The Ballerina Nugget

Yesterday our Nugget participated in her first ever extra-curricular activity: A ballet class for three to four year olds. Y'all, my heart nearly exploded.

It was the Nugget's Schnupperstunde. A Schnupperstunde is a free trial class, but Schnupperstunde is one of those examples of a foreign word being so vastly superior that I've decided it needs to enter the English language, like Doppelgänger or Schadenfreude. A Stunde is an hour (or a session), and schnuppern means to snuffle or nose around, like a puppy in a pile of leaves, so your Schnupperstunde is where you get to sniff it out. 

It smelled like roses, dude. 

The studio is less than a mile from home as the crow flies, but sort of silly to reach via public transport, so I brought a stroller and the babe took a power nap as we walked over. This was great news, because she's a (big) toddler and toddlers who are tired after a full day at preschool can really bug out if you plop them in front of a group of all new people and tell them to, you know, dance. 

So I was braced for everything to possibly be a trainwreck--not least because that morning Nugget had informed me that she hated dancing and didn't want to go--but it wasn't! It was a straight hour of cuteness. Right before class she woke up, ate a banana and said, "Thank you mommy for this delicious banana." I beamed. 

We went inside and she told the teacher, "Hello, I am the Nugget and I am three years old." I beamed some more. 

Because she doesn't yet own the standard pink outfit that the other kids have, I let her change into this horrifying tutu thing with Elsa's face on it that she loves with all of her heart. And the other kids goggled at her, so she beamed. Most importantly, her outfit gave her strength, because the branded crap kids wear somehow imbues them with the powers of the characters represented on it. 

I think this is why when little kids watch TV they'll tell each other which character they are: "I'm Daniel Tiger"; "I'm Ladybug"; "I'm Cat Boy no no no no I mean Gecko". While watching Frozen, all kids are always Elsa -- I mean duh. Anna doesn't have ice powers. And then kids will Rocky Horror mime out the cartoons they are watching, too. (By the way, if you think I just made up all those characters in this last paragraph, you clearly need to get out more, you philistine.) 

Also, I wonder to what degree a kid in her favorite Spiderman jammies is or is not different than a person who wears e.g. a silver picture of a saint on a chain around their neck. That's not meant condescendingly at all, by the way. Me, I buy products because famous people advertise them, and that seems like just a more abstracted form of the same impulse. On the more concrete end of things, some people kill and eat the toes of the ones they love most, or honor the greatness of slain enemies by cannibalizing them. People want to consume the people they admire, sometimes literally, in order get a little of that ineffable something extra. I bet this urge to absorb admirable others, if not physically than at least by using their lip liner, is some weird evolutionary holdover from humanity's most infinitely distant past: Once upon a time we were globby, Jabba-like cells, picking not just nutrients but also information from the bacteria we subsumed. As humans that behaviour would be pathological, so instead we try to channel others by surrounding our bodies with their trinkets. 

(Did that last paragraph sound convincing, like maybe there's a straight line from the evolutionary imperative of single-celled organisms assimilating bits of genetic information from one another straight up to humans wearing religious icons? I want to be clear that I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, so #FakeNews. Get media literate people.)

Also ALSO, I wonder what would happen if I gave my kids T-shirts that had me and their dad's smiling faces printed on them --in large size, in full color--presented as if they were cooler than a Hatchimal. "Sorry, kid," I'd say. "They were all out of Elsa. But here's a dress with MY face on it!" Imagine the side-eye we'd get from other parents. Ha! 

Anyway, back at ballet class the kids were taken out of the waiting and changing area into the studio and the heavy wooden door was shut in our faces for the duration, but since I was the new parent in the group I'm ashamed to say I spent a few minutes with my eyeball pressed against the keyhole, where I watched the children warm up by pretending to be the tiniest cats and the jumpiest frogs, and by golly it was effing adorable. Equally adorable is the idea that three year olds need to warm up. They are warmed up from the moment they pop out of bed at the crack of down until their bodies pull the emergency brake on their consciousnesses some time at night. I guess it's more like burning off the extra energy so they can focus for the rest of the class. By the way, I'd share pictures, but this is the Internet and those are other people's kids, and if I ever stoop to photographing strangers' children through a keyhole, I invite you to beat me about the head. 

