Archive for January, 2012

8 month fairy tale and something more

Here we go, put up your hands because Carlitos reached 8 months and many improvements

Since I am lately not managing to write the posts on time, I try to remind myself by pictures what have happened that time. Though this month was special just because it was Christmas time, because of our New year Eve party with Checo-Latinos friends, because we have spend our first Christmas as only our family and also because I ended my work in Skupiner.cz and focussed fully on Lyoness.

And in the meanwhile Carlitos was growing and unbelievable improving his skills

  • his weight is now 8,150 Kg and still growing
  • He is crawling perfectly
  • He started to sit on 24th of December, he probably decided that to keep checking the presents is good by sitting among them as one of them :)
  • He grown one more tooth, so now he has 3 of them,
  • He decided also to stood up and he is about to walk
  • He is still very smiley baby and he will always be as I see. He loves to be caressed by me, he loves to be carried too to see what is happening
  • He is not that kamikaze like Edie was, he is more careful and even though he loves to observe Edie jumping and making crazy stuff, he is rather sitting and being calm. If i try to through him into the air he looks scared.
  • Even since little they have such different personalities. Carlitos is calmer, but bigger pain cryer. Edie while punching himself cried always just a bit and then he contined playing. Carlitos not. He wants to be hugged, touched and maybe after a while he will stopped. He is we called it “Mr. Bolistka” :)
  • His favourite toys are Tupperware boxes which I have in the kitchen shelf prepared for him and also draws. He loves to be opening them and closing all over again and again. He also loves to be hitting the floor with something hard so that it can make loud sounds.
  • Now he is eating 3 meals per day, He is eating a lot, more than 300g vegetables and fruits, he likes mainly everything and he preferes things which I cook for him rather than can food. And no wonder :)
  • Regarding to a sleeping. He is able to fall a sleep on his own during the night. During the day he goes once maximum twice per day. In the morning just sometimes, usually he has nap after lunch. During night he is still waking me up 3 to 4 times. He want to know if we are there. I try to feed him only 2 after midnight and then in the morning. Though he is night bird. He is able to stay until late night. During the new Year party he was up until 10pm with the smile and keeping active.

Edie and his life path

  • Edik is a very nice boy, growing and improving many skills
  • He still drives us crazy because of his crying mode, always if he does not want something he starts to cry a lot but we try to be resistant
  • He loves kindergarden KMC Knoflik now, so I always hear from him that we have to go to see the teachers “deme za pani ucitel” and if I am picking him up he is alway welcoming me with words “I do not want mamy, I do not want to go home” every day the same story. So I start to think that I am a Herodes.
  • Edicek also started to communicate more and he loves to read books. Before going to bed we try to read him every night. It is demanding but I love his gase, his staring eyes which keeps sliding on my face and are ready to hear the stories which I am creating. He likes also singing but sometimes he just ssssss mum and puts the stay quiet sign on his face. So I respect that too.
  • He loves to read letters so I went with him through the ABC and by linking different words to the different syllables he will soon be able to recognize most of them.
  • Edi has already his characteristical behavioral  patterns which are also sharing with me his teachers from kinder and it is given on our family behavior. For example if he shows affection he is licking another child od he tries to kiss him/her or he tries to go close enough to touch by noses.
  • Affection towards Carlitos is shown also by lickig his face, chewing his hands, riding him as horse, playing with him. Doing hide and seek. And in general I have to say that if Carlitos wants to cry Edie always tries to come with something silly to cheer him up. Carlitos sometimes has total laught attacts because of Edie which makes us laugh too.
  • Edik is also very attached to his grandfather Josef, my dad. Always if I mention his name he want to call him, to be with him and do silly stuff in general. Dad is also a great grandfather he is teaching Edie all the forbidden fun stuff, such as “plazit jazyk” , roll the stairs on the bicycle, jump over stuff, destroy something, eat tons of chocolate etc. Simply spoiling him as grandfather. I can also see how attached they are by the invisible connection.
  • Edie and his dad Carlos. They are very good friends. Edicek though has many times momities so only me can help him to go on toilet, to bath him, to feed him to read him books etc. There is nobody in the world and he does not want dad to do it for him. But if I am out of home they are the best friends. Playing together and he is following Carlos nicely. But if I am at home……..achhh momiiiii  ONLY YOUUUUUUUU…..I think that most of the mothers understand.

And story is over, I mean this month story, the other ones are being written by every day and I am just sometimes sad that I can not share everyday moments, because if I am just observing how my angels are growing under my hands it is unbelievable. And I believe that one morning I will turn and I will be already a grandma which will be reading this lines with grand kids and just having fun about their fathers……….. :)

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Skiing with the kids, enjoying winter holiday

Dear ski lovers, same as I am!

I try to teach that also to my kids. Thought the best learning is hands on learning, so by showing them that sport is fun and demonstrating on my own I believe that once they will love skiing the same as I do.

