He was so bald!

So, this is an extremely old photo--if I'd gone and had another baby who was now old enough to be sticking his nose into Easter lilies with such reckless abandon, you would have heard about it, even without the blog. But I've been getting really sentimental in the last couple of days about the loss of Tristram's baby photos on Jonathan's computer that got stolen. We even had them backed up on an external hard drive, and that got stolen too when the mover's van got broken into. So I've been sorting through what I do still have on this computer, and this is an old favorite. Especially since today he decreed that "Mommy's plants will die!"

Robyn and Dan left to head back to Tulsa this morning, but apparently are still stuck in Chicago. Flying in the upper Midwest in winter is dicey. Tristram has been thoroughly enjoying all his presents; he has gone through most of his books (his favorites are the two amazing pop-up books and Dragon's Fat Cat. He keeps pointing at the scarier-looking pop-up sea creatures and saying, "It won't hurt you, Mommy. It's just a predator." (This is funny because he actually knows all about predators. When he watches his dinosaur shows now, he yells, "Uh-oh, predator! Be careful, didelphodont!") I tell him it will only eat little fish, and he vehemently denies being a little fish. It's a game of sorts. He is also so in love with his new tool set and play fort that we had to take both of them away till tomorrow. Jonathan and I have been taking the extra time to get more unpacked (sorting through stacks of paper, hanging art...the late stages).

Jonathan hasn't gotten to test out his new boots yet, since Tristram refused to go outside to play this afternoon. He says he wants to go the zoo tomorrow, so I guess that'll be the big trial. If you've never tried to buy men's snow boots in a size 15, I recommend it as an amusing exercise. The salesmen's faces invariably go through set stages: initial shock, then picturing the man who would wear such a shoe, then deeper shock followed by an awed, "Nooo...we don't have any of those..No-wow-we don't even have a 14...Hey (other employee), do you have any idea where she might find a MEN'S SIZE 15 BOOT?" It's something everyone should see. Repeated enough times, though, it gets old, which is all by way of saying that I will be really disappointed if these boots turn out not to work once we're actually out and about.

Belial went to his new vet this morning. He needs his teeth cleaned, and first they needed to do a basic exam to make sure he won't fly apart into furry bits when they stick the instruments in his mouth (or, rather, the anasthetic in his veins). He was so glad to get home that he even let Tristram pet him. Now Belial and Seker are sleeping on the floor, Tristram is sleeping on his bed, Jonathan is playing Indigo Prophecy, and I am heading off to soak in the tub. Tomorrow, zoo, Monday, 7 am certification test.

It's for Mommy

I'm back!

We went from Paris to Tustin to Madison, and now it's Sparkly Day morning in Wisconsin. I started work at Epic this month (Dec. 7), and so far it's great. I like the company, the campus, and the people, and the training is still interesting. I don't want this to turn into McKenzie's work blog, though, so shop talk will be minimal. Jonathan is taking care of Tristram while I am at work.

Tristram turned two on the 23rd, and is now sleeping in a big boy bed. The morning before his birthday, he pulled himself out of his crib while I was digging socks out of his closet and landed on his head. So we figured, if sleeping in a crib is now a threat to life and limb, time to switch. He's taken to it quite well; he actually goes to sleep easier and stays asleep better when he can get himself in and out of bed.

He likes, as you can see, to eat everything with chopsticks. He also still likes to feed anyone around. Right now he is watching The Wizard of Oz, which is one of his new presents. GrandDan and GrandRobyn will be here in about half an hour. It is raining (it's warm today!), but if it lets up we will probably walk over to Tenney Park, next door to us, do a little sledding, and watch kids play hockey. I got Jonathan snow boots, which it turns out are very hard to find in a size 15, so they can play outside now. Then we will eat goose for dinner, since the traditional Sparkly Day crab is not available in the Midwest. Though I can get all the microbrews, ice creams, sausages, and cheeses I want! Maybe we'll have to come up with a new traditional meal.

Tristram's First Joke

Scene: Our apartment yesterday morning.

Tristram, Jonathan, and McKenzie are sitting on the couch playing with blocks. Tristram throws a block at Jonathan laughs hysterically.

Jonathan: No, Tristram, that's not funny. Here, I'll show you how to be funny: Say "Knock knock" to Mommy.
Tristram: Knock.
McKenzie: Who's there?
Tristram. Sheepy.
McKenzie: Sheepy who?
Tristram: Grape.

Satisfaction at Last

I waited all year to see the wisteria on this covered bridge in our park next door go into bloom. We ran into the head gardener for that park around the same time, and he insisted that it was not wisteria. Looks like it to me, though.

I have been a big blog flake for a long time now. I've been spending most of my non-Tristram time working on a chapter on interventions to help dementia caregivers for a geropsychiatry textbook, which the psychologist I RAed for between college and grad school was kind enough to offer me first-author slot on so I could get a more recent publication on my CV and have a better chance of getting a job. It's a lot of fun, but it's a weird, weird format. I would be astounded if anyone could show me evidence that practitioners actually change their practice in any significant way after reading such a document--and yet these books are very popular. They are called textbooks, but they're not for students. They're for practicing clinicians, in this case psychiatrists and other MDs. What seems weird about the format is that 5000 words is far too little to actually teach people to do new things they don't know how to do, but too much to just say "refer your patients to a specialist who does X, Y, and Z." No, the rhetorical goal of the format here seems to be to give people the illusion that after reading one chapter, they'll be ready to run right out and start treating these people effectively--but at the same time, to make sure that they have enough real information they won't do something really stupid like just hand out a referral to a support group and think they've provided effective treatment for all eventualities.

At the same time, we've been getting ready for our move. Tonight is my last night sleeping in this apartment; Friday afternoon Tris and I will move to a hotel near CDG so Jonathan can have that night and Saturday morning to clean. We want our deposit back! He hands in the keys on Saturday (the French won't work on Sundays), and we fly out Monday morning. That's going to be a long day of travel with a 17-month-old. In the meantime, we've been trying to make arrangements for when we get back. We've got our apartment, we've got internet set up (we're foregoing cable for the time being), we're trying to set up child care. That would be a lot easier if our boss for the summer would stop changing my schedule around. Arranging a babysitter from overseas is a little complicated to begin with; add in that I've now had to say, "Sorry, forget that whole morning thing--now I need afternoons--and maybe two other mornings, but I don't know yet," and I will be surprised if I'm not frantically scrambling up to the last minute despite my best efforts to do it early. There will be plenty of other things to do when we get back--get Jonathan a bike, get his driver's license renewed, hopefully get me some health insurance, get Tristram set back up for MediCal for kids, finish this chapter, resume looking for a real job...

