The Joy of Not Cooking

My mom made us get a microwave. She offered to buy one, even the very particular now discontinued Sharp Half Pint. I didn't let her take me shopping for the microwave. Mostly because I would always rather spend the day with her and Joaquin at the park. But after her last visit, she commented that Brenda looked really excited at the idea of a microwave. Since Brenda is the best nanny I could ever have hoped for and a gift to my life that I thank at least once a week, I decided we needed a microwave.
One rainy day in January, Daniel, the baby and I drove to Target. We picked out the smallest microwave they had.
Oh so quickly I fell in love with this new fangled gadget. I microwaved sweet potatoes- Joaquin's favorite- in minutes. His oatmeal no longer meant a crusted pan in the sink all day. And on and on. Why didn't anyone tell me, I mean really look me in the eye and tell me that a toddler needs a microwave. A need a microwave more than I need a baby monitor, or a even a crib (he sleeps in a portable pack-n-play).
So while I am waxing poetic about my microwave, Joaquin's scrambled egg is cooking in a minute and a half in a little ramekin. Perhaps serving microwaved eggs to your kid is crossing the line. But the clean-up so easy. The funny part is now when Joaquin is hungry, he stands in front of the microwave and does a pointing-wiggling-and-fussing kind of dance. He thinks that's where food comes from. A magic silver box.

Bluegrass Foot Stompin'

I love it when Joaquin dances. Some parents teach their kids the colors, I am teaching him dance moves. He can do a twirl. We ask him to 'dar vuelta' and he turns around.

Little Firefighter

We play at Habitot, a great Berkeley little children's play place. With all the recent rain, we have been there often.

At the park

Ive been short on photos and post lately. Here are a few pictures taken with my new-to-me iphone.

Part-time

I really like my job.

I can't remember that last time wholeheartedly felt that way about work. Ask Daniel or my friends, I do not live to work. My ambitions in life for career grandeur are fleeting. Quickly replaced by dreams of living in a foreign country, by sabbatical years, by trying my hand at hairdressing, teaching, writing, by summers of hiking the grand canyon and staying home with my babies. My most common experience with work is finding it a nuisance that keeps me from being where I want to be- outside, with time unstructured.

Yet, these days I can honestly say that I really like my job as a senior policy advocate at The Vote Solar Initiative. It could be that I have five very clever co-workers and office mates that make showing up in our unheated, warehouse space worthwhile. It could be that after a year and a half, I have gotten the hang of the complicated solar policy design that we promote. The work I do is anything but rote- the outcomes of solar policy are yet to be proved. Often we are learning as we go or from a small set of experiences. It makes it all very interesting, and challenging. It could be that I only go into the office three days a week. Three days a week is the perfect amount to make the thinking and the completing of tasks a treat.
Part-time is all part of my Grand Plan. The baby was just a stepping stone in the Grand Plan to work part-time. In American working society, part-time employment does not exist in jobs that are interesting, substantive and well-paid. I know I looked for them. Americans are productive. And if you can do something well, your boss wants you to do it as much as you can. That's 40 hours or more. So with the Grand Plan in mind, I spent the first year at Vote Solar as a full time employee. I knew once I had a baby that I would have the leverage I needed to request to move to part-time. And it worked. The recession worked in my favor of requesting less hours and less pay. The less pay is taking some getting used to.
However, part-time now doesn't allow for afternoon bike rides, and all day craft projects. But nonetheless, the result is that I enjoy work more than ever. For most people that's a rare thing, for me even moreso.

Here's the team at Vote Solar. This picture is either our album shot or a police line-up.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

I often think of Joaquin as a small animal.
Joaquin is now a little copycat, a little monkey do, a little parrot.
If I turn off the stereo with my toe, since he is in my arms. He needs to wiggle down and try to turn off the stereo with his toe. If I blow my nose, he blows his nose.

He has learned several more words.
I left him parked in the grocery store and returned from picking out mushrooms to Joaquin exclaiming "apple" over and over again. Indeed he was in front of a very large display of no less than 6 varieties of apple.
He says egg, and stuck. He was sitting in Daniel's lap tonight and I looked at Daniel and wondered- did he just say milk? But then he signed very clearly the sign for milk and I realized he did.
He says "all done" as he signs all done. And he says bye, bye. Quite a few words.
Daniel is now admitting he may take after my side of the family when it comes to language. We took him on a hike on today's gray January afternoon and he babbled to himself when he was not eating or sleeping. Granted most of the time he is not eating or sleeping, he is babbling to be let out of the stroller to walk.

Mama Love

Joaquin does say mama these days. Not really to refer to me, but more as a mantra that makes him feel good.
I am posting below a screen shot of my computer desktop. I swear Joaquin posted that picture of me himself. I had open a folder of my pictures on my laptop since he likes looking at his family and himself. As he was typing wildly on the keyboard he managed to set this photo as the desktop wallpaper.

That's me, several months pregnant at the wedding of my good friends Erin and Emil. mamamamamamamamamamamama.