Coming home

 

Being the new person at work, there are many times in the past few weeks when I've been asked where I live. The response has been greeted pretty much the same way each time: with an incredulous look and a why. Most people live along the lake, and out where we are, even though it's only 25 minutes by train from the city, is the sticks.

So I reply about family, and explain it's not that far away, and insist it's very beautiful.

The family they can understand, the distance they admit is not too bad but, with no lake and only hills instead of mountains, I can tell they never believe me about the beauty.

Too bad for them.

April fool's fish day

Rustle rustle rustle.

Woken up from a deep sleep, I ordered the offending child out of the bedroom, not paying much attention to what he'd been doing. Which, an hour later when I woke up properly, I discovered was sticking a paper fish to my back.

The kids had prepared them the day before, giggling delightedly as they cut them out from Lukan's magazine, imagining all the people they were going to get for le poisson d'avril.

It seemed a poor substitute for April fool's jokes to me, just sticking a paper fish on unsuspecting people, but I couldn't let being got myself go without consequences.

The offender. Very easy, and quite satisfying.

So easy it was cruel, but still.  Tee hee.

A little harder, and so even more satisfying.

No one was safe!

All this, within just a few minutes of getting up. Le poisson d'avril is really quite amusing after all.

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.

This weekend

With old freelance projects to finish up and the new job as well, it feels like I've been working ever since I got back from Sydney. Every day, every weekend, even some nights. So on Saturday - sunny, blue and warm - I was very happy to finally have a day off and go skiing with my family.

That lasted about 5 minutes, before the non-stop wails of I can't do it and it's too hard combined with not even an ounce of trying had me shouting spouting a number of parenting gems. At both kids.

C took over with Téo, and when Lukan and I had both finished sulking, I redeemed myself slightly by getting Lukan to slide by himself for the first time:

And then we walked out onto the frozen lake and built a snowman:

Which was very nice of Lukan, since what he actually wanted to do was play in the playground.

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Do you want me to be able to wead?

This is what Lukan says, sidling up with a cheeky smile.

There is of course only one possible answer.

Then you'd better let me do Weading Eggs!

He's been asking to do it for the last 6 months or so, and while he learned the sounds of the letters, he never got the actual reading part, was never able to put the letter sounds together into a word. But his brain must have grown the right connections recently, because look how far he's come in the last two weeks:

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I stopped him after 3 lessons. And then the house was invaded by piwates.

Because boasting about your kids is just gauche

- Hey guess what? Our new au pair is running for Miss [EuropeanCity]!

- Oh yeah? Well ours is a Swedish television star.