Tristram is great. He is 13.4 kilos now (29.5 lbs) and 84 cm tall (33 inches). He got his vaccinations at the doctor's on Tuesday (it's a lot easier to do them a shade early here than to wait till we get back), and now he doesn't need shots again for a year, then for five years. He did not cry at all, which amazed the doctor. She couldn't stop saying how rare that is. He was just delighted that we all clapped for him.

He is finally de-spoiled. He now understands that Mama and Daddy will, when he asks for his drink, for example, tell him where it is and say, "Go get it!" And we will just laugh if he starts crying because he wants someone else to walk across the room for him and bring it to him. He is definitely in the "No" stage, but he's not belligerent about it. The one issue now is that he throws things at us. He only does it when he's trying to play with us or is excited; it's never an angry/aggressive thing. But I got a split lip this week nonetheless. His throwing abilities far outstrip his ability to understand that we don't throw hard toys at people or inside the house. I have also caught Jonathan gleefully throwing blocks with him twice in the last week, both times hours after complaining bitterly to me that he doesn't understand why Tristram won't stop. I think I have a pretty good idea why not.

The Seal at Three Months

This is the toy seal GrandRobyn and GrandDan got him when they came in February. We took this shot in early May. It is obviously well-loved. He calls it "Sealbo," which seems harder to say than just plain "seal," but a lot of words get a "bo" or "boo" ending now.

Tristram had a great time with GrandToni and GrandBob. He was a trooper, too--he sat through no less than four restaurant meals with us, and only had to be taken outside during the very last one. And that was after being in the stroller almost all morning. We are very lucky to have him so well-behaved. Oh, and he's just hit a new language level. Yesterday he said a bunch of new words: take, tadpole, (he wanted to bring one home from the park-that's a comment, not a thing he said), food, hungry, more--and then a couple of things in French: "ca va" and "au revoir." "O-vwa" is my new favorite. Plus he says "mama" a lot now, and he will point at me if you ask who his favorite mama is. Then again, he will also point at me if you ask who his favorite bird is. Right now he has just come in the door with Jonathan, and is telling me about the owl he heard on their walk and the keys he is holding.

What I am less enthusiastic about is that he is having a difficult time getting over his grandparental spoiling. More details later; it appears I am on duty now.

The Patchwork Play Rug I Made

So, anyway, Carries (and yes, there should be a backward accent on that e). He is a crazy man, whose work I can neither stand to look nor stop looking at, but I did promise Jonathan we can collect if we ever get super-rich. Also, he looks a lot like Riley's husband. We also discovered a new--not favorite, but liked--painter I'd never heard of before, Aristide Maillol. On looking him up, it seems he's actually more of a sculptor--in any case, he has his own museum in Paris, and I want to go to it. La Vague is probably his most famous painting, and the one that first caught my eye.

I am writing this in the morning before Tris gets up, a la Sylvia Plath, because work ate all my writing time last night. But I will continue the saga later today--it involves getting spoiled by grandparents and saying a lot of new words.

His Block Tower

This one's actually a couple of months old; now that he's mastered block-stacking he's lost some interest. The new thing is putting on my shoes and clomping around the house, or stealing my makeup and pretending to put it on himself.

I think it's long enough that we will skip the rest of the grandparent summary. Suffice to say we have a new favorite ceramist, Carries,

Oops, he's up. Will finish when he goes to bed tonight.

He Learns to Make Faces on the Window

Strange how the less often I blog, the less I seem to have to say. Or not strange, given how many years I've spent telling students that the more specific they get in their arguments, the more they will actually have to say. The many-day-overview is just of necessity less detailed than the current day's thoughts.

My parents are here! They got in on Wednesday morning, and we went to the park on the island and then lunch at the Maison Fournaise. We were pleasantly surprised that Tristram was able to sit with us all through lunch (provided we kept the bites of food coming) and did not require any trips out to the courtyard to play. Thursday we took a bateaux mouches ride on the Seine, which I mostly spent twisted around so Tristram could amuse himself playing with the i-cord I knit as a drawstring for my skirt. That, and laughing hysterically about feeding me madeleines. He was tired. Bob and Toni took the afternoon to play in Paris, and then made us dinner.

We actually are getting really spoiled this week; not only are my parents buying us meals and cooking for us and taking us for cruises on the river, Jonathan's friend Aioffe from the university babysat Tuesday night so we could go see Star Trek. It is a thoroughly enjoyable movie, although the black holes require suspension not only of disbelief but of basic logic and desire for the movie to be internally consistent. Do they crack your windshield or send you through time? I'll take either, as it fits the needs of the plot--one doesn't watch sci fi for good physics--but I'd prefer that they pick one and stick with that at least within the film. I will say, however, that the opening sequence actually made me cry. Well, ok, first it made me laugh when a woman supposedly in transition, who during an obviously fake contraction gave a little groan as if she'd stubbed her toe and then claimed it to have been a "big one." You will laugh too, if you have had a child or seen one had (unless you are in the lucky 10% or so who do think it's no big deal). But then it did make me cry. The only drawback to a movie paced like this one is that you run out of adrenaline about halfway through and so it's hard to get quite as much enjoyment out of the climax as out of the early build-up.

This morning my parents and I went for a walk along the Seine, up to where you'd turn to go the Turgenev museum. Tristram got to play with rocks and sticks and the cottony stuff that comes off of willow trees in spring. He calls it "sheep-o," which is what he calls his fleecy.

This afternoon we are going to get Lebanese food and head downtown for a picnic. We will see how many parks we manage to hit--Amitie, for sure, and then we'll swing through downtown and head to Bois Preau. In theory we will also go to Malmaison to see the roses, but that may be overambitious. We do, after all, have to get back for chicken night.

Having parents is awesome.

Sitting Like a Big Boy

Well, that got cut short--so much for his letting me write my blog entries.

I was going to tell you more about my Mother's Day, but now I'll keep that to a quick summary: I got the best duck & rabbit fricassee over tagliatelle that you can imagine. I didn't have to change a diaper all day. I got to take hot bath. And we went to the Mt. Valerien fort that I mentioned. It is quite something--it seems that, if you're interested in the history of the Resistance, that is absolutely the most important place to visit in all of France. The monument's pictures don't give you a good sense of scale, but it's very impressive. It's huge, and the sculptures are genuinely good in their own right as well as historically interesting. Plus, you have a really good view of the Eiffel Tower. We didn't time it to make one of the tours of the crypt inside, but we did get a good look at the fresh wreaths laid for VE day (which is a much bigger deal here, for obvious reasons). We were also pretty struck by the teenagers who go there just to hang out on weekends--can you imagine American teenagers going to sit and do all their very important nothing in any comparable site of historical importance in the U.S.? It makes me feel like quite the uncultured whelp. Oh, and as you walk around the fort, you not only get glimpses of Napoleon's orphanage and the military dovecotes, you also discover that they clearly have some sort of huge dog-training operation: the moat is full of jumps & obedience & agility equipment, with lots of "canin royal" banners lining the sides.

