Choices

"It's all about choices," my Dad used to say.
It was one of those annoying 'answers to everything' that used to irritate me like mad at 15, make me smile at 20... and today, at the grand old age of 32, makes me nod wisely.

Today, I no longer have the privilege of hearing him utter these ubiquitous words, but were he around, I would happily endure them one more time.
Luckily, though, I am an excellent pupil, so I have now learned to say them to myself (a shadow of the mentor hovering benevolently somewhere close...).

We get to points in our life when the choices seem more critical, more laden with consequences, than others.
Have kids? Have another kid? Move? Marry? Quit the city? Opt out? Opt in?
(no implied order, here, of course... It's just about timing, and taking one path rather than another).

Now, I can choose to sit tight in the job I've got - "comfort zone" personified: zero challenge but a nice reassuring dollop of stability... - or I can choose to move on.
I can pick up the phone, overcome my natural reserve, sell myself. Networking.
As the days slip by, the results far exceed my expectations, and I realise that I can do it.
The flutter of excitement: the call of change, the certainty that if change occurs, it will because I made it happen, and only because I made it happen.

I never thought of myself as an "ambitious" person. As though the very term "ambitious" was tinged with capitalist greed... or connotations of being a less than devoted mother.
"Of COURSE you're an ambitious person!" exclaims my boss, when I boldly tell him of my plans.
"You are not content to sit tight: you have goals, you like to push yourself, tu es très volontaire..."

I am?
Yes, perhaps I am.
The comfort zone is familiar and friendly and they let you out at 5 pm.
The rest is unknown.
But the really important thing to remember, of course, is that we DO have choices: about who to marry, where to live, how to live, where to work.
And the very fact that our lives are determined by Choice is the most immense of privileges, the greatest gift we could hope for.

Bedtime Story

I've just spent an hour stroking and cuddling and cajoling LB to sleep.
For the past few weeks, this long drawn out bedtime has been an almost nightly occurrence.
Maybe it's just one of those innumerable and vague "stages" that some babies go through.
Or maybe it's just him.

As LB's personality starts to emerge and take form - giving us little glimpses of the future boy, the future man he will one day become - I realise that he is a loving, affectionate child who enjoys nothing more than the company of others.
Whereas BB would be content to curl up and sleep with the briefest of "goodnights", his brother needs a long hug... caressing fingers on the soft pink skin of his belly... eye contact.

It takes a while for the penny to drop: these two boys are not one and the same. They came from the same mould, but a child is so much more than the sum total of his genes.
What's good for one is not good for the other.
We must adapt: struggle through the tiredness and the preconceived ideas to tune in to this little person who has come to live with us, trying to show us who he is.

A few nights ago, I told myself We have to teach him to fall asleep by himself. All this cuddling up together and extra time... We have to be firmer.

Tonight, I've spent an hour lying silently next to my almost naked baby, simply looking into each other's eyes - smiling, sometimes kissing fingers - as the light faded, night crept in and the fan whirred above us.
Some time later, I noticed that he had fallen to sleep.

And I looked at his little contented face and for the first time I thought: Maybe I don't have to teach him anything. Maybe he's the one who has to teach me.

Hired Help

Some fine folks have been over to visit...



And it's been so hot that half of the family no longer requires clothing.
Which saves on washing and outfit-planning.

And now that this hot, fuzzy, family interlude is over, it's back to reality with some hard choices for Professional Maman (She who must emerge unscathed from the domestic and maternal trials of each weekend... to be re-born sleek, confident and business-like each Monday morning. Preferably with no yoghurt stains on her skirt). But more about that later...

Long Drive to Freedom

Merry Mummy mutates into Mean Mummy. Eyes glued to the road, she has but one goal: get them all back to Toulouse before anyone throws a dangerous object through the windscreen.

Sweet boy has become Evil Spoilt Child. Hard to believe that only hours earlier, I was thinking how cute he looked in his skinny lycra trunks.

Only LB appears mildly more relaxed at the end of the holiday than at the start.

May we therefore deem the trip "a success"??

The Naked Truth

A few random yet considered observations regarding our week in Provence:

1/ The bigger the car, the more stuff you manage to fill it with.
In the days when we used to travel in a cute four-seater Twingo, it would be packed to bursting when we set off on holiday. Now that we travel in a five-seater Megane, it is still packed to bursting when we set off on holiday.
To be fair, though, we have acquired an additional kid since the Twingo era and - as every parent knows - the smaller the kid, the more stuff he requires.

Luckily, we were several kilos lighter on the way back. The lost kilos corresponded to the quantity of blood sucked out of us by the hoards of mosquitos that were our loyal holiday companions.
Lesson learnt: when the floods subside, the mosquitos come out of the woodwork (and swamps).


