Frenchie goes to France, or How a baby handles Jetlag

So, we're back. We're a bit more French, a bit more fat, and certainly more worse for wear. We're also about a week and a half away from having a crawling baby in our house.

In answer to my post-title question, a 7 month old baby does not deal with Jetlag. She sleeps as though she was at home, continuing to follow Pacific time, as if you hadn't just put her on a plane and travelled across multiple time zones and expected her to adjust to being 9 hours ahead. During the day, she would look around sleepily, wondering why it was daytime. While at night, she'd look around and yelling (in babyspeak) "Play!!!!" from 2am to 6 am. So basically, B and I need to spend the next two weeks sleeping, to make up for us not sleeping for the past two weeks.

Village in Normandy

But, besides the whole no-sleeping thing, there was fabulousness. Fabulous food, wine, more wine, and then, just a bit more food to top things off. As I promised B, there were croissants every morning along with multiple cups of coffee. Big French lunches (Duck, Hare - not my favorite -, Castrated Chicken -no idea, but this is exactly as it was presented to me-, Lamb, Steak Frites, Oysters, Shrimp, tons of beautiful breads, cheeses, ice cream, eclairs and have I mentioned wine?), walks around the small city where my family lives (Rouen, for those of you who are interested to know specifics), and light dinners of pate, cheese, and (you guessed it) wine.

My uncle's fancy midieval house.

B and I did manage to spend a night without Mia in Paris. We pretended to be young again by trying to keep up with my younger brother and his girlfriend, and B got to visit the most fabulous city on earth. We didn't have too much time, so we focused on my favorites. The Louvre in the morning (not my favorite - but B insisted he had to see the Mona Lisa), then we hopped on the metro to Sacre Coeur and a stroll around Montmartre, including lunch at an adorable cafe with multi colored chairs. Then, we headed over to the Isle St. Louis for some Berthillion Ice Cream (best ice cream in the world), and I sped back to the train station (dragging a less willing crowd behind me) to get to my little bundle for fear that she had learned to crawl in the 24 hours that I left her.

On the banks of the Seine.

Then, back to Normandy for a few more relaxing days of family time, translating everything for Brian, and eating all the pastries we could manage. We shopped with some of our Christmas money, but spent most of the loot on Mia. She got quite a few French baby clothes, a ridiculously expensive French baby doll which I insisted on buying because it was exactly like the one I had as a kid, French books. I got a beautiful Italian leather purse from my uncle and felt completely satisfied and did not buy anything else for myself (except ice cream and eclairs).

With her Tito F, my brother.

Now, I'm back at work, catching up on emails and blogs. I've only been gone two weeks, but I feel like I've missed about a million things. I'll easily admit though, although we got very little sleep, I was grateful for the vacation from social media and cell phones, and I got to complete immerse myself in the Hunger Games Trilogy, which I finished just moments before I came in to work on Monday morning.