Adventures in babysitting

"Bea" has a view of the chateau from her garden...some are just born lucky !

Tomorrow morning baby S and I are going to visit 'local' best friend, Bea. It's really a combined visit and babysitting session since Bea's boys, aged 4 and 6 are on Spring break and she has to work this week. Baby S and I are doing the Thursday and Friday shift and staying through lunch on Saturday to just hang out and extend the visit a little longer.

Three days of Power Rangers, Spiderman, The Incredibles, Blue Clues and extended explanations of the rules of Yugioh, complete with sound effects, "and 'den kapow! kaboom! You lay down a card and 'den..." (and then as is often the case, a breathless shift in language) ..."and 'den tu dois faire le même chose! d'accord Chris?"They always remind me of the things they aren't allowed to do to baby S. "We aren't allowed to trow baby S from da roof Chris, right?" And, then the other will add "we aren't allowed to go ARRRRRRRRRRRGH in his ears when he's asleep, right?" And they'll go on like this for at least 15 minutes coming up with scenario after scenario and giggling with amusement at themselves at topping each other's creativity.

Bea has been my friend since 1998 when I first came to France. She is my American connection. The one who I can cry to when thing aren't going well here. And, believe me when I say she has a very wet shoulder. She's the one I can share my bad days and my good days with. She knows all the intimate characters in my life already and there really is no need to provide the backgrounds, just the first names of countless relatives and friends, most of whom she's never met. She tracks them and follows my tales, as I do hers, kind of like a real world soap opera we both are fans of. She loans me wonderful books by Carl Sagan and Zora Hurston and always shares with me the best oatmeal cookie and vegetarian recipes that she comes across. She's a fabulous cook. The type who never gloats about it, but always says, "Oh that's so easy to make--here, write down the recipe," shoving a pen and buttercup colored stationery into my hands as she rattles off the steps to a very complicated soup or stew.

So, I'll be spending the next few days groaning that I can't change the channel from Sponge Bob to Seinfield. The calamity of being presented with Canal-Satellite and not being able to zapper! Evenings will certainly be spent cooking, eating, gossiping and lamenting about things we miss at home, like Barnes and Nobles bookstores, deep-dish pizza and radio stations with good music. But then we'll agree that France has it's good points like cheap produce and relatively sane politics. We'll invariably discuss the combining of the two "in order to form a more perfect union," and we'll discuss the fictional days when we retire and can own dream homes in both countries, coming and going as we please, but always secretly preferring our native turf, the good, old Southern USA that we've learned to appreciate so much while in exile.

Oh and, we'll definitely stay up until 2am or 3am making it nearly impossible to get up the next day for work and adventures in babysitting. Tant-pis. That's what girlfriends are supposed to do.

The outer limits

stuck behind and with my head cropped off in enlargements to boot!


The grandparents are coming. My in-laws will be here in one week to snuggle little baby S and observe his every flicker with pure, unabated delight. It's actually pretty scary how obsessed they are with him. I've heard of grandparents fussing over the grandkids but until you've seen it up close you will not truly understand how kooky their own special brand of love is.

Lately I feel that if I were having a heart attack on the kitchen floor they probably wouldn't notice, so absorbed they are in baby S and his every movement. Not that baby S isn't cute! He is. And not that they ever fussed over me anyway. They didn't. But it has become ridiculous. Upon seeing us after a long absence they literally grab him from my arms and carry him off to the other room and making these wild cooing noises. No "bonjour Chistine, comment ça va?" no "et comment tu va Christine?" Nothing. Nada. Rien. At least not for the first hour. *sigh*

Jealous? Probably. After all I was here first and let's face it, I have much better French than baby S. I so deserve to be carried off to the living room and fussed over. They have never once done this to me. Maybe I´m just not cute enough.

It reminds me of the professional Christmas photos we had done. The photographer learning who had in law status, stuck me and brother in law behind the sofa. I´m not a huge fan of these type of posed family photos anyway but I really regretted coming up with this idea afterwards. It was my idea to get the family together in a group photo and I got sent to the back of the bus. I felt like an ornament in the living room. I LOOK like an ornament in the living room. The hairstyle doesn't help.

