Is there such a thing as a two year-old night owl?

We definitely have our own issues with LP and things are not perfect, but there are several difficult things that most kids his age do and that we're just completely unfamiliar with. For instance the picky eating. I’d say he’s more selective now than he used to be, but he’s still a good eater. Always have been, and his taste and appetite far surpass those of many adults. For instance, last night he ate Pad Thai. Sure I had to take out the shrimp and skip the cilantro (he suddenly decided he doesn’t like it: parsley is fine, basil is fine, but “coriandre” is not), but the kid is 2 and he devoured a bowl consisting of rice noodles, tangy/spicy sauce, bean sprouts, omelet fried in sesame oil, chopped peanuts, scallions, lime, etc. I know, I know, it might still change. But let’s just hope not.

The other thing that just never happened in our house is the super early rising. I can never believe it when people “casually” mention their kid(s) wake up at 5:20 AM, smiling and ready to play. Or when they discuss strategies to make them stay in bed longer, whether letting them watch TV or telling them they can’t get out of their room before a certain time. Makes me feel so lucky.

LP is the last person in the family to get out of bed in the morning, and the one who has the hardest time waking up. During the week, I usually get up between 5:30 and 6, and wake M up around 7. For LP, it’s another story. Regardless of what time he went to bed the night before, he’s just not a morning person, and I didn’t think it would be so clear so early. Sometimes I try to wake him up for 10 minutes, then give up and go fix his breakfast and prepare his clothes for the day. When I come back I can then usually coax him out of bed but it’s a slow process that usually involves him resisting a bit, and telling me he doesn’t want to get up, he wants to sleep some more.

During weekends, he rarely wakes up before 8, and can easily stretch it until 9 (yes, we’re really grateful for that). We usually put him to bed between 8 and 8:30, among other things because trying to do so earlier made our evenings much more stressful and because it really wasn’t working out for him. When we’re out of the house or it’s just not possible to put him to bed at that time, we’re always surprised at how he’ll be like the Energizer bunny, going on, and on, and on. Some parents have told us their kids simply disintegrate when their bedtime extends past 7, but LP seems to just come alive. I’m usually tired before he is (one of the worst punishment you can give me is putting me in a situation where I have to stay up really late).

Some nights that make me feel totally pathetic, he just won’t fall asleep, whatever we try. He'll remain in bed, calm but completely awake and super chatty, until I pass out myself and don’t remember what happens next. Surely that can't be right???

Stuff computer geeks like

[ThinkGeek shirt]

I’ve worked with computer geeks (and truly heart them) for so long now that I’ve become quite the expert in observing them in their natural habitat…

-Star Wars and/or Star Trek, but you already knew that, right? Other popular sub-categories include Dungeons & Dragons as well as sci-fi/supernatural stuff.

-Anything you can order on thinkgeek.com, including, but not limited to: useless USB gadgets like plastic animals that make an annoying sound, fish tanks, beverage coolers, fondue sets, etc., binary desk clocks (took me years to figure out these were telling the time), tiny but extremely strong magnets, and little articulated stick figures (one pair here is immortalized in a Kung Fu pose, while another one is doing it doggy style)

-Making fun of the fluffy trendiness of Apple products (which are heaven for the design-conscious tech-savvy, but a big faux pas for the true geek)

-Online gaming. The serious kind. Any video gaming in general.

-Linux, but in fact anything open source

-Pointing out every Microsoft flaw

-Building their own “machine” (i.e. PC) while comparing notes with fellow geeks (as other guys might compare cars) and shopping for each component individually. According to geek logic, why would anyone buy a ready-made, plug-and-play computer?

-Making geek inside jokes, for instance referring to a real-life situation as if it were a SQL database query

-Tongue-in-cheek t-shirts that proves them geekiness is cool

-Offices where the dress code is really casual

-Japanese manga

-Any other Web browser than Internet Explorer

-Wired magazine

-Using drawings instead of words to explain their points.

Our guestbook

[Unfortunately you can see the water stains, resulting from an extremely-windy-tent-and-flower-arrangement-near-where-we-had-put-the-guestbook incident right before the ceremony...]

The thought of having a guest book had never really occurred to me, maybe because we didn't really have a big nor traditional wedding... But then my friend Alison offered to lend me the Polaroid camera she had used for her own wedding two years ago. She said it was a big hit among the guests, who took pictures of themselves and were able to immediately glue them into the book along with well wishes. I thought the idea was pretty neat.

