Chez Mui Richard

Grandma and Daddy celebrate Chloe’s first Halloween in Cobble Hill Park. Check out our little monkey!

A few pictures from Daddy as we come to the end of October. My favorite is Laurent’s Facebook post on Grandma’s birthday. The caption made me laugh so hard! Stay tuned for Halloween pics!

So we get to the airport in Paris only to find out that our flight is overbooked. Yes, overbooked. You can just imagine the sinking feeling I got in my stomach knowing that not only would we not have a seat for Chloe but that our flight was overbooked. But what can you do?

We get to the gate with plenty of time. We even stop for a Starbucks to pair with the croissants we bought from the bakery before we entered the airport. Can you believe that Starbucks in the airport is more expensive than in NYC? And that’s BEFORE you convert from USD to Euros!

We take advantage of the early boarding and get on the plane. Much to our surprise, we are sitting in the first row behind first class! SCORE! They put us in BUSINESS CLASS! WUHOO! And after the cabin fills, the team offers to put a bassinet up on the wall for Chloe after take off so she can sleep. SCORE! Not that Miss Chloe slept very much since it was a day flight and there was in general just a lot of commotion in the cabin because it was not an overnight flight. That and she’s just incredibly nosy and wants to look at everything even though she is dead tired. But I managed to snap a couple of shots while she enjoyed herself on the ride home. No complaints overall – the air pressure changes at take off and landing didn’t seem to bother her one bit. Although I don’t imagine I’ll be compelled to take her on another flight anytime soon…

And the few days we did have in France absolutely flew by, despite my lack of sleep (between Chloe’s crying and Laurent’s snoring, I need a vacation from this vacation!). While I am sad to leave France (because I could stay and eat Dominique’s cooking ALL DAY), I am hopeful that Chloe falls back into her normal sleep routine as soon as we get home. We always said Chloe was a great baby and really had no complaints but after this week, I don’t know how I would have gotten through eight months of this kind of terror. With a little bit of luck (and some mercy), I hope she readjusts back to home life quickly.

Lunch with the Couvrat, Menard and Richard family, YUM!  So stuffed!

Photos courtesy of Nathalie, thanks for sharing!

Maybe a glimpse of future tango Chloe with a flower in her mouth or tucked behind an ear? =0)

Chloe’s first aquarium experience – she was thoroughly absorbed by the fishies. We may need to reconsider going to Coney Island Aquarium at some point…

And of course, just general happy Chloe. A little blurry, but you get the idea. Au revoir Paris!

OMG. Night of terror is all I can say. Jetlagged baby Chloe is not a pretty sight. I believe I saw almost every hour on the clock last night, I definitely remember seeing 8pm, 9, 10, 11, 12am, 2, 4, 6 and then 1030am when we finally woke up. First we thought it was teething from the random unstoppable crying, then we thought it was unfamiliarity with the bedroom we were sleeping in even though she had all the same bedding as from home, and then I just gave up on trying to figure it all out. The worst of it was between 11pm and 12am when nothing I did could get her to sleep. Thank gosh for the front carrier (thank you Tina) because it was the only way I could get her to go to sleep, rocking her in my arms wasn’t even enough. My first attempt in the carrier did not end well as she woke when I took her out to put her in bed. So half an hour later, when she finally calmed down and was sleeping again, I unstrapped the carrier and both baby and carrier went to bed. What can you do? And Chloe this morning? Happy as a clam, probably didn’t remember any of it. (sigh) Ah the joys of motherhood…

A few hours later (and after a nice nap in the car), baby Chloe met Grandpa Richard. Chloe was totally at ease; maybe it’s because there is such a similarity between the faces of Grandpa Richard and Daddy. That or Grandpa’s electronic wheelchair console absolutely fascinated her and held her interest. Grandpa said (in my paraphrased translation) “perhaps she is a pilot in the making”. Maybe!

No doctor’s visit this month because Miss Chloe is celebrating her eighth month in France!  Joyeaux anniversaire!

Monday was our flight to Paris to see Laurent’s dad. We tried to be smart about it and bought a 5:30pm departure, knowing that Chloe’s normal bed time is around 730-8pm and we figured that a night flight would guarantee all the lights in the cabin would be off for a good amount of the flight.

Packing the weekend leading up to the flight was out of control, so much harder than packing for just Laurent and myself. It’s not even packing her clothes and bibs that is the pain; it’s everything else. It’s her bedding and blankets so she smells something from home, her random one or two toys to comfort her, the ground oatmeal and cookies and emergency jars of baby food, her upright red seat, etc and etc and more etc. And of course there was a number of things we couldn’t pack until Monday morning that just made the whole ordeal exhausting in and of itself.

