An Aquarium in Paris

I'm so tired. Tristram woke up at 5 this morning and wouldn't go back to sleep; we gave up and just got him up for the day at 6:30 after an hour and a half of crying while we tried to soothe him. He's napping now. I don't know how we used to do that every day after even less sleep at night. Fortunately he's usually quite a good sleeper now. I guess he wanted to show Jessie what it's like for the first six to nine months with a baby.

We did have a good day yesterday. We went to the Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie, which is the big science museum in Paris. It's a lot like the Exploratorium in SF except that it's much bigger and the space is more interestingly designed on the inside. We got one-year passes, since we knew we couldn't stay long enough to do everything, and we wanted to be able to come back when it wasn't so full of families, and Jonathan wants to go the planetarium. We walked through their origins of the earth exhibit, which comprises both geology and space as well as some basic physics. We looked at the expo on infectious diseases that is about to end; unfortunately since it was Sunday their massive (up to 100 players) simulation game that takes up a floor was not running. We went through the "Jeux de Lumiere," which are a lot of fun optical illusion toys, and then swung by the very small aquarium since Tristram still loves to watch fish. It looked like there was tons of fun stuff on the grounds outside, but since the fountain was still frozen about halfway in from the edges in mid-afternoon we decided to save it for a warmer day. Another curiously named thing we didn't go to was an expo on puberty called "Zizi Sexuel." "Zizi" is a silly name for a young boy's penis, so that's basically like saying "Sexual Pee-pee." It sounds strange to American ears.

One of the best things about it is that they have a whole wing (the Cite des Enfants) that's kid stuff, separated into ages 2-7 and 5-10. In the big room before you enter the main sections they have lots of kid-sized benches, each with a drawer of games and books, all different. Again, a great place to take a slightly older child. I think that is my new reason for being sad to leave: I'd love to take him there in a year when he is two.

We watched Clueless last night (one of Jonathan's Sparkly Day presents, since we have both been on a Jane Austen kick). We tried to come up with a list of disguised movie adaptations of books, but it was pretty short. Can anyone add to this list:?

Clueless
West Side Story
Armageddon
Ten Things I Hate About You

Bad News, Good News, As Yet Uncategorized News

First, the bad news: Our camera is gone. It apparently got left in the park on Sparkly Day when Jonathan set it down to tie his shoe. Our pictures of Sparkly Day? Gone. Of the first pre-spring blossoms? Gone. Of Tristram discovering new toys? Gone. Our chances to get pictures of him with Jessie this week? Gone. Our $300 that we spent on it? Gone. Now we either have to spring for a new one or go without pictures for the next six months. I'm trying to look at it as one of those unexpected expenses that always pop up. In other words, this year's version of car repairs. We're going to put up fliers, and check with the gardien once things are open again, but the chances of getting it back are slim at best.

The good news is that Jessie is here! She is playing with Tristram right now. He seems to prefer her to either of us at the moment. She is very tired, but thinks she can make it till 9 tonight to reset herself and avoid jet lag. Tomorrow we will find an adventure for her.

Tristram got his pull toy this morning, and he loves it. He hasn't quite figured out how to pull it; he more tends to lift it up by the string and carry it around. I'd post you a picture, but guess what?

Yesterday we went to the Hotel des Invalides to see Napoleon's tomb. The walk up to the front is strange; it's got the biggest cobblestones in France and is surrounded by forbidden grass edged with topiaries that, as far as I can tell, are shaped like shells. At least I choose to tell it that way because they're all so lopsided that they would never be able to fire, which makes it quite funny indeed. We thought we'd save the entrance fee to the military history museum and just go to the tomb, but you have to pay one entry fee for the whole deal, even though they have separate entrances. Napoleon's tomb is a strange combination of really elegant, beautiful design--like, for Marechal Foch's memorial, the windows are all blue glass so the room is bathed in a blue light. Very simple, very striking. Napoleon's tomb itself reminds me vaguely of a grand piano, though I doubt I could explain why. If you look up, the gilding and overly detailed paintings all over the ceiling are extremely garish. Meretricious, even--or, as we shortened it to make our favorite insult in college, merry, That would make it seasonally appropriate. Sounds like a TV special, doesn't it? "A Very Meretricious Christmas with Napoleon Bonaparte."

Since we had already paid, we went to the ancient armor & arms section of the museum. Three observations: 1) Knights were, for the most part, TERRIBLE riders. 2) Japanese swords were much higher quality than European. Compare the swords over 500 years old--the European ones are rusted through; the Japanese ones are still gleaming and sharp. 3) Child-sized armor is really horrifying to see. All the more so because it's kind of cute. I don't think it would have sent such a chill to my heart to see Tristram-sized armor before I had him to size it by. Granted, it was for much older children, who were tiny both because they were ancient and because they were French, but still. Oh, and one final observation: No matter how many times you've seen them, the super-bulging codpieces on old suits of armor are still impossible not to laugh at.

You may have noticed that I've dropped the stay/go rubric. That's because of the last bit of news: We are coming back in June. We can't afford to stay with only the remnants of Jonathan's teaching income here; we're going to have at least one of us work in the States and still get his Nanterre checks. Which of us works is still somewhat open. I'm going to start my job search in January (very soon now!), and if I get a permanent job in Southern California, or one elsewhere that pays enough to cover his tuition and our expenses, I'll be working. If not, he's got a nearly full-time SAT teaching job that will run through the summer. With the economy the way it is, that seems the more likely option. Maybe I'll replace the stay/go with the sad to go/glad to go dichotomy of the day.

Sparkly Day was a good day. Tristram warmed up to his new dog quite thoroughly, and by night was dragging it around the room and lying down to give it big hugs. He's also finished half his dried fruit already (Jonathan helped).

We went for walk the other direction down the Seine, and got to the end of the path, where there's a big inlet into town, presumably for the use of the industrial section over there. I noticed a couple of very comforting signs about the weather for the rest of the winter: pussy willows are already coming out, and the quince is already flowering. Those are both sure signs of spring, so we can't be in for too terrible of a winter ahead, or too long of one. And even if we are, I got long underwear, so I am coldproof now.

We took Tristram to a new playground, the one right by our building. They have older-kid equipment and are usually full, so we take him to the one with baby toys, but we figured since everything was empty why not? We had him go down the slide with us holding him by the waist, which is his new absolute favorite thing to do. He tried to climb back up by himself seven or eight times. Then he helped push his own stroller back to our door, and he was ready to keep heading down the sidewalk instead of coming in with us. The kid loves walking. I'm hoping this is a sign that he'll soon be ready for goal-oriented walking, meaning that we can let him out of his stroller on the way somewhere and put him back in it when he gets tired. That will keep him much, much happier, and will hopefully keep the stroller from becoming the new high chair, which we had to retire when the restraint upset him so much that he refused to eat.

Happy Sparkly Day

Every baby needs one good crying picture. This was taken less than a minute after the smile I posted yesterday--babies are like that. He was smiling again in one more minute.

We have had a good Sparkly Day morning, and we appear to be the only people on the block awake yet (it's ten now). We saved some of our packages for birthdays. Tristram got three presents: bath toys for tonight (thanks, GrandBob and GrandToni!), his giant stuffed dog (thanks, Ramona!), which is enthralling but still a little scary since it's several times his size, and his new crib bumper, which I finished last night. Pictures will follow soon. Hopefully when he pounds on his crib for fun it will muffle the noise a little; the downstairs neighbors have complained that he wakes up their baby, who is about 2 months old.

Jonathan and I are very happy with our haul, but what I enjoyed most was getting to be the Santa parents and set out all the presents after Tristram went to bed. This afternoon we are going to go for a walk along the Seine, in keeping with the Wood family Christmas hike tradition. Tonight we are going to eat buche noel, and hope that we can get another, or something equally festive for New Year's, for Jessie. I don't think it'll keep till Saturday. Tomorrow we are going to try to put in our crab order for the traditional Sparkly Day meal while she is here. I asked our fishmonger a while back if crab would be available for the holidays, and he said yes, it's a tradition here as well. I asked what kind he had, and he showed me in his "bible." They're called tourteau, which translates to "edible crab." I guess the Atlantic does not offer quite the same selection as the Pacific--fortunately I've already gotten used to the dearth of options from the produce aisle. As long as it's good crab, I will be happy.

