But I do have to work 5 days a week, starting at 9am and typically not leaving until 8pm, sometimes later. And then, as mentioned in Saturday Markets, I also have to work a couple of hours on Saturday morning once or twice a month. It's a lot of hours and a severe change in lifestyle for me, being used to either the flexible university student lifestyle or even when I worked full-time in retail I could still run errands during the day without a problem. Not anymore....
A typical day runs thus:
Arrive 9am, baby handover from Mr
10am, Little J has nap
11.45am, Little J wakes up. Get him dressed if he wasn't when I arrived.
noon, feed Little J
12.30, Mr and Mrs come home from the office for lunch cooked by Mr (Normally a simple style of meal, I'm lucky if I see so much as a vegetable shaving, although at least one bottle of wine is typically drunk.)
2pm, Little J down for arvo nap
2pm/ 2.30pm Mr and Mrs return to the office
3.45pm, get Little J up, ready for school pick-up and play in the park
4pm/ 4.15pm leave home for school pick up
4.30pm school's out. Battle my way through the throngs of parents, grandparents, au pairs and other children through to the narrow gate, down the narrow path to the tiny courtyard where I have to wait for E to wave at me from her Juliet balcony. She then points me out to her teacher, who I have to acknowledge and wave my little blue security card at (it's got E's photo on it).
4.35pm, give E her afternoon gouter (snack) that I brought with me, she then runs off onto the lawn to play with her friends. French schools typically don't have much space to run around at lunch time, so it's their first chance to run off some steam.
I now have to entertain Little J, give him a gouter, stop him from crawling onto other people's rugs or taking their balls or eating mysterious ground-matter. Spending time in the park has become much nicer now that I've made friends with an American nanny. I'll call her Beth. Beth has a 3yr old and a 7yr old. They're more independent, so she doesn't have to supervise too closely at the park. But they're also quite rude, so I think I prefer my high-maintenance but cutie-pie 1 yr old.
5pm, leave Parc Monceau, walk home with E. If she's lucky I've brought her little razor scooter so she can trip home on that, otherwise she has to walk (which she doesn't like much at all. I tell her sport's good for her, and that she's just being lazy.)
5.25pm, back home. Try and convince E to play with her brother, because he loves it so much and laughs like crazy around her.
5.45pm Little J has last nap of the day. Give E something else to eat, do her homework, play with her, tidy her room
6.30pm bathe Little J, make sure E is also showering or bathing.
6.45pm, put the wriggle machine into his pyjamas, and into his high chair for dinner. Dinner takes a minimum of 25 minutes. Which never really ceases to amaze me, that even if he's on his best behaviour it still takes that long. It would definitely go quicker if I could feed him through his ears. I spend so much time looking at his ears while he scopes the room for the object he most wants to bang around his tray table for all of about 30 seconds to max 2 minutes. Then it's back to scoping for the next object.
7.15pm, playing with Little J, making sure E's room is tidy, listening to her piano practice
Between 7.30-8pm Mr arrives home, Little J can go to bed, I can do the baby-baton change and head home.
Variations on a theme:
Sometimes, like today, I get a phonecall around noon saying Mr and Mrs are too busy to come home for lunch, so I'll have to cook something myself. I would like this more, I think, if their pantry came stocked with my choice of food. However, I still like it because it means I get to eat lunch earlier (today it was a pan-seared chicken fillet with tabole and tsatsiki) and then after lunch I take Little J for a walk to my fave bakery and we grab an espresso and something sugary, like a strawberry tart, berry danish or today's choice, escargot. He also gets to eat my complimentary meringue, which is fab cos it gives me a head start eating the sweet-yumminess that I ordered.
Or I might get a call around 7pm saying I have to cook dinner for E. That call's not as much fun.
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