Sophie, swaddling, and sundry stuff

Sometimes choosing a gift for new parents is so hard. With such bountiful options out there, it really is so hard to narrow things down. Even choosing gifts for yourself by registering is a daunting task. I remember spending days with suggested lists of products from Babies R Us, Target, and Walmart. I made an Excel spreadsheet with columns for items I’d chosen, different patterns for the linens, a column to categorize according to level of need, and one for what store they come from. I called family and friends to ask for suggestions as to products that they love, wish they’d gotten, or bought and never used. It was traumatizing. What if I didn’t get the right swing? Should I get a walker, a stationary activity station, an activity mat? All three? None? I think it took me half an hour to decide which pacifiers to register for.

Sometimes I wish I were more like my husband. His “hey, this one looks good” method is too quick and easy for me. Too stress-less. Every time I try to follow is quick pick lead, an endless stream of questions come to mind: “Do I really need this? Do I need more than one? Is this too expensive? Is it too cheap? Does this have the best color design? Will the baby like it?”

Will the baby care what design it on her bib? Absolutely not. Does that stop me from spending longer than I’m comfortable admitting picking them out? You know it doesn’t.

Now that I’ve been through it, buying gifts for our friends who are new parents has become a whole different experience. Now that I’m a mother, I have experienced a sampling of the plethora of products out there; I should just give them my favorite, the one I couldn’t live without, the one I never would have thought to buy had it not been gifted to me. There are still too many to choose!

Do I go with Sophie, la giraffe? Arguably the best baby teether out there. She was one of the first toys Lily could hold on to herself. She has lasted the test of baby chewing, pulling, throwing, and squeezing. To top it all off, she’s French! What more could this maman ask for? We actually have two: one that still squeaks, and one that I accidentally messed up by submerging with water and ruined her squeaker. (This is now our church Sophie.)

What about the washable liners that lay out on the changing table? On those days when we had 3 blowout diapers, and my washing machine just couldn’t keep up, these pads could easily be tossed in the laundry basket and changed out without having to replace the cover for the changing pad and without breaking the bank. You could have a pack of three of these changing pad liners for less than the price of one extra changing pad cover. A definite necessity.

Or maybe I should give the swaddler? I was always a terrible swaddler. When I was post-C-section and relying on my husband to change diapers and even after we’d come home and I was moving around a little more, I was never very good at wrapping Lily in a blanket and getting it to stay wrapped. He was a master. The nurse showed him how she did it, and he could always get it to stay wrapped nice and comfily. I, on the other hand, relied on the swaddler – the one baby product that we made fun of during the registering process. “How silly looking! It makes the baby look like she’s in a cocoon.” For a parent of an infant who won’t sleep unless tightly swaddled, the swaddler was one of the best gifts I received! Swaddling is also the safety way to keep babies warm while sleeping as it’s not recommended to leave them with loose blankets in the cribs as infants.

(This is Lily in her swaddler and her way too big hat at about 5 days old.)

Decisions decisions…

One really cool thing that we did at school for a coworker who had a baby this month is a dinner calendar. Everyone took a day (or two) and signed up a certain meal to provide for dinner for their family for the last two months of school. New parents have SO much to worry about; the last thing a mother needs to spend time thinking about is what she and her husband will eat for dinner. Cooking for me was one of the BEST ways my family and friends supported me in the weeks after Lily was born. So we all signed up, and 4 days after his baby girl was born when our colleague returned to work, he was greeted with a calendar and the following poem:

Congratulations to your family

on your beautiful baby girl!

No doubt she will be the center

of your forever-changed world.

So you can focus on sweet ________,

your adorable beginner,

and to make your lives a little easier,

we are preparing several dinners.

We send you lots of love,

and we wish you little fatigue.

We hope you’ll enjoy these meals

prepared by your friends and colleagues.

Much love,

your friends at _______

What is your favorite thing to give as a baby gift? Or what was your favorite gift someone gave you when you became a parent?

