onicox's blog

On the 27th of December, Pierre-Emmanuel, my brother and Kathia, Marc’s sister came with their last two children, Mazarine, almost 3 years old and Samuel, 9 months old. They stayed with us for 6 days.
It was great. The children got along pretty well (as children from 9 months to 3 and half year old can get along!!!), the adults spent some great evening to laugh and the house an organised chaos!!
We went to the swimming pool, to Snake and Ladder and to the pub.
They baby-sit the children to enable us to see Avatar that we loved. They taught us a great new card game which makes us have a lot of laughing moment. They brought us a great amount of food (maybe there is no shops in England) and a lot of present for the children (always the same theme as 3 days before: Arthur: Lighting MacQueen, Rémi, trains and cars).
We were sad to see them leave on the 2nd of January, but they brought us a little piece of Strasbourg for 6 days.

The last weekend of August, we were supposed to participate to a charity event for Cancer Research UK in memory of my aunt who passed away last February. But, unfortunately, the event was postponed until next year.
I talked about it to my uncle, Andre, my father’s little brother who won his battle against cancer and at that time he wasn’t interested. He thought of it and when we came back from Sardinia, a message was waiting for us.
He came anyway and spent a week with us. It was great, Arthur loved him.
We went to Bristol and Cardiff, of course we visited Oxford, then he went on his own to visit Windsor, Cambridge and London.
I think he liked his stay. It was the first uncle (or aunt by the way) from both side of the family to come to see us. The idea should spread further.

It is well known that English summer is great. That's why for 2 months of the year, every year, we have a lot of visitors. This year, it started with Rosa (Marc's mum) and Alexandre (my brother Pierre-Emmanuel's son).
Rosa came to "get some rest" and see the children, but this year Alexandre (who got his baccalaureate with distinction!!!) came with her to improve his English. He did it. I am pride of him.
We spent two weeks to play card, eat cake and speak English!!!





Marc and I took the opportunity having some babysitter at home to see Harry Potter (with Alexandre) to the cinema and to spent 24h just for ourselves (including a good night sleep) at Reading.
Alexandre took the opportunity to visit London et Oxford

When Arthur's godfather, Paul, is visiting, Arthur jumps of happiness.

Here we go, Rémi is more than a month old and finally I manage to write a post! Marc was supposed to write one for the Rémi's birth, but he also didn't have time. Having two children, can it be called a technical problem, Melanie?

So in the news, Rémi is fine, but has a lot of difficulties to sleep during the day. He began his life to feed every 20 minutes at night. He calmed down now and sleeps between 4 to 5 hours at night, but the day he can't sleep alone. He vomits a lot, found it difficult to burp and therefore has a lot of gas in his small tummy. He likes to eat and does it like a piggy from the start. We have reached the stage of using a dummy because my breasts are not! So I couldn't do much during the day. Now, it's getting better.

I see an osteopath because he always sleeps with his head on the same side (and also begins to have the flat head). She found a tension in his neck and his shoulders. I also contacted my homoeopath for his vomiting and she will give me a treatment which I hope will work or at least help.

Arthur is fine. After Rémi's birth it was a little tough with him, but not with Rémi, but with us. His opposition phase has increased dramatically and the fact that my parents and Marc's sister were there has not improved things. He is calmer now, he doesn't necessarily obey more, but we are managing to avoid conflicts and to have what we want from him, with a lot of patience. He loves his brother, he wants to breastfeed him, kiss him constantly and if he can't he takes his hand. He was very disturbed at the beginning when he was crying, but it's OK now and even make fun of him.

We are knaked. Marc has a lot of work, but looks after Arthur in the morning to bring him to the childminder because I'm very tired with Rémi's last feed at 5am! He also manages the evening when Rémi cries. He must have magic hands because he calms him down faster than me. We are starting to have a routine again, but it will be disturbed with all the visits that we will have this summer starting this weekend with the Savio family.

Here we go the news, they are brief, but from now I'll try to give some more often (do I promise that?)

OK, my New Year resolution of writing a post per week hasn’t been followed, but I have good excuses!!

Motor skills: he walks; he runs and climbs on everything he can find on his way! He gets a lot of bruise, but he cries only when it is really painful or when he is very tired, therefore practically never!
He can go in the bath on his own, climb the stairs without help and the slide’s ladder too.
For a week now, he can go down his high chair on his own.
He loves to jump on the trampoline at Fiona’s and goes on the slide in the park.
He dances on Gwen Stefani, Nelly Fertado and Manu Chao (in reality he turns on himself until he loses his balance!), he tries to clicking his fingers, but doesn’t manage yet.

