The Other Mother

Julia happy in her big sister's care

Meet Elina, 5 and almost a half, with a self-confidence rivaled by few. She carries her youngest (look-alike) sister around much to my terror and possibly Julia's peril. Or not? I am not brave enough to find out where her limitations are. No incidences yet, though. She's awfully good at handling her, I have to admit, just not as good at listening to the guidelines I set up for sister-caring...

Happy Birthday, Isak!

Isak turned 7 on July 5th, but with July 4th on a Saturday we held a part for him yesterday. We don't do parties every year, and this year was clearly not the best one to do it, because as a nursing mother it was a logistics challenge to run this smoothly. Thanks to good friends it went pretty well, despite a few hitches (any kids' party is somewhat organized chaos, I suppose). Tiffany made extra pigs-in-a-blanket for me while I nursed, and Kristin helped on the activity. Thanks, girls, you are the best!

Backward Summer Re-Cap

swimlessons and pool time

Here is an assemblage of pictures from varying summer activities, chronologically backwards, more or less.



Isak turned 7, Julia is barely 3 weeks here



We went to Dallas for Swedish Midsummer Celebration



Elina graduated from Safety Town



And last day of school and June 4th

Bath time

Elina helps

Taken today with the phone because the camera was not within reach. Julia is a month now, and looks a lot like Elina at this age - skinny and bald (exact same hair color too - what little there is). She's adding some height as well. Our new laundry room has this awesome, wide slop sink that we have used SO much this summer in giving Anja quick baths and cleaning wounded knees, dirty feet etc, besides spot treating clothes (ser du galltvålen i hörnet, mamma, i den blåa tvålasken?). Turns out it holds the infant tub remarkably well, too.

Ten Years With Mark

I met Mark in mid-February of 1998, at the close of my year as an Au Pair. Those intense, early days of our dating took place in a heavenly, northern California landscape, 70 degrees with white blossoms on every tree. I honestly did not think I would ever see him again when we parted. Our lives were headed completely different directions. In March of that year I left to go back to Sweden for 5 months, after which I had my sights on BYU - to which I had just been accepted. Mark was due to begin his great, brand new job for Pella Windows in San Francisco a few days after I left. With the globe trotter life style that I led back then, it was not the first time I had met an incredible person only to part ways forever. Or so I thought.

Mark was a bit different, though. And perhaps I was different this time. I had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints some 7 months before we met, and Mark too had been baptized even more recently, and we were fiercely converted (still are), uncompromising in our new life style. It really was a miracle that we did meet, an incredible answer to Mark's prayer (not mine, for I had something different in mind, back then). But that is not my story to tell. You will have to pressure Mark for those details, and they are rich enough to make one heck of a movie.
We met at church in the family ward I attended. He delayed calling until Tuesday morning (smooth). He was new in town, I offered to show him around (he seemed a bit lost). I wore my lime green striped pants. After that night we spent almost all our time together. I nannied full-time and the parents of the girls I watched immediately adored Mark and didn't mind him hanging out at the house, and his job was not due to begin for another few weeks. Not only did Mark and I share similar conversion experiences - it was easy to bond over the fact that Mark had a love for Swedish people, culture and language.

He called almost weekly after I returned to Sweden, and in the fall when I went to BYU (aka Mormon Meat Market), Mark quit his job in San Francisco and moved to Orem, Utah so he could use his Master's Degree to pound nails for $10 an hour in an economy where it's hard to get a decent job quickly unless you are related to someone. He was frighteningly blunt as to the reason for this crazy move. "I knew if I wanted to have any kind of chance at marrying you, I had to move quickly." Well, it worked. Just not immediately. It sort of backfired at first, as I felt slightly stalked, and I needed to explore the vast dating opportunities at BYU first. But we were married June 19, 1999 after I spent a term at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies.


These ten years have left us lots of stories to tell. I think I will do a few blog posts in their honor in the coming month. About how Mark painted houses in San Francisco bay, how we moved from California to Oklahoma, packing all our belongings in a Toyota pick-up truck and a 1971 VW van, and about the many remodels and construction projects gone wrong before they went right... Many of these stories are humbling, funny in retrospect, because much of our marriage has been spent to some degree of 'poverty' and crisis management. But as this year has unraveled, revealing the amount of debt many Americans are in, I realize that it was our die-hard pay-cash attitude led us (me) to wonder how the rest of the world could afford such fancy cars, expensive houses etc, while we were living hand to mouth? Now I know many of them could not afford it. Ten years later and all we have is a small mortgage on a large house, one that is less than what some people owe on their cars.

