Little people

Five

Photographing kids

I love taking pictures of my kids. I have so many photos it's almost like an obsession. They are so used to having a camera stuck in their faces that if they ever become famous it's going to feel completely normal to them to be chased by paparazzi.

Okay here's a great shot to do with kids of all ages, even babies, peek-a-boo in the curtains. There's something cute about the height of the curtains and the smiles you get from the game of it that works well. The natural light of the window is lovely. I have a ton of peek-a-boo curtain photos of my kids and it always works well. I think this is a great photo for an older child too. Just let them play and snap away. Give it a try.



The garbage can on the head shot? As long as it's relatively clean. This one was not my idea. Little S likes to bang on her head and face with a stick when she puts this on and she loves it,-- my chic, little garbage can not so much.



We finally made Little S's invitations for his fifth birthday party next week. Am I stressed about having ten kids over with the house so disorganized. Nahhhh.



Hey does anyone have any party games ideas for five year olds besides the usual,--pin the tail, musical chairs etc. ? I'm looking for something a little different or forgotten and I'm too lazy to dig through Martha Stewart archives.

Back to school time

Yesterday was the first day back for Little S who starts the Grande Section of his Maternelle class. He was exhausted and had a really hard time getting up! His teacher even noticed and said "someone went to bed late." He looks a little disheveled, but then again my kids always look like this.



He's really proud to be the big boy on campus and he kept going on and on about it over our vacation saying "I'm in Grande Section now so I get extra desserts" and "now that I'm in Grande Section I can stay up later!"

His class is huge with over fifty kids so they've still got it divided it in two classes. He's with most of the same kids he was with last year but they have moved some kids which mixes it up a bit. I think Little S is in the good class though because they get to go on a field trip in February and they'll be gone four days! EEeeek. I'm already stressing about it but I think it's going to be lots of fun for him and it's probably a good reflection of his teacher for wanting to plan such a thing with a bunch of five and six year olds. She must love kids.

Gateau boy

This photo was from a few weeks ago and his front tooth has now turned a lovely shade of medieval gray. The dentist says it won't fall out but that it's just dead -- tant pis pour mon petit mec.

It'll be a year or more before he gets his adult teeth so he just has to live with his new look.

Yes indeed

Charlotte is now walking. Well, waddling is more like it. It was offical a few weeks ago on Tuesday to be exact which I will record here in my blog in case I ever do one of those huge scrapbooks so I can you know, get a big TuEsDaY sticker and paste it across the top with little feet stickers and a heartfelt poem about how much I'll miss carrying her lardy baby butt everywhere. Anyway there I was having coffee with a few moms from S's school who I never have coffee with, just a fluke invitation, and Charlotte bumbled over to a mom all furniture free and sassy and then sort of bumbled back like a woman on a highwire (minus umbrella of course). They were all chuffed to be the first that she walked to because everyone knows she's a late walker so the subject of when she'd walk has been beaten to death outside the school, "cou-cou, quand est que tu va marcher ma petite Charlotte!" or "Elle marche toujours pas?" I think she was sick of hearing it. Like me.

So there just like that it's done and now two weeks later she's doing things like running out in streets at the neighborhood block party "il faut faire attention, c'est dangereuse!" someone said and I felt like saying "yeah she'd better pay attention otherwise she'll get squashed, silly monkey. Ohhhh, you meant..."

The whole walking thing, all so new to us. In fact the leashed child idea is starting to grow on me as I remember it did with the firstborn. This way I can tie her up outside the school and shops while I run inside. Convenient. Practical.

She's a late walker. Curse those fat little thighs. We'll call it eighteen months and a few weeks. Yay Charlotte!

p.s. Little S took the picture, ma boy

Eighteen months old (soon)

She's going to be 18 months old next week but I know I'll forget to write about it because I always do, so I'm writing about it now. She isn't walking yet, but close enough to say that it will probably happen in the next few weeks. Just this weekend she took two or three steps by herself. I don't know why my kids walk late. It doesn't bother me really but it does seem to bother a lot of people. I get asked constantly "when is she going to walk?" and mother-in-law is really worried giving us specialists names. I'm sure it's just her fear of falling. She isn't much of a climber or risk taker (umm that'd be Charlotte).

She...

has nappy hair in the back and a perpetual chocolate stain on her face. Little Miss Sunshine competition is not going to happen.

fell out of her highchair two times this month flat on her head. Yes I'm one of those moms who forgets the seatbelt. twice.

has a terrible sweet tooth and eats like a sumo. Rule of the house is not to leave open packages of food in front of her because if you do they'll be emptied.

wears a size 3 in her dresses because otherwise they're too tight. I think little girl dresses are made small though. At least that's what I tell myself. and her.

is very chatty and says papa, dodo, cat, shoes, chauss-shoes (a classic frenglish word--S said the same thing) and repeats everything we say like a little parrot.

is STILL breastfeeding three times a day or more. I refuse to do it in public because of the comments and the shocked looks--it makes me really uncomfortable lately, and so if I go to someones house we end up with screaming episodes and my shirt becomes a mini blind. So it's not like I can be casual and hide the fact that I'm still breastfeeding but hoisting a near two year old into feeding position has started to make me feel like that painting of Frida Kahlo with her wet nurse. It just feels more natural to do it at home when no one's watching.

has terrible morning breath (and she's a baby!) which proves she's mine.

is a little angel in every sense of the word

Mosaic maker

My little French fries.

At the park

Playing upstairs

Making a Piston Cup circuit out of Thomas tracks and Legos.

Smiley girl

She started crawling a few short weeks ago, which is always a funny thing because you get so used to plopping baby down somewhere and then suddenly they become mobile and you turn around and there they are. It's a funny feeling.

Our smiley girl turns eleven months old in four days, nearly the big one year! She sleeps on her own now and eats well,...very well in fact. She loves food and I can't imagine that there will ever be a time when she will become a picky eater. I can't seem to get her to accept a bottle and this has been difficult because we stopped two of the breastfeeding sessions--the morning one and the four o'clock one. The morning session just became too hectic with getting Little S to school, driving Seb to work and preparing myself. I can't give her bottles so instead she eats yogurts to replace these feeds. Well petit suisse which in France is a sort of thick creamy unsweetend yogurt (40 percent fat!) and what the pediatrician recommends for babies as a bottle replacement at snack time. I still breastfeed her at night and we do a few short session before she goes down for naps. I hope we can continue this until age two with her eventually taking a bottle in the morning.

There is another backdated post here if you'd like to read it.

Fourth birthday time

My favorite small guy turned four years old on Friday. We took cake to his school and he had a little party with his class. Then on Friday night we did our own little party with an improvised L McQ**n cake (because if your child has been to 20 Mexican birthday parties in the past year he will ask you flat out where his L McQ**n birthday cake is and be curious why he doesn't have a pinata hanging up in the living room ...ahh Mexico we miss you!)

This year Little S is changing so much into a small person that I can't believe it. He has hair on his legs! He has big muscular legs now and he seems to have all these opinions about things and people which are surprising and funny.

Our gift to him this year is to calm down and stay put and find more family time where we work outside in our wonderful garden. We still hope he gets to see the world a little more with us. We have a few travel plans for the next few months and we realized that was a gift in itself so we didn't get him much, just drawing supplies and a stuffed animal. Luckily the slide I mentioned in the last post arrived on his birthday so he was feeling spoiled already and then on Sunday the same people dropped by with an entire swingset. He was overjoyed and we were too because we had priced them and had decided it was entirely out of our budget for now. Yay to nice neighbors who give you free stuff!

I've backposted an entry if you want to read about what happened in the weeks before we moved in to the house. (Scroll back a few posts if that link isn't working).

Summer living

Our Florida time is coming to an end. It's time to start that new chapter of our lives.

We're going to miss our family here. Until next Summer!

In the caddy

I have a lot of grocery cart pictures of the baby. I´m not sure why but she always looks cute in the cart. This one is funny. She´s guarding the tequila like a good little Mexican girl!

We are in the middle of packing right now and it´s a bit crazy here. On Thursday things should be better. By the weekend hopefully even better!

Hasta luego!

Jellicle

"Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats
Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats
Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats
Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats"

Little Avedon

Little man of the house, seen here in his dad´s shirt transformed into art smock with elastic cuffs and crazy patchwork embellishments (we will add more no doubt). Crude yes, okay well it was very spur of the moment.

