Caladesi Island

We spent a nice weekend on Caladesi Island, a favorite childhood beach paradise of mine. My parents have a boat once again and we were able to do an overnight visit which was lots of fun. To be honest we didn't sleep so well on the boat with baby S, but the afternoon's activities made up for it. In the evening we grilled our dinner on the island while enjoying the magnificent sunset and ate it on the boat with a few relaxing glasses of wine.

Baby S was positively slathered in sunscreen and spent the entire weekend covered like a mummy. Finally we decided to let him crawl around a bit on the beach all naked and natural. He loved it!

He turns ten months

I'd be remiss if I didn't write about the ten month anniversary of this little bundle of energy we call baby S.

He's crawling. Still breastfeeding three times a day. He's got five teeth. He likes to pull out all of the tupperware from the cupboard. Unplugs the phone. Points at everything. Loves to hand you something and grunt enthusiastically. Smells terrible often enough. Smiles when Seb and I kiss. Loves to have his head rubbed. Has soft, little curls all over his head. Talks to cats as if they were people. Likes to swim. Eats every food imaginable. Is not a good napper. Loves his mom. Is fiercely loved by his mom.

Is getting too big far too fast.

We are gathered

Seb finally arrived in Florida, a tired heap of wasted muscles and bloodshot eyes fresh from a flight with no less than three stopovers. He found it difficult to go to sleep and even more difficult to stay asleep because he wanted so badly to wake up baby S and have a look. I completely understood but nevertheless said "no way are you crazy!" He heard the desperation in my voice and thought better. He got his first look at baby S at a hearty 6am anyway, only four short hours later.

We are resting and enjoying the very hot weather combined with a swimming pool and followed by shopping trips and lots of television. We are following a rigid baby S routine finding this sometimes difficult, since we have always vacationed doing things by the seat of our pants. In the past years we would usually bike the Pinellas Trail for a long stretch each day, stopping off at the beach for swims in the hotel pools along the way. Often we'd visit my brother and his wife in the evenings for a late night glass of wine and a chat or take in last call at a local beach bar followed by a midnight swim. All that has changed this trip. The baby really puts things into a different perspective. We keep forgetting that we can't just dash off to do just anything at any hour.




We wake, or are awakened at 6am, oh and at 4am too thank you very much. Most days we putter around in the car in the afternoon. We visit the ghastly mall where I spent so many hours of my awkward teen years gawking at designer jeans and overpriced sneakers and boys. We usually swim at 4 in the afternoon with baby S and then we all take outdoor showers poolside. Seb loves this Crusoe lifestyle. I've even taken to shaving my legs poolside in a nifty bucket, it's just easier than finding time to do it indoors. Seb is not so amused by this part.

All in all we have tamed our lifestyle in one hundred subtle little ways. It's all very nice but sometimes strikingly strange. It's like trying on a different outfit, one that you never thought you'd see yourself wearing but one that surprisingly looks very good on you. We are adjusting, changing, and becoming a family.

The invasion of the grandchild

Baby S had his first taste of cat food today. No this isn't some new holistic, hippie baby food making venture I'm trying. He dipped right into the bowls of 'Sheeba' and 'Maya' with such lightning flash speed he didn't even bother to ask if they minded. There wasn't time. In the swish of a Bombay show cat's tail he'd already inspected it, properly smushed it and had it all in his mouth by the time I even noticed. Naturally I immediately stuck my finger down his throat. He's getting used to this gesture.

And no I'm not a bad mother. I'm just a mother who finds it impossible to babyproof my own mother's house without having her lose her mind. The woman is clearly on the brink. We've moved in for the duration of summer, taken over her master bedroom, become germ crazy enough to mop every morning and have actual floor inspections throughout the afternoon, "mom what's this spot...I JUST cleaned this floor huh, what's this!?" I've been militantly patrolling the cupboards and moving all the dainty, lower level bookshelf knick-knacks to higher ground. My mother, a woman very attatched to her eclectic, knick-knack collection and not afraid to grasp the wrist of those who would dare move it, has learned that I'm the goddamned Jackie Chan of stashing her crap. She won't mess with me. Her flower vases and her giant, baby crushing lamps, crystal kitty cat candy trays and silky flowers have all gradually been reassigned to the garage. There is very little of her personality left, just a giant Graco and a towering Fisher Price ball dropper toy. She has been caught several times just standing in the living room, staring off into the swimming pool, aching to tell me where I can stuff these things, but fearful of the mommy-martial artist who has emerged from my normally mild mannered self.

Oh god, and that swimming pool. I don't even want to think about the pool. We must keep all of the doors locked. We must call the house five times an hour when going out to be sure the doors are secure. We must not wake up screaming in a pool of sweat in the middle of the night worried that the worst has happened. I hate that damn pool, a mother's worst nightmare.

Babyproofing my house won't be easier than this, but at least I can toss what I want where I want it without a decorator's lament. Hey I'm all for thinking we should all just be able to move into Fisher Price condominiums for the first two years of the baby's life--everything wildly colorful and ergonomically correct in smooth, molded plastic. Oh well I think my own house will soon become a chic, Fisher Price baby haven anyway. At the rate it's slowly taking over my life, I may as well just accept it and enjoy it.

And sorry again mom. Those knick knacks will be back on the shelf in due time, barely missed but you're never going to forget those little scuffed baby knees who zipped across your rooms for two very short months. Who loves you baby!

A whole new little man

I had really hoped that he wouldn't change so much in the six weeks before his father arrives. I had hoped he'd just stay the same little french fry that he was, rolling around on the floor shrieking and looking at his toes. This arrangemnt would have been perfect. I would be able to keep my baby suspended in an 8 and 1/2 month time warp, gaining precious time staring at that amazing little creature who cooked in my belly for nine months and 4 days, and his father wouldn't miss a thing. Blame it on evolution or the hearty American diet but this child is suddenly taking off.



In the last few weeks alone baby S has crawled his first few "real" crawling steps, cut two teeth, learned to point, learned to wave "hi" and "bye" (and grunt an occasional primal "huuu" and "buhhh"), swam in his first real pool and just today he actually STOOD against the rail in his crib to protest his nap. Whew! I'm overwhelmed with all of these new things. I mean what else can he possibly do in the next three weeks?

Yes, therin lies the fear.



I feel somehow like I'm cheating on my best friend. I feel like I'm running around and having fabulous fun with someone else. When I talk to Seb on the phone about our day, I have a hard time not telling him about all of baby S's new milestones. And I have a hard time controlling my level of enthusiasm. I try to present it all as dryly as possible, but I'm sure my scantily clad descriptions without details belies me. After all he knows me. I love the details. And, the man can practically read my mind so he must understand.

I'm very sad where I should be excited. He should be seeing all of this and he isn't. He's missing it all. And I often feel like he's missing all of it because I'm selfishly here for the summer, weeks and weeks ahead of him. And although he says, "oh that's fine, we knew when we got married we'd have lots of time apart," I still feel incredibly guilty and sad about all of it.

So do you think maybe I can cryogenically freeze baby S so he doesn't do anything else? "It's only a matter of a few weeks" you say? "He'll be here in no time at all." But you see with a baby a week can mean a whole new person. I'm afraid he won't recognize this little man who was just a baby a few short weeks ago.

And miles to go before I sleep

They say that travel open up new horizons for you and makes you a better and more rounded person. I don't remember hearing that this statement applied to babies as well as adventurous adults, but evidently in a certain baby's case it does apply.

Baby S is doing lots of new and exciting things. He's jumping through all the proper hoops, crawling and teething and babbling at me with the concerted expression of "you know what I mean...know what I'm saying here mom," and I'm really loving it. He's even learned to say hi and wave his hand up and down. But, one of the most noteworthy milestones of all has to do with his sleeping. Upon arriving at my brother's home in Ohio a very tired baby S was plopped without very much decorum or cerimony into a five year old Pack 'n Play for the night. We didn't really plan on co-sleeping since there was only a lone single bed ill suited to a squirmy S, but we had no backup plan. My brother who we affectionately call Mister Safety, and who is likewise not the least bit offended by this title, hadn't been told that we even planned on possibly cosleeping. I knew he would have given me a longwinded and very detailed lecture about the many hidden dangers of baby squashing, and I just didn't want to hear it all spelled out in 'virgo' detail. I had eyed the floor, immediately sizing up the inevitible digs baby S and I would be forced to share. At least there was a piled rug.

And so now for the freaky part. My little angel actually fell asleep in that borrowed, portable bed. That's right he actually slept! And you should have seen my jaw drop when while I was getting the late night, quickie tour of the house by my sister-in-law, my brother showed up to say, "I just went in to check on him and I covered him for you. He's so sweet and..." I'm sure I jumped, I was so startled. "You WHAT? And he didn't wake up...whoa WHAT!?" I was stunned in utter disbelief. He had no idea that for almost nine months S had been curled up in our bed right next to me nursing. No idea that all experiments to tiptoe away from him or check on his breathing if we did tiptoe away had ended in a gutteral primal "WAHHHHHH" of protest. "Okay" I thought. We'll just chalk it up to jet lag. It's just a fluke. After all, he hadn't slept in what, fourteen hours. A baby is bound to do anything under those circumstances.

He never woke once that night. He slept through again and again and EVERY SINGLE NIGHT after that. And here he's still sleeping throught the night. We have no idea why but we won't even question it. I just want to dance a jig or something. Finally after a year I can get a good night's sleep. Sleep is no longer a faded memory of the past. What I used to know as sleep; endless soirees attached to a 15 pound octopus latching it's suction on me for intermittent cocktail hours, has become what it was again; a tired woman with a pillow and a 16 pound baby not so far across the room in his very own bed.

Lost in suburbia

It was a long and tiring trip and we'd finally made it to our destination, well sort of at least. You see in that frenzy of post travel-itus where you can finally unstrap your travel boots we arrived at Columbus International Airport. We were expecting to be greeted by my brother and sister-in-law and the adorable little nephew I'd not yet met, little Jo (can you believe he's five and I've never met him, sniffle). But, anyway upon exiting the arrivals terminal there was nothing but an eery, empty airport looking as if it were about to close down for the night. I had to stop and ask myself, "do airports actually close?" The employees were all yawning and this one looked like it kept specific hours. I felt like some kind of intruder stepping into someone's home.



It couldn't be helped. We were naturally late in arriving and I just knew when I booked my JFK connection that we'd get hung up on some tarmac or cramped up in some lounge reading CNN headlines. Both things ended up happening and we were about two hours late with no way to call anyone. My brother and his wife had waited patiently before finally leaving the airport in an anticlimax. They drove back home to put my five year old nephew in bed before he exploded with anticipation or melted into a puddle of boredom. Apparently he was fluctuating between the two at an alarming rate and they were getting worried. There was a gummy bear overdose involved somehow and they couldn't possibly stay another minute without losing sanity. Unfortunately I arrived ten minutes after they left. Yep, ten minutes. After a brief and slightly panicky telephone call from me, my brother rearrived curbside to collect us: a bleary eyed sister, a whiny Baby S and our two comically oversized but virtually empty suitcases, my usual plan being to fill them to the brim with books and clothes.



