The Candrians Down Under

Rotmos

Rotmos, or "root mash" is a food I've discovered in Sweden that I really love and wonder why it's not more popular in the States. At least I'd never heard of it. It is flavorful enough to eat without gravy or tons of butter and cream, and it is definitely more nutritious.
I just ate it today again today for lunch at a cute little cafe (from the 1700's!) Långängens Gård and thought it would be good to share. I was adventurous and ordered grissidan - literally, the side of a pig. I didn't think it was too big a deal considering I've eaten plenty of pork. But as I was digging into my third bite I noticed that the outer layer seemed a little hairy. Closer inspection. Yes. Hairy. I ate a hairy, fuzzy, pig. I sort of lost my appetite for it and really dug into that rotmos.
So, here's all it is - you just do like you do for mashed potatoes, but add in other root vegetables with the potatoes - carrots, parsnips, turnips, sweet potatoes, swedes (rutabega)...whatever. Experiment. Make sure they are all boiled till soft, add some butter/olive oil, salt, and pepper, and mash em. Yum! I think adding a sweet potato gives especially good flavor - and I NEVER like those before (never cared for that marshmellowy yam dish at thanksgiving, and I think that was my only previous run-in with sweet potatoes).

Since moving here, I've also really come to like sparkling water and beets.

Boo-pa

Michael's Boo-pa Candrian came to visit yesterday. I say "Michael's" because I'm pretty sure he thinks he owns him. These two will be inseparable for the next week.

I have enjoyed the extra time to dote on Ella. See her there chewing on a train track at the bottom of the second photo? She is SO the second child, and I am always trying to make up for it but falling short. But she has never noticed, not once. Today she woke up a little early from a nap and I had the chance to just let her snuggle up to me and sleep a little longer in my arms. It was sublime. Then we went on a walk together, just she and I. She got to check out any tree or branch or patch of plants she wanted to touch along the way. We chatted lots, just us girls. Gotta do more of this one-on-one time.

I am a child of God

Michael loves to just sing and sing and sing. He has Rob's ability to pick up on lyrics quickly. I think it is especially cute when he sings "I am a child of God" (a quintessential song for mormon kids) because he mixes up the lyrics "has given me an earthly home with parents kind and dear" to "has given me an ugly home, with parents *kind of* dear".
Maybe one day I will find out it wasn't really a mistake.

Massage

The massage table remains one of my favorite things we own. Every now and then the kids and I have been surprising Rob by having it out for him when he gets home from work. I think this pic is from V-day. Michael is obsessed with lotions so he is stoked about getting unlimited access and applies it exuberantly. He also thinks it is great fun to feed us grapes through the little head hole.

The highlight of today was that the table happened to be left out, and Michael really wanted to give me a massage. He needs to work on his technique and pressure, but overall, I'd still rate it as a pretty fabulous morning activity. One of the very few times since his birth that I have been able to lay down and relax in his waking hours. He stuffs grapes into my mouth through the head hole as fast as he can get them in there, which leads to pretty chipmunked cheeks. I tried to tell him to wait but then juices spilled out of my mouth, which was pretty hilarious, and had us both cracking up.

A Blog a Day

I decided to post a blog a day for the next month. I think I need to exercise the part of my brain that deals with things simply and briefly and then lets go. So, I am going to just capture a couple random bits each day and see if I can just leave it at that. I just deleted an entire long paragraph detailing this goal along with a long chunk of self-analysis. It was a long complex ramble about simplicity. Nice.

So, here's to the start of a month of simple, concise (but still pretty random) daily thoughts.

Michael is constantly making me realize how ancient I am getting. He sees play telephones and has no idea what it even is! Then, today he heard an ice-cream truck and he proclaimed "that's a loud cell phone, mommy." (And, btw, I can't believe they are selling ice-cream when there is still snow and ice on the ground!)

Not so fun yesterday was going to our big storage freezer downstairs and finding that Michael must've found the switch and turned it off several days ago. Probably a good couple hundred bucks worth of food got thawed and had to be trashed. Sad.

Doesn't Ella look just like her dad? I'm still wondering if I actually contributed any DNA. They both happened to be wearing orange yesterday, so of course I couldn't resist a quick snap. I think they make a pretty gorgeous pair.

Winter Saturday

Yesterday was nothing special, just a pretty average Saturday that felt nice and I happened to get the camera out.
We went ice-skating with our friends the Endlers who loaned us skates and a nice pink helmet for sir Smalls. He totally works the pink.

The bar contraption is to hold on to to learn balance. But he thought it was more fun to fall. So he kept slipping and falling, on purpose, over and over and over again. I didn't think it was as much fun so I sat him on it instead and we skated around like this.

Beautiful snowy day for xc skiing. I usually prefer to do the hills in the forest, but yesterday was cold enough to go out on the frozen-over Baltic Sea.

And finally, some indoor time playing with the Lego Duplo train set I got Smalls for Christmas. It took multiple orders off of ebay to amass this awesome collection, and each time we got more tracks and legos, Rob would be like - Oh, I guess we can save this one for Michael's birthday. And I would be like - No, actually, it's for me. I actually really enjoy doing this toy with him and have fun getting creative with new configurations. But thank you, thank you Ebay, or I would have had to get a side job to pay for all of this (who knew Lego is so ridiculously expensive, particularly the train sets?).

p.s. Smalls does not have on pants because he is now officially potty trained. Hurray! Yes, most potty trained kids wear pants, but we went with this method and it worked out so, so great for us. Could do a whole other post on this. Thanks, Andrea, for posting the method on your blog - it sealed the deal for us.

This sledding pic is from last week, but we've been doing lots of it so I had to throw it in.

We've both decided that Swedish winters are actually not so bad*. (Compared to other places with cold winter climates, that is, and not compared to California.) Because as long as it is going to be fairly cold, it's actually sort of nice to have the snow stick and be white and beautiful. It hasn't gotten above freezing for over two weeks and we've enjoyed it a lot - it's easier to run and bike on soft snow than stuff that melts and then refreezes and is icy and sloshy, not to mention all the fun of sledding and xc skiing right out the door. I even invented this awesome running contraption for the sled using a resistance band and a rope - I can go running and drag Michael in the sled behind me, even while using my arms and keeping decent running form. He loooves it and I get in a great workout. It's pretty awesome and I've gotten some looks from people, surely envious of my genius contraption.
*that's a lie I tell myself till June. It could be true if the coldness was confined to three winter months, instead of, like, half the year.

Half

Ella is officially half.

Although this picture was taken when she was 4 months.

In general, she is just my happy little angel baby. I always say that I would like to order 5 more just like her. I would happily have Irish twins if I knew it would be another of her breed. (But I can't put in orders, so don't anyone get their hopes up.)

First taste of food, yummy Swedish corn porridge

Ella 6 months

Ella wakes up happy.
She goes to sleep happy.
When it is time for sleep, if she doesn't fall asleep nursing then I can just set her down in her crib, give her a kiss, and walk out of the room. She might happily chirp for a few minutes and then fall asleep.
Since she was 3 weeks old, she would usually only wake up to nurse once in the night (barring vacations, jetlag and colds).
When I get her in the morning she greets me with a big smile and raspberries.
Sometimes I catch her staring at me across the room and she gives me the biggest grin. She'll do that to pretty much everyone, smile hugely at them if they look her way.
She just started trying food this week and she is so happy about it that sometimes she actually giggles while I feed her.
She loves to blow raspberries. Michael is jealous of this skill and gets frustrated trying to copy her (although he was equally good at her age, so apparently it is a lost skill).
She just has the sweetest presence. Everyone loves her to pieces. She is turning into a mama's girl, and I often enjoy hogging her, so it is a pretty symbiotic relationship.
She seems really smart to me, although I have nothing to say for evidence.
She has beautiful bright blue eyes and she looks just like her pops.
She doesn't take a pacifier but sucks away happily at her first two fingers (funny, she mirrors the same ones Michael sucks).
One of the more difficult times I've had with her has been adjusting back to Sweden's time zone after spending two months in the States. That's NINE hours change from California. She didn't adjust very quickly (and I am terrible at adjustment) so I was as much a zombie as when she was a newborn...maybe more. So, the fun story from all this is that the second night we were home I accidentally BRUSHED MY TEETH WITH HER DIAPER RASH CREAM! It's as gross as it sounds. Turns out that a tube of Desitin and a tube of Sensodine look almost exactly the same, and should NOT be stored in the same bathroom drawer. At first when I tasted the grossness, I thought that the toothpaste had gone stale after all that time I was gone. I was pretty tired. Also, I was doing it in the dark. But then it was just too nasty and I checked out the tube and started some pretty intense spitting. The thing about diaper cream is that it has all this zinc oxide that is meant to stick and not come off. So I felt it in my mouth the next day or two. The silver lining is that my mouth is rash-free and I have a great idea for April Fools.