I've been waxing nostalgic since yesterday, even though on the whole I greatly prefer having a one-year-old to having a newborn. I can make a short list of the things I miss:

1) Having a completely portable baby. It was really nice having it make no difference to his naps whether we were at home or out, being able to wear him all day without getting too tired or sore, and having him only fuss when he was hungry or uncomfortable or lonely to be held, not because he was just sick of being confined or bored.
2) Stinkless poops. Maybe the best reason to breastfeed exclusively as long as possible.
3) Not having to childproof yet. That's the big advantage of having them stay where you put them. Now we can't let him in the kitchen at all; then I could sit him at the far end from the hot stuff with his toys and he'd play and watch me cook.
4) Having him sleep on my chest.
5) The way he smelled when he was tiny.
6) Happy baby noises--the kind they make before they start trying to talk.

We took him to the doctor yesterday for his checkup, and he nearly tore the place apart in his frenzy of excitement at having a new place to play. He went through every toy she had, plus all the paper on the examining table, and it took both Jonathan and me to keep him from jumping off the table to go explore more. He's now the baby other parents point to and say "Regarde, un petit garcon qui marche!" to their children who aren't walking yet. Then they watch us chase him around for a while and start to rethink the urgency of the need for their kids to walk too.

We're waiting on shots, since his nose is still runny, but we got a prescription for a one-time dose of vitamin D since there is very little sunlight in France in winter, and even when there is it's too cold for much bare skin. Here are the new official measurements:

79.5 cm (31 inches)--That means he's increased his height by almost a foot, and by more than 50%, in the last year. Hopefully he'll slow down at some point, or he'll be at least 5 feet tall by the time he starts first grade.
10.25 kg (22.5 lbs)--We're pretty sure this is an undermeasurement, since he was resting one leg on a box of stuff off the end of the scale.

Birthday Boy

One year old! It's hard to believe that in one year he went from unable to control his movements to walking, running, climbing, and starting to talk.

He's had a bunch of new accomplishments lately, so here, for one-year celebration purposes, is a short list:

1) Catching yawns.
2) Perfecting the sign for dog (and using it for every mammal animal he sees--which shows that he's also comprehended the concept of mammals and assigned that concept a name).
3) Drinking from a sippy cup without help.
4) Pushing two chairs together and then pushing them both around the room.
5) Going all night without a feeding.
6) Walking backwards and sideways, and scooting backward across the room on his belly while laughing hysterically.
7) Standing up and walking on the bed, much to our dismay.
8) Putting the cap on a water bottle--he can screw it on and off himself.
9) Looking at books on his own and telling us when he sees a picture of an animal.
10) Wiping his nose on stuff other than his hand, although he still hates it when we do it.

That last one is a good example of how many milestones are not noted at all in baby books. You never hear parents excitedly asking, "When will my baby start wiping his nose on my shirt?" But it seems to me quite an achievement in terms of self-perception and problem-solving.

Tristram also seems to be becoming quite a generous boy. He still likes to feed us, and now it's much more high-level than that. Yesterday I was trying to show him how to play pretend by pretending to sip guava nectar out of an empty sippy cup. He cocked his head and gave me a funny look, and then went and got the one with water in it and tried to put it in my mouth. I guess he thought I was really thirsty.

Jonathan is out doing his Sparkly Day shopping, and I just got back from getting T. Grey one more toy. I'm only able to get one at a time when I'm carrying it back myself--kind of hard to push the stroller, carry it up and down stairs, and carry a lot of extra stuff. But that's okay; we're planning on only giving him one one at a time this year so he won't get overwhelmed and ignore them all. We're also kind of planning to use Jessie as an extra set of hands. Although the stroller is cumbersome, I'm sure I will soon miss the days when one could take him along on his own Sparkly Day shopping.

Bob and Toni got us a Sparkly Day tree before they left--a small one, so it can go on top of our bookshelf. It's decorated with some blue ornaments and most of my earrings. I want to get some blue hyacinths, primroses, and african violets to go around it, but that's another trip that requires extra hands.

Tristram is enjoying his daddy's winter vacation so far. Saturday was farm day, and this time he got to walk around on his own in the barn. The calf has been sent away, but one of the cows is due to give birth any minute, so by the next farm event in February there will be a brand new calf, and hopefully some new piglets too. Their barn is sort of divided into rooms with stalls in each, and Tristram loved it, but got so excited that after a while he just sort of ran from room to room without slowing down to actually look at the animals. He got to pet the rabbits a little through the wire fronts of their hutches, so I think that was his favorite. No goats this time, since their room was swarmed with children and they were staying away toward the back of their pen. The ones that were in front were so annoyed at constantly having their faces grabbed (strangely, it's parents more often than kids who fail to realize that having your face grabbed over and over is REALLY ANNOYING--kids go more often for the top of the head or the neck) that they were starting to nip people. In a few years Tristram will have to learn that some animals nip and one needs to be careful about that, but he's too young now, so I kept him out of range. Also, one very obnoxious boy kept grabbing their hay off the ground and throwing it at them, while his father stood by never so much as whispering a suggestion that one ought not to throw things at goats. Good thing my parents included that in my early etiquette lessons. I mean, specifically the rule was no throwing fish on the ducks, but I was able to generalize.

It was a short trip, since he was a little overexcited, but it was a big hit. Hopefully next time he will slow down long enough for us to get some good pictures. Yesterday I made his birthday cake, since it was solstice and also the day I started his birth. We'll have another treat tonight, and a fancy pastry from the store for his actual birthday. He was terribly upset with me for disappearing into the kitchen for so long, but once it was ready I haven't seen him love anything I've made him quite so much. He even succeeded in getting both the bowl and spoon away from me, so not only his face but his hands and our living room got pretty well covered in carrot-pineapple cake. I think I'm going to put the recipe up on the McKenzie's Recipes blog to make sure I have it to make for him again.

Butte-Chaumont

I am behind on my blogging again. My excuse is that immediately after I downloaded all my new photos into this computer, Jonathan took it to work for two days. Also, Tristram has been so clingy I can barely get dressed. On Thursday I was home alone with him for twelve hours and didn't get one single stroke of sweeping done. I think it's a combination of feeling a little sick--he's got a runny nose--and missing his GrandBob and GrandToni.

Sunday was their last full day here. We went to Notre Dame in the morning. The plan was to go to La Ste. Chappelle too, but Jonathan needed to run to the hardware store first, and since the lines get long so quickly on Ile de la Cite we didn't wait for Ste. Chappelle. Notre Dame is quite an impressive building. It was extremely crowded, too. Jonathan felt weird about being there on Sunday morning, since they have services going on, but I think if you choose to worship in Notre Dame, knowing that it's the tourist destination it is, you are okay with the idea of being watched. I think it bespeaks quite a dramatic exhibitionist streak in one's religiosity, since it's not like there's a shortage of quieter churches in Paris. They probably think of it as the last legal form of proselytizing in France, though it's even better because the proselytizees come to them. Anyway, it was our most touristy morning, but a pleasant one nonetheless.

For the afternoon, we headed to Butte-Chaumont, which is as far as I can tell from Parisians and Rueillois the most beloved park in Paris. It's not in any tourist info, though; we only discovered it because I got a book of Paris walking tours written in French for Parisians after we got here. The picture at the top is the view up through one of the caves in the park. In summer there's a big waterfall running through there, too, but they shut down the water features in winter. Except, of course, for the (very shallow) lake, which was largely frozen over. We spent a good while watching a Canada goose try to swim/walk through the ice crust without much success. Jonathan kept marveling at its silliness for not going back through the path it had already broken and walking around the concrete edge to where it was trying to go. Then he remembered that "goose" is also a term of insult denoting extreme foolishness and inability to reason out logical courses of action, and concluded that now we know why.

We went up to the little restaurant in the park for lunch. They don't serve prepared meals so much as big hunks of snack food--we got two plates of cheese, a plate of ham, a plate of chorizo, and a jar of rillettes de canard (duck spread). Of course they serve bread with it. It turned out to be one of the best meals we've had our whole time here. And we discovered that chorizo is one of Tristram's favorite foods. (He also loves black olives and cucumber now, but more on that later.) I've heard some nonsense about babies not liking spicy food, but I don't what babies that might be. It seems quite the opposite to me, though then again Tristram has been used to spicy food since before he was born, both in utero and via my milk. I think babies who are fussy eaters most likely have parents who are weird about food and don't eat lots of things themselves. Just like most kids who won't eat vegetables have parents who don't eat vegetables (or who overcook them or serve--bleah! canned vegetables). In any case, trying new flavors is one of Tristram's greatest delights.

