Chelsea Kaplan’s Musings About Life... After Birth

First and foremost, the biggest, hugest thank you to reader Mona, who took it upon herself to up and photoshop that picture of me and the boys. Check out her handiwork:

How nice is that? Mona, you rule. Now, if you could only photoshop the post-pregnancy weight off of me in all of my other photos…..

In other news, my best friend Jessica, who has been my best friend since we were 8th graders (my, do we have some stuff on each other), is spending the year with her husband in China, courtesy of this cool opportunity she got with Google, the company for which she works. Anyway, it’s been kind of hard because China is like 13 hours ahead of me in my Eastern Standard time zone, so we rarely get to talk or google-chat. Luckily, there is email. In her latest report, she talked about how interesting Chinese culture is re: kids. She doesn’t yet have any of her own, but knows how into the subject I am, considering my profession both as Mom and parenting journalist. She writes:

“So, one of the different but really cool things here is how people are with their kids and other peoples’ kids. Since everyone can really only have one kid, people LOOOOOVE kids. LOVE them. And, in general, there is like, no violent crime here, but people especially really look out for little kids. So, if you’re at a park, restaurant or shop, you can really kind of let your kid run around and not worry about him. For example, last night we had dinner with some folks who also fairly recently moved here from Atlanta and who have an adorable 2 1/2 year old (Dillon). So we meet them at the (really nice) restaurant, and there is a kids playroom tucked away behind this like, frosted door. All of the waiters and waitresses were swooning over Dillon and
talking to him and playing with him. So he goes into the playroom, and we sit down to dinner. A few minutes later he comes out of the playroom and over to the table (totally by himself) and the waiter picks him up and helps him get settled in his high chair.  Can you imagine? And this is at a really cool, great restaurant - not one you would typically consider “family-friendly”. Nancy (Dillon’s mom) says it takes getting used to, but once you do it is awesome. And it was so fun - we got some adult-talking time when he would go to the playroom and we got some Dillon time when he came back. It’s a totally different approach but it was really cool to see.”

I’ve been saying that if a Democrat doesn’t get elected in ‘08, then I’m moving to Canada, but China might work too…