Little Piglet turned two…

On the 28th April she blew out two candles. I still can’t believe she is two and am somewhat on denial.

Somehow we’ve progressed from me worrying about her not drinking enough milk to where she’s going to be going to school. Yes. School.

In our part of rural France we don’t have any International schools or Montessori schools and I’m somewhat dubious about the French eduction system and their uncanny ability to break a childs spirit, churning out thousands of carbon copy mini adults all aspiring to be French civil servants.

When I watch my daughters creativity, her talent as an actrice and her ability to get her own way, I see a talented individual where others may see an unruly child.

Maybe I’m looking through rose tinted glasses or maybe not but either way I had fobbed off the school question for sometime as there was no way that she could go if she wasnt potty trained. But here’s the thing: she trained herself one week before her first birthday and is now clean all day long. So the school question is back on and I’ve learned that you need to enroll really early to get a good one which I’m way behind on.

I’m not bothered about her being in the besf school, I’m more bothered about her being allowed to grow and develop naturally but now I’m beginning to get stressed.

They say as a parent you never stop worrying and boy is that true.

How did you cope with the school situation and at what age did your little one (s) start?

Read Full Post »

Forgiveness

Recent events at work have caused me to lose faith in humans, total lack of respect and consideration for others and downright selfishness have made me wonder even more about the world we live in.

However, I am so thrilled to have participated in a natural act of kindness and forgiveness that I am somewhat more convinced that decent folk do exist.

This morning, Little Piglet, now nearly 23 months, was unfortunately scratched by our cat Princess. LP was very upset and suffered a superficial wound to her forehead.

This evening, LP was clingy and upset

Read Full Post »

It’s been a very long time…

But this little bundle of fun has been keeping me busy

I am going to try and post more so a bientot les amis.
X

Read Full Post »

Help Needed

I hate to ask but I could really do with your help in order to win a photo contest for Little Piglet. All you have to do is come and “LIKE” her photo on Coccinelle Boutique’s page here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151874229685096&set=a.10151874220780096.886066.179472630095&type=1&theater

Please share amongst your friends so that she can get as many votes as possible.

Hopefully she’ll win and I’ll get to share the good news! Of course I think she is the most adorable but then I am biased

Thanks!

Read Full Post »

Here I am!

Since having Little Piglet last year, time has become precious and I often have the feeling that I am living with a time bomb.

Rare are the occasions when I get a minute to myself, yet alone time to do my nails, read or blog.

My days start early, usually it is Little Piglet that wakes me up when she’s had enough of sleeping and then it’s the daily grind of getting her ready, trying to get ready myself, work and then the evening routine when she returns from the Nanny.

After an important work meeting last week, my Mum asked how I dressed and what I did with my hair. After quickly explaining and stating that I do know how to dress professionally, she said that it had been a long time since she’d seen me anything other than half dressed.

It is true that most days I start getting ready and then before I have time to actually brush my hair or put on make up, Little Piglet is demanding my attention or about to eat something that she found on the floor.

Waking up earlier would be a solution but I find that hard, I’m already up any time between 6 and 7.

Dear Mr Piglet helps as much as he can but he works full time too and spends most of his days and evenings working outside of the home. He doesn’t really get any extra time to himself but men just have it easy don’t they? I mean, it’s not them that have to deal with the post partum weight loss, hairy legs or eyebrows. They are so low maintenance and don’t even get me started on how easy they are to dress!

So here I am tonight, football on TV, taking five minutes to myself to write this. No doubt in 15 minutes I’ll have collapsed on my bed, fast asleep in preparation for another grueling day tomorrow.

The best thing is, whilst my life is on hold at the moment, I wouldn’t change a thing. Happiness has taken on a whole new meaning, material things and appearances no longer count. One hug from my Little Piglet makes everything okay.

Bon nuit!

ps. Oh yeah, amongst other things, I finally got my braces off after 18 months! Finally I can talk normally again and smile without having salad stuck in my teeth Also, I have a Hollywood smile! Whoop whoop!

Read Full Post »

A week ago today, my darling Baby Piglet turned 1

We celebrated the day with family and some close friends and Baby Piglet met some of her UK relatives for the first time.

Happy Birthday

I had decided to have quite a laid back affair and a few weeks before the party I realized I had invited too many people to have a sit down lunch. What to do? The weather forecast was changeable and the weather leading up to the party was absolutely awful; rain and wind.

Thankfully Mr Piglet came up with the idea (the day before) of having the party in the barn, so the English guests who had already arrived set about clearing the space and making it look a bit more partyish.

All the guests enjoyed the rather haphazard setting and loved the rural feel of the location complete with cows in our fields. Much wine and champagne was drunk and much cake eaten, including a gorgeous Victoria Sponge cake which an English friend had made for me as I desperately wanted to have a traditional birthday cake but am useless at baking.

