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.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
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!
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!
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