Hot and sweaty

So it seems the universe has not finished laughing at me: just when I actually went and bought some contraception, the first signs of menopause started.

Hot flashes. Goodness they are unpleasant. And also not very well timed. I mean, there are situations when a shot of extra body heat could be useful, like, for example, when one finds oneself inadequately clothed while learning curling.

But is this when they come? No, they come in warm rooms and cosy beds. And after many years of rolling my eyes at Hollywood movies that had menopausal women frantically fanning themselves, I no longer think the director was over-exaggerating the point. 

Oh the continued joys of the female reproductive system.

Toilet humour

His first spoken word was so sweet.

His first* written word? Well, the execution is quite impressive... but the subject? Not so sweet.

Sigh. Does it ever end?

* OK, so an attempt at toilet was actually his second word. The first was lit (bed) - spelled correctly which we found very impressive given that you don't pronounce the t and he's not learning to read in French -but it was only a matter of minutes before he converted it to "tolit", so my telling of this is not too much of a stretch.

I don't know how they do it

So just a couple of weeks into this full-time working thing, and already I was channeling Kate Reddy - rushing out the door each morning, rushing to leave on time each afternoon, trying to get at least the most urgent chores done each evening, collapsing into bed, not sleeping well, getting up 7 hours later to do it all again, never feeling I was giving anything enough attention, even cutting short a winter holiday due to a work emergency.

But although I have a new level of  respect for full-time working-out-of-home mums, they're not who the title of this post refers to. It's the full-time working mums who also blog - and not with snapshots and cute things their kids said, but with long, thoughtful, well-argued posts... regular long, thoughtful, well-argued posts - that have me in awe. Because me? Night after night I've opened up my laptop, and then closed it, too tired to even craft captions or transcribe my offspings' utterings.

Tonight - more than a week after the event - I'm just about up for captions. But not video editing, sorry.

Anyway, that winter holiday, it was a school holiday, and the kids and C had a great week in the mountains with friends and family. When I returned home after the first weekend, Lukan was doing this:

When I went back 5 days later, he was doing this:

And this:

Téo also improved hugely, going from sticking to one blue run to schussing down steep runs:

And jumping anything he could:

Thank you ski school!

Thank you nice chalet owners who let us stay for an extra weekend at no extra charge!

Thank you snowy cold winter with perfectly timed spring weather!

(He didn't last the week)

Thank you friends and (un-iPhoneographed) family!

And actually, thank you work emergency, which meant that instead of a long weekend at the beginning of the week, I had a weekend at the beginning and then a long weekend at the end, and so got to enjoy skiing with the kids.