Weeknotes: 2022, week 9

[28 Feb – 6 Mar]

Two weeks ago was my last of paternity leave as such. Since last week I'm on a different type of absence: a shorter one that is given to parents of lactating babies to make it easier for them to feed the child while at work. In principle it's one hour less of work per day for a certain period of time, but I chose to concentrate it all in whole days, and that gave me an extra couple of weeks completely off work. (That's what most other parents choose to do too, for what I hear.)

Some days we had a few fights with Miss Entropy. Tantrums, noes, whims… Some days she's lovely, but others she links one annoying behaviour with the next, and it exhausts diplomacy and persuasion (and patience). On Wednesday, for instance, I had plans to go out in the evening to meet two different groups of people, each for a short while; but I was so tired from dealing with the kids that I ducked out in the last minute and didn't even go out. I was in a bit of a bad mood. Fortunately an hour or two of isolation late at night, when everybody else was in bed, made me some good. Thank $DEITY for the night! If only one didn't need to sleep…

We resumed Miss Entropy's swimming “lessons” after having skipped the previous two weeks. She mostly likes that little weekly adventure, and we're glad that we started so early taking her to a place where she learns something that will gradually become “swimming”.

Breaker of Horses for his part had three more nights of irregular sleep and a little complaining. He's hoarse and has a running nose. The good news is that we spotted a tiny incisor peeking out in his mouth, and so we think it's likely that all that discomfort is just the benign symptoms of his first teeth coming out. Speaking of teeth: one of my wisdom teeth (or the place where one of them is supposed to be, or used to be) started aching on Sunday. I was a bit alarmed and feared the worst (and joked that my son and I are both at the exact same developmental stage). Spoiler: the pain eased in the next few days.

I started reading Stefan Zweig's “The Royal Game” (also known as “Chess Story”).

Thursday was rainy, but Miss Entropy and I made the best of the weather by going out for a little walk (her in her cute little welly boots) to look for snails (grand total: zero spotted) and to step in all the puddles (that much we did). On Friday it was still cloudy. Still, that rain was much needed here (read: in Madrid region, in Spain as a whole), so: it was good weather!

On Friday I called to book a test drive with the Volkswagen ID.4 that we saw three weeks earlier (more about that on the next weeknotes). And in the afternoon, our friends C. and her parents came home for coffee and snacks. My parents came to visit another day, too.

Saturday dawned sunny and pleasant, so we picked up some stuff, took the car and went out, and ended up spending most of the day outdoors. Some of that was a handful of errands (do those ever end?), like dropping a few old objects at a recycling centre, and in the evening, going to the supermarket and to the pharmacy. But our main activity was a hike in Dehesa Boyal, an area of hills which we hadn't visited yet in a town nearby. My wife carried Breaker of Horses in his little rucksack. Miss Entropy walked quite a lot: roughly half of the route; and the other half I carried her in our big carrier backpack. In total, we were out there for ~2h10′ and walked ~3.5 km. We encountered very few people, the weather was nice, and we enjoyed it quite a lot!

On Sunday we went to join my wife's family for a very abundant and unhurried lunch at one of her sisters' place. Plenty of delicious (and relatively unhealthy) home-made dishes, and plenty of laughs. Miss Entropy was lovely and attracted so much attention. It was “late” when we got back home: ~20:00. The kids by that time are usually tired (so were we last Sunday), and the whole evening routine up to the moment they're asleep in bed becomes a bit harder. (Extended) family time is worth it, though.

Toot thread of the week: