Seven weeks to go

What can I say? I'm gigantic! Compared to what I looked like in October (see here) I am enormous now. Where will this end? I'm sorry to see that it's not only my belly that has grown, but also the rest of me. I hope most of it is fluids that'll go away as soon as this is over... :-) Anyway I plan on lots of walking with the baby once it has decided to come out to the real world. And since we have bought a great baby carriage literally made for long walks I am sure those extra kilos won't be a long story. But still they say nine months of gaining weight and nine more to loose it. I guess I'll be really fit just in time for all the goodies on the Christmas table then...

This is, by the way, the official After X-mas picture to be compared with this one.

Chocolate balls

Today I made some Chokladbollar. They are very easy to make and are delicious (for those of you who have had Delicatobollar, the kind that they sell in Ikea, this is the homemade version).

All you need is 100 g of butter that you beat with 1 deciliter sugar until well blended. Then you add 3 deciliter oatmeal, 2 tbsp cocoa powder, 1 tsp vanilla sugar and 2 tbsp cold, strong coffee.

Mix well and form small balls (this recipe yields everything from about 24 small balls to a few big ones). Roll the balls in coconut flakes, decorative sugar (these two versions I made today) or colorful sprinkles. Then put them in the fridge until it is time to eat them. Oh, I can hardly wait to taste mine later tonight!

There's an alligator in our bath tub!

Lately we have had an alligator in our bath tub! It is there to prevent me from slipping and falling over when I take a shower since I kind of have gained a lot of weight lately and no longer know where my center of gravity is... In addition to this problem I now wake up every morning with extreme swollen fingers - so swollen they hurt and I cannot bend them properly until I have been up for a while. And then we have my legs. If I don't wear support stockings my ankles look like logs in the evening. All these things are symptoms of the wonder that's growing inside of me, so I really shouldn't complain but appreciate these weird things that happen to me at the moment. :-)

On a tired Saturday morning

I know that this isn't the most beautiful picture of me and the belly, but hey, what do you look like yourself on Saturday mornings? Here I am, pre breakfast and pre gym (hence the fancy clothes and hair-do).

Today we went for the second (and probably last) ultrasound examination. We found out that the baby weighs a little more than 2.2 kg at the moment and that everything looks good so far. It is now more or less fixated with the head down and what I feel pressing on my ribs on the right side is probably the butt... :-)

A trip to Falun

In the beginning of January, I went to Falun to visit my parents. They live a seven hour train ride from Lund and when I booked my tickets I got to experience one of the weird things about the Swedish train ticket system. The ticketing system in Sweden is nothing at all like the Swiss one. It actually resembles the system for the flight tickets more... Why? Well, to get a good price you have to book your tickets far in advance since the prices go up the closer to departure date you come - at least on popular travel days and times. This time I booked kind of late (that is not three months in advance) so the tickets were quite expensive, but ok. The funny thing was that the 1st class ticket was cheaper than the 2nd class one! This happens now and then since people in general travel 2nd class to save money and never even consider checking the 1st class price. It is very weird anyway.

However, as a 1st class passenger, my ticket to Falun not only was cheaper than the 2nd class ticket, but it also included breakfast since I left quite early in the morning. So there I was, sitting in a nice chair on the train having an excellent breakfas and paying less than many in the crowded 2nd class carriages!

Then I reached Falun and my parents and met a winter wonder land! The temperature was about -25 C all the time, and the sun shone from a blue sky. Falun really is a very nice town and almost every day I took a walk along the river and one of the lakes close to my parents house.

The sun stands very low during winter and the light is fantastic. I really love winter, and dressed in long johns, warm glowes, good shoes and Matts' warm winter coat I could enjoy the cold. I did get an ice mustache though as well as nice, red cheeks, but I really didn't freeze.

From Falun I took the train to Kumla to visit my grandmother and then I went to Örebro to see my brother and one of my sisters as well as meet her boyfriend for the first time. Then I went back to Lund. During these parts of the trip I did experience more of the Swedish train system. First, going to Kumla, we had to go on a bus in the middle of the train trip since the rail was broken for a bit (probably due to heavy cargo trains with bad wheels literally cracking the cold rali). Then, from Örebro I once again had to take a bus instead of the train for the first bit since a train had derailed... And then, of course, my last train was about half an hour late to Lund... But all in all it was a very good trip.

New Year and all that

Time is passing by really fast now and I cannot believe it's almost three weeks since year 2010 begun. But so it is.

New Year we celebrated with good friends. Andrea and Thomas came down from Gothenburg for a couple of days and on New Year's Eve Jenny and Samuel also joined us. Matts did his thing in the kitchen and prepared a great three course meal on an apple theme... Yummy indeed!

On New Year's Day, Frida and Lars came by on their way back to Switzerland. As always, it was very nice to meet them and we had 24 really nice hours together before they had to leave for the airport.