So my view was mainly of the waiting area, which had soft, colorful couches and poufs. Mid-way through the hour all the little girls thundered out of the studio because they simultaneously realized they had to pee, so that was ten minutes of unpacking and repacking them in their outfits, and like three extra minutes of all the kids un-wedgie-ing themselves. At one point this kid wandered out of class, singing to herself, suddenly realized that class wasn't over and that she'd temporarily lost her mind, shrieked and ran back in. Another one came out of the class about five times so her mom could blow her nose, equally mad at her mother each time that her nose was still running (geez, mom, you're such a d***). There was a one year old in the waiting room who grinned at me the whole time while bopping to the music emanating through the classroom door. And when it was all over, there was a bowl of small apples for the kids to take, which brought both joy and sustenance. It was perfect. 

As we were leaving, I told the Nugget she did a good job listening to the teacher, and that I bet she danced well even though I couldn't see her. "What did you think about it?," I asked.

"I danced gweat," she replied. "It was much gweater dancing than I 'spected. I didn't thought so it was going to be good but it was!" 

What I said was, "Mmmhmm, you didn't think it, honey. You were gReat."

But what I meant was that I was proud as punch and I hope we can go back.  

Daily Door Doo Doo

Wise men say only fools rush in. Nowhere is this more true than when crossing the threshhold into our lovely apartment in Gumpen Village Street. That is because of the daily door doo doo. 

What is a daily door doo doo? 

This is a daily door doo doo: 

THIS: 

I understand that all misplaced cat turds are inconvenient. Some are aggravating. But a daily door doo doo will you drive you to despair.

I bet YOU like getting home. I used to like getting home. 

When a person arrives at their front door after a long day at work...

Or when a person arrives at their front door after an awesome, life-giving day in the sunshine...

Or when a person arrives at their front door sweating inside their winter coat with 25 kg of groceries cutting into their fingers and two crying children (The fingers are deep purple and have lost all circulation because it has literally taken 20 minutes to go up two flights of steps, and the reason it took 20 minutes is because the three year-old keeps crying and sitting down, and the reason the child is crying is because you will not carry her, not even if her shoes feel funny and her knee hurts and she is so very tired, and you will especially not carry her because you are lugging enough f***ing milk to bathe Cleopatra (cow! skim! almond! rice!), and now all of this arguing and starting and stopping and sweating inside coats has caused your formerly sanguine five year old to also sit down on the steps and cry, and both kids' mother is just about ready to sit down and cry too but she doesn't because that would be the beginning of the end of all things)... 

No matter in what condition you arrive at your front door, what you want is to come home. To throw open the door, toss off your shoes, and flop onto the nearest upholstered surface. 

The act of coming through your own front door is SUPPOSED to unleash a little prickle of heart joy. The smell of candles and cookies and your own laundry detergent. Warmth. Your people, your things. An invitation to hang up your sorrows along with your hat.  

Daily door doo doo is why you cannot have that. 

What you can have instead is a rainbow shit smear that smells like what it is, and that is too sticky to be removed by paper towels alone. What you can do is tiptoe and lift your whining children over it, and undress them hastily in a deeply funky cloud of cat dung. While they scamper off, you can storm around gathering paper towels and Windex, and spend the first few moments of your arrival at home cussing and scraping up poop, and then trying to get a fine mache of poop and paper out from under your fingernails. And the next time you leave the apartment, you get to do it all again! 

F*** YOU

This is only my second blog post in a while. I should end on a positive note. Negativity is super alienating. 

So: It's not all bad! 

Like, the way the poop smears can really teach us a lot about how circles work. 

Secondly, understanding Schrödinger, but with the poop instead of the cats! Is there a doo doo? Isn't there? Perfect ambiguity, until you open the door. Thanks, cats!

Thirdly, it's not EVERY time you open the front door. It's like 70% of the time. And today I left the apartment late enough to catch a daily doorway doo doo on the inside (that's what inspired this post...I'll take what I can get), so there's only like a 25% chance that the next person to come home will face the rancid rainbow. Grace is real, guys.  

And lastly, doo doo teaches us not to take the joy of home-coming for granted. Ain't nothing in life comes free. And believe me, once you've finished cleaning up the daily door doo doo and its consequences, and possibly given the cat a harder-than-necessary prod with your toe, and apologized to your very strict five year old for having dropped an f-bomb or two, you will flop onto that couch knowing that you absolutely deserve to be there. 

