NCS was an architect living in Boston, NYC, LA, Berlin, Amsterdam, Zurich, and Poland before she became a mommy.  She had also written a book on the lake and river baths in Zurich.  She's one of those people who are curious about almost everything and hence, like to do nearly everything (that doesn't harm anyone else).  She had liked to hear concerts, see movies, and go away for the weekend, and has found that having a kid has definitely made it more difficult to do these things.  Lately, anything for personal leisure or anything spontaneous is pretty much put to the side.

Now, NCS divides her time between the Chicago suburbs and Katowice, Poland.  She has found that part-time architectural jobs are rare, and a full-time architecture job is basically a job-and-a-half.  NCS has a pretty strong independent streak, so she decided to have a go at being self-employed, which would allow her to schedule her time as she wanted and to spend more time with her 4-year-old son.

NCS's ultimate dream is to have a peaceful, daily routine.  But basically, in the morning, there's a mad dash to get her son up and to make and eat breakfast, a mad dash to get him to preschool on time, a mad dash to then try to make the most of her time and be productive while he's not at home.  This means working on their family violin rental business, cleaning up after her son, thinking about lunch, thinking about dinner, daydreaming about how to relax, and constantly wondering about how to make things easier.  And then there's scampering to pick her son up, dashing to get dinner ready and have him eat it, and taking a bath.  And then there's the monumental task of putting him to bed before falling asleep herself first.

To save money, NCS's husband cuts her son's hair, as well as hers.  To her, saving money usually means buying things for her son rather than herself.

To make things easier for her, it really helped a lot to hire someone to clean the house once in a while.  But beyond that, she thinks she's only made decisions in her life which have made everything more complex.

To teach her son about his heritage, NCS insisted that her mother only speak Chinese with him.  He also goes to Chinese class once a week.  NCS is part of a group called the Chinese Fine Arts Society, so they go to a lot of concerts which they host, where her son hears Western and also Chinese music being played.  NCS's husband is Polish, so their son goes to a Polish daycare for part of the week.

For fun, NCS's family visits the arboretum, arranges playdates, swims, goes to Millennium Park in the summer for concerts, and goes out for Dim Sum or soybean milk on the weekends.

What does she do for herself?  Having just turned forty, NCS has decided to make her own health a priority and signed up (and managed to attend) a boot camp exercise class twice a week!

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