Hacked

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A little while ago I started a separate Instagram for the Imp called Grumpy Baby. It was just for fun, because she has resting grumpy face, and sometimes her grumpy photos just give me a chuckle. It has all of like 8 followers or something, nearly all family members. So imagine my surprise when suddenly I got an e-mail from Instagram telling me that the e-mail associated with the account had been changed. Followed by another e-mail saying that the username had been changed.

It gave me an option to click a link to revert the e-mail change, which I did as soon as I received it. However, and I can only assume it’s because of the user name change, the reversion didn’t work. I got about halfway through only to be told the account didn’t exist. Hopefully the half-done reversal blocked the hacker too though, because in the 24 hours it took me to retrieve the account, nothing was posted on it.

In the end, I did get the account back – but it did require a bit of work. Especially since one of the things they want is a photo of you holding a hand-written sign with your username, and the person in the photo should be on the account. Since the account only has photos of the Imp, I had to take a photo of her with a sign. And yes, I did it while she was sleeping, because otherwise said sign would have been eaten and/or crumpled by grubby little hands.

While all this was going on, I discovered that someone must have the password for my @spellbound.nu e-mail, because I was getting lots of spam of undelivered messages. So someone was using my e-mail address to spam people. Great. I’ve since changed the password, and I haven’t received any “undelivered” messages since, so hopefully that’s stopped it.

Not a very interesting blog post this, I suppose – but I hope it may serve as a reminder to change your passwords now and then. I have had the bad habit of using the same password in more than one place. In large part because I have a terrible memory, but I will just have to do a password retrieve every time if I have to – because this was a really frustrating experience.

Oh, and if anyone wants to see the occasional photo of resting grumpy face, her Instagram account is grumpybaby.02.

Christmas 2018

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The boyfriend and I made an agreement years ago that we would spend every other Christmas and New Year’s with my family in Sweden, since it’s only fair.

2018 was the Imp’s first Christmas, and a Sweden year, so on 21 December we dragged our asses to the airport and flew to Sweden. The Imp handled the flight brilliantly, much better than during the summer! She only complained a bit when her ears were undoubtedly hurting during the descent.

We’ve been staying with my brother in his house, but celebrated Christmas at my mom’s flat with a mountain of gifts, great food and company.

A few days later we traveled the three hours to my dad’s where we celebrated New Year’s. We had a great time!

We’re now back at my brother’s until we go back to England on the 21st. On Thursday the Imp’s grandma will arrive from the UK and spend a few days before travelling back with us.

Happy New Year!

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Where does the time go? Suddenly it’s 2019, wasn’t it January 2018 just a couple of months ago?

2018 was the year I became a mom, and very little blogging was done. I’m hoping that I will do a bit better this year, but then I think I say that every year, so we’ll see.

I think one of my problems with the blog is how much (or little) I want to share about the Imp. It’s a difficult one for me. Also life in general, it’s probably boring for everyone else, but nice for me to be able to go back and see what I’ve been doing.

Will have to think on this and make a decision.

So, 2018… I had more visits from family than any other year. I suspect due to a certain little imp being born.

I connected with a couple of friends who already had young children on a new level, and we now get together with the little ones nearly every week, which is lovely.

In the summer, the Imp and I spent 4 weeks in Sweden with my family, which was great.

Christmas and New Years was also spent in Sweden, and we’re currently here until 21 January.

Here’s to hoping for a brilliant 2019!

Christmas Plans

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I’m currently in semi-panic mode about everything I need to get done in, well, by tomorrow night – because on Friday morning we’re all traveling to Sweden to celebrate Christmas with my family. As much as I’m looking forward to the Imp’s first Christmas, and seeing my family – there’s a lot to be done!

I have to pack everyone’s suitcases, and hope against hope that I can fit all of the Christmas gifts! Then I need to tidy up the flat and prepare it for the people who will be staying to take care of the pets. It may not sound like a lot, but it all takes time – especially with a little Imp that crawls around my legs and tries to get into everything. Today I wrapped the last gifts, and probably spent as much time wrapping as I did removing sticky little hands from the paper, tags and anything else in reach.

So, so, so looking forward to going home for the holidays though! I love Christmas! My sister will be traveling up as well, so there will be quite a few of us on Christmas. The Imp will spend Christmas with three out of four cousins.

New Year’s we’ll spend at my dad’s, and then the boyfriend travels back to England on January 5th, while the Imp and I stay until the 21st. So plenty of time to see the whole family.

What is everyone else doing for the holidays?