Then Grandma and Grandpa dropped us off at the airport. I forgot that it was Columbus Day Monday; didn’t even occur to me. Laurent was super smart and checked our baggage and got our boarding passes at the curb, so one long line averted. The security line for the gates, on the other hand, holy cow, it was so long that it was pretty much going past the agent counters, out into the main lobby and outside the main doors of the terminal. CRAZY. So we got in line. And I put the CUTE BABY on my shoulder for everyone to see, hoping that some TSA individual would take mercy on us and let us skip some portion of the queue. We were probably waiting for about 25 minutes and still at least 20 people away from the entrance of the roped security lines (yes the entrance, we had not even entered the official queue), when the TSA guard at the express lane for the crew waived us over. SCORE #1! So excited, wheeled ourselves straight up and had someone check our passports and boarding passes and off to the xray machines we went. They had me go through the normal metal detectors with Chloe in my arms instead of the fancy new xray machines. And then after, they did the strangest thing, another TSA had me hold my palms up and he wiped them with some sort of detector that he then put into a machine. I asked what they were looking for and he replied “explosives on your hands since you were holding the baby” and I thought to myself, “Really? Have people hidden explosives in the diaper of a baby or anywhere on a baby before?” I guess you never know.

Then we went to our gate and confirmed that our plane was not full and so Ms. Chloe had her own seat. SCORE #2!! We boarded the plane and got settled but Chloe was already getting a little stir crazy from all the commotion. We were sitting in the middle of plane with three seats, and so Laurent and I took the aisle seats and we put Chloe in between us. It wasn’t until we put the car seat down that Laurent realized that the person in front of Chloe was not going to be able to recline their seat. Laurent politely excused himself and told the couple in front of us, apologizing for the inconvenience; we thought we were lucky because no one was sitting next to the couple, so as long as both individuals sat in the aisle seats, they could both recline their seats. I can’t even begin to explain to you the reaction of the woman in front of us. To keep it short, she basically proceeded to give us a series of dirty looks, asked if we could turn the car seat around (of course not, not that it would have made a difference) and then told us that she was pregnant and needed to be comfortable as well. Seriously? It’s not like she didn’t have options – she could move to the aisle seat in front of me and recline her seat – or she could lay across her partner and sleep across three chairs (which is what she ended up doing). And if she truly was pregnant (because I totally think she was lying), then shouldn’t she realize that someday she’ll be in the same predicament? I just can’t. Maybe it’s because Laurent and I are naturally nice people (really we are) but had the roles been reversed, I can’t even fathom having the reaction that this individual had. For those of you who know my passion (i.e. hot temper), you can just imagine the four-letter words I would have liked to express to her, but for the sake of my daughter and the whole flight, I bit my tongue and kept quiet. There was one passenger on Laurent’s side that expressed genuine interest in the baby and even commented later on throughout the flight how well behaved Chloe was for her first flight, which was such a huge relief to hear. Note to self: when I see a mother with a baby on a flight, I’ll make sure to give her supporting words of encouragement; there’s really no reason to add to a mother’s stress by being negative or even nasty. And I’ll leave it at that. =0)

So the flight to France was seven hours long. Overall I think Chloe did great on the flight. She was most fussy at the beginning when we were stuck on the tar mat waiting to take off. I think it was because she was all worked up from boarding the plane (and dealing with the bad vibes of the psycho woman in front of us) and then she was confined to our seats. After dinner service and when the lights went out, she fell asleep as we walked the aisles and stayed asleep for about 2.5 hours which was another relief. Here’s an airport selfie of a very tired and jetlagged baby Chloe and I as we wait for Daddy to get our luggage.

And here’s a picture of the family with luggage in tow marking our first flight with Baby Chloe to Paris. Bonjour Paris!

And the second BIG BLUE outfit for Ms. Chloe!  Let’s go Giants!

It’s very rare to have back to back posts but this one couldn’t wait. I was having lunch when Laurent emailed this photo over with the subject line “Yeah, we’re going out” and I nearly choked on my food. You couldn’t have posed this picture better or asked her to make a better face. Photo courtesy of Laurent, this is DEFINITELY my new favorite. Already made it my desktop background at work just to give me a chuckle every now and then. Enjoy! (and p.s. i love the hat, Chloe is definitely a hat girl, thanks Sab!)