September 8th

I haven't thrown up in 2 whole days. But I'm still feeling pretty miserable, so we're not out of the woods yet.

My mom came to help us out for a couple of weeks which was wonderful - she worked in the yard, entertained Benjamin, kept my house clean, did my laundry, stripped wallpaper & primed the guest room, and I got to lie around and be miserable to my heart's content.

The day before she left we had an excursion to Ikea so she couldn't say we kept her imprisoned in the house for 2 weeks.

Yum, ice cream!!




This is Benjamin reading with Frederic a couple of weeks ago.

still puking

I'm still sick, Frederic is still having to do everything around the house and work, and Benjamin is still cute. The renovations are at a stand-still because Frederic doesn't have time to work on them at the moment. Frederic also pulled a muscle in his back at work a few days ago so was off for 4 days -- too bad that 3 of those days were his normal days off anyway!

My mom is arriving tomorrow for 2 weeks to take care of Benjamin and the house so that I can rest up and Frederic can work on the renovations.

I saw the GP yesterday; he gave me some medicine but so far it's not working, maybe tomorrow.
Oh, and everything you read about having beautiful, luxuriant hair during pregnancy? It's not true. My hair is falling out by the handful.

I thought I didn't have any Benjamin pictures to post for you... I was right. We need to buy new batteries for our camera; they've been recharged for 2 years and won't keep their charge anymore. And I'm a little busy throwing up to take many pictures at the moment. I do have an extremely short, poor quality and soundless video of him dancing for you, though. I guess he got his parents' sense of rhythm, poor kid. We should send him to spend more time with his dancing Creole relatives.




And I can tell you that he knows the Sesame Street Video "Learning About Letters" almost by heart now, and can say "bah-bo" (apple), "nana" (banana), "loons" (balloons), and for some reason says "Daddy" every time Cookie Monster shows up on the screen to sing "C is for Cookie." Not sure where that came from!

He can point to his nose, his ear, his mouth, his teeth, his head, his arm and his feet... he's not too sure where his eyes are, though. One of his favorite books is about a baby who can't find his nose, and finally finds it when he looks in the mirror at the end of the book.

So if you've been wondering...

why the blog hasn't been updated in a while, it's not because nothing is going on.

It's just because my days are largely taken up at the moment with my multiple meetings with the porcelain gods, required by my status as a member of the Daily Vomit Club, and the subsequent required hours of lying on the couch. In between those activities, I also still have to take care of Benjamin and try to get a little bit of work done. Housework has fallen by the wayside completely though - so don't come visit without lots of fair warning.

All that to say... Benjamin will be a big brother next March. Hopefully I can resign from the Daily Vomit Club long before then.

More walls

Things are slowly but surely advancing in our renovations.

This is the long narrow hallway that will no longer exist when we are done - we will remove the wall on the right; the living room is there.

And this is what it looks like now from the opposite end of the hallway (all the way down the hall to the left in the first picture). We have a couple more bits of wall to put up still.

This is our little tiny hallway that goes to the bathroom (left) and guest room (right). The point of this little hallway is so that when we remove the living room wall, you won't see the bathroom door from the living room. (The French like to be discreet about things like that.)

So things are moving right along and hopefully we'll have it mostly done by the end of August. Then we'll have to work on painting/wallpapering and doing new flooring in the guest room. Then we'll get a new bed frame for the guest bed (currently it only has feet, no real frame) and we'll be ready for company again!

The joy of utensils

Benjamin usually eats every meal with his hands. This morning, Frederic decided to be brave and allowed him a spoon. When we'd tried to let him use one in the past, Benjamin didn't seem to understand that there was a relationship between the spoon staying right side up and the food making it into his mouth rather than spilling all over him or the floor. He did better today, although I'm not sure how many hours breakfast lasted.

I think he thinks the spoon is bigger than it really is. The bigger the target, the harder to miss, right?

This is the reason Benjamin has been sleeping in his Pack-n-Play for a week. I heard thumping noises upstairs last Friday after I put him to bed, and went up to find this:

The slats have come completely out of the top and bottom rails of the drop-side of the crib. We are highly unimpressed, since the crib has only been used for 19 months and Benjamin was not mobile for the first few of those. We were given the run-around for a while - as is the custom in France - between the manufacturer and the store where we bought the crib, despite our receipt and warranty papers stating that the crib is guaranteed for 4 years. But finally someone gave in and we should hopefully have a replacement soon.