Weeknotes: 2022, week 8
[21–27 Feb]
As I hinted the week before, Breaker of Horses continued with his spell of bad nights for another four or five days straight. No fever, luckily — but waking up often in the middle of the night, doubling up and crying. One day for instance I had to wake up around 7:00am (yes, that's waking up “early” for us now), take him with me to the living room, and soothe and rock him to sleep. We don't know what it was all those nights (gas? teeth? digestion? nightmares?), as is often the case with little babies. We simply saw he had no fever or other visible symptoms, that whatever was wrong subsided on its own after ten minutes or a few hours at most, and that it happened only at night (and only for a few nights), so our heuristic was that it couldn't be too important, and we didn't even contemplate going to the emergency room or calling our GP in the morning. I guess not being rookies at the child-rearing game any more gives us some advantage. Some nights were tough and my wife and I were tired; others not so much and we functioned well during the day anyway.
On Monday my wife joined her family on a yearly tradition: they went hiking (even stepped on a bit of snow) and then had lunch together. I took care of the kids at home in the meantime. A couple of days last week my parents came along for lunch and to stay with the kids. On Wednesday we felt lazy and ordered paella by phone (no, we do not eat paella every day in Spain!). We wished my little brother a happy birthday. He lives abroad, so we did it over IM and videoconferences. And over the weekend, my uncle and aunt were visiting in Madrid: we had a pleasant, long lunch at an Italian restaurant nearby, and then spent the afternoon all together at home with coffee and the delicious biscuits my mum cooked.
My wife is typically going to the office two days a week now, and working from home the other three days. That is close to ideal, I think. Anyway, her office is less than 30′ away by foot from our place (that's the main reason we live where we live), so her little commuting does not introduce much disturbance into our routine (and I'm still on parental leave anyway, and thus available anytime 🪖).
On Friday Miss Entropy got to wear her home-made Carnival costume all day at her nursery school. All the kids looked very cute (mine a little bit more than the others, needless to say).
Sometimes Miss Entropy hits her little brother, or kicks him “playfully”. She just doesn't seem to grasp that poking him in the face or in the eyes, or squeezing his little hand, is very annoying, or even painful, to him. We always watch them closely when they're together, even as we do our chores and move from one room to another, so usually nothing happens. But a few times we have had to be more assertive and abrupt and yank on her arm to move her away from him. It isn't nice, but she has to learn; and fortunately it's true that little kids can complain and yell and kick intensely for a minute… and then forget all about it the minute after, and even go back to being reasonable and lovely!
On the new (electric?) car front, one of the evenings my parents were around, wife and I sneaked out to go and see two new candidates: the Kia EV6 and the Hyundai Ioniq 5. We liked them both, more or less as much as the other two or three contenders. She didn't love the straight lines and the retro-futuristic vibe of the Ioniq 5, though — but on the more objective and important dimensions (price, range, height, room, storage) they all score similarly.
Toot of the week: