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.