Paternity Jeans

I've dragged NightDaddy along with me to Glasgow for the week. I'm here for a big conference and he's here to keep my pregnant ass company. (Come on we all know it's first-time parent paranoia: WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!?)

As our little Piggelin continues to grown, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to maintain my sense of style, particularly in a professional environment. Namely: they don't make pregnancy clothes for men.

I naively thought that since plenty of dudes are walking around with big ol' beer bellies all the time, this would not be an issue. HA! This only works if one is on the larger side to begin with. Turns out skinny gay boys with no butts don't generally tend to also have hearty guts on them.

Yesterday, following afternoon tea with scones at a cafe recommended by the two crusty old men selling newspapers in front of Glasgow Central Station, ND and I wandered into a baby store. We do this sometimes. We pretend we're checking out carseat prices but we're mostly just feeling overwhelmed. 

Lo and behold! There on a table in the middle of the store was a pile of jeans for pregnant people on sale for TWO FOR 10 POUNDS!!! (for our Swedish readers, that's 50,-/pair) I nervously picked up a pair and was shocked to see that they were labeled "Boyfriend Jeans." As far as I know, this concept doesn't exist in Sweden. I don't know if it's because of the dubiously anti-feminist nature of the description or simply Sweden's love affair with skinny jeans, but I had only ever heard of these things on teh internets. Apparently they're "men's" jeans for "women." Bullshit. They still look like women's jeans to me. But they are heaps more appropriate than the floral embroidered, jewel-encrusted, ass grabbing pants usually found on that side of the aisle. 

I tried them on.

I wish I could launch into the "OMG these things are heaven!" exclamations that generally tend to describe these things in pregnancy forums, but to be honest... um, they're okay. The elastic waistbandy stuff is pretty freaking awesome, but after 4.5 years of roomy menswear, the crotch feels...snug O_o

As I handed them through the curtain to ND to try on a different size, I made some kind of comment about how inexpensive these were for maternity jeans.

"Paternity jeans." He quickly corrected.

/DD

Authority

DayDaddy was worried NightDaddy would have a boring time in Glasgow (ha! the city is awesome!) so he very thoughtfully, endearingly, made a little game for ND to play during his stay so that the hotel room and laptop would seem a little less appealing. It worked! The game is to each day pick one Rule, one Challenge, and one Inspiration randomly out of an envelope, and create a photo. So for example, inspiration could be "Authority", the challenge could be to take public transit, and the rule to post the photo on our blog for the world to see instead of it moulding away on my harddrive, as it would usually.

So, I bring you, Authority, in Glasgow, belabored with rain. Also, I was getting mighty hungry around this time...

Some other adventures that day included being asked to leave from a shopping gallery. The security encounter was not unpleasant, although you could tell that the lady was used to more than a little gruff from the would-be photographers that she must routinely dissuade from practising their trade or hobby. All in all I was politely told to stop taking photographs, and that was that. I can't help but wonder whether her job would not be made easier if the no-photography requirement wasn't a little more prominent upon entering - as it is, it's a tiny plaque off to the side, hidden in shadow, dwarfed by the giant no-smoking signs and promotional adverts plastered on every glass door in the vicinity.

It makes you think what the point of such a policy is when most people will simply not notice, and the establishment clearly does not want their no-photography policy advertised. I suspect it's to deter elaborate and disturbing photo shoots, or pro's using the recognisable interior of Buchanan Galleries - "the largest shopping gallery in the UK" - for some insidious purpose such as lamenting the rise of the authoritarian state. 

So here's a photo from the interior:

Seriously though, the security guard was quite nice, once she realised I wasn't there to make a fuss. As much as I may disagree with the enforcement of a no-photography law on "private" property that is de-facto used as a public space, it's not her fault that she makes a living handling dissenters.

It's too bad, because it meant that I didn't get a chance to purchase the rain jacket I desperately need for this Glasgow visit...

/ND

Lingua

My cousin's recent post on her blog, ProjectProcrastinot, about raising children in multi-lingual families got me thinking about our own situation again.

Despite my own dad's concerted efforts to teach us kids Esperanto when we were little (can you tell where my hippy inclinations come from?), I really only spoke English until I was 17. With only a couple weeks of private tutoring from a local Brazilian, I graduated high school and headed to Brazil for a year as a Rotary exchange student. My first host family didn't speak a word of English and I had absolutely nothing to do but learn Portuguese and go to the beach. I learned Portuguese. Spoke it fluently with a northeastern coastal Brazilian accent embellished with the adolescent slang of 2003. With the exception of a couple college courses after I got back, I never used it again. 

Instead I moved to Denmark. I figured out pretty quickly that 1) Danish was a fuckload harder than Portuguese 2) Fluency is not so easy to pick up in a country where everyone speaks English and 3) Balancing learning a language with other  responsibilities is exhausting. I managed to get fairly conversational in this mumblejumble language when I moved to Sweden. 

To someone who had only ever heard Danish, it's cousin, Swedish sounded absolutely ridiculous to my ears. Although, I've been informed ad nauseum that it is actually Danish that is the weirder sounding of the two languages. Trying to speak Swedish felt like putting on a fake BBC accent. I was terrible at it. Absolutely terrible. For 3 and a half years I've balanced work, studying, keeping a roof over my head, participating in local LGBT activism and managing somesort of social life while also attempting to come to grips with Swedish. A big part of the problem is that Swedish is a bit taboo at my work place. International researchers from all over the world come and go all the time, thus the working language is English spiced up with a few Swedishisms like "fika," "Valborg," and "smultron." However, I feel like I've gotten to a less shameful level of fluency that involves being able to complain about the weather, read ads on Blocket.se and understand the announcements on the train intercom. 

And at home our language is also English. NightDaddy was raised in Stockholm by Polish immigrant parents and grandparents. He attended English school as his parents did not have longterm plans to stay in Sweden back then (I can relate!). Despite living his entire life in Sweden, he didn't actually learn Swedish until he was a teenager and he still doesn't feel entirely comfortable with the language. We even met on an English language dating site primariliy used by non-Swedes in Sweden. 

So what on Earth are we going to do with our little Piggelin? English at home? Polish at Babcia and Dziadek's? Swedish at school? Or should we send her to the nearby English school NightDaddy attended? At first, I thought the obvious answer would be the local Swedish school, but we're having second thoughts. Will we stay in Sweden longterm?  What are the consequences of being the only foreign kid in her class? What are the consequences of going to that school while having non-native Swedish speakers for parents? Since both NightDaddy and I are blue-eyed blonds there's not a lot of guesswork in what Piggelin will look like. What are the consequences of being a blue-eyed, blond child with 20 blue-eyed blond peers? At least at an international school there'd be a bit more diversity...

I guess we'll just have to figure out what works best as we go along!