Nevertheless the question is now, winter is finally starting and I want to go to ski for one day or maybe a weekend with the whole family in a place close by Prague. So I did a quick search on different portals and which places appeared for these possibilities which I want to share with you now:

  • Tak nejblíž bude asi Chotouň, je to u Jílového u Prahy. Je to malá sjezdovka, jezdí tam hlavně rodiny s dětmi, ale pro ty je to super. Jsou tam dva vleky a dětský svah. My tam jezdíme rádi, je to blízko a ceny příznivé, můžeš si vybrat od hodiny do celého dne libovolně jak dlouho budeš lyžovat nebo mají bodovky.Tady najdeš podrobnosti:  http://www.vlekychotoun.cz
  • Nebo Monínechttp://www.moninec.cz/, cca 72 Km from Prague
  • Nebo Ještěd, sice je to není zrovna u metropole, ale po rychlé silnici, z Prahy za hodinku.  www.skijested.cz
  • z Prahy na Severák (Hrabětice, nad Janovem nad Nisou), přijde mi to pro děti z daleka nejlepší, co může být…školička, dětský park s koberci a kolotočem….za 1,2h tam jsme…jezdíme na den, i na víkend s ubytkem v Janově, 2km daleko. Parkoviště tam je zdarma. http://www.skijizerky.cz/ski-arealy/severak/
  • And for those who are still attached to the Austrian alps, there is also nice article with some tips how to enjoy close by Austrian Alps skying with some Czech  advantages.
  • Padák v Příbrami http://www.skipribram.cz/
  • Skyareal Kozinec http://www.snowhill.cz/kozinec/kontakt?menu=1, cca 132 Km od Prahy

So let see if we will manage this or another weekend since Edie started to look sick today. But I believe that if we do not manage now we will manager later.

SPORTU ZDAR A LYŽOVÁNÍ ZVLÁŠTĚ

So once I will be happy to enjoy as this sporty mom with her sons :) GOOD EXAMPLE

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Failure is the biggest learning in our life

Today I have failed, but I missed less than what I have learned

Curious connotation. I just have one of my daily meetings because of my Lyoness business. I know it already quite well I think, to be able to explain. But after Christmas time and new years celebration, more than one week gap, I feel that I need new practice in rhetorics :)

Do you know how does it feel if you fail? How many times we have to fail in our life in order to gain something big? How many times had to fail big inventors, sportmen and thinkers in order to bring and achieve something big in this world?

Just today I had my first after new years meeting and I failed in the explanation of the business. But with a smile I have learned many new things:

  • I know why I failed, in which part of my sales explanation.
  • I have learned a lot about the business I spoke with.
  • I created a nice connection with the owner, even we will not have further business together (yet ;-) )
  • And I have practiced and mastered my YES/NO answeres
  • I also mastered the preparation of the things I have to bring while having a business meeting in which I have to bring my child
  • I also improved my presentation skills related to time, I was effective so I was able to explain the whole idea in 18 min, because it was the time in which Carlitos was sleeping in the trolley

And in the end I have to remind myself how feels the failure….. in some ways it is sweet. It just means, you are fine, and you need to keep going and improving yourself. FAILURE IS GOOD, FILURE is the sister of the learning process, FAILURE is the most effective way of on hands learning.

And what STEVE JOBS said on Failure?

If you have never failed you have never lived

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Have it ALL, Family, Work and personal time? Possible or Impossible combination?

HOW TO HAVE IT ALL: Advice From 10 Rockstar Startup Executives Who Are Parents

 Dear friends, I just want to share with you my curent thoughts which were described in the best way by Emily Hickey. I love what she said and I think that it is sooo much truth!
Keep reading and you will see :)
   
Emily Hickey, Hashable: “Meditating, my great husband, my great nanny, my naturally relatively mellow son, and keeping an eye on the soft factors of my work are my personal success factors.”
Emily Hickey, Hashable:

Emily Hickey, CMO of Hashable, mother

Her career:

Emily Hickey is chief marketing officer of Hashable.  Before that the Stanford graduate was chief operating officer of PhotoShelter, cofounder of Yeah! Wireless, and VP of product management at Hot Jobs.

Her advice:

I think being a working parent at a startup is a pretty tall order… AKA it’s a total bruiser/ass-kicker! but its doable and you can ‘have it all’ if a few variables are right.

For one, you need not just a great and helpful spouse, but a great marriage. Nobody can be taking things too seriously, stuff can never get blown out of proportion, there can’t be a lot of resentment just below the surface, etc. Humor and lightness really have to be at the core of the family and you have to be psyched that you have a family and sort of constantly aware that you chose to do this and be pretty joyful about that choice. I actually think it’s sort of a trick to be enjoying your family at that level on a daily basis versus just being overwhelmed by logistics and lack of personal time.

Also, you need to love your job and your company. Not just be passionately committed to them, but really have warm relationships with the people you are building your company with and have great ‘soft’ factors at work. The work volume is always going to be intense and your daily feelings of success vs. illusion are always going to be fluctuating, so the bottom-line relationships just have to be great and enjoyable.

You also need to be a complete workaholic with a lot of energy. Most people at startups are definitely that, but throwing a kid into the mix means you have three hours of every weekday that you can’t work, which means you are staying up later to get things done, and then you don’t have a weekend to relax and catch up on stuff, so you have to find more energy internally… So the time sitting at your desk has to be really efficient and you have to be willing to crank late at night, without the possibility of sleeping in – ever – for the next 20 years.

You also need a great outside support system. For us that basically means an awesome, awesome nanny since our family is not local.

To sum it up, there’s nothing you can do at a startup to lessen the volume of work or smooth out the emotional cycles, and being a parent is completely consuming and erratic on top of that.  So it’s basically a double startup! All you can do is make sure that at home and at work you have great ‘soft factors’ – otherwise you’ll be in nervous breakdown territory!

One thing I’ve personally spent a lot of time on in the past couple years is meditating and really working on that as a way to keep my mentality light. I would say meditating, my great husband, my great nanny, my naturally relatively mellow son, and keeping an eye on the soft factors of my work are my personal success factors… and I guess I probably drink a few more Bud Lights a week than I used to :) .

And if you want to read more truth stories, keep reading here

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2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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