The lego club

I spent the weekend with Seb tearing out the kitchen and with Little S sorting Legos and talking with him about the Lego Club hes eager to start.  When we moved to China all the posh private schools had these awesome after school programs for art, pottery, music  and languages and there was even one for Legos.  I never got so far as to find out the details of how the club actually  worked but it really captured Little S s imagination that he could sit around building with other kids one day a week after school,

There isn't such a club anywhere around here which is why we've been toying with the idea of starting one on our own,  I think it will be enterprising and fun for Little S to get it started so I am giving him almost full reign on it, with just a few rules.  It has to be limited to four kids a semester.  The kids have to pay a bit to help cover the costs of feeding them gouter and for my having a full house one day a week...and to keep only the participants who are serious,  And we need  funds to build up the brick bounty so the money will help build  up the supplies.  What fun!   They can build their creations each week and leave them to work on when they come back.  I think it will be a big success,    We just have to work out what to charge and Little S has to find the serious minded Lego kids in his classes.

Games

My kids are really strange lately. The past nights Little S has been playing with his sister and they'd made a fake fire on the floor and I'd hear him say "you put the bear meat on the fire and I'll go get some squirrels" He had stuffed animals in a bag he was carrying around and he'd just whip them out and plop them on the fire and Charlotte was turning them over and around sort of browning them. I said what are you playing and he said "me I'm the hunter and I bring home the food." He was using a sword as a gun but weilding it like a hunting gun slung around his shouler with a string attached which I found funny. Today Charlotte was playing with her doll and I started to put him away and arrange the little hat she'd put on him and she said "no mom don't! he's all dressed for the trip to the cemetery today--he's happy to go."

I wonder where they get these games? We don't watch t.v. so I guess it must be The Little House on the Prairie episodes we've been occasionally watching on internet. They're really fascinated with Pa and how he comes home with dead animals every once in a while. And the cemetery thing is just plain creepy. I don't think she's even at an age to understand that people die or even that cemeteries are places to go visit. Very weird.

Six

Little S turned six over the past weekend. He had a small party with his grandparents and then on Wednesday we had a party for him and and six friends. I did both parties by myself and I’m partied out!

He’s changing physically. Suddenly his legs seem to be getting really long. I looked at him stretched out in the bed last night and we talked and I couldn't’t believe his legs were so far down the bed. I seem to have this perpetual image of him as a two year old with this stocky little body, climbing over him to read a bedtime story and his legs were never in the way. Now they’re in the way. How did this happen? I told him what I was thinking and he said to me “where were my legs before?” and I pointed to really high on the bed and he said “I was tout petit!” and I said “yes you were.”

He’s very taken by anything having to do with knights and castles and he spends hours constructing cities and lining up his armour and telling me all the technical terms for parts of the castle. He knows all the nooks and crannies and has names for parts I never knew had names! As soon as he walks into the house he goes into his deguisment box and gets into his chevalier clothes which we’ve made by cutting up old clothes and attaching belts and whatnot. Strangely enough he refused to dress up for his own party—go figure. He’s unpredictable like that. Like for example he went to school for a whole week wearing a red cape we’d made out of a satin skirt. I had to ask him to take it off at the gate to the school but he made me promise to bring it each day after school and he’d put it on right away as soon as he saw me. Then suddenly he just didn’t need it anymore.

When he isn’t playing with his knights and castles he draws. We do a lot of family drawing at the dining room table before dinner (highly recommended!) and he can easily spend two hours cutting paper, painting and making a drawing stack. I am keeping a book of some of his best work and I’m amazed at how much there is. I don’t feel like he’s particularly talented, not much more than any other kid, but he’s so invested in drawing. It’s how he spend all of his free time outside of the knights and castles construction. Of course his drawing are mostly along that theme, knights and castles, but he also enjoys watching me draw and trying to draw exactly what I’ve drawn. He also likes to draw parts of the house, windows and lamps and whatnot. I’m happy that he’s picked this up from me (and that I picked it up from Danny Gregory) It’s a great tool for helping you see better and it’s fun to look back at them.

As I write this I realize his interests are pretty narrow and he probably needs to get outside on his bike more. We’ve just had such strange weather. It’s been raining for nearly a month straight. It’s also hard to write about him because he has so many problems at school right now and since school occupies so much of the week there isn’t much else to write. If I start writing about his school it will turn into another sort of post and probably evolve in to a rant so I’ll leave it for another time.

