The Grand Canyon

Our time in Arizona was not without its misfortunes. It began with a forgotten bag, left behind in Flagstaff, which we had to drive back to collect. Next came the loss of our car seat adapters for the pram (which enable us to use the car seat as a pram top, eliminating one extra thing that you need to carry around), which were left behind in our rental car when we dropped it off in Phoenix. Since the car seat doesn't fit on the pram base without them, the pram was utterly useless to us for the rest of the trip. Then we had to reschedule our plans for Utah on the basis that the ancient RV was way too slow to cover the mileage needed to get there. Then I drove the wrong way down a one way street in the aforementioned RV...

Personal misadventures aside, nature also had a few challenges to throw at us. Back in February, the road just south of Page (which is the closest major town to the Grand Canyon North Rim) decided to shift it's position a little, and ended up looking like this:

As part of our route, we had planned to stay a night in Page, before heading on to the Grand Canyon the next day, but the landslide was in danger of scuppering our plans. Although the landslide is tantalisingly close to Page, out here in no man's land there aren't a huge number of alternative roads. In fact, the route to Page now involves a 45-mile diversion through the Navajo Indian Reservation - not good news for us, our tight schedule and our trundling vehicle. What's worse: I had booked a night in Page as an ideal stop-off before continuing on to the Grand Canyon, but thanks to the landslide, the direct route from Page to the Canyon was also now a no-go. Cue another 45-mile diversion north of Page to access the Grand Canyon National Park.

Although this meant that we spent two long days in the RV and covered a lot of unintended extra miles (with a mileage charge of $0.34 for every mile covered....!), our stop-off in Page did allow us to see Horseshoe Bend, something that the landslide will have prevented a lot of tourists from reaching. This horseshoe-shaped kink in the Colorado river must be one of the most photographed images of this part of the state.

Without a wide-angled lens, our camera didn't really do it justice: if you want to see just how spectacular it can look, this guy has done a pretty amazing job.

From Page, we set off for the big hole in the ground that they call the Grand Canyon. When we were planning the trip, someone said to us 'visit the North Rim, it's much less touristy', so without consulting any maps or actually checking the logistics, we booked two nights in the North Rim campground. Not only is it far less touristy, it's also around 10 degrees cooler, and the terrain is much more varied than that of the South Rim. What we hadn't realised, however, is that although the South and North Rims are just 10 miles apart as the crow flies, there are 215 miles of driving between the two - and that's without the two 45-mile detours that we incurred en route. Happily, it was worth the trouble. We arrived to find our spot in the quiet, secluded woodland campground, with chipmunks scurrying by and birds tweeting all around us. Harvey the RV felt quite at home.

We set off to explore straight away (after clearing up what can only be described as Alec's most explosive nappy to date, a truly extraordinary present to celebrate our arrival) and within minutes we were at the Canyon's edge, looking out at this:

It sounds silly, but I didn't know what to expect from the Grand Canyon. I purposefully hadn't looked at pictures in advance, and in my head I think I expected to see a great big chasm, and a lot of nothingness. I hadn't appreciated how many ups and downs there would be, how many tributaries and offshoots the Canyon has, and how varied and interesting the landscape would be. It is so vast that in places you can barely see the other side, and we certainly couldn't see the bottom from any of the vantage points we found. On the second day we were fortunate (?) enough to get caught in the middle of a thunderstorm, and although we got fairly soaked before we reached cover, we were able to sit at the big picture window in the North Rim restaurant and watch as the lightning and thunder rolled around the rocky landscape. On the final evening, Andy also raced off across the campground just in time to watch this spectacular sunset:

Our two days there were undoubtedly the most memorable of our whole trip. We spent the days wandering around the rocky trails and the evenings toasting marshmallows around our campfire. As for Alec, things got a lot better after The Great Grand Canyon Surprise Poo and he just adored looking at the trees and charming the passers-by on our walks.

Of course, our good luck had to come to an end sometime. And as we rolled out of the campground on the final morning, to begin the long 400-mile journey back to Phoenix, we called in at the gas station to get some air put into a rather low looking tyre... Well, what do you know, it turned out to be flat.

Arizona: the first in a mini-series

Although I'll be posting this after arriving home, I'm writing it in Flagstaff, Arizona, sitting outside our RV (otherwise known as a mobile home to all you UK folk and, funnily enough, the French too - who call it un mobilehome) on a balmy August evening. Family Buckley is on a road trip, American style. There have been (many) pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, a good deal of fried goods, too many meals served with 'whipped butter' and the occasional root beer. There have also been long, long, straight roads, plenty of cacti, and lots and lots of trucks.

Since other people's holidays really aren't very exciting to read about, I'll try and keep the entries relatively brief. But Arizona deserves a bit of good PR. It's largely known for being hot and deserted - in both senses of the word - and for laying claim to one of the seven natural wonders of the world, The Grand Canyon. But the one thing that has struck me in the days since we arrived is the enormous variety of terrain and landscapes in a relatively small area.

The RV signifies the second half of our stay in Arizona and the start of our holiday proper. We arrived a week ago for a conference in Flagstaff. Alec and I hung out in the hotel for a week, while Andy did some clever physics. In the midst of this, I also turned Thirty (I think it deserves a capital letter). Although there were no fireworks or surprise parties or even, in fact, a card from my husband (the less said about that the better), it turned out to be a good day. We drove east of Flagstaff to see the 'world's best known and best preserved' Meteor Crater: nearly a mile across and 550 feet deep, there's no denying its a Very Big Hole in the Ground. At $16 a pop, it ought to be. Sadly, the visitor centre is about 30 years out of date and the exhibits tangential to say the least - after all, there really isn't a lot to say about a big hole in the ground. 

