Tuesday, April 26, 2016

B.A.B.E. Week 51: The work goal


So my work goal was to take a few minutes at the start of each work day to write a plan of action for the day.  And I really liked the idea of this goal but the execution was difficult.  That's the thing with goals -- not usually easy or they wouldn't be goals.
Learning to CHEERS!
In any case, when I stuck with this plan of action goal, I believe that it helped with my overall productivity but I am not sure.  It certainly helped me be more proactive rather than reactive.  But I found myself adding way too many things to my to do list and not being able to accomplish them.



Trying to accomplish too many tasks in one day relates to how I think that so much of the modern condition is about being over committed, over stimulated, etc.  As I write this, it is 1:10 am, I am tired, am trying to finish some stuff for work, and I have a gazillion web-tabs open and a bunch of documents.  



But luckily as I write this and don't sleep, Elle is sleeping peacefully and continues to grow and develop.  She is moving a lot now (crawling, pushing walkers, twisting out of diaper changes, etc.)  She is also babbling a lot and often sings.  And finally, she really likes "high fives" and "cheers".

Becoming an escape artist...
And.. back to work and because I need to get this work stuff done and in the spirit of stopping the over commitment and over stimulation, I am going to finish this blog post now -- let the pictures do the talking and save my reserves for the last blog post of the series next week.


Check out the giant onion...




Wednesday, April 20, 2016

B.A.B.E. Week 50: the baby goal



I have now blogged about the completion or incompletion of 2 out of the 4 babedom goals.  Today, am going to blog about the "baby" goal.  My goal has always been deceptively simple - providing Elle with a healthy environment.  In other words, making sure that Elle's emotional, mental, and physical needs have been met.



I feel extremely lucky that providing Elle with a healthy environment has felt easy for the last 11+ months (knock on wood).   For so many moms across the world, it is certainly not easy to meet their babies physical needs, and maybe also their emotional and mental needs as well.  But for us, our basic needs are met (food, housing, security, healthcare) and we can transfer those physical needs on to Elle quite easily, especially since Elle's health is good.



Providing Elle's mental and emotional needs has also been a joy, not a burden   Mentally, it is so easy to engage her in learning about her world.  And as human beings, I think that we instinctually understand ways to play with our babies to help them learn.   To me, Elle seems so smart as she tries to navigate using a spoon to feed herself or explores her world.



Incidentally, I think that Elle may have finally really gotten her first word "mom".   In the past, I have blogged about her signing milk or saying bye.  Unfortunately, these milestones haven't truly been repeated so we aren't counting them as her first communication.  In contrast, Elle seems to call for me "mom" or "mama"  or has told me "mom" in quiet moments when we are cuddling.   She also now
points to my nose when I ask:  "where is mama's nose?"



And emotionally providing for Elle's needs as a full-time working mama hasn't felt as difficult as I anticipated for a few reasons:  (1) Wilson is such a great caring loving dad that he plays a huge role in fulfilling her emotional needs as well; (2) When I am not working, I am almost always with Elle and being with Elle means that it is a pleasure to respond to her emotionally; and (3) Working from home allows me the flexibility to take breaks and see Elle.

Friday, April 15, 2016

B.A.B.E. Week 49: Good, Bad & Ugly of a week in NYC



Elle and I have been living it up in NYC since Friday.   We came here because my niece, Elle's cousin, had the opportunity to play at the 125 year old Carnegie Hall.  And luckily the trip coincided  with a few other events both personal and work related.

On the personal side, we have gotten to see many beloved friends -- one who had a new baby boy!  (Yea!)  and another who flew in on a red eye from San Francisco so that we could have a girl's weekend with Elle and her loquacious 2 year old daughter  (My SF friend is 7 months pregnant and has incredible strength and stamina).   Seeing beloved friends in Connecticut and across NYC (Upper West Side, Chelsea, and TriBeCa), spending time with family who flew in from CA and TN, and doing a little work has made for a very busy time and Elle and I have experienced "the good, bad, and ugly."



