Confessions of a MUM

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Photo inspired by the catwalk at the D&G show during the latest Milan fashion week: "Viva la mamma!"

Photo inspired by the catwalk at the D&G show during the latest Milan fashion week: “Viva la mamma!”

What I love and don’t love about being a mom
(because it’s Mum’s day in Britain)

 

👍I love how rewarding it is being a mom for my two little daughters. The time and work I put day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year to raise them as good individuals is worth everything.

👎I don’t love how high maintenance they can be.

 

👍I love that I have the privilege to stay at home and keep up with my kids all day. I can’t see myself doing anything more fulfilling than nurturing my kids and caring for them.

👎I don’t fancy having to deal with a gazillion crises per day including whining, tantrums and separation anxiety.

 

👍I love to hug and kiss my daughters. My favorite hug is the one my daughter gives me in the morning when kissing me goodbye before leaving to school. To make sure she melts my heart even more she often complements it with “je ne vais pas faire pipi dans mes vêtements, je te promets maman, je vais faire attention / ENG: I won’t pee in my clothes mommy, promise, I’ll be careful!”

👎I don’t love when my kids become needy and don’t give me a break… (I love hugs and kisses even more after a break away from them!)

 

👍I love those little moments during the day watching and hearing my daughters do and say the cutest things. I giggle randomly whenever their memory comes to mind. I love how my husband and I can’t hide our relief when the girls go to bed and are quiet and it’s finally “us” time, but then we spend the rest of the evening watching iPhone videos of them and marveling at how quickly they’re growing and changing and how amazingly they overwhelmed our life with joy and sleep deprivation.

👎I don’t love that movie night starts at 11, by the time my husband decides on a movie (time to choose a movie can sometime take longer than the actual movie)…or I don’t love that we watch movies as series.

 

👍I love how I miss my baby during sleep time and I love to pick her up from her crib when she first wakes up in the morning and starts calling for me. Her eyes glitter in excitement when she sees me. That moment is everything. No matter how tired and short on sleep I am, the promise of that face waiting for me in the next room promptly gets me out of bed!

👎Even though I am more of a morning person, I don’t fancy preparing oatmeal at 6am, on a Sunday.

 

👍I love the special bond I have with my 3-year-old daughter. I love how at this age she can see through me and understands my emotional state. She stares at me and tells me: “maman, j’aime pas quand tu te faches / ENG: Mom, I don’t like when you get angry”. I love how capable she is in calming me when I’m anxious with a simple smile or word. I love how invested she can get whenever my husband and I argue. I love how she always manages voluntarily or involuntarily (breaking into an argument with a chain of never ending questions but why, but why, but why….) in converting an argument to laughter and jokes.

👎I hate when they drive me nuts sometimes: “go tidy up your room for the 7th time! stop stepping on your sister’s hands/toes/head! Where did you hide your other shoe!!!”

 

👍I love when she comes from school with her silly sense of humor boosted / e.g. as we’re playing kitchen: “maman, je veux te preparer une surprise, c’est un sandwich de caca avec des crottes de nez/ENG: Mom, I have a surprise for you, it’s a poop and boogers sandwich!”.

👎I don’t fancy her saying “Caca boudin” the second I meet her friend’s mom at school and to make the situation even worse, grabs my phone and blasts at that same moment: “My Anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun”!!! Here I am getting the once over look and being labeled the creepy mom who listens to trashy lyrics and lets her daughter swear.

 

👍I love lazy weekend mornings when we all snuggle in one bed and we indulge in a cuddle session.

👎I don’t love that it’s virtually impossible to have any guaranteed uninterrupted private time!

 

👍I love being a mom of 2 GIRLS. I love having been able to give my 3-year-old daughter a sibling.

👎I hate that for most of the time she still sees her as a rival.

 

👍I love when my 3 year old daughter, out of the blue, looks me in the eyes and tells me: “maman je t’aime beaucoup, PAS UN PEU, BEAUCOUP” / ENG: “Mom, I love you a lot, not a bit, A LOT”.

