Still alive

My best friend from school, and Téo's fairy godmother, was visiting from the US last week.

A snowman was built:
Books were read:
Cuddles were had:
(By me too:)
And sadly today she flew back home.

Sorry to freak you out sweetheart while you are away

I was never clucky before Téo was conceived. I wanted a baby, but it was kind of an abstract wanting, not a physical need. Plus I didn't think newborns were that cute.

When Lukan's heart was just starting to beat, I went to the birthday party of a one year old. Watching a slide show of her life so far, I asked her mother if she felt clucky seeing her daugher as a newborn. Yes, she said. I don't feel anything at all, I replied. Newborns still did nothing for me, even with a very much wanted baby growing in my belly.

I've mentioned before our ambivalence towards a third child. We discussed it again last week and it's still unresolved, both of us going from wanting to not wanting and back again.

But since then, it seems like all my blog faves have announced a pregnancy. And I'm jealous. I want to post double lines here, the first shadowy images. Not to be the same as the other bloggers, but because I WANT A BABY. With each pregnancy that's been announced, my heart has ached a little more. For the first time, I am feeling a physical desire for a tiny little newborn of my own, for creating a brand new person.

I'm officially clucky.

Bad love

When I was living in Japan, and before C moved to my town, I fell in love. Even though I had known the guy for a while and hung out with him a bit - even woken up one morning platonically in his bed - the falling was swift and unexpected, catching me by surprise. He was just so cool. He did interesting things. He had interesting opinions. He had written travel articles, and a book. He was cute.

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When I was living in Japan, and before C moved to my town, someone fell in love with me. He was very uncool. He was very unattractive. We had nothing in common. Plus he was 40 years old and a virgin. I was in my 20s and, well, not. I wasn't interested in him at all, not even to be a friend.

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I was in a bad way. I was used to boys liking me more than I liked them, but this time it was the other way around. I wasn't the one in control. I was the one desperate to be liked. And I had no clue what he really thought of me. It was like the ground had been pulled from under me - I was flailing, suddenly unsure of everything. I suspected I was nowhere near cool enough for him, and this took away my sense of worth, my sense of me, my faith in what I believed. Depression, anxiety, and insecurity followed.

Falling in love was not at all pleasant.

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I made it clear to the 40 year old that it was never going to happen. He persisted - for months. He told me I was the one who could make him whole. When I kept refusing to go out with him, he quoted Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, saying he thought I was acting like a man and retreating into a cave. If I didn't answer an email straight away, he accused me of being grumpy. He analysed everything I did and said and threw it back at me. I directly told him that I wasn't interested and that he made me feel uncomfortable. He said I'll wait until you do feel comfortable. He had no pride, and no shame. I grew to intensely dislike him.

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One time during the two weeks we were maybe together, maybe not, I called the guy to ask if he wanted to go on a hike I was going on. He declined and - just like what happens in dumb Hollywood romantic "comedies" - I got off the phone clutching my head and moaning no no no at my stupidity for having asked him along when I knew it wasn't his thing. Now what will he think of me? Did I sound too eager? Too uncool?

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That night I got a postcard from the 40 year old, babble about how he was not a good enough friend for me. It came with two tickets to a concert I didn't want to go to.

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The irony was not lost on me.

Desire over reality

I've been working a lot lately. Big big project, not enough time, a suddenly frequently absent au pair, a keyboard that stopped working and needed replacing, interviewing new nannies (none of them wanted to live with us - oh how we will miss the kitchen being cleaned after dinner!), a husband away this week and half of next week... it's all been a bit crazy.

So I've been working whenever I get a chance, and long hours whenever the au pair is here or C's grandparents can babysit.

Which means the kids are not seeing much of me. We haven't even had mornings together this week as they've been sleeping in until 8, which is when I start work.

Every day Téo asks me over and over when will you be finished your work mummy? I tell him what time, and he asks it's in how long? And has no idea what an hour, or three hours, or ten hours means. I keep saying I'll buy a clock so he can see the hands and know what I mean by the time, but I haven't had a chance.

Yesterday morning he asked again what time I'll be finished. I said 6 o'clock, and he said But I don't know what 6 o'clock means. So I thought a bit, and then said it will be when it's starting to get dark. That seemed to satisfy him, and off he went.

At 10.30am he came back into the office to tell me something, then looked outside at the blue sunny sky, and without a trace of guile said Mummy look! It's starting to be dark!

Never say never

I thought it was dumb that the heroine of The Nanny Diaries was called Nanny. So did C. It was too contrived, too obvious.

Our new nanny is called Nani.

Telling the twoosh

Tonight while getting getting ready for bed:

- Mummy, on the television at grand-papa's I saw a mean bird eating a baby penguin.

- Well, that's nature sweetheart. Some animals eat other animals to live.

- Why?

- Well it's like us, we eat animals too.

- (incredulous) We don't eat cows!

- Yes we do, we eat cows.

- Papa, do you know what mummy said? She's teasing me! She said we eat cows!

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A (slightly hammy) recreation:


And the look on his face when C told him there's horse's hooves in ice cream - was it very different from the expression of you anglophone readers when you heard me say we eat horses??

A spot of bother

Our new au pair is leaving us - for unfortunate reasons and against what she'd like to do, she has to go back to her home country. It's a sad story and I feel deeply for her.

For us it's back to the au pair search. Not nearly the same magnitude of a problem as what our au pair is facing, but still, oh joy.

We interviewed six people to replace J, our lovely summer au pair.

One didn't ask any questions at all, making it an interview with long silences once we had run out of things to say and before she needed to leave to take the train home. This didn't bode well for dinners together.

