Jan
1
Champ champ stumps chump
By Pierre | Filed under Français, Videos, Vive la France | 415 comments
Yes, you can impress the French with champagne! It’s actually very simple: just bring a good bottle - a very good bottle - of California champagne. But then from that point on, please let them do…
Allez… Bonne Année!!!
Dec
7
A Very Wet Birthday
By Pierre | Filed under Family, Français, Little People, Videos | 163 comments
Max & Manu trained for 4 months for my birthday present. Thank you kiddos!
Tags: birthday | double | happyDec
6
Saturday Afternoon Fever
By Pierre | Filed under Français, Little People, Videos | 98 comments
Here is what happens at home when Merritt goes into town on a Saturday afternoon…
Tags: double | happy | musicJul
17
Next article in 18 years
By Pierre | Filed under Français, Little People | Leave a comment
Faithful readers,
A temporary overload had us constrained to postpone the posting of our next article to June 2026, right after Max & Manu’s graduation ceremony.
Wait…
There seems to be an opening between 2 poopies and 4 feedings sometime next weekend. Or maybe the weekend after next. We’ll see. Stay tuned.
Jun
25
A Dream Come True
By Pierre | Filed under Français, Little People, Us in America | 82 comments
Last weekend, we went to Babies’R'us. I captured for the posterity this picture that, I know, a certain Mommy Grooms and a bunch of giggling friends would have never believed to see one day. We arrived in the middle of the afternoon and left past 10pm, by far the last customers, and $950 lighter.
For those of you who don’t live in the US, Babies’R'us is the supermarket where you can find absolutely everything you need for a baby, except the baby itself. For the baby, it’s simple: just follow Brad and Angelina who started the trend and go help yourself in Vietnam. They’ve got literally tons of them over there at $25,000 each (approximately $4,000/pound or 5,500 euros/kilo: it’s a very profitable business). It might seem a bit steep at first but at least you are guaranteed to get the model you want, healthy and all, unlike IVF at $15,000 a pop with dubious success rates.
But let’s not let these little preoccupations spoil our pleasure: we came back with the car packed full of delights and we can’t wait to have our two little wonders at home with us.
Tags: happy | moneyJun
24
Panic Attack
By Pierre | Filed under Family, Français, Little People, Videos | 247 comments
We don’t know what happened, the kids have been cleared for discharge. Friday, we must spend the entire day and night with them in a family room at the hospital, and Saturday morning we’ll bring them back home. It wasn’t supposed to happen before next week. Time to panic! Watch this little video, you’ll see why…
(If you are with Children Services, don’t worry, everything will be ready. You are most welcome to come over and inspect. It’s always like that with us.)
Jun
23
Don’t look at the babies!
By Pierre | Filed under Français, Little People | Leave a comment
At the beginning, I could not help looking at the other babies in the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit). There are babies of all the colors - brown, yellow, red, black, white, pink, blue (yes, blue! but then you see the doctors running around like crazy). There are babies of all the shapes - pear, hourglass, beach ball, Play-Doh - and babies of all the voices too. And they’re all ugly, and they all stink, and they all suck, except Max & Manu. We really got lucky to have these two kids. They’re incredibly cute. They almost never cry. They listen to us with intense love and fascination. They almost always poop when we’re not there. Perfect kids, really. So no wonder I was looking around, trying to figure how the other parents could ever want their awful offspring to come home one day. But the nurses quickly stopped me: “Hey, you’re not supposed to look at the other babies!” Ok, ok… but it wasn’t for the reason you think. I wasn’t like staring at these things in dread or disgust. Actually, I was faking it as well as any nurse but it doesn’t matter, you’re not supposed to look.
The first reason is fairly obvious: avoid any negative reaction. They don’t want anybody to look at a 24-weeker and whisper in shock: “Oh my god, he’s so tiny!” when the mom is nearby not knowing if her kid is ever going to make it intact.
Then they don’t want anything that could raise any kind of suspicion, like “Her poop is so green, what are you feeding her?” or “His scrotum is huge! Are you sure it’s normal?”
They don’t want either of any instinctive reaction that could be meant as a compliment but perceived otherwise, like looking at a black kid and exclaim “What a cute little monkey!”
But they don’t even want genuine compliments or courteous socializing between parents. Imagine if a group of parents were gathering to see a charming baby taking her first bath, all laughing and congratulating each other… Well, then the 24-weeker’s mom would start lamenting “Boohoohoo, nobody ever comes to admire my baby!”
So only the nurses can go around and look at all the babies - and they pretty much all say that Max & Manu are the coolest and the cutest. We won’t disagree.

Jun
21
Pius loves the babies
By Pierre | Filed under Français, Videos | Leave a comment
Pius, our dog, has not met the babies yet but he already loves them. A lot!… Too much!
Here is the video…
Jun
17
First Bath
By Pierre | Filed under Family, Français, Little People, Videos | 87 comments
Cleanliness is sometimes an acquired taste, but the rewards are worth the efforts. Here are 2 pictures and a video…
Jun
15
(The real) Father’s Day
By Pierre | Filed under Family, Français, Little People | 6 comments
Today is really Father’s Day. Like everybody, the idea I had of Father’s Day was a sexy mama wakes you up in the morning and invites you to a French café for a duck sandwich and a flute of champagne. Everybody dreams about it but I haven’t met anybody who got it all yet.
Well, guess what? I could not believe it but on my first Father’s Day, it’s exactly what happened to me. Lucky me!
Then we went to check if the kids were still there for real. No problem. We were greeted by the nurses who had hung a beautiful handmade sign above their crib. They just got the names wrong; they wrote “Max” on Manu’s picture and “Emmanuelle” on Max’s picture. I don’t know how they got it wrong, I mean, they’re nurses! Just look inside the diapers and you can tell who’s who right away. They really made us laugh.
We were all in the mood to celebrate.
We shook hands and pulled out the bottles.