Ch-ch-changes

I packed a whopping two boxes so I’ve earned the right to write on my blog. I’m still in denial that I’m moving to a new apartment (albeit gradually, not all in one weekend) some time by the end of this month. I’m mildly excited about the second room, though it will be strange not having baby just beside our bed as she is now. Plus the building is completely new. But that could be a bad thing considering our demon cat will no doubt put his scratches on the pristine linoleum and we can’t pretend they have always been there.

I’m also the type of person who gets used to her environment and is afraid to change it. Maybe I did make a BIG environmental change in coming to France, but I still feel strange changing even within the same country, or city, as in this case. I can walk to the new place in perhaps 15 minutes, to show you how close it is. But my daily life and surroundings will nonetheless shift.

My pharmacy is gonna be a bit too far to trek to by foot, as I mentioned before so I’ll choose a different one. And my nearly daily trips to my favorite upscale grocery store (Monoprix) when I’ve just run out of butter will become rarer. I will replace it with CocciMarket, which seems to have a smaller range of products from what I could tell by glancing in the windows. I did spot a lovely bakery/patisserie which could become very dangerous to my waistline.

And I think I’m going to miss some of my current neighbors. We’ve actually got some friendly folks in our building now, the majority of them being retirees. There’s the former pharmacist lady who still has that very professional and smiley way of saying “Au revoir” or “Have a good evening” that is typical of shopkeepers. The white-haired lady who’s 86 and walks literally at a snail’s pace with her little sack on wheels. And the extremely cooky one who all but pledged her allegiance to an infamous German dictator in our presence. She does have his book in her living room. Whatever I can say about her political leanings, she has kindly watched our demon cat twice when we went on vacation. Plus, she doesn’t mind when he jumps over to “visit” her balcony.

I guess I’ll just have to accept the fact that I’ll be in transition for a while. And slowly but surely I’ll create my new world on the other side of the city.

Ma pharmacie

The other week I noticed baby’s nose was running. In typical new mom worry mode, I decided a dash to the pharmacy was in order. So out we went at 6:30 p.m. to pay yet another visit to my friendly pharmacy. I was almost ashamed to show my face there again since sometimes it seems I’m there three times a week. What with prescriptions for myself or baby or just general questions like that one. On that occasion the kind pharmacy lady who has two young kids herself recommended the “mouche bébé”- a high tech system of blowing baby’s nose for her by aspirating it (cotton filter prevents you from ingesting it!).

In the two years that I’ve lived in this city, this little pharmacy has become a cozy and helpful place for me. Since I only fill my prescriptions there, they know my drug history and I can talk to them easily. They saw me pre-baby, pregnant and now post-baby. When I took baby there after getting out of the hospital, it was sort of like showing her to “family”.

But when I first arrived in France I was rather surprised or even disappointed with the system here (and there are still things I gripe about). Back in the good old US of A you can buy aspirin at a quick mart. Here it is only available in pharmacies and more often than not it’s behind the counter so you have to ASK for it. Don’t even think about the Wal-Mart generic bottle of 500 pills. And heaven help you if you need to buy something like Immodium. You’re gonna have to ask for it and thus openly admit that you (or someone in your household) needs it. As if it’s not bad enough to just have to take these types of things to the cash register. Add to this limited French skills and not knowing the brands here and having to explain symptoms…

But the French government thinks that if they sold aspirin in supermarkets that people would misuse it. That we need a real pharmacist to sell it to us to avoid intoxication. Never mind that nine times out of ten when you buy it at a pharmacy you don’t even ask about the side effects or say why you need it.

But I suppose the longer I live here the more I get used to these little idiosyncrasies that are La France! And it’s mostly the warm staff at my pharmacy that make it so pleasant to go there. I even told them with regret that I’ll be moving to a different side of town so would have to change pharmacies. They tried to tell me a diagonal way to get there, but it would be a longer trek. No, I’ll just have to break in a new little pharmacy. They’ll be seeing a lot of me!

What the future holds

The days that seemed so far off before baby was born are now approaching too fast. Like the return to work, which in itself isn’t so terrible since I like my colleauges. It’s more the fact that I won’t be spending all my time with baby. Last week I had to face reality since I took her to meet the sitter. She’s part of an organization in our city where the sitters are certified and once a week or so they go to the center for play groups. And last Thursday it was the monthly visit from the pediatrician, so we had to establish baby’s file there.

So Tatie Marie (auntie Marie) was happy to meet her new charge. She said baby was pretty (I guess I’m prejudiced so I never know if it’s really true or not) and kissed her on the cheek. After the weighing and measuring of the kids, all the sitters took a coffee and chatted. Tatie Marie wanted to hold baby for a while, and she was very calm with the sitter. Just sort of looking around at the other kids. So strange for me to see her little face in someone else’s arms. From time to time it started getting to me so I tried to chat about anything and everything to not let too many tears escape.

I also met my baby’s new playmates, Thibaut (pronounced Tee-bo), a boy of six months with bright blue eyes, and Camille, a two year-old girl with brown curls. So my own little girl will be the youngest in the “family”. Who knows, maybe as she gets older, Thibaut could be her first little boyfriend.

