Just Call Me Superwoman

My original plan was to complete my application dossier for French citizenship while I was on maternity leave. As in, before the baby was born.

But life, laziness and bureaucracy got in the way and, with my return to work looming, it had to be done this week, as I'm pretty sure that once I start back I will have no spare time to do anything for myself ever again, let alone the brainpower and motivation for mammoth administrative tasks.

And so it was that yesterday I found myself trying to finalise everything at the last minute with a baby and toddler in tow - a situation which really deserves the invention of an extra circle of hell just to accommodate it.

Things started off badly when I popped into my local tabac for a timbre fiscale. You can buy these online now, but for certain procedures you still need the paper ones. Unfortunately the paper ones are being phased out by the end of the year, so hardly anywhere stocks them. I was advised to go to our nearest town centre (a 40 minute walk away with a double buggy when I had a million other things to do and nap times to respect) but luckily along the way I found another tabac which just happened to have the right ones. Another stroke of luck was the lovely HR lady at work emailing me a copy of a payslip 5 minutes after I left a message on her phone, which saved me rushing to go and collect it. Finally, a trip round Monoprix with the buggy and the toddler pushing a mini shopping trolley left me with just the right change for the photo machine (because I had realised the night before that none of the photos I had at home actually conformed to the regulations any more). With those missions accomplished, we fitted in a trip to the park to reward the toddler for her patience, then the baby considerately fell asleep independently in her cot (currently a rare feat for her). Nobody had cried all morning, and I sat down to lunch with the toddler feeling like superwoman.

The last hurdle was to photocopy all the documents (around 50 pages in total). The fact that this had to be done twice was not clear on the original list I had, but was written in big bold letters on the instructions from the préfecture which I came across at the last minute. Except that the printer was running out of ink. A trip to Carrefour to buy more took an hour out of my evening after some very tired children had gone to sleep, and I finally went to bed myself just after midnight with my alarm set for 6:15.

On the excellent advice of a friend, I turned up to queue at the préfecture half an hour before it opened and managed to be second in line to submit my dossier. That took just over an hour and the baby, who had been woken up early for the occasion, managed to stay reasonably cheerful for the duration (luckily the toddler was in childcare, because having her there would have been a challenge too far). And then, having spent the past 48 hours flying by the seat of my superwoman pants, I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief because all that paperwork was GONE.

I would like to say, though, that although the list of documents is long and takes a lot of time (and money) to assemble, the actual procedure so far hasn't been anything like as awful as I thought it might be, and I was very impressed with the staff at the préfecture. Not only did they respond to all my (many) email enquiries within 24 hours, they were also extremely nice in person. When the baby started to get fussy as I stood at the desk while they took my first set of documents, the lady told me to pick her up and she would sort the paperwork. I was offered a room to breastfeed in as I waited to be seen (I have no shame whatsoever about breastfeeding in public, but the thought was kind). At the end, I needed to make an appointment for the interview stage but I didn't have my holiday dates and the man was happy to give me his email address so I could confirm later. Everybody smiled at KB and helped to keep her happy. So maybe the stereotypical unhelpful, grumpy fonctionnaire is finally becoming a thing of the past, or maybe the trick is to always take a baby when you go to the préfecture!

Toddler franglais - c'est funny!

One of the best things about having a toddler has to be watching their language develop (and finally having an idea of what might be going on in their little minds after all those months of guessing).

With a bilingual toddler - twice the fun!

After a slow-ish start, SCT's vocabulary seems to be expanding exponentially, and she is starting to speak in little sentences, which, as adoring parents, we think is very clever.

At the moment, French is her dominant language for speaking, although I think she understands English just as well. To balance out French-speaking childcare, UFM and I have been making an effort to speak English with each other in front of her, and this seems to be taking effect. At the beginning, she would mostly just use the word from whichever language came to mind first, but now she'll say something to me in English, then turn to UFM and repeat the same thing in French. She has also figured out that I'm more likely to give her what she wants if she asks in English, so sometimes I'll see her desperately searching for the English word to couple with a long, drawn out "pleeeease."

One thing I've found interesting is that up until recently, she had absolutely no grasp of grammatical gender and used the feminine for everything. She tends to use French sentence structures and verbs, giving rise to utterances such as, "C'est ma daddy!" and "Nooo, la big!"

It's also interesting to see her figuring out that synonyms in the two languages don't work in every situation.  For example, we are always reminding her to put the lids (bouchons) back on her felt tip pens, so those are words that she knows well, but she was very puzzled when her daddy corrected her for calling the lid of the jam jar a bouchon and not a couvercle. And she attempted to correct my French for the first time the other day in a discussion about which of her cups were tasses and which were goblets.  (My mother-in-law confirmed that we were both right, saving me face ... for now. )

Also hilarious is when she repeats phrases she's heard adults use, so she swats at flies telling them, "File!"and loves to tell us, "C'est pas possiiible!" when something goes wrong. She announced to me recently that she was "pas une petite fille, une lady" but some of her other favourite words of the moment are mess, bêtise, chipie and coquine, which tells you a lot about the reality of the situation.
Nothing illustrates it better than a little conversation we had yesterday at breakfast time when I asked her to stop eating her cornflakes with her hands because she was making a mess and her fingers were all sticky.

"Tant pis," she replied.

Just occasionally, I think it would be preferable if she hadn't learned to say certain things.

Nessun Dorma

(This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a little while waiting for a final paragraph. The 14th July was a while ago now!)

Saturday was the 14th July and to celebrate the fête nationale, as happens every year, there was a concert on the Champ de Mars followed by a fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower. In years past, we have sat on various bridges across the Seine, streaming the concert on the radio and watching the fireworks amongst the ooh-ing and ahh-ing crowds before making our way home through hot streets and on jam-packed metros at midnight. It's an event which, more than any other, means Paris in the summer to me. It's busy but relaxed, and after the 14th, many people leave the city, everything starts to close down and life is mainly to be lived in quiet parks, enjoying the sleepy streets, until the end of August when Paris comes back to life again.

This year, we watched the concert on TV and, as I remarked to UFM, we might as well have been hundreds of kilometres away, like the viewers in Brittany or the Lozère, so distant did it seem.

Then they performed Nessun Dorma, a piece which sends shivers down my spine ever since I saw Turandot performed in the Arena de Verona on a hot summer's night even more years ago. I was working at summer camp, and after a busy morning of lessons, songs and silly games, my fellow tutors and I would soak up all that is wonderful about Italy: strolls around Verona city, bike rides across the hot, sleepy plains to little villages where we would eat gelato and drink Aperol spritz before it became trendy, and family life with our Italian hosts who over the years became dear friends.

