Our second child

I have given birth to our second son.  As expected, Bilal was overjoyed by the arrival.  One could falsely believe that he wasn't, given how much he has spoken about subsequent children, but he has been visibly excited throughout the pregnancy and his joy in holding our second son just after he was born was clear for everyone to see.  In one sense, nobody deserves anything, given that we all fall short of God's glory, but in another sense, given the fruits Bilal has produced during his Christian journey, I think Bilal really deserved this type of fruit.  He has a yearning for a big family and I am very aware that it is something he has aspired to for pretty much all his life.

As with his older brother, our son was a very pretty baby immediately upon being born and he was born with some lovely curly locks and beautiful light brown skin in between the skin shades Bilal and I have.  I would have enrolled them as baby models immediately if Bilal hadn't said no: - personal privacy is one of his primary preoccupations, so this is out the question, but I don't mind, as he clearly has his family's best interests at heart.  He is no controlling husband and does not do things like demand to know where I am at any moment of day, lol.  Marriage is about give and take and Bilal has certainly given a lot, so even by the standards of non-believers, there is no justification for upsetting him by sharing photos of our sons against his will (the boy in the photo below is not ours).

The delivery had no complications and I was immediately back to my previous waist measurement and weight with no fat to lose.  People often say this doesn't tend to happen, but I have managed it during both my pregnancies!  It is easy if you just eat sensibly: - just utter the magic phrase at mealtimes ("la moitie, s'il vous plait)!  MDR!  The lack of complications meant that I left hospital within a matter of hours: - as a BBC article pointed out, we French are often hypochondriacs, but it was blatantly obvious there was nothing wrong with me.  This was nice, because although I don't do much worrying about my health (since I eat properly), Bilal does.  He can be very attentive if he suspects I am unwell and it is often hard work to reassure him.  Even with French standards of hypochondria, he has made a name for himself at the local doctor's surgery for being overly cautious with almost every sniffle our first son has had, MDR.

Within an hour of completion of the delivery, Bilal was talking about future children, which attracted an unwanted disapproving comment from a feminist member of the hospital staff: - "Come on!  Your wife has just given birth and you want to force more children on her like she is some breeding animal?  A woman is worth more than the children she bears!"  Bilal was visibly shaken by this comment and he is uneasy about engaging in conversation with unrelated women, so I stepped in: - "Madam, I am aware of many options open to me in this country if I were in an abusive marriage and my husband were forcing me to have children against my will, but he is not, so I will thank you not to interfere in our private family life".  Bilal said very little after that and was clearly very upset, but he returned to his normal ungentlemanly self after we left the hospital with our sons and returned home, MDR.

Save for my parents who were at the hospital and came home with us, our first acquaintances to visit were some of his "homies" from La Savine who he has been trying to encourage to come along to our church.  When they rang the bell from the street entrance, Bilal was naturally too engrossed in our sons to notice, so Daddy went to the intercom.  The poor quality of their French made Daddy reluctant to let them in, so he asked Bilal if he knew them, to which Bilal abruptly replied "let them in, they are manz homies from La Savine".  When Daddy let them in at the door, he was visibly unimpressed with their attire (low-slung trousers and hooded tops covering most of their faces).  Upon seeing our second son, they said, "Congratulations fam!  You da man!"  Bilal replied, "True dat!  Manz only been married 19 months and manz knocked up manz well buff wifey twice and manz now got two sons!  Manz gonna knock her up again as soon as possible and be an even bigger man!  Us manz Heavenly Father has given man a bare sick gift between manz legs!"  Bilal then did a hip-thrust gesture and a loud grunt whilst saying that for effect.  This caused me to start sniggering and my parents let out a groan: - Daddy never liked Bilal's ungentlemanly behaviour and he tried to turn Bilal into a gentleman when we were courting and subsequently engaged, but eventually just gave up, reasoning that Bilal is an otherwise wholesome man, even if he is quite hip-hop with some similarly hip-hop friends.  I am expecting Bilal to be similarly ungentlemanly when we go to church today, MDR.

Bilal is enjoying his short time on paternity leave.  Ever since becoming a father, he has been almost clingy with our sons: - though he enjoys his job and works very hard, I know that he is always yearning for the end of the working day to come so he can come home and be with me and our offspring.  His interaction with our sons is at least as much as mine.

French Christmas dinner is more stylish than any other

This year, I ate Christmas dinner with my own family plus Bilal: - his stupid parents won't have anything to do with Christmas.  Granted, some reformed Christians had no time for Christmas either, viewing it as an extra-scriptural obligation.  Charles Spurgeon dissented from this view to a small extent, saying, "However, I wish there were ten or a dozen Christmas-days in the year; for there is work enough in the world, and a little more rest would not hurt labouring people."

Eating Christmas dinner (known in French as "Le Gros Souper" and "Lou Gros Soupa" in Provençal), I thought to myself about how stylish we French are when it comes to what we eat at Christmas.  Le Gros Souper is traditionally eaten before Midnight Mass (which we don't have, as it is too Roman Catholic).