Holiday Movies

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Last year I read a fair amount of holiday books around this time of year, but with the Imp around reading is not really something I’m capable of at the moment. So what I’m doing this year is watching a bunch of holiday movies – with more or less attention actually paid. Admittedly, a lot of times they’re just kind of on in the background as the Imp and I get on with our daily life, but still – it’s holiday movies!

So, what have I seen so far, and what did I think? Some of these may contain spoilers, do be warned!

Four Christmases

Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn star in this movie as a couple who have no interest in getting married or having children, mainly (apparently) because they both come from broken homes and their families are kind of messed up. A part of me kind of wanted the no marriage/no children thing to be a valid choice, but this is a typical movie where naturally – everyone has to eventually want to be married and make babies. 

The story itself is that their usual holiday getaway (that they lie to their family about, usually saying they’re off on some charity thing etc.) is canceled and their families see them in TV as a reporter interviews them about the flights all being grounded. Now they’re suddenly having to visit all of their parents, who are divorced, in one day – hence four Christmases.

Admittedly I missed a lot of this movie. I caught the start and the very last bit, so I didn’t necessarily get to see how they went from “no children”, to suddenly having a baby. The first family they visited was Vince Vaughn’s dad and brothers, and it wasn’t something I enjoyed. So that’s possibly why I missed a lot (a really good movie I’d pause when leaving the room). Personally, for me, this holiday movie can be a miss.

This accurately describes my feelings about the movie.

Elf

I can’t help it. Even after all these years, I still love the movie Elf with Will Ferrell. It’s one of my holiday favourites and I probably watch it ever year. It’s silly, and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, and if you can suspend belief and just have fun – Elf will deliver just that.

Buddy is a human who accidentally ended up in the North Pole as a baby, and as such was raised by Santa’s elves. He finds out that his real, human father lives in New York, and sets off to find him. However, since he’s lived in the North Pole his entire life, and spent most of it as an elf – he’s not entirely prepared for the human world.

Just watch it. That’s my score.

Buddy’s completely normal reaction to hearing Santa’s coming.

The Holiday

I’ve seen this one before, but it was quite some time ago. It’s a bit of a feel-good movie with what I like to call 1,5 romances. Maybe it’s meant to be two, but the second one unfolds so slowly, and is much more focused on the relationship between Kate Winslet and the old gentleman friend, rather than her romantic second lead. The first romance is much more of a proper romance.

The setting of the movie for those who have lived under a rock and never seen/heard of it, is that Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz have both just had their hearts broken and need a break. They end up on a website for home trading, and they switch homes for two weeks. Winslet going to live in Diaz’s massive house in L.A., and Diaz in Winslet’s little English cottage. Meet-cute when Winslet’s brother Jude Law comes knocking one evening while drunk, apparently not realising that his sister has gone. (And sorry, I can’t remember any character names.)

It’s a sweet movie, and fairly decent as far as holiday movies go, and even okay for a romance. A couple of things bothered me, but nothing overly major. Oh, one thing about the ending… spoiler alert!

Diaz and Law want to be together, but the major thing is that she lives and works in L.A. and he is UK bound. She eventually decides to stay a bit longer in the UK to celebrate New Year’s with his family – but that doesn’t actually solve the issue in any way. So it’s not the happily ever after one may have hoped for.

I’d probably invite a drunk Jude Law too.

That’ll have to do for now, since my writing time is limited. I will write about some other movies I’ve seen another day (like the Netflix specials!), as I’m sure everyone is dying to know….

The Sleep Saga

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I feel like this blog has shifted focus a bit lately, but I suppose that is because my life has sort of shifted focus since the Imp came into the world. It’s difficult to find the time to blog, but I still would like to, and I’m hoping that the Imp will eventually settle into a better bedtime routine that allows me some time in the evenings.

At the moment the Imp tends to go to bed for the night no earlier than 10 pm most nights. Which means that I have to make a choice between getting more sleep or having a couple of hours to myself. Admittedly I often choose the latter, which leaves me very tired the next morning (since the Imp often wakes up around 1 am, and then again any time between 4-6 am). By then I’m so tired after spending three hours trying to get the Imp to sleep that I just sort of crash on the couch with some Netflix.

The Imp just really seems to struggle to settle down in the evenings. She will be tired, I’ll put her to bed and she’ll have a feed, you can see that she’s about to drift off – she turns over on her tummy (current favourite sleeping position), then seems to remember that she knows how to get up on all four – and bad time is ruined. After that it’s impossible to get her to lie back down; she will flip herself around in the bed, get up on all fours, climb all over the place, stand up against anything she can… You name it.