👎I hate when I proudly prepared a creative gourmet dish for my family (which took me all day) and at first taste my daughter hits me with: “J’aime PAS” / ENG: “I don’t like it”.

 

👍I love when I wake up and find my husband sitting with my daughters reading them a book / playing basketball with the mini sand bucket as the net….I love him even more when on his way to drop our daughter at school he sends me a texto saying: “she says “papa, une autre hitoire de Johanna” / ENG: “Daddy, another Johanna story please!” one more time and I’ll 🔫 myself!” (me 😝) (ps: Johanna is a fictional character I invited one day while giving her a shower and now Johanna has taken a life of her own and we’re at her adventure #156! Our daughter refuses to hear the exact same story twice! It’s like being in a creative writing class everytime we take a cab ride with her!)

 

👍I love how my daughters challenge me, inspire me, strengthen me and push me forward… the thing with children is, and that’s something that probably only parents can truly appreciate, is that even though raising them is exhausting and can make you lose touch with some aspects of your pre-children self, they have an ability, whether it’s through a smile or a joke or a new word they’ve learned to empower you to endure the hardship… it’s your pride and bedazzlement turning into increased patience and limitless willingness to sacrifice and endure their screeching screaming voices!

Now it’s your turn to share with me what you love 👍 or don’t love 👎 about being a mom! xoxo Happy Mother’s Day!

Immeuble Bizarre!

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Much to my surprise my 3 year old was serving as somewhat of an art tourist guide during our latest trip to Barcelona! After our first encounter with a modernist building, she reacted “immeuble bizarre!” (eng. weird building) and since that caught our attention, she then went on to say that everytime she spotted a building she felt was out of the norm and most often that would turn out to be a Gaudí building or another very original modernist building! So when we went this morning to the Sagrada Família I was perhaps more excited to see her reaction to that fantasy of a church than seeing this architectural marvel myself… and I wasn’t disappointed! After we stepped out of the cab, opened the stroller and made sure we grabbed the 200 moving pieces we dangle around with us (e.g. gloves and scarfs we don’t need but just in case…), I finally told her to look up and in an instant her eyes grew wide open and she said “maman maman immeuble TRÈS BIZARRE! with such a sense of accomplishment that she had found that “building” that she might have convinced herself that she made it appear by her dedication to this spot-the-weird-building game! While she was mesmerized by the grandeur of the church, what ultimately captured her imagination was a small ladybug that is sculpted on one of its main door… that ladybug and the curiousness of its presence became the subject of her long monologues and questions afterwards! Today was a very sacred family day at the Sagrada Família…

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Pink Attraction 👅

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I think my ballerinas have found their car!

Pink Attraction

P.S.   When I asked my editor (i.e. my 3 year old daughter 😜) what she thought of the photo, she said: “Mais où est donc ta tête maman?!” eng. “But where has your head gone mommy?!” Not sure if she meant that literary or metaphorically! 😳

#LaVéritéSortDeLaBoucheDesEnfants #DontTakeLifeTooSeriously 😂

UPDATED (by popular demand): here’s the front! 👅👅

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Girls’ Timeless Reverie…

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One of my favorite Christmas holiday activities is flipping through family albums and this find at my in-laws’ house not only stunned me as I felt I was seeing my 8 months old in the 60s, but also reminded me of the timelessness of girls’ eagerness to discover the outside world and their beautiful ability to dream big and make it happen!

