– 2:37 pm
I have COVID.
What’s happening?
– 9:57 am
Well for starters, your mother and I spent four and half hours last night putting together an IKEA baby changing unit. By the time we were done, I had a footprint the size of an elephant’s. I had pain all over my back from trying to be nimble with a fractured leg. It took a few yoga poses to relieve some of the tension. That I miss. Yoga that is. I’m going to attempt a class one of these days (like I usually do via the app).
The decision to put it together was a spontaneous one. We were going to do it last weekend right after assembling the bedside crib we bought from Snuz. We’d unpacked all the pieces and all it took was a glance at the manual to shelve it.
We agreed to get someone from IKEA or Airtasker to do it but Valentina (who helps us clean) volunteered her husband. They were going to pop round yesterday but six was too late for us. That’s when we decided to give it another go – terrible fucking idea!
Dear IKEA
You can do better. You really can.
Thanks
Kilian et Liza
PS – But we got it done.
Midway through this writeup, I had to dash upstairs with my drill and toolbox to help put up a blackout curtain in the second bedroom. That’s been my morning so far.
Yesterday was also day two of the NCT classes we’ve been taking. This session was about labour and childbirth. I took some notes. Honestly, I have not the faintest clue why anyone would want to put their body through pregnancy and childbirth. It ranges from uncomfortable to downright excruciating throughout. But your mother keeps repeating the female hormones override any input from a logical standpoint. Good thing I’m not the one who has to bring you into this world. You’d be abandoned son. I would never do it.
What else? Umm… We bought another sofabed to go in the studio downstairs. I foresee myself sleeping in there a lot, especially if I have to work while your mother is on maternity leave. There is currently no reason to believe you will spare us and sleep throughout the night. Most babies won’t and you won’t be any different. I’m prepping for the worst-case scenario. But the idea is a catch-all for anyone who offers us help and needs a bed. It gives us flexibility.
I also started reading Cribsheet by Emily Oster. It’s a data-driven approach to parenting. I read the chapter on circumcision this morning when I woke up. I was but you won’t be. Medically speaking, there is no real reason to get it. Historically, it’s more for cultural and religious reasons. And we know where I stand on the latter. You can be circumcised at any point in your life so if you decide otherwise when you’re older then it’s your choice.
Ah yes, you’ll be on a plane again tonight. This time to Riga. Your mother is flying out for a work conference. It’s a project she spent a solid six months working on and this event unites all her “Central and Eastern grantees”. You’d have to ask her what that means.
I just had to help her put on compression tights as she’s too big to do it herself now. They are also quite tight to be fair. You’ll get to hang out with your grandparents. I joked she could bring anything but COVID back. I still have a bad cough I seem unable to shake. Thinking about it, I wonder if I should get it checked out…
Anyway, I have to run. The car needs cleaning and charging. I have to drive myself to the hospital and back tomorrow morning for a progress update and an X-ray. The part of the leg which had an infection just won’t heal. We’ve been managing it with iodine since Friday but I’m keen to speak to Mr Culpan about it. It’s doing my head in quite frankly.
Also worthy of note are the Braxton Hicks contractions your mother reported having. I think it may be prudent doing a dry run to the hospital and finding a 24 hour and over car park. I have a ticket raised on my Trello board to complete this task. I want to minimise uncertainty on d-day as much as possible. Where to park shouldn't be something to worry about.
She major
– 5:12 pm
Well, if at the time of reading this you haven’t figured this out by now, your mother’s a lot of things. One of those is, “great at her job”. She’s currently in Riga small talking with the President of Latvia and Google’s Global VP. Oh and this isn’t her first encounter with world rulers. She’s very much one of those successful corporate women who can lead the masses (but can’t pack a dishwasher).
– 11:52 am, Wednesday, June 22
Here’s what someone said about her on LinkedIn, (and not for the first time).
Last but not least, meeting Liza Belozerova and seeing how adored she is by the organizations that Google.org supports in this region. It speaks volumes of her work, commitment and results.
– 8:19 pm, Tuesday, July 12
I had to return to this post with an update. Liza just sent me the feedback Karan (Global VP, Google) sent her Manager about her and the role she played during this event. The screenshot she received (from Rowan I believe) came with “NOBODY has ever received this from him. Ever.” which makes it even more awe-inspiring and formidable.
I wanted to drop you a note about Liza Belozerova, who I've had a chance to interact with a bit from time to time in the past couple of years, but really engaged with for a few days during my recent visit to CEE. It started with an event that she had organized (with Rowan's guidance and engagement!) of CEE dot-org grantees, as part of a several day convening in Riga. ... She was terrific -- great stage presence, energetic, humble, smart, personable and strong domain expertise. And then she joined me for a meeting with the Latvian President, to explain what it was Dot org was doing. Totally unphased by meeting a head-of-state, she did a great job explaining all the great work that Dot org does. (The President was quite interested and had lots of follow-up questions which she fielded.) ... From everything I understand from the GAPP team in the region, she's also a great day-to-day partner in many ways that I don't get to see. ... I know she's out on mat leave (the fact that she lead such a full agenda while 8.5 months pregnant made it even more impressive!), so it will be a while til she gets the feedback, but just wanted to let you know that she really impressed and you have a very grateful xfn partner! Best- Karan
Dry run
– 11:46 am
Yesterday, we attended good friends Wez and Nic’s birthday party for their one-year-old Alfie. Hard to believe it’s been a year already. He’s massive now. I’ve watched him and his elder brother Stanley grow into the boys they are today, from infancy. It’s incredible how fast they grow. I always wondered if kids remember these parties as teens or adults. What’s their version of events? How would they retell it? I found this to be equally interesting and enlightening.
