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In Stamford

Sunday Morning Beach Walk

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

January 17, 2021

About an hour after I uploaded the last post, my doctor sent me a message that I do not have gestational diabetes, yay! My baseline, first, third and forth blood tests showed way below the minimum level, the second test showed closer but still below, so I definitely don’t have diabetes. The 1 hour tests doesn’t seem too accurate (hence why they make you do the 3 hour one sometimes), it’s can kinda just be bad luck. I didn’t have to do anything special before the 1 hour test, I called the morning of to double check and they just said to not eat an hour before my appointment. But, I read somewhere on google that if you would eat for example cereal in the morning before your test it can interfere. I don’t eat cereal very often but for some reason I did the day of my test, so who knows if that did something.
Well, it is definitely great news. It would suck to have to check your blood sugar 4 times a day. But plenty of women get this diagnose and unless you’re really at a high risk to maybe even have diabetes after pregnancy, you’ll be fine, just have to watch what you eat more. 

Yesterday we didn’t do anything special. I have like four thousand things on my to-do list before our trip so I spent most of the day at my desk. We went for a longer walk in the afternoon and we watched a tv-show at night, but that’s it. 
This morning we drove to Cove Island here in Stamford around 8am. Nobody there really that early on a cold Sunday morning which was nice. Thor tried to eat all the sand again which we tried to train him out of. We are going down south in a week and he can not eat all the sand there, that would not end well. Not sure why he does it either, he’s weird. But we had a nice walk, very refreshing. The good thing about wearing a mask is that it covers your face when the wind gets really cold:)

I have to clean the apartment today, also gonna cook us a vegetarian Mexican lunch and then try to check off a few more things from the to-dos. We’ll see if I have time for anything else. Jim is off work tomorrow (MLK day) so I have plenty of time to ask him to do stuff for me hahah (mostly just to carry stuff around since I try to not lift things these days or to grab things up high in cabinets).

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Very nice in the sun but the wind was freezing
Thor ordered us coffees on the way home 😀

In Swedish in America, Uncategorized

Our ending of the old & beginning of the New Year

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

January 4, 2021

Hello 2021! It feels so nice to welcome you and leave 2020 behind. 

Hope you all had a wonderful start of this new year! Did you do anything special to celebrate the ending of last year? 

On Tuesday the 29th I practiced some asana and then did a meditation during the sunset. The full moon was lighting up our apartment and I decided to pull a few tarot cards like I always do on full moon nights or when about to enter a new month. For the first one I asked about 2021 and I got “Blossoming” which sounds pretty nice to me considering I’m carrying a child that is due this spring:) 

On New Years Eve I was so tired I could barely sit up cause I had been sleeping poorly that night. So I got basically nothing done and then took a nap in the afternoon (oh pregnant life haha). J was working til 4. For dinner that night we decided to order food from Luckys. I popped a bottle of sparkling apple cider. I’m not a big fan of that and not much for regular sodas either, they are too sweet (says the person who can eat a whole bowl of candy in one go), but that was the most exciting non alcoholic drink I could come up with for the night. 
We watched “Dinner for One” like always through youtube. It’s on Swedish national TV every New Years and I just love it, it’s too funny! 
We pretty much sat on the couch all night watching the Time Square celebration thing. Then 10, 9, 8….2, 1 – Happy New Year! We stayed up for a couple of hours after that and slept in for a bit the next day.

I started the first day with a shower imagining washing off the past year to welcome the new one. We had breakfast and I facetimed with my mom. Normally, to me, January 1st means to do absolute nothing all day, just watch movies and eat crap. But I was so motivated to start this new year that I didn’t rest much. We went to a store to return something and then went to the grocery store to buy several bags of chips cause I guess we couldn’t really decide what we wanted haha. And when we came home I took down Christmas. Ya, that’s right, I took it down, it was up for a month and that’s enough. I left the garland and the lights on the stairs though since I kinda just put that up and it’s nice light these dark days. Thought J would help me take down the tree but once he was done with playing games on his pc I had taken everything down by myself (ain’t nobody got time to waste).
In the evening we did watch a movie and eat chips. We watched the Disney Pixar “Soul“, it was really good. I’m a big fan of the “Inside Out” movie cause I think that’s an awesome movie for kids and this Soul movie was of the same quality. 

Saturday and Sunday had a good mix of me being really productive at home, building a house on sims and watching movies. It’s called balance, hahah. 

Did not sleep that well last night cause J snored louder than a monster truck, the neighbors were screaming bad words to each other while slamming doors and the mystery ghost train outside was honking non stop. Every time it finally got quiet for a few minutes the baby started practicing gymnastic routines on my bladder and I also got really hungry. But oh well. Dragged myself up at 7am, took a shower and had a pretty productive day. I love this motivated feeling, I hope it sticks:)

I went for a cold but lovely walk around the “cute street” on the 29th Once I came back home I had calm morning with a kicking baby
(she/he kicked non-stop for 24 hours during full moon) Thor got a haircut on the 30th. Just a trim. He was soft like silk.
He seems to have got some of his black color back which is great!
Cheers! At least I tried to make it look nice:)
If you haven’t seen this, then youtube itJanuary 2nd, bumpie is getting really big now♥

