October 2010
6 posts
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week 32: a business trip to New Orleans
Last week I went to New Orleans on a 3 days business trip. Just when I was about to depart Michael Stipe (the lead singer of R.E.M) posted his personal guide to New Orleans on Gwyneth Paltrow’s blog. I checked out a few of his digs, but overall it did not correspond to me at all. So here is my “guide for a business trip to New Orleans”.
Primo: two night business trips are like...
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Interlude: a biographical list of favorite novels
Novels are delicious. I have relishing them since I was a little girl. Here is a brief biographical essay in novels.
A wrinkle in time (I can’t recall the story, only that I loved it and read it when I was very young)
Jane Eyre (read in High school)
Le Premier Siecle apres Beatrice (read in High School)
Spring Snow (read in High school – images of cherry blossoms stuck with me for years until I...
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Week 31: an unusual mother figure
When I was pregnant with my first child I went through a brief attempt to watch all movies that had won the Best Picture Oscar. I made it through a few, and Antonia’s Line was among them. In this Dutch movie there is an amazing mothering scene, where a young girl realizes soon after giving birth that she would rather spend her time solving mathematical puzzles than raising her baby. So her mother...
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week 30: food tips for you and your family
I have a dear friend who started a nutrition consulting business several years ago to help busy bodies find a healthy diet. I signed up for her class when my first child was nine months old: I wanted to rebuild my body and energy, recover from childbearing, breastfeeding, sleep deprivation and pretty radical changes in my lifestyle. She customized a “rebuilding” diet for me and I have...
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September 2010
2 posts
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week 28: three problems my children solved
Several months ago, a friend asked me what I missed most from my life before children. I was able to answer that question really fast: sleeping in, not being interrupted and travel to off-the-beaten path locations. She didn’t ask what I had gained from having children, maybe because she expected mention of love, fun and cuddles. Yet, had she asked that’s not what I would have said. My...
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week 27: baby gear, tried and tested
Pregnant friends ask me what I find most useful to have on hand for babies. As I am a minimalist I think this list may be of service to those who’d like to keep it simple… though, even then it’s a handful (see my earlier post on keeping things tidy).
I have made it through two children with no automatic swing or rocker, no big clunky plastic toys, no wipes or bottle warmers, no...
August 2010
6 posts
keep me motivated: vote!
I have got less than 10 posts left to write in fewer than 10 weeks. I have been back at work for nearly two months, and am steadily gearing up to full time.
I need encouragement and your feedback on posts you have preferred. Which category has been most entertaining, enjoying, interesting?
Minding the Mind: ways to keep your brain ticking while you tend to little ones;
Body Builders: ways to...
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week 26: toy tidying tips
Now that baby is starting to roll around and will soon crawl, we have set up a play area in our living room for her to be busy and active while we do our big people stuff (cook, eat, read books, talk, play piano). The key to letting colorful, sometimes awful plastic stuff into your social space is to have a rapid clean up routine. I’m a big fan of nice baskets, woven or fabric, which I...
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week 25: chocolate
I’m having trouble keeping up with my blog routine: I suppose this is symptomatic of being back at work, and having less time for musings and writings. However, I will complete my 33 post challenge, and I will do so before my 34th birthday (October).
When you don’t seem to have enough time in the day and you need a “pick-me-up” to get from a busy morning to an active...
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week 24: childcare for a sane life
Recently a pregnant friend asked me what I would recommend she does when she returns to work. Considering the endless days and nights I have spent musing over my childcare budget and needs, I thought I should write a blog post on this puzzle: how do you find childcare for your professional and personal needs?
First let me reiterate the question: professional and personal needs. Very quickly I...
July 2010
5 posts
week 23: babysitters...
I am currently looking for someone to help with our children during the day. I’m not new to this, as I have been working with babysitters and nannies for over three years, and I feel that I have learned some essential lessons that may benefit first time parents.
First, I find that you have to train your nanny, no matter how much experience she has. This may be obvious to some of you, but you may...
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week 22: yoga
My first yoga class was in 1999 - that’s a long time ago. I’m no acrobat and I don’t do things that will make your jaw drop, but yoga has been a fixture in my life for longer than I can recall. I moved to San Francisco in part to live in a city that was a mecca for yoga and healing arts. I live within walking distance of 10 yoga studios!
I have what is called a “home...
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week 21: evening routine - amends
I’ve been told that when people disagree with you, they are more likely to comment on our your blog. This is proving to be true!
1) we are experimenting this summer by having a live-in “nanny” for one month, who happens to be our cousin and is helping me go back to work. I deliberately did this to put a little “give” into our life and have some breathing room. We...
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week 20: evening routine
It’s 5:30 pm and all hell breaks loose - parents are coming home from work (yes, in California we do make it home by then!), kids are tired, nanny wants to get out of there, dinner is not ready and everyone feels the pressure to catch up and “spend time” with everyone else. THIS IS NOT A LIFE! And this post is about how you can avoid most of the witching hour and truly enjoy...
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Awesome machine for making home-made baby food →
I bought this machine a few days ago and I am totally sold: it first steams then blends your veggies and fruit so that you can make fresh food in less than 10 minutes.
June 2010
7 posts
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week 19: have fun!
One of my 2010 resolutions is to have more fun with my children. I can lose sight of the “F” word when I am too focused on schedules and tasks and it is a shame because little ones provide so much opportunity for silliness, giggles and mischief.
Last week I brought my son to his first TaiKwonDo class. There is a studio in our neighborhood that takes children as young as three and we...
