The whole foods near our house apparently opened just in
time…for my maternity leave! I have been
hitting that store hard--like sometimes
twice/day hard. It’s the perfect walk
from our house with Theo—long enough to get out and about for an hour or so,
but close enough that he can do it with little complaint. There is a coffee/juice bar! But the best part is that they give free fruit
to kids, a perk that allows Theo to practice interacting with people (saying hi
with eyes, as we call it) and to get to choose what he eats.
Since I am still pumping (I made it to three months! (bronze award), and decided to just keep
going, but I have a feeling it will end by June), our freezer is still double
stuffed with frozen breast milk. This
means that we are currently doing what I like to call, “eating like a
European”. We do not have space for
frozen foods in our house, so this week I started the practice of going to the
grocery store every day and just buying what we’re eating for dinner. It’s been pretty great so far (day 4)! We’ve eaten beans and cornbread, veggie eggs
and hash browns, and (tonight) taquitos w/ rice, beans and guac. The stark difference between the (US of) American
and Viennese styles of food procurement is one of my most salient memories of
our summer in Vienna. In the US, we
have memberships to Costco and extra freezers in our garages. In Vienna, they have small fridges and make
frequent trips to the store for fresh foods.
Do they even have coupons in the EU?
The whole foods in the morning is glorious—big, spacious and
with no one around. I see lots of other
ladies on maternity leave, with their covered up babies in infant carriers,
smart phones and coffee purchases. It’s
like a small army of sleep deprived moms with only the most well research
brand/method of everything for their babies (I too am guilty of this!).
On the home front, I have dipped my toes into cloth
diapering, and am awaiting a shipment of bum genius AIO (CD terminology!) to
arrive any day in order to go in up to my waist! I had a few CD from when Theo was a baby and
then I bought a couple more to see how it worked with Charlie now that he’s out
of the pooping every hour phase. I will
say that I made a conscious decision to go with the absolutely easiest method
of doing it—basically the diaper that acts like a disposable (nothing to fold
or stuff), except I have to wash them every 3 days. The main selling point this time (besides
being good for the environment, blah blah blah), was when I saw on some CD
website that you save enough money by cloth diapering to go on a cruise! What an incentive (well, that cruise or
paying for two children to be in daycare full time, the price of which is
absolutely bonkers. Why are there no
daycare subsidies in the US to allow for (mostly) women to stay in the
workforce if they want, rather than dropping out because they won’t make enough
to pay for daycare, so what’s the point?
(Hugely important family/feminist issue)). But I digress--Here are some cute pictures of
my amazing and sweet boy children!
Theo’s favorite color is pink, which is awesome and makes
perfect sense to me, as it is a warm and vibrant color. It pains me that it is so strongly gender-specified for children and thus he might grow out of
liking it.
We went bowling for the last birthday of Natan's 30's! Theo really liked it, and I feel like we need to go on those super hot summer days to enjoy some air conditioning and fried foods.
There is an awesome park in San Jose that has chickens, pigs and cows that kids can visit. We went there for a birthday party and spent some time in the big barn.
Charlie has been smiling and gets cuter every day. He has his first eye exam next week! (benefit of having a brother with eye problems and glasses--aggressive screening!)
The light rail station near our house is a very popular topic of conversation. It has rainbow tigers! (including a two-headed one?!) It also has a lot of drug dealing and bench sleeping.