The Anglesea Arms

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morning walk chelsea

There’s a pub in my neighborhood called The Anglesea Arms, as soon as there’s a shred of sunlight, its terrace gets flooded with drink and sun-seekers… the mood in it is often contagious and the crowds overflow to the streets. One way or the other I end up passing by this place on weekend afternoons with my family and just as my eldest is throwing some sort of fit and my baby daughter is demanding to be held…My husband and I inevitably look at the crowds, then each other and grimace a nervous resigned smile and keep on strolling our two kids away into a non-pub / kids friendly environment. I’m sure many mommies out there have that place in their neighborhood, which just like The Anglesea Arms, is the constant reminder of how much their lives have changed since they used to hang out carelessly sipping a drink with friends at a bar terrace on a weekend morning. These days my weekend ritual starts, not much later after the last Anglesea Arms enthusiasts are forced to go home, inaugurated by my morning alarm / aka my 3 year-old daughter shouting in my ear: “maman j’ai faim! / mommy i’m hungry!” (an earlier stint occurs as well sometimes, while Anglesea Arms revelers are probably counting down their shots, by my daughter shouting “maman, pipi!”)… So she’s got my attention, I remove all the bed linens and open the garden door to let in the freezing air to force my husband out of bed to help. I head to the kitchen to prepare my toddler’s breakfast and then head back to the bedroom to find that my husband has still managed to stay asleep and before I get a chance to say a word, inevitably, baby # 2 starts crying and I have to go breastfeed her. It’s at that time that my husband usually wakes up and passes by the nursery to ask me what we’re going to do today and it’s usually at that point that my baby # 2 burps all over me and that my daughter starts shouting from the kitchen that she wants more Cheerios…

Despite the increasingly grey and wet weather in London these days, I refuse however to be imprisoned at home over the weekends caught in attending to one then the other or acrobatically attending to both and generally find that it’s easier to distract the kids outside the house so I endeavor to make my best to head out of the house as soon as possible. There’s of course a lot to get done for that to happen: showers x 4, getting dressed x 4, etc… Slowly but surely however we do head out (I’m glad to report that we hit a 10am record yesterday!) + 2 strollers and having gone through our 100 items checklist of things we need to have done or need with us on the go… On our way, we often pass by The Anglesea Arms again, which by then is of course empty and my husband and I stare at the place, our well-groomed and calm kids, then stare at each other, take a deep breath of fresh air and unreservedly smile and keep on strolling into our new parent identities…

#WakeUpCall

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Text SYRIA to 70007 to donate £5 in the UK or go to www.wakeupcall.org.uk or go to: UNICEF – Crisis in Syria if you are outside the UK

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While we are sleeping in the luxury and warmth of our homes, with our children by our side, millions of children in Syria and the surrounding region are in danger. They are torn from everything they know, they’re left vulnerable to many many risks, from the cold weather, to disease and malnutrition to violence and exploitation.

Bébé, Tot & Vacation?

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A couple of months ago, amid the chaos of our post-baby#2 summer London move, my husband announced to me that his October vacation request was approved. It was his attempt to cheer me up at the end of a long hectic day while I was still trying to put to bed a restless newborn. My initial reaction: Traveling with a breastfed baby and a restless tot? Thanks but no thanks… it was just impossible for me to picture through tantrums and colic how traveling would be anything but exhausting.

Sales pitch: (1) only way to break the exhausting homebuilding ride I had embarked on; (2) keep my older daughter entertained during her October mid-term break; and (3) to compensate for not being able to head to a beach destination in the summer because of the move logistics.

I was sold on (2) and set myself deadlines for things I wanted to achieve at home before our departure and started planning the trip trying to balance making it as kids friendly as possible while still making it enjoyable for my husband and I… still, I wasn’t very thrilled.

Before we knew it, 2 months had passed and we were off to the airport, a kid strapped to my husband, another holding my hand + 3 travel bags, a car seat and of course my Coco Cocoon bag / diaper bag.

Bad Start: After going through the painful airport security checks with our two kids, we decided to grab breakfast… my toddler was restless and the infant was crying and when I tasted the ‘yogurt’ and granola I had ordered for my daughter I discovered they gave her mayonnaise and granola! To say the least I was already ready to head back home by then, but somehow I managed to keep calm and go on (well maybe the waiter there might disagree with the keep calm part).

Surprisingly the Plan Worked: Much to my surprise and delight however, after this initial hiccup, things started lining up and the vacation was a success to both parents and kids. Having been back for a couple of days and had the chance to reflect on how we pulled this off, here’s what I think are the key components for a successful trip with your kids and hopefully this will convince you not to always rush to your parents/in-laws to drop your kids before heading on vacation!