The infertile camp

There's been a lot of talk lately on the various infertility blogs* I follow about how to define yourself when you conceive or adopt after years of fertility treatments. Mainly this talk abounds because almost every infertile blogger on the internet, adopted or got pregnant and well, stayed pregnant last year. Now in blogs where the main topic was "falling in love with my RE (who cringes when he sees me)", it's more apt to be "falling in love with mini-me (who cries every time he can't see me)."

I find myself asking the same question. After over 5 years of infertility treatments; from invasive procedures, & countless tests, to numerous IUI's, 2 IVF's and a terrifying nine month nail-biting session; what am I now? Who am I now?

I really did define myself by those tiresome trying to have a baby years. I was that classic infertile women who feels uncomfortable at mom/baby events, who felt left out of a whole class of women involved in the revolution of motherhood. This was a group I wasn't allowed to be a part of. It felt kind of like being 8 years old all over again and not getting invited to Cindy Grummbacher's birthday party. I mean everybody in the class got to go except me! Everybody got to see that huge house and they talked about it for days. New friendships were formed at that birthday party. Not getting to go to that party defined the rest of the school year for me. The whole rest of the year I was the oddball. Because you see one event, or one series of events can put you in a particular group for a long, long time. So here in my adult years I think I'm in the infertile camp. Maybe it's because I'm trying to conceive again that I feel this way but I'm not so sure.

Last month we invited a colleague of Seb's, his wife and their two kids for dinner. She's pregnant again with their third, a planned pregnancy. The discussion between us women turned from child raising to spacing out children, and I sheepishly confided in her that we were trying again for a second baby. She looked at baby S wriggling in my arms, "Oh God ... so soon!" she gasped and covered her mouth for effect. "I don't know...hmmm...that's going to be awfully close" And then she continued and continued to comment, telling me stories of crazed motherhood with two underfoot, of jealous sibling rivalries, of hair pulling and brink of madness days. At that point in the glaring light of her astonishment, I began to feel a little ridiculous for even considering a second child. And, so to defend myself I spilled out the whole entire story of how we'd been infertile for several years. I explained that we had to try soon because we'd lost seven years trying to conceive the first, and now were in a rush to complete the family we had originally wanted (and deserved but I didn't add that even though I wanted to). She narrowed her eyes a little vacantly and nodded her head sympathetically as if searching for an equivalent story to make light of my situation. Then she changed the subject. So here I was finally able to do the mommy bonding thing and I was right back in the infertility camp all alone. It's a comfortable place actually so maybe that's why I ended up sharing the story in the first place. Being out there in "fertile" country, recklessly having baby number two right after baby one was just too tight a squeeze for me. I had to redefine myself as the "really just trying so quickly because I'm pretty sure it won't work" person as quickly as I could. I had to define myself as the infertile woman.

I don't think we ever leave the infertility camp. Those painful years so profoundly change who we are. Something akin to the phenomenon where a released prisoner can't quite reintegrate into society after spending all those years in a controlled environment, so he keeps getting himself thrown back in the can. Or maybe the lost look of a soldier fresh from the war observing the mundane normalcy of kids going off to school on a Tuesday morning. He keeps signing up for more tours of duty because he just can't relate with how a peaceful society functions. I feel a little lost like that sometimes, only relating to pregnancy war stories and battle scars. And, only functioning in the realm of rigid & controlled reproductive methods. Making babies? Fun and pleasurable? Uh no, sorry not in my world. I just can't identify with that. That's not who I am.

Several years from now I imagine I'll be sunning on Miami beach with my retired female cohorts and one of them will say "and right after Caleb was born I skipped a pill and Emily was conceived," and then someone else will say "yes, well I was three months pregnant with Irene before I realized it..." And then I'll share my story and they'll all stop talking and smile vacantly just like they do today. They'll each rack their brains for a similar story about someone they know who was infertile.** Even that many years from now I think I'll still be the oddball in the mothering group.

I don't think I can be rehabilitated into fertile feminine society nor do I think I want or need to at this point. I've leaned to identify with this beast that formulated my entire 30's. It's part of who I am now. And, like a prisoner or war veteran, I find it strangely and remarkably comfortable here aligned with the women I've met who are just like me. There's incredible camaraderie in tragedy, be it the bittersweet kind or the happily ever after variety.

