American Soil

Today, Aliena took her first crap in America!

Let me back up a bit...

We made our second trip to the American Consular Presence (read: poor man's consulate) in Toulouse to yet again try to have Aliena's citizenship papers filed. Technically were were in America (all 50sq ft of it).

This time we were armed with all the paperwork that they neglected to tell us to bring the first time...as in "Alexis' US passport is not sufficient proof of his US citizenship even though it is irrelevant since Amy is also a citizen and was born in the US...so you have to bring Alexis' consular report of birth". I guess for some reason the US government is skeptical of the quality of a citizen's passport when they honestly declare that they were born in another country (as if any cheats would tell the truth!). To make a long story short, the same grumpy lady scowled at our paperwork which differed only in the fact that another archaic bit of paper was put on display (my consular report of birth...whose existence I discovered about a month ago), and finally said that it all looked OK and that the consul would come and watch us sign the papers (tough hob...I know...but at least you get to see your tax dollars in action). Whew....and Grumpy even gave a half-smile as she went back to her cubicle.
Then the consul came out...to glance at the papers. He immediately looked up and said "Aliena? Very Shakespearean" ??????? The look of confusion must have been obvious since he followed that one up with "Do you know what play it comes from?"...uh...no..."Let me give you a hint..." at which time he stated to describe every one of Shakespeare's plays (two people in the wilderness...one is not who they appear to be...a confused individual falls in love...etc...). Finally I asked him which one it was..."Ummmmmm....I just saw it in London last weekend (2 days ago!) and its on the tip of my tongue...I'll remember before you leave." (he did remember...after a trip to his office where I am sure he googled it!).
Then we got the consular stamp of approval....Aliena was recognized as a US citizen. (and there was rejoicing....yaay)...she can now pin the US flag next to her french one. A 3 hour drive for 30 min well spent!

Aliena then celebrated this very exciting event and her second visit to 'America' by soiling her diaper.......and yes......we all heard it.........even the consul...........all 6 times! A momentous poop for a momentous event.

 

Kris Visits

About 2 weeks ago (yeah, I know...I'm playing catch-up), our friend Kris came through town on his inaugural European vacation. Made sense since our village is along the Paris-Stockholm-Milan-St. Girons-Rome path (have euro-rail pass....will sleep in train!). We had a great 3 days packed with activities such as the school party (see previous post), good food, and visits.
The weather was not great, but we managed to fit in a few short hikes to appreciate the spectacular fall colors. Good timing...those bright red and yellow leaves only last a few weeks!

the tour de france comes up this valley fairly often... (la Core)

We also did our best to give Kris a tour of good french food -- cassoulet, snails, lamb, magret de canard, and of course good wine and cheese. I think he liked it...and left a dozen pounds heavier! (at least we did).

No French visit is complete without a peek at a medieval castle...so on his last day here, we visited 2 and a cave with paintings for good measure.

We passed by the castle at Foix and explored the castle at Carcassone. To know what Carcassone looks like, just close your eyes...picture the perfect medieval castle and that's it. Well...maybe add a carousel out front...

The cave was the Grotte de Niaux - which has graffiti from 1642 and fantastic paintings that are 15,000 years old of bison, horses, and ibex. This was Adrien's second visit (the first was when he was 1.5 years old) and Aliena's first (I know...we are slackers on her cultural education - we really should have done it before she turned 2 months...).

Adrien was sure that we would see bears and deer in the cave along with the paintings - and he told me all about how these animals would scratch him. Here is the video....although to fully understand you will have to decode his french-english mix. He does mime a deer scratching him though...!

During the visit, Adrien took a liking to Kris, but he could not manage to remember his name! For the first 2 days or so, Adrien called Kris "that guy". He then must have over-heard us talking about Bruce (memory-lane) at which point Kris became "Bruce"...which must somehow be easier to remember than Kris. We corrected him, of course: "That's not Bruce, that's Kris"...at which point Kris became "not-Bruce" for the rest of the trip!

Hope our little bit of Ariege was a nice enough place to come back for another visit Not-Bruce!

 

Class Party and School Vacation

Its time for the fall school vacation, and Adrien's class had a little party to show off what they learned.

Parents and family were present...as were unwitting house-guests that planned their European vacation at this time of year (sorry Kris!).

They showed off their artwork and had a slide show with some of their activities.

Made walnut macaroons from walnuts they found when out on a walk...and made 'stone soup' for everyone.

