The Rest of the House

For completeness here's the rest of the house. Only missing bits are the office and the bathrooms which aren't so interesting.

Bella's Boudoir

Sebastian's hide-out

Our room

The Guest Room

The Kitchen

Playroom

The master bedroom of the house is upstairs, whereas the rest of the bedrooms are downstairs. So, as much as the idea was appealing to sleep upstairs, we decided to turn it in to a playroom instead. It's pretty cool, I reckon we could open our own creche, with Pimpa in charge.

The Playroom

Sebastian's Time to Learn to Crawl Corner

Bella's Doing Corner

The Ikea Storage Corner,

built by my mum whilst I was rushing Sebastian to hospital (Thanks!)

House Piccies

The house is pretty much sorted now, so here are some photos of the main living area (upstairs)

The full space

The TV/lounging area

The Dining Area

The Cosy Corner

The Cocktail Hour (dream on)

The Countdown

My last week before return to work the new nanny started to allow transition time. The nanny is called Pimpa and is half Swiss half Thai, and speaks French no English. She's worked the last 8 or so years in creches and is a qualified maternity/early years nurse so very well qualified. The week went very well considering the amount of time I've been at home. Bella only had one melt down when we were leaving one day. We tended to leave the house, as if we're there then Bella wants to be with us. So we had the opportunity to finish the purchases for the house as well as some leisure time. We bought about 20 light fittings and the garden furniture, Weber BBQ etc. Not having had a garden in recent times we didn't have anything. We installed some stuff on the small balcony outside the main room (the house in an upside down house with the living space upstairs and the bedrooms downstairs). The weather has been glorious so we took advantage with lots of outdoors activities. When we first arrived Bella would run inside screaming when she saw a fly, but she's quickly acclimatising.

It was Swiss Mother's Day on Sunday, so Bella made me a card (with Pimpa) and went shopping for some pressies with dad (having missed the UK one) which was nice. We went out to a big park with playgrounds, rope bridges, resturants and generally lots to do. Think this will become the equivalent of Parc d'Acclimatation in Paris.

So I went back to work. I started on a bank holiday week, to reduce the pain. The office is quiet as it's new (infact it's not finished yet, only 1 of the 4 floors is finished) and most people haven't elocated to Switzerland yet from their various countries. The week was pretty uneventful, but next week things should start to get busier as I get things handed back to me after my maternity leave. Malcolm took the opportunity, as he was still off for another week, to do some hiking. After a couple of hikes he got so excited he went and bought another back-pack child carrier so we can go on family hikes.... Eeeek I'd better be the one carrying Sebastian!

Next visitors/babysitters

Mum went home, and Malc's parents came out. They came by car, as they are off on a long trip around France. This time it was my turn to head off, and went to the UK for a work meeting for a few days. I also managed to fit in an intensive hour's shopping...

The weather in Geneva was beautiful (it was torrential rain in London all the time I was there). They all did a bit of sight seeing. Being the resident photographer not any photos. However here are some of them playing in the garden and washing the car. Malc and I did an exciting trip to buy light fittings and picture frames. Now all that is left is garden furniture I think. Granny and Gandad did another great job babysitting. Everyone has gone now, and it's just us for the weekend. On Monday the new nanny starts, so we'll have a whole new set of challenges next week.

First Visits at the New House

So we moved in pretty smoothly to the Big Yellow House. My mum came out from the UK and did some serious babysitting whilst we got on with stuff. Nick and Michie and Marisa were passing through on their way back from skiing on our first weekend so they called by for a couple of hours. They left their skis here in the hope they'll be "seeing lots of us" next season. Marisa was taken on a test drive by Bella in the duckmobile. Sebby is flying all over the house in it, thanks to new wooden floors, so we had to install the stairgate quickly.

Nick and Sebby tested the theory that all babies look like Nick...and some more than others.

Malc went on a trip back to Paris for his leaving do and to do the final house inspection on the Paris apartment. On Malc's first night away Sebby woke up crying and when I went to him it appeared that he couldn't breathe. Calm in many situations, a non-breathing baby is not my forte. Malc does the medical stuff I do the practical stuff. Thank goodness mum was there. I called the emergency hospital number and after some exchanges I wasn't really any happier. I couldn't find half the medical stuff (thermometer, saline etc.) and we had no doctor to go to the next day. I thought it was asthma as the house was really dusty and we are a very allergenic family (comes with the blonde hair and blue eyes - or the mousy hair and green eyes in my case). So with that and the bronchitis episode in mind I decided to take a trip to the ER for children in Geneva. Thank goodness for GPS as it took me straight there. Anyway to cut a long story short it was only a virus that had affected the throat and made it a bit difficult to breathe although it sounded worse than it was. We stayed a few hours with the humidifier on, pulse-ox monitored etc. before coming home at 2am. He coughed like a dog for a few days, but he's fine now. Mum continued to babysit by day and build ikea storage by night. Malc returned and in a week the house was pretty sorted. We had some "fun" with the various install men. Who'd have thought it would take 4 hours to install a phone??? Mind you this was before the man came to install Sky. He spent a day and half with us (16 cigarette breaks). Having lost the will to live, I made a quick call to our man in Paris who resolved the issue in a minute (hmmm it's a bit provincial out here, not seen one of these before). The Sky installer also managed in the process of trying to be helpful to blast a 3 inch hole through the wall providing us a small window in to the playroom, and took a large chunk out of the floor with the attic ladder. I filled the hole in rather badly and we complained about the cheap flooring...on the positive side the installer decided not to bill us. He offered his friends to help fix the wall but we instead we escorted him off the premises as soon as the satellite signal was in. May have been a little hasty as the box isn't working properly however I think we can live with it for now.