The aroma of nostalgia gripped me the moment I got into my brother's car and we exited towards the freeway. Ohio is the place of my childhood and it somehow stands strangely frozen into a very shy, lip biting, nine year old's perspective. It's the part of the world where I spent the first several years of my young life, managing to learn to ride a skateboard, visiting my mom's local beauty shop after school, getting Pipi Longstocking books from the library, staying overnight in the treehouse of my best friend, the pastor's youngest daughter and crying over the teenage punks who stole my Big Wheel. My brother still lives in the exact same neighborhood where we grew up and has made it possible to recreate this entire chapter of our childhood on a daily basis with his own son Joe.

I guess I had forgotten, or else maybe just never realized how utterly suburban this small corner of the world was and still is. I often fail to remember in my travels and adventures across the world that such places really do exist. And so our visit to Ohio while strange and crazy, was somehow downright enjoyable and baby S and I basked in it all. The glory of friendly, solicitous neighbors in two story houses who hollered "hey" each time we'd pass, an assembly line of backyard cookouts, wall to wall carpeting and multiple bathrooms, and the startling realization that nearly every neighbor as far as the eye could see had a wooden swingset with an attached sliding board and a blow up baby pool. It was all very surreal to an expat mom and baby used to life in a conservative little French village which simply exists on it's reputation for very good mineral water and an abundance of boulangeries and flower shops.

We adapted rapidly to our newfound lifestyle. Baby S turned immediately into the perfect little suburban baby, sleeping right through the night in his little borrowed Graco Pack and Play crib at the first available opportunity as if this was something he'd always done. I shopped at Walmart buying him baseball themed t-shirts at the unheard of price of 3.99 and cute, little sippy cups that worked so charmingly that he actually figured out how to use them after only one day. Life became dreamy and easy. We settled together into this cozy sort of relationship where I could pretend I was this hip, know-it-all, American mom and he was the baby who did it all on cue...eat, sleep, play...eat, sleep, play...ad nauseum. If it didn't work we'd just fix it, or buy it or better yet find it in a garage sale for three dollars and bargain it down to two dollars. I was in the Magic Kingdom of babydom.



I must admit that we are getting far too used to this way of life. Cheap, convenient and easy is something we 'French' moms know nothing about. Suburbia really doesn't exist in my little part of the world. Children's clothes and toys and gadgets seem to cost a fortune. Many of the latest conveniences like a Fisher Price Ocean Wonders this or that are specific only to Americana. Sometimes imported, items are often inflated to several times the price. As a result we live simply with the minimum baby paraphernalia and fewer toys.

At the end of the week we said our Ohio goodbyes and made our way down to Florida to move in with my parents for the next few months. I am starting to think that our empty suitcases may be bulging at the seams by the time we leave for France. A mom gets used to cheap, easy and convenient, especially when it means her little wide eyed baby is actually entertained throughout the daytime hours and sleeping through the night.

Leaving for home

In a few short days we'll be heading to the airport for a long awaited visit home. I have two homes actually, Florida's west coast where I grew up and Southeast France where I also grew up, that is if you count growing up as anything that happens after age thirty. I have that awful expat phenomenon where I don't ever feel entirely at home in either place, and there is a giant, gaping hole left in my heart whenever I leave either place for the other for any length of time. I suppose the only solution is to grow very wealthy and have a leisurely life in both locales, staying six months out of the year in each and switching languages and cultures as easily as most people do their shoes. We should all be so lucky to enjoy such a life.



Leaving this Thursday will probably leave me very teary eyed because Seb will be left behind for the first six weeks. We are really quite attached as a couple don't get me wrong, but it's not the leaving of each other that will be difficult. It's going to be the first time our family unit will be apart for more than a few days and I think it will be a difficult burden for us to bear as new parents. Babies change so rapidly at this point in their little lives, I think that Seb will miss a great deal of baby S's milestones. These are moments that can never be recaptured and I know this will leave him dealing with the inevitable pangs of jealousy and more than his fair share of hurt. I can't really blame him because I'd be scratching at the walls if anyone separated me from baby S at this point. Well, after the first three days that is; envisioning self sipping pina colada with toes painted a pearly pink while stretched out on a breezy, azure shoreline.

Otherwise I'm testing out baby handling for the various international airports we'll be maneuvering. Can I actually carry a sack full of diapers and sundries, a very large purse stuffed with chocolate and Savoyard pottery, a baby and fold a stroller all with only two arms? My obsessing has led to several bickering matches between Seb and me, "are you crazy! I can't put my son on the floor of the airport! It's dirty and disgusting and someone could kidnap him!" "It's dirty" of course being the first of my concerns, kidnapping being second. Seb has had to remind me to try to relax on several points. I'm just thankful he's not the one traveling alone with baby S. I think he'd probably come tumbling out on the baggage carousel at the final destination, unscathed and babbling and chewing on a luggage tag. Seb would just collect him and stroll on out to meet me not a care in the world. Meanwhile I've already imagined the profiles of several of my potential seatmates, all of them unshaven men wearing very large heeled shoes and shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

Now for the checklists if you'll excuse me while I go off and obsess some more: children's Doliprane, birth certificate, passport numbers, emergency telephone numbers, frozen baby food, disposable diapers, earplugs (several sets for the entire plane), very cute baby outfits (to "market" baby S to my advantage), and the list goes on . . .

If you care to add anything I'm all ears.
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Moi-meme

I've never been "memed" and this week I got lucky. The very cool ,Dalïado transient French citizen extraordinaire, interviewed me with five burning questions. Read on.

1. You mention that your in-laws don't seem to notice you when they visit you, Baby S and Seb. Why do you think that is?

Oh my, that's where sarcasm will get me--"memed" into being grilled about my mother- in-law! I was being sarcastic and silly in that post. They don´t notice Seb either anymore. It´s all about baby S haha. Well, okay but being in all humor there is a ring of truth I'll fess up. Okay, let's try stepping back into the past. For a year or two when I first came to France Seb's family simply could not communicate with me. That was really hard for all of us. So without realizing it they just kind of talked over my head. No one can truly understand the difficulty and frustration of being plopped right into a foreign country with zero language skills. It's like having masking tape over your mouth. Besides the fact that people will often lose patience while you're struggling to find the right word. My mother-in-law used to cut off the end of my painstakingly slow French sentences sighing, then turn to my husband and say "I have no idea what she's saying."

Now it's better because I've learned French, although my father-in-law stilllll... taaaaalks... liiiike... thiiis... to me. It´s actually kind of funny.

And yet as I said before, baby S has lousy French and they never cut him off. How fair is that?

2. How often are you able to visit with your family?

I try to visit every year. These are my chicken soup visits. They're very important for morale. I make a lousy expat.

3. Are there any advantages to living "near" your in-laws?

Actually we don´t live neear them. They live about 8 hours away completely in the North of France. We only see them for holidays and vacations. We only see them periodically and then during those periods it´s like for two weeks straight they kind of move in with us. Whats hard about being an American with French in-laws is that the French live very much by a food clock and we Americans positively don't so we adapt to a new schedule schedule for days on end. I´m terrible at preparing lunch at 12:00 sharp. I'm usually still washing up dishes from breakfast at 11am. I just can't live by a clock and I'm a very bad hostess after the first 24 hours. I think I drive them nuts when they come and visit!

4. Do you think that you and Seb would be considered "hippie" parents if you were raising Baby S in the USA?

Oh probably. I don't think I've ever done much of anything the typical way. I've always been sort of a hippie fish. Seb isn't really a hippie parent though. He's very straightlaced. He's just a hippie parent by proxy, poor thing.

5. Do you have any concerns about raising your baby bilingually? Do you have any specific language learning methods in mind?

No not really. I think he'll have a much easier time than his parents do with the languages. He'll probably just pick both languages right up. They're very sponge-like these little critters.

We have no methods really. We're an English speaking household overall. It's just been our habit to always communicate in English. Seb speaks to baby S in French. I always speak to him in English. When we're around others or outside the house we tend to speak French.

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Okay it's your turn everyone. If you have the inclination and a blog I'd love to "meme" you. The first 5 people who would like to be interviewed by me must leave a comment with a resounding "yes darling please do."
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Cloth me mama

baby S sports a Motherease diaper

When we first decided to have a baby I decided three important things: the baby would be a girl, she would eat natural, homemade foods, I would probably breast feed her for 6 weeks maximum and she would not wear disposable diapers.

Many of these governing principles fell quickly by the wayside. First of all ultrasound reports, the first available as I am not one to wait around nine months for surprises, revealed that baby C would become baby S. This took some time to get used to. I had already bought three baby dresses in the last six years and moved them several times from house to house and box to box. The thought of a wardrobe full of suspendered jeans with truck and firemen motifs made my heart sink. I have since learned to embrace the inevitable and am delighted to discover that boys clothes can be very cute and little boys can be even cuter.

The natural foods part is an unwavering principle and has turned out to be a lot of fun. I love to cook and cooking for a baby is probably the most fun you can have in the kitchen. Imagine an instant little 'food critic' there at all times to immediately rate your culinary talents with a giddy toothless grin. You've gotta love it.

The breastfeeding just happened. I really didn't set out to breastfeed for very long. I had no confidence that it would work, that I would like it, that I would feel comfortable doing it or that my baby would enjoy it so much. I still can't believe that we'll have been doing this for 9 months in a few short weeks.

Finally the diapers. I could think of no other way I could have brought a child into this world without my cloth diapers. It became one of my biggest worries during pregnancy. What would I do with the dirty diapers? I didn't want to add to the landfill problem, throwing away 6-8 diapers each day for the next 2 to 3 years. And yet I couldn't see myself handling cloth diapers at all. Besides, while cloth is reasonably well known in the Unites States and England, no one and I mean NO ONE here in France uses them. I did a lot of research. I thought about disposable alternatives. I looked for biodegradable disposables but the source was only willing to ship to France from England. It all seemed unreliable and expensive. Cloth became my backup choice. I just was not looking forward to using them but I ordered a batch of them off of American E Bay nonetheless.

I used disposables for the first six weeks. It's true that they were convenient and easy. I was new to this baby handling thing and disposables were more familiar to me. Meanwhile I had 24 state-of-the-art Motherease diapers just sitting in the diaper cupboard. One day I ran out of disposables and there I sat diaperless. I was forced to finally try one of these strange cloth contraptions. And do you know what? The diapers fit like a charm. And baby S looked adorable all wrapped in padded cloth with his big 'ole baby butt. And miraculously the hours ticked, the diaper filled and it didn't leak! I removed it after about two hours or more and replaced it with another, the diaper bin slowly filling all the while. At the end of the day I dropped it all in the machine and ran a fairly steamy load of whites. I line dried them as instructed (you always have to line dry modern cloth diapers because of the elastic) and in no time at all the rotation began. I had baby S in cloth and he was happy and so was I.

I'm not trying to sell anyone on cloth but I would be remiss if I didn't say that it's easier than you might imagine. Baby poop is only very, very, very messy in the early days of babyhood when it's less solid. It's during this phase that you place the diapers in a pail to soak with tea tree oil and pretty much run your diaper wash in very hot water with little else in the machine. After a while the baby starts solid food and the poop easily 'drops' right into the toilet. The diapers get washed fairly poop free. Nowadays we often wash our towels and jeans right along with baby S's diapers with no qualms whatsoever. The diapers take up very little laundry space anyway so even early on you're washing very small loads. And, baby S has never had any diaper rash with cloth. The only times he's had a rash was ironically (or perhaps coincidentally) when he was wearing disposables. As far as traveling is concerned, I either take a pack of disposables if it's a particularly long trip with no washing machine readily available or I'll take a plastic sack to drop the old diapers into if it's a day trip.

Besides, where else can you find diapers this cute and help the environment out at the same time?


*Motherease is a good investment if you want baby in cloth. The diapers are brilliantly engineered to adjust over the first year of the baby's life. The covers are sold separately. I also use Bumkins all in ones from time to time. These also come recommended.


**I'm a SAHM (a "stay at home mom" or a "Shit Ass Ho Motherfucker" as Dooce eloquently puts it) and I'll agree that maybe these things have been made easier because I don't have to work during baby S's first year. I salute all working moms who take the time to breastfeed, co sleep, cloth diaper or make their own foods. You are the real goddesses.

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Relax aboard the IVF train

If you've been following this blog for awhile then maybe you remember a while back when I mentioned that we wanted a second baby. "Wait...you mean it took you over five years to have the first baby where you did 5 IUI's, numerous fertility drugs, embarrassing invasive tests and an IVF and now you want another?" ::emphatic head shaking::

Let's take a stroll through the past. Look, see how trim and fit I am! Look I don't have that crease in my brow yet. Awwwww look there's Seb and we're ...oh wait... turn around. No not that way, this way. I want you all to see. We're actually having sex! Hey look we're having sex for pleasure!! Wow, I should come visiting here more often! Wait I hear voices.

voices fade in . . .

-Look, we've been trying for two cycles to have a baby and it just isn't working.
-just relax and it will happen.

-We've been trying for 6 months to have a baby and it just isn't working
-just relax and it will happen.

-We've been trying for 1 year to have a baby and it just isn't working.
-just relax and it will happen.

-We've been trying for 2 years to have a baby and it just isn't working.
-just relax and it will happen.

-We've been trying for 3 years to have a baby and it just isn't working.
-just relax and it will happen.

-We've been trying for 4 years to have a baby and it just isn't working.
-just relax and it will happen.

-We've been trying for 5 years to have a baby and it just isn't working.
-just relax and it will happen.

-We've been trying FOREVER to have a baby and it isn't working!
-just relax and it will happen.

voices fade out . . .

It finally did happen. The voices were not right. It was not while we we're relaxed that we conceived baby S but in fact it was during one of the most tense periods of our life. Me, out cold and lying on my back, legs wide open having my eggs sucked out of me by strangers while Seb produced a sample in a room down the hall. Oh wait that was just part one. Part two consisted of lying on my back legs wide open and having a good looking doctor with a catheter pump 3 eggs back into me. Then we were sent home so I could throw up for 4 days straight from hyper-stimulation. Then I got the news that my father had suddenly died of a heart attack several time zones away. This was followed by a two week hormone induced shouting match between Seb and me. So you see relaxing is for wimps. Real couples make babies under extreme duress.

Here we are back in today. We have once again been told to "just relax and it will happen" and we've also been told "women are very fertile after giving birth" and "some things just fix themselves" and also "you just have to prime the pump!" But even though the pump has been primed and pumped out a baby and lots of other stuff, (ask Seb about this and he will make his 'I watched my wife give birth' face), we still are having no success.

My theory is that some couples don't just do it. Some of us need an intervention. The only way we seem to be able to make babies is through the reproductive equivalent of a bitch slap. Subtle relaxation and non-stress techniques obviously don't work for us. We need power and lightning. We need drama and headlines. We need large doses of science.

We've got our appointments all lined up and we're climbing once again aboard a very strange sort of train where there's no alcohol, no caffeine, lots of overpriced drugs and a wanking room for the men. The female passengers are all a bit bitchy but they have a great excuse for it, much to their partner's dismay, and the "engineer" is a very nice looking 40-something, 'mr. know it all' gent who makes all the women swoon. I'll be taking my usual seat near the window because I get motion sickness if I can't see the scenery moving. I should be at least be spared that misery.
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Baptismal luncheon

Baby S was baptised on Sunday amid a throng of visiting relatives and friends and neighbors. Since his first birthday falls in a time period when people wouldn't really be able to visit, and since many friends hadn't really seen him yet, we decided to make an elaborate party out of the baptism weekend and have a lovely buffet luncheon catered by well, yours truly with lots of help from my good friend Bea and my sister Jane.

Saturday we slaved in the kitchen, me my sister Jane and Bea. Friends dropped in and out all afternoon, grabbing glasses of water and teas and lingering over the ingredients in bowls on the tables. Ingredients like peanut butter and roasted pine nuts, fromage nature and mangoes caused wrinkled brows and evoked inquisitive "hmmms." Bea finally left me at the end of the day with a menu list and a fridge full of oversized ziplock baggies, neatly labeled for mixing the next day. I really have to tip my hat to her party planning skills. She's just one of these people born to entertain and even though she couldn't make it to the Sunday luncheon, she was the main reason it was a success.


Jane poses by the rapidly thrown together buffet tables we concocted Saturday night in an exhausted frenzy

Sunday morning we all casually strolled uphill to the church, all sixteen of us, with Baby S elegantly in tow. He wore his baptismal white: cotton elastic bottomed pants, a silken shirt and tie, ruffled silk socks and high top sneakers. He was gorgeous!


part of the crew casually strolling up the very steep hill to town


and then over half of the crew meets up at the top to take photos while we wait for those who took the funicular

The baptism itself was delightful in that our randomly chosen day happened to be Mother's Day in France. The priest was able to tie in the Virgin Mary and wrapped the whole Baptismal sermon around the immaculate conception. I found that amusing because of our own little immaculate "IVF conception" and while I know the catholic church frowns on the whole IVF process, the priest was certainly unknowingly echoing these sentiments when he sermoned about the virgin mother and her miracle son. Ironically the priest himself had been baptised on this exact same day 75 years ago and he talked a lot about that too. So, I think we chose the date well.


Seb holds Baby S as he gets doused by the priest


Seb and I posing with Dee who is holding Baby S

The party went very well considering the state of the house, which didn't improve as much as we would have liked. Friends and family overlooked the broken floors, the funny peach & pink walls with concrete chunks sticking out and we finally stuck some semblance of a doorknob on the door to the w.c. (that's bathroom for those of us who are American but my British friend always says..."there's no bath in there so why do you keep calling it that!?") We stuck candles everywhere and brought out plate after plate of yummy delights torn from the pages of Southern Living and Oprah magazine. Oh and the punch seemed to help draw everybody together too. I just love "punch" because even the shyest person will help themselves to another glass of seemingly innocent fruit juice and unwittingly get zonked. I know this isn't really the goal of this type of proper luncheon but I always like my guests stuffed and 'relaxed' at all of my gatherings and what's the harm in an 83 year old French woman helping herself to yet another glass of uh "fruit juice" as she casually tells her life story to a young man from Manchester.


lemon pound cake with strawberry sauce...mmmm

I finally got to see all of my crew of friends in one gathering, and it was magnificent that they got to see Baby S and the house too. My friend Jess and her boyfriend David stayed for a few extra days and we got to have a nice visit. I was so excited for her to meet Baby S. She's a natural with babies and David seems to share her enthusiasm. They had him giggling so much that I was afraid for when they'd leave. I knew I'd never be able to keep up the entertainment level he was getting used to. He really relished in all their attention.

My friend Dee bravely showed up too. I felt the pangs of sorrow for her in her last and most recent failed attempt at IVF and I know it must have been hard for her to see us all gathered around Baby S cooing and coddling him. She is much braver than I am on that front. I think I would have had a difficult time spending a weekend in the midst of all my friends celebrating a birth. This is especially true since we had spent New Years 2004 all together doing fertility treatments. The same whole gang was there last year mocking us for not drinking and running upstairs doing our little injections every evening. I ended up pregnant with Baby S that cycle and unfortunately Dee ended up with another failed IUI. This must have been running through her mind I'm sure.

The only damper was a bit of mother-in-law badgering which I guess is to be expected. The sight of an eight month old Baby S still clinging to his mother's breast in the church's front pew was a little more than she could bear. I thought it was pretty damn cool. The irony of the occasion was not lost in that there was a painting not too far away of the Virgin Mother doing the exact same thing with the baby Jesus. But, the pleas to stop breastfeeding "for goodness sake" made me a little nutty and ready to say my peace. I held back for the sake of the occasion but it wasn't easy. When you've got something that bugs your mother in law that much, you just gotta keep on doing it for the sheer pleasure it gives you to see her blood boil.

Finally at the end of the day we all went for a swim in the lake to cool off and get out of our party clothes. All in all a good day was had by all, especially Baby S who slept like a groundhog the next day. Now he knows how rock stars feel. It's tiring being adored and having women fawn over you for an entire day!

Sleep deprivation

Just as we are in the dregs of preparing the house for the baptism "world summit meeting" luncheon, rapidly hanging drywall and fanning paint dry, Baby S has decided he doesn't want to sleep. He would much rather squirm and protest all night, whining and "ya-ya-ya-ing" himself to a lull at around 4:30am. Who can you blame but his parents?

We cosleep with Baby S and if you read what my philosophy is on AP(attachment parenting) you'll see that my definition differs slightly from the reality. It's basically a very good parenting ideal, obviously marketed by those with perfectly, well-behaved infants. The reality is that if your baby is even slightly high needs, yes it's good for him but his parents will suffer immensely, getting little sleep and lugging about a 20 pounds of very soft baby meat all day long. We do this. We sleep very little because he squirms in bed all night. We carry him all day long. We make our own baby food. We wash load after load of cloth diapers and line dry them. We kiss instead of correct. We snuggle. We have no schedule.

It really is frightening to be a part of a movement you feel wrangled into, but it's you who have wrangled yourself into it. And the worst part is that we didn't even know there was a label for this strange brand of parenting we practice. Seb's parents just call it 'crazed,' mine shrug and call it 'hippie parenting' expecting little else from me, and our pediatrician who is a very mainstream French middle of the road baby doctor just smiles condescendingly at us with a wrinkled brow.