He did have an unfortunate meltdown on the train home, earning us our first dirty looks since we've been here. He had just had way too much stroller for one week. This current stage of being too big to wear but not big enough to walk on his own (he can walk, he just can't understand that we are walking in a particular direction and we are not sitting down in the mud) is hard on him. He calmed down when we took him out and held him instead, which is what we had to do all the way home.

Puppy and Fleecy

Tristram likes to show off his favorites for the camera.

Let's see, where was I? Saturday night we got to go out alone for the first time since we've been here. Grandparents are great! I'm sure their enthusiasm for babysitting would wane if they lived too near us, but as it is we love taking advantage of their willingness to look after our progeny. Plus, he adores them.

French movie theaters, as it happens, are much nicer than American. Their celebrity photos along the walls are better shot and better displayed, the theaters are better-looking and much, much more comfortable, they play better music, their popcorn sizes are much more reasonable, the movies are loud, but not painfully so... All around, a much better experience. Except for this: Americans do advertising better. If you come early, you watch the ads while you wait. When the movie starts, you have previews and then movie. In France, you have to wait outside till about 5 minutes before showtime (they allow less time between films), and when the movie starts, THEN you get 20 minutes of ads and previews mixed together. And most of the ads don't make any sense at all. I guess if you live here you just get used to coming in about 15 minutes after the film was supposed to start.

We saw Quantum of Solace (I was going to say "the new James Bond movie," but it's no longer new). It is definitely good, and definitely not as good as the last one. I do think, though, that it's quite solidly a well-done film. A lot of the criticism is unfair. It's just that the last one was such a stunningly different Bond film, being a total reboot and a complete departure from the Pierce Brosnan foppish self-mocking chauvinist ridiculousness and inane sex puns that were the logical end of the Sean Connery mode of Bonds. (Pierce Brosnan was my favorite, because of the self-aware quality of his Bondian absurdity, but now he's tied with Craig who isn't, as all the other Bonds were, ultimately a comedic figure.) There was no way the second Daniel Craig film could duplicate that, and no one would have wanted another complete overhaul of the series. So how is it fair to knock this one just for not being the first in the new series? That criticism is hypocritical, too, because a lot of the complaints about the lack of plot were actually complaints about the attempt to extend the overhaul. Instead of the long, intricate reveal of the evil plot in all its twists and turns, they skip that and go straight from the action scenes to the end. You know that Bond is an extremely unsavory figure in his means of getting information from his suspects, you know that he's going to get it, and really it doesn't matter exactly what the plot is, because it's going to lead to the same end. It's a much more subtly self-mocking move, one that's a genre critique rather than a "Christmas only comes once a year" joke. But people only like having their genre expectations disturbed so much.

I will agree that the way the action scenes are shot is incredibly annoying. Not just because it makes one queasy, but because, as everyone already said, you can't see what's happening. I'm willing to grant that the filmmakers felt locked into that style because the opening scene, which is an extended visual joke, requires it. What if, instead of dwelling on all the Bond paraphernalia and in particular the car, you couldn't really even see the car during the chase? And the chase happened in the opening sequence, destroying the car and getting rid of virtually all the paraphernalia for the rest of the movie? Get it? I do like that move, and it was funny, but if it locked them into a thoroughly failed cinematography style for ALL the action sequences then it wasn't worth it.

And that is my very belated movie review.

Overstuffed Bread Cheeks

Bob and Toni went home yesterday. We will miss them a lot, but I guess it will be nice to get back to regular things, like blogging and working on Tristram's tour de lit. I have only sent out one super-brief email in the last three days--to my best friend since junior high, who has far more exciting news than I do. She volunteered for Obama, and won a ticket to his inauguration! She is planning to stay with Bob and Toni for that, then come over to visit me. How thoughtful of her to get me a liberal president for my birthday!

I guess my last update was Friday, which leaves me again with several days' worth of news. Saturday was centreville day. We didn't make it onto the Sparkly Day train or the carriage ride, since we belatedly realized that neither of those was stroller-friendly and both looked really cold, but we did see the ice skating rink in front of the marie. I realized on Sunday that that's not a Rueil thing, it's a France thing--there's one in front of the Paris mairie too, and Jonathan says Clermont-Ferrand has an even bigger rink. I guess San Jose and New York stole the idea from France.

We went to a restaurant I've been curious about since I moved here. It's extremely pastel, and looks like a candy shop. It is a really delightful sort of pink kitsch that they do very well in France and in San Luis Obispo. The bathroom goes above and beyond in pink kitsch--I think of it as Rueil-Malmaison's answer to the Madonna Inn, even though there is no waterfall in the men's room as far as I know. It turns out to be an "Italian" restaurant, though it's the thoroughly French version of Italian food. It's the sort of place Jonathan would normally refuse to go, since he has a firm anti-Italian-restaurant policy on the grounds that none of them compare to his mom's Italian food. This one, however, he liked. My rabbit was perfect, his pizza was great, and the dessert was the best tiramisu I've ever had. Tristram ended up stealing the last portion of Bob and Toni's dessert (the other tiramisu--red fruits instead of chocolate) and it seemed to be his favorite thing he's ever tasted.

We finally got comfortable pillows, we took Bob and Toni to see the quilting store here with its collection of beautiful quilts all over the walls, we tried to take them to Josephine's tomb but the church closes at noon on Saturdays, we took them to one of the local cavistes (does that take an e? Marianne? Jonathan?), we took them to the kid's bookstore with the most gorgeous collection of books I've seen in any bookstore, we hunted down an umbrella for Bob, and we went to the history museum again. We noted a couple more details--the handmade knife from the trenches of WWI is named "Malrepas," or "Bad Dinner," and the articles creating the Academie were signed here. I also found their museum guide brochure, which seems to have been written a very long time ago by someone with prophetic powers: It informs me that "It's in Malmaison that the Empress will settle down after her divorce and it's otherthere [which is how they translate "là"] that she will die the 29 of May 1814," that "The original bell tower will be conserved toward the middle of the nineteenth century and will be rebuilt in the Norman Style," and finally that "The 1870's war will be felt cruelly." Although I don't know; that last might be a statement about how we haven't yet felt the true impact of the War of 1870. I'm sure it's going to hit us any day now. My favorite, though, is this: "This hamlet [Buzenval, one of the quartiers of Rueil-Malmaison] takes his name from the castle given by Charles Le Chauve of his whiskers called Bozon." Yeah, that's right. You figure it out.

I'm thinking of volunteering to retranslate the brochure for them. I would volunteer to edit it, but retranslating would be a lot easier.

Aux Morts (Pere LaChaise)

We're not quite what Morts this is Aux, but our theory is that it's the mass grave of Pere LaChaise. Once families that don't have a grant in perpetuity stop paying upkeep and the gravesite is abandoned, the keepers unearth the bodies to resell those grave sites; that's why you can see graves here and there with the stones partly removed and the deep holes underneath dug out to various degrees. There's no more space in the cemetery, so what else are they supposed to do? We think those bodies then get cremated and go into this monument at the end of the Principle, the street of the most important graves. Maybe we are wrong, but we like our theory.

Returning to the current activities, Bob and Toni have been officially initiated into chicken night. They got here in the late afternoon, and since it was freezing cold and near dark we decided to skip the Seine walk. We took Tristram to the playground, where he demonstrated his running-around-picking-up-tree-cones skills. We went to our local Marche de Noel, which thankfully was quite small, and got him some dried fruit for a Sparkly Day present, plus a pull toy from the Unicef booth. The woman selling the fruit couldn't get through a sale without making multiple dick jokes, since it is preservative-free and in French a preservative is also what you call a condom. I am glad that his fruit doesn't have any condoms in it.

We doubled up on chicken and potatoes, and after we finished that we made them our favorite French dessert: 2 Tbsp creme de marron, 1/2 (or 1, if you prefer more slightly sour stuff to cut the sweetness of the other ingredients) petit suisse (which is like a cross between cream cheese and yogurt), and 20 g of melted dark chocolate, layered in that order from bottom to top in a small glass. It takes less than 5 minutes, and it's delicious. We were going to make eggnog too, but we put that off for when we return from the downtown trip today. Hopefully Tristram will be in a better mood; he's working on his next tooth and he was kind of a pain most of the day yesterday. But he will get no eggnog no matter how he yells.

The big project for yesterday was a trip to the Musee National du Moyen Age, aka the Cluny. It is an interesting building--actually the building is probably the most interesting thing about it. There is part that's very old and delapidated--crumbling walls, no ceiling, and so forth--and they are currently doing a lot of work on that. There is apparently a "frigidarium" in there, which is currently closed, but they have a big window from the room with all the fragments of old, old stuff from Notre Dame so you can look down into the really ancient room and see the workers carrying pipes and beams around. Toni's favorite was the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, which is what she went to see, but Tristram was not so into those. He liked the rooms of all stained glass windows, and his favorite was an old brass sculpture of an eagle. He said, "Eagle! Eagle!" over and over again, but he won't be able to reproduce it. It's hard to know how to measure his vocabulary. He can approximate just about any name if he sees something he's interested in and you tell him what it is, but he can't reproduce it later on. Talking to me today about the eagle he saw yesterday would be way beyond him.

We came into Chatelet Les Halles on the RER, walked across the Ile de la Cite to get to the museum (stopping to get Tristram a crepe), and then decided to walk a lot of the way back. We walked back across the Ile, along the Seine to the Louvre, then cut over to the Louvre garden so we could walk through that and the Tuileries and down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, where we got back on the train. It was about 3 miles from when we left the museum to when we got back on the train. Unfortunately they've put up a big ferris wheel (maybe it was there before and I just didn't remember it) in the Place de la Concorde just past the Tuileries, so the view of the line-up from the Napoleonic arch outside the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe to the Grande Arche de La Defense is obscured. Still, it's a lovely walk, and the sun came out for the first time this week, and Tristram took a nap. There is yet another Marche de Noel along the Champs Elysees (the park part, not the fancy stores and Lido part), with almost identical booths to the one at the Grande Arche. I am going to be all Marche de Noeled out by the end of the weekend, since we are going to our local one tonight. That is a small one, at least, and we are mostly going for the food--the usual Lebanese traiteurs and the chicken guy are there, and there is also raclette and vin chaud for the Sparkly Day market. I did note that our local one has a booth selling Unicef stuff, so maybe we will have some different things here.

Bob and Toni are at the Musee d'Orsay this morning. While it would be very easy to make museums toddler-friendly, they are not particular well-designed to accommodate babies. Tristram is remarkably good, but three museums in three days would be asking a bit much, especially since Bob and Toni are going to want to linger at the Orsay, and the one thing you absolutely can't do when taking a baby out is stop and stand for a long time. So they will meet us this afternoon, and we will walk by the Seine if it's nice, and then go to the Marche and get our chicken and eat lots of food.

I have been reading a lot of Where Does Maisy Live? to Tristram (except in French her name is Mimi), and I'm thinking that Henry James' What Maisie Knew should be the next in that series. They'll have to iron out the spelling, and sort out some copyright issues, but other than that it would be perfect. The next bestseller, and the spark for a Henry James revival. Who wants to start writing some of the questions and under-the-flap answers with me?

The Luncheon of the Zeiss Party

I've now had my first long French lunch. We did succeed in making it to the Maison Fournaise, where we stayed for two and a half hours. Tristram was remarkably good--he sat for the first hour and a half and played peekaboo and ate bread and then our food. Then he was absolutely done with sitting in his stroller (French restaurants, as a rule, don't have high chairs). When we got there, they'd seated us next to an empty room and said we could take him in there if we needed to, so we went in there for a while, and then took turns taking him outside to chase pigeons in the courtyard. He now makes a beeline for any surface he has not walked on before. Before we left, he mastered cobblestones and made a valiant effort at walking up a grassy slope. He also charmed all the businessmen who were there for lunch.

Jonathan went to work, and Bob & Toni and I walked over to the Atelier Grognard, the largest and fanciest of the municipal galleries in our town. They're having an exhibit of pre-impressionist and impressionist paintings done along this little stretch of the Seine, which obviously includes a lot of boating party pictures--though they didn't display the Renoir one, above, that depicts where we ate lunch. The big names don't really make it to small local galleries, though they had a nice little set of Monet sketches. Tristram now has a favorite painting, "Partie de Canot" by Ferdinand Heilbuth. He is pretty good with museums, since he likes looking at pictures. He just has to go out so he can walk around on his own every so often, and when he sees a picture he likes he will talk about it enthusiastically and stretch toward it, so you have to prevent the grabbing and hope that the other patrons are also pleased the baby likes art instead of annoyed about the noise. Being annoyed about happy baby noise, though, would be very un-French.

The Atelier was our test run to see if we can take him to museums--the answer, it seems, is yes, but pick one with someplace you can take him to run around every so often. I wonder why more museums aren't designed to be kid-friendly. It would be pretty easy: hang the art high enough so they can't grab it when you let them down to walk around, or if the painting is too big, instead of just painting the "stand behind this line" line on the floor, put up a little barrier to keep toddlers from climbing over and grabbing. Of course it would mean their parents had to move through relatively quickly, but kids do love pictures. It wouldn't even be hard to set up little guide brochures written for kids like those they hand out for adults. Why does this not exist for the delight of children everywhere? And the delight of parents who want to go look at art themselves? Anyway, I am fortunate to have a little aesthete on my hands.

We went into the Chateau Malmaison, though we moved through quickly as it was close to closing. We went up to the third floor, which was closed last time I was there as they were setting up the temporary exhibition of a good selection of Josephine's collection of classical art & stuff, mostly from Pompeii. She also had a fair collection of gladiator gear, and a mummified woman's head with the hairstyle perfectly preserved. And, most curiously, a small replica of a coffin complete with skeleton inside. Tris was getting fussy, so I didn't get to read the full info about it. The one thing you don't get to do with him is stand still. We went outside to look quickly at the Lebanese cedar Napoleon planted in 1800 to commemorate his victory at Marengo, and then home since it was dinnertime and time to be out of the stroller.

Parents keep you busy!

Friday we tried to go to the Maison Fournaise for dinner--it's about a 15 minute walk from us, it's right on the river and beautiful, it's been recommended to Jonathan by university faculty, and we thought Toni would like it especially because it's where Renoir did 80 of his paintings, and "The Boating Party" is set on its balcony. We realized belatedly that Jonathan and I hadn't yet tried to go out to dinner since we've been here, seeing as we have a baby with an early bedtime instead of spending money. Turns out we were wise: nothing opens till 7:30 to serve dinner. We ended up walking back here and cooking them crepes, and fortunately they liked them despite my difficulties with this particular recipe and my cursing over the stove on each individual crepe.

They brought a suitcase full of toys and books for Tristram, much to his delight. We'd left a lot of his stuff there when we came over, due to needing our suitcase space for clothes and living essentials. He now has a new favorite stuffed animal, a dog they brought him, and yesterday morning I could hardly get dressed because he kept whacking me in the knees with "new" books he wanted me to read.

We went to Montmartre yesterday. That is, my parents and I did, while Jonathan went to work. After some difficulty in getting there (a forgotten guidebook, a metro entrance where the stroller gate is locked and you're supposed to get the agent at the window to open it for you, except that they've now closed that ticket window and nobody comes when you call on the call box), we wandered all over and had a lot of fun. We even went into the church, which made me heartily miss Riley. Whatever you think of Catholic theology and political history--and I don't think anything good about either one, especially the gruesome history of terror and bloodshed--their aesthetic is on point. I firmly believe it's the reason Catholicism remains so popular around the world. The Montmartre Sacre Coeur, as it was built after WWI to commemorate the end of the war, is a rare artistic achievement in that it's a legitimately stunning update of the old style. They kept the stained-glass windows, but they're all modernist in style; they've got gorgeous mosaic work and tiling at each saint's station around the circle inside the church, but it's not just an imitation of old mosaic work. The outside of the church goes back and forth between lovely and garish, depending on the way the light hits it and your mood, but yesterday in the cloudy weather it was at its best. The crypt was closed again, though, and I am now wondering if it's ever open. The much older (like, six centuries older) church across the street has a similar style of windows; they were put in around the same time after they got bombed out. It's quite fun to compare the architecture of the two.

We wandered down the hill past the windmills and the old cemetery and vineyard, and kind of wished we could see their Sparkly Day lights at night. We didn't linger, as it was starting to rain, and when we got back off the RER it was snowing. Didn't stick, but it was very beautiful.

