The sting

My daughter turned three this past week. I know I don't write much about her lately but she is quite a handful. A lovely handful, yes but very, very spirited.

Let me back up a bit...

I love astrology and I've read up on it constantly throughout my life so at one point during our many ivf trials and tribulations I thought "if this works out and I get pregnant I'll have LEO child,....oh dear" (Oh dear is absolutely right, and eek and aiye! & oh my...) The thought dangled in my mind for a few days and then of course as luck would have it I wasn't pregnant after all and there was no Leo child, "one blessing at least!" I said to myself. I know leos well and they aren't always easy for me. Maybe you don't have any Leos in your life and you don't have this problem but I have my fair share and trust me they aren't easy. For example I have a little cousin with a big blonde head like a little lioness, a typical Leo, and I remember her always saying to my aunt "hey you're not the boss 'round me!" and then crossing her arms in a haughty huff. She was only three and she ruled the home. My husband is a Leo and my cat is a Leo and I love both of them to death but both are impossibly self-centered and pig headed and sometime I can't believe how much so, but then I remind myself why by muttering "King of the Jungle" and stifling a yawn and Seb can usually laugh about how he's acting. He gives me a look of "oh sorry was I just doing that selfish epicenter of the world thing?" and I just shake my head yes. So like I said a Leo child was something I was quite happy to skip over as I calculated due dates for both of my children.

But wait,

no one ever told me about the Scorpio child...

which is worse.


Last week she turned three and today I watched out of the corner of my eye a little event that probably best sums up the nature of a Scorpio child. Her brother was teasing her, tugging on a toy or her napkin or something at the table and suddenly I saw this arm haul back and a spoon FLYING across the room, thud! As she threw it she screamed like a javelin thrower and I noticed the spoon narrowly missing S's ear in all the commotion. Of course I stopped my kitchen work and went straight in to work things out and as I looked into her eyes they were little peircing slits of viper poison. It was quite a sight in a three year old and yet nothing new really. The fierce glare is something I get a lot of as she goes through her challenging twos and threes, and heck I've even seen it in her baby years a few time.

So the last laugh is on me I guess. Who knew there was something worse than a lion's ego? When I say for example that she isn't adjusting at school I don't mean she's sad about going. No she's mad about it and she lets the whole building know it. She throws herself down on the ground legs and arms flailing in all direction and wails, "no, no, no, no!!" When I told her teacher, la directrice that she'd not be coming back I do think she'd breathed a sigh of relief. I can't say I didn't blame her.

I fight a lot of battles with her, --pyjamas, toothbrush, how to pee and what toilet to use (little potty or big), what she eats, seat belts, scarves and jackets. It's a daily struggle and her will is so strong she will fight to exhaustion over every single point. I usually give in first because I can't keep fighting. It feels like breaking a wild horse. It takes so much energy I can't do it every minute of the day.

I do love her and I get more kisses and affection from her than any mother can want or wish for; --intense, passionate motherly obsessional LOVE; --choking hugs, my face smothered in kisses and arms wrapped at my waist nearly 20 times a day. She adores me and needs me and lets me know so often I never need to question it. It's no wonder she breastfed so long. I'm surprised she ever stopped.

When I think about homeschooling her I do get kind of antsy about it. She may not be the type of personality to even be home-schooled, who knows. Her spirit seems to be liberated when she's in a group. She loves people and I think enjoys the hierarchy of traditional school--loved her teacher so much I think she did regret leaving for that reason alone because she talks about her often.

This isn't a rant about my child by any means. I adore her. She's wonderful, affectionate and sweet. I do wish I could learn to calm her temper and direct her strong will a little more. I'm learning and trust me I get a lot of advice about it, most bad. The blog The Parenting Passageway (in my sidebar) has really helped in the past six months and I can't believe I didn't know about it sooner. It's a goldmine of parenting wisdom, really incredible and not preachy at all but sound and intellectual. I've learned so much from it and really changed parenting styles because of it. Check it out.

Meanwhile go ahead and laugh as you picture the Leo dad confronting the Scorpio daughter. If you're an astrology buff I don't need to tell you who wins those battles.

(disclaimer--I am very fond of Leos and don't really feel as harsh about them as it sounds in this post. In fact in some weird way they fall into my life on a regular basis as predictable as autumns rain. I seem to attract/be attracted to them and I suppose my life would be dull without them. Shanghai anyone?)

Favorite pjs

Charlotte at 24 months



Little S at 26 months


It's so fun to make comparisons. They don't have the same face or physique but they do look like brother and sister.

Two!

My big girl had a birthday yesterday.

She also got her first hair cut the other day so these are the most recent photos I have. I didn't get much cut, just her bangs so she could see again. This is her in the Carrefour parking lot before the cut doing her little twisty dance.



She's a big talker and picks up words and phrases easily. I'm really impressed with her ability to switch from French to English depending on who she talks to. We got her hair cut in Jean-Louis David (which isn't exactly the most economical solution for kid haircuts, 19 euros for five minutes of cut, gulp!)



Her favorite food is chinese, but she pretty much eats everything except green beans and strangely enough clementines (but I bet that will change because S inhales clementines--he eats at least seven a day).



People tell me all the time that she looks just like a doll, and I thought it was an expression like "ohh, what a little doll!" but I see dolls all the time now that look like her. S sees them too and he always says "look mom it's another Charlotte doll. Let's buy it for her!" Unfortunately she has no dolls only trucks, cars and Legos. She seems pretty happy with that.



Happy Birthday little one!

The curls

While I was at my mother in law's going through photos I came across a photo of Seb as a baby and was really struck with how much he looks like Charlotte at the same age. They're like twins!

It's terrible to have such blonde children and have dark hair like mine. Everyone makes the same remarks "the papa must be really blonde!" to which I sometimes say "no c'est le facteur!" My doctor even thought for a while that Charlotte was adopted and on the last visit she said "remind me what country you adopted her from again?" I burst out laughing. Charlotte has no French healthcare papers yet so she just assumed we'd brought her back from our travels to Mexico. A little blonde Mexican!

Curly needs a cut

Little Miss is always like this. I have other more ladylike pictures of her looking all correct and demure but it isn't her personality. These are her! She loves life and isn't afraid to show it. She loves good food and good company (don't we all) and her brother makes her laugh the most. She'll dance to almost anything but first SHOES. She's obsessed with searching in her closet and mine for the right shoes.

She speaks without pauses and missing articles, "mom please give me yogurt please, I want petit-suisse please mom now." She's a chatterbox from the moment she wakes up. We can hear her calling from her bed in the early morning, "papa please! I want dou-dou" and she will repeat this a hundred times until we ignore her enough and she falls back to sleep, whew. We aren't veteran parent for nothing after all. They always fall back to sleep before seven right?

She erases all the problems that come with a crappy house with her adorable curls, her funny cheeks and her squinty eyes. When she lifts her shirt and shows her Little Miss Sunshine Belly suddenly everything's right with what's wrong.

Twenty months goes by so fast. I can't believe it wasn't just a few short weeks ago that I was drifting to sleep next to her in my enourmous Mexican bedroom with the sounds of the mini mart serenading us from over the wall. Time flies and life changes so fast.

Yes indeed

Charlotte is now walking. Well, waddling is more like it. It was offical a few weeks ago on Tuesday to be exact which I will record here in my blog in case I ever do one of those huge scrapbooks so I can you know, get a big TuEsDaY sticker and paste it across the top with little feet stickers and a heartfelt poem about how much I'll miss carrying her lardy baby butt everywhere. Anyway there I was having coffee with a few moms from S's school who I never have coffee with, just a fluke invitation, and Charlotte bumbled over to a mom all furniture free and sassy and then sort of bumbled back like a woman on a highwire (minus umbrella of course). They were all chuffed to be the first that she walked to because everyone knows she's a late walker so the subject of when she'd walk has been beaten to death outside the school, "cou-cou, quand est que tu va marcher ma petite Charlotte!" or "Elle marche toujours pas?" I think she was sick of hearing it. Like me.

So there just like that it's done and now two weeks later she's doing things like running out in streets at the neighborhood block party "il faut faire attention, c'est dangereuse!" someone said and I felt like saying "yeah she'd better pay attention otherwise she'll get squashed, silly monkey. Ohhhh, you meant..."

The whole walking thing, all so new to us. In fact the leashed child idea is starting to grow on me as I remember it did with the firstborn. This way I can tie her up outside the school and shops while I run inside. Convenient. Practical.

She's a late walker. Curse those fat little thighs. We'll call it eighteen months and a few weeks. Yay Charlotte!

p.s. Little S took the picture, ma boy

Fifteen months yesterday

She's 15 months old this week! Her hair is growing like weeds and tangles like brair patches and she has a tangled personality to match. We consider her very French because she loves to eat and eat and eat. She adores bread and cheese and creamy sauces and anything chocolate.

She isn't yet walking. "Why walk when that lady will just carry me everywhere?" but she's the fastest thing on all fours that you've ever seen. She can dismantle the kitchen cupboard in the time it takes me to type a sentence.

As for sleeping we have no complaints. She falls right to sleep when we put her down. She loves her room and her little bed and sleeps until 9:30 if you'll let her (which we do on Wednesdays and Weekends).

She finally took a bottle and really enjoys it but somehow we went back to full time breastfeeding and I'm not even sure how or why. It's completely unscheduled and she has no clock which is funny because I swore I'd keep her on a feeding schedule in a wistful post from a long while back but it never happened. So the bottle then is mostly just for water but sometimes I surprise her with milk too.

She seems to be speaking well, babbling all the classic words like mama, papa and bye-bye (or voir-voir which is Frenglish and what Little S said too at that age). She seems to like speaking and she really likes music. She always looks for musical instruments or little song making toys and then she dances flapping her arms up and down and clapping. Cutest thing ever.

She has a place in daycare for September 2010 which ironically is the same year she starts public preschool. You have to love the French! We got put on a reserve list just in case there's a little hour or two here or there between now and then so she can adapt but more than that is impossible. I was a little sad for her not to have a daycare like S had with lots of kids running around interacting and eating Playdoh. That was such a fun time for him. Hopefully I can meet some other moms with little ones her age so that she can have some friends before school starts.

We have standing!

Just after her birthday she started really standing up. We haven't been pushing the walking really so I'm not minding that she's only just pulling herself up. Baby proofing and renovating are not two things that go hand in hand at all!

We are excited for her new discovery though and so is she. That little four toothed grin flashed at her proud mama is a priceless image I'll have burned into my memory right up until the day she has little ones of her own. Now if I could only get her some shoes in the right size. I keep ordering the wrong size.

30 days to one year - 30

Seb took off on a business trip yesterday and took my cable for my laptop, (well I suppose it is his after all), but anyway I had about an hour of battery time and then it was curtains for the rest of the day. I didn't get time to post the last day of the month picture for Charlotte's birthday.

I can't believe my baby girl is one!

So here are just a few pictures. There are ten of them! I took pictures of her all day long and she was such a happy girl all day that I couldn't resist. I only have one blurry photo of myself on my own first birthday so I wanted to be sure she had a lot of pictures of herself on her big day.






I wrapped up a silly stuffed toy of hers in a box from my bank that cleverly unfolds. I'd been saving the box for her birthday. She loved it. Now this is her new favorite toy. She'd forgotten all about it.



We had chocolate cupcakes and she had hers served on a gorgeous gold rimmed Villeroy-Boch plate which she promptly pulled onto the floor, crash!

It was just the sort of ending you'd expect from a really good baby party and a fabulous year of being parents.

30 days to one year - 29

day before one year
Originally uploaded by aprettyhow

She turns one tomorrow!

Smiley girl

She started crawling a few short weeks ago, which is always a funny thing because you get so used to plopping baby down somewhere and then suddenly they become mobile and you turn around and there they are. It's a funny feeling.

Our smiley girl turns eleven months old in four days, nearly the big one year! She sleeps on her own now and eats well,...very well in fact. She loves food and I can't imagine that there will ever be a time when she will become a picky eater. I can't seem to get her to accept a bottle and this has been difficult because we stopped two of the breastfeeding sessions--the morning one and the four o'clock one. The morning session just became too hectic with getting Little S to school, driving Seb to work and preparing myself. I can't give her bottles so instead she eats yogurts to replace these feeds. Well petit suisse which in France is a sort of thick creamy unsweetend yogurt (40 percent fat!) and what the pediatrician recommends for babies as a bottle replacement at snack time. I still breastfeed her at night and we do a few short session before she goes down for naps. I hope we can continue this until age two with her eventually taking a bottle in the morning.

There is another backdated post here if you'd like to read it.

Eight months old

My brother took this picture. I don't think her eyes are really this blue. He denies saturating them in Photoshop but I'm pretty suspicious.

Eight months old? Well...teething! yes teething all month long with bottoms in and now tops coming, sitting up well on her own very well now, lalalalaing all the time, imitating people when they say things (funny), eating a jar sized portion of food at each meal, still breastfeeding as much as ever, growing very chunky!

...and charming and ever smiling as usual!

The easy job

When we traveled on the plane with Charlotte this time we brought the car seat which is part of our travel system. On two of our three flights they let us bring it directly on board and I was hands free for most of the flight (clean finger stuck in baby's mouth for sucking clears ears for take-off btw). While I was sitting there reading magazines and watching her sleep Seb got the difficult job of keeping the Little S man in his seat. What a luxury for me to have no responsibilities!

I look sadistic in that photo but I was just exhausted. It's a known fact that you will not sleep a wink on the eve of your permanent departure from one country to another. Our flight was at 7 am. How brutal it was getting two kids up and ready at 4:30am!

Teething and shopping

Charlotte is teething and we are here in Florida visiting the family and Charlotte is teething. Did I mention that Charlotte is teething?

I was in Florida on a month long vacation when Little S was teething three years ago and I don't remember anything like this. She's nervous and grumpy and only wanting to nurse and fuss and twist the skin on my arms and fuss, fuss, fuss. So yes, Charlotte. Teething. Aaaagh!

But it's lovely to see everyone and the weather is not as humid as it normally is and we get to spend the fourth in the states for the first time in three years. And we have done a little bit of shopping which is nice. I haven't bought new clothes in almost three years. I've either been pregnant or budgeting or post pregnant so I've easily avoided the stores over the years, but now is a great time to shop because not only am I relatively thin again, but the exchange rate is chanting from the rooftops "shop lady!! go! go! go! shop!!"

My shopping dilemma is this: trying to find a babysitter for the little miss while I squeeze into new jeans, *sigh* No one seems to be able to comfort her except me. Oh well, maybe she'll be better next week and I can peruse the racks in silence. I definitely need a selfish mommy break.

Los problemas?

Little Charlotte turned seven months yesterday and on the very same day she got her US Passport from the consulate in Monterrey. I'm so relieved to be past all this paper collecting and so happy for her to be able to travel to the US. She's a real American now, or at least it feels more official since she has a passport.

Too bad she isn't feeling so well. The poor thing has been vomiting nearly non-stop for the past 24 hours and seems to have the same icky, little bug we all have. Seb delayed his departure by a day so that he could help me out with our plague filled household, and I am so thankful that he was here. Our water was cut off for four days for a few mysterious reasons and I think I will always have fond memories of rinsing baby vomit from my hair with the precious supply of bottled water we were left with. It's amazing how after nearly a year in Mexico these sorts of things like not having water for days on end don't even phase me. Two weeks ago there was a mysterious problem with the gas for five days and we had no hot water or cooking capabilities. "No problem!" I said and just cooked on our campstove and heated water for washing up things. Mexico has definitely taught me not to worry about trivial things. The joke about the country is that the unofficial national motto is "no hay problema" and this may be true from an outsider's perspective. I think it's probably become my motto too over the past year.

We are selling our car today which is kind of sad. We'd have liked to keep it but the logistics are just impossible--continuing the payments without help, carrying the insurance, transport fees, and the idea that we may not even be able to register it in France. It would just be too much to worry about with all the other things we have going on. Oh well, life changes you know and sometimes it's for the better. Still I loved that car for the short time we had it. I'm refusing to go outside while Seb transfers the title because I'm afraid I'll get too sad. Not so much for the car but because it represents the end of our time here. I always have a hard time with endings and I need to learn to see that there are often better things around the corner so it's best to not fight change. I'm still learning this. "No hay problema," right?