One was sugary sweet and overly polite, and also a very definite and dominating presence. This both annoyed and intimidated me, respectively.

One seemed OK except that just the week before she'd suddenly left her previous au pair job in a perfect family after an (understandable) emotional breakdown and now (inexplicably) didn't want us to speak to them ... and then let slip that her boyfriend had recently thrown her mobile phone out the window in a fit of rage at her speaking to other males. This didn't help me believe that there wouldn't soon be another crisis.

One got a face full of Téo fiddling with himself. Apart from that, she wasn't actually an au pair.*

One we didn't even get to interview because, despite C spending a lot of time charming her mother, she did a no-show twice. Twice. And then she had the nerve to be rude when C told her we'd chosen someone else!!**

The sixth, who was the first we interviewed, seemed capable and pleasant. She got the job.

Here's hoping we find someone good to replace her quickly - for both the kids and my deadlines!

* She would have minded the kids in her own home... but J spoiled us with the benefits of having an extra pair of hands around even when I wasn't working. Like at dinner time.

** Here's the whole story if you are interested:

It started when the mother (who was handling all the emails) dismissed us as being an option because other families had sent lovely welcoming emails and pictures of their kids and houses in contrast to C's short email followed by a telephone call. So C spent an evening writing a very polite email to the daughter (sent through her mother) and taking pictures of the kids and the entire floor we have to offer to an au pair. He was rewarded with a very effusive email from the mother gushing over our beautiful children and saying that we were now the favourites. So he got what he wanted... but she was never a real candidate after this as we still had no direct contact with the daughter and the mother seemed a little over the top (e.g., she told us hadn't sent any pictures of her daughter (not that we asked for any) because the ones she had were not to her daughter's advantage) . I was concerned that if we took on this girl, the mother would be on our doorstep any time her precious darling didn't like something. And then the daughter failed to show up twice for an interview, and didn't even call to tell us she wasn't coming. Pity, as I was curious to meet them both in person. (You didn't think she'd be coming to the interview alone, did you??)

A cheesy story

C loves himself some cheese fondue. Every year come September, he starts dreaming of a weekly fondue dinner.

A weekly fondue dinner is never going to happen. And I hold out as long as possible for the first one of the season.

It's not that I don't like fondue, because I do. It's yummy. So yummy that when it's there bubbling away in front of me, I can't stop dipping into it... and no matter how sternly I have told myelf beforehand to just eat a little, before I know it I've ingested a quarter of a kilo of cheese. That's a lot of cheese. And however much C insists that it's really not so many calories, it's still a lot of fat. Fat which will not in any way help my (not very strenuous) efforts to lose the last 5 kilos of pregnancy fat.

So anyway, this year I held out until last weeked.

C was very happy to hear I'd relented. He got the ingredients ready, took out the fondue pot... and ran into a problem.

The fondue pot is ceramic. Our new stove is induction.

Lucky we have a gas burner!

So the 2008/9 fondue season could start after all.

(But we're never having one a week.) (No matter how much you nag me sweetheart.)

Little engines that can

Téo got a bike for his birthday. I wasn't sure how he'd go on it.

He's never been the most agile child. It's not that he can't do things, he just doesn't always do them very gracefully. So while other kids his age would climb easily onto those rocking things at the park, Téo would awkwardly clamber and get a foot stuck somewhere. Other kids would give one powerful push on their scooter and then breezily glide along, while Téo would hesitantly push-push-push, only daring to glide for a half second at a time.

(I worry that he takes after me.) (I'm sorry sweetheart if you do.)

Even recently I had seen kids a full year younger pedal better than him. So while I wanted him to have a bike, I thought it might take a while before he got the hang of it.

Wrong. It's like he was born to ride it. And the look of capable determination on his face while he pedals - I love it. His expression, it's like a glimpse of an older Téo, the man he will be.

I love that he's so proud of himself, and that he enjoys riding so much.

It was the perfect present.

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In other news, Lukan took two steps today!

My next wish...

... is that Barack Obama is not assassinated by some nut job.

Who will it be??

For the first time ever, I want to stay up to see who's won the American presidential election. I've always wanted the Democrat to win before, but this is just me following party lines - I've never really cared about who exactly the winning and losing candidates are (well, except for George W. four years ago). But this year I do. This year I even wish I could vote myself.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not really that engaged. I haven't followed everything each presidential and vice-presidential candidate has said, I didn't watch the debates. But even so, I know that I really really do not want Sarah Palin anywhere near the Oval Office or getting any further public endorsement, and that I'd really really like Barack Obama to win.

I'd like to be more eloquent about my admiration for Obama and despair over Palin, but many others are saying it so much better. So I'll just say that it's pretty much summed up in this speech by Obama and this snippet from Palin (her anti-research remark is at 01:18) (and how is it even possible that someone so ignorant can even be part of a contest against Obama's thoughtfulness???)

Here's hoping there's good news in the morning...

Cataclysm

There you are, wandering the world, when all of a sudden you stumble across a nice place to live. A warm place, with lots of food and enough water. A calm, cosy place. Uncrowded. You settle down, meet others of your kind, reproduce.

Generations pass, and your by now large family prospers. Food remains plentiful, as does water. The climate stays stable.

One of your descendants carries a new mutation - which who knows, may lead to an entire new species with wondrous new capabilities.

And then, out of the blue, a random event wipes it all out, leaving nothing behind but a barren wasteland. Whatever possibility that descendant with the new mutation held - gone. It's all gone.

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This is what I was thinking the other day when, for the first time ever, I cleared out the gunk from Lukan's earfolds.