Thursday, March 28, 2013

Oh, hi there.

Yes, I haven't posted in almost two months, my bad. I have no real excuse of any interest to anyone, just the usual life stuff that everyone deals with, so! Let's get right back into it with a bunch of bullets, shall we?
  • For Callum's birthday, I made a rose cake. It turned out great. I used this tutorial and it was super easy. The only thing was that I didn't realize when I was doing the green flowers that it's best to work with cold icing (not a cake decorator over here...). I rectified this mistake before I did the blue flowers and they turned out much nicer and crisper.
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  • Let's see, for MY birthday we got a blizzard, and for some reason (and I really don't know what that reason could be, because we haven't had much snow this year so the city should have plenty of money left in the plow budget), it took forever to get the roads plowed, and they were very icy, so we ended up canceling our plans and staying home. So, my birthday is rescheduled for next weekend. Which is fine! Weeklong birthday! Whee! Also this weekend it's supposed to be pretty warm out so I can wear the springlike dress I had picked out for last weekend, which would definitely not have worked even if the roads had been drivable, given that it was about 10 degrees out. Brr.
  • Will it be annoying if I write about a book I haven't even read? I have thoughts on European parenting that I'd like to share, but I haven't read Bringing Up Bebe, though I really should. Don't worry, I'm not going to criticize the book without reading it or anything. Just, the hype over it has been making me think. So yeah, I'm going to let that percolate for awhile and then I think I may have some thoughts to share.
  • I'm partway into my third-to-last graduate class and it's really interesting and kind of like an MBA-style class and I like it a lot and yet I'm sooooo over it. I am just completely unmotivated and don't want to deal with it. Getting a master's degree is great and I know when it's done I'll be glad I did it but ugh, money and time and motivation and guilt over how I spend my free time, no thank you. If this is senioritis already then I'm screwed for the last two classes (bioethics and biology of disease, also known as the hardest two classes in the program, yayyyyy).
  • Callum is just extremely delightful right now and it's really fun. I mean, he has his moments (see: post-bedtime tantrum when I refused to give in to his endless stalling attempts by singing infinite rotations of Twinkle Twinkle, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and Baby Beluga, and he screamed for half an hour like someone was torturing him with acid), but mostly he's just awesome. He talks SO MUCH, mostly in 3-5 word combinations and also in some simple sentences, and he just chats all the time, and he's figured out that Torsten speaks German and I speak English, and he's outgoing and hilarious and makes jokes and then yells, "FUNNY!" and he jumps constantly (and loooves his new gymnastics class, to nobody's surprise) and he's learned gender and is constantly pointing to strangers and identifying them (correctly, thankfully) as men or women and if someone does something for him and he doesn't know their name he'll say, "Thank you, woman/man," which oh my goodness, more of this, please. He's just the best.
  • Also by now Callum loves daycare. We switched to Mondays and Tuesdays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays and the two days in a row has made a huge difference. I think it really helps him to have his time chunked off so he has an idea of what to expect from day to day. There are no more tears at dropoff or pickup and he talks about his teachers and his "fends" (friends) constantly. He's really thriving and I'm so glad we decided to do this now instead of just throwing him into full-time preschool in the fall. I think the preschool transition will be much, much smoother thanks to his daycare experience.
  • Things are good, in a non-earth-shattering, domestic-life-ish, wonderful kind of way. I feel very content. It's a nice way to feel.
  • Here's what my kid is looking like these days. He's the king of ridiculous facial expressions. It's awesome.
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5 comments:

  1. Yay for a new post!

    Your rose cake is very impressive!

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  2. That rose cake is really pretty-- and I'm sure it was delicious as well.

    I would love to hear your thoughts on European parenting! I did read Bringing Up Bebe, but I have no kids, so... I guess I'm just storing that knowledge for later?

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  3. I am ALWAYS happy to see you post! :)

    As a grad student I totally, totally relate to what you're saying. I have more thoughts, but since I am surpassing my allotted procrastination time I will refrain from blabbering on about graduate school. :)

    -Steph

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  4. I love how your cake turned out. In my imagination I am am amazing baker.

    Also, I'm in love with your kid via the internet, just so you know!

    And finally, your posts about grad school remind me that I am so, so happy that I never finished grad school. It just was not the right path for me. Sometimes I kind of wish it had been...and then I remember that I was fairly miserable the entire time, & that most of the jobs that require the degree I was pursuing would make me equally miserable. *whew* Close call, that. 3 more classes though. You've totally got this!

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