I'M BACK! To the FUTURE!

Well, fancy meeting you here. In the unlikely event anyone is reading this, please know I am honored and delighted that you are here. Stay! It has been a long old time since I wrote anything on this here dusty blog, and a sight longer than that since I updated it regularly. I have a long list of excuses reasons for this, but this new weight loss app that I just downloaded has educated me to understand that being super f***ing busy isn't a thing, so let us put down the cookie and face the future together. 

All blog entries need pictures. It's like a rule. Today's images are brought to us by InspiroBot, the AI bot that randomly generates inspirational memes. They often make sense, but they never have meaning. Thanks, InspiroBot!

Here is the current state of affairs: The Noodle is five, is in kindergarten and will begin the first grade this coming September. I'm trying to think of how best to describe how she's changed over the last year. I guess you could say that she is old enough to have a private inner life now. She has thoughts that are her own, and she is better able to control who sees these. She is a happy, laughing kid 95% of the time. She can be super silly (she thinks it is hilarious to pull down her pants and fart in our general direction, for example), but she's also very intent and serious about coming to grips with the shadow side of life, like why people have to die or why cupcakes taste good if they're bad for you. She is the bright full moon, a magical and joyful gift.  

The Nugget -- who is arguably more of a noodle than a nugget herself these days -- is now three years old. She walks (runs), talks (a lot) and has a great number of opinions. She is still charmingly transparent in her id-driven ways. Cupcakes are bad for you so you cannot have another; but they are yummy so I want one. If you get out of bed you shall not get a sticker in the morning; but I don't like stickers at night except now I want a sticker in the morning, mommy.  She is laughter and bubbles, a dinosaur fairy superhero. She also continues to literally think she is a mouse, like an actual furry cheese-loving rodent, but that's another story. 

As you can imagine, every room in our home now carries the spaghetti stains of our little glitter monsters. The noise is cacophonous, the clean-up sisyphean, the vocabulary resplendent! We wouldn't have it any other way. And as of this morning,  Christmas break is over and they have been safely stowed in kindergarten. THANK GOD. 

Superdad, heart and soul of this here operation, continues to be Superdad, and in particular has turned out to be a live-in website's worth of ideas for arts and crafts. Who knew? He also continues to have a job and run a business, so if he was a Care Bear his tummy would have a picture of a giant platinum motor on it that spits out toilet paper roll kaleidoscopes. Or something. In any case, I love him. 

Think how profoundly silly humanity must be for our version of AI to come up with this. 

And on to me: I am now officially (big gulp) not working -- which brings me to why I have time to blog this morning! Until the end of December I had a busy and fulfilling role at a great organization, working with awesome people doing something I loved to do -- and for money, too! But for a list of reasons I won't be discussing here, I felt it was time for a new adventure. 

A large part of that consideration was this: Professionally (and personally), I've had the great luck to walk through open doors one after the other -- but a tremendous amount of my energy has been spent on how to do my best in the room I'm in, which is fabulous and important, but which hasn't given me a lot of time to think about what might be behind those other doors, and how to find the keys. 

Because I am 35 years old and the boss of me, and because neither of my kids wear diapers any more, I am giving myself permission to think about it. Thus it has come to pass that for the first time in many a year, I have left a job without having another one lined up. It is utterly terrifying but also exhilirating. With friendship and joy I said goodbye to a fabulous bunch of colleagues whom I wish only the greatest success (and they don't need my wishes to get it, trust me), and I'm ready to see what's next.  

I need a new position. Or maybe a couple jobs, or consultancies? Or maybe some additional education in a field related to but different from the one I have been working in? Can I do that and still work and still be a mom? Do I even want to? What is most important to me right now? 

Crap. InspiroBot has put its finger on my deepest insecurity about my new life phase. It's cool, this is just a random meme generator, this doesn't mean anything. It doesn't KNOW things. I'm not gonna let this get to me. Pff. Bots.   ...    *hides in closet* . 

All of these questions and life-models are now officially, as of today, under exploration.  I need to do some budget, schedule and activity reshuffling to make sure that we start living way more cheaply (because for now I'm living on savings) but also continue to also offer our kids (and ourselves) an interesting and stimulating life. Basically, I'm project managing a readjustment of my personal operations, but this time I get to start at the outcome level: What do I want? What do we need? 

