Saturday - Things that are working, things that are improving

I had the most wonderful day mountain biking yesterday.  It took a lot to plan and it was a lot of fun.  I have exactly one photo of me eating a post ride hot dog.

During the biking we thought of loads of FLOM (or family meetings) worthy life updates which I didn't record very well.  And by the time it was bedtime I was so tired we didn't really cover any of the things.  but the takeaway was that Andy and I are both up for more adventure and are aware this will be a slow start due to the number and ages of kids we have.

Also, I would like to take a moment for things that are working right now, since I feel I've recently started using this blog for things that are not working.

Things that are working

Having a big car.  We have a S-Max 7 seater and it is great.  It's from 2017 and is the newest car we have ever owned

Our two day a week nanny who is starting 4 days a week.  She is lovely and so good with the kids and so incredibly calm as a human.  It's great for me to see what an inherently calm person is like because I am not that and I could definitely learn.

Our kid patio

Things that are improving

Not eating dinner with the kids all the time.  Sometimes meals are better when we sit for kid meal and then adult meal.  My new plan is Mon-Thurs we feed kids first, then Fri-Sun we eat all together.  We will see if this works, mostly it means I need to be less hungry at 5:30 kid meal.

Waking up early in the morning.  I am a morning person. I started being an evening person because mornings and baby wakeups were chaos, but they are not as chaos now, and kids are generally sleeping until 6:30 these days.  The problem is, it's hard to switch from being an evening person to a morning person.  It's very easy to stay up later and much harder to go to bed earlier (on a day by day basis).  I'm not planning on being a "in bed by 9 every day" person, but 9:30-5am is 7.5 hours of sleep and I do want to aim for that 3 or 4 days a week.

The weather.  I don't have any impact of this but OMG does it make a big difference

Is anything distinctly "working" or "improving" for you right now?

A failure to plan fun is a plan to fail at being fun?

Fun and Plans

Today Andy and I are going to our local Mountain Bike Trail Center together.  I worked from 7:00 to 9:30pm last night to try and get "caught up" for my day off which is super against my working ethos. I don't really have anything against working at night - I just don't like doing it because I seem to then stay up too late, which is exactly what happened yesterday and I don't think I fell asleep until 10:30. 

For the first time ever, I planned what routes we are going to do and now I'm even more excited.  I don't mean to be a loser here, but planning my fun was fun, and I think I will have more fun doing my fun now that it's planned. 

In case you're curious and want to see what MTB trails are called, the plan I made is as follows

Pedal to top of mountain
Funnel down
Pedal up
Poppity Ping Sessions to Terrys Belly
Uplift (a truck drives me and my bike up, yay)
Melted Welly to Off Grid to Forrest Bump to Kermit
Coffee and cake stop
Pedal up
Sixtapod to Merthyr Rocks
Uplift
????

I don't know if I can actually ride that much but we will see.  Slightly constrained by school times - we have less childcare on a friday - but maybe it's possible?

We were supposed to do this trip on Thursday a few weeks ago but Ezra was ill and I had to stay at home with him.  Andy starts a new job in June where he works on Fridays so this feels like a last chance adventure.  To make this work our nanny is watching the twins, and then my mom taking Ezra to school, and then my mom taking Lily to nursery (which starts at 1, and is right over twin nap, which is why nanny can't do the nursery drop off), and then my mom picking up both kids from school so we can do nanny twin handover, make dinner, and then collect bigger kids. I know it will be fun but there's a lot of logistics involved in a 7 hour escape.

Plans and unfun

Recently I feel I've been missing things that could be planned better.  Small and mostly insignificant things, but I know they all add to the mental load.  

For instance, breakfast is annoying.  Why do we have to do it every day?  We don't usually eat cereal because it doesn't seem super nutritious as compared to pancakes or eggs, but also... toast and peanut butter is nutritions.  And then we run out of toast.  And then... plans.  Blarg.

Lily only has two school summer dresses because I waited until after Easter to buy them and then only bought two because I feel we have too many clothes.  This may be the case, but now I have to do laundry daily until I can buy more and the local shops are out because who waits until it's 20 degrees to buy kids summer uniform? Me.