The celestial object that caused it was about 45m across and travelling at 40,000 miles an hour when it hit, which are impressive stats, but that is about as far as it goes. A little disgruntled, we headed back to Flagstaff and north to the Wupatki National Monument. The first thing you need to know is: it's not a monument. The US seems to have chosen to call sites of national or historic interest 'monuments', the equivalent if you like to our national heritage sites in the UK. The Wupatki 'monument' is actually a series of early American Indian settlements, pueblos, which have been found scattered across the barren Arizonan landscape. Built around 900 years ago from simple bricks and sand-based mortar, they seem older than they really are. 

If you consider that Durham Cathedral was built and already been worshipped in around the same time, they start to look a little sad. But they are an unusual feature out in the hot Arizonan desert, in what is in any case a 'young' country. More impressive, however, was the lava field we drove alongside to reach them. Having been created when lava cascaded down from the volcano at Sunset Crater around the same time as the Wupatki settlements developed, the lava fields now look like ridiculously deep overturned fields of earth. Except that this 'earth' is solidified molten rock. I've never seen anything like it.

That stuff that looks like ploughed earth? Actually solidified lava.

The lava fields were just one of the many incredible vistas we've seen as we've driven across the state. When we left Phoenix airport (ground temperature: 41 degrees) and drove north to Flagstaff, we passed through cacti country. Barren, sandy and rocky, with poker-straight roads carving through the middle of it, this was exactly how we had pictured the Arizonan landscape. But as we headed north and climbed up towards the plateau on which Flagstaff sits, we found mountains, forests and an abundance of vegetation. We are back in Flagstaff rather unintentionally. After leaving the conference, we drove back to Phoenix to collect our RV. Enthusiastic and woefully over-optimistic, we intended to drive north to Saint Johns (roughly 200 miles north east) that same afternoon. Unfortunately we hadn't checked any topographical maps (Arizona is flat and dusty, right?) and we soon found ourselves limping through an unwieldy mountainous landscape that our rattly old RV simply couldn't cope with (in fact, this will turn out to be just one of an impressive series of bits of misfortune during the trip...). The scenery was staggering, all the more so because we passed through a dramatic thunderstorm en route, but by 7pm we'd only traveled 80 miles, so we called it quits and holed up in a roadside RV park for the night. The next day - today - we had to rethink our plans, which had originally included driving still further north to Bluff, Utah by tonight to see Monument Valley. Looking at the huge expanse of map ahead of us, and having now become accustomed to our RV's rather leisurely pace (if the road signs specify a 55 mph speed limit, we can be fairly confident we won't be managing much more than 30), we've scaled back. The stop-off in Flagstaff tonight is part of our new journey towards Page tomorrow, and the Grand Canyon the day after. Happily, this change of route allowed us to see the Painted Desert today: a vast, rolling area of rocky desert in which the rocks are stratified in different colours. While much of the Painted Desert is nothing out of the ordinary, some of the vistas are breathtakingly beautiful, such as the lookout we found just north of Winslow.

Arizona continues to amaze and surprise us, and we haven't even seen the Grand Canyon yet. With a bit of luck, out RV will manage to trundle all the way up there.     

Long time no blog

Oh dear: no blogs since May. My Aunt in Chester-le-Street will be very cross with me, as I know she checks in at Life as a Cern Wife every time she turns on her computer. She has probably given up hope by now. In fairness, we've been a little busy, with trips to the UK, visits from friends, finding a new house to live in out here, trying to find tenants for our two houses in the UK... And for me there's all those playdates, lunches, baby swimming, walks along the lake, coffee with other mums. It's a tough life and I won't hear otherwise.

It's a little while since I blogged about Alec, so I think that means I'm allowed to give a few updates. In case you were wondering, yes he is still very cute. Here's proof:

Alec is 5 months old this week, and lots seems to be changing at the moment. He's just moved into his own room and has decided that he's now happy to sleep through the night, 8pm-8am, which is good news for those of us who haven't slept for a solid 8 hours in a long time. Although, it seems when you are a new parent, you are programmed to wake up every few hours wondering if the silence on the other end of the baby monitor is a good or a bad thing - meaning that a solid 8 hours sleep still evades you. At least, that's the case for me. Andy sleeps on happily and wakes in the morning to ask, 'How was the night?' He's done this since Alec was a few weeks old.

As well as stocking up on sleep, Alec is also stocking up on food. Real food. After many, many conversations about weaning with just about everyone I came into contact with, I can now report: Yes. Alec is eating solids. Sweet potato, carrot, cauliflower, green beans, banana, pear, apple, apricot. You name it, he eats it. I am doing the usual mummsy thing of making up batches of puree and putting them in ice cube trays in the freezer. Although it turns out we only have novelty ice cube trays, so his sweet potato portions look like this:

Real Food also means Lots of Mess, so a highchair has become the latest addition to the growing mountain of Alec's stuff, which is slowly but surely starting to take over the house.

He has also become lots more mobile in the last few weeks, and wriggles and rolls all over the place given half a chance. This isn't great news for us, as we now have to keep a beady eye on him at all times. Or something like this tends to happen:

We had our first family holiday last week - to Talloires, halfway along Lake Annecy. Those of you thinking -'Annecy sounds familiar' - that's probably because it was in the news a lot last year, after a cyclist and a family were shot there in quite mysterious circumstances. There were lots of cyclists while we were there, but thankfully no shootings. We were staying in a little cabin which the French call a mobilehome (ah, the French and their Franglais), although there was nothing mobile about it. A tiny bedroom, living area and bathroom, all squeezed into 15m2, and a large deck out the front nearly the size of the cabin itself. But as fate would have it, it turned out to be the same campsite where my brother-in-law has been staying with his family since he was a wee lad. Perched up on the (very steep) hillside, the view over the lake was stunning, even in the mostly cloudy weather.

The paragliders you can see floating around are the real reason we were in Talloires. After we did a paragliding course a few years ago, Andy decided he wanted to learn more so he did a week's course, and Alec and I tagged along for the holiday. Andy is now the proud owner of his first autonomous paragliding pilot's licence, which allows him to fly in calm conditions in places that he knows. I won't be letting him jump off the Jura just yet.

The next couple of months have lots in store: lots more visitors, moving house, a trip to the UK and then a big trip to Arizona for most of August. At this rate, expect another update somewhere around Christmas.

France: it ain't all great

Andy tells me that it is only right that I should follow-up my blog about why it's so great living in France, with a blog about the things that drive me mad. I argued that telling the world how much the French annoy me probably wouldn't help in our efforts to fit in with the locals. Ok, our direct neighbours don't speak English, but Google Translate is pretty hot these days.

But Andy's point is a fair one: I ought to give an un-biased account of life in France, not one which just focuses on the good stuff. So here, in short, is what drives me mad (note that this Bad Things list is not as long as the Good Things list - ergo life in France is Good).

1. The driving
Ok, it may not be a patch on the Italians or the Spaniards (oh dear, here I go on a whole anti-European drive, never mind just a French one...) but the driving here drives me mad (if you'll excuse the pun). It's not bad driving as such - there's generally not much speeding, swerving or beeping to speak of - it's more the etiquette. No one, and I mean no one, ever lets you out. If you sit there with your indicators flashing madly, waiting to pull out from a parking space into slow-moving traffic, nine times out of ten you will be willfully ignored. Trying to do a tricky reverse parking manoeuvre while your child screams blue murder in the back? Don't expect anyone to give you any space to carry out this difficult task, you will just have to wait your turn. Which leads me neatly on to...

2. Manners
This one could get me into hot water. But if we exclude the nice French children from my previous blog, who always say Bonjour, and the sunny people at the checkout tills who wish you a bonne journée, there is a certain lack of politeness around here. My neighbours are lovely. In fact, on a one-on-one basis, most people around here are charming and welcoming and helpful. (Except the other neighbours who have never even said so much as Bonjour in 8 months, and the estate agents who ignore all your calls, and the man in the Feu Vert garage who doesn't appear to want our custom at all). But there is a general lack of awareness of other people from the average person on the street. Everyone seems to mooch along in their own world, and if they accidentally (or not, as the case may be) knock you as you walk past, you are unlikely to get a 'Pardon', or even so much as a backward glance. Getting on the tram with a buggy, I have been stared at point blank more times than I care to remember, as I apologise for having a baby and attempt to find a tiny little space in which to squirrel myself and my clearly unwelcome small child. Coming back from the UK last week just reinforced this: we left behind the helpful souls of England who all wanted to give up their seat for me, to be met by the stony, unsmiling faces of the folk of Geneva.

3. French old ladies and their advice
One of the other trials one has to negotiate when taking public transport is the French Old Lady and her Advice. Mainly, it concerns the aforementioned unwelcome infant and their well-being. He is either too hot, too cold, too tired to be out, too young to be out or just inappropriately attired for that particular old lady's whim. For the record, yes I did check the weather forecast this morning, no he doesn't need a hat today, yes he is wearing a vest underneath his babygrow and yes, he's my child and he's just perfect, thank you very much.

4. The bread is too small for toast
What sort of country doesn't prioritise the production of bread that lends itself to becoming toast?

5. Numbers
My French has improved a lot since we moved here, but I am floored every single time someone says a number that begins quatre vingts... Argh, I think, they've just said one of the stupid numbers. Now, what did they say after they said quatre vingts? Did they say a normal number like sept, so it's actually not too tricky, it's just 87. Or did they say dix-sept, meaning I have to do some quick addition in my head and work out what 80 plus 17 is (not a difficult sum, I know, but when they are in the middle of dictating a long phone number and you're desperately trying to keep up with all the other quatre vingts, it's like some kind of French Numberwang). What kind of language names its numbers thus: Ten, Twenty, Thirty, Forty, Fifty, Sixty, Sixty and Ten, Four Twenties, Four Twenties and Ten...?! At least the Swiss are smart, and have adopted the far preferable Septante, Octante, Nonante.

And that's all I have to complain about. So far.

10 things that are good about living in France

This morning I had breakfast on the balcony in the (not-so-)early morning sunshine and after coffee at a friend's house this afternoon, I took the back road home and drove through the vineyards, heading towards the snow-capped Jura mountains, with the sunshine beating down, the thermometer showing 25 degrees and a light summer breeze wafting through the windows to keep me cool. It reminded me of why living in France is so wonderful. So here are some of the things that make life here so fine.

1. The aforementioned sun
Sorry to all of you still battling the drizzle and the blizzards in the UK, but we've had some nicely well-defined seasons since we've been here and the transitions between them have been nothing if not swift. Two weeks ago it snowed, and we tucked in a last weekend of decent skiing. Then a storm came, brought a ton of rain and some thunder two nights running and lo, the following day it was spring. Since Sunday we've had more or less non-stop sunshine and 23 degrees. The trees were a little surprised by all this, and despite the lack of buds until two days ago, they have been rushing to get their leaves out quick smart.