We have finally broken down and bought Baby S a bed of his own. It sits in the corner, matressless. We can't seem to decide on the brand we like. We'd like crib bumpers and blankets but there is a sale in in the catalogue companies and we'd like to see if another company will have their sales too. Meanwhile I feel like we're stalling for time. Either that or Baby S is hypnotizing us at night while we sleep "don't ...buy.... it... don't .... buy..."

So, after the baptism is over we're going to transfer the little flea to his own "lit." A stone's throw away from our own bed, I'm sure it won't be terribly tramatic for him. I will certainly be the one lying there alert with one eye focused on the corner of his bed half the night. I won't sleep much, head and heart spinning with the newness of it all. I will be the one with overflowing breasts and empty arms.
*

The arrival of the aunt

My sister Jane arrived in France on Friday for a ten day visit, her first visit since Baby S came into our world. My sister and I are very close and it's always been hard being far away from her. I often think we're more like best friends than sisters, and I always laugh hardest when I'm with her. We also seem to have some of the biggest fights of anyone I know, lashing out at each other like cobras. I have a philosophy that you can't really love someone unless you can truly argue with them. Our arguments cleanse us and make the air a little fresher in our relationship but boy, oh boy are they scary. They don't happen very often, maybe once every two or three years. The last time we argued it was after a long car trip to Key West. I threw coconuts at her head at three a.m. in front of our parent's house over some dispute about the rental car. And then there was something about Jane having severe swimmer's ear and thinking that Seb and I were ignoring her the whole trip home, but really she couldn't hear us talking to her. I can barely remember all the details. In retrospect it was all very funny. Especially because my mom came outside nonchalantly in her bathrobe and just sighed "oh, you girls...c'mon now." She was used to these little dramas. Unfortunately the neighbors weren't though.

Jane hasn't had children and I know Baby S will become like her own. She's one of the most generous, fiercely loyal and loving persons I know, so I know he'll be protected by her as long as she lives. I'm sure he'll always seek the comfort of her loving arms and will certainly find her bohemian, carefree nature attractive enough to defy me and confide in her one day. This will probably cause one of our famous dramatic fights, making a teenage Baby S sigh with boredom "oh girls...c'mon now!"

View from the top

The weather was finally warm and pretty enough to go jacketless and hatless. I lugged Baby S to the very top of our street overlooking Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) so that he could look at our house and see all of the sailboats on the port. "Look we live down there little monkey," I squinted and pointed out our house. "Waaaaaa haaaarrr." Translation: what happened to that cool stick you gave me earlier? "Look sweetheart, aren't we lucky to live in such a pretty village?" "Arrrrrrrr ra ra ra arrrrr..." Translation: I hate the sun. Get me out of here!

We left after just a few photos. Tourists were beginning to wonder if I was up to something sinister, holding a baby by one arm while barely managing a camera with the other, all the while dangling everything near the edge of the railing. No, I was just trying to capture a moment in time; Baby S's first Spring in the special place we call home. Enough nostalgia, I sat him down and returned the stick. He immediately stopped crying and started his own musings, "Mmmmmmmm stick yum."*



*warning: sticks are very dangerous for babies (as every grandmother within a 50 km radius will inform you the minute you give your baby one)
*

Children's songs

Mother-in-law feeds Baby S

My mother in law's visit, while difficult for me as she stuffed my delicate lamb with every imaginable thing possible, was particularly amusing for Baby S. As we reviewed the video sequences she'd shot while she babysat him each afternoon, we all smiled thoughtfully at his giggles, toothless grins and sheer admiration for the woman he will call "mamie" for the rest of his life.

She spent much of her time with him singing animated children songs, whipping out a new title each few days complete with fingers dancing, bouncing about and a general air of "yoopee-ness." Bay S was enthralled. My husband was impressed. My mother in law was beaming. I was jealous.

Like a competitive schoolgirl, I rapidly searched my head for the equivalent to 'A Dada Sur Mon Bidet' * or 'Pêche, Pomme, Poire, Abricot,' and came up with 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider.' I awkwardly did finger crossings and my "rain" came a little before the line 'down came the rain,' so eager was I to show off. I was sadly rusty and let's face it, ill practiced. No one was impressed, least of all Baby S. My repetoire was empty aside from 'This Little Piggy,' and I was not going to risk the ridiculousness of getting that one all wrong too, what with bare toes involved and all.

My mother-in-law sympathetically offered to loan me her copy of a book that teaches you French children's songs, so unenamoured is she with the English language's gross lack of ability to entertain children. But yet I know this is totally untrue. We have fabulous songs! I just haven't got the brain cells to remember them all for now. So, I'm asking you dear anglophone readers. What is you personal favorite children's song? And please, something with some action. I really want to wow them, ...um I mean Baby S.

*No, not actually a bathroom bidet. I made the same mistake upon hearing the song, but my mother-in-law explained to me that a bidet is also a pony of sort. The "a da da" is the trotting noise and you bounce the baby on your lap to the 'trot.'

Silk pashmina

Baby S and I had a wonderful time visiting my friend Bea and her boys but it's always a little sad when we're together. We're both terminally homesick and it seems like we spend all of our time lamenting about going home. We both seem to and crawl into a verbal cocoon, telling stories of adventures we've had the previous summers in the States and reliving all of the adventures we had before moving here. It seems almost like the memories we're creating here pale dimly in comparison to those created in the short visits where we see our family each year. I hate having these feelings because I want to enjoy the present, but they are so omnipresent that there's little I can do about them.

