To celebrate her new level of maturity — five-year-olds are big enough to go to town to get their hair cut, you know — Petra decided to change things up with a new ‘do, entirely of her own choosing. I think it suits her to a T.

Petra celebrated her fifth birthday on Monday, and she had her very first “kid party” yesterday afternoon. She was proud nearly to bursting when she filled out and delivered the invitations, and when we set up the party scene out on the front porch. I think maybe the party itself was secondary to [...]

My mom arrived on Friday, which coincided nicely with the start of Olof’s vacation so that now we’ve got four weeks stretching before us with not much on the schedule besides rest and relaxation. I can’t speak for the others, but I know that I’ve been needing that.

Olof and I dragged ourselves out of bed bright and early this morning to go to what was probably the most pointless doctor’s appointment ever. A couple of weeks ago, at my one and only prenatal appointment to date (and that was only an intake, not a “real” appointment), I told the midwife that [...]

The past few days have been more or less the same around here — lots of bright, warm sunshine and plenty of playing outdoors. Just what summer should be.

Tage is quite taken lately with jokes and riddles. His most recent favorite is “Why do birds fly south for the winter?” (A: because it’s too far to walk). Sometimes, just to keep us on our toes, he switches up the answer, saying it’s too far to run or too far to drive [...]