Snowing again. Heavy snowfalls forecasted.

The week started with cleaning up the driveway. Very fun, especially when you have an 18 month old toddler hanging around; thank God mine is as smart and patient as it gets - I was able to clean up the whole driveway. Nevertheless, to all 6 month pregnant girls out there - do not attempt!

Happy to have finished The Black Monk by Akunin.  It was getting a bit boring towards the end, although the final scene of the murderer escaping with a load of uranium, making plans about using the money on scientific breakthroughs, restoring himself as a scientist and finding new source of energy - not knowing he had already been lethally poisoned with radiation - got stuck in my mind for some time.

Next fiction in line - Pelevin. Smart, unpredictable and incredibly delicious! Read the first several chapters of The Sacred Book of the Werewolf - and after Akunin's attempts to depict woman's psyche, - it gives a special pleasure.

Caught myself ironing a shirt for a 18 month old guy :) Who would have thought!

Actually, cleaning up the whole house with Dr. Chill around is still doable. He can wipe furniture with dust cloth, even helped me wash the baseboards in the kitchen this week, put things back to their places, help me with the laundry - put dirty clothes in the washer or take clean dry clothes out of the dryer, and then sit on the clean dry laundry in the laundry basket  - he just loves that! And vacuuming! He's been checking on the vacuum cleaner 2-3 times a day for the past 3 weeks,- must be going through his vacuum cleaner phase, - so whenever I vacuum, he will shadow me holding on to the vacuum cleaner.

As for the Dr. Chill Jr, it feel like he is a pretty active guy too. Probably a bit more good natured than the older brother :) but just as active. Great - I can have them both exhaust each other! if I survive the next year with them I mean

There is something exiting and aspiring in thinking the 2nd pregnancy will only last for 3 more months. That all this constant self-discipline, hard work and inconvenience is only for the lesser part of the pregnancy. And then - life will get easier in terms of getting my body - and what's even more important, my brain - back in full use. Time flies with the second pregnancy so fast I'm only glad I manage to  jot down a few notes into my little pregnancy diary every now and then, otherwise I'ld only realized the whole speed of it once I was in hospital.

The improvements from my 1st pregnancy - my abdominal muscles still flex (I completely lost control over them end of 1st trimester of the 1st pregnancy); I am more flexible (was more swollen at this time of my 1st pregnancy a couple of years ago).

Downsides of this pregnancy - lungs (had to stop running half way into 1st trimester this time, and can already feel they are not functioning at their best); and back (my prenatal masseusse claims the right side of my back along the spine feels quite bad. Probably because when I have to carry Dr. Chill for 10-15 minutes straight, I do so with my left arm only while I am doing whatever I need to do with my right hand. :)  )

Another important upside is that I am still able to do 1/2hr of elliptical with my tummy!

Ah, why am I not surprised?

How much do women around the world pay to give birth?

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31052665


I just hope that despite the high overall costs, Switzerland and Australia's major insurance companies do cover more than 80% of childbirth expenses...

The moral (for self)  is: work harder. And smarter.

Lunatic's notes.

The best way to burn dinner is to cook it in almost complete darkness outside, with a very-energetic toddler handing on you once you step indoors.

And I mean not just have a crust a little too thick, but to set the whole set of meat and veggies on fire.
So that the flames almost reach the house wall. And there's so much smoke as if boyscouts invaded our backyard and chopped the fence and the garden beds to firewood. And that the grill would burn for another 10 minutes after the gas is shut off.

Just as Liz explained a quarter of an hour later when ordering pizza: "When you said you can't check on the burgers because the flames burst all the way up when you try lifting the grill lid - I realized things'd gone reeeeally wrong!".

I believe it all started last week when I tried to drink compote from Dr. Chill's sippy cup, mistakenly grabbing it instead of my champagne flute with juice.

Or a few days before that, when I was running around Dr Chill's classroom in daycare looking for a bag I brought his diapers supply in, and which mysteriously disappeared after I took out the diapers. Until one of his teachers tactfully suggested: "Like the big red bag behind your shoulder?".

Closing curtain.

I begin suspecting it's either my oldest one or the youngest one - doing something to my brain. Or maybe both of them.

28

One of my little personal victories of the past few years - is that I am shaping my life more and more towards what I would like to see it. By now I know I can't - I am literally incapable of - just focusing on career. Or being just a Mom. Or just a wife. Or only building my life around gym, swimming pool and my kitchen. Or only devote time and energy to my hobbies, books and education. I get the biggest satisfaction and fulfillment from my life when I continuously take up all these different roles in different areas of my life and put to use all my skills and knowledge to find my life's new perfect balance. My life's new perfect balance is not a constant by the way; which makes defining and establishing it quite hard, but most of the times - interesting and exiting.

My other little personal victory of the past few years - is the ability to act before I change my mind :) Once I know I need to start doing something or I need stop doing something - I can push myself to do so, before starting wallowing in self-discouraging thoughts of the plan being too expensive, too time consuming, too exhausting...  Any form of action proves to be LESS time or energy consuming than when preceded by a phase of pulling yourself together.  Another interesting thing about the energy though, is that the more of it I use on getting things done right away (whether major milestones or line items in my agenda's to-do list) the more energy I get back. Mystery.

As for the things that still do not.... present themselves in the way most favourable for me :) I could probably single out the lack of time as single biggest drawback. With the obvious need to complete education, take career one step up, devote enough time to my family, welcome the new family member (which in my Universe equals to a significant amount of time put into sports, walks, sleep, body and skin care), making sure our home is clean and we have enough food in the fridge so we can keep running, getting roof works in the way and planning upcoming bathroom works, doing research on and planning to obtain another couple of licensing... with all that I sense like the days are packed and yet there are no major breakthroughs in sight. I was going to fix this feeling from last year by boiling down my current life goals to only 16 for this year...

Enjoying being myself. Biens dans ma peau, and starting to feel confident that I can maintain this feeling for the next several years at least.