The party was full of toddlers running around, dipping or sliding in and out of either ball pit or tunnel; watchful parents screaming and yelling from the stands, spectating over the entire Olympic event. There were some jaw-dropping performances, some inconsolable losers and others who simply enjoyed the privilege of being allowed to participate. You could see it on their faces. It was a great atmosphere.
Also present, in almost an entire section of the stands, were the grandparents, in a world of their own. I imagine all they talked about was what it’s like to be that age and how things used to be. The past.
My interactions with people revolved around the miracle of being crutch-free just six or so weeks into a double open fracture leg break. Charlie was there as well. It’s always great to see him of course. We got to meet his girlfriend Victoria. To put it extremely harshly, he’d been sleazing around till now. Liza said she seemed nice. So I am thrilled for him.
I hadn’t seen Wez’s brother Dan in a while. The Browns seem to be losing a lot of weight, at least between Wez and Dan. The latter is training to be a fireman, said he had his fitness test coming up. He seemed psyched talking about running into burning buildings and rescuing “damsels in distress”. Frankly speaking, he looks the part.
Liza caught up with another blue-eyed couple, Bucket and Shell – not sure why we called him Bucket and come to think of it, I don’t know Bucket’s real name. It’s unsurprising though, there’s a lot of that going around. Shell is an NHS nurse and they just had their daughter. The spitting four-month-old was a joy to carry and calm the entire time. Apparently, this is a reflection of the parents. The babies just copy their moods.
They advised to “sleep when the baby sleeps, the both of ya. You’ll need it”. Interestingly, and I think I heard this from Marc as well, they said not to tiptoe around the house. “Carry on as usual, with the same amount of noise so the baby gets used to it. Otherwise, you’d get to a place where you’re hush-hushing each other all the time and you don’t want that”. They gave us great tips.
We left a couple of hours later to complete the second task of the day – do a dry run to the hospital to a 24/7 valet car park. The drive took about an hour and a half, with intermittent heavy traffic. We found the place easily enough. In fact, we’d parked at the entry before, on one of the hospital visits. My “leg doctor” is also within walking distance from it. We just didn’t know it was there but now we do. So that’s one less prep task to think about. An important one at that.
From there we walked to Chotto Matte in Marylebone to make our 7 pm reservation. The plates were delightful, the cassava wedges were very good, and the sauces exceptional. I love octopus in any state, and the padrón peppers were exquisite. It was a good day. Hope you enjoyed it.
Really!?
Sleeping on feathers
– 4:42 pm
Your mother has a weekly with Dr Erskine. It’s ongoing until you’re born. She sent me an update not long ago.
Baby nowhere near to being born for at least another 10 days she says. She did an internal exam (painful 🥴)
This can only be her doing. I told her she’s keeping you way too comfortable. Who wants to leave a five-star hotel? Shiiiii! Not me.
Turns out the contractions have also been doing dry runs…
says that baby movement that feels intense and wakes me up at night and feels tiring is actually practice contractions
I need to get some food in me — likely something from Deliveroo. We don’t have a k… I didn’t mention that did I? Right. So the last big major house update pre-baby is the kitchen. We’re getting it re-done. Our place currently looks like a crackhouse.
Which reminds me, I need to message Kostia to pick up the remaining bits of the previous kitchen. He’s Liza’s childhood friend. We hosted them on the weekend with his wife and two (well-behaved) kids. He couldn’t grab the entire kitchen yesterday as some units were still standing. But I think they’re all down now.
A man now
– 8:39 am
We were in the same room when she sent me this. I may have been in the shower perhaps. But isn’t it fascinating that we communicate in this way even when face to face? I wonder if your generation will see it as anything other than normal.
Anywho, you are now officially of age to come out into this crazy world. There’ll be a shit show waiting for ya when you do. But hopefully, we can help you navigate through it.
Wave
– 1:20 pm
I walked limped out to meet your mother at the bus stop. She got you a couple of hats, the baguette I requested and I assume some nursing bras. The latter is why she went out in the first place. She’s struggling with the heat today, currently 26o. It feels hotter though. She’s upstairs, my guess, in front of the Dyson. The week coming is apparently going to be just as hot, if not hotter.
Downstairs is where you want to be in such scenarios. It’s like having the AC on without the hefty bill at the end of the month. Shame a homeless person still wouldn’t crash here with all the kitchen works ongoing.
You’ve met Nate right? ‘Course you have! Anyway, I got him to make some tweaks to the website, nothing intrusive, a half-hour job he said. For example, if you scroll down to the end of this page, you’ll notice Newer posts “New diapers” and Older posts “Old diapers“. I think it’s quite wry and relevant all things considered.