So there it is from Little Man to Bigger Little Man who already has hair on his legs. Where has the time gone?

Decluttering

(sorry but my blog is undergoing some construction--no time to fix it so you'll have to excuse all the ugliness until I can clean up around here)

I spent the weekend organising and yet our house is still a mess. I'm sure it will be this way until we move in December. My project is to to reduce the number of boxes we have in the basement down to half, --mostly things from our Mexico move never opened. The good news is that I found so many boxes of art supplies it made my week last week! Every time we took apart a room to renovate I'd box them up and then lose them in the basement somewhere so I'd end up buying new stuff and starting over again. It was like Christmas finding and organising all those boxes and the kids loved digging into it all. I think there's at least one more box somewhere.

I've been emptying the kids rooms too in preparation for the move. There are a lot of baby things that we don't need anymore¨*sniffle* so that really cuts out the clutter. I've reread some books recently too that really inspired me to ruthlessly declutter--Clear You Clutter With Feng Shui and Amanda Blake Soule's book The Creative Family, (great book by the way). I like what she says about looking at toys for your kids --"do the toys around you evoke a feeling of beauty?" I noticed oddly enough as I separated things from Charlotte's room that most of the toys that didn't inspire me or evoke a sense of beauty were actually gifts or hand me downs. I do usually buy inspired things like wood toys, books or art supplies for the kids, but it's the "everyone else" factor that gets in the way. It's all well meant and I love the family for the act of buying the gifts for the kids but there's a feeling of responsibility with a gift to keep it even if I don't like it or need it. I certainly felt that as I wondered what to do with the things I'd put aside. All this has me inspired to try to make more gifts for the children that we know and offer them art supplies or special books or well thought out wood toys for their gifts. (by the way for the friends reading this blog I'm not talking about YOU--your gifts were kept!)

The other thing I did was replace all the plastic bins with baskets and what a world of difference that made. The room felt so much better. It was suddenly lighter and airier. I think kids need to be surrounded by beauty to appreciate life and I'm dedicated to getting our whole home in that same order (even if I have a looooong way to go). The little people spaces are a good start though.

I'll post the finished room when I get the last details done and get the new bedding.

Homeschoolin'

My internet has been really snarky and I can never figure out what to do to get it back if Seb's not here so no blogging for two whole weeks. No wifi here just a wire strung across the doorway that Charlotte always trips over. It works for us most of the time though but it went wacko when Seb left.

Husband is back from China for a few weeks and we're trying to get some jobs done in the house. I have to get back to painting the inside of the house again but I just haven't had much energy lately. I'm still getting used to the single mom schedule which really BITES I have to say. The no adult to talk to part is really tough. No matter how much you love your kids at the end of the day you do need someone else to bounce off big people ideas with. I haven't even had the internet for that thankyouverymuch. Okay end of ::rant::

Seb and I have been busy catching up on it all though and our big debate lately is homeschooling. I don't talk about it much here but basically I have always wanted to homeschool the kids since birth but Seb has never wanted me to. I know homeschool is a controversial subject in the US but in France it's taboo to even talk about it. I've only brought it up once in a group of moms and it was as if I'd mentioned incest or bigamy. I was really surprised by the reactions and I quickly bailed out of the discussion with a sort of " yeah you know I'm not sure how I feel about it..." and I left it at that. I think it's all so new in France. After that though I understood Seb's attitude. It's just unheard of to do such a thing here.

Now that we're moving to China though he's considering the homeschooling route a little bit more. He absolutely agrees that Little S is drowning in the public school system. One week into the school year and we already have a note from the teacher for S to join a study support group after school or at lunch and to start with the psych. I pretty much expected it. He's in a big class this year with thirty kids and it's just impossible for him to focus with his learning problems. At the same time what are his learning problems? We still don't know and we may never know so it makes it even harder to get him help.

I'm doing some reading on what I can do for him and how to manage things. I'm more of the unschooling mindset, (John Holt) and Seb being rigid and well, French..., wants him to follow a routine with a little bell and a CNED book. Maybe we can meet in the middle. Or maybe we'll find a great little alternative school in Shanghai after all. You can see I'm a little terrified of the whole thing. I suppose because if it doesn't work I'll have Big S breathing down my neck saying "I TOLD YOU SO!" At the same time I think I can do better than the public school system where three years later he still can't correctly write his name and he needs after school help after a seven hour day.

I'm off to bed to sleep on the whole issue...again.

