Dear dad

This is a short movie made in norway and now translated to english. It gives me tears in my eyes each time i see and listen to it. This is what i fear for filippa, and this is what i know she will grow up in.

this is partly what i talked about in the post thoughts about cute girls in pink dresses. this movie is about what it is like growing up as a girl (and a boy) 2016… watch it, and not only once, watch it two or three times and listen really careful to what the girl says…and think back of your own youth and see how much of this actually also happened to you…

 

if you don’t really get what the movie says i explain a bit here below:

• the fact that boys call girls whores, bitches, cunts is nowadays so normal that many don’t even react, “boys will be boys”, “it is just a joke”. the fact that no one reacts send the wrong signal to both boys and girls…that it is ok to make these kind of jokes and talk like this about girls/women…
• this leads to that boys think they can do whatever they want to girls, that girls accept being called whore and being touched wherever
• the problem is also that girls are blamed if they are raped, because they were wasted or because they had inappropriate clothes…when it is actually the boys who are doing not allowed things..
• that by not reacting on “jokes” that boys say, about girls and sex, you agree to that it is OK…in the film the girl gets raped by the neighbours son. that son had overheard his father making insulting jokes to the “girls father” who didn’t react or say against him…one thing leads to the other. what if the girls father had reacted and told the boys father that the joke wasn’t ok…maybe the boy hadn’t raped the girl?
• that grown up women who are being abused by their men often blame themselves, and stay with their partner defending his actions

This is a movie about being a girl…but it is also a movie about how we raise our boys. how we allow boys to be violent from young age because “boys will be boys”. How we defend boys hitting small girls by saying “he hits you because he is in love with you”…HOW SICK IS THAT? How we defend boys touching girls breasts and bottoms and say” boys will be boys”…giving signals that a girls NO means NO! Girls are not an object…

We have to raise our boys to be able to say no to their friends, to not laugh if someone says whore to girls or make inappropriate jokes. But first of all, the grown ups, you and me, has to react and say STOP when those jokes (and terrible pictures) are told and sent in whatsapp groups and friendship groups…

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER…

show this movie to your partner and/or friends and have a discussion…it is SO IMPORTANT!

• you can talk about if this ever happened to you, as a boy or a girl
• how were your thoughts after it happened?
• if you have kids, what are your thoughts of how to stop this?
• how can you talk to your kids about this?
• how will you react next time an insulting joke come from your friends?

 

Thoughts about cute girls in pink dresses

First of all, this is not an angry post, more worried. Second of all, i know that everyone just wants to be kind and really think that girls in dresses are cute, I mean, THEY ARE.

Since a month or two filippa shows more interest in choosing clothes and almost always wants to wear a dress. If one of her two pink dresses are there, she definitely wants one of them. Since i think it is important that she is allowed to take desiscions about her own body and things concerning her person i very rarely interfere. I can hide the dresses (when she doesn’t see), or let them be in the wash longer to “force” her to choose other dresses or pants.  So far we have no argues at all when it comes to choosing clothes, probably since she feels she is in charge. I often let her choose between two options and in that way we are both happy…

anyway, this is not my biggest concern…

So whats the problem?

The problem as i see it is how the society/people reacts on girls in dresses or cute (mostly pink) clothes. If you have read something about gender and social structures you know where i am heading…

girls always get more comments about their looks, already from young age…actually already as baby. There are so many cute dresses and accessories and of course they are cute! however, this is where the problem starts. I am 100% sure that the reason for filippas love of dresses is not coming from “inside”. It definitely comes from all the attention she gets when she wear her dresses…it is all the “oooohhh”, and “aaaaaaw”, and “HOW PRETTY YOU ARE IN THAT NICE DRESS”…the attention of her is so much bigger when she comes with a dress than in pants…

Of course i know that everyone just wants to be kind, and probably also thinks she is cute. she IS cute and pretty in her dress. but the signal is WRONG!!! already now filippa realise that she gets attention if she looks pretty. What signal does this give her? That she dress up to be seen? Girls and women do get attention by the way they look, a lot more than men/boys.

How many boys do you think get those comments when they meet people? How often do you think boys hear “ooooh” and “aaaaw” and “you are soooo cute in those pants”??? I would say that that almost never happens, but i might be wrong…i don’t have a son so i cant be sure.