*Both Julie a& getupgrrl wrote eloquently on this subject. Check it out.

**Although the way things are headed there may be a lot more IF stories to share in this fictional scenario

Nestle stinks

My supermarket is full of their crap. I live on the Swiss border where the big N rules. In fact they're right across the lake from me; convenient for transmitting subliminal marketing messages directly into my brain. We do have a Nestle shield on our house deflecting this, but when I'm outside gardening I think I occasionally get zapped. There are a few yogurts in the fridge. How they got there I don't know.

Nestle makes just about the only baby cereal in the supermarket here. The fact that it's THEM doesn't bug me as much as the fact that they are LOADED with sugar and other garbage. You see well, since having a baby I do this really bizarre thing. I read labels on the back of food in the supermarket before buying it. I know, I know, I know! I've totally lost my mind. Who does this sort of stuff anyway? Mom's that's who! Go ahead, roll your eyes. Oh and remind me to write that multilingual guide for how to spend 14 hours a week in a French hypermarché. I do it often enough lately. Anyway, back to greedy, life-sucking, corporate conglomerates. Nestle even makes a precooked cocoa flavored baby cereal. I mean c'mon, talk about forming early addictions. There had to be some alternatives.

I started researching on the internet. Turns out you can make your own very simple baby cereal. A brief visit to the local health food store and I loaded myself up with one package of organic oatmeal. At home I puréed the oatmeal in my food processor to a fine powder and stored it in a jar. Now, this stuff is not precooked. Do not fear! Get out a saucepan and follow the instructions on the package. If your package has no instructions, then read my mini instruction brief below for cooking oatmeal cereal.

Hopefully your baby will love this as much as mine does. I always mix in a few teaspoons of banana or other fruit with it. It's really delicious. Remember to start off with very little food(1-2 tsp) and gradually increase the quantity over a few months time to about 5-6 tsp's.

The internet has lots of baby cereal recipes. As baby gets used to one type of cereal you can make a mix adding barley and brown rice, & a small amount of wheatgerm (iron source). As usual, try to buy organic!


**cooking oats: Boil 3 parts water & add 1 part oatmeal (or any other ground cereal or grain). Simmer for 1-2 minutes while stirring. Turn off heat & leave covered to steam cook for 3 more minutes. Use a wire whisk to smooth out lumps before serving.

Let's get Mikey!

If you're pregnant and this is your first baby I want you do something. Take a piece of paper and write the word "CEREAL" in big, bold letters at the top of the paper. Got that? Okay, now, wait until you have the baby, or perhaps even before you have the little tyke, and mark an X on the page every time someone says the word CEREAL to you. Let me tell you that you'll have a page full of X's at the end of six months. You may even need to use the second side of the paper.

Cereal is the choice drug of the babycare set. Like with any drug, peer pressure abounds. Friends, family and strangers in the supermarket line are going to push you to try cereal. If you just replace the word 'cereal' with the word 'heroin' you'll see what I mean. "C'mon man...try some cereal...jess a little man. She's gonna love cereal and so are you. Cereal is so gooooooood man. Did you try that cereal I told you about? wink? wink"

In their heroin/cereal pitch they'll invariably use the magic word that will prick up your ears: sleep. Golden, magical, mythical, fabulous sleep. They know you want to hear that word. They know that word makes you listen. "Hey man...you put a little 'cereal' in that baby and he is out man. Never, never land for both of you. Twelve golden hours!" You hear the words 'twelve golden hours' which to you sounds as good as 'Caribbean vacation' or 'spa treatment' and you're all ears. You falter. You put cereal in their bottle at 3 months. Some even falter earlier. Some are so desperate they try in the first few weeks. And guess what? The baby still cries. They don't get any sleep. They have a box of cereal, another routine to follow, and everything is the same.

I'm very happy that I was able to resist. It was hard! When so many people are repeating their mantra you have a hard time drowning it out ... picturing the shower scene here in "Carrie" where the locker room girls are throwing tampons at her and chanting.... You can try humming loudly but they'll just wait until you're vulnerable complaining after a few nights of very bad sleep ... now picturing The Exorcist where little Regan is on the levitating bed, all yellow-eyed and spewing obscenities at the priest... ew, bad night...

They will not stop.

All I can say is resist the temptation. Your baby will not sleep through the night with cereal. He may coincidentally sleep through the night with cereal, and then you'll perhaps become a cereal 'dealer' yourself, but chances are he'll be wide awake at the same hours with or without it. Your baby will not starve without cereal. Your baby will most certainly be fine until 6 months old. After 6 months you can evaluate the effects of cereal if you feel he needs it. Before trying cereal read into the controversy a little. Check some of the informational articles on Kellymom.com and then decide how you feel.

Whatever you do don't retaliate against a cereal dealer with reasons why you think cereal might be useless or bad for babies. They will only increase the pressure, calling you at 6am with articles from Parent magazine that state cereal's importance as the MOST IMPORTANT, BENEFICIAL thing you can do for your child's future. They'll tell you how you can resist if you like but this is considered CHILD ABUSE and you may be anonymously reported to social services. It's futile. Don't resist. Just smile demurely and say, "Yes, thank you so much . We're looking into that you know," and leave it at that.

Practice that phrase now in fact. You'll be using it a lot.

Holy guacamole!

We tried out the first 'vegetable' on baby S yesterday--avocado. He adored it, and so did we for that matter! He was of course completely covered in this bright, green paste by the end of it all.

This was something I discovered you can freeze very well! You know what a pain in the ass it is waiting for avocados to ripen and then 'hurry up and use them...' Well, I just puréed them with a teeny bit of olive oil and froze the goop in cubes. It tasted perfectly yummy. I'm going to start doing this for us big people too!

Guacamole on a whim...heavenly.

Make your own baby food...it's easy!

It's incredibly easy to make baby food. No one should be afraid. It requires virtually no skill in the kitchen and takes no time at all. Best of all you can make and freeze big batches at a time. I'm going to lead you through step-by-step in a sort of Master Class in baby food. I kind of borrowed this teaching idea from blogger mommy Jemma.

Anyway, we're going to make some pears. Choose organic ones if you can for obvious reasons. If you find this daunting looking all over for expensive produce, at least buy your bananas organic. The toxins on those are some of the worst and the skins are very porous. Okay, enough preaching. Where were we? Oh yes, pears. I chose to make a batch of four. You can make as much as you think your baby will eat.



First you'll want to peel them.

Then you will steam them for about 15 minutes. If you don't have an electric steamer like mine you can just use a covered pan with about 2 inches of water. Keep the heat on low. It's a good idea to at least invest in a little steamer tray if you can. You can usually find these for just a few dollars at most discount stores carrying kitchen supplies.




After steaming, you simply cut them up any old way in chunky pieces, discarding the core and seed of course.



Put them in a food processor or blender with a little water to help smooth out the consistency. I used about 1/4 cup of water with my pears. Let the food processor run for about 3 minutes on medium speed. You should have a very smooth constancy if your baby is just starting solids. You can also use a fork but I really recommend the blender or food processor because it's less work!

You really don't need to strain it if you mixed it well. I never strain anything. Now get out your ice cube trays. Wash these well with hot soapy water . You can even sterilize them in boiling water if you feel they aren't clean enough. Be careful not to melt the plastic though! Okay, now spoon your mixture into the trays and freeze.



The next day you should have some nice cubes like this ready to be thawed and fed to baby. I store mine in Tupperware. If plan on storing alot of varieties and quantities you may want to start putting them in ziplock baggies and writing the date on them.



You can also do vegetables this same way. Be certain to slightly overcook them though. They can be hard on little stomachs otherwise. Along with water you can add a few drizzles of olive oil to smooth out and flavor your vegetables. Don't use salt though! Salt is very bad for babies.

Later when your baby eats more varieties you can also make concoctions of beans, rice & meat in your steamer. The possibilities are endless. Steal all your ideas from the labels of the baby food jars!

I should mention that you don't need to steam bananas but you do need to make sure they're ripe. I put a little warm water in the mixture for consistency when I blend them.

