Moving to a Bigger Apartment

We are finally moving!

Although we are sad to say goodbye to our very nice apartment and neighbors (we live next to my husband's sister) we are moving to a bigger place in two weeks. I will be needing lots of decor advice and will chronicle my plans for the new space. First off I need to post some pictures so everyone has an idea of what the place looks like.

The first thing to decide is paint color. Because this is Paris everything including painting an apartment is insanely expensive. So after getting an estimate of 5,000 Euro I decided I would do it myself. The only two rooms that I think need to be painted is the baby's room and our bedroom.

Here are some pics...

The French Creche aka Free Goverment Daycare

(This picture is pretty funny. Where are the screaming babies???)

I am currently awaiting the answer of whether my child will be accepted into a state run creche, also known as creche municipale. I signed up when I was 7 months pregnant last August and ill not find out until mid May or June almost a year later! If you are a pregnant foreigner in France I recommend that you sign up at your local Marie right when you are six months pregnant. Most foreigners make the mistake of waiting to sign up for day care until after their baby is born. I would have made the same mistake had a friend not told me to go as soon as possible.

After your baby is born you will receive 7 acte de naissance (birth certificates) from the person who comes to register your child's birth at the hospital. By the way if you don't have these you can order as many as you want from your Marie whenever you want. You have to send these certificates to your top 4 choices of creche's that you made when you signed up at the mairie while you were pregnant, as well as to the Mairie itself. You have to remember to send these as soon as your baby is born to complete your file and put you on the list awaiting a place in the creche. The city compiles the list for the kids accepted at the end of the school year for the coming September.

After your file is complete you basically just have to wait for the response from the Mairie. You also have some other choices however, just in case your child does not get accepted in a municipal creche. You can do garde partage with another family. The way this works is that you share the cost of a private nanny at either your or their houses. The nanny is your employee and you can discount the cost of her salary in your taxes if she is properly declared. Another option that I am exploring is the halte garderie. These places also run by the state accept kids only part time. So you can probably get your kid in for up to three days a week. The third option which I am in the process of finding out about is the creche parental. These are day cares run by the parents of the kids attending. I will post about this as soon as I attend the open house next weekend. There is also the option of taking your child to the house of a specially trained babysitter who can watch up to 4 kids. I am learning more about this and will let you know as soon as I find out more.

Just a quick note...the reason everyone wants a place in the creche municipale is because it is the cheapest option. Garde partage is super expensive (about 900 a month, 9:00 to 19:00). Halt garderie is somewhere in the middle, but the catch for this one is that it is not full time. You can only sign your child up for up to 3 days a week.
 

Lactation

I chose to breastfeed my baby. This notion is completely outlandish to the French and especially Parisians. For some reason most new French mothers never even try breastfeeding. It might have something to do with keeping body image issues, French women are notoriously obsessed with being skinny. I have also heard others say that they didn't want to be the only ones doing all the work, or be a slave to the baby. I can totally understand not wanting to do all the work while your husband sleeps or relaxes and breastfeeding definitely takes a huge toll on the woman's body. However, from my perspective there were just way too many benefits for the baby for me not to do it.


Since my baby was born in October at the beginning of the ugly Parisian winter and flu season I can tell you from experience that breastfeeding kept her from getting sick. The antibodies in my body got transferred to her through the milk and while everyone around her was getting the flu she was protected. At first I wasn't sure if I truly believed this notion. But when we visited with my husbands friends who had little babies that were coughing with runny noses I was sure that my kid would catch something. After all during the winter people like to be indoors with the heat turned up and rarely think of airing out their homes....thus the germs get incubated and passed to anyone who enters the "sick" house. After several visits to these types of infected homes I caught a cold, so did my husband but the baby had nothing! That's when I realized that there was truth in the breast milk protecting the baby notion after all.

My kid is now five months and a half and I am still breastfeeding. At five months I started giving her formula once a day during the weekdays because I am leaving her with a nanny to go to work and it just got too hard to pump at night (very very tiring). I felt a little bad about it but in the end I have to sleep and get out once in a while also! I don't know how long I'll keep breastfeeding but so far I really love it so probably till she is one. Next month I'll be starting puree's so there will be a post on how that goes...

I know that some people have problems producing enough milk. I used two recipes that really help increase milk production. The first is a mix of herbs for a tea and the second is a yummy cookie.

Lactation Tea:
In France you can find several brands of lactation teas. The one I started to buy was Les Jardins de Gaia, mainly because it comes in a bigger package and I like making my own tea bags. However, you could make your own tea with the following herbs. These are also the ingredients in the brand mentioned about. I drank about a cup or two a day. You don't need to go crazy with it, one or two cups is definitely enough.
***You need to be careful about what herbs you take when breastfeeding. Remember that everything that you eat and ingest (medicine, etc.) goes to your baby!

(This makes two cups)
1 tsp. fennel
1tsp. cumin seeds
1tsp dill
1 tsp. anis
a few raspberry leaves 


Lactation Cookie:
I found the recipe here and they turned out great. I made a few changes like substiture sugar for maple syrup and added coconut flakes.

