We’re back.? We had a fantastic time.? Well, Mr. Waffle and I did. Difficult to know what the Princess thought of her days in the creche since she can’t talk. Have a niggling concern that she may not have enjoyed herself as she roared lustily every morning as she was handed in to the creche people and woke up every two hours at night. So, review of the week:
Travel
Took the train there and back. Infinitely superior to air travel. There is a direct train from Bxls to the train station nearest the resort. Only slight disadvantage, we ended up sitting near hyperactive 8 year old twins. It is difficult for a baby to sleep when twins keep running up and down the aisle screaming. Inevitably, we were all sitting in the same seats on the return journey. Train station a complete nightmare. Thought bad thoughts about the architect as we lugged a baby, a pushchair, a travel cot and two large bags of clothes up and down a series of steep staircases while ducking other people’s skis. Bus journey to Val Thorens from train station unspectacular on the way up but on the way back, Princess was sick. Mr. Waffle with great presence of mind and absence of squeamishness caught the vomit in his hand. Yeuch. Kind mother of two sitting opposite plied us with tissues. Princess, none the worse for her adventure, grabbed doggy and fell back asleep. Doggy now smells of vomit despite our best efforts at “surface washing”. However, my sister in America is coming to Cork next week with two doggies which we found on the internet. I am in Cork the week after to collect them (and also to see my parents) and then we will recklessly throw vom doggy in the washing machine.
The Creche
We booked ourselves in for a series of six lessons with the ESF. The ESF also run the creche. The creche opens at 9.00 and skiing lessons start at 9.00. Do you see a problem here ? First morning we presented ourselves with the Princess’s kit:
3 pairs of bootees
Proof of vaccinations
Complete change of clothes
Sunglasses
Suncream
Snowsuit
Hat and scarf
Gloves
Pushchair
Doudou (sort of doggy type thing, though obviously, we weren’t going to give them doggy, in case they lost him, so gave them an inferior substitute – actually a hat that she likes to snuggle up to).
3 nappies
Packet of “mini-toasts”
Bottle
Formula
The girl on reception looked coldly at our offering and said “Where’s the spoon for the formula?” We had forgotten the wretched spoon. Did they have a spare spoon? Oh no, they’re all different. Spent almost an hour racing round the resort trying to find formula. Eventually ran it to ground in the chemists. 20.70 for a can. And we left it behind us. Rats.
Skiing Lessons
After missing lessons the first morning due to the formula incident, every morning we tried a different permutation to get to our lessons on time. Mr. Waffle was very perturbed by our lateness (I married the only punctual Irish man) and, thus, every morning began in great tension. We tried walking to the creche before 8 with our skis. We tried having Mr. Waffle’s brother, an excellent skier, ski down with our skis, but nothing worked. The creche took our baby at 8.50 at the earliest and it took at least 15 minutes to get to lessons from the creche.
So, after an inevitably late start, we joined up with our group. They were a very nice bunch. Our instructor, C, was sweet and determined that this group should know no fear. On the whole, he gauged the mood of the group well. He called us the “the group of the traverse”. We liked to ski slowly. One of the girls in our group, a Croatian architect, was very good although it was only her second time skiing. She explained that she had travelled from Zagreb with a group of 30 ski instructors. They would put her on the top of a black slope and say “Relax, go…”. She found the mornings a form of gentle relief from the regime of terror in the afternoons.
We went off piste for the morning on Thursday and we took an hour and a half to go from Cime de Caron to Lac du Lou. C said that it was a new record for him. No, not in speediness… meanwhile Mr. Waffle’s brother the expert skier had done the same run in 20 minutes.
In the evenings we would come back to the residence and talk to people in other classes at level 2 or, worse, level 1 and say “We did some more blues today” and they would say things like “We did all reds and blacks today…” Very distressing. Nevertheless, C nursed us along and by the end of the week we were really much better and even did a (very easy) black with no fear. I think I may finally have reached the intermediate rut.