Plus! (a bilingual baby update)

It has been almost 9 months since I’ve last checked in with you. It was shortly before the start of the school year, and – as all my teacher friends know – all free time flies out the window when August comes rolling around. Of course I had a plan to write weekly posts updating you of my cooking, my crafts, and my communication with Lily girl; however, I rarely had time to actually do crafts or cooking let alone write about it. It has been a hamburger helper and “my husband the chef” kind of culinary year for us.

As I re-read my first (and only) post about bilingualism and Lily, I can feel my trepidation and uncertainty. I felt like a fool: a silly American girl trying to speak French to her American daughter. Half of me wondered if people thought I was strange, and the other half worried that there were Francophiles everywhere judging my incorrect French grammar and lacking vocabulary. I realize now that most of my fears came from my insecurity of being a mother at all, not necessarily the language aspect.  I still don’t know much. I still call my mother at the first sniffle or cough, and I have become a Google queen, but I have become much more confident in speaking to Lily in French.

I think the biggest bit of encouragement is her comprehension. When she was a two-month-old, her smile was less of a reaction to anything I said and more of an alert to something new in her diaper. Now she smiles and laughs when we talk. She seems to understand some of what I say. In fact, if I ask her where her tête or her bouche is she will gladly show me, smiling to show off her 5 teeth and counting. She loves to blow des bisous, and she waves bonjour and au revoir. My biggest fear initially was that I was doing more harm than good, stunting her English by clouding it with my haphazard French. My education and research told me otherwise, and now I’ve seen it for myself.

When she was 5 or 6 months old, we started trying to teach her some baby signs. I know. It’s crazy. English and French aren’t enough? You want to teach her sign language too? And it did turn out to be too much for me. Stopping to look up the word for something in French and its sign was just too time-consuming, so I dropped the signing and stuck with the French. Only two of our signs lasted: the sign for plus (which Lily changed and doesn’t even resemble the actual sign for more) and the sign for fini.

My next step is to teach her some songs with hand motions: Itsy Bitsy Spider-esque, but French. I have yet to learn any, but we’ll learn together. I hope to continue posting a little more frequently, but we’ll see what life has in store for us as summer approaches. I see trips to French story time at the library in our future… I’ll let you know how it goes.

Franglais, anyone?

While I wish that I could stay at home with my Lily and be a full-time cook, crafter, and homemaker, I am about to return to my full-time job as a French teacher at an elementary school.

My students are always surprised to find out that I’m not from France or Belgium or another francophone country (as are the other French teachers at our school). I am often explaining to them that I learned French in school, just like them! OK, well not exactly like them, considering that I didn’t start learning French until high school and that the most concentrated period of language acquisition for me was probably a month spent at an immersion program in Nova Scotia, Canada.

  

I have, however, come very far in my fluency from high school me. I can understand nearly all speech by native speakers, but my grammar is by no means perfect, and my French vocabulary has much to be desired. I have, however, always dreamt in the back of my mind that I would speak only French to my at the time future children. Now that the time has come, I am finding it much more difficult that I imagined.

 

[Lily does love playing with (chewing on? Making out with?) Sophie la giraffe.]

Prior to Lily’s birth, I gathered French children’s books and a few DVDs, and I took note of songs I thought a baby would like. Now that she is here, I am making an attempt to speak to her only in French; however, there are no other adults in my life (aside from certain colleagues) who speak French fluently, and thus conversing with Lily in French is basically like having a conversation with myself.

As a non-native speaker, I’m very self-conscious about my French. I often can’t think of words that I should know and have probably learned at one point, but even more often than that, I find myself struggling to use a great many of the words I never learned that are necessary involving baby care. For instance, while I could easily give directions from my house to school in French [which Lily would clearly benefit from…], I still haven’t quite figured out how to say, “Silly Lily, your poo leaked out all over your romper, and now Mommy has to clean you and the seat cover on your swing, but we've run out of wipes!”

