To my first baby: Happy 4th Birthday to my wonderful, spirited, artistic, clever, beautiful, kind, funny and witty troublemaker. I am so lucky to be your mom and I am grateful every day to have you as my child. I know that you will grow into a wonderful person and I am thrilled to see you becoming that person right before my eyes. I never realized how much I could love someone until I had you. I wish you health and happiness till 120!
I wasn’t sleeping!
Kids are notorious for not wanting to admit when they are tired. I have met the occasional mom who claims to have a unicorn child who says “I need to go to bed” when they are tired and go to sleep with no arguments. But I bet that’s pretty rare. I remember when I was a kid I hated going to sleep. I have memories of being annoyed that I had to nap in kindergarten. In former Soviet Union most kids had nap time until 5 or even 6 years old. The teachers would get mad at the kids who weren’t sleeping. There were a few times when I would say I had a tummy ache just so they would leave me alone and stop telling to stop rolling around and go to sleep. I remember chatting with my friend and being told to stop talking. I was told to stop talking quite often actually when I was a child. [Read more…]
Road Trippin’ With Kids
We’re back from our Southern California family road trip. We got to see Disneyland for the first time, Hollywood and a little of LA (and a LOT of infamous LA traffic) and San Diego.
Driving so much got hectic at times but also a lot of fun. The kids did surprisingly well in the car for the many hours of driving. The last couple hours of the drive home got pretty hairy but everyone survived. I think there is something magical about the family being stuck in the car together for hours and hours with nothing to do but look out the window and talk with each other. It can be stressful but it can also be a wonderful bonding opportunity. This is how we survived a road trip with kids.
Sleep Anxiety
Sleep anxiety is real. We’re having a particularly rough week sleep-wise. I feel like I have a newborn again. Booboo decided that she doesn’t need sleep. Plus she’s teething. She’s not particularly upset which is why I’m not sure if the sleepless nights and lack of naps is from that. When time for bed rolls around I don’t look forward to getting some much needed rest. Instead I dread going to sleep because I anticipate being rudely awakened less than two hours later. So I sit on the couch scrolling through my facebook feed for the millionth time. When I finally do get in bed, every noise and movement keeps me up. Is that the baby stirring? Is she going to start crying again? I’m afraid to close my eyes because it seems easier to just stay awake than to be woken on the verge of sleep. When I do fall asleep I’m haunted by the potential of being woken up at any point. My brain refuses to give in and I spend the rest of the night in limbo, not quite awake but not quite sleeping either.
Foul Language: Lost in Translation
There is a Soviet comedy called “The Diamond Arm” (a quick google check says it was released in 1969) which my parents watched a few times in my childhood. I guess since this movie is actually from their own childhoods, it was a feel-good nostalgic movie to watch.
From what I can remember (which isn’t much) it’s about a band of thieves who try to smuggles jewels using a cast on someone’s arm. They Accidentally end up putting the cast on an unsuspecting citizen instead of a fellow thief. The rest of the movie is about how these thieves are trying to get this guy’s cast without being outed and how this regular Joe is correcting and teaching the thieves how to behave and speak properly. This is the part that I always remember best from the movie. They kept calling each other “Radish” (ridiska) as an insult and at one point Joe Regular corrected them that instead of the slang “radish” they should say “bad person”. [Read more…]
What’s For Dinner? On Dinner Decision Fatigue
The other day I yelled at my poor husband because he told me he doesn’t care what’s for dinner and I should decide. On the surface that might seem unreasonable. I’m sure that having an 8-month old who still wakes up multiple times per night had something to do with it as well. But what my well-intentioned husband doesn’t understand is that having to be the one to figure out what everyone will eat every day for every meal of the day is exhausting. Every once in a while I suffer from dinner decision fatigue.
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