Postcard from the sun

After three days on the road, we're here!

Self-employment, day 1

That's not all... My mom fed us eggs Benedict, too.

Moi!

F, 20 months, is talking up a storm. We've entered the "me do it!" phase, when she wants to do everything by herself. She pushes my hand away when we walk, loses her s* when I attempt to put her shoes on (even though she can't do it alone), and downright planks when we try to buckle her into her car seat. Juggling a grocery shopping session with the two kids has become borderline unmanageable even with both parents present, between the constant negotiating and disappearing in the books/toys section (LP), and the constant bolting and touching everything and melting down over us trying to prevent the inevitable catastrophy (F)... (Our errands strategy needs some tweaking, me thinks). This stage of toddlerhood is really, really fun and rich developmentally-speaking, and she's absolutely adorable... You know, except when she's not.

The thing I love most about the symbolic importance of saying "moi!" (me!) (or "à moi!" (mine!)), is that it means she now fully sees herself as a subject, a person that is independent from others. When asked, she will say her name (it sounds like "Dédélite") as well as her brother's ("Pilite"), but she doesn't really uses it in sentences, yet.

Still, her vocabulary is fast expanding, to the point where my mom who hadn't seen her in a week saw a striking difference. New words are added every day, as well as new names for the people around her. She has sentences (her favorites being: "Non! Pas ça!" (No!... Not that!) when she's not pleased with something and "Non, c'est pas bon!" (No, that's not good) when referring to my cooking), verbs ("regarde" (look), "attends" (wait), "assis" (sit down) -all of these sounding pretty imperative. Her bossy tendencies are clearly shining through at this point, which cracks all three of us up. For instance, when we tell her no or rain on her parade in any other way, she'll point her index finger at us menacingly, and bark something semi-decipherable that really sounds like she's cursing us in Greek (or maybe Turkish?) 

She pretends to talk on the phone a lot, and always ends these conversation with an expeditive "Bye!," which makes my mom giggle, as it apparently sounds exactly like how M and I are saying it.

I'm not sure anymore if she really talks less than LP did? I remember that after he switched daycares exactly around the same age, there was a funny stage when every day I would ask him what he had for lunch, and he would always reply "Pa-te-ti!" (Spaghetti). Well, now when I ask her the same she always replies "Gau(ffre)!" (waffle), but when she sees a spaghetti plate in one of her books, she's started saying the word as well, exactly in the same way. The teachers at daycare all think she talks a lot for her age, and highlight the fact that she's progressed really quickly... So maybe we're under this impression that she talks less because 1-when LP was little there was only him in our extended family and so we were a lot more focused on the slightest little things he did, and 2-we have a 5 year old in the same house who almost speaks like an adult, so of course in comparison it doesn't seem like she talks so much?

She's really michievious, and funny. Overnight she developed this guttural, devilish laugh she'll only use when she's she knows she's being really silly and/or naughty (which makes me remember how she grunted a lot as a newborn). She likes hugs, and always pats the other person on the back while doing it (I guess I'm doing that with her?).

She's a mother of twins too, with her two dolls (her "bébés") we need to carry everywhere with us one day, then find dangling on the edge of the couch with their heads upside down the next. She'll imitate lots of animal sounds, from the lion to (my favorite) the donkey. Just like her brother did, she calls giraffes "oooon-cou" ("long cou", long neck), because whenever I've shown them one I've always desribed them this way.

She absolutely refuses to give up her beloved pacifier ("suce!" is whined very often in the house), and we've decided to postpone withdrawal until after our roadtrip (for everyone's sake), but I expect it will not go down easy. She doesn't have it at daycare anymore, and she loves to watch the Elmo "Bye-bye binky" video, so, small steps I guess.

She nows runs (very awkwardly-cutely), dances energetically, goes up and down the stairs completely on her own, has suddenly stopped using her high chair altogether, anwsers all of our questions. She climbs out of bed on her own when she wakes up (she usually finishes the night with us) -giving a whole new meaning to the word "bedhead", and picks which barette she wants to wear in the morning. She adores her brother (the first night he was away last week, we facetimed with him and she burst into tears because she didn't want him to go away...) but won't let him get away with anything that's unfavorable to her. She's giving us the impression that she understands basically everything we say...

She's going places, this little one.

Daddy after 235 km...

At the risk of repeating myself... SO proud....

Today is an even better day

I just resigned from my job.




I was lucky enough to find a second main freelancing client, who was willing to promise me enough hours within the next year to finally make the plunge. The topic is still fairly technical, but the project and company are really interesting and dynamic, and it's a nice hybrid mandate: I'll be mostly doing marketing/Web/PR documentation.



Hear this: it's from home.



This project should pretty much fill my time for the first few months, then become more sporadic (or not? You never know with these things). All this to say that I'll likely have to find another "fill-the-gap" client or project or gig at some point in the fall, but we'll cross the bridge when we get there. This is still a tad unnerving but a lot less so now with two clients providing sustained work, i.e. reliable income. Bottom line is, for me as well as for my family, flexibility is a lot more important than job security right now.



I don't think I'm quite fully realizing the impact yet, but I keep telling myself: no more bosses, just clients. No more schedules, just deadlines.




No one here has been reading since 2008, but let me bring back the topic of one of my very first posts, back when LP was 13 months. It was titled One in a hundred million, which was the approximate number of blogs there was at the time. (I can't imagine what that number is now, but that's another question). I talked about my reasons for blogging, despite the fact that I didn't really think a lot of people could be interested in my ordinary life (which proved true, and is totally fine by me). But you know what the last sentence was? The last sentence which has always remained in the back of my mind ever since?

I'll write it out here for you: "My goal is that when LP is in school a couple of years from now, I can work mostly from home and be there for his lunches, homework, and summer vacations".



And just in time, it's going to happen, dear friends. It is. For real. You have no idea how both amazing and comforting this feels.




P.S. This is totally unrelated to my upcoming first magazine article I posted about on Friday... But the fact that it happened on the same day everything else was confirmed totally felt like a message to me that I need to trust myself. To just dive in. Because it's so the right thing to do, and it will work out somehow.

P.P.S. So thank you universe.

Today is a good day

I just learned that I won a food blogger contest. My article will be published in the next issue of the beautiful, very high-end magazine Le Must. A first for me in print. And not the worst first I could have had, I must say.

I think that the universe is saying: keep the faith.

Still here!

I've started adding to my freelance workload a couple of weeks ago, and now act as a social media and community manager for the food website I also blog for. It's incredibly fun but right now, is requiring a lot of my (already sparse) free time.

I'm also trying to ramp everything up for our upcoming annual vacation, freelancing and otherwise, so there you go, all of a sudden, I currently have zero minutes available for the blog or other little fun side projects. This explains my current silence.

Crazy but I keep reminding myself that it's a transition period toward the life I really want. I think I'm on the cusp of something here... We'll see.

And yeah, we're going on a roadtrip soon. We're driving down to Florida, where we rented my friend C's beach house for a week. A three-day trip, with stops in Virginia and Savanah, Georgia. After that, we're coming back through the long way round, with stops in (probably!) Atlanta, Nashville, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Seriously guys, I CAN'T wait. I don't think I've ever looked forward to a vacation like I look forward to this one. I've really earned it.

In other news, it's M's charity cycling event this weekend. He's really excited, and so am I. I am so proud of him, of his commitment to this since March (he's in great shape and 14 pounds lighter now), of all the money he's raised for pediatric cancer as well. Now all he needs to do is pedal for 225 km!

LP is spending the week at his grandparents in Quebec city. We'll all meet again on Sunday to cheer on his dad at the finish line.

Will try to check back in whenever possible...