This week has been a little more rough. Tristram is doing a lot better since I decided he had to tough it out for five minutes twice a day. It's actually turned out to be very much like when he was tiny and I finally got too tired to walk up and down with him till he fell asleep: I sat down and held him, and he screamed but then fell sound asleep within 15 minutes. Now he fusses for a couple of minutes, and just when you think he's going to have a meltdown he decides it's really boring and goes and finds something to do. I wish someone had told me that instead of just all the admonishments mothers get to "take time for yourself!" Those always seem cruel unless they include some advice on how exactly one is supposed to do that. I don't imagine there are any mothers to whom it's never occurred that it might be nice to have some time for themselves. But what are you supposed to do, declare it "time for myself" and ignore your screaming kid? That would lots of fun for us both. Now that I've realized he actually will amuse himself for 15-30 minutes if I don't give in right away, life is much easier. However, at the same time I've now got lots more to do, as I'm co-authoring a chapter for a British geropsychiatry textbook in addition to the open source project, so I've been frustrated again. But at least now I am frustrated and productive, not just frustrated.

Yesterday was our last farm visit. I am going to miss the community life here a lot. And the parks. We went to the Parc de Bercy today. It is, like just about every park we have been to here, unbelievably beautiful and astoundingly well-integrated into the city space around it. Seamless, but completely peaceful inside. This one features an extensive water feature running into a lake with nesting boxes for ducks, a rhododendron garden, a peony garden (not quite blooming yet), an old vineyard, and an experimental organic garden managed by the local junior high kids. Again, I am loathe to go back to the dreary patches of grass that pass for parks in the States.

While we were doing that, we missed three of the local events: 1) The festival of youth and sports, at the park over on the island; 2) the painter's market in our local square and extending down the wisteria walkway to the river; and 3) the Promenade des Gallicourts, a set of three walking tours for Napoleon & Josephine buffs. Apparently people were busing in from all over France for the set of three hikes (different lengths and steepnesses depending on how hardcore you are).

Mmmm!

He loves to smell flowers. He hears me say "mmm," so he says it even more. He will, if you let him, try to wade through the flowerbed to smell every single one, tramping the already-smelt as he goes. He will also smell any picture of a flower and say "mmm!" And leaves, and occasionally even the grass. Also, he loves to tear pieces off our chive plant and eat them.

The nap thing is working out better now. Every few days he gets so tired he needs two. Yesterday morning he fell asleep on my lap at 10:30, so that was a two-nap day (and it gave me renewed hope that he will sleep at least some of the time on the plane flying back). He's also hit a new level, quite suddenly, of being able to play alone. He's actually letting me type this right now. Plus, he's suddenly making three-word sentences every day: Soap where it? Daddy where go? Cereal want please. And he can follow directions like "carry this book to daddy" or "put the socks in the closet." And he has four new teeth. And he's suddenly able to work all the shapes in his shape sorter, though not every time.

Also, he's suddenly become a boy. He still loves animals, especially crocodiles and monkeys. But he also loves cars, and trains, and planes, and boats. And trucks, now that one went by today and honked its horn. He also loves to do anything that makes a loud noise, and he likes pounding with a hammer. He's also interested in babies now, though, so I might see if he enjoys a baby doll when we get back to balance out the heavy machinery.

Soap Where It?

We are back to two naps today. This one-nap thing really isn't working out for me--he's been sleeping less, obviously, and being more fussy and demanding while he's awake. This morning I finally decided to institute a new policy wherein mommy gets five minutes twice a day to sit down at the computer. The idea was, once he got used to that, I'd gradually extend it. But instead, he fussed for a couple of minutes, then got his fleecy from his crib and curled up and tried to go to sleep on the living room floor. I put him to bed for a morning nap and he slept for almost two hours. I got a long translation done, he felt better, everyone was happy. I don't think he's quite ready for one nap yet, and I'm certainly not. Maybe we'll try it every other day for a while.

In any case, I have a new project: I am working on some of the documentation for an OpenSource project. It sounds like it will make it much easier to use grid and cloud computing technologies--and if you want to know more than that, ask me! Some of you will quit reading if I get more technical than that right now. It's another way to overextend myself, but it's also a cool project and a good way to get some experience in technical writing & editing. Experience is, you know, good if you want to apply for jobs. Speaking of which, joining STC (the Society for Technical Communications) looks like it is shaping up to be one of the best decisions I've made in a long time.

Tristram's new achievements: He talks a lot more. He recognizes the word "boo" in a couple of his books (but before you get excited that he's sight-reading already, remember that a) sight-reading words you've memorized is not the same as actually reading, and b) he's not actually sight-reading yet. He only knows "boo" in context in those books. I even checked by writing "boo" on a piece of paper and asking him what it said. And if you point to the "b" and ask him what it says, he's as likely to say "oo" as "b.") He recognizes circles, and knows what they're called, and thinks it's really fun to point them out. He now says "please" as well as "thank you." That is, he signs "thank you," and he combines a sign we made up for "please" with a "plisss" noise that almost sounds like he is trying to blow a raspberry. He says it very enthusiastically, though! He also has started making short sentences: "I don't do," "Bath all done," "Bye bird," and "Soap where it?" He loves soap now. He likes to pretend to lose it, ask where it is, and then triumphantly hold it up. He has had a couple of crying jags, though, over not being allowed to eat it, even though we let him try it the first time and he thought it was gross. We thought he wouldn't try it again, but no.

We have our move-out date: we turn in keys on June 13. Since we don't fly out till the 15th, we will have to spend a couple of nights in a hotel. For some reason I'm excited as if we were going on vacation, even though it's not a vacation but an extra hassle in moving.

