T's weaning food lunch box today:
seaweed rice sandwich,
boiled veggies and homemade baby wonton,
boiled apple and strawberries.

Have managed another day without delay at the nursery! 
I am feeling much better after today's early start and conscientious puncture despite that I went to bed at 2 am and woke up again at 4 am to console tearful T and started the day from 6:30 am. 

Being on time has become a smallest bliss that I wish to have every day, as it is the least sigh of a mother in control of herself.


The little person at home has become quite quiet since yesterday afternoon after a usual nap. He is in imperfect health and shows good appetite, but somehow pensive. I do not know if he would understand the conversation between me and my parents during a video conference yesterday, and the secondhand melancholy was passed onto him. Or, did he feel hurt knowing that  I was reporting something funny he did.

After knowing that we failed in the first screening for the application to nurseries, my mother repeated her advice on my giving up my job and becoming a full time stay-at-home mom. 

I replied with silence.

I can only speak silence in this issue, less because I am pondering over such possibility but more because of my thoughts about my relationship to the mother. In a society like Japan, I came across questions of this sort very often, and on 99% of the occasions I answer with a determined no. However, when the question is from my own parent, my reaction is complicated with fury, confusion, and resistance. It's quite imaginable to have questions from friends, from people who have not raised me as their own, but my own parents have laboured so much to nourish and educate me as an intellectual equal to my partner, why would they so casually wish me to abandon the self that I have so far fashioned with their assistance?

Of course I have never thought of compromising my child's well-being, but this question sounds more and more suspicious and accusative as it gets repeated.

There are a lot of problems to solve and much more pressure to face when I have determined to stick to the decision to keep my work.  Certainly I also have anxieties of being an incapable mother. But I have decided never to admit my weakness to my in-laws, and now I also realize that I need to be strong at all times in front of my native family.

Sometimes it feels like a very lonely journey.

I hope, if T really gets any second hand emotion from me, he would not misunderstand how I think about him and how I love him without discount.