Language skills: he says only “Papa”, “Maman”, “No”, “Bye bye”, “nono” (for his favourite soft toy), “Nana” (for Fiona and/or Sabrina), he said only once “itelle” after Marc told him “Christelle”, “Memo” (for Nemo the fish which are his sleepers), “My” (for “mine”).
A week ago, he said for the first time “loo” (for "look) and “hello” Even if he doesn’t speak much, he understands everything and in all the languages. If we ask, he can throw something in the bin, to get his shoes to go for a walk, give back his brush tooth when he finished brushing his teeth (instead of leaving it on the floor!!)… It is amazing to see that he understands everything, even if he doesn’t say anything, but it will happen soon enough.
But on the other hand, in sound effects aspect, he is rather good, he does the dog, the cat, duck, chicks, the cow, the elephant, the pig, fish and rabbit (ok, the last two don’t make any noise, but he does the faces which go with them). He doesn’t do the noise of the pig and chicks at the good time, but at least he is able to do them.

Manual skills: at Fiona’s, he cooked: he made a cheese pie and blackberries jam pie which we had the pleasure to eat in the same evening. He learn how to glue some died leaves on a piece of paper, did some painting and he liked it!

Social skills: he doesn’t have any problem. He has two small girlfriends at Fiona’s with which he loves to give kisses. He knows how to pretend to laugh or cry to make you laugh. He likes to do a lot of cuddles, but only when He wants! He loves going to Toddler group with Fiona. Apparently, he likes to look at a child playing with a toy and when the child finished, he takes it to play and tries to make the same thing.
He loves to run after the girls, but also likes to be run after, with the result that one doesn’t know very well who runs after who.

Learning skills: he manages to put objects of various forms in the adapted holes, but only if we indicates the hole to him (except the circle). At Fiona’s, he likes to play pretending food, empty the boxes of toys and leave a trail of them behind him. He throws the ball very well. He loves to play with cars, train, and tractor… like a proper boy.

Food wise: He eats everything in big quantity. We didn’t find one thing yet that he refuses and which is for his age (we haven’t make him taste tripe yet!!)
He loves cherry tomatoes like he mum and it is a fight now to be able to eat some before he finishes them all

Sleep wise: he sleeps 10-12h per night without waking up or then he goes back to sleep on his own (except if it is a nightmare, but they are rare). For the nap, it is rather particular. With Fiona, he sleeps 1h30-2h the afternoon, with his father, he sleeps 2h the morning and 2h the afternoon and with me, he sleeps 1h or not at all the morning and 3h the afternoon!!

Health: he hasn’t been sick much. He has essentially some cold and since he is born, he had one bronchiolitis and one gastroenteritis. He was diagnosed with asthma in June. We gave him a basic treatment and since the end of August, we stopped the drugs. He doesn’t seem to cough at night or when he runs any more, except when he is sick. When he has a cold and that he can breathe properly, we make him inhale a drug with a mask (which is not easy!)
He has 8 incisive, 4 premolars and 3 canines (the fourth is coming soon). He does all his teeth per package of 4 (except the first two incisive and the 3 canines!), and each time he has a really bad nappy rash (someone will have to explain to me the connection). But except with his nappy rashes, he is adorable when he is teething.

Here we go, I think I said everything about our little man. He is a baby (can I still call him a baby?) adorable with his own character. He knows what he wants and it is better to also know what he wants if not it is not easy!

After coming back from our holidays on Monday the 16th of July, the next day in the evening Rosa and Donato, Marc’s parents arrived to spend 10 days with us. We didn’t put Arthur at Fiona’s so they could enjoy him fully. It was worth it.

Marc and I took a new resolution (it's never too late!): we are going to start improving our house.
I explain: one of my colleague who moved house in February of this year and who has three children, already finish to improve her three children bedroom and the au pair's one. I asked her to tell me her secret to do some DIY with three children. She said that they decided to have only one day during the week end for DIY and the other one to child out. When they are doing DIY, their au pair is playing with the children.
I suddenly remembered Christelle complaining about the fact she never has time to play with Arthur because he goes directly in bed when she baby-sits him.
I talked to Marc, I talked to Christelle and we decided that from now, Christelle will look after Arthur while we are doing some DIY at home. We moved more than a year ago now and we did little to improve our house: Marc painted his office (necessary as one of the wall was black!), Arthur's bedroom (also necessary to avoid having a child with epileptic crisis because of the bright colours!), the bathroom (we were in an aquarium before!), Marc's father fitted the laminated floor, Marc's grand father dig the garden and Marc removed the wallpaper in the corridors. There is still some much to do.
Next week end we starting with Arthur's bedroom to finish some details and this way he can have a beautiful bedroom.
Little by little we should progress and not being disgusted of DIY!