One other note: the latest issue of the Hauts-de-Seine magazine they drop in our box for free has a long article about the fort at Mt. Valerien, next to the farm where we take Tristram to kiss the goats every month. Apparently that hill was a favorite spot for monks and hermits, and one 12th century saint I'd never heard of. Then Napoleon built the main building as a home for the orphans of the Foreign Legionnaires, but it was never used because they didn't solve their water transport issues. Eventually it became a military fort, specializing in communications. Then it was (along with the rest of France, obviously) taken over by the Nazis, and used as a prison for Resistance members--1019 of them were executed there. Today there's a military communications museum and an historical military dovecote, but you can't see those except on the "days of patrimony" because it's still a working military telecommunications base. But with pigeons, too. You can go see the monument to the Resistance, which is on the outside of the walls; they have an urn of ashes from the concentration camps, 16 coffins of people executed there, and a 17th that they are holding open for the last "companion of the Liberation," whatever that means. (Though this sounds like one of the more legitimate claims to hardcore Resistance history, the French tend to get really heavy on the pathos and short on the details when they talk about the Resistance. The plaque at the Arc de Triomphe basically claims that De Gaulle singlehandedly liberated France and defeated the Nazis--oh, and as an afterthought, the Americans and British helped him out a little bit.) We plan to go and see it this weekend, since it will be farm weekend again. This will be our very last farm weekend, too, so we had better make the most of it.

The Local Empress

We have a picnic in the park that went with Josephine's estate at least once a week. It's a huge park with lots of space for running. We usually eat by this statue and then follow Tristram around while he goes exploring.

We also found a new park this weekend: the Parc de l'Amitie. It looks tiny when you walk past on the street, but it goes on for a long, long way, and it has lots of areas: the entry lawn & beds you see from the street; a scent garden; an Asian garden full of rhododenrons with bridge, pond (with small koi and more tadpoles than I've seen in the rest of my life put together), and shinto shrines; a zen rock garden; a small foresty area; a renaissance-inspired garden with box hedges; an amphitheatre with a small iris garden; and a lot of roses. I have been given to understand the roses of Malmaison are something quite famous all the way to London--famous enough to be capitalized as often as not. We will have to get to the Chateau's garden again once they start popping, but we'll probably spend more time on the Amitie roses--they are closer and free-er, the park not charging any entry fee. And there are almost as many of them as at the Chateaus, though the bushes, I'm sure, are not as historic and venerable.

I have been having a hard time adjusting to Tristram's new paucity of naps. Poor Jonathan has been getting snapped at a lot: I spend so much of my day getting tugged at and whined at and generally having my attention demanded every time I turn around that when I finally sit down to read or sew and he asks me a question I get really ill-tempered about it. I am going to have to figure out how to reconcile myself to it, though, because it's not fair to him. Any suggestions from my faithful readers on how to train toddlers to play by themselves a little more of the time?

I do love that Tristram is so affectionate, and I can't really resent it when he decides a toy is fun and immediately brings it to share with me. Sharing is good, and liking mommy is good too. But one does occasionally wish for a break.

Mandatory Baby in Sunglasses Photo

It was Louvre day again today. We will only have one more after this. That makes me sad.

We stopped to get lunch at the snack bar on the way out, and while Jonathan got food I thumbed through a brochure on the Louvre's scheduled activities for April through August. Turns out if we lived here, he could start taking art classes at the Louvre at age 4. He could start, for example, with a class on color. After going over the basics, the class would walk through the rooms of 17th-century French painting to see examples of how color is used for symbolism or to evoke an emotion or a state of mind. Sigh. Who wouldn't be sad to leave a place where 4-6 year olds--that's kindergarteners and first-graders--not only get introduced to color theory but get to walk through the Louvre galleries by way of demonstration?

One thing I will say, though: having Mr. will make us explore a lot more of the OC offerings than we otherwise would. Museums of all stripes, gardens, zoos, aquariums, you name it. We do a lot less, in some ways--I read less, we don't go out at night or for social activities, we do fewer of our own activities at home--but we get out at least once a day if it's at all possible, even if it's just to a park.

I am trying to teach myself new sewing and knitting things. More to follow next time, though--Jonathan has a yarn emergency.

How to Eat Soup Without a Bowl

You probably guessed from the last picture that a sad fate befell that white sweater we let him wear to eat spaghetti. This is the new feeding attire. He won't wear bibs, so it's easiest just to take off his shirt and scrub him down when he finishes.

Today is Jonathan's last day before heading back to classes to finish out the semester. We are still in search of a place in Orange County, and I am still in search of a job, but as we get closer to the move date I find that I'm more and more reluctant to keep applying with out-of-town addresses and phone numbers and more and more tempted to wait till I have a local address to show off on my letters & resumes.

What happened in Jonathan's vacation? He finished a draft of his new novel, which is outstanding and I stayed up late to read on Friday night. (I also finished my skirt, and am very happy with it--a well-matched lining will disguise a multitude of small knitting errors.) I then got woken up at 5 am by a little mister who is having weird sleep issues. He's been trying to shift his nap schedule for a while now, but leaving it to his lead has resulted in his still taking two naps and just not sleeping well at night. Now we're shifting morning nap later by 15 minutes every day, so in a little while he should be on a one-nap in the early afternoon schedule and sleeping later in the mornings--at least, that's our plan; we'll see how well he goes along with it.

In any case, yesterday we were all very, very tired. Tristram never did really nap. Fortunately we have plenty of those magical places called parks around here. No matter how tired he is, if you take him to the park he will be happy, and if he gets to spend a couple of hours there he will even stay happy once you get him back home. I am never doing a winter shut indoors in a small apartment with a one-year-old and no pets to help amuse him again. I can't believe how much easier child care is now.

I have been puzzling for some time over why all the ponies at the Poney Club de L'Ile are geldings. No stallions for little kids makes sense, but no mares? There are some people who just don't like mares, though; once in a while you'll find an establishment in the U.S. that insists on geldings only. We discovered yesterday that they do indeed have mares, or at least one mare. It's just that they haven't been using for lessons, they've been using her for breeding! She was out in their little pasture area with her filly (so I guess now they have two females on the premises). The tiny baby of a tiny pony is unbelievably cute. Tiny gallop!

Friday we did indeed make it to the Parc Floral, which is spectacular. We only saw a little bit, since it's big enough that if you went with no kids at all it would take you all day to see the whole place. And when you have a toddler in tow, you can either resign yourself to making him miserable by keeping in the stroller while you go around being goal-oriented, or you can let him out to play and wander and resign yourself to not getting to very many official destinations. (Jonathan points out that the one advantage to all the immobilization and sensory deprivation French babies are subjected to is that they get so passive they WILL just sit quietly in their strollers and let the rest of the family have fun till they're about twice Tristram's age.) As soon as we got there, we found some trees to sit under and let him out so we could eat lunch. We did strap him back in to see the rhododendron garden, which is at its peak right now and is pretty incredible, and I saw some tree peonies blooming, so I was utterly content. We let him out to play again, and were just debating whether to let him play till we needed to leave or try to see one more garden when he blew out his diaper in dramatic style. So as it happened, the one last thing we went to see was a bathroom.