When Jonathan got off work we met up to go the Sparkly Day market at the Grand Arch, which is one metro stop away from Bob and Toni's hotel. We poked around and drank vin chaud until our toes got too cold, and then we went inside to find some toys for Tristram. I must say the organization of Toys'R'Us makes it extremely difficult to actually buy any toys. It's so crammed and busy, and even though it was only moderately crowded it makes you more inclined to just turn around and walk out than to sort through to find what you came for. He now has one birthday present, a push cart full of blocks, awaiting him in a couple of weeks. I suppose I'll try to get back there in the morning sometime when it's less crowded and he's less close to his evening snapping point to pick out some more gifts. A Sparkly Day gift from GrandBob and GrandToni, birthday and Spakrly Day gifts from Mom and Dad, and birthday and Sparkly Day gifts from GrandRobyn and GrandDan...Plus, Ramona sent us that with which to buy him a soft toy, so the giant stuffed animal we want for him will be from her. He will be all set once I screw my courage up and walk in in a super-decisive and determined mood, so that I can avoid being undermined by the overproliferation of brightly colored plastic and actually get toys instead of just fleeing.

Today we have a Rueil history day planned--impressionist exhibit at the foremost local atelier, visit to the chateau, visit to the park right by those two spots...But first, we have a quiet morning planned, since Tristram definitely needs some downtime to just roam around the house, play, and be read to. He loves to go out, but sitting in a stroller all day long is not something he will agree to do two days in a row.

Nettles on a Grave

Good news! Dan and Robyn are coming in February! We talked to them last night, and they have picked dates & flights and are setting it up via their travel agent. My parents have landed and are probably on their way to their hotel right now.

Yesterday Tristram went down for his morning nap about 10:30. I blogged, and set to work on his tour-de-lit, and finished the appliques on one whole end panel. That is time-consuming work. As I was finishing, Jonathan poked his head in and asked if I was worried, and I realized it was almost 1 pm. I went and checked, and Tris was fine, just sleeping his little heart out. I opened up his rideau to let the light in, and he woke up on his own in a few minutes. Weird--is he going to one long nap instead of two short to medium? He hasn't napped that long in months and months. Makes one a little anxious. He's napping now; we'll see what he does today.

Since he had such a nice long sleep, we took him out for the whole afternoon to Pere LaChaise. It's now my standard of what a cemetery should be like. I find that the falling-apart, abandoned graves are as interesting as the famous ones--more interesting than a lot of them. Jonathan mocked me heartily for walking past Colette's grave to take a picture of a volunteer tree growing out of the top of someone's mausoleum. But Colette's grave was a drab affair, and too shiny-new looking to be of much interest. This one was my favorite: the planter box is filled with a thriving patch of stinging nettles.

Oscar Wilde's grave is worth seeing; Jim Morrison's is not. I also liked the walk around the Circulaire, where at the top of the hill they have all their memorial monuments. You go past the first Holocaust monument, the one with Sisyphus on it, and past a section of graves dedicated to the French Communist party, and then you get to the memorials for every separate concentration camp and several to Resistance members. It's pretty impressive; I find it a good answer to the US Washington Mall style monument collection. Then, however, you get to a section with memorials for every plane crash ever involving a significant number of French citizens, and it starts to seem more and more trivial and kind of bizarre. Those are on your right, Gertrude Stein is on your left. So is Alice B. Toklas, for that matter, though she's not marked in any way. Then you turn left and go see Oscar Wilde's thoroughly kissed tomb. Jonathan recognized lots of French authors I did not, and marveled at how many LeFevre/LeFebvre/LeFebure graves there are. He is convinced they are all actually one big family that keeps really atrocious records and has a lot of rancorous disputes.

We did not make it to Abelard and Heloise's grave. The cemetery is very large, and confusingly laid out, and neither the map in my guidebook nor the ones posted in the cemetery itself are very good. We also did not make it to Victor Hugo's grave, which Jonathan has something of a professional obligation to visit, nor to Richard Wright's, which I feel obligated to see. Tristram had a good time, since he was outdoors and there was lots of new stuff to look at, but it was cold. We'd planned to let him wander around and play out of the stroller, but it was already past four by the time we left, and we thought we'd better get him home. I thought the weather was perfect for a cemetery visit--foggy, dark grey, chilly but not too cold, lots of crows cawing--but Jonathan's boy scout training kicked in and nagged him mercilessly to go warm up.

It's a very peaceful, beautiful cemetery. For the first time, I understand the impulse to have a family grave, or crypt, or what have you that you can visit and bring things to. I'd always thought it was silly and wasteful before, but then I'd only been looking at American cemeteries. The sudden understanding made me think about Elissa. I don't think about her all that often anymore; a few times a week and usually briefly. Her ashes are at my parents' house now. We always said we wanted to do "something" when we felt ready, but never did. It just felt too overwhelming for so long, and everything we could think of to do seemed trivial in response to the fact of her death and also too wrenching to contemplate. Then we didn't want to risk losing her in the luggage or shut her up in storage. So she's in D.C. But now I feel like I really would like to do something besides keep her in an urn in our apartment. But what? I'm obviously not getting her a spot in Pere LaChaise, and now no other cemetery will do. I'd think it was perfect to construct a memorial for her and use her ashes in her own memorial garden in our house when we get one, but the chances of staying in the same house all our lives are minute, and then how could I leave? Maybe we'll take her to the redwood grove in Big Basin where she has a memorial tree. Maybe we'll sneak her up to the cathedral grove where we got married. This is all confusing to me. It's a new impulse, this memorializing, and I don't quite know what to make of it. I suppose by the time we are back Tristram will be old enough to have some idea what we're doing. I wonder what he will think of it.

Well, that was the first time I've had a picture post without text--usually when there are technical difficulties it's the other way around.

We are extra-super-infinity-excited because my parents are coming to visit tomorrow. I have the flight tracking widget set up already, even though their first leg won't start till 2:35 this afternoon Eastern time (or 8:35 tonight our time). It's 10:23 am our time right now. They will stay for a week, and we already have a much, much longer list of things to do than we can possibly do in that time, especially with a baby who needs naps. We may not have all the success they are hoping for in taking a toddler to museums, and we may decide to put off some of the outdoor stuff till they come back in spring, but it should be a very fun trip nonetheless. I am still debating whether to do a birthday celebration for Tristram while they are here or do it on his actual birthday. We need to figure out what we will do, just the three of us, for Sparkly Day too.

The next visit will be from Jonathan's sister Jessie starting Dec. 26th--at least, she leaves then, so she'll get here on the 27th, making for a short visit but one for which we are also very eager. (Jessie, is it weird to read about yourself in the third person?) Jonathan's parents want her to celebrate Sparkly Day with them and the family, which is quite understandable, though it's unfortunate for her since the day after Sparkly Day and the day before Thanksgiving are the two worst travel days of the year. My best friend since junior high is coming at the end of January, and my parents are coming again in spring. We are hoping we can get Jonathan's parents to come visit, too. They are talking about February, and we would be thrilled! They have already missed all of Tristram's crawling stage, since they are having a lot of reservations about making the trip overseas. It is a big trip, and big trips are never cheap or easy to schedule, no doubt about that. It seems so sad, though, to miss so much of his babyhood, that we really hope they will come over. Plus, we want to see them!

My parents will be here just in time for lots of Sparkly Day festivities. We made a grocery run yesterday for eggnog makings, and I'm looking forward to getting some genuine French holiday pastries--I expect American bouche noel will never impress me again. They will also, if they want to, be able to go ice skating in front of the ancien marie (now the history museum) since they turn the garden into a skating rink, though I suspect we may be spectators at that one.

The Tennis of the Forbidden Fruit

The other night I dreamed that I was being chased by a moose on roller skates. I grabbed Jonathan and said, "Jonathan, that moose is wearing skates!" He rolled his eyes and said, "Those aren't skates, those are bloofles." Then the moose skated off to go find a swimming pool.

Tristram has discovered that he doesn't have to walk only forward. He now runs in place, goes sideways, and yesterday even tried backing up a little. Yesterday he also learned how to climb into our living room chairs, which was startling. I hung up a coat in the closet, turned back around, and he was up in the chair.

I had been dreading Thursday all week, because last week solo child care was so rough. But you know what I forgot? When you're well enough to play with him, taking care of Tristram is actually pretty fun. It rained all morning, and then the sun came out and it got beautiful and warm (well, okay, in the low 50s--but that's really warm compared to the last couple of weeks). We went out for a two-hour walk by the river. I discovered a restaurant called Le Fruit Defendu (lefruitdefendu.com) that is right on the river and looks great, though I don't know that Tristram would find it much fun. There's also, apparently, a tennis court associated with the restaurant (Le Tennis du Fruit Defendu), which was curious. A little past that, there's a Poney Club (in France they spell it with an extra e, and more importantly start kids at 3 instead of 7) that has lessons on weekends and Wednesday afternoons. I'm planning to walk him down there next time I'm alone with him on a Wednesday to see if they'll let us watch. I worry about his lack of access to pets, and horses in particular are important to stay used to. Boys, in particular, have such a hard time getting good with horses if they're not immersed from birth. We walked on a little farther, and found ourselves at the edge of town and next to a sign pointing to the Turgenev museum. Seems he had a dacha near here and that's where he did a lot of his writing. Too bad I'm an Americanist and am not up on my Russian lit!