Not having nursery means our house is basically a childcare setting.  For example, our garden & patio:

This is fine, but means I cannot come downstairs and grab food when twins are awake and home.  Which means, I can eat between 10 and 11:30, and 1:30 and 2:30.  I am trying not to eat breakfast first thing, so recently I have a big meal at 10:30, but usually I try and squeeze in exercise during my lunch break which leaves me very very hungry at 3:30 and also least able to come get more food.  

I am a hungry human and need/want more than an apple or a snackbar at 3:30.

Yesterday my meals were a bit less than optimal

I just feel vaguely unsatisfied with how I'm currently eating - not from a nutrition standpoint - but from an enjoyment of food standpoint.  This could be fixable by planning.  It's just... a lot of planning.

Do you plan your fun? Are you in a meal rut? Can you come make me lunches please?  Or, come mountain biking with me?

Photo Dump Confessional: A blog post in 5 photos (or 6)

I got behind in my photo albums.

I generally update these monthly.  It take 1 to 1.5 hours a month.  I do a family album, and then a small album for each kid.

I did my February updates on 31st March.  I actually only ordered the 2023 album in March as well, because there was a sale, and because I finally decided I wasn't going to proofread it at all or check for errors.  I definitely missed adding labels to some months. Oops.

I start every year album with a photo of each room of our house.  I had forgotten to take photos in January, so took them in March.  Oops.  I still need to add them to 2024.

This morning I uploaded all March and April photos to snapfish.  I also haven't done well about clearing out my iphone photos. I don't like using infinite storage, but it seems like that's what's happening.  At least I can get rid of QR codes and random photos of returns.  

Some photos were clearly meant for blog posts... and since I don't think I'll manage a good post anytime soon here's a short post in 5 photos.

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While packing for Sweden we got our our luggage for the first time in 5+ years.  Here is a suitcase we used to move to the UK in 2016.  

After pulling our luggage out of eaves storage eaves storage I decided we don't need to hold onto giant suitcases anymore. This one is a late 90s jansport.  We got it for free.  I think it has made a final voyage.

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Sweden was a great adventure BUT it's amazing how easy it is to get out of exercise routine.  I wasn't feeling well between the 26th and 29th and then Sweden was 23rd to 29th and then... it was easy to not start again.  

I guess this is the tricky thing with habits.  Days formerly didn't feel right unless I did exercise.  It started to feel really optional when I didn't do it.

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When in sweden we went to a toy store to look at toys.  Lily really wanted this toy. Why does a baby need a moped?

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When we first bought our house we thought it had a great garden because it has a pretty big garden (by UK standards.  Also, I mean "lawn" or "backyard".  Except I feel it has a small lawn and a small backyard... so maybe that's why we say "Garden")

It turns out, gardens that are above the level of the house kind of suck for kids.  I got tired of the continued terror of the kids accessing the garden steps and falling off onto paving stones and bought a baby gate which we put outside.  I know this gate will get ruined in a year, but also I hope we won't need it for more than a year.  It's nice that the toddlers can now toddle around outside without me standing in front of these stairs.

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Finally, it's light outside now.  This is the train station on my return from a work trip to London. It's 9pm.  It's dusk.  It's nice to be able to stay outside later.  I don't really need it to be light later (this will be about 10:30pm in late June) but right now I'm super cool with a 9pm light sky.

Post where I complain about having too much stuff and end with a paragraph on acquiring more stuff.

Right now I am feeling like there isn't enough time.  This is not the "May-cember" chaos I read about - I don't feel like school or life is ramping up - I just feel like life *is* ramped.  I try to make a list of what I feel needs to be done to feel less behind and I end up with "laundry" and "sort house".  Neither of these things is a real thing, because you are never done with laundry, and what does "sort house" even mean?  And still, I feel vaguely dissatisfied with many of my home spaces right now.

I am not good at making a home look pretty.  I am good at making a home look tidy.  Right now, we have too much stuff.  We are in a stuff phase of kids, and it shows, but I feel there is just stuff everywhere.

In my little dream head I want to spend 2 days just going through everything in my house and getting rid of things and moving things and putting things away.  BUT if was given 2 days to do anything I want there is no way I would want to spend it doing that, because it's really not a great way to spend valuable free time.  So, the clutter and chaos persists for now.

Speaking of not enough time - Andy and I went on a out of the house date night! We always go to the same bottle shop and get pizza delivered from the pizza place next door and it's great.  We met the owner of this bottle shop on a cross country trip in the USA in 2014.  

