Almost there!

Last Friday was the birthday of our eldest daughter. For a couple of years now, we've been giving our kids experiences instead of gadgets. In this materialistic society, it seems like a wise choice. Of course there will be some physical gifts too, but the ones that are usually most appreciated are what we call "Mother's Day", "Father's Day" and "Family Day". We as parents decide when and what to do on the different days (the kids can have their wishes, of course!). Sometimes the days fall quite close to the birthday, other times we have to wait for our special days. For example, a mom's day might involve luxury coffee at a café, a trip to the cinema or a pedicure/manicure, while a dad's day usually has a sports theme such as skating, watching a live sport etc. The special thing about these days is that you get to be all alone without siblings and do something with a very present parent who isn't busy checking the phone or answering emails.

Lately, the little one has been making a lot of nice comments from a 4 year old's perspective! Thought I'd share a few of them, the others I'll keep to myself:-)

My husband travels a lot for work, so there are a lot of video calls. The last few times, the little girl has been kissing the phone hard every time, because Dad is actually on the phone! She sees him and wants to kiss him!

This is the third week in a row that I am home with sick children. Nothing serious, but still so much that it doesn't work to be in school or kindergarten. Combining VAB (short for taking care of sick children in Sweden) with starting up the business here in Sweden is not optimal. It's not easy to tick off meetings and phone calls when the youngest has a fever of 40 degrees. The idea is to be able to stay at home in Sweden when the children are sick, but unfortunately I haven't gotten into that system yet, and will be completely without income these days. And now there are a lot of VAB days coming up, we seem to be catching every autumn virus that exists in our vicinity.

Now I've been out and about at two different events and picked up a lot of inspiration! However, I find it incredibly interesting that they choose to have such a clear division of content at HarmoniExpo and All for Health (Allt för Hälsan in Swedish). HarmoniExpo was held in Solnahallen at the end of October, while All for Health was run together with Sthlm Food.

I am often struck by how a situation or event can be perceived in such different ways depending on who you ask. Most of the time we only assume how we think in a situation when something happens to us, we rarely think about how the other party thinks and feels in the same situation.

Exactly 4 years ago I wrote about this very thing - that everyone should put themselves in the shoes of the other person and try to see what he/she/they see: Yoga Sutras - Thoughtful words about knowing yourself.

In California, Halloween is an extremely big and appreciated holiday. I would say that Halloween is even bigger than Christmas itself! Halloween includes school parades, fall festivals, pumpkin patches and many decorated gardens. Almost all children dress up and, unlike here in Sweden, there are no ghosts, monsters and scary creatures, but rather princesses, cartoon characters, homemade cute combinations and the occasional Pikachu. You don't get more dangerous than the picture below!:-)