In praise of playing – and play areas – at airports

We fly off tomorrow on a three-flight, 24-hour odyssey back to Sweden.   We do this sort of thing often enough.  And I have just two words for airports worldwide:  play area.

We stumbled upon on our first play area in Salt Lake City a few years ago, and it was like a gift from the heavens, with a big choir singing and everything.  Since then, we discovered a shabby one in Chicago, which likely saved us and hundreds of people on a series of airplanes from a toddler meltdown.

Seriously, why does not every airport have play areas?  All people do is complain about small kids on planes.  Why not give them a place to have fun before they get on board.  Why not get them out of the waiting areas?

A few weeks ago, in Stockholm, E and I wondered why the Stockholm airport had no play area.   It seemed thoughtless and odd.

Then we  found this, based on the work of a beloved early 20th-century children’s book illustrator Elsa Beskow:

 

Seriously, you could charge for this collaboration with Junibacken, a cool children’s museum in Stockholm, which opened in 2011.  It could be an attraction.  We might come early next time around.

Why is this sort of thing so hard?

Let us play, let us play, let us play.

One of the crowd in a California playground

I feel special in Sweden.  I also often feel alone at the park or in the preschool dressing room.  But I also feel special.  I hug my kids a little more, am a little louder, don’t make them wear their snowsuit every afternoon, swing them in big circles and talk both to them and to myself as I hunt for the lost mitten (and there is always a lost  mitten).

We went to a park today here in northern California.  And it was filled with dads.  And it was filled Americans.  And, even though this happens every time we come to California, or I hang out with American dads in Sweden, it dawned on me that I am not special at all.

I mean, I’m sure I’m special and unique and will get a trophy at some point.  But  it is a good reminder to see all these guys taking care of their kids, to see all these parents talking like I do and playing like I do.

It’s not that American parenting is better.  It’s not.  It’s not worse either.

And it is both good and bad to feel part of the crowd.

It was good today.

walking the dog? no, walking the baby

We live in a tiny apartment.  The three-year-old doesn’t mind.  She can craft or pretend that she lives in a house under E’s desk.

But Baby B has just learned to walk.  He is a restless soul.  He does not like long mornings.  He has started waking up at 4am again, and we don’t leave to take his big sister to preschool until 9.

It gets to be too much, the baby following me around at 7 holding my shoes and screaming.  Then he gets his shoes.  Then he starts pulling the stroller around the hallway.

The signals are so subtle, they were hard to decipher.  Did he want a bath?  To sleep again?  Maybe to read a book?

No, it turns out he wanted to go out.  Who knew?!?

So I have started walking the baby.  About 6:30 we throw on some clothes and just go out the front door.  It is literally us and the dog walkers, the only difference that I do not have a leash and the dogs are not picking flowers and trying to chew on cigarette butts.

We wander around.  We climb stairs.  Yesterday, we crossed the street about seven times.

Then we come back in, and he is satiated.  For about an hour.  Then he gets the shoes again.

But then he has to wait, because E has gone to school and I have to go visit my friend Shoobi in this cute little house under a desk …

3 zen-ish ways to stay sane in Daddyland at YourTango.com

Here is my latest post for YourTango.com on how life in Daddyland affects relationships:

When you have small children, you have little control—not over your time, not over your money and certainly not over the little people crawling over your once-immaculate couch with frozen blueberries in their hands. My wife and I feel this as much as anyone. We live in less than 500 square feet with a 3-year-old and a 15-month-old. We’ve moved across the Atlantic twice since we got married five years ago. We’ve endured serious health issues and two kids who just refuse to sleep. And yet we are (barely) sane. Here are three slightly counterintuitive reasons why.

1. Coffee: We live in Sweden, and Swedish coffee is amazing. As I wrote last week, my wife and I do not share a bed because we co-sleep. But we do drink our amazing Swedish coffee together. This is our sacred moment of the morning, the only thing that cuts through diaper changes, feedings, crying, singing and role playing. Drinking coffee puts us way behind schedule on all that. It has the potential to increase our stress. Yet we still leap over toys and spilled Cheerios to sit on the couch. We allow ourselves to fully live in this moment, and we raise our voices to be heard over the din, and we sometimes swap a six-second hug or compulsively share, as in “I-had-this-insight-into-the-meaning-of-my-life-it-has-to-do-with-barefoot-shoes-and-hockey-and-hot-yoga.”