And sitting at home on that warm summer's evening with two little ones asleep in the next room, I was grateful in equal measures for the life I have now and the fact that my twenties and early thirties were filled with so many awesome adventures.

Recently we have mostly been ...

(I realise it's been a very long time since I last wrote a blog post. Luckily "recently" is a flexible word.)

... holidaying. We took the risk, before Kangaroo Baby was born, of semi-commiting to a long-weekend with friends on the Ile de Ré. Luckily, KB seems fairly happy in the car, unlike her sister, who screamed her way through every journey for the first nine months. She only objects when we slow down or stop, so we bought a Télépass and everything was fine. The Ile de Ré is better set up for cycling than for cars, but cycling wasn't really practical with a tiny baby and a toddler, so we just had to get used to ignoring the satnav as it tried to send us down yet another alleyway that was narrower than our car. We didn't do a lot, but the scenery was beautiful and it was nice to get back into the "normality" of getting away and spending time with friends after the weeks of newborn haze.

Pretty street on the Ile de Ré. Instead of blue doors and window frames like in Brittany, all the houses are white with green paintwork.

House number

 We also spent a week in Normandy, in a little village inland from the coast between Fécamp and Etretat. The aim was to rest and relax, so we booked a gîte with a garden and a swimming pool so that we could enjoy ourselves without having to organise big trips out. The weather wasn't as good as we'd hoped, but SCT made good use of the garden nonetheless, and we had a couple of days where it was warm enough to take advantage of the pool. The old seaside towns on the coast were perfect for little day trips, as SCT could scoot along the promenade on her new trottinette and explore the numerous play parks while I took pictures of the sea. I hadn't done anything remotely creative for a very long time, so it was nice to have a few minutes every so often just for me, and although the pictures aren't amazing, they do capture the feel of these once-busy resort towns quite nicely.

Etretat

Etretat

Saint Valéry-en-Caux

... having visitors. My aunt and uncle came to visit and it felt very grown-up to finally be able to offer them our "guest room". We also had my brother and his girlfriend to stay, which was ever so slightly bittersweet, because my brother was meeting both his nieces for the first time and it was lovely, but we're unlikely to see him again for quite a long time, so it felt a bit like greetings and farewell all at the same time

... loving having two little ones. It's getting easier now that KB is willing to be put down. She'll now happily spend time on her playmat or sit on a bouncy chair in the kitchen watching her sister eating dinner. Some of my favourite moments are when I turn my back for a bit, then look round to see SCT waving and saying "hello" and KB looking adoringly up at her and smiling. There's no doubt that it's hard work, but it's worth it. Let's hope they stay as good friends for the next 18 years or so!

... feeling the time rushing away. Summer has well and truly arrived and I'll be back to work in September, so I'm sure it's going to fly by. The only thing to do is to make the absolute most of it while it lasts!

Two More Weeks

The time is just flying by! And while there have been some crazy moments, there have been lots of great ones too.

One of the best things is that the sun has come out. I feel a bit guilty about enjoying climate-change summer temperatures in April, but it has been so good to finally spend time outside after a long winter of hibernation. After I hurt my back doing too much carrying, I decided to invest in a double buggy, and although I think the woman who sold it to me on Le Bon Coin ripped me off slightly, it already feels like money well spent. With everybody strapped in safely, the baby being rocked to sleep by the movement and the toddler riding high up front with a smile on her face, it has saved my sanity on several occasions and allows me to save the sling for using around the house. (Baby 2 has a bit of colic and likes to sleep as close to me as possible, so she has been spending so much time in the sling that I think her blog nickname will be Kangaroo Baby.)


Just as the weather got warmer, my brother came to visit and we had a lovely day in Paris, mostly just strolling along the sunshine and having lunch in the Marais with Kangaroo Baby asleep in the buggy. We also went for a walk in the forest and (possibly as karmic revenge for feeling good about global warming) I got my first mosquito bite of the year.

Paris in the Spring

 UFM and I have also at last got around to exploring a bit further afield. Where we live is very much the Parisian suburbs, but if you go further out, you find yourself in what feels like proper countryside. Recently we have been exploring Les Yvelines, France's biggest département.One Sunday, we went to the Ferme de Gally, where you can pick your own fruit, vegetables and flowers, buy produce in the shop and visit the educational farm. The only things which were in season for picking were spinach and tulips, and as we didn't particularly want either, we focused on taking SCT to look at all the animals. In typical toddler fashion, she enjoyed looking at the ducks, pigs, goats and chickens for a little while, then became much more interested in playing with the gates, picking daisies and sitting down on every log, rock or wooden bar she set eyes on, but UFM and I felt proud that we had finally taken her somewhere interesting and done something a bit different with our day. (We also entertained ourselves by looking at all the families who looked as though they had decided to visit the farm straight after Sunday Mass - I'm sure there were more girls in pretty dresses than welly boots. But then, as UFM pointed out, proper rural people don't have to visit educational farms!)

Ducklings!

Inspired by our success, the following weekend we went to Dampierre-en-Yvelines, hoping to stroll around the lake and the château gardens. This trip was nearly a failure, as the château turned out to be closed, meaning there was no access from the village to the lake or even the forest beyond that would have been feasible for us, but luckily we saw a sign for the Château de Breteuil and went there instead.The main attraction for us here was a series of animated tableaux telling the stories of Charles Perrault, who turned folk tales into some of the first fairytales. The tableaux are housed in the outbuildings of the château, so you walk around the gardens visiting each one. Most are animated waxworks with sound and lighting, and there are some videos as well. SCT was a little bit too young to understand everything, but she still enjoyed looking and talked about the things she had seen when we got back in the evening. The gardens were also gorgeous in the bright sunshine, and if everyone hadn't been feeling a bit tired by then, we would probably have lingered for longer.

It's a big effort to get everybody organised and out of the house at the weekend (so much so that sometimes we don't decide where we're actually going until everything is packed up and ready) but it feels great to get out and about. Doing fun things with all four of us together makes up for the fraught moments when the house is a mess, everyone is tired and several people are crying at once (and yes, sometimes it has been more than just the two girls ... ). There are a few long weekends coming up and UFM has booked his leave for the summer, so next up is planning some summer holidays!

Two Weeks with Two Under Two

It's been all right so far.

Probably much aided by the fact that Baby #2 will sleep at night for four hours at a stretch, and that SCT goes to the crèche 3 days a week. Thank you France and your affordable childcare, because the days when I have two at home are full-on to say the least.