2. French children say 'Bonjour'
Yes, it's true: everyone who walks past you in the street, even the children and the teenagers, says 'Bonjour.'

3. The supermarkets only sell seasonal produce
OK, so this is a little annoying if you need a spring onion in the middle of winter, but ultimately it's a Very Good Thing for airmiles, local produce and the like. You can't buy soft fruit in the winter, and you can't buy a red cabbage in the summer. Fair dos. It encourages you to think about what you're cooking, where the food has come from and to appreciate the growing seasons. I like it.

4. Lunchtimes
The French consider lunch important enough that everyone has to take two hours out for it. What's not to like? (well, the fact that the 12-2 closures mean you can't make any calls to businesses, visit shops in small towns or even, bizarrely, have lunch at a time that suits you (i.e. outside the 12-2 bracket) - these things are quite annoying)

5. The bread
Don't live here if you have a wheat intolerance. Avoiding bread is impossible, and why would you want to? It's incredible. Not to mention the croissants, fine patisserie, and macarons, available in the obligatory bakery in every village...

6. The skiing
Don't ski? Pah. Then why are you living in France?

7. The word for a walkie-talkie is 'un talkie-walkie'
Need I say more?

8. French radio
They have absolutely no qualms about playing songs such as 'Especially For You' by Kylie and Jason, entirely without irony, in the middle of an average programme. Mariah Carey, Paula Abdul, The Bangles and Bon Jovi are other favoured artists.

9. The wildlife
When Alec was born and we started looking for nice places to walk, I was a bit put out to realise there weren't any wildlife/bird reserves nearby that we could walk around. Then I realised it's because there is no need. On an average walk around our village, or out into the fields beyond, I will probably see as many as half a dozen big birds - buzzards, kites, kestrels and other things I don't know the name of. They are two a penny here, and rarely a day goes by when we don't seem them. There are deer in the vineyards, lizards scuttling along the pavements and something big that keeps leaving giant pawprints in the snow (admittedly, it's possibly a dog).

10. Did I mention the sunshine?

On the downside, the French are appalling at keeping their road surfaces in a decent condition. Pot holes all over. I suppose you can't win them all.

The Baby Whisperer

I was determined that I wasn't going to read any books about bringing up babies. There are so many out there, all with different agendas and perspectives, that I was quite sure reading them would just make life even more confusing. And as one of my friends nicely put it, no baby ever read a book about how it should behave. Parenting is something to be worked out intuitively, I believe, and if you follow the signals that your child gives you and take a sensible and calm approach to looking after them, I was fairly sure that little could go wrong.

But then I came across the Baby Whisperer. It's a terrible title, you have to agree. We've all heard of the Horse Whisperer, who gently whispers platitudes to an unruly horse to tame it, turning it from an untrained, wild beast into a docile animal that will accept humans, so the title of the Baby Whisperer implies you will be partaking in some kind of low-level babbling with your baby to communicate with them on a 'deeper level'. It sounded a bit hippy-ish to me. But the title kept coming up again and again, with other mums mentioning that the baby whisperer had something good to say about nearly everything, so I picked up a cheap copy for 11p on Amazon and thought I would flick through it out of interest. It's not a new title, by any means, nor is it unknown. Second only to Gina Ford it is perhaps one of the most widely read baby books of the lot. Even so, I found that a lot of my friends hadn't read it. I am now feeling almost evangelical about this book. I want to tell the world how much it has changed our lives. So excuse me while I spread the word.

Alec has been a lovely baby, very easy indeed compared to many, I think, but as he has become older and more aware of the world a few difficulties started to creep in. The main one being that around 5-6 weeks he started refusing to nap during the day. If we were lucky and we caught him at the right moment, he might nap on me or in the sling, but otherwise I felt compelled to get out of the house as soon as possible every day so that he could sleep in the car or the pram. People kept commenting to me about how amazing I was to be getting out and about with him, but I had to! Putting him down anywhere in the house to sleep, even on the sofa beside me, was totally impossible. As he began to nap less and less, he also began to cry more and more, and I started to wonder where my placid little baby had gone. The baby that everyone told me was so quiet, and about whom they commented it was amazing that they never heard him cry. It was pretty clear to me that Alec was getting tired, but was fighting off his sleep, and would only be reluctantly lulled into it by the movement of the pram or the car - and even then, he would often fight it.

The Baby Whisperer has chapters on sleeping, eating, and activity among other things, and I just casually flicked through the sleep chapter the night the book arrived. She suggests a 'structured routine' called E.A.S.Y.: Eat, Activity, Sleep, Your Time. The baby's day should consist of consecutive cycles of this pattern. A no brainer, it seems, as that's pretty much all there is in a baby's life. For her, though, it's important that the E does not come before the S, so that the baby doesn't get used to being nursed to sleep. Ok, fine. This wasn't as interesting as the next bit: when it comes to sleep, we need to recognise the baby's signals and respond as soon as possible. She suggests putting them down to nap when you see the first yawn, and certainly by the third yawn. If you leave it much longer, you risk missing the 'window' and them becoming over-tired, by which time they will find it much harder to drop off. By the time they're crying with tiredness it's too late and you will have a battle on your hands. Now this bit was news to me, as I realised I'd only really begun to think Alec was tired when he started to cry. So the next morning, we got up, I fed him, and then we played for a bit. As soon as I saw him yawn, I picked him up, gave him a cuddle, wrapped him up in a blanket and put him in his cot. I said some nice things like 'have a nice sleep, see you a little later' and patted him on the chest. He blinked at me, closed his eyes and went to sleep for the next hour - this just an hour after he had first woken up. I couldn't believe it was so easy (or E.A.S.Y. if you will...). It's been three days now and we've been following this basic cycle with huge success. In these three days Alec has been  a happy, smiley little baby with hardly any crying at all. And what's more, I suddenly have time to get things done while he naps. We haven't needed to leave the house unless there was a reason to do so (of course we still go for a walk each day, so he has one of his naps in his pram anyway) and our evenings have become so much more civilised, as he's not crying with extreme tiredness. In fact, he naps while we eat dinner. Eureka! He is also sleeping much better at night, having gone from waking every 1-2 hours, to going 4-5 hours at a stretch. For those that worry that 2 months is too young to introduce a routine, I agree. But this isn't a routine, it's more like common sense. There's no clock-watching involved (in the book she suggests we do time it, but for me Alec is still too young to be conforming to a schedule, so our times are flexible according to his cues), it's simply a case of reading the signals - signals that are simple but that I was completely oblivious to before picking up the book.

