In the early days when the first social distancing restrictions were put in place, my biggest nightmare was having to keep our three young boys at home for 14 days. Priding ourselves of raising “free-range” kids, I was already conjuring up ideas of a family-escape to the woods just to avoid having to keep them confined indoors for that long, should the quarantine measures be declared.
Category: Musings
A writing portfolio of my personal essays about living and raising a family in the Swiss countryside, self-published or also shared on other online magazines
A bite of the Empty Nest
The baby turned a year old last month, and I wasn’t prepared for it. No, I didn’t forget, of course not. Let me clarify that. I know three children can be a handful. I sometimes have to keep counting them, just to make sure they’re all there. One is reading a book on the couch. Check….
The Gift of Language
When we deny our own mothertongue, don’t we deny our own heritage? Last autumn, while enjoying an afternoon in a forest playground with my two sons, I met another mother with three boys tailing her. She greeted us with an imploring smile. I was speaking to my eldest in my mothertongue, Tagalog, urging him to…
Where Midwives are Worth Gold
Before moving to Switzerland, I never really imagined myself being a mother, let alone birthing naturally without any pain killers, with only the assistance of my husband and midwife, and delivering both my sons in public hospitals…
Winter Wonderland
Living out in the countryside, it can get quite lonely at times. Especially for a full-time mom whose husband is away for work most of the week. And although the cold has a nasty way of keeping us indoors, we make it a point to try to get out for at least an hour or…
TV? No Thank You!
There’s been an endless debate about what the right amount of digital media exposure for young children is. The first article I remember reading about such “detrimental” effects was written in the late nineties about Japanese children. In the report, the young children were losing their social skills to TV and video games, and…
A Bridge Language: Baby Sign
I have always been fascinated with sign language already as a child, so when I first told my husband about Baby Sign Language while I was pregnant for the first time, he was not as enthusiastic as I had hoped. „It’s too alternative“ he claimed. What?! I wanted to push the subject but I imagined…
while in switzerland 