Celebrating birthdays!

February is a birthday month in almost every Wallergård's home. That is because (due to a special coincidence? ;D) 3 over 4 of the Wallergàrd's clan children (that are not that children anymore...) are born within one week.

This has always been an occasion to celebrate them all together with some dinner tradition and after breaking the chinese (almost new year) tradition, we have this year tried a new place: http://www.halltorpsgastgiveri.se/

The place seems to have quite a good name, and it is understandable why.
It is big, it has a nice view, you can organize whatever event there (they even put the beloved Swedish flag on the table, if you wish so) and they serve quite nice food. And finally, they have tablecloth on the tables!!

It is a pity that they have a fixed menu, or at least, they had it when we were there, but of course, it would have been nice to pick a look at a more a la carte menu.
The menu was Italian inspired and, with a quite odd (?) coincidence the waiter/sommelier was Italian (from Busto Arsizio!), hence he entertained mostly me and Mattias with jokes and comments, while explaining the menu.

The appetizer was some chicken-lever pate' served on a crostino, and even Mattias who is not fond of this at all, ate it with taste. For me it was perfect in order to raise the amount of iron in my blood ;)
The first dish was a minestrone with an omelette. Odd the combination with the frittatina, but it was nice since it had a ricotta background taste. The minestrone had the "home made" feeling, although I am in love with the frozen minestrone you can buy in Italy ;)

The main dish (or actually the second one) was some veal-roll filled with mozzarella and served with "sicilian vegetables" (artichokes and I don't remember what) and some sort of arancino, not arancino. but similar to arancino (that unfortunately had some mushroom background taste). The meat was good, but a little bit dry, the sauce of course helped a lot.

Finally, for dessert an heart-shaped cookie (sold as "biscotto della nonna"), a strawberry ice cream and a small little cake with vanilla cream and berries.

The best? I can't decide between the ice cream and the crostino. Personally, the thing I liked the least was the veal, but it is also true I am not a big meat fan and I am extraordinary picky on meat quality. However, it was a surprisingly good result for being a French chef and who knows if this will become a new tradition or we will create a new one to try out some other food and see if the quality will be consistent ;-)

Where to change a baby...

Or where to wash her!
That is: how to avoid to have 200 pieces of furniture floating around in your already tiny and squeezed apartment?

Well, I really didn't want to buy that many additional objects for all of this, so my initial proposition was to reuse an Ikea Malm drawer, put on top a changing mattress and be happy like that. Then, the thought that it was just big enough for the mattress, that I would have to fight with the wall and that I would have to carry around water and so on in the bedroom made me change my mind. When I saw our old changer that my mother still use for all the babies of the next generation, I realized maybe having something more "comfy" wouldn't have hurt that much, since it was just one piece of furniture and not 300.

We first saw this:

which can be found in Babyringen in Malmö, which was cheap and practical. However, we thought it was a bit "too plastic" and slightly instable for our taste.
We then jumped directly into an offer for this item, instead:

and we went to the shop, but thanks to the really nice price, the item was sold out. We are now waiting that they will bring it back in stock (and that we get the time to go there again). We would like to have it white and not natural wood, since it will be better in our bathroom.
In this way, we will gain a drawer that can be used also later on, since both the changing table and the bath part can be removed and just covered with a wooden surface.

Another item for the baby! Check!

Buying a pram

As many other parents to be or quite recent parents, we have experienced the nightmare of the pram choice.
There are simply too many possibilities and too many models. It is a jungle and one needs quite some luck in order to get out of there, sane.

We had the opportunity to borrow the complete pram from my brother, but we decided to use it instead as "base" in Italy, giving us the freedom to travel much lighter. At least from here to Italy.
The choice then was narrowed to models that would be possible to find in the Swedish market and we were quite confused on what we wanted for several months, also because, due to the dimensions of our bedroom, what we would have been buying would have been connected to where our baby would sleep (or at least to understand what to buy based on our pram choice).

Initially we were thinking of going for a pram without a carrycot, so that we could buy a moses nest for the sleeping part. However, buying a moses nest here in Sweden seems quite expensive (even though this item in UK is instead quite cheap) and we ended up surfing for prams and finding other models.

The first is a moses basket from Mamas and Papas, while the second is a version (not the nicest colors combination though) of a Teutonia Lambda without carrycot.

What we were after was something that could be a practical city pram (no big wheels both on front and back), with turnable front wheels, not too low (my back could not take diving into the pram to take the baby up), with all sorts of decent functions a pram, these days, should have (adjustable handle, good space on the bottom, compact when folded).

We got slightly interested in a model that seems though really hard to find in Sweden, but we could not find the original producer.

This is a Queenette Cross Fire

Finally, digging out similar models we ended up in a Polish brand, Tako. They have few models in different versions and it seemed to have all the characteristics we wanted.
Included a really nice price, nice dampening (if you see above the Queenette has quite flat tires) for Lund's cobblestones and quite light as well.
So now, we are simply not sure of which color combination we would like to have. But it is matter of hours, since we have decided to go to the shop today!
Will it be this?
http://pyretosnackan.se/barnvagnar/tako/jumper-minerals-barnvagnar/jumper-minerals-3-in-1-gra/

This?
http://pyretosnackan.se/barnvagnar/tako/jumper-minerals-barnvagnar/jumper-minerals-3-in-1-svart-orange/

Or this one?
http://pyretosnackan.se/barnvagnar/tako/jumper-gt-barnvagnar/jumper-gt-3-in-1-1/