Winter is finally here

Zoe woke up about half an hour after me on Saturday and immediately ran to the window. She had seen snow on the roofs. "Mommy, mommy, look, snow!", she proclaimed, "let's go outside" (I cannot explain how cutely she says 'udenfor' the Danish for outside, but instead of using a u, she uses a y, which makes everyone around her laugh, not the least me, because it sounds slightly snobbish). She resolutely put on her boots and her jacket, all on top of her too small cupcake pajamas. Zoe, I said still half asleep, your mom needs a shower and a cup of coffee. She waited patiently although at one point between me dressing and finishing my coffee she opened the front door and tried to call the elevator. We finally went outside with the tool she had missed the most this past year: her sleigh. Because our street is the tiniest street in Stockholm it is never cleared and I could drag her down to the playground at the end of it on the sleigh. At first we tried building a snowman, but I realized that not only am I clueless when it comes to doing anything with snow, it was also to powdery and we only managed to do a 40 cm hill with a tennis ball sized head. Then Zoe saw a boy riding down the hill on the sleigh. See, this was a new thing to her. So far the sleigh has been used to actually transport her around when the stroller couldn't get through the snow, but she was not really big enough for downhill sliding last year. Or at least, I hadn't thought about it.

We started with the small hill, got ourselves dragged up there and I pushed Zoe down. It was perfectly Zoe-sized and she had no problem dragging the sleigh up again like the boy, as long as I helped her the last meter by grabbing her hand. But after about ten times we went on to the other side of the playground where it turned out that a lot of other kids had taken use of another hill for downhill sliding. It was less steep and ended up in a larger area, but on the other hand there were a lot more kids. And as it turned out a lot of younger kids who couldn't drag up their sleigh themselves or whose parents were a bit more protective (not something I have ever been accused of when it comes to Zoe, if she wants to stay on the slide in Ikea at 2 years old, I let her), which gave Zoe the brilliant idea: "Mommy, you run with me like the other parents!" she dictated and after a bit discussing back and forth she won. "Okay, once", I said but did it twice. After yet another argument I said (and meant) "Last Time". Which was exactly when and how I slipped right on the hill, falling backwards straight on my tailbone. I sat there for a couple of seconds wondering if any of the other parents would come and ask if I was okay but this is Sweden so of course nobody did. Then I went down to Zoe and said we had to leave. It hurt like **** and I really had to leave. She actually understood the severity of the situation and went with me without much complaint. We went to the pancake house where she played and we had pancakes, me sitting on the side of my behind on the bench, wondering how much it should ache before I had to go to the hospital. I decided that it shouldn't ruin our wonderfully planned day and we went to the puppet theater we had bought tickets for the previous day where I could luckily lie half way down while watching. It probably looked like I was just making sure that the kids behind me could see, but the truth was that this position was the only one I could sit in without being in excruciating pain. But the puppet theater was fun and with a bit of translation (Zoe still don't understand Swedish),  she enjoyed it.

Zoe and I had a wonderful first snow day but I was glad to hand her over to her dad late in the afternoon and after a Sunday on pain killers I'm now trying to get back to actual work. My colleague helped me carry a bar table from the common area into my office today so I can stand up working for the next week or so. I would probably be a lot more annoyed about the fairly serious bruising if it wasn't because Zoe and I had such an amazingly fun day, if I hadn't thought at the end of it: If I could do it all over again, I would do exactly the same, with the falling and everything. Because that was a pretty wonderful day with a pretty wonderful girl.

Lights out

As much as I love my apartment, with it being small and cozy and high ceilings, those high ceilings come with a certain cost. Emotional cost. The beautiful windows and almost 3 meter ceilings also means that, like most apartments on Södermalm, the block was built in the 1920s. Now, it is well-kept and the kitchen is of course renovated (in fact less than 3 years ago) but one thing they have not exchanged is the power box.

Zoe and I came home one late afternoon last week and I was in dire need of a coffee so I turned on the espresso maker (my department for some reason tends to run out of milk at the most annoying times like the day of my 8am class and I cannot drink coffee without milk) and I was about to heat up leftover lasagna for early dinner. Zoe wanted to watch a bit of cartoons so I put my laptop in the charger and turned on a 30s Donald Duck episode. Then everything went PUF and the apartment went dark (yes, it is very dark outside at 5:30pm here now). Zoe started screaming, 'oh no, oh no' and I started wondering what kind of electricity system we had here, because I have lived with a range of types through my time as an international dweller. Then I remembered that it was the old system with fuses and that a fuse had probably blown. I had to use Zoe's high chair to reach the fuse box and as I looked on the shelf below I realized what I had suspected: The owner had not left me with any spare fuses. I tried desperately to calm Zoe but looking at the clock it was now close to 6, the time most stores apart from grocery stores close. I took Zoe with me and started ringing doorbells at my neighbors. Nobody home. I found one guy above me who nicely enough came in, looked and seemed more confused than me. "But we modernized" he said and recommended me to go down and buy a new fuse. We got our shoes back on and ventured down. Before I left, I cleverly took a picture of the fusebox so I knew what I was looking for. I grew up with this type of system so it couldn't be that difficult. I put Zoe on my back in the Beco, since her stroller was already parked in the basement one flight of stairs below and I did not have the strength to pull it up again. She was overly joyed to be in the 'back pack' as she calls it.

