hot

it's 34 degrees today in prague, and we have 25 students in a classroom and the air conditioner doesn't cut it.  poor students!  this must be hard for them.

solving all the problems

lumi was really fussy this morning for some reason and wouldn't let me set her down.  i cuddled her as long as i could until i had to start the morning routine, but she was lying on the floor and crying in protest.  but then kimmo offered an olive.  she loves to put her finger in the little hole left by the pitting machine.  it cheered her up in no time.

girls in burkina

nice slideshow from the bbc:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18357253

watermelon in the morning

the hotel where my course is gives us a nice coffee break in the morning -- with good watermelon!

Long day

It was a long teaching day, then we took a tour of a potential training facility. I didn't get home until 19:30, just before bathtime. I felt like a shitty parent and a shitty wife.

the fountain

lumi has a horrific diaper rash.  i was in zurich for 2 days last week and one of those days turned out to a pooping spree.  kimmo has a very limited sense of smell, and doesn't pick up on poo that he is not expecting.   normally we let her run around in her pajamas and night diaper for most of the morning while she eats breakfast, so she can be in that night diaper for about 11 hours.  what i think happened was that lumi had a huge poo early in the night, which kimmo did not detect because he didn't smell anything, and then she was left to pee and roll around in that same diaper until 7am the next day.  and then when he actually cleaned her up, i'm guessing he didn't do a thorough enough job.

this means that i arrived home to find that she had a bright red rash all over her skin under her diaper, and something that looks like heat rash up to her belly.  it was painful for a few days, but it's healing now, after a lot of frequent diaper changes this weekend, plus diaper-free time, plus extra lotion and oil to help the skin heal itself.  but then after one day of daycare it again looked not so great today.  still not as bad as last week, but i think they were not as vigilant about changing her as we were, so it regressed a bit.  so at about 18:45 tonight i took off her diaper to let her run around and get some air in there.  she didn't have any accidents for about 20 minutes, but then when i was holding her she peed on me.  then i tried to take her to the potty but she insisted she was done.  then she peed again on the floor.  then she insisted she was done.  then she had a little poo on the floor.  again, i took her to the potty, cleaned her up, and she insisted she was done.  then she had a bigger poo on the floor!  i started to clean it up while kimmo took her to the bathroom to start the bath.  and then she peed one last time on the floor next to the bathtub while kimmo was trying to get the bath ready.

seriously, i have welts

i think i'm about ready to stop breastfeeding.  lumi loves it and i love it when she's gentle, but she isn't ever gentle anymore.  no biting, but she pulls (wtf?) and scratches, neither of which are pleasant.  she doesn't seem to do it maliciously; it's like a nervous habit to dig her nails into my skin.

but now we have to wean her, and don't really know how to do it with minimal trauma.

the parent i want to be, the worker i want to be

i read this article today. this quote really struck me as something i need to focus on now, when i'm on a new career path that i enjoy:

Most important is when thinking about the arc of your career to think not "when am I going to have to drop out?" but "how am I going to build in the flexibility to be the parent I want and the worker I want, and stay in the game?"

uto kulm

i'm at uto kulm in uetliberg, atop a little hill overlooking zurich.  it's stunning.  gorgeous!  and even the air is wonderful!

on the move

i'm going to zurich tonight for a 2-day meeting.  i'm taking the breast pump, but i'm not sure how it's going to go.  last time i went away for 2 days (munich in march) i used the pump but it's not as efficient as lumi is and my breasts were achy and too full by the second day.

confusion

me: we need to do a little shopping saturday to get some staples i didn't want to buy before we moved.

kimmo: what staples?  we have plenty.

me: (annoyed).  well, milk.  and rice.  and meat for the cats.

kimmo: but what staples?

it turns out that while i was using the term to mean 'basic supplies', he was thinking of office staples (and he's right that we have plenty -- we have two boxes, the contents of which were enthusiastically sprinkled over the living room last week by lumi).

Moved!