We haven't settled on a plan for today yet. Whatever we pick, I am pretty sure it will involve a park of some sort.

The Uppet Show

Tristram used his first imperative verb today. We let him watch "videos" on the computer after dinner. He likes Planet Earth, Life of Mammals, Life of Birds, and the Muppet Show. Tonight he came up to Jonathan and starting saying, "Uppets! Uppets! Uppets!" Jonathan said, "After dinner. We only watch videos after dinner," and Tristram said, "Cook! Cook!" He usually says that when he wants to be taken into the kitchen to see the cooking in process and taste all the ingredients (especially raw onion), but it seemed pretty clearly to be a command.

He also walked home from the library with me yesterday. It was the first time that he's seemed to have a sense of direction--I mean, he knows where our usual landmarks are and can run right to the playground, but he's never shown any clear sense that we were setting out to go from point A to point B and consistently headed that direction just because I said that's where we were going before. We stopped to watch a frog and a rat swimming in the pond, and to sniff a very high percentage of the flowers in the park.

Those flowers now include peonies! I am going to miss the peonies--well, all the flowers, but especially the peonies--a lot once we're back in the horticultural wasteland of Orange County. At the same time, I'm looking forward to a lot of things: stores that are actually open, peanut butter cups, Mexican food without a bunch of peas in it, Netflix, BabyPlays, doing paperwork with people who are not completely mystified by the concept of a middle name...

Preparations for the move back continue. We've got our hotel reserved for two nights in Santa Cruz, figuring that after 22 hours of travel with a 17-month-old (more like 24, if you count getting luggage and drive over 17 we'll need a while to recharge for the 400-mile drive down the coast. We get into Irvine on the 17th, if we stick to this schedule. I am worried that we don't have housing yet. We thought we were subletting a place on campus for the summer, but its owner seems to have flaked on us. We were all set to schedule key pick-up, and then we never heard another word. So now we're trying to figure out how to set up a lease from overseas when we can't fax signed documents from here, and more than that how to afford OC prices. It'll be easier to get a job once I have a local address, but to get an off-campus place we'll have to show that we have 2.7 to 3 times the rent in our monthly income, which is hard to do when you're moving back and switching work situations altogether.

We have been talking to Tristram about the move back, since kids hate change and we want him to be ready for it. His favorite song to dance to is, by a long margin, "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side," and we have been promising him that Pat will play it for him. It occurs to me that we should probably have you guys send us photos and make your own promises though, lest you be held to our promises on the threat of breaking a toddler's heart. Pat may not want to do baby concerts. And Robert may not really want us to come visit the cats every day, if we do get the cat-allergic sublet for the summer. Also, it would help us to have pictures or videos to show him. He loves to look at pictures, but is a little fuzzy on the concept of people from names alone. For instance, every time we say Mia's name he says, "Meow!" Were that a comment on her pulchritude I would be inclined to agree, but I am pretty sure he thinks that in California we know a giant talking cat who is going to play with hats with him.

Airplane

Whew, I've been lazy a long time! First I was very sick--more antibiotics, making for more since we've been in France than in the last five years, at least. I'm much better now, though. Then Jonathan got back into writing, and has been typing busily whenever Tristram is asleep.

But now for the update:

I am the proud owner of one meter of stretch lining, in a color matching my skirt, no less. See, it does exist! Now I am slowly sewing the lining in and working on a baby jacket to teach myself to crochet. It's not for any actual baby, so it doesn't matter how many beginner mistakes I make. I am again astounded at how badly most patterns are written. A little editing, please? This one, at one point, randomly has instructions for a row 5 in between rows 1 and 2. And the row 5 in question doesn't seem actually to be part of this pattern at all. Still, I am having a lot of fun with it, and feeling superior about having some editing skills.

Easter Monday, we went to the Promenade Plantee, which I had found in our Paris guidebook. I highly recommend that anyone spending more than a week in France pick up a Michelin Guide Vert for their region. Any local shop that sells a lot of magazines should have a rack of them. That's how we've now discovered two of our favorite spots in Paris, the Promenade Plantee and the park at Butte Chaumont. Both are big Parisian favorites but tourists don't know about them. The Michelin green guides are in French, of course, which poses more of a problem for some of you than for others, but they have maps that are much more useful than the text anyway.

So, the P.P. is an abandoned raised train track that they've converted into just what it sounds like, a planted walkway. Beautifully planted, lots of benches, runs 4.5 miles, takes you through a big park that looks like it's out of a Star Trek: The Next Generation-style utopian future, and eventually spits you out a few blocks from the Bois de Vincennes. I got to see my first peonies of the year! It's a great case of urban good-use-of-space planning. At times it runs through spaces that you know would be dirty alleys at street level, and once even through a building. Oh, and it's wired as a WiFi zone, too.

We went back to the Bois de Vincennes on Wednesday to try to take Tristram to the Parc Zoologique, which I've seen lots of raves about. Turns out it closed in December for at least four years of renovations. Wish they'd mentioned that somewhere on their website. The Bois, though, is beautiful, and huge, and we are still going back later this week (Jonathan's second and last week of vacances for spring) to try to see the Parc Floral, the Ferme de Paris, and the tropical aquarium in the Palais de la Porte Doree, which used to be a big monument to French imperialism and is now an aquarium and a museum of African and Oceanic art. It's worth a trip just to see the outside of the building and have a picnic in the Bois, next time you're in Paris. At least, we'll try to do one or more of those; all three might be a little ambitious. The closer we get to leaving, the more I feel like we've barely scratched the surface. Paris is inexhaustible.

Yesterday we walked to the Parc de Bois Preau for a picnic; it's a big park that used to part of the Napoleonic lands here. There's a big statue of Josephine, but mostly it's just a nice big park that's mostly open space so your kids can run around. Tristram is having fun seeing how far he can get from us; once he hits the end of his comfort zone he walks back and forth on that line. He ate falafel and ran around and generally had a good time and wore himself out. Today we took him goat-kissing. It was farm weekend again, and since it was rainy we guessed (correctly) that it would be much less crowded. He petted bunnies, who nibbled his fingers and made him laugh, and petted baby goats and mama goats and the daddy goat, and saw the cows and ducks and chickens, and was bored with the sheep. But mostly he kissed every goat that came within range. He was once again pointed out as the example child, this time by a mom who was holding her daughter (three or four?) at arms' length over the fence into the baby goat pen trying to get her to feed them a cracker. The kid was crying and saying, "Mais j'ai peur!", and the mom pointed at Tristram and said, "Arrete de fair le bebe! Regarde, c'est un tout-petit bebe et il n'a pas peur!" I don't understand why so many parents want to force their kids to do things they are afraid of. I mean really, would her life be severely impeded even if she were always too afraid to feed crackers to goats? The forcing confrontation/shaming thing; I don't get it.

