Now starting pappa leave for six months.
For all of you fathers who have had the incredible opportunity to be on paternity leave, please share the best and worst thing about it. And then the funniest anecdote.
Here’s one of my favorite memories. Watch the video. It’s called goats and snot.
Hi Gabe,
I really appreciated the blog muchissaidinjest and your endeavour to explain/explore the Swedish system for parental leave and especially the paternal aspect. (I suspect you're fine with Swedish after living here for quite some time but I'll write in English as your original post was in English)
I studied at the university when my two sons were born and they were only 15 month apart so their mother never went back to work in between, just had some part time investigation tasks that she could do from home to extend the period off from work to "carry over" as we weren't able to get day-care for our oldest son. (Isn't IT great 
Studying made it possible for me to be home a lot when my sons were infants and then I timed my parental leave for a summer break and had three months during the best time of year before they started going to a kindergarten close to our home.
Being home with a one-year-old and a 2½ -year old just doing "our thing" was great! We went to the beach, to parks, to the zoo, open day-care etc and that was just a perfect way of getting to know them even better than before. The only "bad" parts would be that I was constantly needed for something, there was very little time to just sit down and relax. As their nap-times were hard to match and they often woke up or fell asleep at different times I never really had time to prepare lunch or tidy up in an orderly manner. All those tasks were usually disrupted by some "emergency" and more than one time the food was burnt or the clothes never made it from the washer to the drier before my girlfriend came home 
But, I wouldn't want to have missed it for the world, I think it gave us a very strong bond which I appreciate very much today. They can still come up to me and give me a hug unexpectedly, ask me to read them something or talk about difficult subjects and they are now soon to be 12 and 13 and on the brink of "teenage-hood".
This is very comforting as the coming years will be tough on them, as for most teenagers I think, and I know that whatever is on their minds they know in their hearts that they can come to me to talk.
One thing that bothered me in the beginning of my parental leave was that my girlfriend expected me to do everything the way she had done it, have the exact same routines, do mostly the same activities etc and until I had made it clear that this was now "my" time to be at home and care for the boys it was a source of discord between us. When she finally "got the message" we were all fine. We agreed on some ground rules on mealtimes and chores and the dividing of responsibilities and that was it.
As this was now a decade ago I haven't got any anecdotes fresh in mind but I can tell you another fun story.
Starting kindergarten was very exiting for my sons. New toys, friends and a new playground to explore so it was all well until a few months had passed and this was becoming old news.
Then my oldest started to protest in the mornings, saying he didn't like it at kindergarten. I got him dressed in boots, overall, mittens, a woollen hat(this was late in the fall so warm clothes was needed). Then I started to get my youngster dressed in the same type of clothes. Done! Turns around to see that the older one has just undressed....
OK, start over, overall, mittens...
Then my youngest have realized that taking of the clothes was a splendid idea...
After trying a few times to get them both dressed at the same time I gave up, just put all the clothes in a plastic bag and off we were. When we got outside, they both realized it was cold and wanted to go back, but I refused and said that we just had to put on the clothes in the bag.
After a few mornings like this they resigned and accepted that taking off the clothes would just mean putting them on in the driveway, in the cold driveway... and they stopped.
I did talk to the staff at the kindergarten and they assured me that it was/is common that when the novelty of kindergarten wears off children "don't want to go" for a period of time, I had nothing to worry about. I was just frustrated initially that they would keep undressing when I turned my back...
Good luck in the future with documenting parental leave in Sweden. Cheers!