Yesterday, for example, we went to the park. I drove there, because SCT wants to take her bike everywhere and I can't manage the two of them plus the bike out in the street. (Also, she loves the bike but gets tired of actually riding it very quickly!) It took us two hours to get everyone up, fed and dressed, then I put the baby in the sling and the nappies and changes of clothes in a rucksack,convinced SCT that I couldn't carry her down the stairs, so she would have to walk, collected the bike, loaded everything into the car and off we went. When we arrived, it was the whole process in reverse - baby in sling, jacket on over baby, bike out of the boot, toddler out of the car, bike helmet on toddler, convince the toddler to walk and haul everything across the road to the park.

We had a lovely morning and got back just as the baby was starting to get cross about having her nap continually interrupted to transfer between the sling and the car seat (I stopped off to post a parcel on the way home, so we'd done it seven times in total). I attempted to feed the baby but she'd decided to go to sleep again so I popped her in her Moses basket and started to cook lunch, at which point I was starting to feel that I was winning at parenting. SCT had taken her trousers off, as they were muddy from the park, and was running around in her vest and bike helmet. I could see that her nappy was starting to look a little bit saggy, but figured it could wait a little longer.

Then, just as lunch starting to simmer away, I heard an "Uh-oh" from SCT and turned round to see a little puddle on the floor with one of her feet (still in socks) in it, and a big wet patch on her vest. It turned out that the nappy wasn't saggy because it was getting full, it was saggy because it had come unstuck.

At which point the baby woke up and decided she was hungry after all. You never win at parenting for long.

But by mid-afternoon, they were both asleep and I was catching up with admin one-handed on the computer and eating chocolate as the baby snored in my arms, and everything was under control again ... for a while.

So far, things have gone pretty much as I expected, apart from the fact that the baby's wonderful sleep only happens if she is right next to me - put her in the Moses basket, even right next to us, and she will wake up every half hour. This is fine at night, as we just have her in our bed (I'll happily make a rod for my own back if it means I only get woken up once in eight hours), but in the daytime, my only option is to put her in the sling if I want to get anything else done at all. And while I have no objection to this in principle (it was always part of the survival plan), I hadn't reckoned on just how tiring it is to carry a baby, even one which only weighs 3.5 kg, around all the time while simultaneously looking after a toddler who still needs lifted into her highchair, her cot, her car seat and all the play equipment in the park, as well as removed from places like kitchen cupboards and prevented from playing "going for a pipi" (basically flushing the toilet) multiple times a day. Especially when your stomach muscles are a round wobbly blob after nine months of pregnancy and your back hasn't quite recovered from giving birth yet.

Luckily, UFM has taken a few days off work (thank you France and your generous holiday allowance) so I'll only be carrying around one of them at a time for the next little while!

She's Here!

After my last whinging blog post, I decided too get over myself and made lots of plans for the week with friends along the lines of "Assuming I'm not otherwise occupied by then, would you like to meet up?" and the last few days of pregnancy were actually quite nice despite the effect of hormones which I'm sure were to blame for making me grumpy.

Then, with perfect timing, another series of contractions started just as I was putting SCT to bed. I kept an eye on the timings while reading her bedtime story,  UFM came home from work, and as soon as SCT fell asleep we made our way to the hospital.

Everyone tells you that second babies often come more quickly, so I was fearing a fast and dramatic birth, but in fact this labour was if anything slightly longer than the first. But although I wouldn't go so far as to say it was pleasant (and having resisted an epidural for as long as possible, I'm in awe of anyone who gives birth without one) everything went as well as could be expected and we were enjoying newborn cuddles by the middle of the morning.

SCT has been to meet her little sister. She looked at her, said, "Fait dodo," very matter-of-factly, then got busy climbing on the hospital furniture and playing with the controls on the bed.

So all is well chez nous for the moment!

Why Are We Waiting ...

... this is so frustrating!

If I were in the UK, today would be my due date. Because in France le terme is counted as 41 weeks, here I still have another 7 days to go, but none of that really matters because I feel as if my body has seriously tricked me at the end of this pregnancy. With SCT, I had a lovely second trimester, then felt progressively more tired throughout the third. During the 39th week I had a few signs that her arrival might be imminent (with hindsight - I didn't recognise them all at the time). I was due to be induced at 39 weeks so I didn't stress too much about when she might arrive, then on the due date, we went to the hospital, my contractions started and she was born the same day.

This time around, I started to feel as if things might be happening just before 38 weeks too and was expecting Baby 2 to arrive around the same time as SCT. Then at 38 weeks I had an episode of really strong contractions and started to think we might need to go to the hospital. (This would have been very inconvenient, as SCT was ill at the time.) Then nothing.

Then I had a day when I felt full of energy and ready to go, just like the day before SCT was born.

Then nothing.

And the pattern has continued for 2 weeks now - a few signs and symptoms that just disappear as soon as I start to think it really could be now. It's driving me nuts, because I don't want to make too many plans, and also, I'm just tired enough to not really have the energy to do much, but not so tired that I'm not frustrated by just waiting for the time to pass.

At the beginning it was made worse by the fact that all the symptom spotting and planning was kind of necessary, as we had to make sure everything was in place for SCT if UFM and I needed to leave, but now my mum is here to look after her and we're all organised, so there's nothing to worry about.

On the plus side:
- it's been lovely having a bit of extra time to spend 1:1 with SCT on the days when she's been at home with me
- I've been able to make the most of my mum's visit. If the baby had decided to come straight after she arrived, I'd have spent 4 days at the hospital while she was back at home with SCT and UFM.
- We've had time to move SCT into her new bedroom, so everybody is now sleeping in the right place for when Baby 2 arrives and needs to be in our room.
- The midwife who did my ante-natal classes recommended making a little book for SCT explaining what will happen when the baby is born, to be read to her after I leave for the hospital. I'm really pleased I actually had time to do this, because leaving her behind is the thing I'm looking forward to the least about Baby 2's arrival.

Well, that and going through childbirth again, I suppose!

Bicultural Aspects of Child Rearing

Last night we had the somewhat stressful experience of taking SCT to the paediatric emergency unit after an episode of intestinal flu left her dehydrated. After the drama of deciding at 9pm that this situation really did merit emergency treatment and the drive in the dark to the hospital, we sat in the waiting room and watched as other children were called up to register to be seen.

Each time they were handed a small thermometer and disappeared into the toilets.

UFM, who had twigged more quickly than I did, turned to me with fear in his eyes and said, "What do we do if they ask us to take her rectal temperature?" (At home we have an electronic thermometer that we use in SCT's ears. We've only once been asked by a doctor if we've taken her temperature in  the "correct" (because apparently more accurate) way.)

In what was probably not my proudest moment as either a mother or a loyal wife, I replied, "This is your culture. You'll have to do it."

And he did ... this time round. I have a nasty feeling, though, that this is a skill I am going to have to learn.

Pregnancy 1 vs Pregnancy 2

My own gloomy Eiffel Tower shot.

A few weeks ago I read an article, illustrated by a very gloomy picture of the Eiffel Tower, about how this winter has been one of the darkest ever on record in northern Europe, with Paris experiencing only ten hours of sunlight in the first half of January, compared to an average of 63 hours.

Suddenly, I understood why it has been so hard to get out of bed in the mornings. I don't think I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder or anything, but I suspect a difference as extreme as that must have an impact on most people.

I was also quite relieved. Any time I've mentioned feeling more tired during this pregnancy than the last one, people have said it's because I also have a toddler to look after, which wasn't exactly boding well for how things will go after baby number 2 is born.

Plus, my gut feeling was that it wasn't true. Physically, this pregnancy has been very similar to the last one, and while it's true that running around after SCT isn't exactly restful, in other ways life has become easier (not spending 2.5 hours per day commuting being one of the best examples).

It's been fun, however, to compare the two experiences in other ways.

Armed with my knowledge from last time, I found it easier to organise my medical care. For the first six months I saw a sage-femme libérale, and for the rest I got signed up easily at a maternity hospital with a very similar ethos to the one I went to in Paris. All the staff I've encountered so far have been lovely, and they don't seem to as overwhelmed with patient numbers and administrative issues, so everything is going smoothly so far.

Being busy with other things, I've probably spent less time thinking about the actual pregnancy, reading about every step of the baby's development and watching my bump move. This baby hasn't been neglected though: knowing what it was like the first time round has given me a more concrete idea of things to look forward to, and I'm actually finding it easier to be excited.

Then of course, there's the small matter of getting the baby out of there and into the world. I can't say that's something I'm looking forward to, but at least I have a better idea of what to expect and how to manage it all. They say that second births are generally easier, so fingers crossed I'm not going to be the exception to that rule!

Under Examination

Recently I finally did something I've had at the back of my mind for a long time: I took the language exam to obtain the certificate required in order to make a French citizenship application.

The Test de connaissance du français pour accès à la nationalité française is a shorter version of the full Test de connaissance du français, which evaluates the candidate's level of French within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages . The levels range from A1 (Breakthrough or Beginner) to C2 (Mastery or Proficiency). In order to apply for citizenship, you need level B1 (Threshold or Intermediate). In the ANF version, you only sit the oral parts of the exam, so there is a listening test followed by an interview to judge spoken expression.

Having studied French at university and lived in France for ten years, I wasn't worried about reaching the expected level, but I did feel a certain level of nervousness nonetheless. This was probably mostly because, precisely because I have studied French and lived here for so long, it would have been very embarrassing not to get a good score, even if the only people who knew I was taking the test were myself and Understanding Frenchman, and he probably knows my level of French better than anyone!

Also, while I think the questions in the test are probably very fair, the way it works is quite stressful because you have to listen to an audio clip and only when it's finished do you find out what the question about it will be. You only hear the clip and the question once, so in my mildly sleep deprived, pregnant state, I wasn't worried about not understanding the information, just about forgetting what had been said!

In the end, that only happened once, and I was happy with the level I came out with. The interview part was actually much less stressful, because it was face-to-face with a real person, who was very nice and made me feel at ease. For the final result, they combine the listening and speaking scores, so I have to wait a few weeks for the CIEP to mark the interview, but according to the feedback from the interviewer, everything went well.

What was funny, though, was the feeling of being under examination, and the accompanying nerves, because they made me realise that it's actually a really long time since I've been in that situation. I think the last official exam I sat was my driving test about a decade ago. Throughout my twenties I took endless university exams, followed by a string of job interviews as I got on the career ladder, but for the last few years, I've become far more used to being the examiner than the candidate. I don't think it made me any more nervous than I would otherwise have been, but the feeling of mild nerves was definitly less familiar than it used to be. I wonder if we really get more confident as we get older because we are more sure of ourselves, or just because our competence is less often put under scrutiny!

Life Update

I haven't felt particularly much like blogging recently. It's partly because although life is still very full and interesting to me, I'm not sure that much of what I do is of interest to anybody else, and partly because, for various reasons, I'm a bit wary of putting lots of personal things out there at the moment. (Even if I don't blog under my real name, I'm not fooling myself that anyone who knows a bit about me in real life might not figure out that this is me. So if you're reading this and we know each other - hi!) But then I read a few blogs I really like and felt inspired to make my own little contribution. So here is a quick round up of what we've been doing recently.

We went to the UK for Christmas. Travelling went pretty well on the way out but on the way back we had a long delay due to stormy weather and arrived back in Paris with a tired baby who was coming down with a tummy bug. It was definitely worth it, though, for a proper family Christmas with grandparents, uncle and auntie and SCB's slightly older cousin, who was unbelievably sweet with her. I also enjoyed all the UK traditions, like stockings and Christmas carols and sausages wrapped up in bacon, which we missed out on last year because we stayed in France. After that we headed out to Brittany for the new year and even more family time, this time with mamie and papy and the rest of UFM's relatives. We managed to stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve but I slipped into my pyjamas at around 11:30pm in order to be able to get straight into bed afterwards. (Luckily UFM's family are very laid back and this was completely socially acceptable!)

I've been back at work for a few days now and things are already feeling quite hectic. I have a lot of things that I want to accomplish before I go off on maternity leave, so I'm kind of putting pressure on myself, while at the same time coping with the third trimester of pregnancy, looking after a toddler, and various things that we need to do at home before baby number 2 is born. I'm telling myself it's only for a few weeks and hoping I can hang in there until it's officially time to drop it all and rest.

SCB should really be called SCT these days, standing for Super Cool/Cute/Crazy Toddler, depending on the moment (and sometimes all at once). Her language is coming on and she now has quite a few words, including a very definite MORE in English, chaussures in French (it's a bit of an obsession) and a good range of onomatopoeia, including "vroom" for cars and "wow-wow" for dogs. Other recent tricks include pointing to us and saying "mama" and "papa", then to herself and saying her own name, which melts my heart every time (and I think she knows it!) and, as of this evening, peeling her own clementines.

That's all for now ... but creating this post has given me a few ideas for other things to write about, so maybe it won't be quite so long until the next one.

Choosing a Bilingual Baby Name ...

... is hard!

UFM and I agree that we prefer a name which will be pronounced in a similar way by people who speak either language over a name which exists in both but is pronounced very differently. So Pierre, for example, would be fine, because English speakers know how to say it roughly in the French way, but Timothy would not, even though the very similar-looking Timothée exists in French.

We both like fairly classic names, especially for boys, but unfortunately many of them are ruled out by our first criterion. And there are an awful lot of boys' names where the French sounds or looks like a girl's name in English: Nicholas, Jean and Michael for example. Also, quite a lot of names which are just classic in French are posh classics in English - in UFM's family Charles and François were a plumber and an electrician, whereas in English they sound like aristocrats, which is not exactly the vibe that we're aiming for.

There are a lot of pitfalls to avoid too. I was never going to call my daughter Fanny, but UFM had to point out to me that Connor sounds a lot like connard and I only learned relatively recently that the first few letters of Fiona make a rude word in French. We met a little girl called Aliénor in the park the other day, and I thought her name was gorgeous until I realised that English-speaking kids would probably refer to her as "Extra-terrestrial".

Maybe everybody feels like this about their own children, but I'm also starting to think I am incredibly picky when it comes to names. There are some letters that I just don't like very much, like B and G, either because of the way they sound or how they look written down. Then there are the trends that make perfectly nice names sound annoying when you realise that in a class of children, they all sound a bit the same. For women my roughly my age in France this is the 3 syllables ending in IE trend represented by Virginie, Nathalie, Aurelie and Coralie , while in 2016 it seems to have been the letter L and ending in A - Léna, Lina, Lana, Luna, Lila, Lola and Lisa were all in the top 100 last year.

Finally, one really wants one's child's name to have a beautiful meaning or personal significance, all the while having no idea what kind of a person they will turn out to be and whether it will actually suit them.

I have been mulling all of the above over for months now. UFM thinks we should wait until after the next scan, when at least we'll know if we're having a boy or a girl and can rule out half the agonising!

If things have been quiet around here ...

... it might be because it's the rentrée and everyone is too busy taking work seriously to do fun and exciting things.

... it might be because taking a toddler to the park is often the highlight of our weekend

... it might be because we've moved to the suburbs and are in the process of becoming old and boring

But there's also a very exciting reason why evenings spent reading and watching TV, local walks and afternoon naps have taken precedence over novel and bloggable experiences:

We are expecting our second baby!

He or she is due in March, so having spent the summer feeling sick and exhausted, I'm finding it a bit easier to enjoy life now (at least up until about 9pm, when I fall asleep on the sofa). So far, I think the best thing about this being the second time around is looking forward to everything more: we know what to expect and, having survived the baby experience once, we're more confident that it will be OK this time around as well.

But if anyone has any tips for surviving sleepless nights with a newborn followed by manic days with a toddler, I'm all ears!

Chez M. le Président

Two weeks ago, we went on a visit to the president's house.

Admittedly, so did 20 000 other people, but it was still pretty cool.

It was the Journées du patrimoine, when important buildings all over France are open to the public. We had a friend of UFM's who had come all the way from Canada staying, which helped to motivate us to actually get out and do something. In previous years, we had visited the Assemblée Nationale and the Senate and survived the queues and the crowds (tip - visit at lunch time), so this time we decided to swing by the most popular building of all, the Elysée palace and see if we could face the experience.

We arrived at 10am and happily came across the priority queue for disabled people, pregnant women and people with small children. It didn't look too horrific, so we decided to take advantage of having SCB with us and make the effort.

Observing the crowds, a surprising number of heavily pregnant women seemed to have decided that seeing the president's official residence was an essential item on their "to do" list in the final weeks before the birth, along with the elderly and infirm and families like ours who were prepared to be optimistic about their toddlers' capacity for waiting patiently, and even in the "priority" queue, it took us two hours to reach the entrance to the garden.

Nevertheless, SCB was happy enough toddling up and down and smiling at elderly ladies, and we were pretty pleased with how things were gone as we passed through the final security check.

The view from the queue

...Only to discover that there was a further queue inside the garden where only those with actual medical needs were considered to be priority and escorted past the waiting hoards by the fire service. People like us who were only carrying 11 kilos of wriggly toddler on our backs (you had to leave buggies at the entrance, but I had luckily thought to pack the baby carrier ) had to wait patiently like everybody else.

That said, apart from one woman who kept harassing the poor junior fire service volunteers because she hadn't been allowed to skip ahead, everyone really was quite patient and the atmosphere was much nicer than you would expect among a bunch of Parisians who had been standing around for several hours.






Eventually, we shuffled our way in the door and the visit really began.

The first room was not at all what I was expecting:

Next to the giant swans, under a ceiling covered in what looked like geometric perspex icicles, was a beautifully set dining table. I can only imagine M. Macron eating here with a deeply ironic smile on his face, perhaps glancing across the table at Brigitte as if to say, "We've really made it now, haven't we, chérie?" 

The rest of the palace was more in keeping with my expectations, although it was interesting in many of the rooms to see modern art and furnishings juxtaposed with much older décor.

There were a lot of chandeliers.

 One of the fun parts was an exhibition of all the gifts Macron has received since becoming president:

 I also liked the section with all the place settings and cutlery used for presidential dinners.  UFM and I are quite proud of the cutlery set we received as a wedding present which has two different sizes of knives and forks, but we're still missing elements such as the grape scissors:

We all agreed afterwards that we were glad we had made the effort to do the visit ... and also very glad that it's ticked off the list and we will never have to stand in the 3 hour queue again!

August

I thought I would write lots about what we did in August, because, unlike in July, we actually did plenty of interesting things. But it's now September, la rentrée has come around and I think I may have to resort to a quick summary of the highlights:

Grandparents Galore
My parents came to visit, then we went out to Brittany to see mamie and papy. SCB loved being pushed on the swings, going paddling, building sandcastles and generally being showered with attention, but unfortunately chose the only week in the year when we had unlimited babysitting on tap to become ridiculously clingy, howling and grabbing our legs whenever UFM or I tried to leave her alone with any of our parents. So there was no "us" time for us, but it was lovely to have everyone together. My mum impressed us all once again with her French conversational skills and papy taught everyone how to play palets, a Breton game where you throw round metal discs on to a board and aim to hit the target.

Beautiful Beaches
As usual, we tested the waters in both the north and the south of Brittany. We went to Carnac, which was beautiful but windy, and Saint Enogat, where, after a picnic and sandcastle-building with granny, SCB suddenly dashed off across the sand to the far-distant sea (the tide was very, very low) and had a wonderful time splashing about in the shallows.