They then showed off our talents by singing a few songs... Our boy is the one picking his nose instead of singing! This second song shows him actually signing...for once! (warning...its longer than most non-grandparents care to watch).

the babies

Since I'm slow on the post thing....here are a few photos of the babies!
Morning is loads of fun if its the weekend and the sun is not  yet up! I know I sure enjoyed it...?

Adrien is still obsessed with his cars. Here he is lining them up (did I mention he likes to line things up? Very strange!) and in his favorite outfit (pantsless).

And his discovery of binoculars...

Goodnight! Blow some kisses....

Colic...

If you felt a shiver run down your spine, broke into a cold sweat, and nearly ran out the front door with a panic attach...then you too probably had a child with 'colic'.
And if you said "Oh, but it only last for the first three months or so", then you should be shot...or worse, put in a room with baby cries for 8 hour stretches just to punish you for such insensitive remarks!
For the rest of you...the only way to describe it is that your newborn cries a blood-curdling sob for long stretches of time and nothing you could possibly do helps.
Our baby, fortunately, seems to have a somewhat mild case...as in she screams on and off for the evening, rather than continuous screaming for hours and hours on end. And we are blessed with it not being bad every night! Did I mention that nobody knows the cause (other than that its more common in second children)...nor the cure? For a very mild taste of our fun...here is a short video...(if you want the true experience, turn up the volume and loop it 180 times...she was just getting warmed up):

Fortunately for us, there are old remedies that sometimes help. The one suggested to us could be picked up at the pharmacy for 1.60 a bottle (custom mixed....I love socialism!) and is called 'Eaux de chaux'.

Does the halo around the bottle come through in the photo?
The ingredients on the recipe supplied by the doctor had 2 ingredients: 'eaux de chaux' and 'julep gommeux'. What is this magic stuff? Well, a bit of internet digging gave us the first clues: Eaux de chaux is basically calcium carbonate..or your typical antacid for indigestion. Julep gommeux was trickier -- seems to be some sort of syrup (sugar and water...and babies love sugar!) and some other ingredient that is rarely specified. A bit more digging found that the other ingredient is opium....ahhhhhh....no wonder it mellows out baby!
Takes the edge of, ya know?
Turns out the modern version of this recipe substitutes orange blossom extract for the opium...and presumably works way less well. Fortunately, it still works....at least a bit!

In any case, those angel-smiles make colic bearable....that and knowing it only lasts the first few months!

Sheepish...

First the cows came home...now this! We really do live in the boonies!

 

I love the fact that Adrien is standing in the middle of the street in his socks (no doubt in a sea of sheep-poop) in front of a swarm of sheep - and he is smiling like he owns them!

Art

OK...its been a long time. I'm not sure why...except that I can't seem to find the 20min or so that it takes me to write a post!
In the meantime....here is some artwork from Adrien..

Idiots!