This homing instinct was never a part of my personality until I became pregnant. My friend Bea claims it was the same for her and true to this, she has always talked about "going home" since we first met, just after the birth of her oldest boy. I didn't have these feelings at all, and always told her that France suited me well for now and that I enjoyed living here. Maybe it was the beginning of the tugging that made me always say it suited me "for now" and not "forever."

As soon as I became pregnant I turned to the telephone and called my mother. I immediately discussed the purchase of plane tickets for a visit home before the end of the second trimester. And, when that month long visit to the States was finished I still hadn't had enough. For the first time in forever I didn't want to get on the airplane and go back to France. I wanted to stay where I was and have Seb come to me. It actually physically hurt every nerve in my being to get back on that airplane to come home to France. I cried a good part of the way to New York, blaming the abundance of hormones. After all I had cried just as hard a few weeks earlier over a story about terrier who found his owners after they'd moved across the country.

I still have these crying spells. I find myself drawn closer and closer to the nebulous of a world I'm more familiar with. This is the world I wanted to raise my children in, the children songs I know, the women I need, the vacations I loved as a kid. In short the nostalgia of my childhood. I'm not sure if the instinct is as strong for the male species, or maybe it has something to do with the French culture not being as buried in nostalgia as American culture. My husband doesn't seem to have this need to surround his children with the things of his own childhood. Instead I think he considered it banal and would much prefer to see his kids explore the world for themselves, and maybe even have more fun than he did doing it. Or maybe it really comes down to the fact that he's never been away from his culture enough to miss it.

We've discussed the inevitable move one day. My heart tells me loud and clear that I won't retire here in France, but that I will be painfully drawn to it from the other side of the Atlantic. Like a woman with two lovers, each with equally endearing qualities, away from one I'll continually long for the other. France is my antique, hand woven, silk pashima. I'll always wrap myself in it for it's ability to make me feel adventurous and elegant, impregnated with all of its memories of discovering another world. The States to me are like well-worn bedroom slippers, full of holes and dingy, but feeling to me like a comfortable, second skin. Right now the pashima feels a little chilly around my shoulders and the slippers seem delightfully inviting.
*

He's seven months old

Baby S turned 7 months old yesterday. My sweet, fragile baby boy is turning into a small man right before my eyes. It’s almost scary how quickly they change. I swear sometimes that someone came in my house in the night, stole my sleepy-eyed, little ragdoll, and replaced him with this tempermental little pistol who chit-chats all afternoon and squeals with delight at “Les Petit Marionettes.”

He’s eating very little solid food. We’re taking it slower than I ever thought. We’re just doing what feels right. He loves to eat but seems full after two or three tablespoons. He’s not quite sitting up yet. I think that’s going to take a while. But, he has suddenly taken delightfully to rolling back and forth at rapid speed. He seems very proud of this and always has this sort of “look at me” grin on his face when he does it. This is probably because we’d clap and shout and do wolf whistles each time he’d do it. Now he does it so often that we just kind of grunt "good boy" out of the corner of our mouths and carry on with "...oh, and honey can you pass me the salt while you're up?" He’s probably thinking, "hey guys, what happened to all the hoopla?" Well, I guess he’ll have to get a new gig, the poor little monkey. That show's already in syndication.

I wish I had a special stop watch to freeze certain moments and carry them with me forever. Memories aren't the same, they fade and change color. Movies don't capture the same feelings. Don't we all wish we could stock memories and keep them in our minds and hearts as fresh as they are when they happen. I hope I can always look at him and see that fresh faced baby with the droopy head, tenderly wrapped in the yellow, satin receiving blanket.



*

Mouse Funeral

the youngest tries desperately to reanimate the poor critter with water

It's not easy having three kids under six. Luckily I was just the babysitter--and the very tired babysitter by the middle of the third day.

On Friday afternoon the sun was blazing and the weather was georgous. I dragged all of the kids outside in the courtyard for a water gun fight and some impromptu horseplay. "Get out and blow some stink off of you!" I said, sounding eerily like my mother. We put on some music and they had a great time dancing around to American Indian drums and chants, shooting each other mercilessly all the while with their Super Power Blaster guns, as I sat contently with baby S in the shade for a few moments and relaxed.

After about twenty minutes the oldest of Bea's boys came running up and grabbed me excitedly by the arm, "come here...look!" They had discovered the decapitated remains of a little, brown mouse that Nilla the cat had neatly layed out by the garden hose. Lots of animated questions came pouring forth, especially from the mouth of Bea's youngest boy, age four. "Is it still going to be okay?" "Can he grow a new head?" "Does he have any brothers that need to know where he is?" And finally, "what does it mean to be dead...where do you go?" I carefully answered all of the questions as best as I could, and for the last two I simply said "it means he's gone somewhere else interesting and maybe we'll see him again one day." They seemed to accept all of my answers, except that the little one looked perplexed and seemed to have a problem organizing all this new information. He kept pouring water on the mouse carcass and would run back to tell me "come look...he moved his tail!" and, "come look he breathe-ded again!" I told him I was really not sure if he could save the mouse but that his efforts were valiant. And I added, "I think it's time for his funeral."

So on Friday afternoon we staged a mouse funeral, picking him up carefully with laurier leaves and delivering him into a neatly dug hole. We placed rocks on top of his grave, Celtic style and said a short word about what we thought about garden mouses in general. "He was the best mouse in da world," the youngest added very seriously.

If his mouse family was watching from behind a garden rock I'm sure they were impressed with the poetic ending of their mouse brother's life. A lovely finish any garden mouse would be envious of.

*

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.