My eyes are open for new prospects, and meanwhile I need to do a bunch of research and have a lot of conversations with clever, wonderful people I look up to. I also need to take a deep breath and a deep look inside myself and figure out how I should best balance a lot of competing personal priorities. 

LIke everyone else, I get caught up at work and in projects, and everything else kind of falls away. This makes me a great team member (and you can find my LinkedIn here...just kidding), but sometimes it means I forget that I love to blog and experience art and take long walks and sit under a tree and stare into space for a minute.  

Having time for that other stuff while working and raising children is luxurious, and I know it's not possible to have all the things at the same time. But if I could make some time and mental space for a few more of these finer, funner things, no matter what I do career-wise, I think it will be a life better lived. So I'm going to try to use this self-imposed down time to really, really think about it. 

Not to worry though. 

I promise I will NOT be using this space to set personal goals and indicators and mark achievements or any of that, because there is nothing more tiresome than using social media as a space for accountability or personal growth when it was clearly designed for sharing videos of floating hedgehogs or whatever. I am merely explaining all this as a basic framework for the stories about my children's antics and my general personal disarray that are to follow. 

And on that note, I literally have a laundry list of ish to do. Happy Tuesday and if you have read this far, gold stickers and gratitude!  

The Lantern Festival

A couple weeks ago was the daycare's annual lantern festival, which is an Austrian tradition that celebrates St. Martin. I really don't know what lanterns have to do with Martin, but let me google that for you. The group that the Noodle and the Nugget are in hosted their celebration at 4.30 pm on a Wednesday, because apparently no one's parents work, and, in a rare change of events, the teachers decided that it would be too cold to let the kids parade outside, so it was hosted in a darkened classroom. 

Indeed it was so dark that all of our photos came out plain black. This means you'll have to rely on the evocative power of the written word. I hear that people can't do that any more, especially millennials, but the readership of this blog is very, very exclusive (hi, mom and dad!). What you do is read the words and just imagine stuff. I believe in you. 

So what is supposed to happen at the lantern festival was that the parents sit on teeny weeny chairs in a big circle, the lights go out, the kids (ages 1 - 3.5) parade in holding paper lanterns (with real candles for everyone aged 2 and up!) singing the Lantern Song. This is followed by the performance of five or six songs and poems. Then punch and a brioche roll for everyone. Hooray! 

What happened instead was like the bar scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Time stopped, nothing made sense, we weren't sure if this was hilarious or frightening. 

Only half of the children actually came in singing, of which only one of them audibly (bless her!). The rest were evenly divided between running to their parents, crying, falling over, or staring stupidly into space. The teachers (bless them!) sang loudly and looked at the children encouragingly, but toddlers have a mulish recalcitrance to perform on command. These ones, in particular, could not have given less of a f***.  

The Nugget, who can't walk very well yet, came and sat on my lap. She did a great job dancing in place and hurling her lamp around, though. 

The Noodle, by contrast, is one of the four "big kids" in the class (>3 years) and was therefore supposed to join in the recitation of a poem (calm down, it had like 12 words) and also play a lead role in a little play that they put down. 

She was not having it. 

"No," she said when her turn came. "Meh. Meh meh mmph," she said, turning her head to the wall.  

"PLEASE," begged the teacher's assistant. "You practiced! You did so well! You can do it."

At these moments it's not clear what the best parenting approach is. I tend to freeze like a deer in headlights. On one hand, she's three. On the other hand, I'm half Chinese. I wasn't sure what the appropriate mix of flexible, supportive, cajoling or threatening (I mean 'ambitious') would be, so I just shuffled through all of them in the space of about 30 seconds.

"That's okay babe, if you're feeling shy you don't have to go. You can stay right here with me. We can sing from here together... But don't you want to go? It looks so fun. I really think you should go. I bet you'd do a great job! Look, your teacher wants you to go. Get up. Go. GO! Come on, just go. Please go? I'd be so happy if you'd go. I'll be so sad if you don't go. Go? No? Okay that's fine, stay right here. Don't even worry about it. You can tell us the poem later. Are you sure you don't want to go?" 

I'm pretty sure this is actually some form of emotional abuse, but never mind. In the end she stayed right next to us all the way until the end of the performance and didn't even really sing along once. My only comforts were the boy (also one of the big kids - YES!) who basically napped next to his mom, and the little girl who zipped around like a caffeinated wasp the whole time, landing on various people's laps. I felt tremendous solidarity with their parents. 