On Wednesday, we packed up the whole family and headed up to Toulouse to the American Consular Presence to get Aliena's US paperwork done. Basically certify her as a US citizen too and get a passport made. We actually began the process the week after her birth - but the consulate is only open one day a week (at least to the public) and they have a 6 week lead time on appointments. We emailed a few times to make sure I had all the documents we needed -- turns out their web information is not really up to date (from 2004...so they referred me to the more recent..2008...info posted by the Marseilles office - at which point I should mention that Marseilles is known as the most laid-back and unconcerned big town in france...which does not bode well for Toulouse) - but I finally managed to get it all together. One sticking point was that I needed an original copy of our marriage license...and the French one would not work...which meant that I had to get my mom to dig through files in CA to find it and send it out to us. I'm not really sure why we need this document - I mean, you don't have to be married to have kids and since Amy is American anyways, then Aliena gets citizenship regardless of who I am. I suppose that should have been an omen... Anyways, we load up the kids, drive 1.5 hours to Toulouse, park, do the whole metal detector thing (which is squished into a closet meaning that you are cuddling with the security gaurd under the metal detector as he checks your passport before letting you through the bomb-proof door), and get settled in with our pile of documents. First off, the (less-than-friendly) lady helping us did not like the passport photo -- Aliena's head was too wide and probably too big (although she did not have a ruler with inches on it to be able to measure..which I incidentally did in photoshop and know it to be under the max height allowed). I tried to explain to the lady that a baby's head is not proportioned the same as an adult's, so if you scaled the head to the proper height, it would be wider than an adult's head. This approach to scaling the photo worked for Adrien's passport, but apparently our consular 'helper' was having a bad day and thought we should too. Second, she noticed I was born in France - at which point she asked me if I had ever been to the US...which I started to laugh at until I realized she was serious. Apparently the US doesn't bother to stamp passports anymore, so my US passport (issued not from a consulate, but from the US passport office..which means I ordered it from within the US) which I've had for 9 years now does not have a single US stamp in it. This was a sticking point - she had not told me via email that I needed to bring proof that I had ever been to the US. Fortunately Amy was thinking on her toes and pointed out that the marriage certificate that we had to have sent out showed we were married in Watsonville, CA showing that I had indeed been to the US (at least for 1 day). Whew! Not so fast... since I was born in France, where was my consular certificate of birth to prove that I was a US citizen? Uh, I don't have it (and don't recall ever seeing it in my life...)...but the website printout says that a current US passport is sufficient proof of citizenship. So isn't that enough? No, I guess not. I guess as a citizen born abroad, you don't have quite the same rights (like, I can 't be president...although I can be vice-president...which would get complicated if the president died...) - be that should surprise nobody who has been listening to the 'separate but equal' arguments about 'same sex marriage' vs. 'same sex unions'. I still can't figure out why our 'helper' didn't tell us this sort of thing before we took the trek up there nor why its not listed on any of the consular literature that they provided us for preparing the paperwork. I mean, these people deal with FOREIGN BIRTHS all the time -- and really, I bet lots of the consular birth reports they have to prepare have one parent who was a citizen born abroad (the sorts of people who may be disproportionately comfortable living in a different country). And how should we know what to bring if they don't tell us? I was hoping that we could sign all the forms and mail in my extra document (and a new photo of Aliena) to complete the whole thing, but of course that would be too easy. She wants us to come back and sign in front of her when we have the form in hand. Not sure why it makes a difference if we sign now or in a few weeks....except of course that she knows that means another day of work lost for me, 3 hours of driving for the family, added air pollution, etc... Well, at least its good to know that the consular presence is there when you need their help. I'm pretty sure in an emergency I might take a gamble and drive the extra 2 hours to Bordeaux, where if the help is no better, at least I can drown my sorrows in an excellent bottle of local wine!

Uber-nerd

The other day, Adrien was laying out his dinosaur cards (I know...you're all very jealous) when he paused and pointed to one he had just put down (in neat rows...yes, our child is obsessive). He asked me what it was called, so I read it off to him... "Gallimimus" without paying much attention to the image. "Comme une poule" he said ('like a chicken'). "Wow, that's great!" I responded "yeah, the latin name for chickens is gallus, and so..."...at which point I paused and realized that I'm a super-nerd, and my poor child is doomed...! Sorry in advance Adrien! But then I looked at the card and that dinosaur sure does look like a chicken...so I guess he's pretty observant (and probably not a latin scholar yet)...and probably doomed by his genes!

Cows

Yesterday the cows came home....
Amy captured the moment on her phone's camera as they passed in front of our house.
Now we have only the cow pies in the road and the castaway flies to remind us of their passage.
Ah....the country life!

Bonnets

My cousin, Julie, who is two months older than me came to visit us recently with her family - the Bonnets. They have 5 kids including the last two who are very close in age to Adrien (Alexis is 6 months older) and Aliena (Romain is 3 months older). It was lots of fun hanging out with them - something we don't do often enough considering that they live near Toulouse and together we form the Southern Enclave of the family. But we don't make it up to the big city very often and they...well...moving 5 kids anywhere more than a 30min drive is surely a major task! Amy and I were feeling like 2 kids was much more hectic than just 1...but Julie reassures us that from the 3rd one on, it actually gets easier. Not that they take care of themselves (I don't know who started that crazy rumor...but my guess is its either the sellers of baby formula or mini-vans)...but they can give each other attention when you are focused on the current crisis. Anyways...we had a wonderful pic-nick, told them all about our current housing stress (that's for another entry...sigh!), and we took a walk through the woods.
(sorry the photos suck...I forgot my camera and the one on my phone is a POS)

IHOP

As in International House Of Pizza.
This week we met up with the international-Anglo crowd for dinner.
The 4 of us, Felix, Susi, Julius (the Germans who sound Australian), Radika and Lea (Aussies), and Leoni, Anthony and their 3 kids Larry, Isolde, and Persephone (Aussie-French, by way of London, Brussels, and Paris).
We all speak french with accents that vary in quality and we all speak english better than french.
The pizzeria in Moulis (near the lab) is a great place for us to all meet and have a good time being expats - business is not so hot at the pizzeria, so we have the place to ourselves and the kids can be wild, make noise, and have fun. The pizzeria also has a big platform with kids toys surrounding an immense fish tank (that has written on it "Don't tap the glass. It scares the fish and they die"...surrounded by kids toys....and an army of 2-5 year olds...who can't read....and you wonder why they are going out of business?). Good fun!
The kids had a great time and stayed up playing WAY past their bed times (and ours) for a weeknight.