But if you look at studies they also say that boys get more comments on their performance and abilities, than their clothes and looks. And if they get comments, it is about how cool, and strong and tough they are…(and that is another subject that is worth thinking over another time….)

So what do I want?

I don’t know what i want… i guess i want people to stop commenting on my daughters looks and instead give her attention for performance and abilities…i want people to think a bit further, what their comments do to girls…

What i really DONT want is my daughter to learn that she is more loved if she is pretty. (which also means i have to let her dress completely as she wants even if it is terrible mismatching…i will love her even if she is dressed in all different patterns and colors…)

I DON’T want her to grow up and think that she is there to be nice to look at, to get objectified, to think that she has to please others and be as other people want her to be…because that is what i think is happening to many girls, and the start is probably nice and well meant comments about how cute they are and how nice clothes they have…

Now i am curious, have you ever thought of this? do you think it makes sense? 

picture of filippa in favorite pink dress=)

 

 

 

 

Pics in my phone

We went to check the new tunnel out, exciting if you ask filippa and her very good friends jonas and olivia:)   
   Filippa had had a cough and i found a new medicine thanks to one of my pt clients. Very good!  
  Filippa didnt want to sleep and instead joined demi in the office. Filippa muss schaffe!  
    
  These are the two girls we hear most about at home since the day she was able to say their names..there is power in all three of them..will be very exciting to see what comes in the future…think i will not always have a smile on my face… 

   This pic is older than a week, because it is now a week ago filippa gave her nukki to the nukki tree. We had 3-4 nights where she woke up and asked for it, and cried crocodile tears at bedtime. But now it is all good. She doesnt ask for it and falls asleep without problems. Now it is still only me that can miss her face expression of complete calm and security when she got the nukki in her mouth at night…i play with the thought “what would happen if i now gave it to her”? I have to tell myself to “get over it” and “grow up”!! 

This is how i felt a bitnafter the firdt nights…

 
   My little douschkidooo!!! 
Tomorrow monday and lots of work for 5 days, then weekend again. So happy that i decided on having weekends off. Works most weekends:)  

Practise makes perfect

We went skiing yesterday. Two runs, one before lunch and  one after. I would not say that filippa is hooked on skiing yet. One second she says she wants to ski and the next she really don’t want to! here we are still at home having  a last pee, with ALL clothing on. And yes, she went to the toilet before we started the dressing session, but of course had to go again. The law of going to toilet in the most inappropriate time…
 I am very happy about my new colourful jacket:) feel like a swedish ski bum again;)

 After skiing we took a spontaneous after ski at cervo. Filippa didn’t want to be outside for some weird reason so we had to go inside:(   
 Very nice afternoon! 

Below video of our little  racer. I am so impressed and absolutely horrified when she skis. It is not as flat as it looks on the video and it goes fast. When i ski with her i use the harness and rope. Demian is much faster on the skiis and reacts quick to all her movements! Practise makes perfect! 

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like the frosties commercial

today has been a fantastic day. In one way nothing special happened but i have been very much in peace with myself and with filippa.

It started with a sleep in. I woke up 8.32 with filippa next to me. Demian was in Lenk. We were cuddeling a bit and talkimg about that matterhorn was gone and “where has it gone??”(cloudy). I had organised opa reini to look after filippa from 9-12 so i could go touring but abandoned that idea since we slept so long. Breakfast would be to tight on training and i would just feel really tired. Sleeping and having a rest is sometimes more important…

We had breakfast and afterwards a happy filippa went to opa, still in her pyjama. I made myself a big coffee, checked my fav blogs and went up to continue my bookkeeping for 2015. Worked really well until 12 and then a happy hungry filippa came back.  Got this pic from reini:)

 We had lunch and then played that she and all her stuffed animals were on a boat on a wild ocean! 

Afterwards we went sledging and it was snowing like crazy and i had to run and push the whole time since the snow was wet and SLOW!  

    
 A exhausted filippa fell asleep on the sledge and continued to sleep on the floor at sarahs place where we had coffee afterwards. 

Afterwards we went to meet demi who had come back from lenk. We walked home and i made pancakes for snack and it was like american happy family in the frosties commercial! It was getting dark and demi put a fire on and went to the gym. Filippa watched the ipad and i read a book(!!!!)! Then demi came home again and we made a good attempt in making filippa tired by playing circus and hide and seek. 