Thanks to Kimmo's efforts this week plus the help of a great moving company, we are staying in our new apartment in Prague 4 tonight. Lumster already seems to like it.

war and peace

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

i finished it! 8 months, but i finished it!

i actually enjoyed it a lot. the characters are for the most part interesting, and those parts went quickly. the war-oriented parts are sometimes fascinating and sometimes quite boring. the worst thing though was the last 5% or so is all philosophy of history, and discussing to what we can attribute actions in history. he spends *way* too long on what historians are doing wrong and a comparatively short time on what he thinks is the correct way to analyze history. and then, after what seems like page after page of needless minutiae of his argument, there are large leaps of logic that i think are unfounded.

i don't intend to read this book again, but i definitely enjoyed it.

View all my reviews

Ugh

I just ate a whole thing of gummi fruits.

Fatigue

First day of teaching TD Factory week 1 solo. And I am exhausted. It was lecture all day, and lots of questions.

packing

we're packing.  the first IKEA run has happened, and the new furniture is at the new place.  most of it isn't put together yet.

preferences

i thought it would hurt my feelings when lumi began to prefer kimmo.  they say it happens with all children -- there will be phases when she prefers the mother, then others when she prefers the father.  since i was the one breastfeeding her and getting up in the middle of the night with her and attending to most of her little needs, i felt i was intellectually prepared but emotionally unprepared to be passed over in favor of my husband.

but over the last week, she sobs when she thinks he's leaving, like when he goes to park the car and we stay in one place waiting for him to come back.  yesterday we were moving stuff and had a full elevator so kimmo decided to take the stairs and meet lumi and i down in the parking garage, but lumi cried for him to carry her, so i rode the elevator alone.

and instead of making me feel sad, i feel fucking fantastic.

bribery in the czech republic

this seems insane to me:

In the case of health care, 4 percent of Czechs have experienced bribery over a medical examination and 17 percent know about someone who met with a bribe.
Moreover, 5 percent of respondents experienced bribery when committing a traffic offence and 15 percent heard about it, the poll shows.
Up to 3 percent of respondents met with a bribe when a child was admitted to kindergarten, when passing an exam at a driving school, if they wanted a quick construction permit and in the case of results of a sport game.

i smell like pee

because during our commute from home to daycare, lumi peed a *lot*.  her diaper was soaked, her onesie was soaked, her tights were soaked, her skirt was soaked, the baby carrier was soaked, and my shirt was soaked.  

normally we put on the diaper and clothes not too long before we go, and we use a prefold or flatfold and a waterproof cover.  babies normally pee a lot more in the morning than in the afternoon or evening, and her little butt is pressed into the baby carrier, so instead of her diaper being able to act like a normal sponge, it's kind of like her diaper is a sponge that is being squeezed -- it just can't hold as much.  the commute can be long, so if there are 2 or 3 big pees, the pocket diapers can't handle it and it leaks onto her clothes.  we had a lot of soaked pants before we figured out that the 'old school' setup of diaper and waterproof cover is better for first thing in the morning.  though they are less foolproof, we use the pocket diapers for the daycare place because they are just as easy as disposable, so we don't feel like we are asking them to do a lot of extra work to use cloth instead of disposable.  

anyway, lumi of course had several changes of clothes in her little box at daycare, but i am stuck with my pee shirt at the office.  it's a striped shirt and it doesn't show, but seriously, i might have to come home because i can smell the pee myself.

feeling small

i went with lumi to get a vaccine today, and she was also weighed and measured.  she is small!  her weight is well below average and so is her height.  she used to be around 50 percentile.  i feel quite strange about it, and have been plotting all day how to get her to eat more.  the funny thing is that she eats quite a bit -- sometimes it's a bit shocking how much, and it's more than other kids her age.  but i guess we need to be better about getting her protein and things like that.  she loves kidney beans, so i think we'll start giving her those for breakfast.  and she is still breastfeeding 3 times a day (or more on the weekends when we are together during the day and if she feels like she needs it -- like when she was running around the house this morning and slammed into my knee and got a bloody nose, which was a totally awesome thing to do right before we went to the doctor), but maybe we should supplement more.

Of course

Naturally, one of the booths sold these cool inflatable camouflaged machine guns with 'USA' printed on the side.

detsky den

it was children's day sometime last week, and there were a slew of celebrations all over prague this weekend.  today we met with kimmo's friends (who have 2 young boys) and went to Zamek Berchtold ( http://www.zamekberchtold.cz/ ), where there was a carnival-ish thing going on.  there were a lot of old-timey cars on display, including a mercedes originally owned by ivana trump.  :)