spring is in the air

The short winter days are over. We’ll revisit them again along with the beautiful soft winter light next year. Lately the sun has been bright and gets high in the sky. Today the sun rose at 5:49 am and set at 5:46 pm. It’s hard to believe that in a few days we’ll have more light than darkness. We still have at least a foot of snow in town and there are no flowers popping up or trees budding, so it seems hard to believe that the first day of spring is next week, but we are enjoying the sunshine.

Here are some pictures of our winter life:

This is outside our front door. Amelia is getting more brave lately. There are 20+ foot piles of snow all around town and she has been enjoying climbing them and making slides down them. Yes, we wear snow pants every day!

We are fortunate to be able to ski from our front door into the forest near our home.

Amelia is enjoying taking a dance class and wants to play dance class just about every day. I add a little yoga so I get to do some yoga ;)

We've spent many hours doing arts and crafts. She particularly likes making fairies. She's drawn them, painted them, made play-dough fairies, and even fairies out of pipe cleaners.

In this picture she's sewing a bear. Thanks Grandma Cindy, Grandpa Klatt, and Emily! He is stuffed, has a bow tie, eyes, a smily face and has been named Sewy.

Thankfully there are indoor play areas. There has been lots of jumping on the coach and bed too.

There are several neighborhood centers around town and churches that have a space for children, young and old. The spaces are very nice with toys and kitchens and gyms. Amelia and I have been consistently going to two playgroups. The öppna förskolor/playgroups are for parents and children to attend. However, most of the children are under a year and half. Families are given 18 months of paid leave to be with the little ones. The time is split between both parents and I think it is required that the dad spends at least two months with the baby while the mom goes back to work. The 18 months do seem flexible though. The family can spread these 18 months paid leave time and work part time or postpone them. Once that paid time is over it seems very common that both parents are back to work and children go to förskolan/daycare, which is free. It seems very uncommon to be a stay-at-home parent beyond this paid leave. (There isn’t a lot of diversity in ways of doing things here in Sweden). The only older kids we see at playgroups are the siblings of the babies. The parents tend to reduce the older children’s time at the daycare to be with them during their paid leave with the new baby.

We have made some friends and learned about Swedish culture by going to the öppna förskolor. Amelia has learned some Swedish! Can you tell which song it is?