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week 18: food diversification
When it comes to introducing real foods into a baby’s diet, the French have a neat concept: food diversification. The idea is to widen the child’s sense of taste and texture and introduce them to the fantastic world of foods and flavors.
My daughter is 5 months old and I have started with the first step: introducing broth in her milk. Other than the occasional formula bottle and a...
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week 17: op-ed course
As part of my resolution to expand my creative horizons in the first half of the year, I signed up for a workshop to improve my opinion writing skills. I had taken the day-long introduction course several years ago, and had since attempted several times to get published in the Opinion Page of state and national newspapers. I hadn’t had much luck, only managed to publish a letter to the...
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week 16: starting a blog
This blog was a by-product of one of my new year’s resolutions for 2010 - to feed my creative instincts. After several bouts of post-delivery illness and a little too many post-partum hormones I felt a little stuck inside my mind and looked for positive ways of shaking myself out of the shell. On days when I was home bound thinking about and writing my blog entry was a real treat. I...
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week 15: new year's resolutions
A decade ago, when we were fresh college graduates, my sister said: “the thing about Stanford grads is that nothing is ever good enough for them”. She was referring to youthful conversations about first jobs, graduate schools and dream careers and she observed that my friends had a tendency to describe their current situation as a stepping stone towards a bigger and brighter future....
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week 14: tools of the trade
I live in a city and often visit other cities with my children. I have a few “tools” to ensure practical access to my important belongings, while retaining a modicum of style:
easy reach sunglasses
a back pack to keep my hands free
flat shoes to make sure I can sprint when needed.
As I walked our Parisian neighborhood yesterday I laughed at the fact that I had completely...
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May 2010
7 posts
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week 13: smart selfishness
I am certain you have heard people mention that the trouble with having children late in life is that you are comfortably settled in your adult routine and BANG babies come and shake it all up. Whereas in the good old days…
I’m not sure what I think about this argument, because someone in her thirties doesn’t seem so old to me, and I can’t imagine that it was much easier to have children in...
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week 11: tibetan art of parenting
It’s not unusual to hear gossip that blames one child’s phobias or extreme behavior on his or her parents. This is an unfortunate offshoot of the popularization of Freud’s theories of the subconscious and childhood traumas. As parodied in Woody Allen’s humor, we’ve all heard adults link their emotional setbacks to the ways they were raised. One of my favorite Woody...
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week 10: becoming your family's "triage nurse"
Illness is the number one enemy of productivity. It’s hard enough balancing home and work: add one sick person to the equation and it becomes impossible. And while, in your past life, you only had to worry about your own health, you are now vulnerable to the aches and pains of several other people. And toddlers are full of bugs!
I’ve struggled mightily to limit sickness in my home....
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week 9: baby travel and jet lag
Those of us who must travel for work, leisure, or to visit relatives enter a new dimension when we have children: airplanes and jet lag WITH children. If you found travel to be rough before you had kids, you are going to need to re-frame your thoughts on this topic, or you will end up house-bound, for fear that you can’t survive without your routine or your gear.
I go to France twice a...
April 2010
11 posts
1 tag
week 8: what would Sacagawea do?
After last week’s post on the importance of schedules and the fear it may have struck in some parents who don’t have it together the way Amira does, here is something a little more humorous, written by “Mission Mom” - my best friend in San Francisco. In her posting, she applies the advice she received from numerous baby books to Sacagawea’s circumstances, as she led...
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week 6: baby's 90 minute rhythm
I have read two parenting books that I highly recommend to new parents: The Baby Whisperer, by Tracy Hogg and The 90 Minute Baby Sleep Program, by Polly Moore. The basic idea behind both books is that our infants have natural rhythms that you must learn to identify and then leverage to teach them how to eat and sleep like all of us! As the title suggests, the 90 Minute book teaches you to read...
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week 5: make a new best friend... over 60 years...
Three years ago, when my son was born, very few people came to visit us at the hospital, per our wishes. Among the few visitors were my mother and her best friends, all of whom have since become crucial allies in helping us raise our children. In many ways, these women are now my best friends too, given how much I have come to rely on them.
My mother is intimately involved in our family’s...
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week 4: what to do if you have mastitis
I breastfed my first child for 8 months and never even heard of mastitis until it struck me furiously on the 6th week of my daughter’s life. Mastitis is an inflammation of the tissue around milk ducts in the breast. It usually starts with a plugged milk duct, and can develop into a bacterial infection if the duct is not cleared. Symptoms include fever, muscular soreness, tender and red...
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week 3: eat this
I’m not one to brag excessively about my babies, nor ascribe their qualities to my mothering. I’m of the Tibetan school of parenting: souls chose their parents to be re-born, and if you have smart, easy children, it’s because they decided you would be a suitable parent to them, for reasons you cannot possibly anticipate. However, I do believe there is one area in which you can...
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Why mothers should work, by my friend Diana Kapp. →
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week 2: take smart time off work
If you count the few weeks I took around Christmas, before my maternity leave officially started, and the few weeks I will take to ease back into a full time work schedule, I’ll come pretty close to 33 weeks - the inspiration for this blog’s title. Since I’m 33 years old, it’s a nice coincidence: 33 weeks in the life of a 33 year old.
Seven months of maternity leave...
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WatchPiano and guitar time - sorry for the “orientation” switch, still figuring out how to do video!
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week 1: remedies for sleep deprivation
I’m sleep deprived. The signs are clear: grumpiness, propensity to get ill, and a terrible short term memory. I remember these symptoms from the months following my son’s birth, three years ago. I was like Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde: I’d wake up in the morning feeling very sorry for myself. I’d snap at my mom and anyone who was trying to help. Then I would take my afternoon nap...
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
– Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenin