collected orange

kcwc: first day

I meant to make this dress over the summer, but well, we had a lot going on. I originally bought the pattern at a shop I loved in Paris, but when I went to open it, the sleeve didn’t match the pattern within and I took it as a sign to shelve the project. I just picked up the pattern again yesterday and am so glad I packed this fabric in my suitcase, not with our boat-load which still hasn’t arrived.

I already made T a couple of napkins to take with her lunch (how I miss the cantine) to flex my sewing muscles, so I have something to show if the dress doesn’t get past the wash-the-fabric stage.

Time to get going.

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July.

The other night I had a dream that I had to sit an exit exam at the prefecture before I would be allowed to leave France.  This is either a sign that we’ve fully acclimated to life here or that we’re leaving just in time.  Day by day, and with each appliance I sell, the decision to leave feels more fraught.  Then I remember, that in fact it’s not really a decision as we don’t have the right to stay here beyond a few more months.  It’s just that time; the curtain is closing on the adventure.  I feel somewhat like I used to feel as a kid, stuck in school all winter, plodding along as if summer would never come.  I could not imagine that my summer camp still existed when I wasn’t there–wasn’t it all a dream?  At this point, I cannot imagine not being here.  I cannot imagine being back in California.  California, are you even still there?  And Paris, what do you do with the sets when we’re not here?

I could go on like this at length, but instead, I point you to the list, perhaps an evolving list, entitled “What I will miss, and what I not”:

• our friends.
• our baker.
• all our merchants: our fruit and veggie guy, our enthusiastic cheese guy, the polite coffee lady, the nosy supermarket checker.
• our apartment, so small, yet so cozy.
• walking, everywhere (almost).
• sundays
• vacations
• being around for my girls
• T as a 2-4 year old in Paris.  I hope she remembers this time.
• and surprisingly, speaking french.

and not:

• smoking at the playground
• the prefecture
• the CAF and just about all the other administrative bodies I’ve encountered, save the public health option.
• individual sized yogurt
• the very small refrigerator
• those first few weeks of March 2010
• the crazy guy who stands at his window shouting

We’re going offline for a couple of weeks, so you might not hear from me until we’re on this side of the ocean, although the other side of the continent:

(Thanks for lending the photo, C).

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june, voila.

Three months old already. La petite puce just hit 5 kilos (11 pounds). She’s packing on the grams, and at a much slower rate, adding some minutes of sleep to nightly cycles.

Her little pixie hat below, quite similar to the flower hats worn by some of T’s playmobil fairies.

She also models some poofy pants, poofy enough for her diapered butt, but flattering nonetheless:

And so time marches forward.  Making the most of our last two months here and not thinking too much about the rest.

Happy June to you all.

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May arrives.

I’m not sure where April went.  Now it’s May and the 3 year old is but hours from becoming 4.  Today we survived the rain plan for T’s birthday party. I’ve never been so proud of my laziness–only got around to inviting 4 kids and that was about capacity in this small space.  Fortunately the skies cleared and we were able to move the festivities to the park around the corner.

And as of tonight we’ve also survived the two week school vacation. It seems that I’m still too American to appreciate all of this vacation time. Lots of “I could never home school” moments, but at the same time, T and I executed some marvelous projects. Behold the goody bags for her party, a combination of re-used bags and decimated “welcome to the world” cards (apologies if yours has not been saved for eternity):

She’s also been getting her math on. We’ve gone from the idea that little F will catch up to her and they’ll be twins by the time they’re twelve to “when I’m 5, F will be 1, and when I’m 6, F will be 2, and on and on.”  Her 8’s are calculator style which I really like, and her 15 is, um, a 12.

So, wow, 4.  As she reminds me every day, she’s a big sister, but still such a little thing, still working out what it means to be a human yet surprising me every day with her insights and bizarre observations.  The addition of #2 seems to be pretty cataclysmic for some, but T’s handled it all quite gracefully, much more so than her mother I have to admit.  Four’s going to treat us well.

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36/2

Little F is 2 weeks old today, or 36 weeks if she were still sealed up tightly within.  The fact that her age is counted in these two ways might be the perfect quantification of the mindfuck that we’ve endured since it became clear that this girl was about to bust through the emergency exit.  As I’m not very interested in reviewing the past month, the events leading up to the exit or pondering too many what-ifs, I’ll skip ahead to the now.

On the happy side, the whole family is back in Paris, with four of us (C, T, catsister and myself) resting cozily chez nous.  F is not with us just yet, but I took some lovely pictures today, and in one of them her middle finger is poised just so as if to give the finger, perhaps to the doctor who accused her of being too sleepy to eat, or perhaps to Gaspard whom she’s about to overtake as largest baby in the NICU.

More happy, unlike the 3 years and 10 months it took me to recover from T’s birth, this time I’m like one of those babycenter outliers driving over to the grocery store a few hours later (not exactly but wow, I can walk and I can wear early stage maternity clothes again [a warm welcome back to my amsterdam-purchased mamalicious jeans].  I’m hardly competing with the French mothers of the neonatal room who seem to have contemplated their hospital wardrobe in an entirely different manner–no yoga pants on these women–but I’m not wearing C’s clothes anymore so that’s something).

The anti-happy is a bit too much for the Internet.  This is a really long, exhausting haul.  Postpartum life is hard enough to navigate in a normal situation, but this is well, so much worse.  F is a certainly a little thing, but is far more robust than most in her cohort.  In many ways, we are very lucky, but somehow that knowledge is little consolation when we go home each night and leave her behind.  Hopefully this will all be a distant memory come next week–I’m sure the sleep deprivation ahead will produce a welcome sort of amnesia.

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February: I never liked you anyway.

Just when I was prepared to send a happy times missive off into the blogosphere, the one where I tell you about being back on my feet again, inexplicably excited about my data gathering, and feeling fashionable in my new gigantic petit bateau t-shirts (t as in tent), the moment has passed.  I’m still processing the last few days, but to save you any suspense,

everything’s okay.

I felt a little strange Tuesday morning.  My belly was unusually tight, as if the creature had outgrown her bubble and the skin hadn’t stretched enough to accommodate her yet, but it felt like one of those pregnancy things, not anything alarming.  I went off to meet someone for coffee and then go to yoga, with the plan to check out my just! unearthed! data! cd! at the library in the afternoon.  Walking to the metro felt different, not the new post-sciatic lightness I’d welcomed, more of a “this 5 ton beach ball isn’t feeling very portable today” sensation.  Still, the morning went, yoga was relaxing, and then I went home, googled around a bit and decided I’d see how things felt after a nap.  I couldn’t have been more mellow, relaxed and calm, yet still had this hard bulge messing with my appetite, my ability to sit, and displaying two signs that were a little too reminiscent of a certain day in May 2006: I could not wear pants (nothing could touch the bulge) and I suddenly felt like someone had migrated a little lower down than she was before.

I skipped the library and called my midwife, figuring if I needed to see her, it was easier to do while T was still at school.  She wasn’t alarmed but couldn’t really give any feedback without seeing me so I set off for the clinic.  I put on pants, packed a few magazines, a couple of snacks and nothing else, hoping I’d have no need for more supplies.  That was Tuesday afternoon.  I came home today.

It turns out that I was having contractions every three minutes.  Three minutes.  Not all of them were that strong and the ones I did feel, I wouldn’t necessarily have described as such.  Tightness, some pressure.  I don’t know.  It’s all a bit of a blur.  C came home early to pick up T and as I was getting information little by little, I told him not to come.  The first proposal was that I go home, rest, and take this contraction reducing pill, but by the time the monitor was off, I was being admitted, on an IV, and run through a bunch of tests.  Overall everyone was calm.  One line of reasoning was very simple: this is normal, not a big deal, we’ll give you this stuff intravenously for 24 hours, stop the contractions and you’ll go home.  The other line was in a sense pure protocol, but more alarming, as in, with situations like this we also measure the baby to see what we’ll be dealing with should she need to come out, we inject you with a steroid to start maturing her lungs, and we tell you about the special neo-natal hospital where you’ll be transferred.

Juggling these two extremes, all the while with no cause attributed to the contractions in the first place, was a lot.  The baby is fine and healthy and sealed in tight, but the worry was that if the contractions didn’t stop, they’d keep pushing her further and further down, and well, out, a 31 week old creature who should really wait until the flowers are blooming but instead was threatening to open her eyes to Paris in the snow.

But.  The drugs stopped the contractions and now we’re home.  Petite’s inside, wiggling around in a much more supple, squishy space than she had on a Tuesday.  My French has been tested in new ways and I’m looking at a long, shortest month of the year…in bed.  Weird times these.

C brought me home this afternoon and T greeted me with a lavish application of smooches all over the belly. By all accounts she was a real trooper.  She was off her schedule, spending time at her old creche and with friends so C could be at the hospital (no kids allowed right now), but managed everything really well.  She might be the only one to be a little disappointed that the baby didn’t come out yet, but I think she understands that this outcome is the best one.

Look forward to hearing your podcast/book/movie/knitting suggestions as there is a lot of time to fill all of a sudden.

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29.5 weeks; just hypnotize me for the next 10.

I remember the weeks in the late 20s being somewhat terrible with T as well.  The hugeness has set in, but the end is still far off.  There’s a lot to do, but it’s too soon to do much of it.  The whole process just starts to feel really eternal.  This time around it’s been made worse by sciatica.  It started intermittently back in November and has gotten progressively crappier.  I’ve spent much of January in bed, unable to turn over by myself or take off my socks, and only taking small excursions away from home, to pick up T from school, to hit the library, to breathe some outside air.  My list of attempted remedies and their associated appointments is long: chiropractor, osteopath, yoga, swimming, magnesium supplements, maternity support belt, walking stick, hot water bottles, reflexology.

