Homeward Bound

DC was mostly a blur.  We stayed with friends from B School.  They have a new baby and I have to say Im a bit jealous.  I think in the 5 days we were there, she cried once.  She was very low key and would even lie in her basket while awake without being held.  Amazing!!

We also spent a lot of time with Chris' folks, brothers and their kids.  I do care a lot about Chris' family but they have a different philosophy than me on practically everything so it can be difficult for all of us at times.  This visit was esspecially challenging as Chris' brothers showed off quite a bit about how much they spoil their kids for Christmas while blowing off my concerns about the rising cost and importance of college which they are not saving for.  This year was fine because she is too young to know whats going on, but Im not sure how I am going to manage two years from now to explain to Lilah why we did not buy her a gazzillion Hannukah/Christmas gifts and her cousins get a lot of gifts.  They are also pro kids-watching-TV which, again, is not the end of the world this year but will be more difficult to manage as Lilah gets older. 

Still, it was quite nice to spend time with them and for Lilah to play with her cousins who all seem to adore her.  

Lilah also had her first 1st birthday party which was fun for everyone!

 

The flight home was very easy thanks to United finally doing a good thing and moving the person sitting next to us so we could set up her car seat.  She slept for the first hour and a half or so and only had a couple crying fits during the 6 hour flight.  Then, of course, United was back to their usual antics and lost our largest piece of luggage.  Luckily they had it back within 24 hours. 

It is great to be home. 

We were definitely gone long enough for it to require some adjustment coming back, from little things like learning that some of our favorite stores and restaurants going out of business while we were gone, to more structural things like getting back into our routine of classes, play dates, going to the Y, etc. 

Today is the first day we have been doing anything normal as the days right after our return were dedicated to preparing for and hosting Lilah's 2nd first birthday party celebration. 

 

 

I decided to cook a whole bunch of stuff from scratch and amazingly it all came off with out a hitch. 

Lilah seemed to have fun and it was wonderful to connect with our Bay Area "family" including actual family members and friends who might as well be. 

The weather was phenomenally beautiful and the icing on the cake of why Im so happy to live where I do.

Now that we are home and not adventuring, I will most likely only write when I have something to say.  Its been fun doing this blog on our trip.  I'm so glad I took the time to do it so that when Lilah asks about the trip I will have something to show her. 

  Butt Up Sleeping

Leaving on Jet Plane

When I went to sleep last night, I planned to use this post to rant about how angry I was at United but I'm not going to do that anymore.  I will add a link to the letter I send to the head of customer relations in a few weeks because I'm pissed enough at this point that I need some remuneration. 

We are in DC now.  Getting here took almost 24 hours straight of travel.  Happily, Lilah took two long naps on the plane so she was quite managable however she woke up at 3 and at 6 so Chris and I are still beat tired.  Something really cool did happen overnight though!  When she woke up at 3, she actually wanted to come in bed with us.  So, the three of us slept for a few hours cuddled up together.  We have never actually done that as a family and it was nice to end this phase of our trip that way.  After all we spent 1008 hours together with no breaks and almost no other people and thats a pretty unique thing.

It is great to be back.  We took a night in a hotel rather than going to our friends house last night so we could get to sleep a couple hours earlier.  Sleeping in a King size bed again was heavenly.  It's been a little unsettling to hear English spoken in an American accent as outside of Chris and a couple Skypes home I havent heard it in quite a while.  I kept thinking I was hearing other people speak in my voice.  Also strange is having toilet flushers on the side rather than the top.  I keep reaching for the top and wondering where the flusher is :-)

Now, we are chilling in the room and waiting for the rest of the world to wake up, wishing we could go back to sleep.  Heading down stairs to the breakfast room now, then let the Christmas madness begin.

The Parting Glass

The day after we got home from our Chamonix adventures, we were supposed to have another play date with the twins and their grandparents.  Grandparents met us at the planned location and gave us a tour of the a quaint village near where they live which is centered around an Abbye undergoing restoration.  Unfortunately, we have no pictures (see comment in previous post re forgetting things).  The funniest part was the ornate nativity scene that was missing Baby Jesus.  Rene's sister did not seem to have any thought on where it might be. 