His sleeping has also been dramatically improved by some use of swaddling. A lot of people had told me along the way that I should try it and that it would help Alec sleep for longer stretches, but because he was put in a 'growbag' (a sleeping bag with arm holes) right from day one in the hospital, we were a little resistant to it. And our botched attempts to swaddle him with a small sheet at home weren't very successful so we gave up. But each night when I put him back in his cot after feeding, he would wake himself up with the startle reflex as I put him down, and start crying, until I picked him up and cuddled him, and then the same thing would happen again... One night, he was so overtired that we decided to try bundling him up in a cosy blanket and he fell asleep almost immediately. So we started swaddling him for all his sleeps and he no longer startles, and seems so much more content and settled in his sleep.

I should, however, point out a couple of things about how we swaddle him. My knowledgeable mother-in-law, a retired GP, pointed out an edition of Inside Health she heard on Radio 4 which documented some potential side-effects of swaddling, namely that it can stop the hip joints forming properly because their legs are pulled together, and this can cause hip dysplasia later in life. You can read the transcript of the programme here. Starting to swaddle from 8 weeks is also a little late in the day, particularly because at this stage babies like to bring their fists up to their mouths and suck on them. So what we do with Alec is kind of a 'loose swaddle'. His legs are free to move and kick about at the bottom, which he likes very much (and as well as the hip benefits, I think it also helps him get rid of his wind) and his arms aren't pinned by his sides - they are inside the swaddle so he is cosy and doesn't startle himself, but he can bring his hands up to his mouth. Finally, we bought a proper swaddling blanket, the classic Miracle Blanket, since our hapless attempts with a normal blanket weren't doing the trick. We will probably need to stop swaddling him around the 16 weeks mark, but by then they have more or less lost their startle reflex so with luck we shouldn't need it any more.

And that, folks, is our recipe for a Happy Baby.

Some highs and some lows

This blog entry should be a witty tale of our first trip to the UK as intrepid explorer parents, armed with a 7-week old baby, having set our sights on introducing Alec to the Kirkbride clan. Unfortunately, the British Embassy have let us down. Actually, that's not quite fair - it is the Swiss authorities who are actually to blame. It took the Swiss 5 weeks to send us Alec's birth certificate, instead of the 2 weeks that we were promised, and since the turnaround for a British overseas passport is nominally given as 6 weeks, as the days ticked by we began to feel like our UK trip might be doomed.

While we waited for the birth certificate, we dealt with the problem of the passport photo. As crazy as it may seem, a child passport that lasts 5 years needs a photo, even if this child is only a few weeks old and will look absolutely nothing like said photo by the time the passport expires. Getting a suitable photo of a then 5-week old baby has its own challenges. They should be photographed on a grey or cream background, their head and shoulders should be visible but - even though at this stage they can't really hold their heads up unaided - the parent's supporting hands should not be visible in the photo. Then are the sizing guidelines: the head should take up a certain portion of the photo, which itself must be sized with milimetre accuracy. It took us many, many attempts. Some of which were less successful than others.

Finally, with a photo that met all the many meticulous requirements, we were able to send the passport application form away, albeit with just two weeks to go until we intended to travel. Armed with the knowledge that many friends had received theirs within 5-10 days, we hoped for the best - but alas it wasn't to be. The passport didn't materialise, and although the man at the British Embassy was very helpful when we rang him in blind panic the morning before we were due to fly, all the consulates were closed for Easter and so we couldn't be supplied with an emergency travel document either. We were grounded. The Kirkbride gathering went ahead, but sadly without the newest member of the team.

Alec is growing and changing on a daily basis, so it was a shame not to be able to introduce him to everyone at this lovely stage in his life. He is now a smiler and a whooper, whose list of favourite things include his new playmat, his black and white books, the picture of a caterpillar installed alongside his changing mat, and bathtime, which remains the highlight of his day.

Playtime

'Reading' with daddy

Happy boy

Alec inexplicably wearing Andy's pants

But when life throws you a curve ball, we've found it's usually best to embrace it. So in the interests of not sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves, Family Buckley headed off for a mini ski break over the Easter weekend. This is not the first time we've managed a spot of skiing since Alec arrived - much to my surprise, we got out for a day with some friends when he was just 5 weeks old. I managed to stay upright for most of it, and surprised myself still further by finding that I had enough coordination and stamina to spend a couple of hours whizzing (well, not exactly whizzing...) down the pistes. For Easter weekend we doubled our efforts and managed to ski for two days in a row, first in Les Carroz and then in Flaine. Working as a relay team, one of us sat in a cafe with Alec while the other took to the slopes and although the faff to skiing ratio wasn't great (somehow it was still midday before we managed to get going each day), it was worth it to get out in the mountains and recapture a tiny glimpse of Life Before Baby.