I do get, though, that Tristram is quite the intrepid little goat-kisser. He loves his animals, and he is learning how to be very nice and gentle with them. That bodes well for the cats.

Baddy

It's a good thing we went with the German last name for Tristram. I predict that to be his second language of choice. Now when he wants to be picked up, he lifts up his arms and says, "Up-picken!" Also, he really likes badgers now, since we ended up with two library books this week that have them and he saw them on Life of Mammals. He calls them "baddy." He calls hedgehos "hedjy." And he has finally, finally started calling me "mama," much to my delight.

Today we are heading into Paris as soon as Tris wakes up from his nap. I need to go to the Marche St. Pierre in Montmartre. I have once again come up against the extreme difficulty of buying anything in France. I want to line my skirt, as I've mentioned. So I went to the nearest mercerie yesterday, which was hard enough in itself. I couldn't go Sunday or Monday, because everything is closed. (Any business that is open on Saturday closes Monday to make up for it. And it's illegal to be open on Sunday without a special permit that you can only get by showing that you cater to tourists.) Every other day, nothing opens till 10. Tristram, however, goes down for a morning nap between 9 and 10, and yesterday not till 10. He sleeps for one to two hours, so yesterday he got up at noon. The nearest and cheapest mercerie closes for lunch at 12:30. The other place I could have tried is open till 1, I believe, but it takes 30-40 minutes to walk there, so when Tris got up at 11:45 wanting lunch I had no time to feed him and get anywhere before the stores shut down. They open again at 3. He got tired for his afternoon nap at 2. He got up at 4, and I popped him in a stroller and dashed over to the store.

Now, a common thing you will find in French businesses is that, if you ask for something they don't have in stock, they will deny that such a thing exists. I explained that I'd knitted a skirt and needed to line it in a dark red fabric, and they showed me their lining fabrics. I then explained that I needed a stretch lining because the skirt has no zipper. They tried to sell me a zipper. I explained that the skirt is already finished, has no zipper, and needs a stretch lining, and they told me that there is no such thing as a lining fabric that can stretch. I asked if they had anything like the sort of fabric you'd make a slip out of, and they thought I'd decided to make a lining AND a slip, and started explaining very annoyedly why that wouldn't solve the problem. Meanwhile, a steady stream of elderly French women were backing up in the (tiny) store, and everyone was getting more and more annoyed at the dumb foreigner. Oh, and I was also trying to get supplies for my next knitting project, but couldn't get clear answers--e.g., I explained that I wanted a yarn that was machine-washable and dryable because it would be for a baby, and they rolled their eyes and told me that all yarns are machine-washable. True, if you wash them in cold water with special detergent and don't put them through the dryer, but that's not what I asked for and they didn't want to hear any explanation of my request. Plus, my language skills disappear fast in situations of social pressure like that, so I bought some compromise wool and made a quick exit.

Today I'll head into the big six-floor Marche, the fabric capital of France. If they don't have what I want, then I'll come up with another plan--like a cheap white half-slip and a bottle of dye. I'll also head to the knitting store right by it and see if they can be a little more helpful. It seems that stores dedicated to one particular function are the only ones that place a value on customer service and are willing to go over questions and help you find what you want. I am mostly used to the French style of shopping by now, but once in a while it gets annoying--both for the intensive planning required to get there while they're open in the first place and for the difficulty of actually getting what you want. But it's a good excuse to head to Paris, and the Marche St. Pierre will be a lot of fun even if I come away empty-handed.

What I Look Like Now

I've often commented on how weird French children's books are. Here's the best we've found yet:

UNE SOURIS VERTE (A GREEN MOUSE)

Une souris verte qui courait dans l'herbe
(A green mouse who was running in the grass)

Je l'attrape par la queue
(I catch her by the tail)

Je la montre a ces messieurs
(I show her to these men)

Ces messieurs me disent:
--Trempez-la dans l'huile!
(These men tell me:
--Dip her in oil!)

--Trempez-la dans l'eau!
(--Dip her in water!)

...Ca fera un escargot tout chaud!
(...That will make a nice hot snail!)

Je la mets dans mon tiroir,
elle me dit: "Il fait trop noir."
(I put her in my drawer,
she says to me: "It's too dark.")

Je la mets dan mon chapeau,
elle me dit: "Il fait trop chaud."
(I put her in my hat,
she says to me: "It's too hot.")

Je la mets dans ma culotte
elle me fait trois petites crottes!
(I put her in my underpants
she makes me three little turds!)

And there you have it. I will miss these books inordinately. It seems that Dadaism survives, but only in French children's books. It's better in French, because it rhymes. Not at the beginning, but it gradually settles into a poetic form.

Puppy Love

We have tickets! We leave Paris at 7:15 am on June 15th, and arrive in San Jose at 8:30 that night. You might think that sounds like about 13 hours, but it's actually 22 hours of travel, including a 5-hour layover in Chicago. With a (by then) 18-month-old who already won't sit still... We are thinking about asking his doctor if there is any safe way to sedate him, kind of like you would a cat that you took in a carrier on an airplane.

At least we have business-class for the first leg, Paris to Dublin. Oddly, that was the cheapest flight available, but hey, we'll take it! For the long leg (Dublin to Chicago), though, we have two out the three seats in the middle section in coach, which should be delightful for whoever gets that other seat.

We will have to figure out how to make sure the car seat is waiting in Santa Cruz for us, and how to get from San Jose to Santa Cruz. We'll spend a night or two in Santa Cruz and then drive down. Now we just need confirmation on the apartment we are subletting!

Job-hunting continues, though I've kind of lost hope of landing anything till I have a local address. I do have two notifications that people will contact me for the next stage, but no actual contacts for the next stage, so we'll see. Today I applied to a company looking for a bilingual French-English administrative assistant with a lot of writing duties and strong communication skills. If the world is at all fair, and they are at all self-interested, they should follow up with me. But HR departments are really weird sometimes in their ideas of what makes a person suited for a job. We'll see. Maybe I'll end up shamelessly copying Robyn and volunteering at local museums, though in my case it won't be for fun so much as it will be to get museum experience on my resume. Though that raises the question of how we can afford to pay for child care so that I can beef up a resume at my own expense--and the question of whether, in the long term, we can afford not to. I'm still hopeful about getting enough tutoring this summer to pay the bills, at least.

