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 [15.10-21.10]

It was a sunny Autumn week this one, so there are plenty of outdoors highlights! Yay!

Starting with a day off at the end of last week to hike a little and eat a fondue in the mountains. Some people thought it was hilarious that we took the caquelon in our backpack instead of a few sandwiches, but not carrying a 13kg Toddler in the backpack had us feeling quite luxurious.

I’m trying to ease back into running a little more, and I enjoy the afternoon runs with Toddler and Z pedalling along. On this particular run, there were some nice hills to climb and a stop at the park. On the return, Toddler asked to run as well and ended up running her first 500m. We were gifted with a beautiful sunset.

The Lavaux never gets old, especially during bright, sunny days. We held a picnic with some friends and walked for a little stretch through the vines. We have been here countless times, but we have never, ever walked this hike from one end to the other, for several reasons, ranging from wine sipping, to pregnancy, babies, toddlers and visitors not suited to big hikes… but we love to come back each time and see how the views change with the seasons.

With the beginning of the week came a huge cold, which hit the Toddler first, then me. Thankfully, I have not lost the sense of taste, so I could enjoy the pasta bake I made earlier in the week, the papas de sarrabulho and Almendrados my parents brought with them, and the nice meals we are making for them, including the unmissable papet vaudois and choucroute garnie.

I went to the cinema for the first time in 2.5 to see the new James Bond. I am not exactly a huge JB fan, but my friend who challenged me is, so I happily joined her for a Monday evening film with popcorn. I was disappointed with the film, which was definitely not the best JB and especially with the ending, but happy for the evening off!

With my parents here, the Toddler is chirpy and on her best behaviour and it is a joy to see her talking her head off, playing with her grandparents, showing off all her toys and enjoying having all the attention.

This week [30.09-07.10]

Very inspired by weekly roundups around the blogsphere (I’m sure this is a criteria for defining a millenial, hey Jo? – still believing the blogsphere is a thing?), especially Ana’s weeknotes, which I really love to read, I am going to start doing my own weekly roundup.

I have never assumed it, but I have been a journaller for many, many years. It’s been all over the place: blogs, notebooks, 1 second every day (which I still do, but haven’t published for two years, because since baby was born, they are mostly about her and I do not feel comfortable sharing that anymore), agendas, themed journals, online apps – you name it – I’ve probably been there. When I get frustrated with one tool, I move onto another one. The result is a jungle of an online and offline collection, documenting most of my adult life, which I really like to look back to in random moments.

So, this time, it’s the weekly roundup.

Last weekend we went to a farm with animals, way in the remote parts of the canton de Vaud. We were surprised to find some not very local species living there, but O. was amused by the wallaby, which she now knows comes from E.’s home land. One of her new favourite “gym” moves is imitating a wallaby moving.

We also went to the Grange aux courges, a farm that specialises in many varieties of pumpkins. We filled our pumpkin stash for the next weeks of Autumn and I have a few recipes in mind.

And speaking of Autumn and recipes, this week’s recipe was Deb’s mum’s apple cake (recipe in her book, tweaked by me) with delicious Boscoop Apples. Swiss apples are a thing and this is their season. They are delicious, very fragrant and there are many species to choose from, a stark contrast to the flavourless apples I used to buy at the supermarket back in Portugal. The recipe is for THE most comforting homemade apple cake ever, delicious enough to qualify as dessert, sturdy enough to stand an afternoon snack, with enough apples for you to have a less guilty second slice.

We have a lot of toys around the house, but it turns out that what our toddler really loves is to imitate our daily life: cooking, cleaning, putting clothes on the drying rack. Transferring beans was the big hit this week, she sits for large blocks of time at her table and invents all sorts of scripts which include the beans. Her favourite is to fill the little glasses with beans and serve us pretend coffee. Here are some ideas for transferring activities for toddlers.

My friend Jo offered me half a year’s subscription of the New Yorker last year. I still haven’t finished reading all the magazines and they stopped coming in June. I read them during breakfast, on the days that I manage to wake up long enough before The Toddler. This week I read this piece on how North Korea relies on cybercrime to finance the regime and I found it intriguing how such a closed system actually has some of the world’s most performing hackers.

I am also reading Amélie Nothomb’s Métaphysique des tubes, recommended by a work colleague, and enjoying it very much.

We bought an electric bike, so that we can cycle Toddler to the crèche and take turns to bike to work. It was a very welcome addition to this family and we look forward to making very good use of it in our crèche runs, commutes and activities on days off and weekends!

This week I also dug a lot into the material from my “previous life” (i.e., my PhD thesis) in order to prepare the first session of a workshop on mental training and dealing with anxiety for musicians at the local music university. I was surprised to look back at many things I wrote and actually feeling proud of them. And I was extremely happy to be back in a classroom with young people, fascinated with knowledge that I usually take for granted.

I started watching Maid just before the weekend and have just finished the last episode of the mini-series. It’s a punch in the gut in many moments, but I thoroughly enjoy this kind of drama depicting complex human emotions, especially when they are expressed in the subtleties of acting, music and the silent moments. I mostly watch Netflix while cooking, so I tend to choose things that don’t need my full attention, but with this one I really did not hurry chopping vegetables, cutting apples for the cake, or putting dishes in the dishwasher.