In Connecticut

not allowed to go to the beach

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

December 28, 2020

Yesterday around 8:30am, we drove to Tod’s Point, a beach area we’ve been to many times. When we got there the parking guard asked us for ID with a Greenwich address on it. Since we don’t live in Greenwich we were not allowed to enter, we had to turn around. Now with covid being really bad again they have new rules. How shitty! We are all already limited in what we can enjoy these days, and one thing I really love is to go to the beaches, and now they take that away from us too. I understand that they want minimize the possible spread even outdoors, but hey, to close off an entire big park to only be used for people in certain area, that is pretty awful. Can they not just keep track on how many that enters the parking? This made me sad. 
Anyway. We saw a cute small park on our way there (we drove a different way than we usually do), so we decided to check it out just so that we and Thor could get a good walk of the day at least. 
It was -4°c outside and frosty, brrr! But the sun was warm and we had plenty of clothes on so it was actually pretty nice and refreshing. I got a new coat that I wore for the first time (all other jackets are getting too small, bumpie is getting big). Thor was cute in his outfit as well. He probably didn’t really need the sweater, he’s extremely fluffy these days, I only put it on since we were going to the beach and he doesn’t like to get too dirty.
We had a lovely morning even if it didn’t turn out the way we wanted. On our way home we ordered pick-up breakfast. J felt like eating something other than Christmas leftover hahah.
I made us a rice dish with leftover ham from Christmas for dinner. My mom used to make us this when I was a kid. Since “Mr American picky eater” doesn’t like onions I didn’t add that but I did put mushroom on half for myself to enjoy (he doesn’t eat that either). It turned out pretty amazing if I can say so myself:) At night we watched the movie ‘Hotel Mumbai’. Based on true events. I don’t recall hearing about this back in 2008.
Now it’s time for me to take Mr Fluff out for a walk. Have a nice Monday!

In Swedish in America, USA

10 YEARS IN AMERICA!

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

December 28, 2010-2020

IT’S BEEN TEN YEARS SINCE I CAME TO AMERICA!! I can’t even believe I’m writing this. It doesn’t feel that long, and at the same time it feels like I’ve always lived here. 10 years, it sounds crazy (and it sounds like I’m old haha). I’ve been through so much these years. I found the love of my life, got married, became a pommy mommy, I have visited 16 US states and tons of cities, traveled to several countries with hubby, I’ve danced thousands of hours, I have had plenty of ups and downs, I’ve met a lot of new people, I have lived in six apartments and now I’m pregnant with our rainbow baby. It’s been ten very interesting and lovely years. 

Happy Anniversary to me and America 😀

Here’s random pictures in a random order from adventures I’ve been on in different places in America throughout the years. 

In Swedish in America, USA

Our 2020 Christmas

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

December 27, 2020

Hope ya’ll had a fantastic Christmas! This year looked different for most, some might have been alone, others might have celebrated outside with loved ones, some had to work long shifts at the hospitals and others enjoyed the company of others through facetime. My husband and I are used to celebrate the holidays just the two of us and Thor, so it wasn’t very different for us this year. 

I have to say, we had a perfect Christmas celebration this year. 

On the evening of the 23rd, I made myself an awesome Irish coffee (non-alcoholic) and we watched the animated version of The Grinch. Surprisingly better than I thought. 

Jim was working half of Christmas Eve (here in America it was just a regular Thursday) while I was baking saffron buns for what felt like hours and prepping some of the food for our “julbord” (Swedish Christmas table) before a quick facetime with my parents. At 3pm we had to say goodbye so that I could start “Kalle Ankas Jul” (the disney Donald Duck Christmas thing we watch every year) that I have on a dvd. After 4pm I prepared the rest of the food and J put a ham in the oven. And then time to eat:) My beets salad and the potato gratin didn’t turn out that great this year, but oh well, everything else was tasty.
At night we were so tired after all the food that we didn’t do much. We opened the gifts from J’s mom and Jim also gave me a gift (even though we had said no gifts). A new camera! The filming on my big camera hasn’t worked that well for awhile, but with this new one I can film our new family member:) We played a few games of Jackbox and then went to bed.
All night we had a massive storm (quite warm outside so no snow, just rain and powerful wind). The crazy wind kept me awake part of the night. In the morning we found trees that had been knocked down. 

The buns on the oven paper got burnt on the bottom so sadly didn’t taste good. The other ones turned out as one instead of 21 hahah, but they were probably the best saffron buns I’ve ever made, yum!
I’m normally not much for hot cocoa but there aren’t many warm drinks to enjoy, especially when you’re pregnant, so sometimes I do make myself a cup:) We haven’t made meatballs since we got food poisoning on Christmas 2014. We had veggie balls this year.
Thor snoozing with his present from his grandma

Christmas Day started with giving Thor his xmas gift. And then I made a nice breakfast with leftover ham. Since we had done most of the Christmas work the day before we had nothing other than facetiming to do. We talked to my sister and Mila for a little while, then we facetimed with J’s mom and stepdad. Then at lunch we “hung out” with my parents. We called J’s grandma when we cooked dinner (cornish game hens) and later called his aunt. In between we didn’t do much, just relaxed. At night we listened to music and then watched the end of the original Grinch movie that was on TV. 

Video Player

22 weeks + 1 day. Tummy is biiiig now, I can only imagine how it’ll look at the end
This looks both amazing and disgusting at the same time.
I often go for vegetarian options but I do also eat meat, fish and poultry at times.
When it comes as a whole animal like this it’s a bit harder though, but it was delicious. 

The next day, the 26th, we ate leftovers and more leftovers, worked out for a little bit and then just watched crap on TV, pretty easy. 

I hope you all had an amazing Christmas (or Hanukkah or whatever you’ve been celebrating)! I hope you and your families are healthy. We know a few people who have got the vaccine already and hopefully the world can go back to “normal” soon.
Stay safe and Happy New Year!