My sidebar says I’m still reading Trader, and there is a bit of truth to that – I am still reading it, but I had to put it on pause for a little while so I could read Petite Anglaise. 

All I knew when I started reading Petite Anglaise was that the author, Catherine Sanderson, lived in Paris and wrote a popular blog called…wait for it…Petite Anglaise. I didn’t know anything about her, having never before read her blog, but I’d heard a bit about the book and was anxious to get my hands on a copy. It just so happened that my friend Metro Mama was able to get me a copy, and not only that, she asked if Catherine – or should I say Petite? – could make a stop here during a Canadian blog tour this spring, an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Catherine’s book is the riveting story of how her expat blog turned into a place where she was able to discover another side of herself, which, in the process, turned her life upside-down. It’s a great read – I could hardly put it down – and, from a blogger’s standpoint, it's really quite interesting.

So, without any further adieu, from Catherine herself, a post that reminds me of a conversation I had with my own daughter not all that long ago.

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‘Mummy?’ says Tadpole, frowning.  ‘You know how you said that when I was a baby, I was swimming around in your tummy?’

It is eight in the morning, and we are lying in Tadpole’s bed.  This is part of our non-negotiable pre-school ritual.  I drag myself out of bed when my alarm clock runs out of ‘snooze’, cross the hallway to my daughter’s room and slip between her sheets.  We snuggle for a good half hour, her buttocks resting against my thighs. Then we get up, gobble down our breakfast, throw on our clothes and run down the hill.  On a good day, we tear through the school entrance with just seconds to spare before the headmistress bolts it closed.  On a bad day, said door is already shut and the headmistress, when she opens it, gives me an evil look she must have perfected over many years.

But incurring the headmistress’s wrath is worth it.  Those thirty minutes are the most precious of my day.  And often Tadpole and I have some of our most memorable conversations during snuggle time.

‘Yes, I remember telling you that you swam around inside my tummy,’ I confirm to Tadpole, wondering if she is going to ask me again whether I can make her a baby sister, or brother. I’d like to, but there’s the small matter of a book I need to write before I take myself off to see the gynaecologist and remove my IUD.  And writing is hard enough, without adding morning sickness, weepiness and exhaustion into the mix.  

‘Well, when I was big enough to come out,’ says Tadpole, turning to face me, her eyes serious, ‘how I did get out?  Did your tummy button open up really wide?  Like a door?’  She pulls back the covers and lifts up her nightdress, inspecting her own belly button as though looking for a secret lever or door handle.

I take a deep breath.  My daughter is almost five years old, and I think she can handle a more or less anatomically accurate explanation.  My only concern is that she seems to have her hands inside her knickers pretty much full-time at the moment and I’m reluctant to increase her obvious fascination with this particular part of her anatomy.

‘Not out of my tummy button, no…’  I say slowly.  ‘The baby comes out of here.’  I wave my hand deliberately vaguely in the general direction of her bottom. Tadpole blinks.   

‘Like a poo-poo?’ she says, as though I’ve said something utterly preposterous.  ‘But I wasn’t born in the toilet, mummy.  You said I did get born in the hospical.’ 

‘In the hospital, that’s right,’ I confirm.  ‘Now, for breakfast, do you want the flakes with chocolate curls, or honey smacks?’

As I leave the room, Tadpole is still staring at her pelvis with a perplexed frown.  

Something tells me her schoolteacher is in for some interesting questions today.

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