No matter how hard I tried the past two weeks to get the stars to align, they just seem to have other plans.  Everything appears hard, from personal goals, to my career, to Johannes’ behaviour and seasonal viruses.

But lets start with work.  After an unpleasant encounter with a new male coworker that was so obviously aggressive and personally directed at me as a woman in business left me shaken and feeling inferior, I realized I’ve been living in a little bit of a bubble.  For the most part people in the my work force have been respectful and fair.  Its been years since I’ve been made to feel like I am less capable simply due to my gender and nothing more, but this particular incident was a burst to my dreamy bubble and pretty quickly put so many issues affecting women in the workforce at the forefront of my attention.

It rocked me pretty hard and I’m ashamed to say that my first feelings were that of sadness and inferiority.  My first thoughts were that I was glad at least my boys would never have to experience this level of sexism, but somewhere along the way I realized how wrong that perception was and how dangerous my train of thought was.  Here I am, an educated woman who’s able to perform on the same level as her male counterparts with much less sleep and many more balls to juggle on a daily basis, feeling inferior from one exchange.  Is it not my responsibility to stand up for myself and demand respect? Yes it sure is.  Is it not my responsibility to model strength and confidence for my boys? Yes it is.  And is it not my job to raise men who look at women as their equal partners, irregardless of gender?  YES it sure as hell is my job.  So with those thoughts rushing through me I confronted the issue head on at work, had the talks I needed to have and moved away from the obviously toxic individual and on to more important work.

Johannes threw us a curve ball too this past week by escalating what would have been a simple accident on the playground, into a much bigger and deliberate lie.  It quickly showed both Michael and I that we most certainly don’t know everything there is to know in this parenting game, and that the old saying “the bigger the kids the bigger the problems” is so very true its almost painful.  Johannes will always be our toughest challenger and not because he’s particularly bad or disobedient, but rather because he will be the very first to put Michael and I in parenting conundrums that we wouldn’t have previously faced. We will have our firsts with him in good and in bad, and we will have to be quick, and adapt to the problems that arise on the fly.  We will undoubtedly learn from our first experiences with him and we will mould into the parents we should be.  With him everything will always be new and messy, very messy.

5/52 Johannes and his black-green-yellow-purple eye

And then of course the health front has been a beast to be reckoned with as of late.  From chest colds, fevers and ear infections, to a baby who still has a dilated kidney and now Hand Foot and Mouth disease. All in the span of two weeks.  Poor Magnus has had it all but he takes it all in stride.  He’s such a tough little guy, never really complaining about physical discomfort but going about his day as though it was all normal.  I on the other hand am not sleeping much.  I watch the monitor like a hawk and go in and out of their room a million times a night to cover them back up, to make sure there is no fever and tuck in their stuffed animals.  Maybe its my body’s way of getting ready for baby three, but sleep just cannot stick around.

5/52 Magnus happy despite having HFM

So that has been our week in a nutshell, a bit messy but I’m sure its only good things from here on out, right?!