how do we introduce our children to the nastier sides of humanity?

Cara was born a few weeks after September 11th - remember sitting watching the news with a hand on my belly wondering what kind of world I bring kids into. With Viktor it was London, Sigge turned up in time for Oslo - it is a new world of European terrorism which is hard to get a grasp on - there is nothing we can do to change that. What I find more difficult are the reports from Africa's horn. Famine seldom appears over night and it all starts and ends with governments not caring enough to make sure it's people is fed. Wars and bad infrastructure, ignorance and absence of schooling - no amount of money to the Red Cross will change that. I haven't given money to the current catastrophe yet - will surely like I always have in the pastbut need to find a way to comprehend why nothing has changed since Biafra. And if there is a smarter way to help. Not even sure if going volonteering will be worthwhile in a life-perspective as the famines keeps coming back. Oops, this milky scented baby blog suddenly get very political - but it has all to do with what kind of world we want to give our milky scented kids. The starving children are all over our newspaper that Cara reads and I need to talk to her about it but struggle to find words of reassurance. And then I think of how there were starving kids in Europe only a few decades back and how we now, obscenely enough, are combatting obesity whereas others starve.

In sharp contrast to all the terribleness of the world we have had a glorious summer together. The weather has been fantastic. We have been on little day-trips to different parts of the Stockholm archipelago and Sigge is starting to turn around. We meet up with friends when they are around but mostly we just do our own thing. And now I have two days left of my parental leave - will come back to it in a few weeks but for now I try to conserve the last moments of the wonderfulness of late summer.