School

R has settled into her new school really well. She is fortunate enough to have an English/Swedish teacher, which has been really helpful in easing her into Swedish education. Children here don't start 'proper' school until they're 7 (although they can go into grundskola at 6) but because she's already had 3 years of English education, she's gone straight into grade 3 even though it means the kids in her class are a year or so older than her. It doesn't seem to have caused any difficulties, and she's made plenty of friends. One of her friends lives just across the road from us, and R has already been over there for a sleepover! That friend is Polish, but also speaks both Swedish and English very well so communication is no problem for them.
The kommun also offers all children who have a non-Swedish language spoken at home (even if they were born and bred in Sweden), weekly lessons in their mödersmal (mother-tongue) so R has extra English for an hour every Wednesday which is more to her level than the English lessons the Swedish children in her class have. I went to a hemspråk parents' meeting a couple of months ago, and was amazed at the number of different languages that were supported - well over 20, including Spanish, Russian, Somalian, Romanian and Kurdish. Basically, if there are 4 children or more with a particular language requirement, the kommun will hold a class for it. For children aged 3-5 in dagis (daycare) the teacher will go in for that hour a week and give the child one-to-one attention. I think it's an amazing thing that they do. It also alleviates our concerns about certainly the youngest 2 'losing' their English.
F goes to dagis for 15 hours a week, spread over 3 days. She has been a little trickier to settle in - although we did expect it - but is making friends and picking up Swedish at an incredible rate. Unfortunately she doesn't think that she knows any Swedish, but the problem is actually that she understands and speaks it without thinking or realising! We do have tears in a morning, but they don't last long and she has a great time. They play outside for at least a couple of hours every day, regardless of the weather, so she has waterproof trousers and wellies for rainy days, salopettes and fleecy boots for cold days, a change of clothes for when she inevitably gets wet and has an absolutely fantastic time! They're really allowed to just be children and run around and get dirty, and it's a great environment for her to be in.
She will be old enough to start grundskola in August, but because she's already done a year of school, it may be possible for her to skip that and go straight into first grade, which would also mean she could have the same teacher that R has had this year.
As for G, well she's still at home with me. Because I'm not working, the kommun won't let her go to dagis until she's 4 (when she can have the same 15 hours a week that F gets now). We've put her name down for a place at the same dagis as F so are hoping that one will become available in January. It will be good for her to get out and about and make some of her own friends, but as she's never been away from me before, I think it's going to be a shock for both of us!

Sunshine (or the lack thereof)

When we arrived here in August, there was a heatwave going on, and you couldn't have asked for better weather. And then November arrived. It is well known for being the most miserable and depressing month of the year in Sweden and having lived through one I can now understand why. This November was apparently worse than usual - Stockholm had a total of 17.5 hours of sunshine in the whole month, which equals just 35 minutes per day. And when you consider that there were a couple of sunny mornings with more than their fair share, you can imagine how many days went by without any sunshine at all.
Add the grey clouds to the rapidly shortening days, and it does sometimes feel like the day never really got light at all.
Happily we are only a couple of weeks off the shortest day and then perhaps things will start to improve. Today, sunrise was at 8.33am and sunset at 2.48pm and there's only another 15 minutes of daylight to be lost before the turn around, so I feel like we've almost made it through the worst! Plus, by the time we get back from our trip to the uk we'll be 12 minutes up on where we are right now.
Roll on Spring....

We are still here!

Sorry for the long delay in updates (once again); I shall make it my New Year's resolution to post more frequently, honest!
As you can imagine, we've been very busy over the last few months settling in. There's been so much to get used to - the different supermarkets, school and dagis for R and F, not to mention the language! We're still living in the apartment which is ok, but I think we're all starting to suffer a little from being in such close quarters all the time.
Up till a couple of weeks ago, I still had my car from England over here, but as we were reaching the point where it would need to be re-registered with the Swedish Vägverket (which would involve a sizeable cost with the alterations that would be required), we decided to send it back to be sold. It's not too bad at the moment as everywhere important is within walking distance. There's even a bus stop right outside for if I wanted to go into town, but I haven't plucked up the courage to try catching the bus yet. *blush*
Anyway, as there are so many things to write about, I've decided to break it down into more manageable chunks which I will be posting over the next day or two.

Back to England

Well D went back to England this morning to pack up the rest of the house and put it into storage, leaving me here with the 3 girls. I'm not jealous of him being in the UK, but I am VERY jealous at the thought that he's going to be having proper bacon butties!

iPhone again

As I mentioned previously, one of the things I was looking forward to about moving to Sweden was that I was promised an iPhone when we got here. Decided to wait till the end of July when the new 3GS was released, but of course when I went on the day they had nowhere near enough stock in and I had to order one. They told me that it would be about a month, so you can imagine my delight when I got a phone call last night to say it had arrived already!
So off I trotted this morning down to the store in much excitement, only to find (after the shiny box was tantalisingly placed on the counter in front of me and we'd determined which tariff was appropriate) that actually I'm not allowed to have a contract phone until I've either been in the country for 8 months, or we have bought a house.
A very sad me left the Telia shop and wandered over to Carphone Warehouse to get a pay as you go sim card to put in my UK phone. Looks like I am doomed to only have basic phone functions for a while longer.

Trosa

We made our third visit to Trosa today and finally got to see it in the sun! Picnic, wander round the shops, ride on the little blue train and an icecream - what could be better?
Photos are here.

Taxinge Slott

Had a day out at Taxinge Slott today - better known as the 'Cake Castle' for reasons that are fairly obvious:


Don't know if it's just the novelty of living somewhere new, or the fact that there's so much right on our doorstep, but we do seem to be going out places a lot more since we came here than we ever did in England...
More photos can be found on flickr.