Summer!

It's the end of the year and our neighbors are slowly starting to leave for their month long vacations which brings home the fact that soon we'll be leaving too ....for good! We haven't really planned a vacation this year since there's just so much going on (a major peeve about international moves--they eat up your entire summer!) We'll try very hard to squeeze in a last minute week somewhere but it isn't going to be easy. I hope we can do it. There's just so much to do.

We have a little inflatable pool on the terrace, actually pretty big, attracting lots of neighbor kids attention. I've invited some kids over on Thursday for a very last hurrah for Little S (must.stop.inviting.kids) and that will be it. It's just so hard to think of cutting him off from his friends but he's at an age where if you leave them alone for five seconds they do some pretty awful things--dirt clods in the window (they were meant for the side of the house mom!--as if THAT were okay) making a medevial pot dinner out of foraged bamboo shoots and things from the kitchen (they used an entire box of powdered chocolate and half a bag of flour--fun cleaning that up) and writing on the newly painted bedroom wall, (they blamed charlotte but there was a very detailed chateau in the picture, yeah right) Normally S is a good kid but in a mixer he's sometimes a demon child and I don't know why. Is it the other kids? Some of these things seem really out of character for him. I guess the addition of another kid brings out some need to be somebody else. People always tell him he's timid and he should talk more so I think that bugs him. Lately though he's been really testing the limits.

So the Kool-Aid mom is tired and yes I actually fell asleep last night fully dressed for at least the third time in a month so this is definitely the last invite. I'm kidded out.

Nostalgie

It's the last day of the school year for my little guy and his last day of maternal (kindergarten) *sniff* Next year it's off to the big school. Lots of changes for someone so little. He seems to be handling things okay though. He's used to change I guess.

We had a fabulous going away-end of school year party for him on Wednesday in our backyard--pretty much the same party we had last year. About 25 kids came with their moms and even some dads showed up this time. It was a big barbecue and everyone brought a dish of some kind, tons of great food. Since we don't have the front gate on the house yet some kids just drifted in from the neighborhood which was funny. It was to the point where I was afraid we'd get a fine for not having a permit or something,--so many cars lined up on the street! We made sure to have a giant water balloon fight--which was probably why we had so many strays show up---they saw us filling them in the driveway. I filled over a hundred balloons and they were gone in minutes. Like last year we put a little baby pool at the bottom of our giant slide and then we watered down the slide so it was really slippery. Great fun but really, really exhausting to organize everything. I love party planning though. If we weren't so saturated with the move and the renovations I'd have been more relaxed about it all.




The real estate agent came and estimated the house. She liked what we've done with everything and said it should rent fairly fast especially because now because it's the renting season when everyone looks for a place. The sign goes up next week. Yep, It feels real now. Once the house is rented there's no turning back for three years. Butterflies! The weird part is that we don't have a place to live in Shanghai yet. I don't think we'll have time to go visit again before we leave either. We just have our preferences registered with a few agencies. Oh well, I think in some kook way that there's a place meant for us so if we can't go find the rental right now I don't want to push it. We'll find something the week we arrive. More butterflies!

Seb has his 40th birthday this month and I can't organise anything. I gave it a go but it just got so overwhelming that I gave up. My in-laws won't come and I didn't feel like begging,--no energy--but I did feel like they wanted to be enticed to come. I'm tired of paying their hotel each time they come so I think it's best for everyone if we just let it go. I feel awful but I think his going to Shanghai is a big present anyway. I mean what more could a change of life birthday offer? I'm not sure what to do so last minute though. The movers come the week after his birthday so I think if we try to do something we're just going to be stressed thinking of that the whole time.

Today I organised a picnic because it's my cantine day anyway. Once a week I take three kids plus mine and feed them lunch and the other moms take them the other days. It's worked out well and it gives me time to do plaster and paint on the days I don't have to go get Little S. Because it's the last day of school today though I'm taking three other kids out with us,--eight kids! I just couldn't think of S's other little friends stuck inside on the last day. The cantine at his school is really loud and the kids all hate it (which is why we started the cantine club). It should be fun. I'm taking them to a little river in the park by the school. They're all excited.

I think I found a job too. I won't jinx it but if it works out I'll start in September. I should know more in the next few weeks. I hope it works out. I've already signed up for classes and I don't want to cancel them so the job has to work around my schedule. Fingers crossed.

Education privée

I have lots of pictures to share of Little S's room and all the hard work I've put into the paint and woodwork. He still hasn't fully moved back in but he will soon, just as soon asI paint a few pieces of furniture and put together his new bookshelf.

Meanwhile on top of all of this renovating business and cleansing the house I'm starting to look around at private schools for Little S. The public school is okay and he loves his class, but even S's teacher admitted to us that a child like him needs more individual attention than the public system can offer him. It's fine now while he's still in kindergarten but next year when he starts elementary school she's told us he'll likely fall behind unless he gets help. So I'm just sort of window shopping in the private sector, but in all likelihood he'll start CP next year in the public school with the rest of his friends and we'll see how it goes.

On Saturday the Montessori school, practically in our backyard, had an open house in the morning and I visited just for the heck of it. I figured if I start work in the Fall we can afford it and even though it would be nearly half my measely salary it would be worth it. I think I'd probably built this school up into something else, probably because Little S's school in Mexico was so chic and gorgeous and the directrice was a dynamic pistol really passionate about her school. She sold Montessori like street vendors in Mexico sell rare trinkets. In fifteen minutes we were convinced there was no way he couldn't go there! We enrolled him right away after the first meeting.

Saturday was an entirely different story. The school was freezing, so cold I had to keep my winter hat and coat on. There was no coffee or snacks and in my mind I'd already said to myself "I can't drink too much coffee or I'll have to pee! oh well at least I can check out the toilets when I pee" But there was no coffee or water or anything. Okay maybe not entirely necessary but an important welcome gesture if you ask me. I was the last to walk in and there were about a dozen cold parents sitting in a circle, huddled around a table of materials. They were staring at their shoes, clearing their throats and listening to a low-talking director drone on and on and ON about the problems with public schools. Every once in a while he'd pick up a very worn out Montessori cube and explain it to the parents in minute detail, but who could hear because he was mumbling so much? And then for no reason he'd start talking about something completely different. The plants in the schoool were all dead or in the process of dying a slow death, frozen no doubt and the desks were all worn with broken or missing parts. Most of the furniture was mismatched, cheap plastic and the walls were plastered in tattered, half hung posters from years gone by. There was a huge, nasty television in every room with video tapes stacked nearby (groan) and in one room the mess was so bad that there was an overflowing garbage sac on the floor, papers spilling out, that we actually had to daintily step around to go into the classrom. "Voila c'est notre petit école!" the director kept saying sticking his chest out. The whole school was like this though, "a petit mess".

It was one of those moments in my life where I said "I can do better than this." You know those moments where you see someone doing something you love and doing it badly. I said to myself "I'd love to have this school. I could do this so much with it." I left the school with some badly photocopied papers (first impressions people) and a big question mark over my head. All the other parents stayed behind to ask more questions, apparently interested (bigger question mark), but I was eager to leave.

a typical Montessori classroom found randomly on the internet--lots of light, plants, wood furniture, clean...and most likely WARM. This is what I'd had built up in my head but it wasn't at all like this...

Later I told my neighbor about it. She has her son in a private school nearby and she said "oh yeah they're all like that. Dimi's school too." It didn't seem to bother her. I think for the amount of money you pay they could at least clean and organize the schools. For me the learning environment should be really nice. I always reorganized the classrooms I worked in, took old things off the walls and tried to clean up. It motivated ME as a teacher. In Montessori one of the main principles is that the school is beautiful, --they're often filled with plants and usually have nice, wood furniture to help the kids learn to love and respect the learning environment. The kids in a Montessori school even help raise and care for the plants and I believe they clean the help clean the classroom too. It certainly wasn't the case in this school. All I could think of was poor Little S if he had to go here. He'd end up like those plants!

I'm curious to see some of the other private schools in the area. I wonder if they're all such a mess like my neighbor says. If that's the case then no thanks. I'd rather home school.

Stuck

Things are really crazy right now and I'm still finding it hard to write and impossible to draw or create. I'm really in a stuck place in my head and I have been for a few weeks now. I wonder if it's the holiday season. It seems to blow in every year around Thanksgiving time or around the time the in-laws start planning our Christmas with them, which brings up last year and then the fights start. We don't bother engaging in the arguments anymore and Seb bless him and his little hot temper was very calm this year. I was shocked because hearing the yelling on the other end of the line made ME get all hot under the collar. But he was graceful and that just made all hell break loose on their end.