Because we are still young at heart we rode bikes to our date night.  On the ride home I saw a free bike outside someone's house and noticed it was actually a really nice free bike! So we decided to take it home.  This was a bit tricky because it's hard to carry a bike home on a bike.  Andy made a
good effort.

We ended up dropping the bike off at a friends house, and will come pick it up in the car soon.  Also a great way to end a date night - surprise hang out with a friend - he thought scavenging for bikes wat not the typical date.  He gave Andy a beer though, and I still had some of my wine left (not pictured, me carrying a half bottle of wine home on the back of my bike), so we had one more drink before heading home.

One of my May goals is to make our outdoor space more fun and appealing.  Today I am picking up some more garden things to make the garden more fun and inviting.  Last year we had the coldest and wettest April on record.  This year we had the hottest April on record.  So far, we have. had three days of pleasant May.  Fingers crossed outdoor life continues!

Do you feel may-cember? Do you ever feel mildly unsatisfied with spaces in your home, or is there one space that gives you more trouble than the rest?

Sweden Report: Volume 1

I realized I did an awesome trip to Sweden and then my first blog post is a list of chores.  Sorry world!

Let's try a travel post instead?

Sweden - Why?

When I was 15 I was an exchange student in sweden.  It was my sophomore year of high school.  I lived with a family who had never had an exchange student before, in the small town of Torshalla, which is about 60 miles West of stockholm.  They had two kids, a 13 year old girl and a 9 year old boy. 

The family wanted an exchange student partly to help their daughter with her English.  Instead, I got really good at Swedish really quickly, probably in about 3 months.  I attended "Swedish for Immigrants" classes at the local adult education center, and was basically fluent before Christmas. 

Sweden - Since

I have been in touch with the family on and off since then, sometimes we go a year or two without emailing and sometimes we email more.  Andy and I visited Sweden for 2 days in 2014, and the host parents and brother came to our wedding in 2015 in the USA.  My host sister had twin boys in 2014 and a daughter in 2019 (so she now has 11 year old boys and a 5 year old girl).

Sweden - This trip 

My favourite way of connecting and communicating with people is in-person.  I wanted to see my Swedish family again, and I wanted to take the kids away for a few nights. I also wanted to leave the UK. I wanted to take the big kids on a flight. I wanted to make use of Lily's passport, which has never been used and expires in October.  

5 days - the kids clothes in the small bag, my clothes and spare room in the big bag.
Backpacks of activities for all.
I still packed too much.

Sweden - Transport

I looked into flights and saw that the second week of our Easter holidays was not too expensive. It was £120 per person round trip to Stockholm and back.  I als paid to book seats, which added £30 each ticket.  Next time I won't do this as apparently it's quite likely we will all sit together anyways (I don't think they can seat a 4 year old alone?) but I really wanted a window-middle-isle combo so I did pay for it.

The flight left at 11:30 so we took a 6:30am train from Cardiff, which got us into heathrow at 9am.  We purchased flight snacks, pulled our carryons through the airport (I was not going to check bags since that was an additional £60 each way) and had a leisurely time in the airport.

My host mom met us at Stockholm airport and helped us navigate the train back to Eskilsturna, and then we were driven back to Torshalla.  We had dinner of beef and potatoes (the kids mostly ate potatoes).

At Cardiff Central

At Heathrow Airport

Train to Eskilstuna

Sweden - The Plan

My host mom planned most of our days, and I saw a lot of people I knew 25 years ago.  The kids played at lots of play parks. We ate lots of Fika (swedish cake and coffee in the afternoon).  We stayed at the host families house. We met up with my host sister and her family, my host brother, my host aunt and uncle, my host grandparents.  The kids did great while being dragged place to place.  The weather was cold (10 C/15F, but sunny).  

Amazing park in Eskilstuna

Sweden parks were sooo good.

On the last day we went to Stockholm for the day, before staying overnight in an airport hotel and flying on home on Monday morning.

I can see why travel posts span multiple posts! I'll post again with "what we did, where we went" soon... this is volume 1.

Have you been to Sweden? Do you have any questions about Sweden, planning logistics, this trip, or any of the random things I've put in this post so far?

Reentry Report - I need a day or two to recover, and a list of house thoughts.

