This week [19.11-25.11]

One more crazy week, one still to go before this month – that turned out to be more intense and challenging than expected – is over.

To survive this week, I cooked a few things during the weekend: in the picture above, whole grain rice with roasted butternut squash with paprika, turnip greens (grelos in Portuguese) and toasted almonds. Accompanied with baked salmon with onions and capers, a staple dish in our house that came from dinner a large number of years ago at this girl’s house. I only saw her once, but the balance was definitely positive.

Other recipes from the weekend: frango com ervilhas e cenouras, homemade granola for our 4 o’clock snack (lanche in Portuguese or goûter in French), that I adapt from Smitten Kitchen’s recipe (it’s in her book, which is one of my favourites), and leite creme to use up the yolks left over from making the granola. All this cooking and a few leftovers set us up for the first half of the week, and when you have a Toddler jumping around, this really saves time and a few hangry tantrums.

We took Toddler to a birthday party and she talked about it all week. It was in one of these big spaces full of trampolines, coloured balls, stray tricycles and bouncy castles – all set up to be a big, messy nightmare for parents, but the kids have so much fun bouncing around all afternoon, that it’s quite fun to watch them. Toddler was so ecstatic she managed to fall with her face on the floor from jumping – on the normal floor – with joy and excitement.

It’s been very, very cold this week. The fireplace has been working every evening. We attempted a walk in the forest on one afternoon, but with the cold and early nightfall, we headed home with our friends for apéro.

Last week I started tracking two new habits: reading 20 minutes every day, and doing a few pushups (I’m so bad I’m actually ashamed to tell anyone how many). I have already failed miserably at both habits (my largest streak was 3 days – lame). But I will keep trying!

I took a day trip to Zurich mid-week. I left very early in the morning and came back as soon as the event was over, so I could catch Toddler before bedtime. I whizzed through the city and saw very little, but enough to make me long for travelling a little more, and remembering I don’t need to go very far to discover new cities. This is the kind of thing that is going back up in the calendar for sure – virus restrictions allowing.

Heading into the next week, hoping that after November is over everything will quiet down a little, and we can get Toddler on board with some nice Christmas activities I’ve been thinking about!

This week [12.11-18.11]

This week was a whirlwind. A tornado. I know I said something similar about the last one, but this one was just the continuation of the last. And the one before that, etc. So, there was not much going on other than juggling work, childcare, chores, … and a sick child again.

Still, a few things worth mentioning.

Running has not been easy to keep up with: with almost no working from home, long workdays, pickups from childcare, evening routines and sunset at 5pm, I haven’t been able to run during the week. Still, I try to during the weekend and toddler likes to run along too. Autumn is in full boast of its colours and it’s a pleasure to run through the woods, and almost forget the lack of motivation and the fatigue from the week.

When weeks get intense like this, we have learned (the hard way) to not overbook all the weekends. Last weekend, I spent some time batch cooking for the week, and it really helps having some leftovers in the fridge, especially for the busy first three days of the week.

Last weekend I made feijoada, a favourite in this house. Other batch foods we have on heavy rotation: lentil and vegetable bolognese, spinach and salmon lasagne, butternut squash and chickpea stew (based on this recipe). Sometimes, I find myself in a rut, so I’ve been looking for recipes to add to the list.

I have been trying to increase my reading time for years. It’s always been on the top of all my to-do lists in the last decade or so, and it’s the one I’ve most failed at. So much, it will probably be my sole goal for 2022, and I have already started. I downloaded an app and started registering my efforts with one of the books I have wanted to have read for almost a decade but failed miserably.

This week, Toddler threw a major tantrum in a store. One of those tantrums where you are the parent all the other parents secretly sigh with relief that they are not in that moment. One of those tantrums where toddlers throw themselves on the floor, punch it furiously and howl… all because you did not allow them to climb up a descending escalator. I used all the skills in my possession to deal with the situation, but the one who really saved it was a very kind and funny store employee, who distracted her with a few funny faces and a ball with a pikachu keyring inside it. It feels like the positive side of major toddler meltdowns is entering a secret society made of random acts of kindness from fellow parents who know exactly where you are. And for every judging or condescending look I’ve ever received, I have received countless more winks, shrugs or sympathetic smiles saying discretely “don’t worry, you’re not alone in this, keep strong!”

This week [5.11-11.11]

Wow. This was one hell of a week, with a LOT of work, some of it quite unexpected, and with some interesting events.

It started off nicely, though. The weekend was full of playdates: 3! The first one ended with this sunset on Lac Léman. The second one was in Portuguese, and we were stunned to see how quickly Toddler became at ease playing with the other girls, whilst in French she is usually quite shy. The third one was in France, with some friends that own the house of our dreams, and their kids own the Toddler’s dream playhouse. We had potatoes with melted Mont d’Or cheese and went for a small walk in the nearby mountains, with a slight peek to the Alps just in front, before being enveloped in the foggy and sharp November cold.

We held a second workshop for musicians. Although prepared at the very last minute, and maybe not as well as I would have liked, it was very good. Because of these workshops, I have been reading on topics that I hadn’t thought about for a long time, such as emotions, the underlying neuroscientific concepts… leading me to order a few books to add to my ever growing to-read pile, one of my main sources of frustration. Until the end of the year, I am determined to find a strategy to attack my pile, including some books that I have never gotten around to reading for over a decade!

The cold is here to stay, and we’ve had some very low temperatures. This means we’ve lit the fire every day for over a week, much to the Toddler’s and the cat’s delight. And mine, after some challenging work days.

Towards the end of the week, just as things were supposed to slow down a little and I expected to tie some loose ends and get to run a little, Toddler got the gastroenteritis bug. We braced ourselves, because gastro is highly contagious and last time I was sick too and we contaminated another whole family. Luckily, this time, it was just the Toddler. Here’s what to do when gastroenteritis hits your house.

During this week, I found myself in some situations, such as a general assembly with highly competent women, or interviews with some people with amazing careers and ideas. This led, of course, to a bit of a case of impostor syndrome. My response to this was to make lists and plans to improve my knowledge and performance and this is what I bring into the next week. Soldier on!

This week [29.10-04.11]

Winter is coming. With the end of summer time, night falls very quickly at the end of the day. This is the view from my new office window. It’s basically the same from my previous office, which is next door to the new one, but I spent a few hours this week organising my new space and I very much like it.

The end of last week brought us… Halloween! At first, I was reluctant to do anything, thinking my Toddler wasn’t much into fantasy, but after some hints from my friends, I decided do bring out my abandoned sewing machine and sew a witch hat. Toddler helped me sticking the little “spider web”. The crèche organised a themed day, and I was told the Toddler wore her hat all day. We went to a little Halloween party in the village we live in, and she was scared out of her wits by a Scary Movie mask that jumped in front of her and yelled boo!

Speaking of Toddler things, I read this Quiz: Is your child two years old? and a) it made me laugh, b) check #3, check a version of #6, #7 several times a week, #10 is my favourite and definitely #13, for which my phone has giving me solid proof with its photo throwbacks.

In trying to stick to a running plan for the sake of kicking myself out the door, I did one of my favourite workouts during the weekend, with a warm-up, some cadence drills, 6x800m speed drills at quite a challenging pace, and then a cool down. This oldie kept my pace up for the last drill on a slight uphill and it was perfect. Toddler loves cycling along while I’m running, and always asks to run a little. She found a little corn-treasure and ran home with it.

Still last week, we saw a demo for a dancing academy in the street, which grabbed her attention in a way I’d never seen before. She made some moves trying to imitate them. When we got home, I showed her my all-time favourite artistic gymnastics floor routine and, since then, every evening has been dancing and doing gym moves in our living room (with a nice message to the neighbours apologizing for the house trembling as if a herd of elephants was living with us). Also, we went to the local library for the first time and it was a huge success!

Most of last week is a lot about Toddler stories, since most of my non-work related time has been doing activities with her. But the thing is – observing a Toddler building her comprehension of the world really blows my mind and it’s really, really fun (and equally frustrating at times – not to just mention the good stuff – but that’s a whole other subject).