Also, when I am alone with Lily – or even just with my husband – I can carry on lengthy monologues in French with near confidence. However, when other non-French speakers (i.e. everyone else we know) are around, I am much more hesitant. First of all because conversations with babies are more often actually conversations between adults [“That silly Daddy! He forgot to close the wipe warmer! Maybe he will hold you while I clean up the kitchen.” or “Nanny, thank you so much for the present! I know I’m going to look so cute in my seersucker dress!”]. And second of all, I just feel a little silly carrying on a “conversation” in French when no one around me understands a word I’m saying. And therein lies my biggest problem…

Recently, however, I came across a blog dedicated entirely to bringing up children bilingually. This woman started her journey with bilingual children with her nephew who she watched only one day a week and spoke to exclusively in French. She experienced many of the same things that have been discouraging me in the last several months, but – lucky for me – she learned from her setbacks and has more than six years of advice posted for me to take in as well as a multitude of other links and resources! I’ve also found lots of iPad apps for helping children learn French. These, of course, are aimed for older children, but Lily loves the bring colors, so occasionally we will play with the iPad together.

Well, folks, I’m just going to have to bite the bullet. So friends and family, you may (if I work up the nerve) begin hearing me speak more French when Lily and I are around. My one request: please don’t look at me like a crazy person. I’m just a mom hoping to help her child grow up speaking two languages. Is that so crazy?

As always, thanks for reading! And post a comment to let me know what you think of my speaking only French to Lily Robin.

Bienvenue... again!

Hey, food-loving friends! So I know. It’s been a while – a looong while. I would blame my virtual absence from the blogosphere on my pregnancy and then newborn, but then again as I type this I can’t actually remember when I made my last post, so that may not be a fair placement of the blame. :) Regardless, I’m back! I know you’ve missed me. Even if you haven’t, I’ve missed me. I’ve missed my weekly cooking adventures, and reliving them here with you. But during the last six months or so, my life has taken on a whole new direction. I’ve joined that club called motherhood.

Yes, as most of you know my beautiful Lily Robin surprised us with an early arrival on Super Bowl Sunday – February 5. The morning after the Hercules Tableau and Ball, actually, but that’s another story entirely.

Recovering from the C-section and the reality shock that is motherhood, I have taken several steps back from the stove and shifted my cooking game plan. I still love cooking, make no mistake. And I’m getting to spend a little more time doing it now, but the cooking I do for my family consists more of freezer-friendly fare, make-ahead meals, and ready in 30 minutes repasts.

As our lives have not so subtly begun to revolve around Lily, my hobbies and interests have also expanded to include things more relevant to her, such as crafts and sewing [Check out this Easter basket that I made for her!] as well as the more long-term adventure we are embarking on together of bilingualism. [C’est vrai!]

So this blog will be shifting slightly, as I think is only appropriate considering the less-than-slight shift my life has taken in the last six months. I will still be sharing kitchen tips and tricks I have learned and fabulous new family- and budget-friendly recipes I come across. (Like this delicious Chocolate Strawberry Pavlova!) I would, however, also love to share with you other parts of the craziness that is my world.

I’m at a very unique crossroads in my life. I still see myself as the little girl who calls her mother every day to ask a question about how to cook something or just to see what she’s doing. [Hell, I am still that girl.] But now I am (hopefully) becoming that same maternal cornerstone to someone else.

I’ve been thinking for the last couple of months about how much I’ve missed writing here and how I’d like to start blogging again, but it always came down to one thing. Too much life, too little time. But my sister-in-law told me to make sure that I don’t get too wrapped up in everything else and lose myself and my happiness along the way. 

So… if you would do me [and Miss Lily Robin] the honors, stay tuned to what I’m sure will be quite an adventure of craftiness, cookery, and cross-cultural communication. I have a feeling it’s going to be the ride of a lifetime.

[Comment to let me know what you think!]