There are also benefits to skiing with a baby in tow. A pram, it turns out, doubles as a trolley.

For the record, that's a baby, a changing bag, a pair of ski boots, a pair of skis and two pairs of poles being carted around by the iCandy Peach Jogger (I feel I should give it a name-check in case anyone else out there is looking to buy a hybrid baby/ski carrier).

And sitting around minding the baby while your wife skis isn't always too taxing, as Andy found out.

The end of getting things done

I admit that my posts have become rather more infrequent since having Alec. This is not so much because having a baby takes up lots of your time - it does, but much of this is spent sitting on the sofa while he feeds or sleeps, so in a sense you are extremely non-busy while at the same time being occupied. This lends itself to many hours spent browsing the internet and typing short, one-handed emails. No, it's the one-handedness that is the problem. It doesn't exactly lend itself to flowing blog articles; instead, I find myself working out the shortest possible way to say what I want to say, punctuation, capitalisation and split infinitives be damned.

The time when I 'get things done' is confined to the short time after we've come in from a walk or a car journey and Alec is still sleeping in his pram/car seat, unaware that we've returned home. If you could see me in that short window of time, you'd watch me running around the house like a bit of a maniac, frantically doing the dishes, putting on a load of washing, making all those phone calls I need to make and typing a few two-handed emails (consider yourself lucky if you receive one of these). Then Alec starts to stir, realising that he's no longer where he thought he was, and I find myself calling out 'Five more minutes please Alec!' to a 5-week old who hasn't exactly mastered the English language yet. It turns out that, actually, washing up can be done twice as fast as you previously thought possible.

But there are some tools of the trade, which help us bypass these manic moments. I give you Exhibit A: The Sling.

The sling is the hands-free approach to parenting. Two-handed emails, dinner preparations, tidying... All are possible once the baby is wrapped up all cosy in the sling. On Sunday, we did our first sling walk along to the gorge at Bellegarde that we last visited in September, and Alec slept happily through the whole thing, blissfully unaware - or perhaps even rudely oblivious - to the dramatic scenery. On Friday I even hoovered and mopped the house while Alec slept peacefully. In fact, he enjoys the noise: when I unplugged the hoover to take it upstairs, he woke up. As I type this, Alec is happily cosied up in the sling with Andy, allowing both of us to multitask. Although sometimes his approach to multitasking simply means cuddling both of our 'children' at once:

And so onto Exhibit B: The Bouncy Chair.

A new member of our household, the bouncy chair doesn't have the longevity of the sling - allowing us only around 20 minutes of hands-free time, as opposed to the couple of hours or so that the sling can provide - but it does have a musical owl and a vibration setting that seems - rather than to soothe him, as the manufacturers apparently intended - to perplex him for just long enough to allow me to make the dinner.

Exhibit C (otherwise known as Andy), although extremely useful, is sadly only available between the hours of 7pm and 9am, and spends much of these hours on standby mode (asleep).

Unfortunately, my new-found two-handedness has received a setback today with a diagnosis of tendonitis from the doctor. Sad face. I woke up with a sore wrist for no apparent reason about a month before Alec was born and simply assumed I'd slept on it in an awkward position and it would go away. All the painkillers in hospital also allowed me to forget about it for a while, but in the last two weeks it's become intolerable. This morning I couldn't even put my socks on, as any movement of my thumb caused excruciating pain to shoot down my arm. So here I am, with a vice-like splint on my left wrist that I have to wear 24/7 until it improves, attempting to type with two hands but instead more or less reduced to the same one-handedness of our pre-sling days. Time to download the dictation app I think.

Alec: the first two weeks

I realise that, by rights, I shouldn't actually have time to write a blog now that I have a two and a half week old baby. But the truth is that we bought him in the Shop of Quiet and Peaceful Babies and, so far at least, he has not proved nearly as much hard work as we expected. Alec is an eater and a sleeper. If he is not eating he is sleeping, and if he is not doing either of those two things then he might just be looking around and taking in the world for a bit before reverting back to one of the former activities. He doesn't cry unless he is hungry or perhaps a little bored, and although his waking hours are increasing more and more every day, so far he seems very content with the little life that he has been given. Neither are we sleep deprived (I know! Ignore what all the books tell you!). Because, with the exception of our first night at home from hospital, when everything was new and strange to him, we have not endured any sleepless nights. He sleeps from around 11pm until 4-5am when he wakes for a feed and then goes back to sleep until 8-9am. This is not a brag - I'm fairly sure that we have little or nothing to do with this blissful situation - and I am only too aware that this could all change at any moment. Babies are not known for their predictability. But for now, we are extremely happy parents, very much enjoying getting to know this tiny little human.

I can't say that we've done anything dramatically exciting during these first couple of weeks that would be of interest to anyone. But we've been getting out and about a bit, with a few walks nearby, a trip into Geneva for a walk and some lunch, a few errands here and there, and our first visit to CERN on Friday. Parenting seems to be all about timing and planning as far as I can tell. If I want to leave when he's wide awake he will grumble and be put out. But if I feed him before we leave the house he will be sleepy enough to be bundled up into his snowsuit and put in his pram, where he'll happily sleep for the next couple of hours, completely oblivious to the lovely places you are taking him. He has more or less slept through all of our outings so far, including the visits to see friends and their babies, some of whom have tried to persuade him that crying is the way to get what you want, but he is having none of it.

So, in summary, here are some of the things he likes:

Sleeping

Sleeping on Daddy

Sleeping in the sling

Sleeping on Mummy

Cuddles with Mummy

Bathtime

And some of the things he's less keen on:

Being bundled up in a ridiculously over-sized snowsuit

Being bundled up as a starfish

Apologies for the photo-heavy blog post this time, but it beats giving you the lowdown on the minutiae of nappy changes, breastfeeding and sleep cycles. For the record, babycare is, as Andy feared, mostly characterised by 'poo, milk and vomit'. But these delights are also served with a liberal sprinkling of laughter, cuteness and sheer awe, so it's not hard to enjoy the whole experience.

Tomorrow, we are off to La Thuile for our first nights away from home. Andy is giving a talk at a conference there and Alec and I have decided to go along for the ride. It might seem terribly bold to be taking our newborn away so early on, but it seemed preferable to me being left behind to deal with all the vomit and nappies by myself for a few days. And really all Alec desires in life is milk, somewhere cosy to sleep and not to be bundled up in inappropriate clothing. Although, unfortunately for him, La Thuile is in the mountains so both the over-sized snowsuit and starfish blanket are coming along too. Tune in next time for news of our inevitable decline into inconsolable crying episodes and sleep deprivation.

A brand new human being

I'm writing this from my hospital bed, with my 19-hour old son lying hiccuping beside me. Alec William Buckley came into the world at 4.17pm (Central European Time) on Tuesday 5th February, weighing 3.3kg (7lb 5oz for the old-fashioned types) and exactly half a metre long. We are biased, of course, but we think we picked a good 'un. He has my mouth, Andy's toes and an excellent grip which Andy believes bodes well for climbing. 

I don't think this is the right forum to give a gritty blow-by-blow account of the birth, but I'm happy to say that it was a largely untraumatic and surprisingly calm experience for us all. I had gestational diabetes during the last third of the pregnancy, which can produce big babies if not well-managed but fortunately didn't present any problems for us. That said, they don't like to let mothers go beyond their due date out here (in the UK they induce at 38 weeks more or less as standard) so I was induced on the evening of our due date - Monday 4th. Unluckily for me, the induction brought on very strong contractions immediately (whereas for many people it takes 12 hours to work) so I spent a very sleepless night putting up with one strong contraction after another, with absolutely no rest between them, much like the last phase of labour is supposed to be, and after 10 hours of this I was completely shattered. The only pain relief they offer here is an epidural - there is no gas and air option, or any other  drugs available - so when I was told that my 10 hours of contractions hadn't actually made any progress, I was very glad to accept it. What followed was just wonderful - I could feel what was happening but was able to rest throughout the day and when we were told, much earlier than expected, that it was time to push I was refuelled and ready. Alec came out 45 minutes later and Andy and I sobbed and sobbed. It was a wonderful experience that is making me teary again just thinking about it. 

The private healthcare system out here is also something to rave about, and although many people have balked at the idea that they will keep us in hospital for 5 days, I am feeling very glad about it at the moment. I have a lovely private room that is far nicer than many hotels I've stayed in and I'm being very well looked after (while paying for it of course!). As well as the cleaning staff who come and go and bring me fresh tea, the midwives who pop in every hour to check up on us, the flatscreen TV on the wall and the bottle of champagne in the fridge (!), my first post-birth meal, brought to me in the delivery suite, was a three-course bonanza that included sirloin steak and a patisserie style dessert. I think I'm getting crab salad for lunch today. The hospital also happens to be just a stone's throw from CERN so Andy can come and go from work while I'm here, and we can look out to his office building from our window. 

If it seems strange that I have the time and energy to write a blog post less than a day after giving birth, it's because of this wonderful care. Alec has been sleeping peacefully for most of his life so far, only waking up to feed and scrutinise his besotted parents for a few minutes before dropping off again. And with free Wifi in the hospital it's a great opportunity to catch up with people before the real hard graft - going home and doing it alone - begins at the weekend.

That said, we can't wait to see what the future will bring to our new little family unit. The early signs are promising.

Baby DIY: fitting an ISOFIX baby seat to a non-ISOFIX Ford C-MAX

Ladies and gents, I have a special announcement to make. It's not, I'm afraid, news of the arrival of Baby Buckley. No, he/she seems happy to stay cooped up inside for a little longer but is due to be served with an eviction notice on Monday. In the meantime, I am pleased to announce a special GUEST POST from none other than Dr Buckley - not me, the other one.

This is more practical advice than my usual rambling blog post, so if you're not interested in learning how to fit a car seat base to a car that doesn't want to be fixed with said car seat base, then you might want to stop reading right about now. Normal service should resume at the next installment.

Andy B writes:

Just the other day, Jo suggested that I might like to post a guest entry on this blog, since there have now been nearly 6 months of her point of view and perhaps I'd like to add some balance. I pooh-poohed the idea, since the things that occasionally cross my threshold of blogability tend to be technical: some physics, or maybe a programming/computing thing that I've recently made or found useful. But the minutiae of our lives -- who would be interested in that? (Oh, a lot of you... I stand corrected.)

But almost immediately, a technical issue worthy of report has appeared: the traumatic tale of how to install our first child car seat. Some time ago, Jo decreed after extensive research that we should get a Maxi-Cosi FamilyFit seat base to remain in the car and make exchanging the seat itself much easier. We had a quick indoor look at the seat base, verified that the seat clicked in nicely, and then as I am a selectively lazy sort (a badge of honour in computing terms) my plan was to install it while Jo was enjoying the Hospitality (sic) at La Tour.