Only way I’ve been able to get her to settle in the evenings is to put her in the sling and rock her to sleep. It’s not great, since it’s not really something I want her to get used to, but the alternative is hours of rummaging around in bed until she hits exhaustion and just screams/cries with tiredness. She’ll whinge a bit when first put in the sling too, it’s how she keeps herself awake sometimes. You’ll know when she’s tired when we’re out for a walk, cause she’ll suddenly start crying in an attempt to stay awake! Yup, that’s my imp.

Anyway, I shan’t bore you anymore with our sleep issues (and I didn’t even get into the multiple wake-ups every evening when she finally has gone to sleep!), it’s just nice to get to have a whinge about it now and then. I do see some improvements in all honesty, and I hope that they will continue to improve. It’s extra frustrating in a way because she actually used to sleep amazingly for maybe a month or two, then it suddenly stopped and we’ve not been able to get back to it.

One day we’ll get there.

The Imp’s first time in a swing the other day.

Instagram Roundup (Catch-up)

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I would like to get back to my monthly Instagram roundup posts, but it’s been a while so I thought I’d do a catch-up post of the ones I missed. Obviously that’s a lot of photos, so I’m not doing all, but I’ve chosen some that I’d like to share. To make it a little bit less spammy, I’ve added them as a gallery. It’s up to and including September this year. I will include October’s photos when I do a November post in early December.

Unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to make the gallery put the photos in the order I want, so they’re somewhat out of order.

Baby Potter

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Photo spam incoming!

For my baby shower I received a Harry Potter onesie for The Imp, and some time ago I finally got around to using it (and she had grown into it). Since I’m a bit behind on my blogging in general, I never shared the photos – and they’re too cute not to! So, here’s Baby Potter!

The Imp is totally ready for her letter from Hogwarts. She has her own owl and everything!

The full outfit, including wizard’s hat!

It also includes a cape!

Waiting for her letter from Hogwarts!

“I’m ready to go!”

What are owls for if not eating?

The Imp was not impressed when I told her that one doesn’t get to start Hogwarts until 11 years old.

Free time (or lack thereof)

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Suddenly even more time has passed. I swear I want to get back to blogging (and writing), but at the moment my time is severely limited. Not only have I been blessed with a baby that doesn’t particularly enjoy playing by herself (at all), she also doesn’t seem to think that sleep is anything she needs to be bothered with.

Now, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea here. I love my girl to bits. But I do miss having some time to myself. Any time to myself. Right now having a shower is a luxury.

For a few weeks it was amazing. She went to bed at a reasonable time, and although she may wake up a handful of times throughout the evening, most nights she’d settle back down if I went in to her for a few minutes. Not so for the last month and a bit…

The current trend is that she will go to sleep as usual around 7-8 pm, but then she will only sleep for maybe half an hour before waking back up, and refusing to settle back down. For hours. She will most commonly fall asleep for the night between 10 and midnight. Leaving little to no time for me to do anything for myself. Being an introvert, this is rough.

My sleep-refusing monster.

She also used to sleep through from around midnight to 6, which was lovely. Now she’s quite unsettled and will sort of half-wake and cry several times every night. Fortunately those night time moments she’s usually quite easily settled, but it does leave my sleep quite interrupted.

You might think that I should take the opportunity during the days to sleep when she has a nap. And I’d agree with you. Except nap time is another one of those things that apparently she doesn’t feel that she needs. She will usually have a couple of naps every day. If I’m lucky one of them will last an hour. There’s only a tiny bit of jealousy and bitterness when people in my mummy-group talk about their babies napping for 2-3 hours during the day.

For example; today my daughter had three naps. They were 30 minutes, 10 minutes and 5 minutes.

She’s teething, so I’m hoping that’s part of the reason it’s been so rough lately (though over a month now?), and that hopefully it will turn around soon. My hope is that I can get my evenings back again so that I can start blogging a bit more regularly. You may have to put up with me whining writing about mum-life though. Sorry!

Who wouldn’t forgive this face though? <3

Change of Pace

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This is just a quick little note to anyone who maybe hasn’t removed this blog from their feedreaders or unsubscribed from the e-mails – the WoW blog won’t be coming back, and since this is my oldest domain (and I want to keep it in use) this will turn into my personal blog.

So unless you like reading about life with a baby, and boring posts about my life in general – I suggest you remove this blog from your feedreader now!

I will keep the old WoW posts for posterity in their own category, since I think it’d be a shame to delete them.

Thanks for all the good times back in the day when I was still blogging actively about World of Warcraft!