Another week

This morning I made a mental note that our passports were all on a shelf in my parents' living room. I updated the note on my phone an hour later because I knew I wouldn't remember it in a few days, in fact I had thought that they were in the passport drawer in Stockholm. But at one point I had realized that next time we needed to travel outside Scandinavia, Zoe and I, would be the US in early May, when we are attending my yearly core conference, and figured we would fly out of Copenhagen because we leave the day after Zoe's birthday. And hopefully the note on my phone would prevent me from panic when I later wondered where they were.

Scandinavia has a passport union, that has been in place for over fifty years, which means that we don't need to show passport when going between Stockholm and Copenhagen. I once encountered an anomaly, which is when you travel by plane and check in luggage. Then they ask for your passport or ID. Also the child, if the child checks in luggage. That time I happened to have Zoe's passport with me, because that is obviously the only type of ID a child can have (as far as I know, in most countries) and when I asked the check-in lady if she didn't have problems with that often, she snorted that she had never encountered it. Apparently parents rarely check in luggage in their children's name within Scandinavia, who knew?

I'm off to another two days of Stockholm, picking up Zoe from school and being with her until Wednesday morning. Then she flies down to Copenhagen on Friday for a weekend with me here. Another week, another three flights. 

Zoe cannot sleep

Last Friday I had a migraine and lost 3 hours that I needed to grade exams. Sunday I therefore got a babysitter to come over and play with Zoe in the morning, but when the afternoon approached and she still hadn't taken a nap, I decided that we could both take one together. What is better than napping with your baby? Except we slept until 5 pm. After dinner and bath, I started putting Zoe to bed, a full hour later than usual, 8:30 pm. I rubbed her hair, I sang two good night songs and I finally just sat there staring at a little girl, staring back at me. "Zoe cannot sleep" she said. Very honestly. Okay, I said, let's go into mommy's room and see if you can sleep on the sofa. "Zoe cannot sleep", she said after an hour and now I was getting slightly desperate. I had two more hours of work to do before I could go to sleep myself. And I preferred if those two hours would fall before midnight rather than after. At 10pm I gave up. "Zoe can sit here while I work". I then went to the kitchen counter where I worked on my computer for a bit. I heard Zoe muzzling around and saw her push her high chair over to me. "Zoe sit here with mommy, while mommy works" she said and crawled up on the chair. She sat there, ate a rice cracker, waiting patiently until I was done working at 11pm and then she went to sleep in my bed. She probably couldn't have slept one minute before that. No naps for us on the weekends anymore.