welcome back

With some trepidation, I set out again... Work servers are down, so I can write, and feel okay about it.

We are back from Sweden, and can I say it was about a thousand times better than I feared. Travelling back wasn't easy, but we righted the ship and the upswing in Owen's skin that started in Sweden has continued. Which makes me think we learned a lesson or two while there, or maybe we just got a jump on things and don't want to look back, let it fall behind. The three theories about the improvement that happened: Low humidity and ideal temperatures, the bubblepoolen or swedish jacuzi which is kept at about warm bathwater temperature, and finally, hypervigilance.


The weather was remarkable, and its believeable, but I'm losing faith in this explanation.
The bubblepoolen were nice, and Owen really got good soaks in on a number of nights. Bathwater still pissed him off and frayed our nerves, but lots of hotels didn't have baths at all, so the jacuzzi were nice. Claire likes this explanation, maybe because she wants to get a hot tub for the backyard. I dunno. We didn't use them all that often. Really just three hotels, a total of 7 trips to the water, and the skin seemed to be on a general incline independent of the timing fo these soaks. It definitely did help remove scabs, which is a great thing, since Owen picking at scabs is one of the cyclical issues we have: blister, scab, picked at,  picking causes new blister, repeat. Breaking the cycle at any stage helps. But, and this may be in combo with item 1, he did get pretty itchy in Sweden, and we started using both steroids (OTC, not the stuff we use at home) and lotion, something we had mostly avoided. These seemed to help with teh itching, and combined with the scab cycle break, may be a key ingredient.


hypervigilance. Two parents, constantly with him, needles in my pocket all the time, keeps the size of each blister low, because I can pop as soon as I notice. Also, we spent a fair amount of time in hotel rooms and were generally less clothed than we have here, this helped allow hypervigilance. I have, in the past, tried hypervigilance, as opposed to the isolated pop at the end of the day. They were 4 months ago, I was home with Owen full time, and I set out on a quest to "pop throughout the day." To see if this worked. They were horrible days, awful sensation of torturing my child with no gain. And there was no gain, things were as bad or worse after teh short experiment, and I wanted no part in fatherhood, barely a part in existence.


So who knows, hypervigilance at some level has continued, with claire on maternity leave, so has use of lotion, and a few long baths have been successfully executed (a few short scream filled ones as well). The weather here has been mostly hot. Not traditionally good news for Owen's skin, but we continue to improve. Maybe its just that we're finally ahead of the curve, instead of pounded in the cyclical surf. The exception is his eye, which has been hard lately, and started around Sweden, but so many other areas are wonderful its hard to complain. I find myself knocking on every piece of wood for a thousand mile radius, but maybe this is the new norm. The daily blister rate has drifted many times up and down, 40 seemed bad, until it was routinely a 100.
In any case a few photos of our trip...

In answer to James long held questions: Children from my earlier european travels are doing well and appearing in Swedish advertisements

Owen loved the CHIPS style sunglasses I picked up for our drive.

I am speechless, more often than I should be.

In the Slott.

A Dutch Elm, and its not diseased! I loved this tree.

Owen loved sliding around on this floor, and we had this amazing room in the castle to ourselves for play.

Exploreringer-mabob.

Dramatic fields of mustard would pop up whenever we weren't in forestland. I'm sure that better photos exist everywhere, but its for my memory if nothing else.

Also the castle, out of order...

Happily lost in a old fishing village before our hike.

A fun pair of photos at teh start of the hike. Owen got tired eventually, but for most of this hike he was absolutely ecstatic about following the path forward through the trees.

It was at this point that Claire and I agreed that none of my family would be happy with us. It was an adventure.

At Nevis the driftwood sculpture, Owen was getting fussy and tired and would fall asleep on my shoulder in the hike back up.

It is basically impossible to capture this place as half as fanciful as it actually is.

The Car. We'll be seeing you again in 6 weeks.

Stockholm is a great city for walking. Everyone we met in Sweden speaks English reasonably well. At first glance we didn't appear as tourists, since sane people wouldn't travel to europe with a toddler and a very pregnant lady, but on closer inspection, we were the only people with a stroller that wasn't suited to cobblestone, a dead giveaway.

In front of the Royal palace, or beside it, I guess. I love the tiny soldier standing guard at the top of the ramp, but its hard to see at this resolution.

Taking a break on our walk around part of the archipelago (after a ferry ride that Owen loved).

The archipelago is magical.

Hanging out on the beach. Not sure if Owen actually ate any rocks, but he liked it here.

The Volvo factory, dropping off the car, almost 1500 miles after getting it with 7 miles on the odometer. We missed the tour on both ends, Owen was jetlagged on the way in and cried for almost two hours straight. At that point, I was ready to call the trip a disaster, but by the time we dropped off the car, it was a different world, and owen mopped their floor with his blankets happily while we waited. It would almost surprise me if we didn't do this trip again when its time to retire the honda (in ten years I hope).

Over all, the best part was just being a tight group without distraction, we hadn't done much of that since the first maternity leave and at that time we were so overwhelmed that I couldn't tell you which way was up. Obviously we're about to get overwhelmed again, hopefully with a little less drama, so it was good to get this time in. Owen's going to have to get used to being part of a binary system, instead of the center of his parental universe. Wish us luck, and knock on some wood for me.






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