Twins one year doctor appointment

I will deny this if ever questioned but I miss the French medical system.

Took the boys in for their one year check-ups today.  Everything is fine.  The boys are healthy and growing.

Called the doctor a few weeks ago to set the appointment. They called last week to reschedule because the doctor we wanted to see was going out of town.  Then they called Saturday to say that the appointment that was rescheduled to 1000 needed to be changed to 1100 due to the doctor having to do rounds at the hospital to cover the doctor going out of town.  In France there are no gatekeepers.  You call the doctor office and, lo and behold, the doctor answers the phone and schedules their own appointments.

We arrived at the office 5 minutes early for our 1100 appointment.  No one in the waiting room.  Still took 15 minutes before we were escorted to the exam room.  The exam room was very cold.  It was cloudy and rainy outside with a temperature in the mid 60's but the AC was on in the doctor office.  Can't you just open a window?

The nurse, of course, no sign of doctor yet, weighed and measured the boys.  Benjamin is 24 lbs 10 ozs and 29.5 inches,  Nathan 22 lbs 8 ozs. and 29.75 inches. We then returned to the very cold room with the twins, wearing only diapers at his point, to await the grand and glorious appearance of the doctor. After waiting for 10 minutes the nurse came in and told us the doctor would be right with us.  Fifteen minutes passed and the doctor burst through the door.

All I will say about the doctor is that she wrote our take home instructions on a paper towel and seemed baffled by Benjamin's simple diaper rash.  She tried to convince us that it was psoriasis or a yeast infection.  It was as if she had never seen a diaper rash before.

Needless to say, our search for a good pediatrician starts anew.

Random stuff

Samuel's new favorite word is "DD".  Samuel speak for dvd.  He is allowed to watch one "educational"(!) (Baby Einstein, Sesame Street) DVD every day.  We probably should allow more than one as they have helped him a great deal with his language development.  For those of you that do not know, he is also seeing an orthophonist twice a week.  Aurelie is Samuel's first girlfriend.  She is all he talks about.  Every time we tell him he is going out he says "orely" in a very excited voice.

We have spent the weekend washing, folding and putting away the six and nine month clothes for the boys.  Benjamin has already outgrown his 9 month clothes and needs to be in 12 month.  The 12 month clothes, in terms of length are a little big on Nathan but we are lazy and do not want to have to sort three different sizes of boys clothes so Nathan is also going into 12 month this weekend.

We have continued our laziness by keeping the boys in their pajamas on some days, instead of putting them in real clothes every day.  We figure this saves us 2-3 loads of laundry every week.

Nathan is very close to crawling.  He has begun to push himself up onto his hands and knees to the point where we can see space between the floor and his belly.

The cats hate us.  We have begun locking the cats in the basement over night.  Neither Julia or I are sleeping well.  Our sleep problems are not helped when every morning between 0400-0600 one of the cats begins a mournful wail that can last for more than a minute.  Our reaction was to put the cats outside every night but it has been falling to near 0 over night so we decided to be nice and only lock the cats in the basement.

The boys are doing very well with their solid food.  They get rice cereal mixed with formula at the 1100 feed. They normally eat almost all of the cereal.  The positive aspect is that we can give them their bottles and they are then still able to eat their cereal.  This was something that Samuel was never able to do.  If Samuel finished his bottle he was full enough and refused to eat after.

So far we have been very blessed.  The boys are sleeping through the night.  Samuel has slept through since he was two months.  We have been very lucky being in France where both Julia and I have been with the boys every day.  We also had the same fortunate circumstance with Samuel.  Julia did not return to work until Samuel was 18 weeks old.

Une Greve

Welcome to our winter of French discontent.  In summary, the French government is attempting to revise the retirement rules.  They want to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.  This, of course, has set off strikes across industries and the country since the beginning of September.

Living in the suburbs and with Julia not yet having returned to work we have not been that effected by the strikes.  Except for having to cancel a couple of language lessons due to train disruption life has proceeded as normal.