Making a break for the sea

Magnificent Mountains
After Brittany, we spent two weeks in the Alps. Despite only having learned to walk eight weeks before, SCB took to scrambling up mountain paths with gusto. She didn't go very far ( a few hundred metres at a time) but she was happy to be carried by us the rest of the time, so although we were limited a bit by how far we were fit enough to carry her, we managed to do some proper mountain walks for the first time in almost two years.

Mini-Hiker

Our second week in the Alps was spent in Beaufort, the town north east of Albertville famous for one of the most delicious (and expensive!) cheeses in France. The whole area is ridiculously charming. Even the ski industry hasn't spoiled the little villages of delightful wooden chalets, all with flowers in window boxes on the balconies. Even the cows whose milk is used to make Beaufort cheese are more charming than other cows. When Understanding Frenchman told me that the illustrators of Heidi visited the area for inspiration instead of going to Switzerland, I wasn't at all surprised. In practical terms, it was also a good place for us to be, as you can drive fairly high up into the mountains and there are plenty of accessible walks. On the days when we didn't have the energy to hike, we also appreciated the outdoor swimming pool and enjoyed wandering around the village eating artisanal ice cream.

Beaufort

Faithful Friends
After all that fun, we might have been a bit sad to come back to la région parisienne, but luckily two very good friends came to stay for the last couple of days of the holidays.We've always liked having visitors, but since travel has become more complicated for us since the arrival of SCB, we appreciate people coming to see us even more. Having guests was also a good motivation to head into Paris and generally make the most of our last few days of freedom. I was sorry to see them go, but the gourmet delicacies that they brought from their home town of Birmingham (i.e. an enormous bag of Cadbury's chocolate) has been helping to lessen the pain of the rentrée and has been much appreciated!

 

Busy / Not Busy

July was a bit of a strange month in our house. I was on holiday for most of it, while UFM was working, and I was really looking forward to having plenty of time with SCB and getting out and about lots.

In the end, it wasn't quite like that. While SCB has basically been sleeping through the night for a while now, she went through a phase of waking up ridiculously early and refusing to go back to sleep even although she was clearly tired. At the same time I had a period of insomnia which meant that I ended up planning most of the day around her having naps in her cot so that I could go to sleep at the same time. So we didn't go on nearly as many exciting trips as I'd planned.

(Incidentally, we have since solved the early waking, along with her reluctance to go to bed at night, by cutting out her morning nap and putting her to bed later. Contrary to what the sleep "experts" of the internet will tell you, poor sleep routines can actually be due to undertiredness as well as too little sleep!)

We did manage a few outings into Paris, though, made easier by the acquisition of a new, super light buggy that you can use from newborn, fold with one hand, lift with one finger and push through the barriers on the metro. Any trip out now has to involve safe opportunities to for SCB to practise walking, so we had lunch at the Musée du Quai Branly, which has a lovely, quiet garden that feels a bit like one of Paris' undiscovered secrets despite being only a few hundred metres from the Eiffel tower. A friend and I also met up at the Natural History museum and spent an hour or so strolling through the course of evolution and marvelling at the length of a narwhal's tooth before letting SCB loose in the Jardin des Plantes. We watched the planes flying overhead for the military parade on the 14th July from a friend's balcony, and I even managed to do a little bit of successful sales shopping and spend a voucher I had for Galeries Lafayette before it expired. After our shopping trip, SCB needed to stretch her legs, so we went to the park at Trinité d'Estienne d'Orves, where she toddled around distributing smiles to old ladies, other children and the dodgy blokes smoking joints in secluded corners alike. (Ironically these guys are a lot less scary when you have a small child with you than when you're a woman alone.)

Playing in the sandpit at the park

Written down like that, it seems like quite a lot, but at the time it felt as though I spent most of July in a state of lethargy, interspersed with many, many trips to the local park. Which wasn't a horrible way to spend the holidays, but I'm glad the UFM is now off work as well, we've escaped from Paris and August is shaping up to be a bit more exciting!

All Sorts of Bidets

Having a small child in the house has introduced me to the weird and wonderful world of French nursery rhymes. In English, I've so far avoided the ones about about cutting the tails off visually impaired rodents and dying of the plague, but SCB was given a musical book of French children's songs which included this little gem:

A cheval sur mon bidet,
Quand il trotte il fait des pets,
Au pas, au pas, au pas,
Au trot, au trot, au trot,
Au galop, au galop, au galop!

Il a tant galopé
Qu'il est tombé sur le nez!

For which a rough translation would be:

Riding on my little horse/bidet,
When he trots he farts,
Walking, walking, walking,
Trotting, trotting, trotting,
Galloping, galloping, galloping,

He galloped so much
He fell down on his nose!

Intrigued by the scatological references, I did a quick search on Wordreference.com and discovered that bidet is an old-fashioned word for a horse. There is even a whole discussion thread related to whether the bathroom furnishing is named because of the position one adopts when using it, and whether the wordplay was intentional when the song was invented. 

I'm not sure how I feel about singing along with that one now!

Feeding Baby the French Way (Part 2)

When we started weaning SCB onto solid foods, I felt a little bit conflicted about the French nutrition guidelines for babies. I like their structure, their emphasis on introducing lots of different flavours, and the fact that the recommend foods are very gentle on tiny, developing digestive systems. On the negative side, there is very little emphasis given to finger foods and babies learning to chew and, more worryingly from our point of view, the advice seems to be very based on the needs of formula-fed babies, with little attention paid to those who might still be breast fed beyond the first few months.

Fast-forward six months, though,and most of that is behind us. SCB is eating a wide variety of things from all the food groups, 3 meals a day, and all sorts of textures. Aside from teaching her to use a knife and fork, and to say, "Pass the butter, please," and, "May I leave the table?" it would be tempting to believe that our work here was done.

The awesome thing about France, though, is that educating your child about food doesn't stop at making sure they'll happily eat green beans and broccoli. The emphasis on learning about different tastes continues all through early childhood. I remember being massively impressed when I visited a friend and her toddler many years ago and the little one had rabbit stew followed by a wedge of camembert for lunch. (This article (in French) explains why providing a "meticulous selection of good cheeses" is a good way to "awaken" baby's sense of taste.)

I was similarly stunned last week when I went to pick SCB up from the nanny and she announced that she had fed the babies liver for lunch. I think I have eaten liver once in my life, and the nanny admitted that she doesn't like it or cook it at home either, but we both agreed that it was important for SCB to have some so that she doesn't grow up being as fussy as us!

Recently we have mostly been ...