My guy--so full of life and energy. Where does his all this come from? I have no clue. It´s baffling.



Today I very bravely loaned him my camera for 15 minutes to see what he would shoot. He was delighted. I was a little nervous. He immediately started taking pictures of his paintings. He loves his art work and he´s really proud of it.



And he shot some crazy photos that made me realize I think too much in the box. I mean how cool is the electrical outlet photo? I love the three year old mind.




Finally he shot a wonderful picture of me and Charlotte, who by the way is busy chawing her way through a paint brush handle so she can poke her eye out with it or something.

It was lots of fun seeing things through his eyes. He needs to be given a camera more often.

Starting to sit

She's starting to sit up better and just wobbles a little bit. She has more and more muscle control each day. I think by the end of the month we might be there. She will be able to sit up entirely on her own.

She's crying because I'm not holding her up with my hands like I normally do. I felt bad taking the pictures anyway beause she was scared being held up by my legs and crying but trust me I took them very fast!

Poor sweet thing. She must have been thinking why is she doing this to me!

*oops hahaha I posted this here and I meant to post it on the family blog for the in-laws which is why it has the part about me taking the pictures fast (so they won´t get too stressed out about her being propped up while I sit around composing shots) It's too much work having two seperate blogs!

30 days: day 12

Yesterday Little S´s school had a Spring Spectacle at his school in belated honor of Mother's Day. All the mom's were invited and the kids recited poems and sang. It was cute and well done, but slightly over-the-top like most of these things here in Mexico. For example all of the mom's without exception were perfectly coiffed and made up as if they were going to a wedding or had the lead role in one of those Mexican soap operas. Mexican women will use any excuse to dress to the nines and it can be intimidating tto be in the middle of it. It was certainly a little intimidating for me, totally ill prepared and dressed in raver pants and a black reversible t-shirt bought in a Paris flea market. Reversible because I like the shirt but not the print so I cut out the tag and wear it wrong side out. I know, I know awful. So yes I felt kind of out of place and let's not even talk about my kid in his crinkley orange t-shirt and scrappy hand me down Carter's shorts three kids have already worn. Nobody said anything on the invitation about the kids putting on a showcase. All the kids looked perfect and S was The Little Rascal. He even told me this morning as we attacked his hair, "yesterday my teacher brush-ed my hair." So yeah, bad mommy.

The food was fun. There were snacks of apples wedges coated in hot pepper candy, deee-licious! I love this red pepper candy coating. It is a perfect mix of sweet and hot and it's not hard and crunchy but powdery and soft. This fountain machine which I love and must have one day for future parties, dripped the red pepper sauce into pretty cascades and you could put your fruit skewers of pineapple and honeydew melon under it. Those candy apples in the background are actually red pepper apples too. The food was really creative and I was impressed. And while I think they spent a lot of money which might have been better spent on Montessori supplies this IS Mexico and parties and festivals are an enormous part of the culture.

I was proud of Little S as he filed out on to the stage with the 27 little amigos from his class. They all sang and did gestures, including one annoying little girl who you could just tell had been coached at home by her parents. Little S bit his bottom lip and stood there staring off until he saw me and then he smiled a little shy smile. I was proud of him for not panicking and for all of the transition he's put up with this year. He didn't sing but he was adorable without doing anything.

* I really wanted all thirty days to be in black and white but I had to cheat a little because this is just too pretty in red.

The milk's in me

Little S drew this airplane today on a card he was making for a friend. It was the first time he drew something representing something. I was very proud of him.

The airplane is from what he calls "The Milk Story" which is of course Maurice Sendak's book, In The Night Kitchen. He is so enchanted by this story. We don´t own the book yet but we watch the little short film made for it so often that he knows it by heart. I think it has a definite maternal theme and I´m not so sure if he isn't finding solace in the storyline.* Besides who can resist it. It's so full of imagination, adventure and charm.

When he drew this plane he was very serious and he said "gonna fly to da milk mom....gonna fly!"

*you can find the video on You Tube or the like.

Like papa

Seb is in the top photo at age three and of course Little S is in the bottom, the same age. Seb could can never deny paternity. They look like the same people. Even Little S thinks it´s a photo of I took of him. He keeps asking me where his duck toy is.