And I remembered the mantra: "Do I really care?" 

Well actually yeah kind of. But whatever. 

By the end of the evening (i.e. 20 minutes after it started), the chairs were no longer in a circle and children were scattered in diverse states of disarray and undress. The parents had lowered their expectations from "I shall take sweet Christmas-y pictures of little Mary and Bobby singing like wee angels" to "I shall keep Mary and Bobby in a holding pattern with their pants on until we can go home". 

Most of the candles in the lanterns had gone out, everyone was talking, and only the two teachers (bless them!) were still trying to hold the whole thing down through the powers of positivity and bloody-minded singing. May they both win the lottery one day, really. Whatever they earn it is not enough.  

And then we all had punch and got the hell out of there as quick as we could. 

Which isn't to say that we aren't totally excited for next year's Lantern Festival. Maybe one day my kids will even participate. I'll light a candle for that. 

The Nugget is One

Two weeks ago our littlest roommate turned one, and happy we are that she is ours. It's hard to believe that it has already been twelve months since this tiny, mewling handful that could barely lift her head slipped into the world*. 

Suuuper excited about turning 1! (Candle man-handled into the cake courtesy of her big sister)

Today she can whisper a few words (Daddy, cats, t'anks, das (this), Mommy, Nara (Nava)). She can gallop on all fours like a tiny bison, hobble along with the aid of a finger and even take a few steps unaided when her hands are full and she forgets that she can't. Who will she be when she grows up? Time will tell, but here are a few early contenders: 

1. The Researcher. The Nugget is serious about understanding everything. She points at objects and names them ("Das, das, das, das, Katze, das, das"). She takes everything apart, empties every drawer, attempts to scale every height, squash herself into every nook, and generally get as many perspectives as possible. The physical world is a wonder that she finally has the wherewithal to explore. 

What happens when I stir Mommy's coffee with a blue marker?  What does it look like if you drop a bowl full of spaghetti from great height? How much toothpaste (fluoride free!) can I eat before someone stops me? What does the toilet brush taste like today? Can I jam my whole shoe in my mouth? Okay but how about now? And now? Yeah but how about...The answer to all these questions, my friend, is "DAS". 

When critical research is interrupted for so-called "safety reasons"

2. The Cat Lady. This child loves our damn cats to death. They, to their eternal credit, haven't mauled her yet. She follows them around like a terrifying floor drone, eats their food, pulls out handfuls of hair, and yanks their tails. 

"No, Nugget, cats are not for hitting. You can pet them nicely, like THIS," we say over and over and to no absolutely avail. She slaps these b****es across the mouth like she's auditioning for a role in The Godfather. It's all love though. 

This face, teaching cats hard lessons since approx. May 2016.

3. The Nerd in a Good Way. You know how in every class, conference or church gathering there's that one dude in the back who finds every shitty PowerPoint joke actually funny, so while everyone else is doing the polite titter he's carrying on like a contested man goose? That's the Nugget. She'll crack up and wave a wee arm in the general direction of whatever's good lately, pointing it out in case you failed to notice. Because water from the faucet...get it? Blocks falling down? Hilarious. The Noodle doing anything? PRICELESS. Nugget's face splits open to reveal four teeth in a sea of gums, she honks away, and the whole world lights up around her. Our little Christmas tree.  

Tricycles are hilarious.

4. The Vacuum Cleaner.  Her big sister, the Noodle, had a babyhood full of vitamins and minerals, steamed vegetables pureed with organic white fish and whole grains. The Nugget, by contrast, gets the baby-friendliest bits of whatever we're having anyway, so basically pizza crusts and the odd lint-covered gummi bear out of her big sister's coat pocket. My husband feels this is justified for the same reason it's cool that we let her fall down a lot: we're making a ninja.  

5. The Enchanted Rainbow Fairy. I guess it's a feature of younger siblings that they are frequently decorated with hair clips, bits of tape, stickers, pieces of Kleenex, neon-colored rubber stamps and other toddler detritus. Plus our apartment has really gone to the dogs since Baby #2 arrived, so there's usually a bunch of lint and fur attached to her, too. The Nugget also loves (*LOVES*) to eat crayons, ideally the washable kind that melt in your mouth and make you look like you have beautiful, enchanted vomit running down your front. She's like a babbling, crawling jack-daw nest. This may sound upsetting,  but you must remember that her father and I looked like this on purpose well into our twenties, and also we are raising a ninja. 