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Planning, planning, planning…

Destination: The key is to minimize being on the go with the kids as they will get exhausted and in consequence will exhaust you through whining and having to deal with their many needs in unexpected places (changing diapers and breastfeeding while hiking or just visiting touristic sites + museums in a new city is therefore not the best idea). You want to be somewhere where you can enter into a comfortable vacation routine to address your kids’ needs (fun, food, sleep and WC) without that becoming stressful to you. We chose to go to the Maldives and stop on each way in Dubai. Despite the fact that there was some long and varied traveling involved (by land, air and sea…as we had to go far to find sunshine in October), we thought that this was balanced out by the fact that we planned for a very kids friendly environment to await us in each destination.

In the Maldives, we chose a resort that has a kids club and thankfully we got lucky as we found a local babysitter we were able to quickly trust with both our kids. We would therefore drop off both kids with her at the kids club in the morning and get some time for ourselves while knowing that they are safe and being entertained. The kids club was managed almost like a pre-school and they had a daily schedule of activities. At the end of each day my toddler would come back with different arts and crafts achievements and many stories about the different activities they did (from a crab race, to visiting the turtles at the turtles conservation program at the hotel to feeding the fish in the ocean…).

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Of course, we would pull them out from time to time during the day to spend time and play with us at the beach or pool. My toddler loved the formula and would wake up looking forward to seeing her friends at the kids club while we were grateful to be able to relax, listen to music and read our magazines (we had left our books back home as we thought we wouldn’t get a chance to read at all but perhaps in retrospect we could have managed a bit of reading…) It was also amazing to see how our own patience and interaction with the kids would change once we had the ability to relax a bit between playtimes with them. By the time we saw them again, we were recharged and ready to go build that sand castle or splash in the pool. The balance of solo relaxation and family quality time was just perfect.

beach play

In Dubai, both the hotels we stayed in and my main shopping destination there (The Dubai Mall) were also very kids friendly and had enough to keep us and the kids entertained. I was particularly thrilled to be able to leave my daughter for a bit at a kids club in the mall as well where she did some arts and crafts while I got a chance to really shop (vs. the running after her in stores and apologizing to the salespeople which is what my shopping experience sometimes turns to with her). She then joined me and hopped on a pushable car-type stroller, which she loved and kept her distracted. The mall also had regular strollers which we took advantage of for the baby.

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Packing light, packing right: As a fashion lover, I always found it hard to pack light. I like to bring lots of options! This time around, I was realistic about the number of outfits I would pull off with the kids and favored the practical + kids friendly options since I knew I would end up opting for those anyways once there. A stylish familly vacation wardrobe should make you feel voguish without sacrificing comfort as your time spent there will involve dealing with kids, hence running, jumping, sliding, floating, splashing, carrying them around, breastfeeding…

Expectations: The fact that I had low expectations to start with and anticipated a trip revolving around the kids was key in feeling that it was a success at the end and in making me appreciate the amount of adult time we ended up having (which was much more than what I had anticipated). If I had embarked on this expecting to have something more similar to the kind of trip we used to have pre-kids I would certainly have been disappointed… therefore expectations (here & pretty much regarding everything else in life) are key to satisfaction.

So start planning your next family vacation and take the challenge of not dropping your kids off with your parents/in-laws before traveling!

Today’s Accomplishment

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”Today’s accomplishments were yesterday’s impossibilities” -Robert H.Schuller

A Walk in the Park

Preparation time: 3 hours

Elements

A worn out mommy

A toddler acting like a baby

A 24/7 hungry-poopy baby

 

Promenade duration: 5 minutes

Today’s accomplishments are tomorrow’s impossibilities!!!

 #helpineedananny

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My Little Miss Chatterbox

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I can’t recall when or how exactly this started but my daughter just can’t stop talking!

By her 2nd birthday she knew a few words, but now, only 6 months later, her communication superpowers are blooming and she sure is loving them and using them! Although she still makes a lot of mistakes in pronunciation and sentence structure, she’s expressing herself in full sentences, opening structured conversations, debating with arguments and asking a whole LOT of questions! What’s overwhelming is mostly the volume of talk! It’s not that I’m not used to this at home, though I didn’t necessarily think (or wish!) she would inherit that specific behavior from her dad!