But to be honest it is very much mostly good.

The Ugly

Our "ugly"  was getting splinters in our hands.  Seriously.  Elle and I had paused on the boardwalk along the water



and somehow managed to get splinters in our hands within seconds of each other. I was pretty distraught to have hurt Elle and so rushed to try to find a pharmacy to obtain tweezers to try to pull the splinter out.  I was nervous because it was just Elle and me and I didn't know how I would manage to hold her hand and tweeze out the splinter.  Right then, I passed a Japanese spa and decided to walk in and ask if they had tweezers and could help.  I was lucky that I did and that they were so nice because they had sterilized tweezers and it took a big effort (with a lot of crying) to get the splinter out.  But we persevered and succeeded.  I was so grateful!

The Bad

The only "bad" from this trip is on the sleep/restoration aspect.  In order to see as many beloveds as possible, Elle and I have been sleeping across the whole New York City area and frankly our sleep has suffered.  Especially Elle's.  She has had to sleep in new surroundings almost every night, and honestly she has outperformed reasonable expectations about all that change.  Add to the strange surroundings is the fact that we are rarely near a place where she can sleep fully during the day.  Instead she has had to grab cat naps in her carrier or whenever she can.  So with disrupted sleep at night and minimal naps during the day, it hasn't been the most optimal rest for Elle.

The Good

Spending all this concentrated time with Elle in so many situations drives home how it feels like there are 1000s of moments of little joys, which arise when I am with her.  So many that they flit across my consciousness and many leave no lasting memory just the impressions of happiness.




A few examples of joy moments that I do remember from this week come from strangers reacting so positively to Elle.   Random people on the subway and throughout New York City are enthralled with her.  In fact, one woman who played with her on the train said that she had been having a rough day but Elle's smiles and engagement had made her day better.   A homeless man complimented Elle on her bow as we walked out of the subway and loved her smiles at him so much that he told her "I love you" as we passed out of earshot.   Other people laugh at her giggles and excitement of being out in the city.



Her joy also makes me see more clearly the joy of my sister's kids, Elle's cousins.  The four who are here with us range in age from 8 to 16 and they are so terrifically sweet with Elle.  My heart expands in happiness as I see the affection and tender interactions they give to Elle.



I see even more clearly how lucky I am to have them as nieces and nephews.  I also feel so lucky to see beloved friends love on Elle.   And it has also been so wonderful to see Elle Catherine Sarah Korol's aunts.  Her aunts Catherine and Sarah are such amazing mamas and they shower all those mama skills on our joyous Elle.  We have had so many good moments this trip with both friends and family.

We feel so so so so grateful.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

B.A.B.E. Week 48: 11 months today!



Elle celebrated her 11 month birthday today by bona-fide crawling yesterday.   I think that we have been in the blissful "put her in one spot" happy baby stage for too long and karma may just catch up to us.  As her nanny said today, "Elle plays rough."  And it's true.  She already likes to wrestle,  she enjoys 'running' more than assisted walking, and tends to be pretty grabby with her friends - so we will see what the future holds.


To be honest, a tough or rough girl suits her family's "team of three" lifestyle pretty well.  We are both always pushing to do more/see more/experience more.  And while I complain to Wilson regularly, probably every weekend, to let me sleep and relax more, he keeps me and Elle in the exploration spirit of "B.A.B.E."dom.

With Elle's "older man" wrestling partner
So how is the exploration goal going?  Well my goal is super easy here, just blog about the adventures that Wilson drags me on.   We explored this past week -- visiting another one of the Bahamas 700 islands.  Visiting other islands (besides the very close small little ones) in the Bahamas is actually no small feat.  For the other 20 or so inhabited islands, you usually have to fly to them.  There are only a couple that offer ferry or high speed boat service and at $150-$200 for a roundtrip, flying is just as affordable.


So this weekend, we flew to Long Island, which is one of the islands most damaged by Hurricane Joaquin.
  

