First trailer of Cars 2 ever!

Here is a trailer for an upcoming movie that will blast you halfway to Radiator Springs an back in just 49 seconds. Since my co-producer has some difficulities with the language we had to do it in Swedish but you´ll get the big picture anyway. I promise. Really.

Rubber Tires Cars - close to completion

Max Schnell - but in the German Cars 2 his name is Sebastian Schnell and Sebastian Vettel does his voice.

Lewis Hamilton - after the english F1-driver. The car is based on a McLaren MP4-12C GT3.

Take a look at my newest investments! One DTM-champion and one really fine sportscar! Max Schnell has the same body as the upcoming swedish car - Flash. And Lewis is one of a kind.

Now I´m only four cars from having all the Rubber Tires from Cars 2. Ooooo! Getting there!

I wonder how it will feel - when I reach completeness?

I guess it´s like the Y2K - a lot of fuzz but nothing really happens. But maybe not!

What if V could read this?

2024. V surfs the internet. On a "40 year anniversary Mac". And finds out about this blogg.

Me and my wife had a talk about publishing things on the internet. It´s so easy to just think of a blogg as a digital diary. And forget that people can actually see what you´re writing.
The whole idea is to comunicate, to reach out, to touch.
I want people who share my somewhat disturbed hobby too read about it and to eventually take contact.
I also want people who have experience of children with different kinds of disabilities to read.
And I want my friends to read.

But what if my own kids will read this? Am I writing things that I haven´t said to them? Wuold there be surprises for them to find out here?
Yes.

Is that something good?

I don´t now.

It´s not a problem yet. A has learned to count to three in english but he still can´t read and he´s just about to discover the alphabet.

V has almost the entire ocean of words left to learn. At least to speak and write and read.

But there will come a day when they´re ready. I´ll have to keep that in mind.

Hopefully they´ll find this site a good source of information. What have actually happened? How did my dad react? What were his thoughts?

My mother passed away when I was only 16. Cancer. Afterwards I read her notebook. I know she wanted me to, she said so. It was a great comfort. Mayby this could be something like that. Something that could make it easier to start an conversation with me.

Or just something to laugh about. Me? As a Cars-avatar? How old are you dad? Five?

A New Deal

I got two more cars yesterday on the swedish auction site Tradera. And to stop me from buying too many (what is the limit?) cars I´ve figured out a new system this evening.

It´s simple. For each swedish crown (0,14 dollar) I spend on a car I will put the same on my special savings account for vacations.
That way I´ll save more when I buy more. And I won´t have the money to buy more cars than what´s healthy for me (again, what is the limit?)

So yesterday I spend 220 swedish crowns on two cars. Today I transferred the same amount to the savings account.

More money to spend on the New York trip. But maybe that eventually will end up in me buying cars i New York for the savings instead...

Hopefully you´ll get the pictures of the two cars tomorrow, the swedish mail is pretty reliable.
What a cliffhanger!

Dreaming of sleep in the city that never...

Five days in New York.This may. The dream is alive!

Me and A went for a trip by ourselves last weekend. My aunt celebrated her 70th birthday and we drove 330 km south to my sister´s. She´d got a digital photo frame for christmas present and now she´d stuffed it with pictures of her family. Our family. And it was quite a few photos of me.

And here´s the strange thing. On every one of them I looked tired. On every single one!
I studied the photos for several loops. Yeah. I was right. All of the photos of me showed a tired man.

And that could mean only one thing. I am very tired.

And when I realised that I began to try to remember when the last time me and my wife were on a vacation together. Without the kids.
It was actually this summer, a short weekend on a nice hotell in the south archipelago of Stockholm.

But our honeymoon has been postponed. We had our wedding in august 2010. And the trip is still to be made.

But this spring, in may, we are going. Five days in New York. Just her and me. I´m longing. Really longing.

Memories of a chair

Right now V is very much alive. By that I mean that he lives a lot. He´s either running, climbing or jumping. The two first he´s really good at, the third... Let´s just say that he looks like if Stefan Holm tried to jump without knowing that somebody had nailed his feet to the ground.

This is something that you could get very tired of. Chasing your son around, trying to stiop him from falling, stop him from reaching that knife or that expensive christmas decoration, or just stop him from crying when you failed doing the other stops.

Jumpin´ Jack Flash - and a flash from the past

But I remember his rolling chair. And suddenly it all feels good again.

When V was one year old, or close to that, he had a walking chair. Actually it was the old one that A had used and learned the basics of walking from.
But V didn´t learn the basics of walking. He got taller and taller but the need for the walking chair remained. Finally he got to big and the chair was more of a trap than something to get aid from. So we went to the medical technical aid centre for help.

I still remember that truly divided feeling, walking in to the centre.
We were getting help. V had to have a better tool. It was going to get better for all of us.
But at the same time... This was a place for disabled people. I mean really disabled.

Should I expect this life for my son from now on? Hanging around with artifical limbs and wheelchairs? An what if... what if he´d never learned? What if he´d never stod up and walked?

I don´t know why that last sentence never stuck in my mind, but the truth is it didn´t. I´ve always thought that V would eventually learn how to walk. Maybe it´s just the way I see things. Maybe I have a strong ability to deny bad things in my life. I don´t know.

And later V did learn how to walk. And before that he had a great time in his medical walking chair. It allowed him to tag along with the rest of us and to experience the house by himself, as well. That was something really important when building his confidence and his independence.

The chair was, in all it´s hospitaliness, uglyness and sturdyness a fine piece of medical art.

But DAMN - it´s so good to be rid of it!

I giant leap in my heart

Me and A was at the local health centre the other day.

Drawings, eyesight control, balance tests - all a walk in the park!

It was time for his four year old control. I guess that most countries have some kind of childrens health care that keeps track of the kids growth, and in Sweden we have a yearly check up.
A did great.
His weight and length - good, his sight and hearing excellent, his abilty to understand pictures and separate colors - glorious.

This was altogether a very pleasant experience. Both for him and me.

I´ve been through a lot of health care checks with V that has been quite the opposite. On his eyesight test we discovered a squint. Around his first birthday, he ceased to gain weight and we discovered a dysfunctional gland. He is alergic to milk and eggs. This required a lot of blod samples to identify.
In short - we´ve done a lot of testing in medical surroundings with V - very often resulting in concerned eyebrows and worried looks at different doctors.

This day, at the health care center with A, we we´re very far from that. Quite a relief.

And just that - to appreciate something that most people take for granted - is something that living with V has brought to our lives.

But also, to appreciate small changes, to see the greatness in tiny steps of progress. Like this afternoon, when I drove the kids home from nursery school and V had a new, even better name/sound for A.
I became warm inside. Happy for a new sound.

Like a Neil Armstrong in his mouth, a small step for V´s tounge but a giant leap in my heart.