Walking in the park. The weather has been gorgeous and SCB's favourite thing to do at the moment is to toddle along holding our hands. At the moment she seems more interested in speed than balance  literally almost trying to run before she can walk!) though, so we might have to wait a bit longer for her first independent steps.

Walking on the beach. SCB has also been eating sand, getting covered in sand and destroying the sandcastles we lovingly built for her. Our parenting lesson of the month has been learning to always apply suncream before we get to the beach in order to have a slightly less sticky, sandy baby.

Visiting mamie and papy. Heading out to Brittany has been an easy getaway for us to make the most of all the long weekends recently. Highlights from our recent trips have included watching baby swallows learning to fly in the barn , the first barbecue of the year, and plenty of goes on the swing in the garden and even a little pony ride for SCB. Last Saturday we visited the town of Arradon and went to a little hidden beach (sort of - it might just have been empty because it was cold).

Going to a Norman-Breton wedding ( and yes, the jokes about Mont St Michel were flying).  This was actually the first French-French wedding I had ever been to in France and it followed a fairly traditional format. The only unusual thing was that the church service came first. It's illegal in France to have a church wedding before you're officially married at the mairie (religious ceremonies are not recognised by the state), but because this was the groom's second marriage, the church service was a blessing and not a full wedding mass. It went on for about an hour but I couldn't tell you much about what was said because although SCB was extremely well behaved, making sure she wasn't getting up to mischief took up most of our attention.  We were a bit worried about how the evening would go, as French weddings go on for a long time and even the dinner often doesn't finish until after midnight. We had visions of taking shifts to sit hungrily with her in a darkened room at the gîte, but in the end she sat in her buggy throughout most of the meal then calmly fell asleep about 11, only waking when they turned the music up at about 1am, at which point we decided to quit while we were ahead and all went to bed.

100 Apples

It's always nice when you have a pet theory about something and science proves it to be true.

It's even more interesting when you have a pet theory about something and science proves that it extends beyond what you had even considered.

When people talk about French paradoxes, one that comes up often is the fact that a country with such an abundance of delicious food (and such an obsession with talking about it) manages to have some of the lowest levels of overweight and obesity in Europe. My pet theory about why this works is that when food tastes good, you don't have to eat as much of it to feel satisfied. (Had I been Mireille Giuliano, I could have made a fortune telling everyone that the key to being slim is to replace Dairy Milk with champagne and oysters, but unfortunately I'm too much of a realist. She also got there first.)

Recently, a few items in the media have caught my eye because research suggests that it goes much further than this: studies have found that the varieties of fruit and vegetables we eat today are much lower in nutrients than those grown in a few decades ago, and it may be that we are eating too many calories because our bodies are craving the vitamins and minerals that they need. This article claims, for example, that a 1950s apple had 100 times more vitamin C than the apples we eat today.

The Obs article cites mainly British, Canadian and American research but there was a programme on France 5 recently (which sadly I can't find on replay anymore) about the work that the French Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique is doing in this area giving much more detail. Both suggest that organic produce is generally better, but the problems of selective breeding, poor soils and increasingly intensive production, even on organic farms, remain.

While the fact that French studies have similar findings to the others shows that France is not immune to this problem, I wonder if the fact that it is still possible here to find many different varieties of fruit and vegetables, often locally produced, means that it might not be quite so bad as elsewhere. And perhaps the national obsession with high-quality food means that France can lead the way in looking for solutions. I'm interested to see what will happen next.

A Fortnight of Firsts

"Just think," UFM said to SCB as we sat on the runway with the engines of the plane starting to throb, "you're nine months old and you're going to fly for the first time. When I did that, I was 25 years old!"

I was a bit nervous about our first experience of taking a baby on a plane, but in fact everything went very smoothly. SCB was not keen on sitting still on my lap at first, but having scarcely napped all day, cried for a couple of minutes after take off and then fell asleep for most of the rest of the flight.

And so our first trip to Scotland as a family of three got off to a good start. Slightly less good was the fact that SCB was carsick four times on the 45 minute drive from the airport to my parents' house - clearly we were being optimistic about the fact that this might have improved since the last time. As a result, we weren't as adventurous about going on lots of trips as we might have been, but the last ten days have nevertheless been packed with other fun "firsts".

We had lunch in Edinburgh with my best friend from university and her baby, who I had never met. We chose the Morningside area, as it's yummy-mummy-ville and therefore full of nice cafés for mums and babies who lunch - the place we chose even had babyfood pouches on the menu, as well as numerous highchairs available. Taking advantage of having a ratio of three devoted adults to one baby, we took SCB swimming for the first time, which she absolutely loved. She also had her first ever play in a swing park and adored the swings (possibly surprising, given the aforementioned carsickness!).

Over the weekend, we ticked off another country, with a trip over the border to the Northumberland coast in the north-east of England. I had been when I was little but didn't have many memories of the area, and I was surprised by both how rural and how beautiful it was. There are lots of long, sandy beaches and historic castles. We were lucky that the sun shone the whole time we were there, so SCB had both her first picnic and her first paddle in the sea ... wrapped up in a warm coat in true British style!

And, for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling quite reluctant to go back to France tomorrow. Normally I enjoy seeing friends and family and reconnecting with home but I'm usually equally happy to get back to my "real" life on the other side of the Channel. This time, despite the fact that I'm very happy with my French life at the moment, I have this feeling that everything from spending time with friends to getting out of the house when you live in a third floor flat with no lift, is so much more effort. Hopefully some nice sunny weather and the prospect of lots of lovely bank holidays will be enough to change my mind when we get back!

Feeding a Baby the French Way (sort of )

Since the French are often held to be the world experts on eating well (and according to some, also on bringing up children!), I was interested to see what the advice would be when we moved SCB on to solid foods.

Confusing, would appear to be the answer.

To be fair, the guidelines in the carnet de santé are fairly straightforward. Fruit, vegetables and meat can be given from 4 months and should definitely be given from 6 months. Most cereals can and should be given from 8 months. (The exception is baby rice, which is possible from 4 months but never actually recommended.) For most things, there should be a gradual progression from purée to lumpier textures and then solid pieces.

Go beyond the carnet de santé, however, and the simplicity stops. My GP, despite the fact that SCB didn't start solids until nearly 6 months old, said that she should have a month of nothing but vegetables, followed by a month of nothing but fruit, then a little bit of meat, and finally carbohydrates. When I asked about quantities, he said, "Oh, just use the jars. They're very good." Laurence Pernoud, meanwhile, keeps suggesting putting baby rice and even purée into bottles of formula. From other research I knew that the most important nutrients to introduce for exclusively breastfed babies were zinc and iron, while baby rice is mostly full of empty calories and apparently arsenic too, so I wasn't too keen to follow either of their advice!

