Nounou Double Vision

Nounou is French for Nanny, see you can all speak French now. Since Bella started at creche a year ago she has had a Nounou called Genevieve who collects her in the afternoon, takes her to the park if it's nice or the cafe if it's not, then brings her home. Genevieve is French and has taught Bella lots of things about growing up, and helped develop Bella's French and her ability to enjoy vegetables amongst other things. Now as we're soon to be moving on, and Genevieve has lots of interests in many areas, we all agreed that Genevieve would move on to a super opportunity she has working afternoons in the Marie. Although I'm not working at the moment we decided Bella would still go to creche 4 half days a week as it's her place, and she has lots of friends and structured fun there (not to mention my sanity).
The creche is quite a distance away from the house (2 miles), and the hours don't really work with Sebastian's routine. So we decided to do a swap and get a nounou (Jill from the Philippines - living in Paris) for Sebastian in the afternoons (2-6) instead. So now I can go and collect Bella, and we get some girl time together, as we walk back via the park, cafes and shops, which is great.

Doudou Double Trouble

Many of you will know Isabella has a favourite doudou. Doudou is the French word for a child's favourite toy they take everywhere with them. Having a doudou is actively encouraged
here. When Bella first went to creche without a doudou we were told off. So we quickly instated one. It was a stripey blanket with a rabbit attached. We quickly realised this wasn't the best choice as she started to look like Linus (or whatever he's called off Charle Brown) as she dragged this thing around the floor with her. So we modified the usual custom and turned this doudou in to "stay-at-home doudou". Bella now happily takes a differnt soft toy in to creche every day and calls it her doudou, much to the concern of the French staff there. Anyway she seems to survive. Point of the story however is the original stripey doudou, became a real doudou, and must be available at bed time, or when upset at home. Doudou after many washes is looking a bit worn. Unfortunately it is no longer available to buy. So when Granny was here with her nimble fingers we hatched a plan. We agreed with Bella that we would cut doudou in half. We (Granny) sewed Jo the Cat on to the second half. The idea was that we could put one away, so there would always be a spare one. Unfortunately we didn't quite execute the plan, so now we have double trouble everynight when we have to find both rabbit doudou and Jo the Cat doudou. Oooops.

A Stroller Workout

Being Friday I had Cost Centre 1 and Cost Centre 2 at home with me today, ha.ha. only joking, I mean Bella and Sebastian. It was a beautiful day so I decided it was time to test a different stroller configuration and go out for the afternoon with Sebastian in the bottom seat, hoping he wouldn't fall asleep and get off plan. Well he did a great job, and with just the occasional prod he managed to be awake when required. Only potential issue was I forgot to kit the stroller out with buckets, spades, nappies and changes of clothes etc. Luckily we got by without, just. Pushing the two of them back up the hill was pretty tough going, especially when Bella announced she needed the loo and I tried to jog. (It does say in the manual the stroller is suitable for occasional jogging) Eventually Bella got out and ran beside me to "help". She was clearly unimpressed by my attempts. Thankfully she managed to hold it in as it became apparent that I need to go to the gym, and her running was even slower than mine. Mind you I haven't been to the gym since I got to Paris, so stroller workouts is as good as it gets.

Nature or nuture?

Gender stereotyping in our house...surely not?

(just in case it's not obvious the one on the right is Bella, before she grew her hair and got attitude!)

Gina Ford - Graduation

Well after a slow-ish start Sebastian got back on track. He's been sleeping through from 11:00 - 7:00 for a week, without any attention. We've been waking him up at 10:30pm for a dream feed, which he was never too keen on.


Anyway he went to the doctors yesterday for his 3 month check-up. The doctor said "he's enormous, stop feeding him so much, and certainly don't wake him up to feed.." Of course this is by French standards and we all know the French don't eat, and this does indeed start when they are babies. However we have to admit he is a bit of a boudin, so we took his advice and decided not to wake him for his dream feed, and he slept through from 7-7. So fingers crossed we now have two Gina Ford graduates.

The disappearing parents

The year is getting off to a busy start. Malc and I went off on a fact finding mission in a country not too far away from here, to check out whether we might relocate soon to said country. M's parents agreed to babysit for us in Paris whilst we had some time to think about what the future may hold. We considered what it might be like to live in a place where instead of ambassadors as neighbours, we'd have cows, Heidi instead of Haussman... Assuming the i's are dotted and the t's crossed soon, we should finally be confirmed.

Bella and Sebastian had a great time with Granny and Grandad. Sebastian stuck closely to his routine (see next post). Bella took the opportunity to be sick and throw up in her bed, all part of the babysitting test, passed with flying colours.

Bella's New Years Resolution - No more nappies

As well as sleep training for Sebastian we did potty/toilet training for Bella over Christmas. We had actually started this in August, on holiday, but had given up as the we decided Bella was still not ready, not to mention we wanted to have a stress free holiday. Anyway she has used the potty on and off since then. So we decided to do it for real this time. The books all say to use stickers as rewards...well we found that chocolates worked much better, and it was a good way of rationing all the chocolates she got for Christmas. In fact we didn't really have to do any training, and on day two she decided to use the toilet rather than the potty. The trip to Oui Oui was the first big trip out and she was fine. She still wears a nappy during sleep time.

So now we have a toilet trained chocaholic.

Here she is ready for the challenge