When your travel blogs morphs to a baby blog

It has been about a month since Elle's first birthday and she has continued to thrive and be an complete joy.  Just today, she and I went to our beloved coffee shop and she was chowing down on an apple and a bran muffin, squealing in delight seeing people.  We walked, as in she held my hand and went where she wanted, around the grounds of the hotel and I put her in various chairs to big smiles and more squeals.  The evolution of her engagement with the larger world has been remarkable, even if that coming into her body and place within the world is mirrored by every kid.  

We also just got back from a great trip to Costa Rica (my work) and Miami (visiting friends).  She did great with the travel and charmed pretty much everyone she met along the way.  I wanted to take a moment and write a tribute to my amazing wife and the great project she undertook and completed with BABE blogging last month.  Being a new parent is hard.  There are so many new things happening and you care more than you can imagine about this little kiddo even if you have no idea what they want and how to keep them happy.  You have vague ideas at first and get better over time at meeting their needs.  Your love towards them is stronger than your pre-birth self can imagine.  And less sleep.  And failures.  And wanting to be better.  

Through all that, Muriel faithfully kept her schedule of blogging, and blogging heartfelt and perceptively and honestly. I am still in awe.  Some of the posts happened at obscene, crazy hours.  Okay, most of the posts.  And now she has created a fantastic record of Elle's first year.  I want to highlight a few of the reasons I am so appreciative of her work and her project. 

Parenting as a shared connection

Several days ago in Miami, we were hanging out a health store/cafe and there was another couple with a baby nearly the same age as elle. Of course we ended up talking with them, sharing some food with each other's baby and generally connecting in a way that would have been unfathomable pre-Elle.  This very same phenomena has been repeated time and time again, with fellow parents from across the globe. 

BABE posts have done that in the digital realm at a larger scale, with many of the posts generating personal and useful digital conversation. With our diffuse community and looking forward to life in the foreign service abroad, this has been very affirming.  Sharing parenting highs and lows and having others weigh in with their experience is wonderful and would have been entirely impossible in this fashion less than a decade ago. 

Mom and dad's anniversary dinner with a beloved +1

Recording Elle's first year

Parenting is usually full on in the moment and adding to that is difficult especially if trying to create a tender record of your child . Thankfully, all these digital platforms have made things much easier.  But I am really grateful that Mu has created this record of Elle's first year, and one that merges perfectly with our travelogue. As Elle turned one, I found myself going back to the beginning of BABE to read and see what was central to our collective lives a year ago.  Sometimes it recalls a great moments - bringing Elle 'home' to our airbnb - and some bad moments - re-hospitalization due to Mu's mastitis. Being able to see Elle on the blog as a 1 day old, or 1 week old, or 1 month old is such a huge contrast to her still a baby present.  

People love the baby blog

And for good reason. Elle is cute a button, oh so sweet and Mu has been wonderful in sharing her/our journey.  But I have to confess that I did not expect the shift in blog focus to Elle's first year to bring a tangible upswing in our readership of livingthekoroldream. You an see in the below chart from our blogger dashboard how Mu's blogging of Elle's first year established a new, better normal for our blog in terms of readership.  Stepping back from when we rolled this blog out, we have over 46k page views, from launch in August 2012 to June 2016. That is many, many orders of magnitude more than we ever expected.   

And Mu has crushed it with BABE authorship.  Metrics and numbers are interesting, but beyond the numbers it has been super cool to see so many loved ones throughout this year and have them already engaged with Elle's development.  It is still surprising to get to someones house and have them start talking about what was going in in Mu and elle's last week, or last month.  The continual reminder of the interaction between the digital and the physical has been surprising, as someone who loves reading and consuming digital media.  I often forget about our own digital content and that loved ones know so much more about Elle than they would have without BABE.

B.A.B.E. Week 52: Elle is 1!

When Wilson and I quit our jobs and travelled the world, I wrote a blog post about what we had learned after 100 days of travel.   It was a riff off of a section of the book Infinite Jest by one of gen X's greatest writers, DFW.  

I am going to use that same riff to write about this past year of B.A.B.E.dom.