Then i tried to put her to bed and she fell asleep straight away (this is NOT TRUE, but that story will maybe be another post tomorrow). After 40minutes of not sleeping me and demian managed to still cook the adult dinner we had planned and looked forward to and sit down alone for 15minutes with filippa in her room playing (21.00 at night, 1,5 hours after normal bedtime). 

Afterwards filippa DID fall asleep and i finished (!!!) my book infront of the fire..

Ha??? What do you think of that day? Once every 10th year this happens! HARMONY!  

Ps. Not written is all the cleaning of dish, floors and baby butts…plus how wet and cold we were after sledging, the toothbrush fight, the fact that filippa had pyjama on the whole day and the 2hour of trying to put filippa to bed…

But it was a FANTASTIC DAY! 

Good night

Nukki tree

  
  So, giving up the nukki/napp didn’t happen in sweden. I was to lazy and i actually love the way filippa gets calm and relaxed whenever she gets the nukki! For quite long she has only been allowed to have it in bed. This has resulted in that she goes down to her or our bed and says she will sleep and that she needs her nukki. Fine for me, since it means she calms down and let me do things on my own. 

However, we feel it is time to let go, especially since she has exema around her mouth that doesnt go away, partly because of the nukki. 
So, we will now try to find a tree somewhere in zermatt, but still to far away to go and get it at desperate nights. Anyone wants to join us? Take this great opportunity together with us? 

Here is a video of filippa in our bed claiming she wants the nukki to sleep and then getting real angry when i say that she needs to give her nukki to the nukki tree…

 

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 So, as you can see we are not ready to give it up yet. We will not traumatise her. She still have to somehow “want” to give it away. To prepare her we are talking about it a little bit every day and then i am showing her this video which she thinks is very fascinating: 

https://vimeo.com/135469827

Filippa update

here we go, a filippa update that i have been meaning to write for over 2 weeks now…

it stresses me that i don’t document all progress that filippa is doing…and most of the time you are so busy with living that you don’t even see that she is developing and getting bigger. now that chloe is in the house i am reminded of what it was like with filippa in that age, but at the same time i don’t remember at all…today i watched the blog from summer 2014 and also youtube clips from that age, time FLIES! I have an unpublished post about filippas language and words, but i always only write a couple of sentences and then i am interrupted and i now realize that i dont remember filippas first word=(

since i wrote that my mum only remembers the good things about my time as a baby she found diaries from 1985-1987. So much fun to read about what we did and who i was as a baby. I was a very happy and satisfied baby, that is obviously true, but there were also days were it said : today catalina has been whining the whole day etc. And in that book it also says my first words and when i walked and all these “milestones”.

i feel this is a very blury post but now i just write so that i finally get this on print. Sorry to all of you who read this blog because of training or food…you guys can stop reading this post now…

anyway, filippa is growing and the last month has been sooooo cool with her. her language is developing so fast and she can explain emotions and thoughts MUCH BETTER! Even if it is fantastic I really miss some of her first funny words, such as:

poppile = kaputt (broken/sönder)
lippa = filippa (she learned to say filippa in sweden)

 

the last few weeks it has been alot:

• filippa KANN
• filippa KANN INTE/NICHT

it hurts a bit when she says that she can not do something, that she doesn’t believe that she is capable. I mean, now it is just small things, like open a can or draw something. but you all of a sudden realize that she is a person with feelings and emotions and that now, already with 2,5 we have to start build her and her confidence up. that she is capable and that she have to keep trying and not give up. You can see that she gets sad from not being able to do all the things she would like to do, but also how proud she is when she manages to do something. this hit me really hard the other morning when she for the first time in months slept a whole night in her own bed. she always fall asleep in her own bed but around 2am she sneaks in to our bed and stays the whole night. I have never seen this as a problem and we all sleep quite well together. Of course I am not applauding her when she comes to us, just lift her up and then we go back to sleep.

the other morning she came out of her room in the morning and called me, “MAMMI, MAMMI, filippa inne (inside)”! I didn’t get what she meant but she continued, “MAMMI, filippa sova själv säng (filippa sleep my herself in the bed)”, “filippa duktig (filippa good)”…and she was jumping up and down and was SO EXTREMLY PROUD OF HERSELF! I almost got tears in my eyes to see her so proud, but at the same time sad if we somehow made her feel not welcome in our bed (overanalysing parent, i know)…

she is a big girl now and we can more and more talk and reason with her. i also realized that she doesnt hit us anymore. I have no idea when that happened. so just like everyone says, it was a phase, that would pass. when you look back it doesn’t seem so bad, but when you are in the middle of these phases and you don’t know how to control yourself or the kid, it is  terrible and takes so much energy. at the moment she is in a wonderful phase. mostly very happy and fun to have around. helpful, talks, wants to cuddle (kom mamma, mysit)…when she gets upset and feel badly treated she puts her chin out and nose up (have to try to catch this on picture) and throws things around to make her point, but this is just once or twice a day nowadays…

we play hide and seek, although she sucks at hiding and as soon as i finished counting she screams: MAMMA, HIER, HIER!!! and shows me where she or the thing she hid is.

she also love to sing and that is also how i make her walk home…we sing so she don’t think of how tired she is: “mamma, filippa tlött bene”..the favorite is still “en kulen natt”, but also “lilla snigel” “lille katt” “sjörövarfabbe” “imse vimse spindel” and many of the other swedish classics. german songs we don’t know so many, ” alle meine enten”, “a ramsamsam” and “hoppehoppe reite” or something like that. English songs is “Happy Birthday” and “big baloon”…

ok, now I have to work…but this post was a huge burden on my shoulders…i hope you will appreciate these posts one day filippa! Otherwise i will appreciate them when i am old and have time to read…

over and out

Train, plane, boat

Arrived safe in helsingborg after 9 hours travel. Filippa was real good company and behaved and was very helpful. To get to helsingborg we went with train to zurich, then with bus to get to the plane. We went with a real small plane and the staff was kids friendly, which i noticed is not always the case. Filippa got the first useful toy ever on a plane, a sticker album! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 

    
 
The bridge between denmark and sweden!

  she fell asleep the last 10min, of course…
   On the train from copenhagen she slept and afterwards she just cuddled so i could listen to 1,5 podcast!!! AMAZING! 
 Last we took the ferry over to sweden and watched the sunset on deck outdoors. Beautiful! 

  
Mum and dad met up with us and we went for a fika. Then home for dinner and then to a christmas concert. Felix also joined us! 

    
 
Today we have been to the library and soon we will meet up with sara and annie! Maaaaaybe we will go to the “nukki tree” tomorrow or sunday and stop with nukki/napp/soother..but only if she feels ready…we borrowed a book from the library about giving the nukki up.. We will see! 

Beyond my imagination

filippa and i had the morning together and had time for lots of things. We started very well with play doh and dolls…

   I was cleaning and filippa was playing quite well by herself…
She went to the toilet by herself and i could hear how she was washing her hands afterwards, good girl! Then she came out with demis toothbrush and i let her brush her teeth. Afterwards she went back to the toilet and i could hear how she played with the water…

“no worries, i am anyway going to clean the toilet afterwards, doesnt matter if it is a bit wet”

A couple of minutes later i anyway go to her to check what up…

Filippa is standing with the toothpaste in her mouth and hands in the sink, the “hole” is full of toothpaste too…

-where is the toothbrush filippa, i ask

– borta (gone) she says

I look on the floor, it is gone..i realise it is probably in the drain and thats why the toothpaste is blocking the water to come down 

 
I go and get a knife to try to get the toothbrush up, but it doesnt work, because… 

 the toothpaste lid is also down there and when turned it has the exact size of the drain(not asthe  picture, turned as you screw it on)

Gah, i managed to get the lid up, but the toothbrush is still down there…

I also managed to keep calm and almost laugh about it… I dont know how i will protect myself to get in to these situations, maybe i dont even have to or want to since i dont want to be a parent who doesnt let the kid explore themselves, but it sometimes very energy and time consuming..it is beyond my imagination to see it coming! I could picture many other situations on that toilet during those few minutes she was there alone, but not that she would put the toothbrush in to the drain and fill it up with toothpaste…

Well, without that happening i would not have had anything to write today.. 

Best friends X 2

it is so cool when your friends have children in the same age. You almost experience your childhood all over again ! Demis best friend and his family is visiting zermatt now and we try to squeez in as much time as possible together. 

And even if they dont see each other super much each year they are also best friends now:) they are like an old couple, cant live with each other, cant live without eachother!