Little S is being all weird lately, packing all kinds of things like his trains and his favorite stuffed animals. I don't know where he got this idea of our leaving from because even if we hinted at it we never really explained it to him. The funny thing is he thinks we're moving to Florida because I heard him pack Elmo* and say "we're going to Florida Elmos..." very matter of factly like you know "I hope you're cool with that." So I guess we will let him go on believing this because explaining all the steps involved in our moving is leaving me baffled. How do you explain the difference between a short term expatriation in Mexico, a vacation to Florida and a new home in France? He already calls our house in Mexico "Mexico" because he thinks when we travel to France and say "we're going back to Mexico"that it means specifically our house and not so much the country, because country is such an abstract idea to a three year old. So when we go grocery shopping and return home he spies our house, applauds and says "It's Mexico! yay!" It's cute and we don't really think it's worth correcting him because would he even understand all this crazy stuff? No probably not. I don't want to belittle his capacity for intelligence but I just think he lives in the moment like most kids his age, and hey maybe we are doing a little of the same thing too right now, and to that I say wholeheartedly "no problem."

*yes Elmo is still with us.

Six months old!

Our little nanette turns six months old today!

She is so sweet and lovely and we are really blessed to have such a happy little person in our house. We all love her to pieces--especially her brother who begs me to wake her from her naps so he can see her and play with her. This doesn't mean he doesn't torture her from time to time, but for the most part he dotes on her and spends half his day trying to make her laugh. It's so wonderful with two in the house. It was so worth it to go through everything we did to get her here. Not a minute goes by where I don't look at her and say "thank God we didn't give up."

She is still in our bed and still feeding several times a day. I haven't been keeping track of the number of times a day she feeds. I guess it's at least eight times a day or more. It's a lot! She should start solids soon or I guess she could if I felt like she needed to but with her dad away I think we'll wait a little longer. She seems perfectly happy with her feeds and so am I. That's not to say we haven't let her try a few things. She has tasted avocado and I caught her brother feeding her some peach yogurt one afternoon, which I bet she loved. But she hasn't been that enthusiastic about first foods.

She is growing well and her hair is lightening more and more each day and finally growing a little. No sign of teeth yet but I will miss her goofy baby smiles when she gets those first teeth. I love her shameless baring of the gums when she really likes something. It's adorable.

I hate seeing my kids grow up but at the same time it's wonderful seeing them explore their world and evolve in to little people with personalities. Already she seems to have learned how to turn on the charm and she knows what makes people smile.

She's an american girl

We got back late last night from our four hour drive to Monterrey to file the papers for Charlotte's Consular Report of Birth Abroad.

It was a big day for her because she is now an American citizen! She received her CRBA yesterday afternoon and we will get her passport mailed to us in about three weeks or less. The day was very similar to the one we spent in December 2004 when we took her brother to get his papers filed in Paris, except there were a few extra hoops to jump through.

I needed all the papers I brought I brought and more. I have to say that proof of citizenship is much harder in Mexico than it was in France. I had an entire bag loaded with paperwork. Unfortunately I had a brain lapse and had completely forgotten my medical folder for my pregnancy with all of the hospital papers in it and all of the sonograms. All I had to do is look at that photo I did of the stuff stacked on the desk to see that it wasn't even in the photo. Fool! The only thing I had was crib card because it was stuck in her baby book and a lot of photos of a very huge baby that looked nothing like a newborn because she was gargantuous. The clerk taking my papers sighed and said "you really need some more proof than this" and I scrambled about all nervous digging through my notebook where I keep all my very important papers in sleeves. There was nothing! Suddenly the clerk spied Little S's CRBA and said "hey THAT! Is that your son's ?" and it was thanks to having this paper with us that Charlotte got processed without too much fuss. As the agent who took our sworn oaths said (yes it's that official--you have to raise your right hand a lot), "I'm going to assume that our colleagues in Paris did their job" and he only asked two or three official questions like "where was I born?" and "where was my daughter born" and that was it. The funny thing was that the consulate experience in Paris was much less invasive and there was no proof of citizenship required on my part.