 

 Despite the international influence, Adrien is now speaking more French than English. That means that I have started to reconsider my 'speak to the kids in French' strategy that I adopted in hopes that it would help them be bilingual. But school is pushing Adrien's language skills to new limits. They have this system where 1 or 2 times a week, you write in a little notebook (and/or paste pictures) to tell the teacher what your kid has been up to...and the teacher can use that to coax a discussion out of your kid and work on language skills (at 3 years old...!!). The teacher also puts in information about what the kids did that week with something to get your kid to talk about class a bit - and avoid that "what did you do today?" - "nothing...I dunno"! So with all that extra french input, my bilingual strategy might have to entail English with me!

Little Lambs

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the farm in our village had little lambs - but I just now found the (terrible) photo. The farmer was telling us that they just brought the sheep down from the mountains and a storm broke out on the way down. That storm freaked out a few very pregnant females who gave birth a good week early. We got to see some of the preemies at day 5 of life - just past the bottle feeding phase. YES, bottle feeding! The farmer told us that to save the lambs, she had to bottle feed them -- that means every 4 hours they get a bottle...filled with milk that she had to get from the mom - so every 4 hours (24h/day..for 4 days) it was milk mom, feed baby, repeat... That's dedication! And all that for a little lamb that is likely to end up on a plate just a few months later (we notice the conspicuous decline in lamb numbers in the fields...). Did I mention Adrien loves lamb? And duck (well...magret de canard, which is the breast of a 'foix gras' duck)!

Chaine Family's Busy Week!

Whenever I think of an appropriate title for these things, I get the feeling I must be plagiarizing a Richard Scary story! When I scan the post after publishing, I almost expect to see a drawing of Sgt. Murphy standing on a big pile of cars with a tuba instead of a whistle...

But last week really was busy! honest!
On Tuesday of last week, Papi and Bonne Maman came down for a short visit between work in Toulouse and vacation with friends near Montpellier. They surprised Adrien by picking him up from school in the afternoon and he showed them around his classroom. They have turtles in their class (a 7 year old and a 13 year old....which leads to a combined age similar to that of the students!) and Adrien was very excited to show them to his grandparents. Since there is no school on Wednesdays for the little ones, Adrien got to take advantage of all the extra attention from having 3 grandparents in one spot! Then Thursday morning, the influx of visitors dropped off. Grandma Pam flew back to California after a 1 month visit and Papi and Bonne Maman headed off to Montpellier. And then the house seemed eerily calm....and we realized that we are on our own for this 2 kid-parenting thing! Yikes!

The departure of grandparents also means that Adrien is not getting a constant influx of presents. So far it seems to be ok and he has not been asking if there are any "cadeaux" for him at random times (yes...we have come to random solicitation of presents with the full expectation that one might actually appear!). One of the recent big hits was the white board/ chalk board from Grandma Pam for Adrien to do art on. His first project was to draw Grandma Pam - which was either very unflattering or a fabulous masterpiece in Picaso's style!

 Another hit was a book of short fairy-tale stories (Les Petites Histoires du Pere Castor) that Papi and Bonne Maman thought he might grow into - but it has taken its place as the primary bed-time book....and morning time book....and mid-day and afternoon and... OK...so we're getting a bit sick of Pere Castor and thinking that we might have to actually get him another book as a cadeaux! The stories are fun...but not 3 times a day!

 

With the (relative) calm settling in and the sense of relief that Aliena's nightly fussiness is no longer nightly (we hope to have dodged what was shaping up to be a case of colic!), we have managed to get in a few walks and visits with friends. We sometimes forget how amazingly beautiful it is here and how lucky it has been to end up in a spot where we get to experience a very different world from what we have seen elsewhere - but walks remind us of all of that. Its also the nicest time of year here (and not just because the tourists have left) and we've tried to take in the sun before winter settles in. Over the weekend we managed to sit outside a bit at our friends Susi and Felix's place while the boys (Adrien and Julius) played cars, piano, and dump all the toys on the floor... (and Adrien special!).

The calm also means that I managed to get my camera and the kids in the same room for a short while....

Aliena is still growing fast -- did I mention she already put on over 1kg in barely a month? Aliena is also getting very strong (she holds her head no problem and can support her own substantial weight on her own two legs for a few seconds) and starting to become more interactive, smiley, and cuddly. She has also acquired a taste for fashion...or at least her mommy has for her...