Tristram loved the whole walk, until we got close enough to home on the way back for him to be bored by familiar scenery. He just wants everything to be new all the time.

I want to stay because it's so much fun to go exploring here.

I want to leave because I miss chocolate sauce. You just can't find it, or at least I can't. No hot fudge, not even Hershey's syrup.

Sometimes Sometimes I Falls Apart

Remember "Total Eclipse of the Heart"? The song that Nancy Reagan's DARE program adopted? And then they went around the country making kids do, or at least watch, interpretive dances to it on the theory that they would thus be prevented from ever taking drugs?

There's a French version. Or rather, a Franglais version. I heard it in the grocery store and I nearly went mad. I'm not usually very good at picking out song lyrics in French, but I had an excellent opportunity to do so as it was not a quick check-out line, and there are twice as many choruses in the French version. At first I thought, wow, somebody went to the effort to translate this whole song in French? Then I realized that they also repeating every verse in English, and the chorus went like this: "Tourne en rond, [something] yeux; Quelquefois de temps en temps je falls apart." Or at least one's translation skills do.

At least, though, this points out one of the best reasons to stay: my French is getting much better. I now speak well enough to be correctable, and my comprehension is much, much better. I'm nowhere near fluent, but I can make myself understood easily, and if there's a problem it takes less than 30 seconds to either correct my pronunciation or find some circumlocution that works better. And rather than resigning myself to missing all of the details of what people say and hoping to catch the drift of it, I now understand most of what people say to me and am usually able to ask what a particular word or expression means if I don't know it. At least, I can if I start a conversation or if there's a clearly defined context, so I know more or less what to expect. If someone just comes up to me and starts talking and I don't know what it's about I still find myself lost as often as not. I find that I tend to understand women much better than men, for some reason. There's a particular late mid-life (50s to 60s) male mumble, that gets worse as the day goes on, that is completely incomprehensible to me.

I want to leave because, as much as I like having my French get better, and as much as I know that it'll disappear again once I leave and there's no way to get it back when I'm not immersed, sometimes I really miss just being able to understand what's going on without so much effort.

Eating Apples

Ah, apples. He says "app" all the time now, though rarely "apple." His grasp on words is still tenuous. He tends to call all animals "duck," or at least "duh," and make the sign for duck. He made the rabbit sign once today (we were watching bunnies on youtube), but then switched back to duck. He was very excited about ducks, and cats, and dogs, and bunnies, but "duck" is the easiest to say. He also says "kick!" though it often comes out "goock" or "koock" or "woock." Or just "kih."

He says "kick" because Jonathan taught him to kick his ball, and that's a favorite game now. He walks around kicking it and saying, "Kick!" He also likes to play running, where we run around and he toddles as fast as he can. It occasionally loosely coheres into one of us chasing the other. Who knows? Maybe all this running and kicking indicates that he'll want to play soccer soon. Or babyfoot, as they call the starting levels here.

He also likes to open two drawers, one above the other, to different degrees and then transfer the contents back and forth from one to the other. And, of course, to throw things in the bathtub and cry because he can't get them back out. Also, he likes roasted green pepper, but not to eat--just to hold on his tongue and chew like gum.

Yesterday we had the alarming incident of changing his diaper and finding that he'd eaten a small piece of foil. I have no idea how he got hold of it. I am still bouncing back and forth between guilt at having let my kid eat something he should not have eaten and resignation, since I suspect no parent gets through a whole year without a baby swallowing some non-food item at least once. Perhaps that was part of the reason for the fussiness?

Me Being Cold

Lazy, rainy day. Tristram does not seem to be sick after all, which is a big relief, but he is definitely unhappy. He has the very edge of a tooth through, next to his right front tooth. It does not seem to be a canine, which means he has missed my tooth pattern. What are the teeth between your incisors and canines called again? I can't remember, because I don't have them. I get that from my dad, who also has two less teeth than normal--but different teeth. I kind of hope Tristram will have two less teeth than normal, too. How that works--two teeth missing, but which pair always different--is an odd little genetic puzzle.

Anyway, he has been superfussy and usually has his hand in his mouth. He's not exactly throwing tantrums, but he is doing this really unpleasant shriek, and we're trying to figure out how to discourage that without ignoring him when he's genuinely in pain. I let him get his fleecy out of his crib for extra comfort today, even. Usually that's against policy because it's such a crisis when I have to wash it that I don't want it getting dirty that often, let alone lost.

With all this teething, I've been wondering--is there a version of hypnobabies for babies? I mean, it didn't totally suffice for me in giving birth, but it helped quite a lot. And it's been even more useful since. I used it when I was recovering from my c-section. I used it to get myself home from the store when I had a 25 lb baby on my front and another 20+ lbs of groceries on my back and my shoulders just desperately hurt. I used it last week to deal with the tonsil abscess, and it's the only reason I got any sleep at all, and made it through my bureaucratic obstacle course. It's just incredibly useful stuff. (Thanks again, April!) I wish there were some way to teach it to Tristram. I suppose we'll have years and years of owies ahead of us to try it out on.

I also wish that I could get Babyplays in France. You know, the company that's like Netflix for baby toys. Tristram is so mad at his old toys for not being novel enough to make up for his teeth hurting. But I'm not going to buy him a new set of toys every other week. That's why I want to go home--for my Babyplays. That and Netflix. I keep wondering why there isn't some equivalent service available in France, and Jonathan keeps pointing out that by now I should be over being surprised when some good or service is not available here.

I want to stay because of the bird nests. There can't possibly be that many more birds here, but I walked past at least 12 nests on my way to the store this morning. Is it just that more of the trees lose their leaves, so you see them better? Is it that the way they pollard the trees here encourages nesting right along the street?

Meteorological Perfection

Sometimes in France you get everything you want. Yesterday just as I finished blogging the sun came out it and it warmed up a few degrees, so we went out for the afternoon. When I got up this morning, it had snowed. Not enough to cover the ground, just a thin dusting on the cars outside, but still! And now it's raining. What an obliging country.

Yesterday was doubly satisfactory because I got to do things I've been wanting to do for a while but have been too sick for. I got the last of the ingredients to make Tristram's tour de lit, I went to the mediatheque to exchange movies, and I managed to time it so we got to see the local history museum. It's an interesting place. It's in the old mairie (mayor's house), which is an extravagant centuries-old affair. It's absolutely packed with stuff, from neolithic & paleolithic hunting materials up through the late 20th century. It's kind of haphazard, as if someone's grandma made a giant scrapbook that took up several rooms, but there are all kinds of neat things hidden in amongst. There is an old ceremonial church chair with the supposed number of Napoleon III's votes on it (I doubt he really got over 7 million) and Cardinal Richelieu's deathmask tucked in a corner, for instance. Why? Because lots of stuff happened around here. It's still stunning to me to walk into a room of a local history museum and see photos of dead soldiers in a battle that took place a few blocks over--Oh yeah! World Wars I and II happened right here where we're standing!

There is a second floor that is apparently filled with toy soldiers, but as there was no elevator and we didn't feel like wrestling a stroller up a grandiose old staircase, we saved that for another day. When we left, it was already getting dark, so I got to see all the Sparkly Day lights on as we walked home. I've seen them up for weeks now, but as I'm never out at night I hadn't seen them lit. They do an impeccable job on Sparkly Day here; there are sapins de noel and lights all over--like, every remotely important street or square in town--but no obnoxious nativity scenes at all.

That's a good reason to stay: They handle the religious/secular thing so much better here. Proselytizing is actually illegal, as well it should be. Jehovah's Witnesses can't come to your door, so they have to content themselves with conspicuously reading The Watchtower on the bus. And having that firmly secular foundation means you get to enjoy winter holidays to the full without all the worry about religious insensitivity, because nobody IS trying to shove their religion down someone else's throat. It's just all to be enjoyed.