The week end which just passed we went to Strasbourg for two reasons:

• Our friend Jose (and Marc's witness at our wedding if you were there) birthday party
• The birth of our common niece: Mazarine.

But before that we had to arrive in Strasbourg. We were supposed to take the plane Thursday (the 18th of January in case you are not following!) evening. For that we took our half day off. All that morning there was a lot of wind, so we decided that we should leave the house quite in advance in case there would be some traffic (2 hours ahead of schedule, this detail is important).
We were right, we had to stop three times because of traffic jam, until we arrived at the junction of the M25 with the M11 which goes to the airport. The M11 was closed!!! Because we didn't have a detailed map of England, we stayed on the motorway to take the next exit. 20 minutes after we were stopped in a big traffic jam: 8 miles in 1h!!!!
We gave up when we went out of the traffic because we were at 30 minutes away from the airport, but the checking was closing in 5 minutes.
We stopped to a services area to walk a bit, and buy a detailed map of England
We went home in one and a half hours (without any problem), we had just spent 6 and half hours in the car!! And during the time Arthur has been an angel. When we arrived at home at 8.30 pm I booked a single ticket for the next morning at 7 am!! Which means: wake up at 3.30 am to leave at 4 am. So obviously we went to bed straight away. We can call this kind of afternoon was a F...... afternoon!
But we made it to Strasbourg!!
The Friday, then, we went to see Mazarine. She is so cute! She barely cries and when she does, she sounds like a kitten who's meowing.
In the evening, we went to sleep to my brother Jerome and my sister-in-law's new flat that they just bought. It's really big and spacious. They are really well settle in it.
My nephew Iago who's 2 and half years old didn't want his mummy to look after Arthur and at one point he said to Sylvie while she was holding Arthur: “Thraw that!!”, but he played a lot with him and it was funny to see them playing together.
Saturday lunch time, we went to see our friends JB and Mimi (Jean-Baptiste and Myriam for their real names) who were leaving in Poland at one point: melted Mont d'or (a stinky cheese) on patatoes. DELICIOUS!
At the end of the afternoon, we went to my parent's house to get ready for Jose's surprise birthday party (which wasn't a surprise after all). The party was taking place at l'Escale (a social and cultural building) in La Robertsau (a neighbourhood in Strasbourg) near my parent's, so we went there with Arthur, this way our friend were able to see him and we brought him back to my parent's at around 9pm for them to look after him while we were still partying. He was knacked because he didn't have any nap the all afternoon, but he was really smiley and enjoyable and obviously he had no problem to fall asleep at my parent's place.
We spent a lovely evening. There was a really good buffet, we dance a lot and we saw a lot of friends we didn't see for a long time and also met some people we never saw before.
Went to bed at 4 am, the next morning was pretty hard for Marc. My father wanted to take care of Arthur, but he didn't know how to deal with the washable nappies so Marc wake up to show him, then he didn't know what to give him for breakfast, so Marc did it. Remark for next time: teach the grand parents to sleep longer!
For lunch, my mum made a Choucroute for me (a typical Alsacien dish). My sister Veronique, her daughter Melanie-Dior and my grand mother joined us. We drank coffee with my friend (and also witness to our wedding) Aurelie and her mother. They almost missed Arthur who slept for 3 and half hours!! A record for him, he slept for the day and the day before!
In the evening, we had dinner at Marc's parents house with his three sisters and their respective boyfriends (if you are following the Leroux-Carlucci saga, my brother Pierre-Emmanuel and his children was there too). So we saw Mazarine again a little bit! For dinner we had home made pasta and some meat ball. A real dietetic weekend!!
Monday lunch time, we ate at our friends Marie-Salome and Robert house with their daughter Camille. Simple menu, but delicious. There too Arthur had a long nap so when he woke up it was time to go back to Gambsheim (a small village where Marc's parents live!) to pack and have dinner.
The way back home passed without any problem with a little Arthur really excited instead of sleeping. He was partying in the plane with one steward and the air hostess. He slept well in the car back home!!
Here we go our long week end, but too short when we are going to Strasbourg. We didn't see half of the people we wanted to see like Cedric and Stephanie, my neighbours, Phil and Isa, Slim and Laurence, Christophe and Elizabeth, Cecile and Cedric... three days it's too short, but with this daily rhythm it's enough to not come back home died!!