Co-housing thoughts
On Sunday, we enjoyed an impromptu post-church lunch with some friends of ours. They have four children, two of whom were adopted into their family from mainland China. Their four […]
Mexico at 14 months
Three loads of laundry are piled up next to me and bright colored toys are strewn all over the first floor. I had to step over a sippy cup and […]
Searching for raw milk
We took advantage of Grammie being in town this past weekend to go on a little road trip to an organic dairy farm. We’ve been looking into our raw milk […]
Hindsight is always 20/20
I recall sitting in a cozy café, sipping a frothy cappuccino while reading all the books I could find on the subject of multilingual parenting atop a basketball-shaped belly. I […]
After Boston…
I shudder when hearing news about someone intentionally trying to inflict harm, breed fear and to snuff out life. Who wouldn’t? How sick in the mind do you have to […]
Language class for tots DIY
Last Saturday, Ayo tried out a second language class for 1-2 year olds – this time at the Alliance Française. I asked if they did trials like the other center […]
For the birth geeks!
Here is an interview between Future Midwives of America and Aubre Tompkins (CNM, MSN), who is the clinical director of Mountain Midwifery Center. Aubre explains some of the joys of […]
A new way of seeing things
Ayo’s room is undergoing a bunch of little changes. Here is the latest of them. I have had the vision for something like this since about November, but I only […]
Everyone Poops
As we were picking out some fun potty awareness books for Ayo’s friend’s birthday (pre potty training), we splurged and picked one out for Ayo as well. There are so […]
Food lately
A little while ago, I said that I would share some food ideas as we came across them. Well, here are five eats you would have seen around our home […]
Language tiers
Back when I was reading up about bilingual parenting, I found one book that wrote about the importance of understanding which tier your languages fall into. It went on to […]
The World Until Yesterday
I first heard about best-selling author Jared Diamond and his newly released The World Until Yesterday – What we can Learn from Traditional Societies in an in-flight magazine. In the […]
Rwandan colored spectacles
Have you ever thought about how strange your life looks behind a different cultural shade of our world’s glasses? Today, my Rwandan mama friend came over for a spontaneous playdate, […]
No longer an infant!
It’s Ayo’s very first birthday today and all sorts of thoughts are running through my mind. My first year of mamahood was mundane and humbling. At the same time, it […]
Slovenian-French 1st birthday!
Joyeux Anniversaire a little in advance and a slightly belated Vse najboljše to these darling little ones, born within nine days of one another. xxx
Babies and language
For all of you interested in infant language assimilation, here are some fascinating TED talks I just have to share! Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies (On critical periods […]
Maisons & Maternage
You’d think there would be birth centers all over France. Natural birth advocate Michel Odent, is, after all French! This report on last night’s 8pm TF1 news shows that maisons […]
Bend, Not Break
Unexpected packages are the best! Well, non work-related unexpected packages, that is. The other day, that sort of package arrived on our doorstep. It gets better. It was addressed…to me! […]
The early years…
My first two were spent aboard the floating hospital in this 12 minute clip, which aired on 60 Minutes this past weekend. True story! That’s me pictured with my brother […]
新年快乐
Happy Chinese New Year! We had such a blast celebrating Ayo’s first Chinese New Year at church. It was a bilingual Mandarin/English service with music, dance, short preaching, kids performance, […]
Remembering the Sabbath
When asked what was the hardest thing about living in the States, my friend recently responded: “probably the way the Sabbath day is treated like any other day. I mean, […]
Baby Catcher
Last night, I finished reading Peggy Vincent’s memoir as a home-birth midwife: Baby Catcher, Chronicles of a Modern Midwife. I think I could have read all 322 pages in one […]
Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens!
One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind. -Charles Dickens
A woman’s world?
Our African friends just gave birth to a precious baby girl. This was their first birth in the United States, so it felt natural to ask about how this experience […]
Operation: Got Milk?
I thought we’d be breastfeeding exclusively for a year, but Ayo seems to be thinking otherwise. In all honesty, I’m not too sad about it. As someone recently said, we’ll […]
Copywriting fun.
Great advertising combined with playful copywriting gets my creative juices flowing. Does it yours? It brings me back to the fun side of my advertising days. When copy is done […]
Visiting Mrs. L
Mamie has forever suggested taking Ayo to a nursing home to provide some cackling cheer to sweet grannies. We finally got a chance to do so yesterday. Tata Mimi, our […]
The end of innocence
Pic and caption stolen from Time magazine (Jan 14th): A schoolgirl astride a toy pony looks up after hearing the sounds of shelling in the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo. […]
Flirtin’ with Asia
An evening watching Whale Wars, an entertaining show about stopping Japanese Antartic whaling 🙂 Korean roasted wasabi seaweed snacks A first taste of Chinese church last Sunday Listening to Chinesepod. […]
Syrian activist
The regime is escalating the use of violent forces. We cannot believe that the world is watching us being killed. -Syrian activist Ahmad
Queen of Quiche comeback
Did you know that I used to be informally known as the Queen of Quiche? Feeling extra hungry? There was a quiche for that. Slightly under the weather? There was […]
New Year’s Eve Sushi
Have you ever made Sushi before? We hadn’t either, but now we can say we made sushi in 2012 thanks to our spontaneous, spunky brother and sis-in-law. What we were […]
RIP Nirbhaya
To our friends in #India: we share your outrage over an act of unimaginable cruelty against one of our sisters. RIP Nirbhaya -Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, […]
Christmas Eve check-up
In all honesty, I usually blow off my annual women’s check up. These days, I feel I’m fairly healthy and also pretty busy. But, since our birth center offers annual […]
Two naps & two fun recipes!
Ayo finally dropped a nap when we got back from our travels. Just after turning nine months. I wasn’t sure if it would ever happen, because he begged for his […]
Back into the swing of things..
This was taken through our screen window this week at some obscene hour of the morning. I can’t believe I sleep through such a magnificent light show most every morning. […]
International travel with baby
It’s hard to believe that Ayo has been on 16 flights in the last six months. I’d say that flying with him is definitely getting easier as we learn how […]
A foodie’s paradise
French grocery store fish counter: Resulting in our Sunday lunch: fresh trout and panchetta with almonds, roasted brussel sprouts and tagliatelle with crème fraîche. (11 EUR for 4 people). Here […]
Seizing the weekday
While I’d much rather have spent today visiting friends, we really needed to use our final weekday to meet with real-estate agents instead. Tall Mountain back from Austria (after India […]
8 month favs
Rocking out to music and noticing that my buddy is humming along to it too, but in soprano. The enthusiastic shake of a small plastic bottle filled with dry beans, […]
279
That is the number of days I would have to prepare for the Imogene Pass Race. My brother-in-law is trying to persuade me to run the September 2013 race with […]
Living in the tension
Well, on Monday, we flew over to Europe again. I had to remind myself what was in our suitcases as I pictured them still having the contents of our last […]
Expectations
I like this a lot. I want to give credit but can’t figure out who designed this picture that goes with the Shakespeare quote. I found it on Hippie Peace […]
Confessions
Tall Mountain left for Toronto yesterday afternoon. They got into the Amnesty film festival there, which is pretty cool. I heard someone recently describe Toronto as a “clean New York”. […]