My son, the one year old.

At 5:30am we were woken by the sounds of cords being pulled out of our TV. Michael and I woke to investigate which one of our children was trying to give us the message about TV Addiction. We looked. Behind the TV, grinning from ear to ear, was our little Hacker, dressed in a singlet and diaper with one sock and no pants. Not only had just found his way out of bed, but into our room and into the arms of his long lost friend: the TV.
Michael and I looked at each other, then looked at the clock. 5:34 am. Our Little Hacker was officially one. My baby is now a year old.
Michael scooped him up and brought him to the bed.
"He knows it's his birthday," Michael said, "He knows attention is coming. Attention and brightly coloured boxes."
"Yeah," I said sarcastically, "He's one, Michael, and already a mind reader. He doesn't even know what day it is."
Michael paused. "I want to give him his present." On a whim, Michael had located a toy store and had chosen a ridiculous box of lego-type things that make noise when connected together. On inspection from Declan and I, we had no idea what to do with them. How had my husband found this atrocity? Had he looked under Toys That Make Excessive Noise and Have Small Parts and No Real Function or Educational Value, and found this? Glad this gift would not be opened at Conor's birthday dinner in the evening, I let Michael give Conor the box. Conor laughed and put the box on the floor. He went back to tugging Michael's glasses. My husband, never beaten, opened the box, tipped out the lego and spread them on the floor. We could hear Conor's curosity turn into full blown excitement. Toys that dismantle! That make noise! Things maman will hate!
Michael and I woke up again at half past six to see Conor still on the floor, concentrating on what could have been a house or a boat or towers. Or just a post modernist piece of art with no real meaning. "Lego Stacked Up in the Morning." This type of art comes with being born post-millennium.
We took a photo of our Busy Constructionist, to go alongside the obligatory Cake photo (this year, Conor will stab, mush and otherwise ruin a chocolate gateau).
Lying in bed, watching our one-year-old, we were silent. Until Michael asks with a hint of curiosity, "Ash, do you think he'll use his Powers for Good or for Evil?:

Why our child will need a shrink.

I wake up this morning to a strange sound. A sound I am not accustomed to.
I look over to the pillow beside me and see my husband is not there snoring La Marseillaise.
However, his feet are poking out the end of the bed and suspiciously tapping against the bed frame. .
When I listen carefully, I hear the sounds of my very French husband softly singing Mockingbird to my stomach. On further listening, I realized this was not just any Mockingbird. This was Eminem's Mockingbird. The Banned Eminem, symbol of evil, that my husband had promised would never enter our house by any means, electronic, musical, pictorial or otherwise. The Eminem version of this childhood that I was not aware my husband had every heard, let alone able to recite at 8am to our Tadpole.
I pull the covers back to reveal my guilty husband.
"Why don't we just sing Baby Got Back," I suggest. "This baby is doomed from the beginning."

The Month of Birthdays.

In a little over a week, our Little Hacker turns one year old. One year since he was born in Tokyo. He is still the cunning little baby that hides in the hamper, and fiddles with the wires on the computer. Lately, his focus has switched from Troublemaking of the Techological Kind to the walking type. Un catastrophe ambulant as my husband says. In a matter of days, Conor has become completely mobile. His favorite game is making various items crash- books, lamps, kitchen utensils. I walked into the kitchen to find the drawers opened and all my pots on the floor.
Conor is making an orchestra, my daughter informed me in Spanish before the imminent banging began. She had been doing her favorite activity of Conor Watching which involves a giving a running commentary of his mischief. From a safe distance.
If Conor unable to find mischief of the common sort, he claps his hands and yells “BOON!” which we have learned is a balloon. A small Disney Cinderella balloon that Carmen inherited is Conor’s best friend. Our good family friends from Japan who were present at Conor’s delivery- and gave him their family name of Takao- will arrive in Brussels tomorrow for Conor’s birthday party. Michael and I haven’t told them yet, but we are asking T & A to be Conor’s godparents.

On the 7th February, Declan turned 6. My mother and father were unable to make it to his party as they are staying in Mexico City to help with my brother Javi’s newest baby. My husband’s parents traveled down from Nantes to be there, and Declan invited 11 francophone and anglophone students from his international high school, and his friend Lucas from Spanish Club. His guest of honor was Mayako-chan from school who has recently moved to Brussels with her aunt and uncle, and who often speaks Japanese with Declan.
Declan was spoiled with gifts including language books and DVDs in all sorts of languages. Dec’s speaking in all his languages has flourished of late. He has perfected the Spanish ‘r’, has acquired new vocab in English, and has learned hiragana and some katakana thanks to the educational DVDs he watches. I am told he understands a lot of Dutch, but it is difficult for me to judge as I speak none. It is like that when your child speaks more languages than you.

For his party, Declan asked for a ‘Cars’ themed cake, and the kids made a fort where they could play party games. We had a ‘Cars’ piñata which Carmen adored. By the end of the afternoon, we had crepes with the adults while the kids watched a DVD.
Last week, Dec had brought home a composition from school where he had written about his family in French.
“Ma mere est Ashley, elle aime les etoiles. Mon pere est Michel. Il est au boulot. J’ai une soeur elle est sympa et j’ai un frere il est mechant et un bebe qui va venir. Le bebe est dans le ventre de maman.”
I can’t believe my little baby is writing already. It doesn’t seem like 6 years since he was a newborn baby in France.

As for the pregnancy, things are progressing well. Last week, the baby measured ahead giving a new due date of July 17th. We have already ‘booked in’ my mom for 3 weeks. Michael’s mom’s health is better than expected, and we are blessed that she is still doing well, and will be able to meet her newest grandchild. At 17 weeks, I am “huge.” With this pregnancy, I seemed to swell almost immediately, and am now almost bigger than I was full term with Declan. We are sure that it is a singleton, gender unknown. Do I have a “feeling” for which gender? I feel that it is a boy. Michael feels that it a girl. I have had an easy pregnancy as I had with my boys, not the all-day sickness I had with Carmen. Michael read books on belly shape, and has concluded that it Must Be a Girl. My husband being the expert, of course. At the baby scan, Gender Unknown was sleeping (another reason Michael is determined it a girl, as Dec and Conor were always on the move.) We have another scan in 2 weeks. Due to the miscarriage of the twins, I have scans often to make sure everything is okay.

As for names, our family have nicknamed the baby That Which Must Be Named. As discussed before, our families begin the name debate while the baby is still a zygote, and the debate doesn’t stop until the name is written on the birth certificate. Even then, we are careful that Michael’s dad doesn’t get there first. For a girl, we are tossing up over Aurelie and some form of Lily (Liliane looking likely). Middle name will most likely be Marthe after Michael’s aunt. Michael and I both like Susanna, but have promised a “French” name for our daughter.

For a boy, Lucas Daniel is our choice. We experimented with Luc, but decided that he needed something more substantial. Daniel had always been our first choice, so there is a possibility of Daniel Lucas. Lucas and Daniel fit into our “transcending language boundaries” criteria.

We will be leaving Brussels in November. Michael’s assignment will either be Kuala Lumpur or Tokyo again. He was asked to move to London in August, but we figure that it will be too difficult moving with four kids, one of whom is a newborn. There is always the option of Paris, but Michael wants to wait a few years before moving back to France. I’ll keep you updated.

Now that Conor has stopped feeding, I can go back to bed.