So we won't be dong the in-laws Christmas this year because of the type of cake we brought last year. Don't even ask because the cake in question is just a catalyst and probably a fitting metaphor for the LAYERS of problems my extended family has. It's hard for me because it brings up old issues of me moving here, leaving my family and adjusting, all the adjusting! Why can't they just be all warm and fuzzy? It also makes me upset for the kids, but I think under the circumstances it's best that they don't get too close to the family because honestly they'll eventually pose the same questions I'm posing today, "who are these insane people?" And they'll get hurt because that brand of psychotic doesn't think before they speak and has too many missing filters. I was worried that the kids had overheard us later discussing the problems, and they probably did because the house is small right now, but then I said "yes well at least they'll know early that these people aren't easy and it's not THEM at fault when the branch snaps in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation." Because the branch snaps a lot with them. Seb has been apologizing for them to me since I first met him and it has helped me deal with them, knowing that HE thinks they're nuts.

So we aren't going anywhere for the holidays which is kind of shocking because suddenly we have no obligations. Weird. Sad for the kids and hard to explain. But to be truthful a little refreshing. Very refreshing. We are free.

And Friday was weird. We went to S's school for a meeting to discuss the two months of observation by the pedi-psych at the school who has been interviewing and observing him. I was all set for her to tell us he was "normal, just a little shy" but her conclusion was that we should probably look into further testing for autism (she didn't know he'd had this in his file already from his school in Mexico). We aren't really sure exactly what she was saying because she isn't allowed to actually diagnose him, she isn't trained for that, but she said he had several signs indicating to her that he needed to be tested and observed for the scope of autism. We left the school a little shocked. A little defeated. Everything from our perspective seemed to be that it was going so well for him at this school but evidently he's so non committal in his lack of speech and body language that he's beyond the shy introvert. There's a problem. It makes my stomach churn to even write about it. I really hope she's wrong but my gut instinct tells me she isn't. We have to go for further testing. I'm really frustrated and sad because I'd pretty much let all those worries go and now here they are again staring me in the face. I know he has serious communication issues and he's finding it harder and harder to put his emotion into a proper outlet so maybe this is a way for him to get help. I'm trying to look at it in a positive way.

Seb is away for two weeks so it was especially hard this week to get all this dumped in our laps and then have him hop on a plane again. My head is so full. The house is a wonderful distraction actually. For once I'm glad to have it and all its work.

Angels on my shoulder

Tomorrow my guy will be five. Whoa. Where's my baby?

Whenever his birthday comes around I get nostalgic. I think back to how scared I was to bring him home from the hospital. I was a geyser of tears, a hormonal basket case. I had a huge panic attack the night before the big departure for home and I had to be given a Xanax by night duty doctor. The nurse called from my room, "is it okay if she takes it because she's breastfeeding? Yes but I think it's a case where she really does need it" "well, yes her milk isn't really in so it's probably okay for tonight" Nobody knows that story. I cried on an interns shoulder and said "I can't do this!" And I stayed awake all night staring at Little S in his bassinette with this impossible fear gripping my throat. I ended up taking him home because I didn't have a choice. You can't stay in the hospital indefinitely can you? Or can you? I took him home and guess what. I didn't do such a bad job. And I didn't drop him, not once. I did trip on the steps the very first day home though and fell down the whole staircase, bare metal parts and all. The stairs were new and didn't have the treads yet so they were slippery. Bam! Bam! Bam! My mom screamed and lunged after us. I reached the last step bruised and breathless, and there I was. I mean there we were. I was miraculously still holding him cradled against my chest. That's when I knew that mothering is a complete and awe inspiring reflex that we have no need to control. It was useless to worry about not being a capable mother. It isn't something you learn it's something you know. I have to remind myself of that all the time.

On Wednesday I organized a kiddie birthday party for ten even though the new concrete driveway was barely dry and the new terrace has missing bricks. I made this very homemade looking train cake that I was really dubious about, we played American party games and there were prizes for the best party hat because everyone was asked to come wearing a silly party hat, and there were prizes for other games. We drew pictures, sang songs and believe me I kept those kids busy!



By six o'clock everyone was exhausted. I'd survived my first kid party. This was no Mexican kiddie party like so many we'd been to in the past with a rented party hall and hired catering. This was all me working with one electrical outlet and an awful lot of extension cords in a basement. I'd worried so much and I was totally unprepared but it all worked out somehow. The house is in chaos we've never known. There's virtually no electricity and three of the upstairs rooms are closed off because of the work and the danger of falling objects, ahhh! We have our new front door stored in the hallway and it's enormous. I'd burned a giant hole in the carpet with the heat gun and that's one of the first things you see when you walk in the house. It's a landmine of possible child catastrophies. No bother we had the party in the basement and I decorated so much it didn't look like a basement anymore. I played music and we danced!



