I'm a mom. What's your super power?

I first read this on the internet...and laughed. And then this night, around 1 a.m., sitting awake in bed it hit me: I actually have super powers. Let me tell you some of them:

• I can function normally (to read: not shouting/beating/killing anyone looking suspiciously like an idiot that crosses my road that day) with less than 4 hours of sleep per night, for several nights in a row. It never happened to me when I was in the no-kids world. A night with less than 9 hours of sleep back then would have made me grumpy for a week or so.
• I can change a diaper on a standing-up/walking/running baby. I figured it takes less time than catching the baby and holding him prisoner on a changing mat while he is screaming from the top of his lungs.
• I can give the bottle to two kids at the same time, while watching TV and talking to my husband. Ok, the last part is not always true, the TV can be quite catching...
• I mastered the art of make-up (aka: I can put on make-up in under 2 minutes). And I do it every working day, otherwise people see me for what I am and tell me to go get some sleep.
• I can follow a 30 minutes monologue about Autobots and Decepticons and (usually) not feel the need to kill 'em all. If you don't know what those are, you can read about them here, you ignorant people.
• I happily join in the fun of the above mentioned monologue and another ma-ma-aa-pa-brrum-brruum-pa-pa one, adding to the mess my own weird sounds - all this happening in the car, on our way back from work/school/day-care. Actually I am doing this only to see smoke going out of my husband's years and his face transforming into an angry dinosaurs' one...

there are probably more, but I managed to fall asleep at some point and forgot the rest of my thoughts.
So, what's your super power?

How much can the music represent a nation?

I recently went to a wedding near Toulouse (so at about 5-hours drive from my place). This gave me and my husband enough time to listen to all CDs we had bought and not listened for a long time. One of them is with Romanian music. Quite old Romanian music and what can be thought as good Romanian music (we consider it that way, at least).
One of the songs actually made me laugh in a way, because of the lyrics. This is the song, if you feel like listening.
Basically, what this says is that luck was given to people. By God, probably, but it's not clearly mentioned in the song, so maybe by someone who had tons of it and didn't know what to do with it... Anyway, so when luck was "provided", everybody got loads of it, but the singer got only a glass, because he was off to work. Wait, it gets better... Then he says that even the glass was only half full, and even that half was actually with bad-luck instead of just luck
So what made me smile/laugh at this? The thought that this kind of represents for me the Romanian way of thinking. Everyone else is luckier than me, poor me, I have only bad luck and nothing goes the way I would have liked it to be... Maybe I am exaggerating in generalizing this, it's just when I heard the song (that I knew very well) it struck me as obvious.

The singer also has other very beautiful songs. My favorite is this one. But it's all in the lyrics, so it's probably boring if you don't understand them.

So I wonder how much music defines a people? Probably a lot, it just depends which one. I will talk in another post about some really bad Romanian music :-)

for reference, other very nice pieces that I love:
Phoenix (an extremely popular rock band for Romanians, one of the first...and I think also known in the US):
  Marele URSS
 Timisoara
Iris (another classic for us): Somn bizar
... and the list is long, but I have to go to a meeting. So to be continued as well...

Romanian wedding - part I

As a reply to this, I have been thinking about describing to unwarned audience (aka you) a Romanian wedding. The perfect opportunity arrived when I actually was at a Romanian wedding, two weeks ago.
I have to admit it was not a typical Romanian wedding, so not much material for this blog. Shame on you, T&E!

So what happens at a Romanian wedding?

There are three steps, officially:

1. civil ceremony
2. church ceremony
3. party... all night long ... 

and maybe...

• I think the really traditional ones also involve some kind of after party (the next morning) with some weird food - at least weird to be eaten at 8am after a party, me thinks. One of the things on the menu would be a kind of borsch (or however you can call that). Then again, maybe I was never drunk enough to appreciate this as a gourmet breakfast.

Nowadays, young couples are choosing between steps and mixing and matching as they wish. Normally the first one is always there, but it might be done weeks/months/years before the others. I did 1+2 the same day, as "my wedding", for example, but not 3 (and definitely not 4). Our friends chose 1+3. Nice choice, as the church ceremony lasts for at least one hour and it's a special story all by itself.

At the civil ceremony - which lasts for like... 5 minutes? - nothing unusual to report. The funny things start outside, where you (as the newly married couple) are to pass through a sort of arch made of flowers that the guests were nice enough to bring to the ceremony - to give to the bride, eventually - and nice enough to hold over your head). Something like this. (disclaimer: no idea who those people are, just took a picture I found on the internet that was nice enough; disclaimer again: it's usually a lot less organized in terms of flowers, shapes and sizes of the bouquets held over their head - some might be dangerous if they accidentally fall from the hand holding them). Throwing rice - aim for the eyes, aim for the eyes! - happens now as well, if any of the guests is an octopus or lazy enough and had not brought flowers. However, this remains optional.
The other people that are expecting - anxiously and enthusiastically - the new family and their soon-to-be-desperate guests is a small crowd of 2+ guys, with accordions and loud traditional music. It is traditional, but it is also quite bad :-) I tried to find something on youtube - it should go like this. You can only imagine that most of the people participating would do anything to make it stop, so - usually the god-father of the couple (yeees, we have that sort of thing) pays them to shut up. As my husband and I were the god-father and god-mother (even if God was not invited at this wedding), he payed them and they were so happy that they stayed! Makes it tough to talk and enjoy the glass of champagne that you get to drink on a 40°C hot summer day, usually standing in the sun.

After this step, everybody goes wherever they wish to go and the party starts in the evening. To be continued...

4 year old wisdom

• Water is a hologram. Because we can pass through it (yes, just like that...)

• For my personal safety, I have to wear these socks (he had mosquito bites on his foot)

• It's really a bad word to say "Enough!". (2 am in the morning, me refusing to go get him another glass of water)

• You know, speed is not the only thing in life. There's also walking, strolling... (to my aunt who was driving - not very fast - on a bumpy road)

• You know, mom, I love you more than "one says". (I often wonder how to take this... I wonder who says what in his little head)