A recent survey showed that the British Christmas dinner was the least healthy in Europe and the French Christmas dinner the healthiest!  See!  Even the British media can't help but tell everyone how impossibly perfect we French are.  We don't want to put rubbish into our bodies, but we really do go to town when it comes to preparing proper Christmas dinners.  As I was born and raised in Provence, we naturally had the Thirteen Desserts.  No!  I do not mean thirteen excessively sweet desserts such as cupcakes as some stupid Americans might be inclined to think upon reading this!  In Provence, we are far more sophisticated than that.  Sweet things are not completely off the menu: - I make mention of Calisson, a Provençal dessert which is made of candied fruit and royal icing.  As you can see below, they are naturally made in dainty sizes that are appropriate for French women with dainty figures such as myself.

For people who cannot get by without sweet foods, a Frenchwoman also likes nougat blanc and nougat noir au miel at Christmas.  As for main courses, we have things including smoked salmon, chestnut stuffed turkey, roast chicken and that delicious French dish Foie Gras.  Hopefully nobody was daft enough to think we Frenchwomen would go fat-free at Christmas!  A Frenchwoman loves rich foods like Foie Gras and would never consider low-fat low-flavour options!

We do enjoy some healthy options as part of a traditional French Christmas dinner though.  These include melons, oranges, apples, pears etc.  Nuts are also included, particularly in Les Treize Desserts.  The British and Americans tend to buy them in huge quantities and so they are no longer regarded as a delicacy like they used to be.  It is the same with fruit.  In the immediate post-war era, British children were content with things like oranges in their christmas stockings, but now they want the latest X-Box One, PS4 and Wii-U games.  I would refer them to the book "Why French Children Don't Talk Back" by Catherine Crawford to remind them of the fact that we French know what we are talking about in everything, even child-raising.

As you can see above, Les Treize Desserts tends to include that delicious Provençal bread fougasse.  When I visited Asda in Gravesend a few weeks ago to teach the chav single mother how to feed her children properly, I came across some really awful imitations of French bread, but I am glad that I am in Marseille with proper fougasse easily available.  I couldn't stand being away from real bread for too long.  I don't know how I managed to get by in London being away from all these stylish foods as long as I did!  A Frenchwoman just adores (in the non-religious sense of the word) fougasse!

Let me not forget another dish (discussed somewhat out of sequence I know) is aigo boulido, another delicious thing that results in me feeling homesick when I am away from Provence for too long.  We French do not like to waste food and this is something we do with stale bread.  The ingredients are stale bread, fresh garlic, olive oil, salvia and water.  The end result is the stale bread soaked in the delicious juices made from the other ingredients.

One French tradition I am not so happy about is le cacho fio.  This is roughly equivalent to the British tradition of the Yuletide log.  The reason I don't like this is its very clear links to paganism, especially as it includes a libation (the pouring out of an alcoholic drink in honour of a god/deity or someone who has died).  Yes, it mentions God's holy name, but it is too heavily steeped in the occult for me to take it seriously as a religious prayer.  Also, the idea of pouring out a drink for God is pointless: - firstly, he created it anyway and secondly, as Jesus has offered his sacrifice once and for all on the cross (as Hebrews 10 makes clear), libations are absolutely pointless.  The ceremony involves the youngest person present reciting the following words (who is old enough to talk, MDR): -
"Alegre, Diou nous alegre, Cachofue ven, tout ben ven, Diou nous fague la graci di veïre l'an que ven Se sian pas mai que siguen pas men." (Provençal)
"Soyons joyeux, Dieu nous garde joyeux, Cacho feu vient, tout bien vient, Dieu nous fasse la grâce de voir l'an qui vient, Si nous sommes pas plus, que nous ne soyons pas moins." (French)
"May we be happy, God keep us happy, [if] Cacho's fire comes, every good thing comes, may God grant us the grace to face the year ahead, whether we be nothing more, or whether we be nothing less." (English)

But anyway, apart from le cacho fio, everything we French do when it comes to Christmas is infinitely more stylish than anything anyone else does, even if French society has become too atheistic to remember anything about why we are celebrating Christmas in the first place.  I am so glad I am not celebrating Christmas in a decidedly unstylish country such as the USA or UK.  I remember the Christmas I spent in the USA on business.  Apart from the substandard biscuits and sweets at parties, I remember a disgusting drink called eggnog.  I was shocked to see a photo of an eggnog carton with French writing on it in Wikimedia commons.  It appears that my francophone cousins in Québec have regrettably fallen for some awful American customs.  Why couldn't they keep in touch with their stylish French ancestry?  Who knows?

All in all, a lovely traditional French Christmas, minus le cacho fio.  Bilal enjoyed it.  He has always been a solitary person and as mentioned, his family has little enthusiasm for celebrating Christmas.  However, he said he really enjoyed the company of myself and my family.  In the unlikely event we want something different for Christmas next year, we could ask him to cook, though as Mali has always been a majority pagan nation (yes, Islam falls into that category), there isn't really any such thing as a traditional Malian Christmas dinner.  However, some Malian foods sound lovely and natural, such as Meni-meniyong, foutou banane, foutou igname etc, even if they aren't as stylish as French cuisine!  MDR.