The kids hugged me when they left and the moms told me the next day that they'd had as much fun as the kids. Two French people have since asked me for the cake recipe. It was delicious. The party was a success.

Even now it's still all reflex. I'm not sure how I pulled off a birthday party in the condition the house is in, really people kept asking me over the last week "are you sure you want to do this?" because they'd drive by and see the concrete truck spinning around or they'd see me cutting this foot high grass with a huge power mower. Somehow I did it. Being a mom comes with special powers. It has to because I'm in awe of myself right now.

FrUmP

There is a period after having a baby where most women go through a serious frump-slump. It's a grace period of about six months and no one pays much attention to it for those first few months. It's allowed and even expected. Moms go back to work and get back in the stream of the living again. If the mom doesn't go back to work though it can become critical. I wasn't so aware of it last year just after having Charlotte (grace period) but this year I'm really noticing it because evidently it can and does continue through the toddler years.


It includes:

oversized t-shirts
ill fitting jeans
no make-up
hair in a ponytail
no haircut or BAD haircut
a "favorite" sweat jacket
sneakers never heels (or dirty sneakers)
dirty, ragged fingernails
never wearing jewelry
unshaved armpits/legs
bad posture
always looking tired (& complaining)

I see it all the time as I follow the moms to pick up our kids at the preschool. I make mental notes of what not to do. I'm not naturally glamorous but I'm aware that frump is contagious and frump can spread like a disease. I try to avoid those clichés. I am trying to try harder.

But obviously not hard enough.

A mom came up to me yesterday at the school and gave me a usb key full of cute pictures of the kids at their little circus gym that they go to every Friday. They take a bus and her husband took tons of photos, and to be funny he shot some photos of me and another mom friend outside the bus window seeing our kids off.



Agh! Frump! Ill fitting jeans, unwashed hair, oversized shirt, bad posture, etc, etc. and unshaved armpits (I bet). I look like the underpaid nanny of that adorable child (who I'm holding like a sack of potatoes). I am one of those BEFORE photos in the before and afters they do on reality makeover shows. The fashion disaster.

The other person in the photo is a mom friend who looks fabulous all the time. She's so put together every day. ANYWAY, time for a makeover. Time to dump the frump and clean out the closet.

On coming back the same dad also took a picture of Seb out the window who was there to pick up Little S. Seb looks great! What is this well dressed man doing with that frumpy woman?

(Just by chance it's the same mom friend in the photo too, don't mean to paste her on the internet--like I said she always looks great)

Clean machine

Seb and I have this ongoing battle because his car is spotless and mine isn't. Easy enough if you don't have to haul around kids and if your driveway isn't a mud pit. We have two kinds of mud--black mud that if you touch it you have to scrub your hands with a brush and this green mud thats all limey and full of sand. Both are impossible to clean and everywhere in the yard. The kids are constantly attracted to it because they know it's a way to drive me nuts.

I wash my car every week and then vacuum maybe once a month. Seb washes his car every week and polishes it AND vacuums it. He's so anal about it. I refuse to even drive it because if something happens I don't want to hear about it for the rest of my life. Besides it's a giant tank of a grandpa car.

The kids have to take off their shoes before they get in his car. In mine they can usually find an extra pair if they need to. You get the idea.

My friend Gwyn sent me this video which about sums it up.

About a boy

The wildflowers are going crazy in the front yard and so are the dandelions. He stands where we made snowmen just a few months ago. He begged me to make them all the way back home in the car, and all the way up the walk to the front door. I was cold and Charlotte was heavy. I just wanted to get inside. My fingers were numb. But I vowed that I would listen more and not be so annoyed. It seemed important to him.

My mom told me last year as I held little Charlotte, "honey try to listen to little boys more. They need you to do that more than little girls do." I was tired from a crying newborn and the transition, so much of it in such a short time. I was snapping at him "please stop bugging me!" She doesn't usually give motherly advice. In fact she never has. I have often thought about that advice and that moment, cringing.

***

Cold hands and very wet mittens, mine not his.

I cheated when he wasn't looking and made the small snowman's body out of a rock. He didn't know. It made it go so much faster.

