, so I knew she would have good advice.

When we arrived, I was surprised by how "under construction" the place was considering they were going to start taking kids in two weeks.  Other than that, it was sparkling new.  Nothing like new toys and carpet to make you feel all warm and fuzzy.  The toys were all perfectly lined up in rows just ready for the little baby hands to snag them.  Everything was orderly and pristine.  They gave an informational session and even though the teachers knew that 45% of us only spoke English, the entire presentation was in Swedish with the promise to pause and translate the important parts --- only they didn't.  They had PowerPoint slides with words on them that I have never seen before in my life.  I couldn't even begin to break them down and I feel like my understanding of basic Swedish vocabulary is fairly solid.  One woman raised her hand and was like, "can I get a hint here?"  Basically they talked in length about their approach to teaching (or I think that's what they were saying).  They would speak for about 20 minutes, laugh, gesture, and then give us English-only folk a 1 minute recap.  I don't think I missed anything too essential or at least I hope I didn't.

Having gone through this daycare song and dance with Calvin back in the US, I found this experience to be completely different.  For one thing, he is a lot older now and my questions are really different than they were when he was a baby-baby.  Back then, when he was 3 months old, all I really cared about was how they were going to feed him, pay attention to his naps, and pick him up when he was crying.  Now, my only questions were centered around how much outside play time he was going to have and the age of the other kids around him.  I felt much more calm, centered and like we were both ready for this transition.

While my mind was spinning trying to listen to Swedish for 45 minutes, Calvin and Joann played with all of the new toys in the other rooms.  He was busy putting objects away and driving on their fancy fun car mats.  He loves opening and closing doors and had a fun time in the kitchen, banging all of those mini pots and pans.  It was familiar to him because we have been going to the open preschools together for 3 months.  He knows the design, toys and he seemed really comfortable.  He didn't even notice me when I came back in the room because he was too busy playing and exploring.  I couldn't help but think back to what a wreck I was back in Atlanta when I decided that we couldn't do daycare because their shoe removal policy was atrocious (they wore those shoe covers outside which kind of defeats the entire point).  Now I just looked at him with a big smile -- he's going to be 110% ok with this.  He is going to have so much fun every day.  He loves interacting with other kids and he is really becoming a social guy -- he must get that from his dad.

Fun car mat!

A few notables on the differences I experienced between the two systems.  This is not to say that ALL US daycares are like this but this is what we were looking at in Atlanta:

Price
Atlanta: $1,500/month -- full time, no part time option
Stockholm: max $175/month -- full time or part time (30 hrs, which is slightly less)

Essentials to bring from home
Atlanta: diapers, wipes, change of clothes, bottles with milk, pacifier
Stockholm: change of clothes, pictures of loved ones, 1 stuffed animal for nap time, pacifier (diapers and wipes are provided)

Teacher to baby ratio
Atlanta: 1:3 (though one teacher "floated" amongst the classrooms, so I observed 1:4 and often 1:5, which is ridiculous)
Stockholm: 1:3

Intake/Adjustment*
Atlanta: 3 days: Day 1: you spend 1 hour getting to know the teacher and letting your kid "play"; Day 2: you leave your child for 3-4 hours and come back every once in a while to check on them; Day 3: leave your child
Stockholm: 3 days: Day 1: spend a half day getting to see the routine and schedule; Day 2: stay until after lunch; Day 3: if you and your child are ready, you leave at some point during the day

*The biggest difference I saw between the two intake systems was that the US daycare was fairly flippant about the process.  It was almost like they were going through the motions of trying to make the parents feel at ease about leaving their 3 month old with a complete set of strangers.  They kept telling me, "yeah yeah, we do this with babies all of the time."  In Stockholm, they emphasized in both languages, that it was very important that both parents and children feel safe and comfortable in the school.  They stressed that on Day 3, you can choose to leave your child or choose to stay longer and continue sitting in until you feel comfortable enough to leave.  You have to "say goodbye" to your child and hand them over to their care provider so that your child knows that you are leaving.  No sneaking off while they are distracted playing!

Sorry mom, I'm busy playing!

I feel more comfortable with our current situation for numerous reasons.

1. Calvin is older -- plain and simple.  He cries a whole lot less so there isn't the worry that someone won't address his every whimper like I had before.
2. Open preschools have set us both up for success.  He knows what is expected of him in these social situations and I know how he will behave and act.  It is reassuring to know that he enjoys all of the playtime and singing.
3. I've done this before.  I've already "left" my baby with another person for care taking during the day.  Albeit we chose a nanny instead of a daycare, but I still left him for 9 hours each day.  I feel like it was much harder when he was younger and I survived it just fine. This doesn't feel nearly as heart wrenching.

I looked at the room of parents and saw the looks of terror, fear and anxiety on some of the moms' faces.  Nobody looked happy and I started wondering if I was crazy for being so calm.  One mom looked at her child's name posted on the cubby and said, "my baby!"  It doesn't matter how old your baby is when you "leave" them, the first time is always the worst.  I absolutely love all of my time with Calvin but I see it as super special "extra" time.  If we still lived in Atlanta, I would still be working and wouldn't have had all of these great experiences at home with him.  His attendance to daycare/preschool isn't the ending of our time together but a chance for him to develop further independence.  I remain lucky in that I'll still be able to go pick him up whenever I want to and it is just a quick walk around the corner.  But I'm not going to lie as I'm also looking forward to speaking on conference calls without a shouty baby banging toys in the background. Professionally, I need some quiet time to get my work done.  Chasing after Calvin to make sure he doesn't poke the dogs' eyes out while I'm writing a paper has been exhausting!

We are going to have to work on their pronunciation of his name though.  One teacher announced his name and I didn't even recognize it.  It took me a second because no other parent moved and then I was like, "Oh yeah, I'm Kelvin Yammies' mom" or at least that was what it sounded like.  Kelvin Yammies...

Some Swedish names and one American name

Ergonomic high chairs

tea time?

I call it a "pillow jacuzzi" and that is a rubber hedgehog in the pic