Today as I boarded the bus to go a distance I used to walk, I ran into my French teacher from the class I quit back in November when the pain started.  I had my walking stick.  She was all, “mon dieu!”  I didn’t go into this with her but the goal of the outing was to purchase small speakers so that I could listen to my new hypnobirthing cd in the privacy of our bedroom away from non-relaxing influences.  When I got home, I popped the cd in, stretched out and let my mind wander (steering it away from thoughts like: this is so stupid, and so not working).  The cat jumped up on my lap such as it is and promptly professed her conversion to the cause.  She passed out, completely accepting the whole “3-2-1 relax” mantra.

So, I listened, I breathed, I thought about the pain shooting down my leg, and I woke up twenty or thirty minutes later renewed (falling asleep is not the goal, but seems to be a common side effect).  I looked out the window and saw sun!  There was sun shining. in Paris. in January.  I listened to the last few minutes of the cd, displaced the cat still in her reverie and got up.  That’s it.  I got up.  I didn’t steady myself.  I didn’t nearly fall over.  I just got up and felt no searing pain.  I had to look down to confirm that the beach ball was still present–I felt that good.  I got my stuff together and went to pick up T, leaving 20 minutes for the formerly 5 minute walk.  I arrived early.

If there’s an option to stay under until April, I might just take it, even if the kid comes out speaking like a very calm British lady.  Not quite the same as a glass of wine my friends, but it’ll do.  Join me on my idyllic stretch of beachfront property if you need a breather too.

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and then he wished us a good continuation

We reviewed all of the times we’ve been wished a “bonne continuation,” one of those phrases that sounds really funny to American ears.  There was the successful renewal of our identity cards, the farewell to our first landlord, at least one or two other times I’ve forgotten, and now this, the assurance that all is well with little sister’s heart.  It’s as if to say, yes we will never see each other again, but in this case, that’s a good thing.

So that’s that.  On y va.

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completed in 2009, planned for 2010.

Made, or rather, remembered to photograph in 2009.

I promised myself not to go there until 2010 arrived.

We returned home Saturday night from the southwest and spent Sunday taking apart the Christmas tree, unpacking and remembering how to live in a very “cozy” place along with Pere Noel’s space-sucking additions.  And then it was time.  I made C take down box after unpacked box from atop the closet–clothes I might not wear again in our time in France, clothes T will never wear again–and then I found what I was looking for, the suitcase stuffed with T’s baby debris taken from the storage unit this summer.  I dumped everything out and refilled the suitcase with the latest pile of outgrown preschool-wear.

T and I sorted through the pile, talked about how small she used to be, tried the little socks on her stuffed animal friends, and then the sadness hit.  There’s no telling what this next little girl’s preferences will be, but unless/until she insists that orange will not work for her as it did her big sister, she requires nothing.  Hence the sadness.  What to knit?  What to sew?  It’s all there already: piles of blankets, slings, little sweaters and full body knitted suits, home printed onesies, bibs, a load of little hats.  I’ve decided that there’s no way I’m going down the sew-your-own diaper road.  So, what is left?

I might add that the big January sales start on Wednesday.  I foresee a few purchases, but what to make?  What to make? Perhaps shirts like these?

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resultats (in)definitifs

Sometimes, even with the newest state of the art doppler probe, results are anything but certain, not unlike the very provisional looking mimeographed reports I’ve been reading lately.  Yesterday we went for an ultrasound, debating until the last minute whether we would find out the creature’s gender.  As the doctor scanned from head to toe, she paused and lingered over the heart and then returned to it again later.  In the French way, she gave us the most minimal of information, only that there might be a little hole where there shouldn’t be and that we should have another opinion.  It might be fine, it’s just that she couldn’t see.  It could all be an instrumentation error.  She was all “it’s no big deal” and then “make sure you follow up with this.”  Initially I chose to focus on the it’s no big deal.  She pronounced us done, but by then I really wanted to know something definite, like the sex.  She couldn’t see, but had another look.  Nope.  Creature was seated on both feet with a hand covering the news.

We both worked from home in the afternoon and spent too much time with dr. google.  I faxed the results to my midwife and waited for her call.  She also emphasized the no big deal, but at the same time, she made us an appointment for tonight.  No big deal, unless it is.

We just got home from the second doctor.  He didn’t see any problem but recommended we see a heart specialist.  When he said this in French, I understood, but had one of those “I know what he said, but it makes no sense” moments, the kind I have everyday here.  Then he switched to perfect English and said it again.  It still didn’t make much sense, but we’ll see the specialist to be sure.  I look forward to having those resultats definitifs in hand.

As long as we were there (and T was with us), I asked if he could answer another question for us.

He could.

As T calculated, when the baby comes out, we’ll be 4 girls (including the feline) and one boy.

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