Another far fetched change I would like to see in our society: shorter work days. I don’t think there is any real reason why we settled on 8h work days, and with the growth of productivity I see no reason why we should stay there. A shorter work day (at same pay) would allow the worker to have more time to enjoy life - and the family they chose to create.

He is learning to speak, and the latest discovery is letting me know the process of bunping into stuff (a second ago, in front of me, usually without hurting himself). He comes to me, tells me “boom” pointing at where he fell, then “aua” with the saddest face, pointing at what he supposedly hurt. Sometimes it’s even the correct spot! He often then patiently waits for a kiss on it.

My kid started hating waking up from his daily nap. I still don’t understand why or how, but at least half of the times, he wakes up so mad! And there seems to be nothing to do. At times he gets more mad if you try to comfort him. Sometimes taking in a soothing voice helps, but not always. Often giving him his pajama pants helps -and that’s the only time in the day he requires them. I don’t know if it counts as tantrum, but i can’t classify it as anything else… we usually wait it out, can take up to 20 minutes of screeching.

1.5 years old he is understanding the concept of hot, so he is learning to blow on warm food, let me know if it’s too hot and communicate this: a hand over the head is the signal for “hot”. It gets used when he passes near the oven, when I am cooking and when we serve food.

At 1.5y, diversion has started to loose its power when having to stop playing or having to leave toys. Luckily I found out that “saying goodbye” is extremely effective. It gives the kid an understanding of what is happening (we are leaving) and a moment to process the loss. So now every time we go home from the playground we say goodbye, even if there are no other people around.

“Latest hack you figured out”

As a new parent, there have been countless little hacks shared with me that really helped my life. The first one: “sometimes babies just need to cry it out” (within reason). Helped me drop the parent guilt of hearing your baby cry and not being able to fix it right away.

Latest one: if you are excited, they will likely be as well. (Experiences of potty training)

Lol! My mum still asks both me and my husband (“techy” jobs according to her) to solve all her problems with computers/printers/ the internet at large/ any app that doesn’t work… the list is endless. I take it as a statement of how proud she is of me that she would still ask us first, even if we haven’t succeeded in fixing a single issue since the time the problem was an old cartridge in the printer some 5-6 years ago.

Wow, that’s great news! Thanks for sharing! I read my father’s version, so definitely older than 1991.

I just started reading The Moon is a harsh Mistress, I’m hope it keeps up with the hype.

The two things are actually often related: junk food is faster, more accessible, stores longer, and is cheaper per calorie. So you can be hungry, skip a salad meal (that would need to be bought fresh and prepared) while having “mcdonalds”/microwave meal/high calorie meal for your leftover meal. Third has been the pattern, following US, where it is very common for the poor to eat more calories than the rich, while eating less healthy meals.

Same here!

The Netherlands has Tikkie, same thing. And my bank has instantaneous transfers all across the EU… I’ll never change bank

Absolutely, and all the people that now have the artifacts benefit in keeping the status quo, so there is effectively little push to solve a very complex problem.

I personally feel represented in at least three categories, so I’d say it does!

I’m glad to see this discussion starting gathering attention. In general, I think we should start looking more and more at car sharing over car owning: nobody needs an SUV every day, but you might enjoy a longer trip driving one. So short term rental should be incentivized to decrease the overall number of cars on the road and parking lots.

My situation has changed over the months, and the stint in which my partner was home while I was working was short, so this is based a bit on that and a bit on the following re-calibrations.

We try to divide tasks according to what we like doing. My husband likes doing the bath, while I like going out of the house with the kid. This means that those times are win-win: one parent is doing a fun task and the other is having some chill me-time. So we try to get as many of those tasks in as we can manage.

When he was home, I’d take my work commute to decompress and as soon as I was home I was in charge for at least an hour. Often, I’d be setting up a bath for the little one and my husband to enjoy. After the little one’s bath, my husband would take his own bath to chill. He would usually be responsible for dinner, but because he likes cooking and I could spend some time with the kid. After the kid was in bed, it was date time for an hour or so.

He’d have the late nights wake ups because I needed my sleep. I’d have the early morning wake ups, that were more rare.

It took a lot of communication to figure out a good balance that worked for everyone and that made us feel fulfilled. The second part became soon very important, we didn’t want to feel like all we did was changing diapers and cleaning up puke, so we needed to find things we could look forward to. Now that the kid is a bit older, it’s just fun to play with him.

This is a great concept! I’d love to see it/read more about it!

It’s already a day later! You got this, the hardest part is flowing by. How are you doing?

My little piece of advice: you don’t have to think about the future, tomorrow, next week, they are all far off. Think about now, this hour, the next 5 minutes, or whatever stretch of time seems manageable. What do you do now? Cook dinner? Watch a show? Cry in the shower? The future might be scary and too much to manage now. You’ll handle it when you get to it. Now, you only have to think about right now.

Verbena tea is calming and soothing. Lavender is relaxing. Green tea for me is a calming ritual.

You got this. Maybe it doesn’t feel like it, but you only need to do one step, and you got that one step.

As others have pointed out, it’s also a way to replace the soul of the city with something more economically interesting: clean apartments.

Amsterdam has a problem with gentrification on one side and “cheap” tourism on the other. This move seems to want to solve the later by amplifying the former…

It’s a bit confusing: the big number is not the index but the world wide ranking if the country. It’s made extra confusing because a big index is good, but a bug ranking is not…