At the grocery store no fuses looked like the ones in my picture. It didn't help that they were named something different than what I had talked to the upstairs neighbor about. Swedish electricity terminology was not something that came easy to me. I concluded that we needed to go to a hardware store the next day. By now we were hungry and when I asked if we should go for pizza on the way home (there would certainly be no cooking at home that evening) Zoe said "No, sushi!", so we found a sushi bar in the big food hall and had dinner. Zoe was still uncomfortable, probably picking up on my concern to spend the night without power and keep asking if there would be light at home. She asked if a friend of mine could come fix it, which I was surprised about; said friend did not usually help out at home but he is one of Zoe's favorite people.

As we were finishing the salmon nigiri, I realized something that I couldn't believe I hadn't thought about at first: there were three fuses in the fuse box and it seemed as only one had died. Not that I knew because it seemed to be tied to everything in the apartment (hence probably the problem with over-heating in the first place), but the bathroom light had still been on. We walked home and I eagerly went up on Zoe's chair and switched the fuses around. Now I noticed that the inside of the fuses actually resembled the ones available in the grocery store. I cursed a bit. I should have known that, I now remembered exactly how they look from my childhood where my mom would proficiently exchange them regularly. Okay, I turned the main switch on and WEOU WEOU WEOU WEOU, turned it quickly off again, climbing down to comfort a very scared and now loudly crying toddler. The fire alarm was apparently attached to the final fuse. After comforting Zoe I did one attempt more, which Zoe was not happy about, she kept repeating as she curled up in the couch "scary, scary, scary". When the sound went off again I gave up. I'll fix this tomorrow I told Zoe and we got out tea candles and the small reading light she had gotten from earlier mentioned friend. She said she wanted to sleep and I let her fall asleep in my bed, in my arms.

The next day we had to wait getting up until it got a bit brighter but then we hurried to daycare. She was really clingy and I told the teachers what had happened. I rushed back, past a grocery store and home to fix the problem. As I managed to keep the power on for slightly longer while the alarm was going, I realized that it was not the fire alarm but the gas alarm that was plugged into the wall above the fridge. It had probably broken in the process and was sounding like most broken alarms do. I unplugged it and changed the fuse and electricity was restored within five minutes. All I had needed was 5 minutes Zoe-free time, something that was not an option the night before. It annoyed me slightly that I hadn't thought about taking the fuse out and bringing it to the grocery store in the first place but there were so many ifs and buts and it made me remember how much longer things take and how much of my energy and brain I spend on my child when with her. Zoe could definitely have been without this experience but I made sure to explain and show things to her when we got home later that day. I took a 'work at home' day and worked from a cafe to get beyond the whole thing. And I made sure to leave three extra fuses in the back of the top kitchen drawer, the very same place my mom kept ours.

Subway panic

It was a very strange day because both Mark and I had late afternoon meetings and after some discussion I had agreed to cancel mine and go pick up Zoe from daycare. However, as I was preparing to leave he walked past my desk (we work on the same floor a few days a week) and said cheerfully that he would be happy to pick her up since his meeting had ended early. I considered going back to my student assignments for a quarter of a second but then suggested we go pick her up together. We have only done this once or twice, when Zoe started daycare 6 months ago.

Zoe was squealing from joy when she saw the both of us and we were all happily chatting on the subway back. At one point Mark suggested that we should go to an outdoor cafe not too far away from us, to celebrate the nice weather and that we had picked her up early. This meant that we needed to board a different, more populated train, at the central station where we changed. It was packed to the last square inch and as I squeezed into one compartment, Mark took Zoe in her stroller through another set of entry doors to the train. Or so I thought. As the train left the station, I saw Mark and Zoe standing on the platform mouthing to me that they would see me at the next station. Note that I always put my bag into Zoe's stroller so I now had nothing other than a lip balm in my pocket. No cell phone, no wallet. No problem, I thought, and got off at the next station so I could wait for them. Here I watched a mother with a toddler in hand and a pram trying to enter the now even more full train. Suddenly the train doors beeped and the doors closed WITH HER PRAM INSIDE THE TRAIN. The mother started screaming and as I was the first one to understand what was happening, I ran over to knock on the doors, mouthing that they should pull the emergency brake. Luckily the people inside did after a couple of seconds' driving and the train came to a halt, the doors opening so the mother could go inside to her pram. At this time I had noticed that she had her baby on her chest in a carrier. Thank god.

When the emergency brake is pulled on a train it takes a while before it can leave again. This was 10 very long minutes where I waited for the next train to come in. I boarded but couldn't immediately see Zoe and Mark. Then I saw a green stroller canopy and pushed myself through to the next compartment. Zoe was distraught and had cried ever since she realized the train had taken me but not them. Apparently they had experienced exactly the same thing except Mark had been able to pull Zoe out: the driver had closed the doors right on the stroller, scaring Zoe. She lightened up fairly quickly and we went to the cafe and I had two glasses of white wine. I can't wait till August where we will have a place in a daycare two blocks from our house. No more strollers in rush hour subways. Oh, and Mark called the subway security next day and reported the driver.

What parents fear

Yesterday, the thing that all parents fear happened to me. Zoe fell down a staircase. Not just a couple of steps but a whole floor, 19 steps marble staircase. From top to bottom. She is fine.

It was one of those days where I tried to do just a bit too much. After talking to the daycare principal around 3pm that day and being told that we could start the next day, I realized that Zoe had almost no clean clothes and rushed up to put on a wash in the communal laundry. To get to the laundry room we take the elevator to 5th floor and walk the last floor up to the big iron door, which leads to several smaller laundry rooms. Zoe loves it up there and she stood there just watching the washer spin as it cleaned her clothes. We went back up to put them into the dryer before leaving to see an apartment that was showing not too far away (yes, we are still looking). Zoe was getting tired and hungry as we got back around 6 pm, but I thought it would be a good idea to go get the laundry on the way in, instead of having to wait for Mark to come home and go get it, so we went directly up to the laundry room. As we exited the iron door, I let Zoe go ahead. She always wait for me to hold her hand before walking down the stairs. The landing on top of the stairs is quite small and it was difficult for me to juggle both my bag and the laundry bag, but I managed to get the heavy door open and closed as Zoe stood there, getting ready to hold my hand and walk down the stairs. Then she got brave and took a small step down but lost her balance. I watched her fall over and tried to reach for her but my bags made me too slow. She started rolling. I screamed. She screamed. I ran after her, trying to grab her, but she rolled too fast. I screamed even louder. At the bottom of the steps she finally stopped rolling but continued screaming. I reached her and hugged her, still screaming "oh my god, oh my god, little Zoe girl". She sobbed and cried and explained to me what had happened: "baba lala bala daba dadu", pointing at her head and the floor and then the staircase, then back at her head. Despite my panic I did consciously think that this was a good sign. She had not been knocked unconscious. When I think back, I remember seeing her little arms above her head as she was rolling down, the reflex that most of us have, to protect our head. I hugged her and kissed her and looked over her little head, moving her hair around but didn't see any bruising. Still feeling a surge of panic I made the decision to ring the doorbell of our upstairs neighbors, a family of five where I had met the mother and chatted to her briefly earlier in the afternoon. "I don't know what to do", I blurted out when she opened, "Zoe fell down the stairs". She went down on her knees to take a look at Zoe and Zoe explained again what had happened: "balala duba bada da", pointing at her head and back at the staircase. "It's not your fault", was the next thing my neighbor said, "but you should take her to the children's emergency room". She gave me the name of it and suggested I take the bus, it would be faster than a taxi.

I called Mark in the elevator on the way down after having grabbed Zoe's stuffed lion George and my Beco baby carrier. There was no way I was going to get the stroller down the stairs and pack Zoe in there when I could have her close to me in the Beco. "Don't worry, she is okay", I said but I want to get her checked out. Meet us there?" At the hospital they were efficient and nice as everywhere else in Sweden and we got to see a doctor within half an hour of arriving. He took a look at my now overtired daughter who was running around, happy with all the attention and after a few tests he reassured us that she was fine. "They are bouncy at that age". I felt relieved but teared up again when explaining to Mark what had happened on the bus home. Turned out the most traumatized person here was the mother.

That night I insisted that Zoe slept in our bedroom and she ended up sleeping right next to me most of the night. I hugged her and kissed her and thought that there definitely must be an angel looking after her. She had no bruises whatsoever on her body, her thick winter clothes probably cushioned the fall. This morning, although tired, she seemed to have no fear of stairs but still waits for me to come hold her hand when going down. One thing is for sure though: I am never taking her to the laundry room again. Sorry Zoe, I'm not.