Also remember that you can mix formula or breast milk with the food if you like. I simply chose not to because I found it too time consuming.

Shoe addict

I have been looking for shoes for baby S for awhile. I wanted soft shoes because I really think it's better for infants to be as barefoot as possible for as long as possible. Also I have heard that hard soled shoes aren't as ideal for learning to walk since they can't feel their feet on the ground. So, we ordered him some Robeez, They're adorable! I wanted to buy the whole collection! We ended up buying the lime green sandals. I have some great Bermuda fisherman shorts I bought for him in Florida last year, including a funky pink pair. Who says you can't dress boys cute. He's going to look fab-u-lous!


Now you ask why on earth does a 6 month old need shoes? To keep his socks on of course.

Yes we have no bananas

We started giving S solid foods this week

There’s something downright amazing about giving a baby his first bite of real food. Its kind of scary. You don’t know what their reaction will be. It is an awful lot of fun in the end though.

We decided to go very slow with it. He had a few teaspoons of mashed bananas mixed into expressed breast milk. I discovered that pumping manually is such a pain in the ass that I can’t keep doing it for every tiny meal (they only eat one teaspoon full at first). Anyway, I’m just too lazy for sterilizing all those little rubber rings and plastic parts that go with the breast pump. Instead for round two I mixed in some Evian water. It’s such minute amount anyway that I doubt it matters much (yeah, that's what they said about lead paint, right?).

S acts like he could care less about solids. He really digs all the colorful plastic spoons. We are trying to encourage him to feed himself as much as possible so gnawing on spoons has been his favorite past time for awhile here. I’m not so sure he’s impressed with the fact that something sticky keeps getting on his spoon, over and over. He spends most of the time trying to flick it off onto the cat.

Anyway, as you can see, we had more fun starring as “the parents” in his first food photos than he had eating it.

Don't bother inviting us

I think we've officially become boring.

Before Seb and I could have kids we lamented that we would never be boring "like people with kids." I remember once we had this apéro with a group of collegues of Seb's. It was insufferable! Three couples all with their kids in tow. Don't get me wrong we didn't invite the kids. We we're ambushed. The parents never mentioned kids coming and who knew to ask. Two of the kids were sick, all runny nosed and in their pyjamas. One little girl chased my cat, stole my fridge magnets and stuck her fingers in the toilet "splash-splash" Then afterwards the little crumb snatcher returned to help herself to MORE of the petit-fours I had so painstakingly decongelated and well, paid for (those little things are expensive!) And all the adults talked about were illnesses, baby milestones, age appropriate toys, strollers and POOP.

After we'd shut the door Seb and I locked eyes . "Oh my God! We will NEVER be that dull if we have kids. We will be aware of it if we are. We will never drag our kids to people's homes like that. We will never talk about them like they are all there is!"

Anyway, I haven't asked anyone close to me but I think we may be getting like those dull, invitees we had a few years back. Going out has become such a chore that we just stay in. We never get invited anywhere anymore (waaaaah) If we do get invited somewhere believe me we're not even going to ask if we have to leave the baby at home because they'll probably say "yes" and then I won't get to go.

But, I'm stopping short of the poop discussions. I mean if I start talking poop you can just file me away sister. If there's anything I'm trying to escape from it's that.

Summer spandex

So now it's six months breastfeeding. I made such a hoopla about the five month mark that six months has not been such a big deal. I feel pretty much the same about making the goal. Summer is coming and I have this sly little voice telling me that all of my little tank tops will be much more comfortable and flattering than those moo-moo style, billowing, dead-head smocks (yes...smocks you heard it) that I've been forced to wear.

I have a very selfish desire to just buy some "Enfamil" and ceremoniously hand Seb a bottle to feed little S with. The trouble is he probably wouldn't do it more than once. Then I'd be stuck washing up all those little plastic bottles and rubber nipples every day. And then I won't have the "instant calming devices" on hand...err well CHEST actually, for when I fly back home to Florida to visit my family.

How selfish is THAT? Go on, chastise me but if you'd been living in cavelike conditions for six months you'd feel a need to let loose a little too.

I suppose I'll have to put my dreams of spaghetti straps on hold for a few more months.