As you can tell by the title, I’ve decided to condense my monthly recaps to quarterly recaps. I’m doing this for a few reasons. First, I’m living a lot more of my life offline since having my baby. Not that I was ever very “online,” but now there’s more happening in my days but less that I want to share. Second, on my never ending quest to simplify and ask myself “is this necessary,” I’ve realized that I can still accomplish my goals of documenting my life and sharing helpful tidbits and books with less frequency. So please enjoy the first quarterly recap (you can see more details on January if you’re interested since I did do a monthly post)!
Life
In January I shared that we had many guests coming to meet the baby – now we’re on to second round visitors! I also shared that we celebrated my and my brother’s birthdays in the city.
I celebrated life events with my friend Carly’s bridal shower and my friend Sheetal’s engagement party!
We continued to have visitors (including sleepovers!) and it makes me so happy to have a comfortable place to host.
Two big wins from this quarter has been getting out and about with the baby and the baby sleeping through the night. We’ve been to many libraries, a gym class, and he’s becoming a pro at running errands together. My confidence has increased and I’ve even eaten out with him three times now.
On the sleeping front, we did the next Taking Cara Babies class (see my review of the newborn class here) and it worked wonderfully for us. I think having a strong sleep foundation to begin with by using the first course was huge, his natural temperament, and our commitment to following the rules to a T all contributed. Let me know if a review of the 5-24 Month Collection would be useful.
Joe and I did a short getaway to our favorite place – Mohonk Mountain House (you can see our experience when we went for our honeymoon in 2020 and our anniversary in 2021). We enjoyed the views, the outstanding spa, and read in every cozy corner in the house. It was just what we needed to take a full break from the whirlwind of the last 6 months.
Books
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After reading “Expecting Better” I knew I also wanted to read “Cribsheet” by Emily Oster and a friend recommended it. I love getting learn about the actual studies and data behind common guidelines and this book delivered on many parenting topics that are important to me.
I especially got value out of the advice around childcare. The author says not to think about your childcare options as nanny v. daycare, but rather to decide between your absolute best case scenario for a nanny and your absolute best case scenario for a daycare.
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I LOVED this book. It was exactly what I needed as I searched for childcare for my baby and envisioned what it would be like to return to work. There are so many lines I highlighted that I will be returning to again and again. I mainly appreciated that the author made me feel less alone and provided practical advice for many situations I have faced and will face in the coming months.
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I feel extremely conflicted about this book. The author is a strong storyteller, the language is engaging, and the concept is unique. However, it felt very much like a lecture on how one culture is “bad” and oppressive while other cultures are simply victims.
This came to a head for me when one character betrays the rest and the author makes a halfhearted attempt to explain the rationale of that character before immediately switching back to the impact to the rest of the characters.
In the acknowledgments the author thanks people for helping her write three of her four characters with “detail and compassion.” The character she decided to cast as the villain is not mentioned and it makes me believe she did not care to have compassion for the entirety of that character’s culture. Instead of walking away from the book feeling that I learned about different perspectives on the world, I instead find that I just feel bad for everyone.
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Instead of reading books written by Maria Montessori, I decided to read a commentary/introduction to her methodology instead. I found this to be super helpful in understanding the basic principles and history of her work. My main takeaways are that Montessori wanted her method to be open rather than fixed, encouraged parents to be calm, and viewed involving children in day to day activities as the best way to support their growth.
I found myself skipping sections that went too deep into educational theory for my purposes, but overall I’m happy that I read a book focused on the original work of Montessori rather than a later interpretation.
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This was a tough novel to rate! I like Ann Patchett’s writing a lot and this book definitely kept my interest, however it was very out there. The premise is that a pharmaceutical company is investing in developing a fertility drug based on research on a tribe in the Amazon that is being studied by a small group of doctors. The development of the drug is taking much longer than anticipated, so our main character is sent to the Amazon to see what’s going on (since the research is happening a completely remote location).
There is drama and action and mystery, and as you’re reading it it all seems reasonable, but once you take a step back you think “what in the world is actually happening here?”. I landed on three stars because it’s well written, but a bit too fantastical for my taste for a work of literary fiction.
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This is another tough one to rate! It’s a historical fiction novel set in China during the 15th century. Let’s start with the things I liked. I really liked learning about the medical field during this time. I really liked understanding the expectations and power dynamics that existed within affluent families and with common people. I really liked the message I took away from the book that female friendship is essential.
What I didn’t love was the graphic descriptions of foot binding and what I viewed as the lack of depth of the characters. Things happened to them, but their reactions were simple – this is sad, this is happy, this is hard. I think this novel could have been stronger with deeper and more complex development for the main characters.
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