Muffins eating "muffins" (they're cupcakes, Starbucks. Stop lying).

6. The Ninja. This baby will slide down your skylight, pull 85 wetwipes out of the box, unroll three packs of toilet paper, eat all the raisins out of your trail mix and ghost before you even look up from that underwhelming diply.com listicle you shouldn't have been reading anyway ("15 things the Internet crapped out today", e.g). Okay, she's not quite one of those YouTube babies that comes out of the womb bouldering and doing kick flips, but for a one year-old she's pretty good. Anything the Noodle can do, the Nugget will try and achieve, and really it's amazing how rarely she actually gets hurt. For example, instead of just, like, getting down off the couch, she usually chooses to fling herself over the (way taller) armrest and drop to the floor like a wayward teen hopping the swimming pool fence late at night. She makes kind of the same face, too ("Hur hur").  

She doesn't sleep, she strategizes.

7. Whatever She Wants To Be. This exuberant little munchkin pumpkin becomes more and more her own every day in the way she moves, communicates, thinks and feels. What I hope for her this year and for all the rest of her years is that she learns to be always kind, has the insight to figure out what she (really) loves to do -- whether that's art, accounting or (*gulp*) astrology -- and finds the courage to do that with all of her heart. 

Thanks for being around, little Nugget. Our lives would be less without you. 

LOVE

___________________________________________________________________

* And by "slipped into the world" I mean she was born in a fight, because it turned out the lease on her home was running out -- the way it contracted, it was death or the loophole, and mighty small that was too. The poor thing was shoved out like a seed through the tail end of a bird, dropped into the cold. Humans all have to start like this though because otherwise it wouldn't be fair that we have airconditioners and baked goods. 

Noodles and Nuggets – A Visit from the Pacifier Fairy

This morning I was awoken at some terrible hour by the garrulous chirping of my three (!) year old daughter, who rises with and like the sun: early. By contrast, I had been out with a few friends until quite late. Which is why I was now the deserving recipient of this gentle torture.

All I heard at first was a barrage of incoherent cartoon sounds, several octaves higher than the adult ear can possibly comprehend at dawn. It’s like having your ears injected with rainbow bubbles.

“Blibble blibble blip blip bleep! Blibble blip blip!”

“Hrmph,” I said. “Wha?”

“I said good morning mommy. Get up. Get up. Get up,” Noodle said in her sweet little helium voice. And then she scowled. “GET UP RIGHT NOW!”

“Blumph,” I said. “Don’ talk me li’ that. Goway.”

“I have a pretty dress,” she said. I peeled my eyeballs open and tried to focus, which was hard since the child was only six inches from my face. She did have a pretty dress. It was smeared with two varieties of food. Chocolate ice cream was one, I guessed. And…pumpkin? Not pumpkin. She hates pumpkin.

“Your dress is filthy,” I said. “Why are you still wearing this dress? Didn’t Daddy give you pajamas?”

“Hmmm? No, I didn’t want pajamas.” She looked down. “Oh yes my dress is so pretty and really GROSS because because because yesterday I…”

She made a sudden look of great concern. I realized she was wearing a bunch of shitty plastic jewellery. Noodle said: “This dress is reaaaaallly disgusting but it’s very pretty but it’s a BIT disgusting because yesterday because I yesterday in the park I had a because because Daddy bought me an ice cream and now I’m REALLY DIRTY!”

As I processed this, I realized something was scrabbling around with my toes, which were hanging off the edge of the bed. A Chewbacca-like roar, followed by the appearance of a tiny pony-tail. The baby had arrived. She stood up started to pick her way around the edge of the bed, emitting the odd grunt.

“Good morning, sweet pea,” I said.

“Aaaaargh,” said my lovely 10-month old.

“You’re pretty smart for having made it here all by yourself,” I said.

“Aaaargh,” she replied.

“Noodle, I heard that the Schnullerfee (pacifier fairy) came yesterday and took all your pacifiers and left you a present,” I said to the big one, who was wearing a dreadful silver plastic necklace with the face of that blonde chick from Frozen and also some kind of shiny, ultra-crappy beaded bracelet.