I want to leave because I'm starting to get really eager to see the winter regrowth that I'm used to, where all the fresh grass comes up and early bulbs start blooming and you take a nice hike in the sun on Sparkly Day. That's probably not going to happen this year.

I'm starting to understand how some people end up not taking their full course of antibiotics. It's just so easy to forget once you are feeling good again and not thinking about taking medicine. Of course, there are also some truly stupid people who think it'd be a good idea to "save" them for next time they're sick, but probably none who are intentionally trying to become walking incubators of drug-resistant superbacteria. Today is my last day, so unless I completely space out tonight I should remain a good patient.

Something is definitely up with Tristram; either he is not feeling good or that next tooth is about to finally pop through. He is mostly happy, but then will just shriek. And he's back to three naps instead of two.

His new game is opening and closing doors. This will inevitably lead to some finger-pinching, but he's clever enough to usually stay pretty careful. Soon he will have figured out the doorknobs and we'll have to keep the deadbolt on the front door. He also has taken to putting apple pieces down my shirt; I'm not sure what makes that so entertaining to him since all I do is pull the apple back out the bottom. I think he is trying to figure out some way to combine breastmilk and apples, his two favorite foods.

I'm starting to forget what nice weather looks like. It's gray and cold every day, and I am still feeling like we've been having an unusually wintery front come through but it will be back to normal any minute. That, though, seems less and less likely. It may be that I won't see the sun, or feel warmth on my skin, again until spring. Which I gather comes later than Feb. 1 in these parts. I would mind the gray and cold less if it would get its act together and precipitate, but it's just dragging on in this taunting, "ha ha, I'm going to storm--no, just kidding--going to do something cool--no, just kidding" way. Rain or warm sun, make up your mind and get to one or the other already! This weird liminal weather grates on the nerves.

The weather reminds me of one of my biggest reasons for wanting to stay at least through the summer, if not for a whole 'nother year: I'd love to see the area when it's nice. I'd get to enjoy it more, and there are so many places that would be beautiful in summer, not the least of which is the park next to our house. It seems a shame to come for the winter and leave as soon as things get nice again.

I want to leave because I miss my friends and family. Thanksgiving makes it apparent how alone we are here; we have no family and don't really know anyone in the area.

Better today. I actually slept last night! There are very few feelings more blissful than lying down when you're tired and being comfortable, so that you can feel you're actually going to drift off to sleep soon...it tempts one to lie awake longer just to enjoy it. Today I'm swearing up and down that I'll never take being able to lie down when tired for granted again, but of course I will by the end of the weekend.

Tristram is a little fussy, though--he seems extra-tired, and he's unhappy about something. I think he's picked up a bit of a cold. Oddly, Jonathan also is starting to get sore in the same place I was, even though he doesn't have tonsils. Hopefully it will stay at the level of a minor cold, like I now have, for both of them.

Tristram is, though, extremely happy that Mommy will play with him and read to him again. We went to the library today; I had put off our weekly trip because it seemed so mean to go and get a stack of new books and then refuse to read them. He's just too young to understand why I haven't been doing my normal mom things this week, and now he won't let me out of his reach.

Baguettes continue to rise on my list of useful parenting implements. They're a snack he can work on all day, the older they get the better they are for him to teethe on, and they're the perfect width for his hands to grab. Plus they kind of roll if you throw them right.

Bureaucracy with a Baguette

Yes, I did go to the Prefecture. I decided that there's a certain state of illness that's actually ideal for dealing with bureaucracy and lines. It's when you are just sick enough not to care where you are or what you are doing, since all you are really up to is staring blankly into space anyway. Now mind you, that's dangerously close to too sick to drag yourself around, and I was right on the edge on Tuesday. But I figured I could sit in a chair and hand over a stack of papers well enough as long as no one threw any surprises at me.

What I forgot to take into account, not having been this sick for at least a couple of years, is that babies aren't so big on letting you just sit and stare. No, instead I walked Tristram around and around the waiting room to keep him content for an hour while we waited to be called back to the guichet. I started thinking that it had been a mistake to come, but once you've handed over your convocation and your passport, you really can't leave until you get called because you need the passport back. Well, when we got back Tristram was just completely done with sitting in the stroller, or on my lap, and so the whole appointment went like this: pull out one piece of paper, dash across the room and retrieve him. Pull out another piece of paper, dash across the other direction and retrieve him. And so forth.

All this rigamarole for my recipisse de sejour was not the best for my health, but it turns out that my health was probably the best thing for my recipisse de sejour. I thought I had all my paperwork in order, but that's not necessarily possible when dealing with French bureaucracy. The lists they give you aren't very clear in their descriptions of the required items, and often each fonctionnaire has his or her own interpretation of what a particular item is supposed to be. So while I thought my "attestation bancaire" was supposed to be the same documentation I had provided at the visa office to show that I have the means to live on for a year if need be, it turned it had to be from a French bank. I burst into tears. The fonctionnaires are very used to people coming in with missing paperwork and then being rude about it, so the woman at the guichet had clearly gone into dismissal mode. I think, though, that it was a lot harder to be mean to a sick mother with a cute baby who, instead of yelling at her, started crying and asking what she could do to fix it. In the end, she filled my whole dossier except for that sheet of paper, drew up, signed, and stamped all my recipisse paperwork, and hand-wrote me a note on my convocation to come back at 2 pm on Thursday with my attestation rather than starting the appointment process over again.

That left open the question of what the attestation was actually supposed to be. There is no clear description available, and I don't have a year's worth of assets in euro, though I do have that much saved in various American accounts. I went to the bank yesterday, and the banker asked what kind of attestation--he ended up drawing me an "attestation classique" and warning me that it should work, but "one never knows" with government. The DMV was really starting to look like a model of clarity and efficiency. I took Tristram by the playground for this picture on the way home since he's been very disappointed in my listless mothering this week.

This morning, I was feeling so awful (I've been sleeping 2-4 hours a night because of being so sick) that I started crying again when Jonathan had to leave for work and asked him to cancel his evening classes so I wouldn't have a 12-hour childcare stint on top of a possible second prefecture failure. As it turned out, though, my luck changed today. My attestation--which was in fact nothing but a letter from my banker stating that I have a French account "and it functions very well"--was correct, and I have my recipisse. I also (I think) have finally turned this illness around, though how much of that is emotional relief is hard to overestimate. I have had a terrible soreness and pressure in my tonsil and ear since Sunday morning, so that it felt like I had strep throat and an ear infection all at once. It spikes if my ear or throat gets cold, and when I lie down--hence the sleepless nights. It didn't seem to be bacterial after all, since the antibiotics made no difference, and even the corticosteroids weren't taking away the swelling like they ought. Early this morning, I got a truly horrible taste in my throat and a truly disgusting runny nose--I mean, I salt-water gargled for a solid half hour because it was just gross. Now the swelling and pain are just about gone, and I've got at least 80% of my voice back all of a sudden. I think what actually happened was that I had a pocket of infection verging on an abscess that was pressing on my throat and ear nerves, and it finally drained. Hopefully, hopefully, this means I will be able to sleep and get better now. I've never been so delighted to have an immensely runny nose and a chest cough. It feels great!

And Tristram? He will be equally delighted when I am up to reading to him again, but he has been handling the week very well. Turns out the trick to getting him through bureaucratic appointments is to hide a half-baguette in the bottom of his stroller and let him find it and pull it out himself. Then he will happily gnaw away. He just keeps getting smarter and smarter, too. He always puts a quick stop to my reading my own books, usually by stealing my bookmark and eating it and then throwing my book on the floor. Last night he came up with a new strategy: he took my bookmark and put it back in my book. He's also got a new way of telling me when he wants a nap: he goes into his room and tries to climb into his crib. Clever boy! Now, if we can just teach him that food is not for stuffing down dad's pants or in all of our shoes, and that sharing your foodd is very nice but only BEFORE you chew it,we will be all set.

Still sick. It hurts a lot more when I lie down, so I only slept 1:30 to 5 am last night. The big question is whether I'm going to make it to my appointment at the prefecture today to get my recipisse de sejour. I'm thinking yes, since once we have them we can go the CAF and get government aid on our rent, though it's going to be a very painful day. But it'll suck whether I'm home or out, and if I go out at least I can feel better that I'm getting an essential task done. Jonathan had his prefecture appointment yesterday while I was at the doctor. I almost begged him today to skip teaching and help me so I don't have to drag myself and Tristram to the prefecture in the freezing cold without help (the rooftops I can see from our window are still all icy) when I feel like this. But of course that's not something he can actually do.