1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour (or if you are gluten free you can use any gluten free mix)
1 3/4 c. oats
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3/4 c. almond butter or peanut butter
1/2 c. butter, softened
1 c. flax seeds
 1/3 c. water
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar (I used maple syrup, or you could use agave as well)
2 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
2 c. (12oz) chocolate chips
1 c. chopped nuts of your choice

Trying to be a Mom in Paris

Having a baby changes your life.  The people who have them know what i'm talking about, the ones that don't...just trust us. So while I initially I wanted to start this blog for DIY ideas and decor, I think it will now turn into baby in France stuff.

As an American having a baby in the French system was very different from what you see back home. Not just the pregnancy process itself, but what comes after also. For example, I am trying to get my kid into a chreche (nursery school) starting September 2012. While this may sound like an easy task it seems that because the chreche's are run by the government and therefore much cheaper than hiring nannies the competition is stiff. First of all what was schoking to me was that you have to sign up at the Mairie (city call of your arrondissmont) before the baby is even born. The instructions say anytime after your 6th month of pregnancy. So I literally went to sign my unborn child up for nursery school when I was 6 month pregnant! The author Pamala Druckerman perfectly describes the system in her book Bringing Up Bebe, which is a great read by the way. You basically have to beg the director for a spot. Call her every week asking if spots open up, etc. It is basically insane and the kid isn't even 6 months old yet!

I have not fully delved into the creche situation so I will keep you updated on what happens. So far I have sent certified copies of my kid's birth certificate as well as letters of introduction to our top four creche's. I will begin the director stalking next week.

I Had A Baby!

So my latest DIY project was having a baby. Needless to say this definitely changed the decor of my apartment and my life in general. Even though you always hear people tell you how crazy having a baby is, you don't really feel it until you go down that path yourself. If the whole process was not physically and mentally hard enough...try doing it all in French!

I got lucky to have a very good pregnancy and birth. It breezed by and I even went on a baby moon to Los Angeles in my sixth month. The most annoying thing I had to do was get my blood drawn every month to check for what the French call toxoplasmus (some sort of stomach flu you can get from unwashed veggies/fruits and cat poop). Also because of this same toxoplasmus I had to wash my fruit and vegetables in vinegar to make sure there was none of this bacteria on it. My baby came late she arrived at almost 42 weeks. However, the birth itself was great. I got the epidural and basically felt nothing. The insanity all started after she popped out!

The first three months were crazy. She wanted to eat all the time and refused to sleep in her own crib. The only position she would fall asleep in is on mine or my husbands chest! My body felt like it was run over by a bus. I chose to breastfeed and that definitely takes a toll on a woman's body. The baby just sucks out all the good vitamins and you feel exhausted. My baby is 5 months right now and I still don't feel like I have fully recovered from the whole pregnancy/birth process.

 But she is really cute and fat.

The Wallpapered Closet

We needed a wardrobe for more storage but I could find nothing below 100 Euro so I decided to start with a cheap Ikea wardrobe and wallpaper it. Unfortunately, I did not fully record this project with pictures but you should get the gist!
 ***Before:

Materials:
- Dombas Wardrobe from Ikea (on sale for 50 Euro)
- 1 roll of wallpaper (I got my black and white polka dot version for 21 Euro), the standard roll is approximately 15 feet by 27 inches.
- Wallpaper paste
- Rollers
- Paper smoother (optional)

Step 1: Unroll your wallpaper and cut the correct sized strips for your wardrobe. If you are using a pattern with a repeat cut in the same place on the repeat so patterns on adjacent sheets will line up.

Step 2: Lay a cut sheet on a flat surface. Using a paint roller, apply a thin film of clear premixed wallpaper paste on the back of the paper. Make sure to apply to all edges.

Step 3: Fold the pasted back of the paper onto itself, top and bottom ends meeting in the middle. Make sure the side edges line up perfectly. Let it sit according to the directions on your roll. (I forgot to take pictures so I pasted one from a DIY wallpaper online, feel free to click the link above for more details)

                              http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/how-to-apply-wallpaper/index.html

Step 4: Paste the first sheet onto one of the doors and smooth out using a special wallpaper smoother or a clean roller, anything to make sure there are no bubbles on the surface. Repeat this step for all your surfaces and wait for everything to dry.
*Cut all the needed small strips for the details. I got lazy and just painted the bottom trim black.

Step 5: After the doors all dry attach them to the body of the wardrobe, attach any doorknobs you want and voila!

Upholstering/Painting Stools

I need some tools to use as kitchen chairs as well as extra seating when we have guests. My little project took less than two hours!

Materials:
- 2 Ikea Oddvar stools (8 euro each)
- Fabric (I used extra pillows that came with our sofa)
- Pillow stuffing
- Stapler
- White spray paint

Step 1: Assemble the body of the stool, without attaching the top.

Step 2: Spray paint your stools and wait for them to dry. If you are using another type of stool make sure to sand it first so your new paint sticks.

Step 3: Place the pillow on the ground, cover it with your fabric and begin pulling and stapling to the stool top. Continue until you are all the way around.

Step 4: Attach the top of stool to your base using the screws that came with the kit from Ikea or your own nails/screws and voila!