Here's a question, speaking of gazelles: Why don't the French spay and neuter? The number of intact males roaming around is quite shocking, really. As an American pet lover, I believe to the core of my being that pet owners who don't fix their charges, unless they are showing their animals in confirmation or following responsible breeding programs for obedience animals, don't deserve to have them. It's so irresponsible and unethical, just inexcusable on all grounds. But here the standard seems different. What gives? I will say, though, that the French on average are on a completely different level in terms of pet-related responsibility. Their dogs are so much better-trained and well-behaved that it puts most American dog owners, even a lot of the good ones, to bitter shame.

What Jonathan looks like now

Today was free day at the Louvre! Tristram was a very good boy, although we didn't stay long--it gets so crowded, he gets so tired, and there's the whole trip back home to consider. He really likes looking at bizarre and fantastical creatures like angels. He stares and stares in curiosity and finally signs "bird" as if that's his considered verdict. But he thinks the bird-men are more interesting than just birds. Also, he found a statue of a lion playing with a ball that he loved.

One could plan a whole museum-going schedule based on a baby's age. First they like black-and-white, or at least really high contrast, stuff, with special favor to human faces. Then they like bright colors, again with faces getting special attention but other than that no interest whatsoever in representational art. Then they gradually develop a desire for representational art, the more realistic the better, especially of animals, and ideally sculpture because that's what's easiest to place as an actual recognizable thing in the world. Now he's starting to really like strange combinations of creatures, like Pegasus and hippogriffs and angels and sphinxes. I suspect that will last a long time, and will gradually be combined with a preference for art that tells stories.

So, start your baby in the MOMA looking at the paintings; modernist art is ideal for newborns & infants. (Though the Louvre would also be ideal for a newborn; since there are so many lovely nursing nooks you could rest in to tank up your kid you could easily spend a whole day walking through with a baby on your chest.) Mix in some portrait galleries for variety. As your kid approaches toddlerhood, shift over to photography and sculpture as the favored media. Then start working in some Renaissance paintings, since there is so much Greek myth that you'll see lots of strange beasts and so much religious art that you'll see lots of bird-men and bird-babies. When he's old enough to be interested in listening, tell him the stories that go with the paintings. I wouldn't be surprised if that leads to hours of museum going, especially if he can get books to take home with copies of the pictures and the stories that go with them.

We'll see how that pans out.

You will also soon see photos of my first foray into patchwork--I made a play rug for a woman we know here who's 8 months pregnant (and still smaller than I was at 6). Well, really for her baby. I was pretty pleased with it, and I learned how to do mitered corners, too. I am going to finish binding off my skirt tonight, and then I just have to line it and I will have my first knitted creation. Technically I don't have to line it, but I think I'll like wearing it better if I do.

Hippopotamus

This is Tristram saying his favorite word. If you ask him what his favorite animal is, he will do this to say "hippopotamus." If you ask him, "Is your favorite animal a hippopotamus?" he will say no. He has entered the stage of automatically saying no to yes or no questions. Well, actually, he's kind of passed that stage, because he soon realized that if he said no when we asked if wanted food, and he was in fact hungry, the result would not be entirely satisfactory. Still, it's best to avoid a yes or no question whenever possible. He also has taken to stomping and screaming when he doesn't get his way, though he really only does it when he's tired or hungry, and it doesn't last long.

He does actually give considered answers to some questions. The other day he climbed up into the canvas director's chair that came with the apartment, and swung his leg over one arm to try to go down the side. I asked him, "Tristram, do you think that is advisable?" and he shook his head no. I asked him, "What could you do that would work better?" and he paused for a few moments, then swung his leg back over and climbed off the front.

Yesterday he learned how to throw a tennis ball for a dog. We met a big, shaggy collie/border collie mix in the park, and he threw a ball for Monkey (pronounced like Manquis) at least a dozen times. He didn't throw it very far, but he was getting the hang of it. He loves dogs, but is still a little shy when he's right next to one. He's not quite sure how to interact with them.

It is good that he is learning to play with dogs, because we've decided not to take him to the playground when other people are there. We don't like other people anymore. Wednesday Jonathan took him for a while, and a mom decided for some reason that it was awful for him to hold a stick, so she instructed her daughter to take his stick away and throw it in the trash. What kind of mom makes her child steal a baby's toy and make him scream? Then, that afternoon, he climbed a little too high on a piece of play equipment that was designed for older kids, and got himself into a precarious position (on top of table on a platform next to the top of a slide) that was really terrifying to me and I had to climb up and get him. I got all kinds of nasty looks from French parents--I recall Marianne's comment a few months ago that they are extremely judgmental. But what 15-month-old worth his salt doesn't push thing a little far once in a while? Anyway, he is not allowed to climb on that structure at all anymore, and I don't want to go to the playground when other people are there if they are going to look at me like I'm dirt anytime my toddler demonstrates that he has more strength than wisdom. They give you dirty looks if your kid does anything they don't let theirs do, and after the moms I've seen shrieking in horror because their child stuck one finger into the stream at the park, I get the impression they don't let their kids do much. Plus, most kids his age just seem dumb and pathologically passive compared to him; they don't even walk around on their own, they don't play or talk to other kids, and that's really disappointing for Trist. And older kids are usually really snotty about a baby coming up to them and mock him for being little. Though once in a while someone is nice, on the whole going to the playground has gotten to be really unpleasant when there are other people there.

He is able to do more every day; he helps us put his socks on now. We hear a lot of "I do," and when he is successful a lot of "I did it!" He also gives kisses, and yells "Daddy!" and runs to see him when Jonathan comes home.

Colgate smile

More product placement...He loves any new boxes that come into our home.

We think we have found a sublet on campus for the summer. Hopefully we can have our cats in it and have a parking place--we shall see.

A word of warning to mothers nursing toddlers: beware feeding your kid spicy food and letting him nurse immediately afterward! Your eating spicy food won't hurt him, as people used to think, but his eating it too soon before latching on might hurt you.

Tristram continues to add new words every day. He still struggles with final syllables, though, so he might ask you for "breakst" and then bring you a "booko" to read. I have been kind of sad for ages that he says "daddy" but not "mommy." But now he has chosen a name for me instead of "mommy": He calls me "pretty."

This morning Jonathan had to leave before Tris got up, and when I went to get him out of his crib he looked confused. I told him Daddy went to work, but would be back before lunch, and he got the saddest look and started frantically waving "bye-bye." Apparently it is important now to say goodbye to people (or at least Daddy) when they leave.

Toothpaste commercial?

