A French-American view on motherhood. Bienvenue chez moi.
Future Mozart?
Originally uploaded by Je suis sophie.
I have a piano! Thanks to Lois, a fellow Soprano at the SFLC who needed to find a home for a few years for her piano, we now have a very nice upright in our living room and Evie has already started exploring it. She’s a genius I tell you 
I’m trying to get everything ready for the big departure to France on Wednesday. This includes wrapping up a couple of work projects so I’m a bit stressed. I’m mostly worried about how well and how quickly Evelyne will get over the jet lag. Of course, to top it off, Evelyne caught the cold that I’d gotten from Dylan last week. So now I have a tired runny-nose little girl, but given the circumstances she’s doing admirably well.
I havent’ written here for a while. Evelyne is growing and it’s amazing how it’s happening right in front of us. I sometimes look at her in Dylan’s arms or in Bronya’s arms, and I wonder “who is this baby?”, ” when did she get to become this tall? When did she learn to do this, or have this expression?”. TOmorrow we are going to the a birthday party for Eva, Krista’s daughter. It’s the first birthday party Evelyne is invited to :). And I realize that if Eva is one year old, then Evelyne is going to be one in 3 to 4 months. Wow. Where did the time go?
I haven’t talked here yet about my other mom friends and the great network that you fall into once you become a parent. It’s common knowledge that to get new friends, the best thing to do is to either get a dog or get a child. After Evie’s birth, I signed up for a number of parents lists and have found most of them somewhat useful. It’s funny however how I’ve had little intersest or motivation in meeting the people from these lists in real life with a couple of exceptions. In retrospective, it makes sense. It’s not because we have children the same age that suddenly I am going to like every parent out there. There are so many Mothers groups and people make it sound like it’s such a great thing. At first I almost felt guilty for not wanting to meet other new moms. Now I’m more comfortable with it and I realize it’s not just me (and also it’s just not me). Somehow, I feel like it’s a very American thing too. I don’t know why, and I haven’t really thought of it much, but this need to always have “peers”, or to have a group that constantly justifies your own decisions…Maybe it’s not so much a American vs. French cultural thing, but more something due to the nature of San Francisco, where so many here are without family ties and support. I don’t know.
Anyway. I was almost feeling guilty I think because it felt like I was depriving Evelyne of somthing, but really I’m not. What does she care about going to playgroups with a bunch of other 6 months old? So I’ve stuck with the few other moms I know here (Shira, and now Ruth). THis being said there are always exceptions, and in my case, there are two of them:
- I met a few people through the French mothers group. That’s how I met Krista, who I really get along with. Her daugther Eva will most likely end up going to school with Evelyne and I love that they arleady know each other!
- I met some of the Burning Moms a few weeks ago at a picnic. That was fun. And I have a lot to say about that but it will have to come in another post because Evie’s fussy…
Some days, everything goes wrong.
Last Thursday was like that. I had a tough day at work with a client who keeps ignoring our recommendations and instead just dictates what the site architecture should be like, what the navigation should look like, and where the content will come from. I feel like a clerk taking notes while others are making decisions and I have to regularly calm down by reminding myself that they are still paying me for my expertise which they aren’t using, but, well, that’s their problem. I also started on another project with a great team, but, boy, they are whipping my butt in shape. This is going to be one intense project. I’m facing a night of work to prepare for two important meetings tomorrow. I have to struggle to find a place to pump. The video room which is my pumping room is being used for (what do you know) a video project so I have to go pump in the upstairs restrooms, 8 floors away, yay! But the cherry on top of the cake is when Bronya calls after I pick up Evelyne, to tell me that she has just opened her mail to find a convocation for jury duty for the next day at 10am. Great. Welcome to child care hell. I arrange with Bronya to eventually have her look after Evie in the afternoon, I call Tryntje as a backup, arrange for my first meeting to be over the phone… Aaaaaaaaggggghhhhh, so much stress in one evening.
And then there are some days when the stars align and everything goes as it should. I knew that my Friday would have to be scheduled very tightly if I wanted it to work. And, oh miracle, everything worked perfectly well! Evelyne took a 2h45 min nap in the morning (first ever I think!), woke up just as my call was finishing and just in time for her feeding before I dropped her at Bronya’s, who escaped jury duty, so icould drive to Fluid, found a parking spot near Fluid’s offices (!), then rescheduled the doctor’s appointment next week, found another spot near AKQA (!), met all the people I had to meet, and made it back to Bronya’s in time.
It’s all a question of balance. But if feels like walking on a thin rope sometimes!
