It's been a while...

I see it's been over a month since we posted here.  So while we haven't done anything spectacular, we'll fill you in on what we've been up to.

Kids here start "school" at 1-1.5 years old, so we enrolled Eli and he started in August.  School started with a gradual transition - his hours there gradually increased over three weeks, and I had to stay with him the first week.  The transition was nice.  Much easier than the shock of going from Quality Manager at a medical device company in Ohio to being a stay-at-home dad in Stockholm.  Eli loves his school.  Every day when Anne gets home, the first thing he does is tell her, using signs, about how he went to school where he napped, ate, swung, played with friends, saw a bunny, or whatever else he did.  He has made good friends there. 


With Eli in school, I can study.  I took the GMAT, and I plan to start an MBA in January.  Just taking prereqs in the mean time.  I drop Eli off in the morning at 9:00, go to a library and work all day, and pick him up at 3:30.  Here's my "office"

Here are some random pics, mostly of Eli of course.  All of these are in or near our apartment.

climbing through the woods behind our apartment

Harbor in the center of Gustavsberg

Future engineer hard at work

We still keep busy in our free time.  We finally got equipment to start brewing beer again, although we can only make batches half the size we used to make.  Right now we have a Lingonberry Belgian Ale fermenting.  Before we got the home-brewing equipment, we played with yeast, water, and grains by making our own bread.  It started as a cost-savings, since groceries are so expensive here.  But now we make artisan breads for every day, as well as other goodies.  Here are a few recent batches:

Since Eli goes crazy whenever he sees horses (almost as much as when he sees big trucks or construction equipment), Anne took him to an equestrian show in September.  His favorite was the medieval weapons demonstration, where they smashed pumpkins with maces from horseback.  He still talks and laughs about it, a month later.

He also loved the marching band on horseback, coming onto the field here. 

We did have a few rough weeks, health- and sleep- wise.  Eli was sick, then he started cutting his 2-year molars.  Although the molars caused him some pain, ice cream and popsicles at least provided momentary relief

We'll try and update this a little more frequently going forward...