I had been trying to teach Baby Piglet to blow out her candles for a couple of weeks and rather than blowing she had learned to whistle. When the time came for her to blow the candle she stuck her finger out and touched it instead! Thank goodness we were able to quickly blow it out for her! It actually looked like she had put it out with her finger, talk about a Harry Potter moment.

Cake time!

Baby Piglet (I’m going to have to think of another name for her now that she’s one, any suggestions?) was spoilt rotten, a new playroom, a new tricycle which she loves, a farm set complete with animals (essential for a baby growing up in a farming community), Lau Lau from the Waybuloo series, toy car, mobile phone… you name it, she got it!

It was a fantastic day that lasted well into the night with a boules tournament after Baby Piglet had gone to bed. I think Baby Piglet will remember this special day, she enjoyed being paraded around in her tricycle and waving to everyone with her special Queen wave as she went. What a contented little baby we have!

Proud

Our UK relatives stayed on for a few days afterwards and Baby Piglet had great fun getting to know her cousin and Uncle and Aunty. There’s only 5 months difference between them but he’s already as big as her and we can see that they’re going to get up to plenty of mischief in the future!

With her Cousin

I can’t believe that it has been a year already, a year where life changing events have taken place, a year of emotion, of sadness, worry and extreme happiness. Baby Piglet has taught me so much in the short time she has been here, she completes me and I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life with her.

Proud Daddy

Read Full Post »

It’s been a long time…

…since I had any spare time to blog or to surf the internet. The hardest thing about being a working Mum is finding time for me. Baby Piglet takes up endless amounts of time and physical energy, then there’s work and at the end of the day I just kind of collapse in a heap on the sofa and fall asleep.

Work has been going well recently, after taking nearly a year off due to problems at the end of my pregnancy and the problems I encountered after giving birth, it feels good to be back and I’m enjoying the thrill of making things happen again.

Baby Piglet is well, she’s coming up to 11 months now, how time flies! I am starting to plan her first birthday party and turning Mr Piglet’s junk room into a playroom for her. She is still not walking or crawling and whilst I’m making the most of this relaxing time, I can see that she is itching to move and unfortunately she does get very frustrated. “Tummy time” was recommended to help build up her core muscles but bless her, as soon as I put her on her tummy she just flips over onto her back!

Little darling Baby Piglet appears to have a fierce independent streak which no doubt will bode her well in time but much to my dismay she decided to stop eating last week. After days of worry that she was ill I took her to the Doctor who cheerfully informed me that Mademoiselle was playing games and that there’s nothing wrong with her! Lo and behold she then proceeded to eat perfectly normally that evening. Score: 0 Mummy, 1 Baby Piglet.

She has also started chatting and saying Dada and Nanan very well. It’s ironic as Mr Piglet wanted to be called Papa and she says Dada perfectly and I wanted to be Mummy or Mama and she is desperately trying to say Maman but can’t get her tongue around the M. Oh well, I can cope with that as it’s helpful that she calls Dada when she wakes during the night.

As for the house, we’ve so much to do! The cold has finally gone, the heating is working and I’ve mastered the fire. The farmer mowed the fields and now we have to tend to the veggie patches, the grass and work out some sort of plan to plant a hedge. The first signs of spring here are all the weeds growing back, oh joy!

Read Full Post »

Frustrations of a Mother – Cooking Skills

Darling Baby Piglet

You’ve probably gathered from my past postings that I’m a first time Mum and that I like to do things as best as I can for my darling Baby Piglet.

I struggled for months with breastfeeding and finally had to admit defeat when my body required medication, I tended to every need my daughter had, lovingly changing nappies, sticking my hand out to catch sick and calming her through her clingy spells (generally when she teethes).

I also carefully prepared healthy and nutritious home cooked meals for her as I didn’t want to give her shop bought baby food, putting her on to formula for me was already a step to far.

All was going swimmingly well until Baby Piglet caught the dreaded gastroenteritis (which she kindly shared with me). After recovering she wouldn’t eat. I saw plate after plate of food I had so painstakingly prepared pushed away in disgust. She gagged, cried and shook her head in order to make me understand that she was having none of it.

Desperate and tired after being sick myself, I was in the supermarket racking my brains as to what I could prepare for her. “What’s the point?” I said to myself whilst scanning the baby food aisle for ideas. “She’s only going to spit it out again” I muttered whilst picking up a few jars of baby food and plonking them into my basket.

I reasoned with myself that she wasn’t going to eat them anyway so took them home, unpacked them and served up her first baby food meal of chicken and potato.

There was no pushing away, no spitting and no gagging. Baby Piglet’s mouth kept opening, wider and wider. Shell shocked, I tasted the food, delicious would be an exaggeration but it was certainly tasty. What had they put in this? The ingredient list revealed nothing untoward so I carried on feeding her.

With her appetite back, that evening I attempted another home cooked meal but was met with “boo-uh, boo-uh” – this was Baby Piglet’s way of expressing her dissatisfaction! “Great! So it really is my cooking that she doesn’t like” I thought to myself, all whilst feeling deflated, incompetent, a bad Mum and to top it off a bad cook!