Nate didn’t know what the site was for when he got it up. He had one of those shower moments guessing it was for you. But he’s inevitably now seen a few (private) posts – it’s still not public. I think he loves the idea.
Christ! Your mother just walked into this screen. I wonder if she’s pieced this all together and is just playing dumb. That’s very unlikely though. She wouldn’t be able to not talk about it if she knew. She took me upstairs to show me what was in her hospital bag. It has all your outfits in separate ziplock bags. Each bag is labelled with its contents on a post-it note. Neat.
The morning after
– 10:09 am
Last night, your mother said ‘something’ had changed. She’s feeling different sensations and types of pain, in different areas. She spent the night struggling to find a comfortable position to get some shuteye, in vain, unfortunately. Her breathing is loud and a lot heavier too. She might need a lot more hugs today. I’ll try to fix that.
Her inhales and exhales woke me up and kept me up. So I decided to edit a post I’d copied over from Notability. I think I’ve migrated all but one. For the most part, she slept through the click-clacking. I was consciously light on the keyboard though.
After her breakfast, she’s going to help complete the form for a Google accelerator program. It’s for Manu and I’s startup idea. We’ve been working on it for some time now. And at this stage, all we need is resource.
Bits and pieces
– 9:17 am
I woke up at about six this morning, and couldn’t get back to sleep. Nothing new. So I decided to start the Sunday early.
Work on the kitchen was completed Thursday. We spent that evening and bits of Friday putting things back into new homes. Good thing we’d boxed everything properly in the first place with clear labels etc. So the job was easy enough. They’ll install the worktop in a fortnight. For now, we have (temporary) thin boards across the kitchen top. But it renders the kitchen functional which we longed for. So we won’t be pernickety about it. (I learned that word from your mother. She’ll probably laugh if she gets to read this someday).
The fitter left a pile of trash in the “garden” which should be collected tomorrow.
I spent most of yesterday filling in the holes the previous kitchen shelf left in the wall. Once done, I painted off most of the stains in and around that area, especially around light switches. They had dirty fingers all over them. My last thought as I went off to bed was how visibly bumpy the filling had been. Annoying mini mountains on the wall. They’ll need a thorough sanding down.
So this morning, I bought a Bosch sander which should be delivered by ten this evening, as promised by Amazon. I love a Bosch product, got a couple already. (Your mother is obsessed with the TV series). I’ll work that wall till it’s smooth and unnoticeable.
We got to the Farmer’s Market around one. Late for a Saturday. Most of the stalls were closing and packing away. So there really wasn’t much to see beyond folding tables and things being thrown into vans. We got some a shit tonne of cheese and left. From home, we drove to Moat Farm to get Simon’s eggs and catch some air. While at it, we bought some grass-like plants to replace the dying ones at home. (Contrary to my advice, your grandmother bought a bunch of plants which have now died. Lavender, thyme, some flowery plants… RIP)
“Packing a hospital bag” was also on yesterday’s checklist. A couple of T-shirts, some underwear, a pair of shorts and chinos. Done. I also tossed in the Nintendo I never play. I bought it under the illusion I could fabricate some time or use it on long-haul flights. Or flights of any kind. Neither has happened. It’s more of a knick-knack now if I’m being truthful. But the dream lives on. Maybe I’ll get lucky when your mother’s giving birth. Even writing it now sounds absurd.
I just heard the curtains draw open. Liza’s up. And walking down the stairs. Time to hide this screen. I just kissed her bump you good morning. She requested some coffee which I just made. So now she’s trying to figure out her breakfast. Same as always I imagine –granola, yoghurt… I brought some honey back from Cameroon which she can’t part ways with. It goes into everything. It does taste great to be fair.
Last night, Liza complained about the fake contractions and the discomfort they bring. Unfortunately, the physical part of pregnancy is a solo ride. The rest of us can just observe and be present. It’s a silent, passive but equally important role in itself.
Summer creature that she is, this heat is fatiguing for her to be or walk in. The other day, the strap in her sandals snapped from her feet swelling so much. But we both agree to sunshine over Winter any day of the week.
Last week Dr Erskine repeated you’re nowhere near coming out. Friday gone made you 38 weeks.
Ah yeah, I bought a Dyson – the V11 Absolute Plus, brand new on eBay. A cordless vacuum cleaner, easy on the wrist and manoeuvrable. It’s by contrast something that doesn’t require you dragging out a hoover to clean small messes (like the ones created by babies). As is the case with most Dyson products, it’s multifunctional and extremely versatile.
However, it came with the wrong wall mount. So I spent more time than I would’ve liked to, trying to figure out why it didn’t fit before coming to that conclusion. This is after tinkering with the stand we bought for it and googling around helplessly for whys. Right after emailing the seller, I bought a replacement which should arrive Monday. Hopefully, he – could be she – refunds me enough to cover the replacement purchase. At least some of it.
Side note, I wonder what happened to the person we had to make an emergency landing for. I hope they’re OK.
Other tasks await. Must go. BBQ later. Ciao.