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.