She always has something to say or to ask about. From the second she opens her eyes in the morning “mommy what food are you serving me?” in her clumsy French “manger quoi, maman?”,  the interrogation journey starts… I hear “c’est quoi ça maman?” (eng: what’s that mommy) more than I feel the baby #2 kicks, although I have to say there has been a nonstop trampoline party going on in my belly lately!

She asks all sorts of questions:

  • Funny ones: in a restaurant where the waiter was wearing a bright yellow shirt and was taking forever to bring our food, “maman, il est ou monsieur jaune? (eng: where is Mr. Yellow?)
  • Weird ones: a 5 min cab ride turns into a drill of questions on the components of a taxi’s interior (most of which I had never even noticed before) from the little screw she found under the door handle to the taxi driver’s ID and registration number.
  • Smart ones: “Papa, comment on appelle ça en anglais?” (eng: How do we say this in English?).
  • Silly ones: “Maman, il est où papa?” (eng: Where’s daddy?) even though papa is holding her hand while crossing the street or when we’re all having dinner together and papa is just sitting next to her!
  • Quizzes: she asks questions that she already asked a million times before and knowing perfectly well what the correct response is. When I try to trick her and answer incorrectly she corrects me “maman, il est où papa” (eng: where’s daddy?) to which I respond “il est sur la lune” (eng: he’s on the moon) followed by her final response with an attitude and a giggle “mais non maman, papa est au travail!” (eng: no mommy, daddy is at work!).

If she’s not talking to me or to her father, she’s scolding a doll because she didn’t finish her dinner or she’s doing a monologue while playing with the blocks. A sneeze or a cough wouldn’t stop her, she just says “à tes souhaits” (eng: bless you) to herself or “pardon” and continues the chatter!

This phase has been a lot of fun, I’m loving watching her growing up, becoming a little adult with a LOL sense of humor and an overwhelming curiosity while providing us with a lot of entertainment and crazy laughs.  She has so much energy (verbal energy) that it’s so hard to keep up with her at times (or get anything – other than responding to her questions – done). It can be particularly draining when I am trying to focus on another conversation, an article or just thinking of something else I need to get done and she stops me 10 times to tell me for the zillionth time how she hurt her foot on the plane, or how huge Santa’s belly was, or that her teddy bear isn’t a bear but a pig…

At this development stage, it’s primordial to provide your toddler with a rich and nurturing communication environment to help grow his vocabulary, educate him and help him form his personality. Try to enjoy the ride as much as you can and while you will get tired of hearing the same questions and repeating the same responses, believe me it is one of the most fulfilling things you can experience to see your own child’s vocab, behavior and personality evolve gradually (but not so slowly actually!) by simply talking to him, describing to him what you’re doing, pointing things out, telling him stories, asking him questions and singing him songs…

I also find it very important to be a good listener and to be responsive to my daughter by giving her my attention when she’s talking to me and providing her with as accurate an answer to her question as possible (thanks Google).

Furthermore, while it’s well established that the reading itself is an important component in helping to enrich your child’s vocabulary and sentence construction, reading can also be an opportunity to start new conversations, to teach your child about new things or to give them a chance to express new ideas.

Personally I find that the key to constructive and effective communication with your toddler is to treat them not as child but as a mini adult. This doesn’t only mean that I assume that no question is too dumb and that she’s able to understand almost everything (so I don’t filter much and I don’t baby-talk my explanations much) but also that as a starting point I expect of her to act like an intelligent adult and not as a baby and I try as much as possible to convey to her that the same rules of communication and interaction that apply to me and her father apply to her and that she doesn’t get a special pass for screaming, pushing me or banging on the table because she’s 2! Of course balance is key however because as much as you want to take advantage of your child’s incredible learning potential, you should not be spending your whole day responding to questions as you have a responsibility to yourself (and your child) to stay sane and be balanced… teaching your child balance is after all, in and of itself, a very important life lesson!