Skiing for Babies
If I get a job, we may go skiing again next year (I don’t think that we could possibly contemplate the ruinous expense of another skiing holiday otherwise). We looked into the possibilities for babies. If we play our cards right, by age 6 the Princess will be able to go for the “Etoile d’Or”. This means that, according to the brochure, she “can ski everywhere including black runs [she will do] timed giant slalom and a technical test”. If on the other hand she is a bit slow she will only be getting ready for the third star “at the end of the week she manages all situations, i.e. slalom, control of speed, good co-ordination, and even more the black run”. I am fascinated and slightly alarmed by the prospect of seeing my daughter eclipse my feeble abilities so thoroughly at such a young age. And this, note, will be achieved by a child who, according to the books, will still need help brushing her teeth.
Socialising
Yes, lots of same. We shared a chalet with Mr. Waffle’s younger brother and his friends. It was all very pleasant. Everyone in the group either had a partner or a sibling or both on the holiday so it was all very incestuous. I felt like I was starring in a sitcom. But we did have a great time. Except, one presumes, for the only singleton in the chalet who ended up sleeping in the main room and being woken every morning at cock crow by the Waffle parents looking bleary-eyed and shovelling yoghurt into their infant.
I was out four nights last week. Are you amazed? Dear reader, I am shocked. I don’t think that we will see such debauchery again for some time.
Sleeping
Very little of that. The Princess woke every two hours. I am getting mildly desperate. On nights that we weren’t out, I went to bed at 7. She is better now that we are home and only woke twice last night, but the fact remains that I haven’t slept through the night since last April. I was very optimistic about the “No cry sleep solution” which I saw Fluid Pudding was reading and promptly purchased. I note, however, from her recent posts that after 30 days of the no-cry sleep solution FP has abandoned and gone for the cry it out method. And it worked. Should we try again?
Birthday
Not really anything to do with skiing but it will be (drumroll) my birthday on Wednesday and if you meant to send a card and a tasteful gift, you should probably get going…
on 09 March 2004 at 21:10
Well, you do ski at a funny angle and, what’s more, I have the photos to prove it. I’m sure you’re feeling better now…
Glad to hear you had a good time – a skiiing holiday always sounds like a good laugh, something I must do at some stage.
I like the shamrock on the dogs – very nationalistic. 😉
And I have to commend Mr. W on the vomit catching – I can’t guarantee I would have done the same. In fact, I could well have lept out of my seat to avoid any ‘splashage’. Then maybe grab an annoying 8 year old to wipe the mess with. Kids on any form of public transport….there should be a law against it…
on 18 March 2004 at 12:50
Well yes, I did think you’d say that – which is fair enough. I prefer to think that by the time I have kids in my 50’s I’ll have my fortune earned so that all transportation will take place either in my porsche, or in the landrover I buy for the nanny.
*grin*
(Hey, nothing wrong with dreaming)
on 18 March 2004 at 19:13
Trust me, you won’t be transporting the kids in your porsche.
Before the Princess was born, I was a really dreadful cook. I could reliably burn instant microwaveable food. However, since the Princess’s birth a weird thing has happened, I have learnt to cook.  There are lots of things you can’t do with an awake small baby including reading. One thing that you can do though is cook and, over the last nine months, I’ve been doing lots of it and, slowly but surely, I have been getting better.  The one snag is that, so far, I haven’t managed to successfully cook anything for guests but when cooking for two, I really am pretty nifty.  Or so says loyal Mr. Waffle. Larger groups are a problem, I lose my nerve and go to pieces. Last Friday night, I attempted my most ambitious dinner (for two) to date. We had mashed potatoes (ok, so far so uninspiring, but with grated nutmeg note) with a Jamie Oliver roasted lentil thing and duck breast (with apple fried in butter and fanned around it on the plate) and a port sauce.  I have to say this was ambitious, perhaps a mite too ambitious. It required lots of having everything ready at the same time, so when poor Mr. Waffle came into the kitchen to innocently inquire whether we needed more stands on the table, he found a snarling wife with a pan in one hand and a bottle of port in the other. That duck fat gets pretty hot, so when I added the port, it went everywhere, Mr. Waffle and I dived for cover in the hall (fortunately, Princess was in bed) and, you will be pleased to hear, sustained no lasting injury. Early Saturday morning, I found Mr. Waffle up a stepladder washing port stains off the kitchen ceiling. Still dinner WAS nice, although I spent the remainder of the evening recovering from the strain of making it. Sunday night, I decided that we would have