Stella Linnéa Richards

Here ends the blog about Stella Linnéa Richards. We’ve documented our life with her in 700 blogs for over three years. As you can tell we are two very proud parents and we’ve enjoyed running this blog.

The reason the story about Stella stopps here is her baby sister Adele Ellen Richards was born on the 5th of September. With her there is a new beginning and the birth of our new family blog: www.swiwifamily.blog.com

Everyone we know are invited to keep following us but for integrity reasons we’ve chosen to password protect the next blog. If you haven’t recieved an e-mail with instructions for the new blog, contact us by email and we will register you to the new blog.

Thanks for following Stella, hope you will join us on Swiwi Family!

These days we have two handy people in our home and mummy is not one of them. Stella has a playing toy in the car that keeps her entertained when we go places but it hasn’t been working for a while so James decided to take a look at it. He took the tools out and so did Stella. For her birthday she got the tools from the cartoon Handy Manny and she started trying them all out to see which one fit, of course knowing all the tools by name. In the end, to be fair, I think James was the one who fixed the toy.

Yesterday Stella went back to pre-school after her summer holiday. She insisted on going there early and have breakfast there with her friends so we left the house around 7.30 on her bike and made it there around 8. She went straight up to her new teacher Caroline, who seems sweet, and shook her hand and told her her name. When I left she was already having breakfast and chatting away to her friends. She was exhausted when daddy picked her up though after a full-on day and started crying when she saw him and later when she saw mummy. We made today a bit shorter by getting there for 9 and will pick up a bit earlier.

Stella has obviously spent a lot of time with mummy the last three weeks since we’ve been off together. But I have noticed that she misses daddy and takes every chance to hug him and crawl up in his lap, not to mention their wrestling matches which causes Stella to laugh til she loses her breath.

Saturday was a fun day. We took a little bike ride in the morning, mostly so Stella could practise her new skill. She did really well and only had one fall when she forgot to look forward and a light post got in the way of one of the training wheels. You could tell that she had been watching daddy cycle as she all of a sudden took out an imaginary phone, held it to her ear, while holding on with just one hand chatting away.

In the afternoon we went to see friends from the parent group that we saw on a weekly basis when Stella was little. It was the twins of the group, Sofia and Carolina that had us over in their new appartment. Zoey and her family with new addition little brother Sam came too. The girls didn’t take too long til they started playing a game with daddy Mickes help. Then the parents where not needed as the girls went on to barbie dolls. After a while all the girls except for Stella had popped out to say or show something where we sat having coffee and tea. I walked into the girls room to check and there was Stella, my little TV-girl, in front of a portable dvd-player that she must have pressed play on herself. After hugs and three hours of play it was time to go.

Stella, Zoey, Micke, Carro and Sofia

Little Sam, Sofia and Zoey in the backround

TV-girl…

We went straight from their house to celebrate Annikas 40th. Liam and Jessicas room where packed with ten kids and Stella was a bit shy at first til Jessica introduced her to her doll-collection so when it was time to leave, Stella was just going to do this and that and not leave right now or five minutes later either. At 9.30 she was in bed and more tired than I’ve seen her in a long time. A long and fun day!

Birthday-girl Annika

Friday felt like the first autumnday. The air had a chill in it but it was sunny and beautiful. We went to see morfar and gammelmormor in the graveyard. Stella brought her kickbike so afterwards she took a ride and we went over to the lake to feed the ducks and have a snack. But when we were out of bread it was almost we who turned into a snack. Well, just almost. All of a sudden we had four baby swans in front of us but they were full grown in the sense that they were the same size as mama and papa swan. They scared the sh.. out of me and as one of them had it’s face a meter away from Stellas I just took her and ran. Hope I haven’t made her scared for life…

When leaving the flat today Stella peeked down the stairs and saw a neighbour leaving his flat on the floor under us. She made me laugh out loud with this comment: ”Mamma, det är en pojke där nere. Jag blev lite sugen på att äta honom.” (Mum, there is a boy down there. I felt like eating him a little bit.)

Yesterday, mormor and I took Stella to the movies for the second time in her life and it was nothing short of a success. We saw the movie about Laban, the ghost, which is based on a series of books. Stella got some popcorn but forgot about them as soon as the movie started. She didn’t say much during the movie but on the way home and the rest of the evening, she re-enacted the whole movie by giving me and mormor the roles of Labans sister and parents. She was Laban of course and gave us the lines word for word. Saying something that wasn’t straight from the movie was not approved and I got corrected straight away. She’s got an amazing memory.

Yesterday we took a trip to Fjärilshuset, the butterfly house. But as it turned out, Stella wasn’t too interested in butterflies. Instead, she was mesmerized by a large tank of huge colourful fish. And these fish were something else. I’d like to call them cuddly but I can hear how wierd that sounds. But as soon as anyone came near the tank, the fish gathered as close as they could, heads over water and made kissing noises. It was even possible to pat them which I pretended being brave enough to do and Stella actually did. When we eventually made it into the butterfly area, Stella ran through it, only to find a new tank of fish but not very nice fish in this one so we left them alone. So to sum up, fish – big hit, butterflies – a bit boring. If you ask Stella.

Grandad – the fish was this big!