As I sat there drinking my water, other kids came up to me and offered me plastic balls or put a plump hand on my knee as they passed by. I love that little warmth from toddlers. Everyone’s their friend or “mountain” to climb on. A sweet little Arabic boy with creamy brown skin walked by in his big boy onesie and said matter of factly, kaka. I could smell it in his diaper, too. Hard to believe my baby will be walking and talking in a time not so far off.

But for now we’ll just have to get through this transition. She’ll still be mine in the evenings and on weekends, of course. No, she’ll still be mine all the time!

Crying, coohing, coughing

You can see baby's many moods here, as the title indicates. Only regret about this video is that she's all dressed in blue, but you know she's a girl anyway! She's also learning to turn on one side, just the left side for now. I'm not sure if she knows how to turn back though so she might get panicky.

Indian Summer

Strolled out with baby to the physical therapist this afternoon. Another generous gift from the French health system, 10 sessions for abdominal exercises to regain that muscle tone. On this early autumn day we’ve got brilliant blue skies and very little wind. Everyone seems to know it could be our last few days of lovely weather and we’re not gonna take it for granted. From inside the therapist’s office I have a view of the cobbled square and the arcades of the facades on the other side. I dutifully do ten minutes on the stationary bike occasionally glancing at baby in her rocky car seat beside me. She’s doing her angel act. Pretending that she always sleeps like this in the afternoon.

I decide to take the long route home as baby’s sleeping so peacefully and the weather’s so nice. I walk against the stream of middle and high school kids who are getting out for the weekend. Always the people-watcher, I study the types of kids who walk past me. The little middle school boy who still resembles the elementary student. The slightly roly-poly girl who’s doing her bit by the current fashion trend here, dressing mildly like a rocker. Black Converse style shoes and shirts that go a bit past the waist. A thin girl with a little overbite wearing a trendy skirt. I wonder where my girl will fit in one day. I’m so not ready for her to be in middle school. Adolescent outbursts and just worrying about the drama that goes on in preteen life. My husband would already like to lock her up from boys till she’s 30. More on that later.

So now she’s still dozing in her crib. Must be that runny nose that’s tired her out. Chat-chat aggressively nuzzled my hand as I tried to type this and now he’s sunning himself on the balcony. Poor thing is so neglected by us now. But he doesn’t do himself any favors by annoying us with cries for food at any hour and nearly tripping us as we go into the kitchen. I am threatening him with cat liposuction without anesthesia.

Ciao for now…

Le jour et la nuit (day and night)

Miracle of miracles. She is actually sleeping. In the morning. Has been for 30 minutes. And she fell asleep by herself in the playpen. Hmm. Has an alien replaced my baby without me knowing it?

However, I cannot cry victory yet. My nights still generally have some interlude that goes like this. I creep back into bed after having put her in her crib. She has fed and I am literally crossing my fingers that she'll stay asleep. Moonlight slits through the blinds and the street outside is dead quiet. Normal for 4 a.m. I snuggle into my husband's sleeping arms and wait for baby to make strange chirping noises that mean she's still hungry. After a while her breathing becomes regular. Or I can't hear anything at all, so I delicately put a hand on her chest to make sure there is that rise and fall. Phew, she's sleeping. Now I can. Until she wakes again...

But she's developping something of a pattern at night. Generally drifts to sleep after a feeding around 10. Stays asleep 4 to 6 hours. Feeds, sleeps some more. It's so much better than before. Amazing how a bit more sleep can make you feel so much more energized. I no longer dread the nights. I should be sleeping now in fact, but must keep an eye on kitty who is curled up in his basket. He has been known to try and jump in baby's play pen while she's in it.

The day is still rather random. Feeds frequently, or at least I offer this as a solution when the crying persists. Sometimes naps in the afternoon if I take her for a stroll. Sometimes continues napping when I put her back in the crib after said stroll. She was actually a little angel last week and stayed mostly asleep when I went to see my colleagues Friday (thanks for the Subway cookie break, Crystal and Caro!).

If I know my little one, she'll probably develop a fine pattern just as I have to go back to work.

You’ve been here how long?!

This week marks an anniversary. Six years since I came to France. Six years that I arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport to meet up with a boy who was sort of my boyfriend and is now my husband. And of course now there is a chat and a bébé in the picture.

Six years ago I knew just enough French to get me by (barely) and the three-year old in the host family knew way more than me. Now I can pretty much understand an inane French slapstick comedy (and there are too many of them), but I still get stumped on words like “curtain rod”. Six years ago everything about this country was exciting and novel. Now a lot of that initial euphoria has worn off and I grumble about France’s flaws and am sometimes tempted to go on strike like those train workers.

But more than all that retrospection, this anniversary shows me how fast time goes by. I’m really starting to sound like an adult when I say, wow, it’s already been six years. Where did the time go? It’s like when you see other people’s kids and say, my, you’ve grown. It’s not so much that the kid has reached our height that bugs us, but that time is going so quickly. And we didn’t even notice, and worse, haven’t perhaps been using our time wisely.

So I don’t know what the next six years will bring. Of course, this little one I’m propping up in my lap to write this post will be high on stories from her first grade class. I just hope I won’t be regretting missed opportunities, but I know I’m the only one who can fix that…