Interna

So we're back in Germany. For the next months, I'm on parental leave again and Stefan works 9 to 5. Lara and Gloria are now almost 6 months old. They can now both roll over from back to belly, though not the other way round, and they've discovered their feet which make good toys that don't fall out of reach. They can grab and hold things, give them from one hand to the other, and bang them not only in their own but also in other people's faces. They can meanwhile eat quite well from a spoon, though they try to grab the spoon which makes feeding inevitably a mess.

Lara entertains us with a large variety of funny sounds ranging from moo-moo over uee-wee to fffff. The latter is particularly amusing when executed with a mouth full of mashed carrots. Gloria too finds distraction in her 5 minutes older sister and often turns to look at her or rolls into her direction. If Lara burps, Gloria laughs. Lara's hair finally seems to start growing, and it turns out to be lighter than it was at birth. Her eye color on the other hand is turning more brownish by the day. Gloria is still blue eyed and has a hint of blond hair.



Yes, my life has become very pink.

The girls now sleep reasonably well at night, but are more demanding during the day. Lara in particular manages to move around without actually being able to crawl and then gets stuck in all sorts of impossible positions. Gloria apparently loves to chew on cables, and it's good she doesn't have teeth yet. In the coming weeks, we'll have to childproof the apartment.

I have, to my great delight, meanwhile received parental benefits from the Swedish Försäkringskassan, at least for a couple of months, after I managed to convincingly explain I'm indeed still insured with them. The problem seems to have been caused by some EU agreement that assigns me to a German health insurance during my stay here. On the Swedish side however the health and social insurance are both in the domain of the same institution, so they seem to have concluded I'm back in Germany for good, never mind that I'm paying taxes in Sweden. Now they have some difficultly figuring out how many days I'm eligible for since Stefan doesn't live in Sweden. The Germans on the other hand have so far refused to pay a single cent of Stefan's benefits since they don't know what the Swedes will pay for me. The bottomline is we're still sitting on piles of paperwork and money is short. We've also learned of several people who've had similar difficulties which is both comforting and frustrating.

Our Saab's oil leak caused us some more headache than anticipated. Here in Germany we were told the broken part, some rusty hose, would have to be shipped from Sweden. Since we were on the way to Sweden anyway, we contacted some repair place there after arrival just to be told that Saab has only one warehouse for spare parts left, which is in Nyköping, and the part we need is out of stock. They could put in an order for fourhundredsomething Euro, and it might come in anything between next month or never. The car making more insulted noises by the day, I had the great idea to Google for 'Saab spare parts' in Swedish. Two days later I picked the part up from the post office; it came to about 25 Euro. To my amazement, it was indeed the right part and it's being replaced right now. Lesson learned: If you need a spare part for your car, buy it online yourself and bring it to your dealer.

Weather here in Germany is brilliant, 36 Grad, Es wird immer heisser, Es ist Sommer! and the women's soccer world cup has just begun.