Day trip to the border

you can click on the grid for a closer look at all of us

We spent yesterday afternoon in the lovely, international and very nearby town of Geneva. We did what we usually do in the city, shopped, strolled, grabbed coffee, took pictures and basked in the musical notes of american english being spoken all around us. Well at least I took it in, flashes of passing phrases:

..."so I was like hey dude I am not, I mean there is no way ... "hey do you have any money because..." "Oh I don't know if" ... "it's on Friday night now, not Saturday"..."RIGHT of course" ...

Sometimes the english annoys me but yesterday it made me feel good and I wanted to hear it. I suppose it's because my mom is leaving soon. Or maybe because I'm overdue for my annual visit to the States. I so need that dose every year or so. There were several reasons I couldn't go back this year and I think I'm feeling the effects of it, nostalgia for annoyingly loud Americans being one of them I suppose. Oh my.

One of our main reasons for a Genevois dash across the border was to buy a multizonal DVD player so that we can play our entire collection of DVD's on one unit instead of hassling ourself with two different DVD players, one of which often won't play anything at all. So yesterday we bought a player so cheap that if it breaks in one year we can toss it out and buy another one as casually as changing a pair of socks. I know, I know... another annoying American trait: overconsumption. I'm terribly guilty of it and not particularly proud of it but I got to watch The Chronicles of Narnia and Pretty in Pink last night in english, so I'm one satistfied woman and probably easier to live with because I'm not cursing out at a Thomson DVD player that never works.

Little S was in another terrible mood yesterday, alternating between complete animation and hysteria to lazing off in periodic slumbers in his stroller. He seemed to want everything and nothing, or he wanted to do something strange like drag our umbrellas through the street like walking canes and when you tried to take them away and get him to walk normally he'd promptly throw himself down on the grungy street and scream "nyaaa! nyaaa!" It was impossible to get any pictures of him without chasing him with the camera which explains pictures with half a toddler head or the one above in the grid where Seb is holding his face straight into the camera in an effort to get record something other than the back of his head or his elbow. Yep it's that time. It's Terrible Two Time and maybe we are lucky after all to only have one baby to deal with and not two under two like we originally planned.

My guys

We spent last weekend, the weekend my sister was to leave, in Geneva doing a little exploring. The weather was damp and a little cold and the jet'd'eau was turned off so we didn't have the best visit, but Baby S sure did.

We have been letting S walk a lot more and explore on his own, taking him by the hand and letting him do his own wandering. This was the first time we've done this in a big city full of bustling shoppers. All the way home S chattered like a magpie about all of the things he'd seen. Jane and I were laughing because it was clear that he was talking about the stores, the bejeweled woman in the fur shop, the watches stuffed in the windows and the trendy cafés just as surely as you or I would be after such an outing.

Here are some photos of my two guys together that day. Am I a lucky lady or what? They're both so wonderful. They are my world and I love them to pieces!