New Babies Must Have Celebrations

I know, I know. It's been forever since the last time I posted. But I have to say that I've been up to quite a lot since the wedding. Of course there was the inevitable wedding wrap up which was just the worst. Getting out thank you notes and tallying the budget was just a nightmare. Good thing that is all over.

But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about another type of Big Day... the arrival of a baby! Don't get too excited, it's not a Fox baby. Not just yet. But it'll be the first baby brought into our little expat community here in Germany and we're excited!

Us Foxes are throwing a very non-traditional baby shower for New Baby Y. According to Wikipedia (gotta love the Wiki!),

 "a baby shower is a way to celebrate the pending or recent birth of a child by presenting gifts to the parents at a party. The term shower is often assumed to mean that the expectant mother is "showered" with gifts. "

Interestingly enough, most baby showers are these women only frilly events where toilet paper is abused in the name of good fun and the colors pink and blue are vomited everywhere as decoration. Miss Manners be damned! Mommy Y doesn't want your Sex and the City-esque frou-frou fete! So we're going to be able to be more creative.

Men must be included. Sorry SITC loving ladies. Source.

Just as a matter of course, Mommy Y has also banned diaper cakes.

None of these allowed. Source.

Honestly, I've never thrown one of these before and the only one I've ever attended was when I was like 12. All I remember is learning how to make a towel "rise" (by folding it into the shape of a penis). I'm actually thankful that Mommy Y isn't interested in a girlie-girl deal. Judging from the amount of wedding related stuff left around the flat I'm glad I won't have tons of storks or baby carriage confetti to clean up.

We're going to go low-key. Beer. Finger foods. Charades. Sunday afternoon. No muss, no fuss, no confetti. It will be good.

Must Have An Awesome Photographer

I have to say that one of the best parts of our wedding was the photographer. I was super excited about her from the start. Once I found her, I had to have her. If you recall, she was the one who did Barbie and Ken's REAL French Wedding (I wrote raved about her work here). Béatrice De Guigné is awesome, we loved working with her.

And I have to say, her blog post about our wedding is pretty awesome too. You can check it out here.

I am absolutely loving checking out these photos over and over again. Our wedding was so great!

Happy First Anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. Fox!

One year ago today, Mr. Fox and then Miss D, stood in front of a civil officier of Amilly, Centre, France in the most adorable salle des mariages to say "Oui, je le veux"(Yes, I want this) in the presence of their families and one best friend.

Serious faces for serious words.

All smiles, promises made and accepted. Uncle A clearly approves.

Proudly, the new Mr. and Mrs. Fox. My proud Mommy beaming in the background.

This year has been full of so many joys and challenges and adventures! I'm still so happy that Mr. Fox threw his hat in the ring and never once relented. Here's to one absolutely wonderful year and the hopes of many, many more to come.

Still very much in love, yours truly.

Love and happiness.

You Must Have An Aggressive Agenda

This week we're back in France filing paperwork for my carte de sejour, the French equivalent of a green card. While we're here, we've got a whole list of lovely errands to run... and of course, the list is growing. The good thing is, if everything goes off as well as the paperwork submission did (thank goodness! It was smooth like spreading peanut butter on a good, thick bread), we'll be super prepared for October 13: Jour-J, like the French call it.

I did realize that time is sliding by quite quickly. We're now past the 2 month mark. The RSVPs are trickling in, my dress is in the hands of the seamstress, I'm all reserved up for my trip back to the US for bridesmaid dress fittings, and I'm starting to get excited. All is going well.

You Must Have a Religious Ceremony Revelation

We are having a Catholic wedding ceremony this time around. It requires a lot of stuff, one of them being "marriage preparation" which amounts to several meetings with a priest to read this little book containing a collection of scriptures applying to marriage and love and discussing them.

The little book. They've even got a website! Source.

At first, I was sure it would be nothing more than an interesting exercise where I would be forced to lie a bit lot about my stance pertaining to my practice of the Catholic religion in my every day life and future since I am completely non-practicing.

I was only half wrong.

Interestingly enough, the little book offers some really (surprisingly) good advice for married people (or actually any people whom are coupled off). It says things (in the discussions) that are real to life and reminiscent of not only someone married but also someone happily married for many years who is probably also some sort of successful professional marriage counselor. In actuality, it's written by a priest.

So our challenge with this planning this stuff was initially in which language to do it. At that time, my French was limited to niceties and adjectives, my German was (and still is) limited to food shopping, ordering and preparation, but my English is pretty strong. Our visit to the presbytère of Montargis provided us with a preview of their super organized and well-planned preparation program in French. Unfortunately, I didn't understand much. Double unfortunately, we'd be hard pressed to make it back to France for several weekends in a row. So we had to find another option. Options remaining: prepare in Greifswald in German (nearly impossible for it to be useful to both of us) or hope we have good luck and find somewhere in Berlin or Hamburg with an English program.

Somehow luck was on our side.

Mr. Fox found the English-Speaking Roman Catholic Mission in Berlin that was not only quick to respond to our inquiry but also fantastically accommodating, flexible, and just overall super.

Our priest seems to be pretty with it. We haven't had to lie... much. (But of course on the subject of birth control usage we had to fib. Who is really diligent enough to do natural family planning?!?!) But in spite of the with-it-ness of our priest, he tends to say these not-with-it things like "women tend to be unable to make decisions when they are emotionally charged (not totally wrong thought this does not only pertain to women) so in these cases you should leave it to your husband to decide." I don't completely disagree. In general, this is not bad counsel. However, you must know that these comments were made within the context of discussing the wedding preparations. Sadly, all of these are emotional decisions and if I left them up to Mr. Fox we'd be having a shoeless backyard kegger with fancy food. (Okay maybe not quite to that extremity, but I'm sure I'm close...)

Another example of the not-with-it-ness is when we read a scripture about how a wife with "governed speech" is a super thing for a man to have (Sirach 26:1-4, 13-16). So after reading this one, he asks us what we think the definition of "governed speech" is.

Me: (confidently) A woman with some education in how to handle herself appropriately in all situations and does.

Mr. Fox: (cautiously) A woman who never is embarrassing because she

The Priest: (basically, but not exactly) A woman who knows her place.

Me: (trying hard not to rebut or make faces) Ah.

Of course I expect stuff like this. He's a Catholic priest (and a pretty old one at that). So needless to say, though these things go off well, and we tend to have some (unexpectedly) awesome and down-to-earth conversations, Mr. Fox has come away with some niftily annoying soundbites that he can deploy whenever he feels like exercising his a**hole muscle.

Me: (discussing *fill in the blank* about the wedding) I can't decide between X, Y and Z. Maybe W or V or ...

Mr. Fox: (a*hole in full tilt and chuckling like a naughty child) Remember what the priest said! When you can't make a decision you have to listen to me!

Me: *sarcastic eyeroll*

Who knew scripture could be so fun?