All this time I’ve been wondering what Evelyne got from me (since it’s obviously not facial features). I think I got a bit of a clue today. Twice today she was trying to do something with one of her toys and the toy was not “cooperating”. I’m not sure what she wanted (pull them apart? get them closer?) but each time it was obvious that she was growing frustrated with the way the toy behaved. Each time the frustration grew to the point that she threw major temper tantrums. Big tears, cries, really angry baby. The “why don’t you understand me?”-like frustration. The “I can’t get what I want” screams. At six month old, my daughter is giving us a little peak into her personality. And I recognize what I see. Now I know what she got from me.
060401-7
Originally uploaded by Je suis sophie.
Evelyne is growing up. She looks different each day, even Dylan and I notice it. She looks more and more like a little girl, and definitively not like a newborn anymore.
Note: My friend Lexie crocheted that hat in less than half an hour.
I’m sitting in Muni on my way back from AKQA after one of my first days back at work. My thoughts start to drift away and I suddenly find myself daydreaming about Evelyne. Her little square head, hamster cheeks, bright eyes are there right in front of me. I suddenly feel overwhelmed by emotion. I have not felt like this about someone in a long time. I’m in love!
A few nights before, as I was feeding her before putting her to bed, Evelyne released the nipple for a little while, turned her head towards me and raised her hand to my cheek as if to give it a little “carresse”. Again, that wave of love just washed over me and I gazed at my daughter with tears in my eyes under the emotion. After I finished the bedtime routine, I told Dylan that I apologized to him but I had fallen in love with someone else. Evelyne’s the name of my latest flame.
Dylan laughed. But the next day after playing with Evelyne, he declared he was in love with her too. “You know that feeling you have when you are just falling for someone? Well it’s like that”. Yes, I know that feeling. It’s sweet and exciting.
So all is well and basking in the love of our little “menage a trois” at the Henrys right now.
DSC00182-sepia
Originally uploaded by Je suis sophie.
Prise par Dylan par suprise un soir comme ca sur notre canape. C’est beau non ?
Yesterday, Dylan and I commented about how having a child really causes you to feel emotions that you would otherwise never have had a chance to experience. It sounds and is completely cliche but there is really no other way to say it. Although friends had told us about it, there is really no way to be prepared for it. In my case, it is not so much the nature of the emotions as the amount of them that has been a suprise. I’m not used to being overwhelmed like that. I’m a French engineer for God’s sake, you can’t really be more cartesian than that, can you?
Emotions have been running particularly high lately as I am tackling the issue of finding a day care solution for Evelyne. All parents I talk with confirm that this is one of the most difficult things parents face. It’s loaded with issues of guilt (shouldn’t I be taking care of her), of fear (what if something happened?), of resentment, and many more too numerous and complex to name. Amid the confusion, one thing stands out clearly, I do want to work part-time only to make sure I can spend some time with Evelyne while she is still young. I would really miss her if I were to work full-time now. Deciding to work 3 days a week only really helped me focus my search for the perfect caregiver. But there is so much more to decide! The most frustrating is that there is no central place for recommendations or comparison of child care providers in San Francisco. Hard to believe in a place like San Francisco! There is really little available on the Internet for this. Tough for me who relies so much on this medium for…well everything now. I have to do what everyone does, which is to visit a ton of places and compare. I guess it comes down more or less to a gut feeling in the end. That’s what all sites/advisors are saying. It is such an un-easy experience for me. Ugh… I hate it.
the lizard-face
Originally uploaded by Je suis sophie.
Yeah! I set up flickr to send pictures to my blog to liven this up. Cool.
As a test, here’s the little lizard face we love. Evelyne loves playing with her tongue. In general as an answer to us sticking our tongue out at her.
Poil aux pieds. (J’ai eu un disque de Bobby Lapointe pour Noël ;-))
Quel retard. Je réecris dans ce blog juste le jour où Maman repart pour la France et donc où je me retrouve de nouveau seule avec Evelyne pour la première fois depuis longtemps. Cette fois-ci, ce sera pour un petit bout de temps. Notre prochain visiteur sera Emmanuelle pour une nuit dans deux semaines, et après ça nous aurons une fin Fevrier très occupée, mais entre temps, j’aurai j’espère l’occasion de trouver une petite routine avec ma fille.
La visite de maman s’est très bien passée. C’était bien agréable d’avoir de la famille pour le premier Noël d’Evelyne et de passer le Nouvel An avec ma mère et ma fille.
Seul hic : ce drole de truc qui m’est arrivé hier. J’étais pliée en deux par des douleurs incroyables dans le dos et le bas de cotes, ce qui m’a fallu une visite aux urgences de UCSF. Pas de diagnostic ferme, mais deux doses de morphine ont aidé. J’espère que ça ne se reproduira pas !