While I was up late drinking tea, sucking on throat lozenges, and whimpering, I started thinking that someone should base a superhero on tonsils. Without any direct reference, of course, because that would be silly. But they could usually save the body from infection/world from peril, albeit while that effort caused them to swell up and inflict great pain on their surroundings and those they are protecting. Once in a while they'd get so out of control they'd have to be aggressively treated and possibly even removed. Then I thought, wait a minute, doesn't that exactly describe the Incredible Hulk? So now I can't think of him as anything other than the Incredible Tonsil. I suppose one could argue that it describes every Stan Lee superhero. Maybe I've just figured out something about Stan Lee's medical history.

What My Tonsils Look Like

No, actually this is my most sewing recent project. I made two of these mushroom cushions, but the first one turned out pretty disastrous. That's alright; I figure the first time I try something new and more complicated is just for practice, and if it turns out well, lucky me. If not, the second try is the one that counts. This is the fourth project I've gotten out of the halloween-costume fabric purchase (costume, pincushion, skirt, cushion). Next up is hemming some pants and making Tristram a tour-de-lit. This was a good learning project, because there are some things that seem like they should be very obvious (fitting the lining to the cover fabric properly, lining up all your pattern pieces for both sides so they are opposite, not parallel) but are surprisingly slippery till you've screwed it up really well one time. Then it's obvious.

Right now, though, I'm taking a break from everything possible. Turns out the reason the cold was hurting my ears and throat so much is that I was working on a doozy of a tonsil infection. I have no voice, and have barely been able to sleep for the pain, and Tristram doesn't understand why I won't read to him or sing to him or even play much at all. This morning I went to the doctor, and now I'm taking amoxicillin, prednisone, and a lot of paracetamol (that's another flavor of Tylenol, for those who haven't sampled the European analgesics). I don't remember the last time I needed an antibiotic for anything, but in the rare cases when they're appropriate, they're really great. Same thing for corticosteroids.

The system in France is pretty hard to beat. There are doctors all over, so you would be hard put to situate yourself more than a 10 or 15 minute walk away from one. Then, you can have an appointment practically the instant you walk in the door. Then you walk across the street to the pharmacy, hand over your prescription, and they turn around and pull your medications off the wall and hand them to you. I was concerned that I'd get charged a lot, since I don't have my French card yet and they're loathe to accept travel insurance. They want you to pay them and get reimbursed from insurance yourself. But guess what the bill turned out to be for a same-day appointment and three prescriptions? About 33 euro. That's about $45. The French do pay higher taxes--much, much higher taxes--, but they get a good deal for them, in terms of availability, quality, and efficiency of care. It's going to be hard to get used to the American wait, and the American prices even with insurance.

So I want to stay because of the socialized medicine. Why waste time and money like we do?

I want to leave because we're out of money for the month again till Jonathan gets paid. No new recipes this week; we're eating pasta every day.

Jungle Gym

Tristram likes chicken night too! So much, in fact, that last night he came over and liked all my potatoes right up and I almost did not get any for myself.

He also likes French toast (or pain perdu) so much that I've changed the title of my food blog to "A la Recherche du Pain Perdu." Same url as ever, though. Turns out that the recipe I put up there counts as health food! I have been eating mostly healthy food since I got here, which is made much easier by the fact that in France chocolate is considered an essential part of a healthy daily diet. Chocolate or no, and despite being much fattier than I eat in the US, I've lost a lot of weight, and so has Jonathan. We've had to retire at least two pairs of pants apiece. (There's no word that is the opposite of outgrow. I have not, fortunately, ingrown any pairs of pants.)

What other news? It's freaking cold. Really, really cold. I have started wearing a hat and gloves. It's so cold that it makes my eardrums hurt, and my face gets so cold it feels like even my gums are getting chilled right through my cheeks. I would just start wearing a ski mask around, but local businesses might get the wrong impression. I'm a little nervous about winter, especially with being down two pairs of pants and it becoming increasingly clear that, no matter how woolly my tights, short skirts are not going to be wearable very soon.

We've been digging out Tristram's winterwear, too. Have you ever set aside an article of clothing that was way too big for your baby, and gotten so used to thinking of it as really big that by the time you thought, "Hey, I bet that'll fit now!" it was too small? I've only done that with a couple of things, but it makes me feel extremely silly.

Tristram's new loves, besides pain perdu, are apples, the playground (especially watching other kids, though he's still shy--he walks up to about three feet away from the nearest older boy and then just stops and stares at his every move), and leaning back on stuff. He really loves reclining. Now that he's able to just get up and walk off whenever he wants, he has no more concerns about getting stuck. He lounges back on pillows, or our legs, or anything really, and just laughs and laughs. Also, as you can see, he thinks I am a pretty good substitute for the playground to climb around on when it is too wet out.

Part IV

Now after reading all about the train saga, you are probably asking yourself, "What moral lesson can I draw from their struggle?" Well, here it is: Jonathan is the best dad in the world and everyone should get him a really great Sparkly Day & birthday present, such as:

new headphones
Thinsulate gloves in black or grey
black sweater (xxl--he's thinner but not shorter)
grey sweater (xxl)
a smaller belt (36-38)
smaller jeans & pants (36 x 34)
VCR (French region or all regions--a simple one; we can't take it back with us)
Nintendo DS games
Taters of the Lost Ark Mr. PotatoHead doll
Giant KinderSurprise egg
A good sturdy laptop bag/briefcase with a shoulder strap
Jules Verne Around the World in 80 Days game
art supplies
mittens for Tristram; he worries about the little hands in winter
something that will teach him how to knit

Part III

We thought we were being very clever by getting on the train at 5, in time to be home for Tristram's dinner and bedtime. It's supposed to be a little over an hour to our stop, and then about ten minutes to get home.

We started to get anxious when two trains in a row were cancelled or delayed. But we got on soon enough and were on our way. Then, two stops into the ride, we sat and sat and sat. Finally the conductor announced that the A line had been interrupted on the far side of Paris because of a "serious fire." We spent the next three hours getting on and off trains, both with and without having traveled to another station, and sitting in stuffy tunnels. At one point, we got to sit in the tunnel with the smokiest smoker who ever smoked. He smelled so bad I had to turn my face into my sleeve as a gas mask to keep from getting sick, and just being a few feet away from him was enough to make Tristram start coughing and then crying in distress. Could I have thrown that man under the train, I probably would have.

We did, after an hour of confusion, make it into town far enough to get onto the Metro line that would take us around the tunnel fire. Then we sat and sat and sat on that train, too. Apparently since more than a million people use the A train every day, and they were probably almost all going to switch to that same metro line, they started running so many more trains than usual that they got backed up and spent most of their time sitting in the tunnel waiting for their turn to pull up to the stop. So, another two hours to get through Paris on the metro.

Should I add that Jonathan was wearing Tristram all through this? It was essential to ease our getting on and off of trains, to protect Tris from the crowds, and to keep him relatively soothed. Of course there is no way to keep a tired, hungry baby from crying when he is overheated and stuffy in a tunnel of overbreathed air, especially when he is surrounded by frustrated, angry people. So add a crying baby to the list of the evening's woes. Still, though, it was one of those times when we were extremely glad to be able to wear him. Jonathan, miraculous dad that he is, even managed to get him to sleep.

Finally we got back onto the RER line, as they had gotten the fire out and resumed traffic. I thought we were almost home free. Then we pulled into the station that had not had any trains coming in for the last five hours. You know that scene at the end of Crocodile Dundee where the stop is so crowded he has to climb over people's heads to move at all? Yeah, like that. Only much, much surlier. Now, I should also add that with that weird sleeping-bag thing in the stroller, it's impossible to fold it up neatly (or at least I haven't figured out how yet). So our stroller nearly got broken, I got roundly cursed for having it at all, and the poor man next to me probably still has its indentations on his shins. As the crowd pushed on, I also heard Tristram wake up and scream because people were pressing on him so hard. That'll panic a mom. I was very glad that Jonathan was wearing him and was able to get an elbow around him and shove back to keep some breathing space for the baby. Nonetheless, I was crying openly by the time we got off at our stop.

Guess why I want to leave?

I want to stay because at least there is public transportation, and most of the time it works quite well, and it's not the southern California freeways had any guarantee of being better. But damn, when public transportation breaks down here it does so in dramatic fashion. Ask Jonathan about the time he had to take the bus home from work because some moron fell in a hole at one of the stations on our line!