Charlotte didn't get her Social Security number and card because evidently you need to bring your own Social Security card and present it--a memorised number won't do. I haven't kept track of my card so much since I moved to France because I never need it. The agent was shocked that I didn't have it on me. And then for some odd reason I needed to bring Charlotte's Mexican vaccination booklet. It's just a book with a few signatures and penciled in dates, not at all official looking so it seemed totally arbitrary to demand it but in Mexico this card is really important. Who knew! We will have to do the Social Security card in Florida this Summer I suppose. The other funny thing was that they told me I had filled out the wrong form and they gave me the form in Spanish which took me a looooong time to fill out. In fact most of the agents and personnel were speaking Spanish, like the guards and the people who take your personal items. They were trying to explain to us what the procedures were for entering the building and we were a little confused and got reprimended by a guard in Spanish for standing in the wrong spot. The agents were pretty much bilingual but a few had really bad English and I kept straining to understand because the accents were thick and they kept missing articles. I should have better Spanish I know but in the consulate I think everyone should be bilingual and have a good level of English and Spanish. These are such coveted jobs that if you aren't bilingual what are you doing there? That's just my opinion.

Otherwise everyone was nice except for the one guard and the whole thing took about two hours. Then we were given the choice of coming back in the afternoon to pick up the official CRBA paper and we did because it was one less thing to have to worry about getting mailed.

Seb did all the French papers in Mexico City for Charlotte and had such an easy time. They even gave him a coffee to drink while he chatted with the agent, mostly about life in Mexico and the economy. In ten minutes everything was done and we didn't even have to be there with him. He was teasing me about how anal retentive strict the Americans are with things like this.

Moby time

With Seb gone I have been making fine use of my Moby Wrap, using it for when I need to do some sewing and cooking and especially for when I go galloping through the house to hear the most extraordinary baby giggles--something that I need to hear at least once a day. I always seem to have babies that refuse to be left in contraptions designed to keep babies occupied and with Little S it was tough and I wrung my hands a lot over it. Fisher Price never invented the magic thingy that allowed me to be arms free. But truth be told I think I've learned to love baby wearing and holding and hands-free baby raising isn't really my style and maybe it never was.

* * *

I'm not a total earth-mother "martyr" because I do have the infamous FP bouncer seat, you know with the musical fish bopping to Mozart, a garage sale find that I keep in the kitchen because I can´t always work close enough to the countertops to chop things when she´s wrapped, and there´s the whole issue of burning the baby that kind of freaks me out. So she does have moments out of my arms. But she only lasts in the bouncy seat about ten minutes max and then she gets frantic, small woman trapped in a burning building--flames licking her heels frantic. And so I pick her up and wrap her.

* * *

She's very spoiled and yes so was the last one. It all started with him. I´ll have them to blame for my bad back in old age. But I do love that feeling of having them right up against me.

* * *

And by the way can you spot the tornado boy in that photo?

Comparing my little twins

I just took Charlotte to the doctor and was shocked to discover that she was the same weight as Little S at the same age. She´s the exact same length too.

When I look at these photos together, both taken at five months old, I am struck with the realization that they have the exact same hair. Their eyes are completely different though. I know that Little S has the almond eyes of his father´s paternal side of the family, very pretty. Charlotte seems to have these big round curious eyes. She´s always looking at everything! She needs those big eyes. She also has her dads ears! They stick out a little at the top like little fairy ears. I´ll have to remind her not to have her hair too short on the sides! As for the face shape we´ll have to see because Charlotte seems to be carrying extra weight in her cheeks and we can´t really imagine what she´ll look like later when she slims out.

Little S was such a delicate featured boy that people often mistook him for a girl. Even if he had trucks on his shirts people said "awww she´s so cute!" Charlotte always gets mistaken for a boy baby. Did someone mix up the genetic cocktail?

It freaks me out a little looking at this photo montage. It´s no secret that we did IVF for both kids but what many don´t know is that when I was pregnant with Little S I was initially pregnant with twins. It makes me realize what it would have been like! I was sad for the loss of the twin but whew! how do twin parents do it? I can´t imagine having both at the same time (even if it would be cute to push them around in a double stroller looking so similar like they do).

* I´ll post about the pediatrician visit on my other blog.

Le grand frère

I had two big brothers and all I have to say is my poor little love this is only the beginning.