Six months has happened incredibly fast with Ella. I am trying to decide if it is because she is so easy going or if it is more that she is a second child. Who knows. One thing that is definitely a second child syndrome is that I don't think I have posted a single boring video of her, whereas I have like 50 boring videos of Michael. Well, we must change that. In commemoration of her turning half, here we go. (Although Michael still tries to steal the show.)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year from the Candrians.
We are enjoying our time at the beach for another few days before we return to Sweden. I'm sure once we get back home we will actually have some blog posts documenting the Christmas and New Years festivities.

Year in video

My sister Andrea made this year end video, showing what happened in Candrian-dom during 2011. Enjoy

Thanksgiving

We went to Utah for Thanksgiving (via DC, where I had a work conference). Lorena and the kids stayed behind, while I came back to Stockholm - since I inexplicably couldn't get six weeks in a row of work off. I'll fly back out next week and we will celebrate Christmas and New Years in California. I know they have been having tons of fun with family and friends in Utah. In their absence, I was able to go surf last week in the Baltic Sea. Yes, it was cold. I was going to go again today, but I managed to sprain my knee playing hockey, which I guess is what happens when you don't really know how to skate. Anyway, here are some pictures. I'd post more, but we remembered to take the camera to Utah, but not the camera cord, which is here with me in Stockholm.

Michaels's bike

Smalls is getting pretty quick on his bike. Just like his Mom.

Actually, they are probably the same speed, right now...

Halloween

I gave myself full permission this year to just buy a costume for Smalls. But the cheapness in me still won out once again and I made it. Cheap and resourceful are my two favorite ingredients for halloween costumes, and I just can't get away from it no matter how far up I move in life.
Here he is as a spider.

It was pretty shoddy handiwork and the strings holding the spider legs to his arms broke within 3 minutes. Michael couldn't have cared less, so I'll continue having my fun as long as he is oblivious to how bad I am.

We went to the Halloween party at the embassy again, and they go pretty all out in decorating offices for trick-or-treaters. I was concerned that it might scare Smalls and give him nightmares, but I let him go through anyway. That night he woke up three times scared of spiders in his crib. So, was it worth the fun? Do most kids get nightmares from stuff like that?

I made Ella's flower costume with pink napkins safety-pinned onto a pink bonnet. I hated having it on her though, so she wore it all of like 10 minutes. I didn't care because it was cheap and easy.

We had one group of 6 kids come trick or treating to our house. Halloween is not a tradition in Sweden, but over the years they have started dipping their toes in to the fun of it. So the kids were totally stoked when they saw me come to the door with a big bag full of candy. Anyway, as I went to hand out candy to the individuals, I noticed that just one kid in the group was holding a big basket, and they informed me that I was just supposed to drop the candy for everyone into the one basket. It cracked me up because that is just so, so, SO incredibly Swedish. It was just such a nice, lovely, fair way to do it and I totally wanted to teach them how to do it right instead. Poor kids will never know the pleasure of coming home with a bag stuffed full of more candy than their little brother.

Lidingö

I've been feeling a bit nostalgic lately about my life here in Sweden. Maybe it's the beautiful autumn, maybe it's knowing that it's my last autumn here. Anyway, I quite love where I live. So I grabbed my camera and took it with me on a bike ride so I can capture a bit of the place I love. I decided to limit it to just the island where we live, Lidingö. It's sort of U-shaped, and probably about 7 miles from end to end.
I know I need a tripod. Even though it is a pretty boring video and it's the only way I can try to capture this place. I often think of this line by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
"I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition."

Oh, and the soundtrack is one of my favorite songs - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

haircut

Photo Album

September 22, 2011

I can't make decisions, especially small ones. Like when your family visits and you end up with approximately 5,000,000 photos, how can you decide on 5 to share? So, I finally decided to just go with an album of pictures and, wha-la, I'm no longer incapacitated. Thanks Aunt Andrea, Grandma and Grandpa Candrian for the visit and the loads of great pictures! Just click on the picture to view the album.

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