creating the life we want in the swedish summer

My wife told me the other day that only three percent of Swedes buy their own summer house. However, it’s not that Swedes don’t have summer houses. I would say at least half, if not a huge majority, of people in Stockholm have a place they go to in the country for at least part of their long summer break.

But the houses stay in families, bound by tradition and the home village. There is no American equivalent because Americans don’t have summer cottages like this – cheap and rustic and gorgeous, spread out through this California-sized country with only 10 million people. It explains why I talk to people at work, and some are heading for summer homes six hours away in a flat forest by no body of water.

We are part of that three percent, our old house that used to be split into apartments for two sisters with no water. It is in a clearing down a hill, which protects us from the noise of the trains and the road. We can walk to the lake in five minutes, the beach in ten.

And we chose this, and that makes us proud. We chose not to buy a car, and subsequently chose a house near a train line, like some 19th century vacationers headed for the Catskills out of New York City. We chose not to move to a bigger apartment. We chose to stretch our parental leave. We chose for E to go to grad school. We chose to buy a summer house close enough to her family so they can visit on her birthday.

For a good while there, we didn’t feel like we had a chance to choose much – and I get this feeling about much of modern digital life, that it spins away from a lot of people. And I am now bound by a lack of car, the needs of two toddlers and swarms of mosquitos in the forest shadows. But it is still a good feeling to be living a life that you consciously created, for better or for worse. And right now, with the sun still up at 9pm, with two kids asleep and a sneaky sleepiness coming over me, it is definitely for the better.

preschool play and new sand at the park make sweden stand out

They dumped a whole load of new sand into the sandbox across the street from our building.  Huge mounds of silky, rock and twig-free sand.  It is a sand builder’s dream, still damp under the dry surface.  Suddenly, all of our sand toys work perfectly, even the stupid crab, whose little legs always get filled with stuck sand.

It is like I am one of those Tibetan monks who make elaborate sand mandalas.

Or not. I am more like an American dad who makes a series of sand frogs that look oddly like ancient religious idols, which are then smashed by his 17-month-old son.

Still, the lesson in impermanence is the same. I like my sand frogs, and they do not last.

I do have a serious point here though. The city of Solna replenishes the sand in this sand box every year. Talk about a commitment to the kids; there are many, many sand boxes in Solna. This is a subtle reason to love Daddyland.

The biggest Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, just ran a big series on how good it is for children to play outside. This seems self-evident to me. Do we really need research to prove that kids should be out in the forest and not inside on a summer day?

It appears so. But the research showed that kids that played in a preschool yard filled with uneven obstacles and mixed trees and rocks and playgrounds focused better than kids with a boring, flat playground.

And this is why we have stuck with NK’s preschool, even if we get grumpy about bigger class sizes and the way they handled her milk allergy. She has a forest for a yard. Literally. And now her younger brother will have a forest for a yard come this fall.

Now there are many boring, small yards at preschools in Solna. But there are also a fair amount of really cool ones – all at this amazing, subsidized price.

I do not want to even think what we would have to pay in the U.S. for a preschool setting like this.

So sand and pine trees and rocks. Pretty fundamental reasons why Sweden is paradise for families with small children.

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 …

a volcano in iceland ruins a social life in sweden

Your social life in Daddyland is all about timing, specifically the timing of when your friends have kids.   Because it is an in-between time.  Most people you know are working.  And parental leave is temporary, so there is no set life of a stay at home parent, with people who know for years.  Parents come in and out of Daddy(and Mommy)land all the time – a week here, a month there, then they switch from mom to dad and then everyone disappears when the kid starts preschool.  And while parents you met on previous trips may be on the same schedule as you, likely they are just six months off or two years off in either direction.

On my first trip here, I had an American friend also on paternity leave.   So we went to open preschool and parks and the library together.   I made other acquaintances too, but it was nice having a base.

None of those people are on leave now.  I do know parents from NK’s daycare and I recognize a few parents from the first time, but I did not know them well then, so it’s more of a smile and wave kind of thing.

This trip to Daddyland is more about social events and time with both kids.

Which brings me to the stupid volcano in Iceland.

I was supposed to work two days last week, just a few hours.  I looked forward to it – the chance to talk about journalism, about communicating … about myself.   Cancelled.

Then my mother was supposed to come for a week’s visit.  She got as far as Newark.

Flight cancelled.

I actually paid no attention to the volcano at first.  Yes, I write a news column for The Faster Times, but I couldn’t think what to write about a volcano, so I left it alone.  And the rest of the day, I spend with little people who know nothing of ash and lava and jet engines.

