Category Archive

international

Will I be left out in my own home due to a language barrier with my kids?

Will I be left out in my own home due to a language barrier with my kids?

My boyfriend and I have been together for a long time and marriage is in the very near future as well as probable kids. I am white and my boyfriend is Hispanic, and he speaks both fluent English and Spanish. He has recently said that he wants his future children to learn Spanish. However, this makes me worried. Most of his immediate family speaks Spanish and they hardly include me in conversations. So I worry that if it happens now, it will only be 10x worse when it is in our household with the kids and my connection to them won’t be as strong.

How DINKs (dual income, no kids) do Dublin, Prague and Pilsen

Despite our mutual love of travel, and a lifestyle that makes it easier to just get up and go (as a teacher, I have my summers off, and we don’t have any children) my husband and I had never traveled internationally together. So we decided to change that this summer, with a trip to Dublin, Ireland and the Czech Republic.

Here’s what we did and what we learned…

Eat, hablar, love: Our last-minute, wifi-tastic, foodie trip to Bogota, Colombia

My boyfriend suggested we take a trip to Bogota, Colombia — which he had traveled to the year before, and knew to be very safe (now). Our main focus on this trip was getting work done (he’s a writer, and you all know what I do!) and eating. So days were spent eating with our laptops open. Afternoons were spent hunting down good cafes with even better wifi. Then our nights were spent drinking and dining out with friends. If you’re looking for places to eat and work in Bogota, here were our favorites…

Family photo fun time with an international blended family of six

This set of photos from Maine-based Justine Johnson Photography celebrates a blended family of AWESOME: Manya and Brian live in Kenya with their four kiddos. These two were both divorced when they met, and happily joined her two daughters and his two sons together. When the six of them were altogether visiting grandparents in Maine last summer they decided to round up the gang for photos — and here’s what they came away with.

We didn’t make it to the hospital in time so our son was accidentally born at home

When my call got answered, it turned out there were no rooms available at my nearby hospital other than the intake rooms (smaller, no gas and air on tap, uncomfortable beds). The midwife offered to ring around the other hospitals in Stockholm (which would later turn out to also be full), but in the end thinking that there was a good few hours left to go I said I’d stay home, take a bath and call back later.

A rainbow bedroom for an eight-year-old in Norway

You guys will have to bear with me — this kid’s bedroom is featured on his mom’s blog, which is written in Norwegian. LUCKILY the room itself is a fantastic mash-up of all things bright and cheery so I don’t need words to know that. Here are a few of my favorite spots — more at the source!

My unplanned emergency C-section renegotiated my parenting ideals

Before I had my baby, I had a lot of plans and expectations based around an unmedicated birth and high hopes for a water birth. This didn’t seem unfeasible as the pregnancy had been entirely uncomplicated. I hadn’t bought a pram, preferring a Kari Me sling. I was planning to wear the baby all the time, breastfeed all the time (after all it’s free and if you’re on limited finances that’s pretty important) and was overall looking forward to it.

A laidback hospital birth story from Sweden

When I started with contractions in the evening, I figured a bath might be nice to soothe and it was — but the contractions soon ramped up to every five minutes. This meant no Kindle reading for me (I had such pleasant ideas for early labour like watching a movie together and reading in bed), so we went for a walk around the block. By the time we were back to our house I was feeling so nauseous with every fourth minute wave that we decided to call the hospital (got the hubster to do it as I have serious speaking Swedish nerves), and we went in.