It sure was a big hit at our event as well. J, my sister's wife, took charge of everything, ensuring that everyone posed and wrote, then assembling the book on the spot (thanks!). I loved being able to look at it on our wedding night, while lying on the hotel bed, my head still buzzing with happiness and positive energy.


Some people posed seriously, while some went a little silly (and I can only imagine how it ends up when people get tipsy)... I had not seen Polaroids in a long time and I was completely blown away by their über-cool 70s feel: off colors, slightly blurry, out-of-focus, badly framed and gritty... It made me realize how much personal photography has evolved in the last few years, partly because of much better equipment, partly because the digital age means we don't even keep the outtakes, and partly because I think even the worst picture taker now has a marginally better trained eye...

I have a complete emotional attachment to these pictures: my childhood albums are full of them, technically awful but still so telling and full of life and awesome...

Here are a few of my favorites:



[One of the rare pictures where I find LP looks like his dad as a child]

[Really LOVE this one!]

Thanks again Alison! I will cherish this funky guestbook forever.

Warning! The soda can you're now holding might be from a company led by a... woman

[Like many women, me think the boss is probably favoring diet...]

A little research for work brought me to come across the following piece of totally random trivia: the president and CEO of old school money-transfer company Western Union is a woman. Not only that, but 5 out of 10 top execs in this company also are. I don't know about you, but I find that quite surprising and interesting (you may remember that I posted about the infamous glass ceiling not too long ago).

So one thing led to another and I looked up how many CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (i.e. the top US companies in revenue) were of the skirt-wearing kind (figuratively speaking).

The answer is 15. Or 0.03%. The companies in question might surprise you. There is definitely a feminine niche in there (for instance Avon, Kraft, Sara Lee...), and there's a retail category (Rite-Aid, TJ Maxx/Marshall's, BJ's Warehouse Club) but there are also complete wildcards: oil company Sunoco, cigarette maker Reynolds, Yahoo, DuPont, Xerox (whose reigns are going to change hands in a couple of days, when the current CEO is replaced by a second woman who will also be the first Black female to make the list), and Pepsi.

Their ages vary between 47 and 62, and their salaries range between $1.9 million (which I personally think is not that much for the responsibility of leading such a top company) and $19 million.

Now, do you think women CEOs earn less than their male counterparts? And how many of these women do you think have children?

My homebound summer plan

-Eat our meals outside, even if it's just a quick weekday breakfast

-Bring flowers and greenery in throughout the season, at home and at the office

-Make homemade lemonade, limeade, mint ice tea and sangria

-Always have a great variety of cut-up fresh fruits

-Cook with what we grow in the backyard: rhubarb, raspberries, lettuce, herbs, and hopefully some strawberries, tomatoes and peppers

-Have a dip in the pool every day when it's nice out, even if it's just a short one

-Make my own fruity pops

-Can some pickles

-Organize get-togethers, have lovely company over, spend leisurely evenings on the patio while the kids run around

-Be fearless with the barbecue

-Bake crusty, oozy pies

-Fill the house with the wonderful scent of hot homemade jam

-Make the most of it while it lasts...

The still hypothetical second one

I don’t feel overwhelmed with the idea of having another child anymore. I don’t feel exactly ready either, but at least I don’t feel like I suddenly can’t breathe when I think about it. Major improvement!

The wedding is now over (one of the things I wanted to “take care of” before), and the age gap issue has now become manageable, from my point of view, at least. I’m 34, not exactly at the very last minute of my fertility, but still much closer to menopause than to my first period (which was 23 years ago). M will turn 37 in the fall, and has fast-graying hair (which btw I find totally foxy sexy). Conceiving our first child was long, challenging, and when it finally worked we were basically a few days away from starting fertility treatments. My point is we don’t want to wait years and years before trying to add to the family. So I guess right now, our somewhat unstable job situation is the main factor preventing me from scheduling that doctor's appointment which will signal the end of contraception.

Do I long to be pregnant again? The answer is no. Do I miss having a newborn, a baby? A little sometimes, but not really (I'm pretty confident it's this current stage of LP's development I'll miss later, not the babyhood). Do I really want another child? I still don’t know, in the sense that I don’t really feel the need or urge for it. But I’ve reconciled with the idea that for many reasons, it’s probably better to have more than one.

I think my problem is that I overanalyze stuff to the point where it prevents me from going forward sometimes. Stop the neurosis and take a leap of faith already! What’s the worse that can happen? We’ll have another child to love? We’ll go into another round of fatigue and disorganization and then things will fall back into place again? I still think it seems tough having more than one, but everyone around us manages, so we can’t be that clueless.