roast chicken, so far so easy you may say, but I have a problem with roast chicken, I can’t make gravy. I always just end up with lumps of flour on the whisk. So I followed a recipe I found in Nigella Lawson for gravy without flour. More a jus, apparently. Alas for the jus, I put the chicken on the bottom of the oven. Guess what, you’re not supposed to do that, that’s why they put in all those shelves in. Although the chicken itself was fine, even the addition of white wine and stock didn’t make the juices from the pan taste anything other than pretty unpleasant. No, I am certainly not above instant gravy, but the Belgians are. Bisto and the like are unobtainable in this jurisdiction. I was reading Nigella Lawson’s thing about chicken and she said that she was a product of her generation and always got fresh organic etc. etc. but for her mother the emphasis was on making indifferent ingredients taste fantastic, mostly by the addition of lots of butter, as I understand it. This struck me as kind of strange, because my mother and I are just the opposite. Not that I look for indifferent ingredients, or that I can necessarily make them taste fantastic but I am not hung up on fresh organic, I mean, I will buy organic if I can, but, if not, then not (except for chicken, battery chickens are too terrifying).  My mother on the other hand is a zealot (she is also an excellent cook and perhaps part of the reason I never bothered to learn, competition was just too fierce). When I was growing up, we had a fishmonger who delivered fresh fish to the door, or sometimes we went into the market to pick up something.  The fishmonger knew my mother well and they would have long chats about what fish we should have and what their respective children were doing, driving other waiting customers to the edge of reason.  We had a chicken lady for fresh free range chickens. A couple of times a year, my mother would drive to Limerick (about an hour away from our house) and pack the boot of the car with a frozen cow, pig or lamb, cut into pieces (and bagged, and bagged) by the butcher she knew from Bruree near where she grew up. He was a farmer on the side and due to my mother’s local contacts, I suppose, he felt obliged to hand over his best animals. When the Limerick meat ran out, there was always Ashley, her butcher in the market. Ashley, knew a good customer when he saw one and always saluted her cheerily.  She began to feel obliged to buy from him every time she passed. To avoid our house overflowing with dead animals, she used to send one of us children in first to check whether Ashley was at his stall and, if not, she would scurry in to make her other purchases.  And then there’s the vegetable lady.  She supplies organic vegetables and free range eggs.  I suppose, when I first heard that there was a vegetable lady, I had certain expectations of what kind of person she might be. I mean, picture to yourself a vegetable lady. Anyhow, she turned up at our front door one day when I was at home, and in this terribly superior English accent said “I’m the vegetable woman, is your mother in?” Bizarre. Still I suppose, fair enough, why shouldn’t she grow organic vegetables in Cork? I was at home one weekend when I was about six months pregnant and she said to me “Oh you’re pregnant, jolly well done.” Very odd. In other news, Princess has recovered from recent mystery stomach bug but has developed nasty cough. We discovered this last night when we let her cry for an hour between 10.30 and 11.30.  One of us went to comfort her every five minutes but it still felt pretty grim leaving a sobbing inconsolable baby behind.  Everytime we went in to her, she would wind her chubby little hands around our necks or grab on to hair, nose or ears. It was heartrending, and occasionally painful, disentangling her.  Eventually at 11.30 she developed an alarming cough so, we abandoned our attempt and brought her into our bed for the night.  Even I can see that we are sending out mixed messages.  I am sure that Gina would not approve.  There was an article in yesterday’s English Independent about her. Some unfortunate journalist had a two and a half year old who woke up to play every morning between 4.00 and 8.00.  To summarise the article, not now post Gina he doesn’t.  Gina said a revealing thing as reported in the article: “Mothers don’t like to apply my methods because it interferes with their lunches at Cafe Rouge”.  I think that this is perhaps a little unfair.  Firstly, because, I feel, most mothers are motivated by their child’s best interests and, if that means no Cafe Rouge lunches, then, I suspect, most mothers would say fine.  Secondly, I think that the real reason mothers don’t like Gina’s methods is because they sound heartless (though I would concede that they may be short term heartless, but long term better for baby etc.). Finally, food in Cafe Rouge is kind of mediocre anyway, so why would you bother.  Do you think Gina is a little disapproving of mothers? Finally, went wild at sales and bought baby clothes that Princess does not need. Must stop buying baby clothes before I beggar us.Cooking and Sleeping
