Paternity Leave

Yippee! Since the Christmas holidays I’ve been on paternity leave. Paternity leave is generous in Sweden, you get approximately 80 per cent of your wages and even a bonus if you split it with your partner, I think you can do it for a year with that level of payment, then it gets lower. I suppose it’s a left over from our deteriorating welfare state. Anyways, it’s great! Finally, I get a break from my never ending work. It has been taking over my mind completely for a while now. But, I actually work Wednesdays, which is quite nice since I keep one foot at work and stay updated with what's happening there.

At first, I got confused, I had all the time in the world together with my son. My mind came up with a thousands ideas and demands of what to do, as it usually does. I had to write a letter to my girlfriend describing all my plans to get some order in my mess. My ambitious plans included: taking a writing course, go on a diet, organising the neighbourhood to combat increasing rents and gentrification, start up my blog, practise Thai boxing. etc. Right now, I’m quite aware of these patterns, thanks to lots of meditation, so I’ve managed to get into a quite balanced routine with my son and skip most of the plans. So here’s what we did today:

In the morning after our breakfast,  my son accompanied me while I installed a scanner, he moved around the floor in an interesting way and gave shrieks of excitement whenever I made funny faces. He doesn’t  know how to crawl yet, but he manages to move forwards by sliding his bottom to the ground and arching at different angels, you would have to see it to understand what I mean.  Maybe I’ll post a video at some point.

After that we went for a nice walk along a river nearby. It’s really nice and quite down there because the water isolates the environment  from all the suburban sounds. My son slept almost the whole way, as he usually does. I don’t know if he enjoys walks, but I think he does because he seems very relaxed in his carriage.

By the time his mother got home we were both tired of each other, it’s what normally happens at that time of the day, but I was grumpy anyway.  I managed to pull myself to the gym while he rested with his mother. After all, it has been a very nice day, a bit of everything, ups and downs, just like life itself.  And I have finally submitted another blog post!