The strikers have a good plan in that they are attempting to shut down the oil/gas refineries and ports so that fuel is unable to be processed or transported.  As of today about 30% of petrol stations are closed due to lack of fuel.  Julia spoke to one of our neighbors yesterday who spent an hour driving around looking for an open petrol station.  We were smart and filed both tanks as soon as we heard about the refineries being struck and since we do not drive much we should be okay with petrol for a month or more.

The only other time we were effected by the strikes was when I tried to go to Castorama (DIY store) and when I reached the street on which it is located it was blocked by police motorcycles.  Apparently there is a high school on the street and the students were violent that day and turning over and burning cars.

That is the one aspect of this strike that I did not understand in the beginning.  Why were high school and college students striking to protest a rise in the retirement age?  At first I was amazed at their participation and shocked at their lack of a grasp of economics as it is clear that France cannot continue within the current system as their are currently just over 3 workers for every retiree and within a decade the ration will fall to 2 to 1.  A ratio that is clearly fiscally untenable.

Yesterday I finally found an article which provided me with the rationale behind the youngsters supporting the strikes.  Apparently the age that a French person gets their first real job is 27.  An astonishing fact that I was unaware of.  Of course, there are temporary jobs that they can attain that will pay the bills but it is at an average of 27 where they get their first job that allows them to begin contributing to the social system to which the changes are proposed.  The youngsters are upset because if the people that already have jobs are forced to stay in the jobs two years longer it means that there will be an even greater wait for the young French to get their first real job.

C'est la vie en France!

Go is going .........................

A refresher for those of you who may have just recently begun following the blog.

Our twins were conceived through IVF.  We were not expecting twins.  Therefore, the twins acquired the nicknames of Bo & Go. BOGO, buy one, get one free.

Back to the story.

Go (Nathan) is a very active child.  He has learned to roll from his back to this stomach so now he can roll wherever he wants.  Until he hits an obstacle and cries for help.  The good news is that he is also active when he is at the halte garderie(HG).

The women at the HG tell us that Samuel ignores his brothers when they are there except when another child comes near the boys.  Then Samuel will walk over and stand nearby, watching his brothers to ensure that they are okay.

It is quite adorable to watch the boys interact with Samuel.  Whatever he does to them they just laugh and smile and look at him as if he could do no wrong.  Nathan is especially taken with Samuel.  We have tried to take video of their interactions but every time we break out the video cam Samuel runs over and thinks it is a new toy to play with.

Bo (Benjamin) is still very attentive if not overly active yet.

We have had a good week with the boys.  It has now been 8 days since we changed their schedule from 5 bottles to four per day and changed their bed time from 2230 to 2030.   So far (knock wood) they have slept through the night until we wake them at 0700 for their morning bottle.

Samuel had his first potty accident yesterday.  He enthusiastically carried his potty into the living room just as we were sitting down to give the boys their bottles.  He sat on the potty for a few seconds before jumping up and running off to the dining room with no pants or diaper.  After a few minutes he returned and while he was standing in the living room he quite suddenly proceeded to have a poo on the living room tiles.  I admonished him with a strong "Samuel" and immediately realized I was wrong to have done so.  We both then encouraged him that accidents happen and tried to teach him so that the could learn from the accident.  This parenting gig is not easy, but it is fun.  Most of the time.

Luckily I was feeding Nathan so Julia had to clean up the mess.  Nathan is a picky eater and we do not stop once he has taken the bottle into his mouth,.  If we take the bottle out of his mouth he may stop eating even if he has taken only a few ounces of milk.  Benjamin on the other hand, is a beast and will eat anything anytime we give it to him. He does become quite agitated if we take the bottle away before he finishes but he calms down and returns to drinking as soon as we return the bottle to his mouth.

I am still recovering from my vasectomy.  No pain but I am still feeling groggy and queasy from the anesthesia. I have had three surgeries in the US and fully recovered from all of them in less than 24 hours.  I am left to assume that the anesthesiologist used  a inordinate amount of anesthesia to put me under as I am still feeling the effects 96 hours later.

Julia goes in for her surgery tomorrow.  The boys will be in the HG so I will be able to take her to the hospital but she will have to take a cab home on Tuesday as I will be home with the boys.  She has been told her recovery will be anywhere from 2-3 weeks.  The primary restriction will be on lifting so she will be unable to be left alone with the boys.