There’s something I had nearly forgotten. I was so blindsided by the “hardship” of the first few years that it didn’t really occur to me that you don’t have children just during the challenging time when they’re little. I know it seems so obvious, but these children will (hopefully) grow up, become their own person and enrich all of our lives forever.

So I do hope LP becomes a big brother someday. I don’t mind if it takes a while, I repeat, we have always known having kids close together was not right for us. We’re not people who can easily or accurately predict our family planning, so I feel I should really take a relaxed approach to it and just let it happen whenever it does (or not forget that in the end, it could maybe also never happen at all). It makes me teary to imagine my son with a sibling, with someone he can simultaneously take care of and lean on, with everything it implies. I guess things have been unconsciously processing in my head, because the raw emotional reality of this situation (a post by the queen of mommy bloggers Heather Armstrong on the first meeting between her five year-old daughter and her newborn one) would have never made me sob before…

Just tweetin'

Before Twitter, I was like a lot of people, thinking how could I fit this one more technology thing into my life? Do people have that many interesting things to say all the time anyway?

But it turns out, life as a 140-character line is surprisingly relevant. It's though, for one thing, to fit into that limitation (for me anyway). It requires skill and work. It proves to be very telling about people's lives and characters, something that is endlessly fascinating for me. There are several tweeting styles: the business twitter, the linker, the I-tweet-every-single-thing-I-do person, the live commenter of something going on in the media, the philosopher, the cheerleader... There's a Twitter language, syntax, and there are many social conventions, about which I'm learning more and more each day.

And of course, there are the witty gems, the pieces of anthology. Some people just have a knack for coming up with lines that just totally make my day.

Like these recent ones:

From Jamie at a desert fete: I really don't like it when *photo shoots* are referred to as *weddings*

From Heather Armstrong at dooce: Some apparel company just sent me a set of fancy maternity underwear which means I am now the proud owner of a lace-trimmed circus tent.

From Maggie Mason at Mighty Girl: Outdoor cafe table for an impromptu conference call. I chose the one near train tracks, with a firehouse up the street. On garbage day.

From Rebecca Woolf at Girl's Gone Child: Wonder if Chastity Bono will go by Chas when she becomes a he. Probably won't be going by Tity.



P.S.: Also check this out (the 10 Twitter behaviors that would make you look crazy in real life). Hilarious! I especially like no 4: Walking into a crowd on Friday morning and shouting out the names of eight best friends.

They say gardening teaches you patience...

And they're right. (Parenting works wonders, too).

My garden is still not how I would like it to be, but it's much better than it was when I arrived at the house five summers ago. I am always going between pride about what I've accomplished, annoyance at things that still left to be desired, and slight despondency at the time and effort it takes to achieve results, time and effort I don't always have, not for gardening anyway.

All through my 20s I dreamed of finally having a garden of my own, and at first I was a little disappointed that ours wasn't that big. Now, while I still love gardening, I'm mostly relieved about its size, because otherwise it would be a full time-job!

I come from a long line of gardeners, spent my childhood and teenage years with images of wonderful lush gardens, helping my father and grandmother tend to their plants, and living summers at the rhythm of what was growing and what was blooming. I want to be up to them. I want to teach these values to my son, too.

I feel especially good about a couple of things:



The big box for fresh herbs M built for me three years ago. It looks great and I love just heading out on the patio and snipping off things to add to our meals. I miss it dearly during the winter, and re-discover it with real joy in the spring. Some varieties, like dill and chives, even come back year after year on their own.




And my peonies! (Word in French is so great: pivoine). When I first moved in there was one meager plant, who produced one small flower that year. I have always loved peonies, and associate them with the greatest memories of my childhood, spent at my grandmother's gorgeous riverside house. She had a big hedge of them around the patio, and my hometown being so far north, they used to bloom in July instead of in June like they do here.

I thought this corner of our house would be the perfect place to put a continuous hedge of peonies, who never fail to remind me of her. So I planted several tubers of different varieties, color and shapes...



Then I waited, and waited. Peonies are hardy and tolerate all kinds of conditions, but they're also stubborn and very capricious. They start off slowly, don't like to be moved at all, and take their time. The second year, I had a couple more flowers, then the year after a few more again.

This year, FIVE summers later, the vision of my peonies hedge has finally come to life. They look wonderful, they smell wonderful. And this brings me complete domestic bliss.