Wilson was there for work to see how the island had recovered and Elle and I met him there for the weekend.   Luckily, it seems that the island has recovered pretty well, although there are still remnants of the category 4-5 hurricane throughout the parts of the island that I saw.   This island enjoys a lot of outside connections and has been able to bring in the resources needed to rebuild.

It is a stunning island.  With small cliffs off the coast and the deepest salt water blue hole in the world.  Snorkeling around it felt like staring into the abyss.  

We also went to where Christopher Columbus may have touched ground in the New World.  A natural gorgeous bay that we had all to ourselves for the whole day.  It was worth the no see-um bites...To see more pics, check out the blog that Wilson wrote when he visited last year....Happy Explorations!


Friday, April 1, 2016

B.A.B.E. Week 47: Failing on the "Body" goal



Right now Elle is developing at an enormously quick rate.  She is extraordinarily happy but is definitely letting us know when she is not  -- squinting her eyes to gear up for a fake cry or getting a little mad.  It is incredible to watch these emotions, and seemingly many more, fly across her face.   In addition to the emotions flying across her face, she often likes to hit her head in an "oh no" fashion when she is eating.  We have absolutely no idea what this is about.   Wilson and I certainly don't do this.  And even though we are sometimes nervous that she is hurting herself, it is pretty cute to see her with the "doh" like expression.



 She is also walking quite well while holding our hands and directing us into different rooms.  For example, when she wakes up in the morning and if she doesn't see her dada (who is away for work), she directs me to walk into our bedroom to check if he is there.  Sadly for both us, he was not.




She is also continuing to enjoy playing with other babies and kids, other 'little people.'  She has a 2 year old friend who  doesn't seem to mind when she grabs his hair and pulls as hard as she can.  In fact, there have been a few wrestling sessions between them that she appears to be fully delighted by....


I admire how strong Elle is as she discovers her body.  This week, I am reporting on my own "body" goal from Week 42.  When I named this blog series, I liked the acronym – “Baby, Aspirations, Body, Exploration”  but wasn’t thrilled about shortening the health and fitness aspect to “Body”.  For me, “Body” is the wrong emphasis.  I strive to focus on health and fitness.   That said, my body goal of eating at least 60 percent plants 5 days a week has only occurred 1 week out of the past 4 weeks! Fail.

I am surprised by how hard it is because I consider myself someone who loves fruits and vegetables.  I didn't realize a month ago how difficult it is to actually eat mostly plants.   Some of the difficulty has come from the large role that proteins can play in a meal.   Secondly, living in the Bahamas with its food challenges of hardly any locally grown produce doesn't help.  Another difficulty is how I crave oatmeal or toast in the morning.   It is interesting because I often eat a large bowl of oatmeal filled with cut up banana, apple, frozen berries, etc.  And even though that seems healthy, the meal isn't actually 60% plants.  It is usually only 40% plants... 60 oatmeal/40 plants. 

So while I will continue to concentrate on eating more plants,  I actually think that  the quest for a “perfect” body is a quixotic quest because perfection is always moveable.  This quest is also morally questionable because I don’t like the concept of placing certain bodies at a premium over other bodies.  It also feeds into other troubling cultural and societal norms such as deriving an individual’s worth primarily from what they look like.

That said, focusing on a certain body outcome can provide a “stick” not to eat everything in sight.  Our demographic is incredibly lucky to afford to buy food basically anywhere and everywhere.   And the easy access makes it hard to resist the constant barrage of food.  We live lives frequently tempted by thousands and thousands of empty calories.  Those empty calories (and the non-empty ones) expand our waistlines and derail our health and fitness. 


But the conclusion that I am coming to is that I ultimately need to continue my reframing to focus on vegetables and leave the body stick behind for many reasons.  First and foremost, I don’t want to pass along any negative and perverse messages about body image to Elle.  I want her to have the freedom to focus on her body as a tool to experience the world and not an end to itself. The appearance of “body” is such a small part of what health and fitness means.   Health and fitness is about calm, fun, strength, peace, longevity, and joy.  All the things that I want to pass along to Elle…
Cuddling/playing in the bath with Colby