Né en janvier 1998 à Santa Cruz, Californie
(toujours le bébé!)
Le voilà au Catalyst, un café sympa au centre de Santa Cruz, en septembre 2000. Est-ce qu’il sait qu’il ne devrait pas y être ? Très certainement !
Toujours le coquin aussi !
On dit “toujours le bébé” parce que maman a annoncé la fermeture de l’usine, un fait déploré mais compris par son entourage.
Ayant déjà un embarras de richesses, que pourrions-nous souhaiter d’autre ?
Nous ne pouvons pas montrer Alex sans sa maman adorée ! L’été 1999, Hurley, GB, près de Marlow.
Alexander a eu la chance d’avoir sa maman à la maison depuis sa naissance (ceci n’a pas été écrit par Marie-Hélène !), et il en profite sans répit!!
Nous voilà à Aquaboulevard de Paris, pendant les vacances d’été 1999.
With Marie-Hélène’s help, I tried to bring some French language into this web site, with its French name and anglo-franco-american family members.
But it was hard work. One of our key differences is that I like to share a lot with many, and she likes to share little with a few. So this whole exercise of publicizing our family life rubbed her the wrong way. She was only comfortable with sanitized and socially banal content, and I sought to convey a little more of who we all were and how we all lived. It didn’t start out that way: it started out as a photo album on the web, literally. But over time it has become more and more a journal of our collective lives.
Plus, I need a lot of help to write correctly in French, and without Marie-Hélène’s help, just gave up after a few years. So that’s why you’re on one of the few French pages in the site, and why even that turns into English moving forward.
La prise préferée de sa maman, avec une aire adulte, novembre 2000. Dans l’heure qui suivait sa naissance, il a fixé son père avec ce même regard.
Like Charlie, Alex grew up with his mother at home full-time looking after him.
A Saint Mâlo, avec sa boisson sur la plage, l’été 1999. Il a un an et demi ici, et déjà un petit bonhomme.
The early years of none of the older children included a full-time mother. With a couple of pauses between jobs, Marie-Hélène worked essentially full-time (with generous French maternity leaves and holidays) until she moved in with Ian. Nick and Tom’s mother, Sunshine, worked full-time for most of the years until she and Ian separated, with similar maternity leaves and holidays. So each had periods of looking after her children full-time during the years before this family’s lift-off, but for the children those periods are not equivalent to having a full-time mother.
Et ici il a quatre ans et demi, travaillant à son bureau en juin 2002. Qu’il est beau !!
Alex did spend a period in a part-time pre-school connected with the Catholic church in Santa Cruz. This started in early 2000, after Nick and Tom rejoined us in Santa Cruz. Marie-Hélène understandably found so many children a bit much. I forget when it ended. But the time spent there was no more than three hours in a day, and it is fair to say that Alex and Charlie always had a full-time mother except when they were being educated.
The little guys, as we call them to distinguish them from their older siblings, have had a charmed life in terms of having their parents present. Even Ian has been self-employed, on a schedule that he primarily dictates himself, since 2004, meaning that even their father has been more present for Alex and Charlie than for their older siblings.
Hopefully, the increasing alienation over the years of their parents from each other has not damaged the fabric wrought by all that care and parental time.
Avec son expression inquiète à la garderie, mars 2000.
Qui s’interesse aux biberons ?
Ou aux piscines ?
A son copain Brendan ?
A sa naissance ?
A jouer ?
Le voilà avec son frére ainé Charlie.