He watched the snowman out the window off and on all evening, "is it going to be there all the time?"

"no it's going to be there for a few days though."

"but it will be there last morning?"

"you mean tomorrow morning, yes probably."

***

I'm trying to be patient and listen more. It's the hardest part about being a parent.

Easter egg hunt

This is the first Easter where Little S has caught on to things, well technically it should have been last year but I think we were in hmm, let me check my blog, be right back... oh yeah, we were in the Yucatan. Ohhh dear I didn't need to see that! Okay so we skipped Easter last year because we were in p a r a d i s e (no need for celebrating holidays in paradise). And so Little S had his first traditional Easter this year with egg hunt and all the trimmings.

I'm not really a good mom for remembering how to do things perfectly and recreating memories. I forget things most moms know automatically like that the bunny hides the eggs (saw that on someone else's blog, oops), that the baskets are for the eggs, and blah, blah, blah. I just kind of left the baskets on the doorstep filled with candy and chocolates and the kids believed the bunny left them. Later in the day we dyed the eggs, i know, i know backwards, right, and then we did an egg hunt. I hid the eggs while he watched, oops, okay whatever. It all worked out and I kind of like our tradition so even if it's wrong and goofy it worked well and we'll probably stick to it.

In the early afternoon after a small lunch we went to Paris for a drive and stumbled on the Bois de Boulogne which is awesome. It's a really pretty wood just outside the city with dirt and concrete trails. We had a nice walk and Little S got to ride his new bike, Charlotte her Disney piano car (mil's well chosen christmas gift, cough, cough), and we got to see the entrance the the Jardin d'Acclimatation. The entrance only because fees are really expensive and confusing. Anywho, they have an exhibit all centered on The USA which meant tee-pees, Ford Mustangs, Jazz and hamburgers, cliche´ but kind of funny, so we hung out debating on whether we'd go in or not. Umm, that'd be no.




Overheard at the entrance, a guy on his cell phone "beh, tu sais les etats unis c'est pas vraiment mon truc" (the states aren't really my thing) which made me laugh for some reason because he was standing in front of a Mustang, and I don't know it was just so cliché and he was being so French.



When we got home we fed the kids and put them in bed, then we had our own dinner--candlelight and all the snazz. The kids were exhausted and I just wanted some time alone with Seb before he left for his two weeks. We had a nice time but I could feel his tension about the upcoming trip and as soon as we finished dessert he was off hunting for his passport and internet cables. I've been so happy that he hasn't had to travel lately. I guess I've gotten too used to it.

I hope everyone reading this had a Happy Easter and overdosed on chocolate like me, because really that's the best part of the holiday.

The day after Easter

The cherry blossoms started falling off the tree today, too soon I was thinking. So sad to see them falling with each wind gust. I wanted to enjoy them longer. The tree just bloomed last week. Then Little S ran outside all excited and said "it's like snow mom!" and he laughed and waved his arms in them. "Look Charlotte, it's snowing!" and he went down the slide covered in petals and said "bring Charlotte out in the snow mom!"

and I could see that weird moment

illuminated as---

my children

seeing time

as having no essence



I know that one day they won't see it that way. They won't be able to enjoy the moment because they'll be so wrapped up in the next moment. I'm going to stop pushing them so hard to be bigger and stronger and better. I'm going to let them enjoy themselves and be children for as long as possible.

who cares about an eighteen month old not walking yet or how a four year old can only count to three and then skips to six seven eight?

I'm going to try not to care about these things so much.

And that's where I was today when I stopped to watch the cherry blossoms fall.

Outside,

thinking

about letting go.

Charlotte's room

The fun thing about the upstairs bedrooms are that the walls and ceilings are these flimsy plywood sheets that we're tearing out this Summer. They're awful!-- glued in some places and badly caulked in others. Hey whatever was needed at the time. The previous owners fixed half the house with duct tape and the other half with a caulk gun. Then they painted everything green. Done!

In Little S's room it's all covered in really ugly wallpaper (not as ugly as the hallway mind you), but in Charlotte's room it's a veritable blank canvas screaming to be enhanced with a little paint.



Little Miss has a lot of my sloppy, frustrated muraliste angst on her walls and ceilings.



This was so much fun!




And so the kids can draw on the walls like me I painted this old grenier door with chalkboard paint. They love it. I have to warn you though that chalkboard paint is highly addictive. I have about a million future projects for the rest of my can of paint.

Links for kids

For my blogiversary (four years!) I thought I'd paste together all those great kid's links that everyone shared a few posts back. We're really enjoying them. Now you can just save the link to this post and voila! you have a nice selection.

If you have any more to add later just leave a note in the comments here and I'll add them to the list. And if there's a particular game that you think is good within one of these links on the list leave a comment too. I'll be adding some notes to them & any more links that I find that are particularly artistic or scientific geared to the under ten set.




Starfall.com
uptoten.com
internet4classrooms
kindergarten links
earobics gamegoo
national geographics kids
Poisson Rouge
Noggin (Em says Jacks Big Music Show is good here)
jeux.fr
Discovery Kids
pbskids.org (we're loving Mister Rogers Build A Neighborhood game. Lots of good stuff here for early computer users).

Cookin' with gas

Both kids love their little kitchen. Heck, *I* love the little kitchen. They play in this room more than the other one because this is where the little kitchen is set up.

I'm hoping when her room is bigger we can open a cafe/bistro (table and chairs, tablecloths, napkins and this tea set of course). We already spend a lot of time playing this but it will be more fun if we can expand it. Yes WE. I said WE. Someone has to teach them how to play cafe/bistro you know.

Hier soir

Bits of our evening as the sky outside turned a lovely shade of purpley blue and yet my camera wouldn't focus on the trees. I got really frustrated with it. It was Charlotte's bath night--they take turns. Little S was mad because he wanted to take a bath too so he crashed cars on the floor making lots of commotion and threatened to put his car in the bath. All the while I made papillotes of vegetables and cut up chicken for grilling in a honey-soy-ginger sauce. It wasn't anything special but it was one of those evenings where the camera was on the table and I kept picking it up.

I'm glad I do this sometimes. It's important to take pictures of nothing special.

Third culture kids

This morning as I was removing the layers of winter padding from Little S I heard a father talking to his daughter in a language closely resembling English. Just as I was tuning in to figure out what it was he asked me if I spoke English to Little S. I explained to him that I was American and then I realized quickly that the little girl was Lison, a small person's name I must hear 150 times a day in our house. "mom Lison's gonna come over and play one day." "Lison wasn´t here today and I was sad." "I want Lison to come over, pleeeease mom." I always explain to Little S that mommies first have to become friends and then Little boys and girls can play at each other's houses. I knew though that Lison's mommy was part of the small group of mommies I am slowly becoming a part of so it was eventual that we would meet up and become friends. But anyway back to the language of the dad,-- it was dutch.

Before leaving for Mexico we did the famous cultural training that many families get before taking off to another country. I talk about this training a lot because it was interesting, but mostly because for two days we had the ear of a 50 something year old French woman, our teacher, who had spent an entire career meeting expats. She had three kids all raised in South America and who were now adults back in France and she had lots of insight into what she called Third Culture Kids. A true TCK is more like a military brat or embassy kid, but bicultural children also fall into this category too. Our trainer explained that the phenomenon with these type of kids is that they always seek out other third culture kids in their peer groups. They don't feel comfortable with regular kids. They also tend to seek out the misfits or oddballs in the class because they feel more at ease with them. I thought it was really funny that Little S's three friends are the little dutch girl, Louis whose parents have travelled all over the world (ie. Myla's boy) and another little boy who wears glasses and vests to school and has a 19th century French name. He looks like a little lawyer. He's very cute but I don't think he exactly fits in to the Power Ranger club if you know what I mean. Little S seems to get bullied a lot and he's been telling me about it lately saying he cried after he was pushed by Maxime or Thibaut. It seems to be the boys club of locals whose parents I know band together outside the school. They are nice enough but it's a group I feel intimidated by too. They don't seem interested in letting outsiders into their circle. Their children must feel that and I think it carries over into the playground as they choose to bully the kids who are different for a reason they probably don't readily understand.

It's funny that Little S's group found each other among the 23 kids in the class even though they aren't big talkers at this age. They really do seek each other out and bond together. I was a misfit kid growing up because my parents moved a lot and it made me very shy. I always had an attraction to oddballs or bicultural kids as friends. I'm curious if other parents of bicultural children notice their kids making friends with bilingual kids or misfit kids.

There are lots of books written about Third Culture Kids. If you link to the Wiki article above most are listed. What I found fascinating in that article is that I was reminded that Barack Obama is a TCK. I think it explains a lot about his personality. TCK are tough skinned and adaptable to any situation. Lucky us to have such a president.