We went back to her house and she laid out a pastry spread that could feed an entire French village and we started to nibble while we waited for the twins and their parents.  And waited.  And waited.  Rene's sister started to make the kind of comment that only a mother can make about how they are always so busy at this time of year.  Around 6pm (play date supposed to start at 4) Lilah has a category 5 meltdown.  She is exhausted and there is no place to put her down there as Lilah can only sleep in a crib or pack n play (the only way she can fall asleep is to crawl to the corner press her head into the side and fall alseep with her butt in the air) so even if I lay with her, she just tries to crawl away.  I took her to the car and tried to get her down there but she screamed even louder so I gave the "Its time to go NOW" honk on the car horn and we had to go.  Frank and Cristelle did email to apologize and the time with Rene's sister was fun (and good practice for me as 0 English was spoken) so its all good.

The last day in France was mostly packing however I promised Lilah that if she was good we would take her to this amazingly cool indoor playgym at a competitor to McDonald's.  She was very good so we headed over there mid day (45 minutes drive each way).  

She had the most fun she had ever had in her entire life.  

I think she played in it for two hours.  These things are a parents paradise.  This one was at least 6 stories of padded baby proof obstacle course.  The biggest concern with the gym was the big kids who play much like they ski.  They were playing this very intense game that seemed to be a combination of tag and hide n seek where everyone was "It" (played in teams) and no home base..   They were actually pretty respectful of Lilah though, taking alternate routes through the course when they saw here playing in a certain section.

More packing and cleaning on last night.  Of course Lilah had a nightmare and woke up screaming just as we got into bed around midnight.  Poor thing.  Its times like that when I wish she could co sleep cause I would have brought her in bed with me but no go.  She has to go through her process.  Happily, her fuzzy butt was in the air within 20 minutes.

Ride to airport coming soon.  Wish us luck for the way home...

Take Me to the Limit

Things got sticky as we tried to leave Chamonix.  The clearing that occurred the day before was long gone and the blizzard had returned.  Did I mention the more snow it 2 weeks than they usually get in a year issue??

Anyhoo, I get down to the front desk after doing a "final sweep" of the hotel room and Chris is deep in conversation with the Front Desk Lady.  She says we cant leave unless we have chains or snow tires.  It takes a while for the following things to make themselves clear and really sink in:

1. Flight is in less than 72 hours, need at least 24 back at Rene's to gather our belongings and clean his house
2. The weather has 0% chance of improving within 3 days
3. There are no chains for our car for sale within 50 miles and leaving the garage without chains cant happen because it involves driving down a driveway that has turned into steep glacier
4. It takes 48 hours to order snow tires and you would still need to take car to garage to get them installed
5. Front Desk Lady's recommendation is to leave Rene's car here and take a 6 hour train ride (remember how Lilah feels regarding trains) and figure out after the snow what to do with the car.  This would cost well north of $500; its cheaper to move our flight however when to move it to?  "Storm could last weeks" says front desk lady.  Plus there would be cost of hotel while we move our flight.
6. We are screwed.

We start calling all of Rene's contacts to try and brainstorm a solution.  Chris walks through said blizzard to get to the office of the car insurance company.  I start researching train schedules.  This whole time front desk lady has been amazingly helpful.  This hotel has some bad reviews about their customer service and those people clearly would not know good service if it smacked them in the face. They also were very helpful to 2 other people with serious problems so it wasn't just Lilah's cute influence :-)

Three hours of panic later, a revelation from one of the maids who has come down to chat with Front Desk Lady on her coffee break.  In France, they do not use the expression "SUV".  So, when we described car to Front Desk Lady that term washed right over her.  For some reason that I dont recall, we end up Googling the car so she can see what it looks like.  "A Cat Cat!!" she cries. "What??"  Well it turns out, in France an SUV is called a Cat Cat.  The fact that we drove a Cat Cat changed everything.  She explained that getting down the Glacier (driveway) would be the hardest part and that since we have a Cat Cat she would be willing to let us try (failure of course would be very costly to each of us).

So we went.  Lilah and I waited until Chris was down the Glacier to get in.  We went down the mountain behind a snow plow and the rest is history.  Except for the fact that Chris left his cell phone in the hotel lobby and had a minor accident in the garage due to the stress of the situatiom.  We have clearly hit our travel limits at this point.  First the cost of the trip itself, plus repairing the car on top of Pregos surgery is going to completely eliminate all of our savings (which had not been truly rebuilt since the house down payment). Also, ever since then all these little things have been going wrong.  I've been sleeping even worse than usual.  I cut my finger with a knife pretty badly.  Chris keeps forgetting things. 

For our last French song, a good one.  I can recall if I posted this earlier and I wanted to make sure to capture it. 

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Chamonix is like a storybook  We almost missed seeing how lovely it really is from a nature perspective is for the entire city was bathed in thick fog until mid-day today.  After seeing nothing but grey in all directions, suddenly we look up and we are surrounded by craggy peaks reaching miles into the sky.

Chamonix itself is not at a particularly high altitude.  Around the same as Denver, CO if I am doing my conversions correctly.  The city is a valley surrounded by mountains and if you want to ski anything above bunny slope, you have to take a gondola of some sort a few miles straight up to get to the actual ski villages.  There was a very small ski area with two green runs (drag lift) and a chair lift to a red and a blue.  I decided "what the hell" so this morning I picked up some skis from the hotel shop and headed over.  Unfortunately, things did not go quite as planned.  Problem #1: The lift was closed leaving access to only the green runs.  No worries, I thought, I can work on skiing parallel.

 Me in the middle in dark green with little ones to the left and right in red, PARALLEL

When I first learned to ski, I was taught pizza wedge.  Not til I was an adult and took a lesson did I learn parallel.  This means that when ever I get scared, I revert back to pizza wedge.

  Me in the middle in dark green doing pizza wedge

This prevents me from getting to more advanced levels and is frustrating so I was happy to work on it.  But, then came Problem #2:  My shoes were WAY too small.  For some reason, I just picked the wrong size in the ski shop and after a couple runs I was about to collapse from pain.  I know ski shoes are supposed to be uncomfortable and thats not what this was.  Undefeated, I loosened them as far as I could safely go.  This made the pain manageable though I still couldn't feel my toes.  It was, however, Problem #3 that was my undoing:  In France, the etiquette for getting on the lift is vastly different than in the US.  In the US, its a simple line procedure.  You wait your turn, the line moves swiftly and viola, in a few minutes you are headed up the mountain.  Not so here. Here it is an all out, nothing held back war to work your way to the front.  The only thing that was off limits as far as I could tell is two handed full out pushing, direct communication with anyone who cuts you off and using your pole to disconnect the person in front of you from their skis in retribution (oh how I wanted to do this!!).  The kids are the most ferocious and wily of all.  The first time up, I waited at least 20 minutes to get to the front....

At long last, heading up the mountain!!

There were only 20 or so people "in front" of me when I pulled up so this wait time was ridiculous.  My only salvation was the snarky comments I made with the Brittish people standing near me who were also horrified at the lack of a proper queue system.  After the first run, I decided to play the game as it was meant to be played.  This was effective, cutting my wait time in half.  However, I just couldnt get behind fighting with 5 year olds so I gave it up at lunch time.

After lunch, we decided we would take the famous gondola up to the very top to see the view or take the train to see the glacier.  No go.  You have to be 4 years old to ride, no exceptions.  So, we spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out around town and shopping.  

We tried to make a snow man but the snow wouldnt pack so instead, I made a snow angel.

Yesterday, we spent the morning sledding.  Lilah was not thrilled with the sledding which really surprised me given how much she loves slides.  She loved watching me ride though.  Peals of laughter every time. 

Something about the snow just rubbed her the wrong way.  Hopefully next year she will like it better cause ideally we want her to learn how to ski early but Im not going to make her do something she doesnt want to do.  Here, they learn how to ski before they can walk.  Its quite extraordinary.  After sledding we went back to our room for a long nap and then headed out to play.  Bowling and Mini Golf that is.  I sucked royally at bowling...

but Lilah had a great time romping around the golf course.

 

While we were there, she improved her crawling speed significantly.  When it was time for dinner, we headed to a burger joint and had some amazingly good grub, including a burger served Pirmanti style (fries on the sandwhich).  We met a very nice Brittish man who was enamored with Lilah.  He turned out to be a Sr. Exec at HP so I think Chris really enjoyed talking to him.

Tomorrow its back to Montfalcon for packing, a final play date with the twins.  I am already salivating at the thought of eating an actual vegitable (have i mentioned they dont really have those here).  And looking forward to seeing my PREGO!!! who is healing well and apparently is back to thinking that he is a ferocious big dog.

PS:  Wait for it

 I

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C'mon 'n Ride It (the Train)

Alas, Lilah is not a fan of the bullet train.  She screamed the entire 2 hours both ways and all we could do is show the other passengers that we were trying to sooth her.  My mom astutely asked if I could feel the speed in my ears and if that could have been the problem.  I had felt discomfort in my ears and a little car sick even though I wasnt reading and the train was going straight so I guess there was some pressure equilibrium thing going on.  At least we have the mystery solved.

While we are on the subject of trains, an interesting thing happened on our way into the Metro on the way home from Paris.  Chris and I were laden with Lilah on his back, two small but heavy suitcases and a handful of shopping bags.  In general it was quite manageable however there is no ADA in France so getting into the Metro involves a lot of stairs.  On all the sets of stairs, I only needed to take on step onto the first stair before a man would come up to me and offer to carry my suitcase.  I was obviously with Chris and I looked like crap and frazzled so there is absolutely no way they were trying to pick me up.  At the same time, there was a black woman traveling alone with a baby in stroller trying to get down the same stairs and through the same skinny tickets.  No one offered to help her!!!  I wanted to help her but couldn't manage it as each time, by the time someone took my stuff, she was a few steps ahead of me and had already come up with a solution.  I was really shocked cause I would say she needed the help more than I did as my bag was heavy but she was carrying a stroller with a baby in it by herself.  I also couldnt help but wonder if it was a race thing which made me really sad.  I wonder if a similar thing would happen in the US.  I have often had guys offer to help me with heavy bags but never while I was walking next to someone who needed help more than me.

Anyway, tomorrow we leave for our final mini trip to the snow!  Its gonna be great to see Lilah romping around.

Here is a pic of her doing an experiment with my mag light.  Dont know why its sideways.  It isnt sideways until I load it....

And since yesterday was a day at home...there's a bad song....

 

You Cant Always Get What You Want

But if you try real hard, you just might find....you get what you need!!

Rain was coming down this morning and we had no choice to make a break for it.  Chris and I both bundled in water proof jackets and we put on Lilah's rain coat instead of her usual jacket since it wasnt that cold out.  We then wrapped her legs in plastic bags so that they wouldnt get wet, ran to the Metro and headed to the Museum (Orsay).  When we arrived at the building we looked at each other in horror as the line was around 500 people deep.  We were ready to accept defeat when I suggested to Chris that the guy manning the line for handicapped people might take pity on us as there were no other people with kids in line.  It was a long shot, but it actually worked so we were ferried in the side door with no wait.  We purchased our tickets and headed for the entrance and in the 1 minute it took us to complete this finally step we got 4 conflicting answers as to whether 1) Lilah could ride in the frame pack and 2) The frame pack could come in to the museum at all.  Chris is usually very good at holding his temper in situations like this and even he was starting to snap at the employees who were coming at us as clearly there was no consensus on the policy (most likely because only crazy people bring 1 year old's to the museum so it doesnt happen very often).  Then one of them told us in English that they would give us a FREE STROLLER to use if we would just let them keep the frame pack out of the gallery.  "You're gonna give us a stroller??" Chris asked.  "Yes, Yes" they said.  We go to the coat check were they are pointing and lo and behold there is an actual stroller loaner line (it also loaned wheel chairs, canes and those cane/chair combo things).  We could barely contain our glee though also wondered why the person who sold us our tickets couldnt have simply directed us to the stroller line when she saw Chris carrying Lilah in the frame pack.  Oh well. Museum was great and since we were so happy to have the stroller we actually spent a few hours looking around.

At the end of the rounds, there was a tactile exhibit with a beanbag chair that looked like an octopus.  The pictures didnt come out but rest assured that Lilah was delighted to climb all over it while Mama lounged. 

After the museum we headed to the Food Court at Gallery Lafayette (which we realized we had been to before).  I had some of the best mediterannean food Ive ever had and Chris had his beloved sushi.  After that, some shopping and some romping at home before heading out to dinner. 

We looked online to find a good place to eat since we have learned that Paris is not a friendly city to eat in with a baby.  The first place we tried touted its all you can eat Steak and Frites and desserts however they failed to mention that Steak and Frites was the ONLY thing on the menu.  As we were both planning to order that anyway, it might have worked out however it was 25e a piece and that was just too much so instead we went to our favorite French chain restaurant.  Hippopotamus.  They even have high chairs, the only restuarant in all of Paris so far as I can tell.  An hour later, we are finishing up and Lilah is throwing potatoes and crayons on the floor while screaming.  The old guy at the table next to us starts giving me the stink eye.  Dude.  You are at a restaurant whose logo is a giant Hippopatamus.  What do you expect??

Tomorrow we leave Paris after lunch and its been a great time although I dont think I would ever come back with a baby.  Or if I did, it would be for long enough that Id have time to walk rather than take the metro and make it worth it to shop for groceries. 

PS: Lilah has traded in her Mercedes for a Mini Cooper