I realize that much of life is hard and finding and choosing who to spend it with is the most crucial decision of a lifetime. Because relationships that last will be tested in the most turbulent waters. I knew this, having watched my parents who have a fantastic marriage. But they struggled through hard economic times, less than sunny times, building a house together while raising a family. I know that the example of my mother helped me get through the re-plumbing of Mark's and my house, for example, when we had no running water for a week. We carried water from the neighbor to flush the toilet. It did not really ruffle my feathers, even though I had a toddler and was pregnant at the time. I had watched my mother pulling all our household water from the neighbor's barn on a child's snow sled, daily, while we added on to our house and our well water was unusable until we drilled a new one. Let me add, for the benefit of the American reader, that this is NOT typical Scandinavian behavior in this day and age. I am thankful for the perspective of delayed gratification and patience with situations in general, and one another in particular, that Mark and I share.

Though I sometimes mourn the decision to live so far from my family, I have never regretted marrying Mark - a feeling validated by something our dear friend Rolf in Sweden said. "But surely there are guys like Mark in Sweden, at least in the church," I tried one time during a visit to their house when Mark was not present (considering the awesome husbands and fathers that are found in the Church generally). But to this I got an emphatic, "No! The guy you caught is one in a million." And Rolf is right, of course.

I will end for now with a short list of certain statistics:

- 10 years
- 4 kids (ages 7, 5, 2 and 0)
- 1 dog
- 5 residences
- 2 college degrees
- 2 complete house remodels
- 1 house addition (5 rooms)
- 2 bouts of unemployment
- 0 car payments
- Sweden trips: 10 Victoria, 4 Mark, 5 Isak, 4 Elina, 2 Anja

The Bilibed

Julia is jaundiced and has to spend a few days on the bilibed (that means ALL her non-feeding time). This is not the traditional tanning booth. Instead she is on top of the lights. She really does not care for it much, and it is hard to leave her there when she wants to be held and swaddled. But her bilirubin levels had gone down when they drew her blood today for the 6th time since her birth. At least she will escape the exchange blood tranfusion I had to have as a newborn.

with flash and light turned on

without flash and lights off

Julia Marianne

Thursday, June 4th 2009
6:56 p.m. - 18:56 (Central Standard Time)
8 lbs - 3640 gram
19 1/2 inches - 50 cm

Very little hair - blonde peach fuzz, same as her sister Elina. (Anja and Isak both had much more).

May Pictures

Elina and her friend Abby.
See the post "Beyond Words," below, to learn more about their friendship.

Isak and best class-mate Zile on the last day of school.

Anja's first REAL turtle at our new house. We're close to the woods and the river so we get all kinds of critters here.

cooking

the trio - Elina lost her smile just before I clicked..

We moved!

And have been without communication (phone and internet) until now. Unpacking is coming along, a little slower than usual.

37 weeks

I can view pictures of myself as pregnant without mental pain about 1 year after the baby is born. This is for my family members in Sweden. And since it is my last time being pregnant, I might as well have it commemorated. June 4 is the day.

(That's a light behind my head - Isak, 6, took this picture)

It is easy to see why packing boxes is sort of hard right now. But I am thankful we can move before the baby is born. I do feel like a million bucks when the baby is out, compared to when I am pregnant, but still, 6 hours of nursing a day I'd rather be doing after a move, than during, if you know what I mean.

I have almost no pictures to prove that I have been pregnant, because not only do I gain 60 lbs each time (55 and counting at the moment), but I also suffer from extreme edema - swelling of every appendage of my body, including my nose/face, and that starts very early in the pregnancy. Right now I do sorely miss my waist from last summer, but more than anything I long to get my nose and face back, which will return to me in some sort of normal fashion in mid-June, about two weeks post partum. The 45 lbs of maternal stores take a bit longer to go away, though... I'm hoping Christmas '09 may not be too unrealistic.