There is an episode of Dora the Explorer in which King Juan del Bobo wanders around yelling, “I want my mommy!”  I would not say I am at that point, but I am wondering why Dora could not have dropped a giant rock over the volcano for me …

when your baby gets the preschool acceptance letter in sweden

We got a paper in the mail a few days back, and it means the end of Daddyland.

Baby B got a spot in his sister’s preschool starting in the fall.

Now this was always the plan.  It is no surprise.  But I do not like this paper.  I did not like signing it, and I did not like going with Baby B to buy a stamp for the envelope to send this paper back to the city.

This is the hard edge of Sweden – little choice on when to go back to work.

Sometimes I see that the boy will do just fine.  Sometimes it seems impossible.

Yesterday a teacher at NK’s preschool said hi to Baby B.  He cried.  She said with a laugh, “Time to get to preschool, B!”

I wanted to scream at her.

lacking homemaking skills in Daddyland

I am a competent home parent.  We have a good morning routine.  E leaves for school and an hour later both kids are fed, dressed and we are on the way to daycare.

This morning I even had a zen moment about crayons.  Baby B eats them.  I get frustrated.  But this morning I sat with both kids and we drew with crayons and I helped him draw and just kept taking the crayons from his mouth – slowing down to his pace.

But I am a short-termer, a visitor to Daddyland.  And this became apparent this morning.  Holding a green crayon, I remembered that NK’s rain overalls needed sewing.  I ran around looking for a needle and thread.  Took too long.  Then I started sewing – with the toddler’s help.  Sewing into rain overalls is hard – three layers of tough material.  I was breaking needles, bleeding from my thumb, all with a three-year-old hanging over me.

During this time, the baby got into a bowl of oatmeal filled with blueberries.  He dumped them all over NK’s chair and the floor … and half our clean laundry.  Meanwhile, the needle got stuck and I had to break the string but left no room to tie a final knot.  I faked it, while cleaning oatmeal off the couch, as the baby had apparently hidden some in a secret pocket just to smear on the clear other side of the room.

Then it was over.  We got ready.  We got to daycare 15 minutes late.  The baby sleeps.

No big deal, except that I realized that I do not know how to sew tough material.  I do not really know what to do with blueberry stains on white clothes.  I do not know the best way to clean a couch.

I do not consider this a question of gender, by the way.  I assume I would know these things if I was home full-time.

But I am not.

So back to the crayons, I am going be zen, and let it go …

paternity leave in Sweden is like stay-at-home parenting-lite

I do not write much about my daily life in Daddyland, you know, that I clean less this time around, that the Swedish sidewalks are covered with gravel from melting snow and all of it gets into the hall, that Baby B walks and how the way he learns to walk is so different from his big sister, that NK was up for two hours last night, that we all roughhoused so much the other day that Baby B got a happy heat rash.

This is partly because I am trying to focus on Daddyland, the journalist and former peace volunteer trying to make a point about families and the safety net and all that.

But – just a little – it is because life in Daddyland is home parenting-lite.  And it just doesn’t feel right to obsess over my kid’s puke when there is a blogosphere of stay at home mom and dads who juggle many more kids and are doing it indefinitely.  And, you know, I wasn’t pregnant either, and haven’t gotten the hang of breast feeding …

Get this.  I take care of one kid full time.  The other one is at daycare about 20-25 hours per week.  My wife is going to take five or six weeks off in the summer.  She is home by mid-afternoon most days anyway.  I will be back at work by September or October.

I am not Stay at home Dad PDX, who has three toddler boys home every day for the foreseeable future. For a very cool essay on masculinity and the stay at home father, check his post out here:

My sense of who I am as a man is not tied up in the job that I have or the work I do. Being home raising my boys gives me more fulfillment and sense of accomplishment than I ever had in the software industry or working offshore building oil platforms. If you find your identity tied up in vocation then you are going to have a hard time being at home whether you’re a man or a woman. It takes a certain type of person and a level of sacrifice to be a stay at home parent but those characteristics are not uniquely feminine. The truth is I am as much of a man as I ever was before being at home; vocation and masculinity are not linked in my mind.

This is the beauty of Daddyland, the reason I love it so.  I experience hundreds of times a day those flashes of joy that you get when your child just breathes in their sleep.  I get that gift.  I get that deepened sense of parenthood.  I get to separate vocation from masculinity, which is incredibly freeing.

And I get paid to do it.

Then I get to go back to work.