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.