2/ Holidaying with young kids is not the same as holidaying among adults. The blandest of platitudes, perhaps, but worth noting anyway.
For the first time, I was glad that our holiday house was part of a large circle of identical holiday houses, all containing a scarily similar reproduction of our own family: two parents plus two kids aged 3 and 1.
Once you put aside your mild panic, learning to serenely accept that yes, you ARE just like everyone else (as far as statistics are concerned): Mr and Mrs Average with their two kids, their buckets, spades, footballs and daily toils... then you realise how much easier life is when you are lumped with those like you.

Same routine, same bedtime, same struggles: all the kids can play together, happily beating each other up over who's turn it is to put sand in the plastic truck that is favoured by all, while the parents look on, glassy-eyed.
Eveyone's kids are shouting and screeching by 8.30 a.m., but for once, it's OK: we're all in the same boat.


3/ Despite the points made in 2/ (above), I am not quite the same as other mothers.
I make this observation without smugness or malice: it is simply that, an observation.
A week's exposure to the parenting techniques of others is an amazing experience - one which I threw myself into wholeheartedly, making almost constant internal notes about what works, what doesn't work, and all the rest.

It was in the course of this research that I became aware of the subtle difference between myself and the other mothers: I don't get involved as much as they do.
As I lay back in my sun lounger, half an eye on BB as he pottered around the pool, I noticed that I was the ONLY mother not knee-deep in the pool itself, chattering away to the swarm of kiddies, enthusiastically filling buckets with water, making excited suggestions about what games should be played next, drawing in my breath sharply and admonishing every time a scrap broke out, or a kid dared to break into a trot "dangerously" close to the poolside.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Probably neither, I decided in the end: it's simply about style.
The thing is: you are who you are, for better and for worse.
And a "laissez faire" mum like me can't be forced to intervene if she doesn't feel it's necessary, even when subjected to a rather pointed stare from what I might term an "intervening mum".
Let them decide for themselves what they want to play, let them fight their own little battles over who gets the truck (as long as they're not hurting each other): surely all this is character forming?
That's my view as it stands today, anyway.
But since I am a mother-in-the-making... don't be surprised if next year's holiday produces a new philosophy.

All Work and No Play?

You know the expression "with friends like these, who needs enemies?"
Yes? Well, you can confidently apply a variant of this incredulous complaint to the week's holiday I have just endured - er, I mean, enjoyed:
With holidays like these, who needs to work??

It actually took a full 24 hours before - exhausted, bewildered and more than slightly miffed - I finally cottoned on: out of the four of us, only two were really "on holiday".
The other two had actually just found a new place of employment... and full-time, no breaks, low paid jobs as Babysitters and Entertainers of Small Children.

I'll leave you to guess who was who in this tangled web of role-playing.

Once I had grasped the notion, discussed it with FH in a foggy daze of fatigue on evening no.2, and heard him confirm that yes, being on holiday was indeed HARDER WORK than being at home, there was a certain liberation.
I just switched mindset and told myself "the holiday is for them, not you. Make them happy, show them a good time."
And the situation improved a little after that.
I tried hard to become Selfless Mother: She who cares not for her own sunbathing time or relaxation... but seeks only to bring a smile of contentment to the ice-cream streaked cheeks of her offspring.

And I did OK for a while. A sort of cross between "merry mummy" and "enthusisastic camp leader". But I confess that these roles do not come naturally to me.
I am only a part-time SAHM (stay-at-home-mum) in Real Life, and boy, that is NOTHING to being a full-time mum. I see that now, and I take my hat off to those brave souls who manage to do it day in day out, I really and truly do.
It is a noble path and a difficult one. The joys are numerous, bien sûr, but my god, it's tiring.

Here we are, back home at last - er, I mean, back home already! Gosh, how quickly a week flies by! - and look at me: back on my laptop and typing out these lines with the fury and relief of an addict just out of cold turkey.
Yes, I missed my computer. I missed my blog, I missed my solitary coffee moments, I missed my bike... halt! Stop press, pinch me: I think I almost wrote that I missed my job!

Perceptive readers will understand that all of this is of course tongue in cheek.
I didn't have a horrible time. I had fun.
The photos I'll post tomorrow will hopefully testify to that fact.
But also, well, yes, I admit: it's good to be home.

In at the Deep End

Off we go for a week's holiday by the sea!
As usual, we have come up trumps and picked THE destination to avoid: the Var region of Provence, which has been totally flooded over the past few days.
Seriously, it's no joke: entire villages are still drenched, roads are cut off, and over twenty people have died.

But hey ho, off we set anyway, optimistically assuming that "lightning doesn't strike twice in the space of two weeks."

But it sure does give a whole new slant to the brochure's boast: "holiday apartments right on the water!"

See you soon...

Last June in Provence...