The next day she had more shop bought food and then the day after some of my Mum’s Shepherds Pie which she loved. I tried some of my cooking again and was once again greeted with THE LOOK.

What a wonderful way to make you feel deflated, defeated and worthless. I had heard that being a Mother is a thankless task but my darling daughter had always been so gracious and loved my food!

So Baby Piglet spent a week of eating my Mum’s cooking, shop bought purees and bread until I plucked up courage to try and make her some salmon, potatoes and broccoli. Thankfully she gobbled it up so it seems as if I’m winning again.

Read Full Post »

Happy Belated Christmas

Christmas this year was at our house, I had expressed that I didn’t feel like traveling anyway after having such a rough year and invited both my and Mr Piglet’s family  to come.

A few days before Christmas we enjoyed a couple of day’s snow which unfortunately didn’t last until Christmas Day but it helped set the scene nonetheless.

Winter Wonderland

 

We even tracked down a Father Christmas for Baby Piglet to give her Christmas list to (and for Mummy to take pictures of her with him) but unfortunately it was all a bit of a let down and we weren’t allowed to take pictures. Father Christmas wouldn’t even put down his umbrella (how will we explain that one?) and kept trying to run away. There was no set up or grotto and he was just perched on a bench in the village.

 

Father Christmas lost his grotto & wouldn't let go of his brolly

The village drunk had decided to hang out with Father Christmas too and poor Mr Piglet got accosted. Grandma and Grandpa Piglet had a hard time keeping straight faces.

Next year I have made a mental note to go and check out Father Christmas BEFORE taking the whole family to see him.

Christmas Day was a marathon, I’m still not used to how long Christmas dinners go on for inFrancealthough I am more used to it than my poor parents. 10 hours at the dinner table finished them off and they headed off to bed exhausted.

 

Artistic Looking Dinner Table!

Thankfully it wasn’t too tiring for me as I had asked each couple to look after a course so I only had the main course to deal with and even then Mr Piglet very helpfully took over as he could see the stress building up.

Baby Piglet had a fantastic day, she started opening her Christmas presents at 8am and didn’t finish until she went to bed at 7pm! She played all day and was her usual smiley self but with lots of posing for the camera. She loved the outfit that her English cousin had sent her and was very proud to be wearing it as you can see from this pic:

All in all a good Christmas, different from what we’ve been used to in the past but good nonetheless.

 

How was your Christmas this year?

Read Full Post »

Redefining my role – thank you France for saving my sight

There’s been lots of moaning on behalf over the last few months about the French medical system as I’ve not had much positive to say about it due to all the bad experiences I’ve had, however, today I would like to thank them for saving my eye sight.

 

Since I posted last week about the One Eyed Blogger, things took a turn for the worse and I ended up back in Hopital Edouard Herriot Eye Centre inLyonthe very next day.

 

One of the funny things about eye problems is that you can’t see. Actually it’s not very funny at all but you lose a lot of perspective and things that you take for granted. I couldn’t see the Doctors that were treating me at the hospital and whilst I know that there were 4 different Doctors that saw me last Tuesday I cannot say what any of them looked like.

 

My pain was so great I had a cover on my head at all times to protect me from the light. The Doctors kept referring me to someone else, it became painfully obvious that my case was serious and when the Chef de Service of the whole eye hospital came to see me I knew that something was majorly wrong.

 

The hospital made it clear to me that I had to go in every day for cortisone injections directly into the eyeball. This was time for me to get over the all consuming fear of hospitals and medical staff that I had developed since this summer. The first time they went to inject me, I actually crossed my legs and wriggled away screaming “non, non”. Obviously the trauma from my birth experience was still very real.

 

The team at the hospital were excellent and listened to what had happened. They offered me tranquilizers and explained why it was so important that they inject into my eyeball. They needed to control the inflammation quickly as it was getting out of control and as a consequence by sight was suffering.

 

Mr Piglet and I made arrangements for me to taken toLyoneach day. It was very stressful trying to organize child care, juggle work (neither Mr Piglet nor I were able to work) plus not know how long each hospital trip would last.

 

After a few days someone piped up that I was entitled to travel by taxi for my hospital trips and that Mr Piglet didn’t need to take time off work to transport me. This was such a relief and a great provision by the French health service. Not only were they taking care of my physical health, my mental well being and peace of mind was also being looked after.

 

So far my sight is improving, the pain is greatly reduced and I am no longer requiring daily Cortison injections. However, I have had to come to terms with my disease and realize that I need medication to help control it right now. This has been hard to admit as at the same time it means admitting I am ill. I have taken the decision to cease breastfeeding Baby Piglet even though I had not wanted to, I do not feel comfortable with the risk of her having medication via my milk.

 

This is the start of a new chapter in my life, a chapter which will redefine my role as a Mummy after only 6 months and a bit, a chapter which will redefine how I look after myself. Now is my time to get well and what better place for it to happen than inFrance?

Read Full Post »