Without you my life's gonna be...

...forever Tuesday morning...goes the famous kiwi song by The Mockers. Well here in Swedentown, it's almost Thursday morning and we are still waiting for the liitle 'un to pop out and say hi. We are carefully convincing 'him' that although it may seem like a good idea to come out and stretch his legs a little, it's a cold world out here and staying in for just a tad longer will be a little more convenient for Mumsy and Dadsy, as we are moving everything we own into our new abode on Saturday, and also it's a heck of a lot warmer in Mum's tummy. 

Nope not today...

Sorry guys, even though it's now 3 days late. 'Peanut' hasn't come yet, although a few pains last night made me a little worried. We picked up our keys to the new apartment tonight. A mixed bag of emotions really.

Extra Storage

I have been pondering something. I have just purchased a 1 Terabyte hard drive for my computer. For those of you who don't get computers, that's 1000 GB of memory. Admittedly that's a lot of storage but for some reason I feel as if even that won't be enough soon. When I purchased my Mac computer, I upgraded to get maximum memory then, which was 90 GB. That was only 3 years ago! Digital and online memory is one thing and gone are the days of super computers that take up entire rooms or warehouses. The 1 TB hard drive is no bigger than a book.

  So then I got to thinking about all of the other storage we have. We have only a few of our things in the apartment which we are temporarily renting and that somehow is enough. Almost everything Sara and I own is jammed tightly into an enormous storage warehouse in the south of Stockholm (refer to photo). So that leaves me to ask the question, why do we need or have all of these other possessions? Why is it that 10 years ago, no one needed extra storage or massive storage facilities for all of their personal belongings that they couldn't bare to part with. For those of you with a kiwi upbringing, all the unnecessary stuff was put in the roof or stacked in the garage. But even that's not enough now. How can we have that much stuff, which is basically what it is...that we need to rent other places to fill up too. You've spent money through the years on things that have become obsolete and maybe lost a little appeal and even more importantly...value. But we now spend even more money to still hang onto things that we no longer even need. That's crazy when you actually think about it. When you're living in a  city with minimal space available to the average person as Sara and I are, storage and available space is a premium. I'm just waiting for the invention where you can turn real things into digital memory and then store them on your computer. That'll be the day! That's a good idea for a drawing...

Into the final straight....

Well it is a late blog this week isn't it, and just when everything is getting exciting. Sara is well and truly on her way to being a Mum. She is glowing, looking fantastic and trying to keep herself busy, but for a girl who has two jobs and is used to training 2 hours a day, she is struggling to do this. However, I do sense that she may get used to it.

An insane idea struck us last week, that we should go to Ikea on the weekend. People have had similar ideas before and never been seen again, such is the chaos which ensues around Ikeas all around Sweden every weekend. We were in effect, doing a smash and grab. With Rich in tow we were there by 11.00 and hit the 'barn' section straight away, green sheets and duvet with white hippopotamus dancing across was the choice of bed linen we decided upon. Before you get the idea we had bought an enormous duvet set big enough for a hippo print, they were reduced somewhat. Actually it was a very nice experience buying bed linen, a baby changing positioner, duvet and towels...only in miniature size. It felt like I was about to get out my Action Man and start dressing him and putting him to bed in this mini world. Strange feeling, but also illuminating. We were all done by 13.30 as Liverpool vs Man United had to be watched. Luckily Liverpool won in a dominant and mesmerising fashion as always. So mesmerising infact that we spent the rest of the day just relaxing and resting. 

Sunday brought us back to Hotorget for some 2nd hand wheeling and dealing, where we bought an antique side table, an antique stool, 2 antique jewellery boxes and an enormous old eraser. Sounds strange but the pleasure I get from brousing through others goods is extremely satisfying and brings me closer to my father in some strange way. I always hear his voice when I'm there haggling for goods. Like father...

Sara is presently in bed sleeping which is a good sign as she's been up the past two nights for an hour each night only to go back to sleep again. Then when I go to work, which admittedly isn't early, she wriggles and struggles onto my side the softer side and sleeps some more. She has been stone cold snoozing the past two mornings as I have left. A good sign!

Into the final bend...

Hi all, 

  We've just entered inside the 2 week zone and things are going just fine. There wasn't much to report this week with the actual pregnancy. Sara visited the 'mid wife' on Thursday and everything was going to plan and seemed very healthy which was good news. Although the stomach itself doesn't seem to be that much bigger, the shape of the stomach constantly changes as the baby occupies more and more space and therefore has less room to move. In the mornings particularly, her belly is some odd shapes, the other morning it was a perfect square, which I then proceeded to serve breakfast on. (Some of the previous sentence might not be exactly true; the bit about the square stomach, and also the bit about me making breakfast). Sara's belly is holding up to the punishment for now, and she loves to stroke the belly as it seems to calm the baby down and it also feels really nice! She continues to be strong, determined, stubborn and she still doesn't like to be fussed over!

The debate continues whether it is a boy or a girl. Sara has met only one person who thinks it's a girl, the other hundred thousand or so people have told her it's a boy. My general feeling has been switching every few days between boy and girl. Now I 'm almost convinced that we're having a boy! If you are too send us some names...please.

Sara stopped working last Friday, now we are inside the 2 week zone. I don't think she is used to being off  and found it difficult to not be doing something yesterday so she spent yesterday completing several jobs that needed doing around town. We then went to the bank and discussed what we wanted to do with our loan, which turned out to be nowhere near as confusing as I'd expected, but when it involves large sums of your own money it's always a nerve wracking experience!

I will post again in a few days as now the final few weeks are here, things can change very quickly.

Post a comment if you'd like to?

The Baby Name Game

Please play the hardest board game known to mankind...particularly boys names!