In the UK, the NHS advice is to begin solids when the baby shows certain signs of readiness which generally appear around six months. There is less emphasis on the order, although it is suggested to start with fruit and vegetables, and giving finger foods early on is recommended. Baby Led Weaning is also very popular. In France BLW (DME, la diversification menée par l'enfant) is almost unheard of - the only time I ever heard it mentioned was at meetings of La Leche League, and even there it wasn't common.

In the end, we did a mixture of what the carnet de santé recommends along with some finger foods as per the NHS advice. We were a bit more lax about the order we introduced things, but with hindsight I'm not sure that was a good idea, as I suspect some of the terrible nights we had in the 7th month were due to poor digestion. At the same time, SCB was clearly hungry for solid food by this point, so I'm glad we didn't try to feed her on nothing but fruit and vegetable purée for two months! I've read elsewhere that the World Health Organisation recommendation to breastfeed exclusively for six months is largely due to the risk of food poisoning in developing countries, and that introducing certain foods before that can reduce the risk of allergies, so perhaps the answer is to start a little earlier, but with smaller quantities. Unfortunately, whatever country you're in, it seems that nobody is totally sure what's correct (or if they are, they're probably being contradicted by official advice from elsewhere), so it's very hard to know.

Three months on, however, we have settled into a nice little routine. SCB has cereal and fruit for breakfast, then mashed up vegetables, carbohydrate and protein for lunch. With the nanny, she has some yoghurt because she isn't having as much milk. She has more fruit in the afternoon, then dinner is a bit more random, as it depends how hungry or tired she is whether she'll eat much or not. I liked the idea of BLW/finger foods, but I find if she does nothing but feed herself for a meal, she'll eat very little and most of it will end up on the floor, so we tend to give her bits and pieces to munch before or alongside the spoon feeding.

I guess only time will tell whether she ends up needing to drink Perrier after meals to help her digestion like a true French person or whether she'll have British-style insides that can stomach a big fry-up for breakfast ...

(Just in case you missed the link earlier, the Science of Mom blog has lots of interesting reading about studies relating to infant nutrition and other aspects of parenting.)

Recently we have mostly been ...

Enjoying the springtime. The flowers are out, the blossom is on the trees and it's daylight in the mornings, meaning that I can now take the scenic route to work and breathe in less exhaust fumes. My new routine is super-healthy, as I'm fitting in an hour of walking every day. It makes a nice change from spending hours on the RER.

Getting more sleep. SCB is now on three meals a day and is doing much better at night, so juggling work, sleep and looking after her is much easier than it was a month or so ago. She's started to pull herself up on the furniture and wants to walk, though, so keeping up with her is becoming another form of daily exercise for us!

Worrying about politics. Between Brexit and the upcoming presidential elections, there's a lot of significant change going on, and it doesn't feel like a good time to be an international family. While we're happy in France at the moment, UFM and I have always agreed that living in the UK would be an option for us in the future, and Brexit could make that much more difficult. SCB and I, as British citizens could move there whenever we wanted to, but to bring a foreign spouse, you have to prove that you can support them with a minimum income of more than £18 000, so if UFM was to come with us, one or both of us would need to find jobs before we arrived. It makes me so angry that Brexiters claim to be making life better for British people, when in fact for many of us, significant rights will potentially be eroded. And if Le Pen gets her way in France, similar things could happen here.

I'm very admiring of some of my American friends who since Trump's election have become extremely politically active and are fighting hard against every policy they disagree with, but, not living in my home country and having limited voting rights in France, I'm still looking for ways to take similar action myself. In the meantime, here's hoping that the French make better choices than the British did come April!

Parisian Public Transport with a Baby

When we lived in the centre of Paris, I quickly figured out that the easiest way to get around with a baby was to use a sling or baby carrier. Shops are narrow, pavements are busy, and accessing the metro almost always requires you to go up or down some stairs. Any time I took the pram, I felt encumbered and awkward, while with the carrier, I was light of foot and free, with the added bonus of permanent baby cuddles, better baby napping and no screaming fits on public transport.

SCB is bigger now though, and too heavy to carry for long on my front. Our Manduca carrier can also be used on your back, but it's not as good for napping because the baby's head isn't supported, so we now use the buggy more of the time.

It's been quite a learning experience. Our buggy is fairly lightweight, but it's not tiny, as we bought it when SCB was 3 months old and still needed one with a lying down position. (Tiny lie-flat buggies do exist, but they cost a LOT of money. With hindsight, if we were still living in Paris, I would say it would be a worthwhile investment though.) I can carry buggy + baby up a flight of stairs if needed, but together they weigh 16 kilos, so I would rather not! The buggy won't fit through the standard entrances in the metro, and as SCB can't stand by herself yet, I can't really take her out, fold the buggy and get us all through. It is possible to put in on an escalator, but you're not supposed to, and it never feels very safe.

So here is what I've learned about Parisian public transport when you need to bring your wheels:

- 90% of the RER A and B are pushchair and wheelchair accessible, with lifts from street to platform level and wide gates in the stations. You have to know where to find the lifts though - at La Défense, for example, you practically have to walk off the platform and into the tunnel, following a very discreet sign. Also, the lifts are frequently under maintenance, and there is only one at each station.

- The metro is very hit or miss. As well as surprising mini flights of stairs even in stations which have some lifts, there are lines where some stations have wide gates and others don't. Only the line 14, as far as I know, is completely accessible.

- Most (maybe all) buses have a buggy space next to the wheelchair area. This works well as long as there isn't another buggy already occupying the place (which there might well be, as none of them are on the metro!). Also, these spaces aren't big enough for some prams, as I found out to my cost early in my career as a Parisian maman , when I attempted an unplanned bus journey with a Maxi-Cosy car seat attachment.

- The tramway is by far the easiest form of transport to use, as everything is at street level and there's loads of space in the carriages. It's great if you need to go somewhere around the edges of the city.

So, it can all be a bit unpredictable. Every time I go into the city centre now, I think about people in wheelchairs and how on earth they cope. If everything worked the way it was supposed to, you could probably plan a way of getting most places, but I don't know what would happen if you got off the train at a station only to find that the lift was out of order. I believe there is an interphone system that people in wheelchairs can use to ask for help - I really hope it works! (There is more information about public transport for wheelchair users here.)

On the plus side, in my experience, people are really nice about offering to help you. The other week I was at Nation and all the lifts AND the escalators were closed, but a nice man waited at every flight of stairs between street level and the RER platform to give me a hand.