Taking Stock: September 2023

No one reads blogs in 2023. That makes it so freeing to come here, dust this old blog and post something that only one random reader in Kazakhstan will read. Here goes!

Making: my bed every morning, and getting a lot of joy from that.

~~Cooking~~ Marinating: Fish and chicken since my nanny does most of the cooking.

Drinking: Water. I've kept up the good habit of drinking lots of water since having Mutana. You need lots of water when pregnant and when breastfeeding, and I suppose just in general as a human. It took me 29 years to built this habit!

Reading: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and I have just now realized that it's been made into a film, so guess who now has something to watch over the weekend / on my long upcoming plane rides?!

Wanting: Cute floral dresses. Preferably matching ones with Mutana.

Looking: out for any chocking hazards on every surface.

Playing: Peekaboo, making faces and weird farty sounds with Mutana.

Wasting: very little in this Nabii's economy

Sewing: nothing, except repairing the odd pair of pants whose seam starts to stretch

Wishing: for love, good health, laughter and joy to all my loved ones.

Enjoying: evening walks, whenever I can manage

Waiting: for 1 p.m. to go feed Mutana and get lunch myself

Liking: A lot of vanilla scents

Wondering: what parenting a toddler will be like

Loving: My favorite dude & the best baby who ever baby-ed

Hoping: To enjoy my first work trip away from Mutana without feeling mum guilt

Marveling: At how quickly babies grow!

Needing: Food in my tummy!

Smelling: Fresh air. It's been raining lately and I love when that cleans the dust from the air

Wearing: My every day mum uniform when at home: tights, a t-shirt and throwing on a cardigan to look serious on calls.

Following: Lots of parenting content, especially on responsive parenting

Noticing: How more at ease and les anxious I am lately

Knowing: how well and completely loved I am (still!)

Thinking: of how blessed I truly am as I go about taking stock

Feeling: Super grateful for everything in my life. I have a healthy happy daughter who delights me, a loving partner, a great job, good health...

Bookmarking: Newsletters to read, which I never get around to reading.

Opening: Tabs to shop for babies clothes online but wondering if tax and shipping will justify it.

Giggling: At Mutana's babbles, which sound almost like full on conversations with her nanny.

Comments

The Girl Code... Not Neccesarily in that Order.

"The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in." Society can be such a drag. What, with all the unwritten, unsaid rules and codes. Guys have an elaborate ‘Bro Code’. In fact there’s a whole website . You will be surprised that Rule no. 1 of it is not the (in)famous ‘Bros before whores’. Girls have their own code too, though it’s not set in stone and varies among different groups of girls. The Girl code is especially tricky to girls like me who aren’t exactly programmed like other girls. So, I have a list of essential rules in the Girl Code. Some come with disclaimers and modifications. Some are universal while others are just stuff that my friends and I have come up with along the way. 1. Should a Girl be critically injured, her Side-Girls are to never make jokes about it, unless the hurt Girl does first. I love my girlfriends…very much, but if said critical injury has risen as a result of a fall (wh

Of Doing Milk and Staying Young

Boredom inspires/ drives me to do the unthinkable... like texting him to say how I couldn’t stand pretending that I didn’t like him...or drinking a glass of milk. I do not DO milk. And no, I am not lactose intolerant. As Max in ‘2 Broke Girls’ aptly points out, “Poor people don’t just run out to buy anti-biotics. You man up, grow a pair, and stare germs in the face...booyah!” I may not be poor but I am definitely not rich. People in my economic bracket don’t get fancy diseases like eczema. We get rashes, and if you want to get all fancy then you will have to do with ‘allergies’. So, no, I am not lactose intolerant. Where I come from it’s just a plain, simple ‘I don’t drink milk.’ But here I am, with a now half empty glass of milk. (I hope you can detect the pessimism there or else my pun will have gone to waste) I suppose the ‘Do Milk, Stay Young’ campaign hasn’t gone to waste. All that sexual objectification of infants wasn’t in vain. “Sexual objectification?” you ask. Yes,

Fighting for my right to be wrong.

I feel as if our relationship has been progressing at an admirable rate... progressing enough for me not to just assume that someone somewhere is reading this, but to hope that this is so. Today has been a Monday, true to form. Murphy s law through and through. Anything that could go wrong DID go wrong...but I don't want to bore you with the gory details. I do need to mention, though, that I was diagnosed with alarmingly high levels of typhoid fever. To be frank, I didn't feel THAT ill. I was simply mildly sick with a stomach ache and a head ache but the pharmacist wouldn't give me any meds until he had run some tests.Even after the diagnosis I still felt pretty amazing considering the shocked expression on the lab tech's face as he tries to make me understand how 'grave' my situation was. Dad wasn't as flippant about it as I was (His own face-to-face encounter with typhoid had confined him to bed for a week and he couldn't believe that my body was

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