To continue reading, go here.

watch my baby blossom on parental leave in sweden

My son walked down a subway platform on Saturday waving to everyone and saying, “Bye bye!”

This was charming.  This was cute.  This was totally unexpected.

Baby B has so far been a shy child, the child who does not want the stuffed monkey to say hello to him at song time at open preschool.

Then he walked and found freedom.  Then he got really sick.  Then he finally got better.  And now he is blossoming.

At least in public.  For we have seen the wild and crazy Baby B from the beginning.

But this is my point.  I am on paternity leave.  So I knew that private Baby B minute-by-minute, the way he goes from screams to laughs and back in about five seconds.  And I have been there for all those times he turned away from the monkey at song time.

And now I was there when he walked down the subway platform saying “Bye-bye” to strangers.

I can’t describe how it is different that I am the home parent.  I would never ever ever in a million years say that I was not as close to his big sister when she was this age (I was off with her when she was older).  I would never say that I am closer to my son than any other father is to his kids.

But still … it is special to be around this boy 24 hours a day and hold his hand while he comes into his toddler own.

opening day baseball in the icy rain of sundbyberg, sweden

Spring came to Sweden today. May 11. It was not here yesterday. It is here today. This happens in the far north, the spring comes later and then faster. There is suddenly ground cover, all the trees are at least a little green, flowers are blooming everywhere, and the sun is out.

The sun was not out on Saturday, when I took both kids to watch the home opener of the Sundbyberg Heat of the Swedish Elite League in baseball.

Yep, Swedish baseball.

It was freezing and overcast and then it started to rain. When I arrived with the kids – at the start of the game – the attendance was … 0.

Yep, 0.

Eventually, about 20 people braved the icy drizzle to watch Sundbyberg beat up on league newcomers the Eskilstuna Hammers. Both kids loved it, even though we spent most of the game under the hot dog tent where they could not see. (For another take on this 41 degree classic, go to the Hairy Swede).

We left in the middle of the first game of a doubleheader with Sundbyberg up 14-0. We got a little lost, and a little wet. We stopped to buy a subway ticket in a little store. The man inside was having a confusing conversation with a customer just standing there looking mad. Suddenly he said, “The man said “Open the cash register, open the cash register. He had a long knife.”

The store had just been robbed.

I left quickly and ran the kids home through the rain back to momma, where they snuggled under blankets and warmed up.

Yesterday NK told her teachers about the game. One asked, in Swedish, if I had played when I was younger.

NK answered, in English, “No, when he was younger.” The teacher asked again in English. “Did your daddy play baseball when he was younger?” NK nodded yes.

That is how associated I am with English now in her head. Questions about me cannot be asked in Swedish.

I love it.

As for the baseball, it was, ummm, OK. Maybe the level of a mid-level club in my California high school league (where I played varsity for two years but never got off the bench). This is a compliment, since this is baseball in Sweden we are talking about. How good do you think American handball or floorball is?

And I loved sitting there watching the pitches come in with just that extra count, just a little too slow.

Because I could play here. I can’t for logistical reasons, and I am not sure I would ever give up every Saturday for it.

But I could play – and be good – in the Swedish Elite League. How cool is that?

Maybe I should take some batting practice after all …

surprised by the competence of dads in sweden

I am working on a magazine pitch based on my paternity leave.  Here is a section that did not make it, but that I think gets an important point across:

I expected great physical comedy in Daddyland – fathers covered with poop, babies covered with motor oil, that sort of thing.  But Swedish dads are not half as incompetent – or maybe it is self-deprecating – as American ones, who seem to revel in their clumsiness and bumbling stereotype.  Swedes have been subject to four decades of government propaganda that Dad is to be not only involved emotionally with his family, but also competent, both at child rearing and housekeeping.

And it worked, as Swedish men have developed what one researcher calls “child-centered masculinity.” This same shift is happening in the U.S. in a herky jerky small kind of way.  But like most things in the welfare state, the transition in Sweden is gentler (and more effective), if saddled with a slew of bureaucratic rules.