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.

There are nights - nights after nights after nights - where, frankly, dinnertime is not so much fun.

Not for us, with endless rounds of please use your knife and fork and no singing at the table and please don't interrupt and stop eating like a pig and I'm talking to papa, just wait a minute and stop mucking around and well go get a cloth and wipe it up and inside voices and eat what you want but stop whingeing about what you don't like and hurry up and eat, it's getting late and no there's no dessert if you don't finish and on and on it goes.

Not for you, with all the above and then also that's one... that's two... and on the bad nights that's three, go sit on the stairs and on the worst that's three, dinner's over, straight to bed.

But then there are nights like tonight, where it's just lovely. Where we have a conversation, an interesting one, between all of us - all listening, all contributing, no loud random interjections or demands, no singing on top of someone's talking. And dinner is eaten with cutlery, by everyone, without half of it ending on the floor. Where there are no threats, and every request is polite and thanked.

Nights where I wish you two would always be like this... not just this polite and pleasant, but quite literally this same age, with this same curiosity, same innocence, same generous cuddles, same unquestioned desire to be with us. Forever.

Snapshots, inside & out

So you may have noticed, it's been a bit chilly here lately. As in, below zero chilly, even during the day. Unusually far below zero, with a nice wind chill factor for good measure. (Those horizontal streaks in this photo? They're blowing snow.) I am pretty much cold all the time. And reeeaaallly enjoying having to now go outside in order to get to work.

Luckily, the other household members are tougher than me. 

We have pretty new cushion covers.

And I have a lovely sister-in-law.