I had thought about booking today as annual leave to help with my return from holiday, but decided against it due to our very sparse childcare situation.  I'm using a fair amount of my holiday allowance covering childcare until our nanny can start 4 days with us in June, and I'll need to use more of my allowance to cover her holidays later this year.

I really really feel like I could use a day or three to catch up on life.

I know that there really isn't such a thing as "catching up on life" because life undoes itself at the same rate.  If I had a magic day I would do the following

• I haven't done the March photo albums (I update them monthly with a end of the month deadline). 
• I haven't finished updating budget for April.  
• I haven't gone through the photos on my phone to delete duplicates and bad ones.  
• Our house feels like it's becoming a "stuff" house and each room could use a thorough sort and purge.  
• The kids need some new clothes. 
• Our outdoor space needs some more thought and some more things and especially more seating
• The kids sand pit needs cleaning
• The climbing frame needs weeding around it
• We need a baby gate on the outdoor steps
• I need to get rid of the play kitchen in the twins room that they mostly use to close doors on each others hands
• Our bathrooms need a clean.  We haven't had a cleaner in about a year and while I am OK with the lowered standard, it is getting too low for me.
• Our whole house could use some cleaning and not just tidying
• I want to move furniture around in the kids room
• The kids need a wardrobe, they have grown out of their tiny drawers
• I need to request a new credit card as I lost our card and canceled it but have to phone to get a new one
• I have to return some clothing I ordered online
• Even though I upgraded my wardrobe last year it turns out that wearing the same things every day means clothes wear out quickly so some things already need replacing
• I need to find an american baby I can donate all our america themed baby clothes to because I don't want to give them to charity where they will probably get thrown away since it's very specific
• I would like to list all our reusable nappies for sale since I'm not using them for the twins and it's just taking up space
• There is a bag of stuff to drop off at the charity shop
• I have email to respond to from people I like

The thing is, none of those things are amazing, and none are worth a day off.  Also, without school or nursery for the twins, there is no day where I can putter in my house all day and sort stuff and feel great about it.  There are always people here.

I am taking a day off next Friday to go mountain biking.  I'm sure I'll remember that day much better than sorting the house?

Today I managed to put away 4 loads of Laundry:

The kids really enjoyed watching Bluey in Swedish:

This is what our bathroom mirror looks like.  I tried to figure out what the kids do when they spend ages "washing their hands" and I think I figured it out.

My most favourite room to clean/tidy post meals is the kitchen, but my least favourite thing in the kitchen is putting away the dishes from the drying rack.  These dishes are left over from this morning and also added to this evening because I just... don't.

I did manage to get L her summer school uniform before we went to Sweden.  In the winter they wear pinafore dressed with white shirts, in the summer it's blue checked dresses.  Helmet and cycling gloves are optional.

Another random Sweden photo - bathroom selfie on the way home.  the 7:40am flight was a bit rough.  The kids were a mess before they started.  But we made it!

What would you do with a day off? What does "day off" mean to you? What did my kids do to my mirror and when do kids stop touching glass all the time? 

Posting from Sweden

 

Posting from Sweden, via my phone. Apologies for any terrible typos (as usual)

I am nearly at the end of 5 days in Sweden with the two big kids. I was visiting a family that I stayed with as an exchange student 25 years ago.

I think solo travel with kids can be fun. Parts of this were a lot of fun! Parts of this were not fun. 

We are sleeping at the airport tonight (in a hotel) before flying out tomorrow at 7am.  I googled and there is a flight we could take back tonight instead, which I contemplated before realising this moment - being in a somewhat basic airport hotel, watching paw patrol in Swedish, preparing sandwiches with materials purchased earlier… this moment is the adventure. Travelling with kids is not a destination focused endeavour. Problems happened when we needed to get somewhere at some time or do something different. When we just explored, went slow, and had snacks it was fine. Sometimes good.

Being In Sweden is weird because I used to speak Swedish when I lived here 25 years ago and after 5 days a lot of it has come back and I find myself confused about what language to speak to the kids because in my mind Swedish is a kids language (because I was basically a kid when I lived here) and if they aren’t listening to me in English I can try Swedish. 

Speaking Swedish did not improve instruction following.

Anyways, it’s been a good trip. It will be great memories. And we will only get better at family travel. Practice makes… patience?