-Dave

ch, ch, ch, ch, changes....................

Julia and her friend Poonam are enjoying a relaxing 2weekend at a spa near Versailles.  So it is a testosterone filled weekend of baby Einstein dvd's and Dr. Suess books.

All of us have had small colds for the last week.  Saturday morning Julia took Samuel to the pool while I took Benjamin and Nathan to the doctor.  Good news, Benjamin just has a cold with no infection.  Nathan has a slight chest infection so has been put on antibiotics for a week.  We expected this as they have been in the halte garderie for 9 of the last 10 business days.

After Poonam and Julia left I hosted a French/English conversation group at our house.  It consists of an Australian couple, a French couple and us.  We met the Australian couple through message, an English speaking support group in Paris.  Joe and Kylie have three kids.  Lily who is Samuel's age and Emily and Luka who are a few years older.  Sebastain and Kattel have two kids, Joseph, Samuel's age and Katrine, who is 5.  It was sometimes difficult to follow the conversation with the 6 kids have a raucous good time with Samuel's toys.  The conversation group meets every weekend and will help me with my French as I will have people who will not be judgemental if I make a mistake.  It will also be beneficial for Julia to practice her conversational French before she returns to work.

Saturday was the first day that we reduced the number of bottles that we give the boys.  We had been feeding the boys 5 bottles at 0700, 100, 1500, 1700 and 2200.  Starting Saturday they get bottles at 0700, 1130, 1600 and 2000.  We had been putting the boys to bed at around 2230 and they had been sleeping through to 0700.  We actually had to wake them up at 0700 in order to give them their bottles.

Saturday night our garde de nuit, Muriel, watched the boys.  She fed them their bottles at 2000 and put them to sleep in their bouncy seats.  They are sleeping int heir bouncy seats because of their congestion.  Sleeping in an upright positions helps their sinuses to drain.  And......................................they slept through to 0700.  I  know I am probably jinxing us but for at least one night everything is going according to plan.

V is for.......

I am beginning to appreciate French culture more every day.  After the birth of the twins we decided that we did not want another children and decided that the best option to ensure this was for me to have a vasectomy.  After our "scare" of a few weeks ago this became a priority.

Julia enthusiastically put it upon herself to make this happen.  Her enthusiasm immediately turned into despair as she discovered that the word vasectomy does not exist in the French medical vocabulary.  Apparently the French male is especially chauvinistic and birth control in this country is the sole responsibility of the female.  One urologist she spoke to said "A man would not be a man if he did that to himself."

Fortunately, for all five of us, we were able to find through friend a doctor in St Germain-en-laye that performs vasectomies.  Next Wednesday(29th) is the day.  Of course the French are not quite up to the medical standards of the US and I will have to have a general anesthetic rather than a local and be in recovey in the hospital for 4-5 hours after.  In the US it is an office procedure that the patient walks out of the office 30 minutes after the incision.  

A tale of two days.......

Yesterday(Tuesday 21st) I fed Samuel his dinner at 1830.  His favorite food is mac and cheese.  He has not yet taken to eating vegetables.  So we had the idea of buying macaroni made of vegetables.  Good idea, right?  Well, for the first time Samuel refused to eat his mac and cheese.  Half of the macaroni is green shaded not the normal yellow color.  He refused to eat any of the green macaroni.  If he was able to separate the yellow macaroni from the green he would eat it but the green macaroni never got close to his mouth.  I also gave him a vegetable medley(peas, green beans carrots, potatoes) in addition to the mac and cheese.  The good news is that he picked the carrots out of the vegetables and ate those.  A light finally came on and we thought lets buy vegetables that aren't green and see if he will eat non-green vegetables.  So we will be going to the fruitier to buy whatever non-green vegetables they have in stock in the hope that Samuel will eat them.  Anyone have any advice as to how to break a toddler of a green food phobia?

The evening was better.  Julia had gone shopping earlier in the day and bought two slices of chateaubriand.  So I was outside grilling the meat and corn on the cob when the moon rose over the river and shone through the cherry trees in our backyard.  Very beautiful, serene and calming.  The memories of the fight over dinner quickly faded into the grey recesses of my mind.