So what have I learned in Elle’s first year?

Well...

If you ever have the great fortune of bringing a new human life into your world, you will acquire new, old, and purposely forgotten facts in that first year.  You will find that 365 days feels like a long time but it is short enough to have a laughing climbing 1 year old in front of you where a week-old newborn once slept.  

The year is short enough that you will realize that the 4-month sleep regression didn’t end until 5 months later and your darling was still sleeping in your bed at 9 months.  You will learn the centrality of the human body (its intake, sleep, excretions) and yet will forget the intensity of your own body’s abuse from bearing and birthing another human being.  That your body and needs are distant and often irrelevant.  That her tears, her laughter, her smiles are so much more than you ever imagined.

You will learn that the harsh thumping of your heart from African safaris is nothing compared to your heart’s thump of contentment as she nestles into your arms.  That, no matter what size she is, she fits like the last puzzle piece into the crook of your arm, along your torso, or seated laughing on your lap.

You will learn how little control there actually is.  That in the beginning she has to get her needs met without the ability to move or talk.   The she has  no autonomy with which to resolve her problems.  A hard role.  So as hard as it is for you to get your tasks done (or even sneak off to pee in the toilet),  at least you could grab that extension cord, wrap it tightly around your neck and chew on its electrical prongs to your heart’s content while she must deal with the frustration of the best “toys” being quickly put out of reach.

That you are lucky (or unlucky) to be dealt your particular life circumstances.   That your baby’s cries from momentary hunger or discomfort (from not wanting to close those drowsy eyes in the crib) pierce your soul and you can’t imagine how it would be to not answer that hunger with good food, or that fatigue with a safe environment.   That you are lucky for every day you don’t live in a war zone, for every kindness bestowed upon you, and every day she doesn’t throw up or cough or feel ill.

That your mind isn’t the same as it was before you became a parent. Emotions are much more potent and previously unrespected fear looms.  That you are afraid of jolting boats, cold viruses and have no tolerance for risk-taking situations at night.   That you share a connection with other parents experiencing the intensity, the fear, and the happiness.  And that happiness makes sleep deprivation laughable. 

That exploring, career, and exercise doesn’t end as a parent.  That she searches for meaning from us;  she wants what is valuable to us.  That you can be born on 5/5/2015 in Nashville, Tennessee and by 5/5/2016 travel to Utah, Las Vegas, Jamaica, Maine, Washington DC, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Panama, Cayman Islands, Bahamas islands (New Providence, Harbor Island,  Long Island, Eleuthera, Exumas, Bimini, Rose, Paradise, and Blue Lagoon), England, Switzerland, and France.  

That in order to exercise and lean into your career, you will threaten with bodily harm anyone who talks or walks too loudly and stirs your peaceful babe from her slumber.

That “sillies” and “happies” abound.  That she will giggle when she wakes, when you smile, when the world is just around her.  And that when the world is around, you obtain celebrity status because so many people notice her, talk to her, and want to make goofy smiles at your attached babe.  

That  rolling on the bed can be pure bliss.  And that it is hard to leave the contentment of home.

 

You will also learn that poop is very interesting and edibility is a shifting concept: peas, sand, or ice cream.   That your baby's refusal of spoon feeding vanishes as soon as she senses ice cream is around.  Or some days besides breastmilk, she may refuse to eat anything but sand and peas.  That breast milk poop smells much better than solid food poop.

That you will fall into the baby infrastructure trap--you need baby stuff everywhere and a lot of it.   That when you travel, your tiny human being will require much stuff... needing her own chair, spoons, cups, bed, to name a few.  And you will inevitably forget  some essential item while packing to travel or packing to come home.  It is all a war of attrition that you will lose but it won't matter because next week she may be too big for said spoon, onesie, chair, etc.

That it will pass too quickly.   Even as the rocking to sleep can feel interminable and the chasing of a diaperless bottom can shift a 30 second diaper changing session to 13 a minute diaper changing session, that all of this time wasted, isn't really a waste of time at all, it is the best of times.

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...

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.

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.

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!

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