Jo is less lazy (clearly due to underexposure to the programming semantics literature) and hence today I found myself being prodded down the stairs toward the car, carrying the aforementioned seat base for a more eager than intended evaluation of its suitability. As it turned out, this was probably for the best: I climbed into the back of our (second-hand) 2007 Ford C-MAX and immediately failed to find the expected steel mounting hoops of the ISOFIX system. It briefly appeared that we were the owners of a costly but useless bit of baby paraphenalia (and presumably not the last of those). But a bit of phone-based Googling made the situation seem less dire: in particular thanks to this helpful blog. It seems that C-MAXes, at least since 2006, have featured the ISOFIX mounting hoops, but that the original owner has a choice about whether or not to expose them by default. If they do not, as seems to have been the case with the original owner of our car, they will later have to be dug out of the upholstery.

So it was useful to find that not all was lost, if a little intimidating to have to chop into our precious car and hope that we wouldn't mess it up. We could pay a Ford garage a hefty fee to do it for us or, according to the blog above, buy a ~£30 kit and perform the seat surgery by ourselves. It seemed clear. But the more we looked at the blog instructions for using the kit, the more we wondered why a kit was needed at all. The separation of the hoops is defined by the ISO13216 standard, or more practically by holding the seat base to be mounted up against the car seat. We prodded the seat and could feel the hoops just under the surface: easy! And, to cut a long story short, a few cuts through the material were enough to mount the base quite adequately... and to my mind more neatly and less invasively than with the plastic wells that come in the Ford conversion kit. The end result is shown to the right.

So, having successfully made this bold and frugal leap into the unknown, it seems responsible to document it a little and hopefully help some others to do the same. Here are a few instructions... with apologies that the instructional photos were actually taken in reverse order, the idea of documentation having arisen after the seat was installed.

Step 1. Prod the seat to make sure the ISOFIX mountings are there before starting any cutting. I don't guarantee that they are, but a good firm prod with your finger halfway up the lowest bit of "upright" fabric (hard to describe, but there is a different-coloured "ramp" of seat fabric at the bottom before the curvy vertical, back-supporting bit starts. Following the photos from the Spinage blog post we anticipated that the hoops would be in-line with the seams on the horizontal part of the seat, and indeed this was the case.

Step 2. To make sure that everything will be ok, and to identify exactly where to cut the fabric, it's best to compare the discovered hoop positions to the separation of the extending yellow mounting bars on the FamilyFix seat base (see the photo to the right). This gives some indication of the correct height at which to make the cut, too.

Step 3. Cutting! I initially made a tiny hole just big enough to insert a thin screwdriver and make sure that I could really find the ISOFIX hoop. (When I made the second hole this seemed like overkill and I didn't bother.) This first cut is the emotional crux!

When I was happy about the position via the
screwdriver prodding, I cut a bit more until I could get a finger into the hole and feel the mounting hoop directly, cf. the photo to the right. Then just extend the hole into a vertical slit: there is no need to actually remove either covering fabric or foam padding.

Make sure the slit is long enough and at the right level for the yellow bar to be inserted: best to explicitly test it. You'll have to cut through a bit of internal foam padding, too: no special technique required.

Step 4. Compare to the bar separation on the seat base again, and cut the second hole at the appropriate position. The mounting hoops are each several cm wide, so the correct separation of the two holes is more important than the exact position of the cuts.

The resulting cuts are shown to the left: not beautiful, but also a lot less intrusive than the plastic sockets that seem to be the only substantial content of the "official" fitting pack.

Step 5. Connecting the base: nothing special to report here! You should have two slits with the right separation, so extend the yellow rods from the seat base as far as they will go. I think it's a good idea to check how they work first: push a screwdriver or similar into the clasp on the end of one rod, to act as the ISOFIX hoop, and the lock should snap shut. At the same time the ratchet mechanism should reverse, so that the rod will now retract: this is how you get a snug fit against the back of the seat. Neat engineering! To release the lock (useful to know before you end up inadvertently attached to the car), you have to pull out one bit of the ratchet lock and push in the other part: it's impossible to describe just in words, so check the little manual.

When happy, just insert the two yellow rods in the seat slits (cf. right), push back and suddenly everything should lock in and slide up against the seat back as in the photo to the right. Wiggle/lever from side to side to get maximum tension (I think this is what a cryptic instructional diagram is suggesting) and you're done. Tada.



Releasing the support leg

Ok, that's almost all you need to know, and certainly all that's specific to cutting a 2007 C-MAX to expose the ISOFIX mountings without paying for silly kits. Just one thing that seems worth mentioning: how to lower the support leg on the FamilyFix base. We spent a good 10 mins in the car pressing the special grey squeezy buttons on the sides, operating the "status check" button, etc. etc.  In the end this trivial Yahoo Answers response was the key: just give it a good pull. No need to put your feet on it, but grab it by the end away from the pivot and don't be afraid about breaking it. It's not locked in place by any clever mechanism but just a plastic clip that's a bit stiff. The final setup (sans baby seat) is shown to the right.

PS. While trying to work out the support leg issue, I happened across this FixYa site on which several people were asking the same question (without getting a good answer). I feel honour-bound by peurility to highlight another question in the same section, the wonderfully innocent, double entendre-less "Where can I get a replacement sponge bit for inbetween the childs legs? Mine fell off and I can't find it". Ah. comedy gold.