“Oh yes the Schnullerfee arrived* when I was at the park and then there was no more schnullers because I am a really big girl now. I don’t NEED a schnuller any more! And I came home and then and then at the stairs there was a PINK present and I carried it up by myself and I held it REALLY straight and I didn’t spill anything and then inside was all of this beautiful STUFF like neckeleckelaces and braceklets and treasures and now I’m so pretty and I cried because I want a schnuller. I want my schnuller!”

She looked downcast. For a moment.

“But I’m a really big girl now and I can’t cry and I have all this beautiful stuff and the Schnullerfee came and when Nugget is big she can’t have a schnuller either but now she is small because she’s still zero years old right Nugget right?”

Nugget, now standing between us, popped her pacifier in her mouth. She looked at the Noodle. Took the pacifier out of her mouth; put it back in. I swear that baby understands more than she lets on.

“I have a lot of beautiful stuff and you don’t but that’s okay don’t cry Nugget,” said Noodle. “I don’t need a Schnuller. I have a neckeckeleckelace. You need a schnuller because you’re a baby.”

Nugget sucked away. Sucka sucka sucka, the sound went.

Noodle grabbed the hem of her truly foul dress and gave a big twirl.

“I’m so pretty,” Noodle said. “Don’t be sad, Nugget, right now you’re just a baby and I’m big and my dress is soooo pretty and I don’t need a schnuller.”

Sucka sucka sucka.  

Twirl twirl twirl.

Sucka sucka.

And then I got up and announced it was time to get ready for nursery, because if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that it is best to nip a brawl in the bud.   

Sisters, sisters

Never were there such devoted sisters

Those who've seen us

know that not a thing could come between us. 

Right?

* Okay so we've been threatening promising the arrival of the Pacifier Fairy for months now, who, legend tells, comes and takes your pacifiers and leaves a present. To avoid having bunny teeth. Yesterday was apparently the day because while Alex (God bless him) was at the park with our babies they LOST Noodle's last best pacifier and so he thought quickly and decided that the Pacifier Fairy had arrived. He conveniently had a pretty pink box of hand-me-down costume fairy jewellry in the car that his coworker had gifted us (God bless her) because her kids are too old for it, and he managed to smuggle the box into our building and leave it where Noodle could find it. Et voila. Well done that man. 

My future is an ideal projection of what I envision now

Just when you think this blog is finally dead, it comes back. Like whack-a-mole. Can't get rid of me, guys. I am now committing to wiping the slate clean, embracing life and getting back to regularly updating this SOB. I feel like this because yesterday I got up early to do an hour of yoga before work, and today I walked to the office at 7 am, so I'm feeling particularly smug and accomplished. The rest of my life is going to be like this. I will drink ginger tea and eat nothing but ethically slaughtered celery. My life is just beginning, and the soundtrack is Om. I am a walking set of affirmations that are individually probably a good idea but collectively fairly fatuous not to say vacuous, but I don't care, because I am pretty. Sooo pretty*. 

Anyway, it's been like three months simce I updated this blog, and I'm going to go ahead and get closure through the powerful medium of a list. 

1. My dad visited. It was awesome, we took pictures, but all he gets is this idiotic post. Sorry dad. I love you. 

2. I was in the US for five weeks. My babies came with me. We stayed with my parents. We hung out with family. It was relaxed and enjoyable and I'd tell you more but it's all water under the bridge, baby. 

3. Three weeks into our Texas visit, Alex came. We left the babies with my sainted parents (LOVE YOU) and met three of our most excellent friends in Mexico City for a long weekend that can be summarized as tacos + mezcal plus that time we each spent well over a hundred bucks on lunch, because I accidentally booked us a table at the 17th best restaurant on planet earth. Whoops. 

Actual worst group photo of all time. Also, the only one.

MUCH better.

4. I went back to work full time about six weeks ago, which is why no blogging. Alex is on baby duty, bless him, and I'm loving work life but trying to juggle my pace and find a rhythm that leaves time for each person in my family and for myself and for my friends and for reading and so on. Y'all know how it is. 

5. Spring came. My nose might be running and I feel like I'm in a fog (damn you, birch pollen!) but it is worth it. 

Onward and upward! My nature is divine! Today is the first day of the rest of my life! I am blessed! And so on. 

*Not that pretty.