I think I've pretty much decided that I'd much rather live in Irvine this summer than in DC . DC would be more comfortable in many ways--well, in almost every way--and I'd love to spend time with my parents. Plus, they'd love to spend time with Tristram. But I just don't want to be away from Jonathan for that long, or on solo child care duty for that long, and now that I've read that DC unemployment is as bad as California's and worsening quickly, there seems little to choose between the two job markets. So I'm searching really hard around Irvine/LA now, and it seems clear that once I'm on the ground I can find one of those ridiculous entry-level marketing jobs or hook up with a temp agency till I find a longer-term position. Plus, I have probably a couple of hundred applications out right now, so something might still come back from one of those. But I've really started thinking of job applications as something I do to pass the time rather than because I expect a result.

Now we just need to know something concrete about housing and figure out how to get our car back down from Santa Cruz. Fly to San Jose, take a shuttle, and then make the trek? With a stop in DC to pick up the car seat?

Yesterday we went to the Cite des Sciences. Tristram is much more able to deal with train rides now, as long as we bring lots of snacks to keep him occupied. And it helps if there are groups of teenage girls who flirt with him shamelessly. He's old enough now to understand when we tell him that we're going to take two trains, and when we get off the first remind him that we're getting on another train and then we'll be there, and so forth. Funny how he does better when he knows what to expect!

He didn't throw fits at all yesterday, though he did get a little fussy about an hour after he would normally have gone down for an afternoon nap. He amused himself running around visiting people, and picking up trash, putting it in the trash can, and then clapping and looking at us to clap for him too. Nobody really minded that he wanted to clear their trash for them.

The Cite des Sciences has some great exhibits, which we got to see more of this time since it was much less crowded than when we went with Jessie. They have, now, a "crim'expo" that walks you through a forensic investigation, complete with forensic entomology. Too bad Tris wasn't old enough to let us linger our way through it and play along They also have some really embarrassing translation problems, like "The investigation has just beginning!" and "Welcome at restaurant name." I don't understand why so many places can't get decent translations done; I could translate every bit of text in the museum in a week with not a single error, and they could hire me on the cheap too. But most museums just don't hire native speakers of the target language, because they are foolish and ignorant of good translation practice.

It looks like our patch of rain has ended, and it'll warm up again this week. Hooray! While waiting to play outside again, Tristram has taken up brushing his hair as a new favorite hobby. My big plan once it's warm again is to set him up on the balcony with trays of water and sponges, and empty shampoo bottles he can squeeze to make bubbles underwater. And sticks and rocks, which he loves to put in water. Maybe even fingerpaints, if I can figure out how to ask for them in French and they'll wash off the walls and balcony floor. Hey, whatever keeps him happy.

"'Oh god" happen

Job searching makes me such a basketcase. Yesterday I got two rejections, and discovered on the Smithsonian site that, although their hiring freeze is off, they don't consider me qualified even to take tickets because I don't have experience working a cash register. That's a good way to make a woman feel she's wasted eight years getting a Ph.D. that leaves her unemployable. How does anybody ever start as a grantwriter, for instance, when every single job requires at least five years of specialized experience? Anyway, it's a rough market now, and they can hold out for people who have all that experience and a Ph.D., too, if they want to. I ended up waking Jonathan up to cry on his shoulder about how I will never get a job because I have wasted my twenties becoming overeducated and underskilled and everyone we know will think less of me and Tristram will be ashamed of his mother.

Today, I am feeling much better again. I've applied to pretty much every school (university, community college, vocational school, you name it) with any kind of open teaching slot in English or related fields. And today I spotted another category that might at least keep me in paychecks for a while: admissions. Lots of schools are hiring admissions officers & recruiters; it actually seems to be growing right now. Makes sense, I guess, since if people can't get jobs they are more likely to go back to school & pick up some skills. I've got experience in a college environment, I have the "excellent oral and written communication skills" they say they want, and that's one field where having a doctorate might work to my advantage instead of making me both overqualified and underexperienced. It'd be a nice shiny hire for them to have a Ph.D. doing their recruiting, after all; it'd boost their image considerably. So we'll see. Now to start blanketing SoCal with admissions-office applications.

Tristram is doing great. He talks more every day. Today he brought me a book and said, "Read it!" So I did. He is also getting more independent, and more interested in playing with other kids, every day. Now he thinks the playground is no fun when there are not other kids there.

Yesterday, Jonathan was playing with him on the floor and suddenly starting yelling, "Ow! Ow!" I asked, "What happened?" and he yelled, "Oh god! Ow!" (Turns out his hip had suddenly cramped up.) Tristram turned to me very solemnly and said, "'Oh god' happen."

Bonhomme de Neige

This was when Lisa was visiting. Now, replace that bonhomme with fritillarias, daphne, and violets.

Our plans for going back are ratcheting up. I'm still looking for a job, and still hedging bets with a bicoastal search. At the moment, I'm frantically looking for a job within driving distance of Irvine, since I'd really prefer to be with Jonathan this summer. I think we need to pick a location by the end of the month, though, so if I have no real prospects, or hints of prospects, by then, I will go ahead and plan on DC for sure. I can always fly from DC to LA as another leg of the trip if something turns up late. Jonathan is pursuing all housing leads; we've got a possible hit on a small one-bedroom in Long Beach, near Bluff Park and the ocean. It would be cramped, but cheap enough for us to live in and still eat on his income alone without going into debt! Unless, that is, I want health insurance. Meanwhile, we have given three months' notice on the apartment here, and are looking for buyers for our appliances (mainly the sewing machine and European-plugged IPod dock).

This last Sunday was farm weekend. It was madness. It was sheep-shearing time, which apparently is extremely popular. We didn't make it till they were all shorn due to naptime, but it was so crowded you could hardly get up close to see the animals. We were both dismayed at how many childless adults were there, and how inconsiderate they were being of the children. Four grown adults, for example, ranged themselves out to take up the entire length of the fence by the baby goats, and just stood there and chatted for at least a quarter of an hour. Even the people with kids couldn't figure out that the appropriate thing to do was for one parent to take the kid up to the fence and the other to stay out of the way. We only stayed half an hour. In the end, though, I'd say it was a success; with a lot of tenacity he did get to pet a rabbit and two goats.

He is finally starting to play by himself for short periods, and as a result I've gotten more reading done in the last week than in the whole preceding month. Yesterday was a rough day, though--it's turned cold and rainy again, and he is quite put out at not being put out to play. He's taken to climbing into his stroller and yelling, "Out! Out!"

We've also pulled the high chair back out. We ditched it at about 10 months when he would do nothing in it but shriek and tear at his hair. Now he's old enough that he likes sitting at the table like a grown-up, and he really likes trying to eat with a spoon on his own. I think he's up to a lifetime total of three independent bites now. Anyway, we asked him if he wanted his own chair, and he said yes, so it's back. He does spend a lot of time dropping pieces of food on the floor and then triumphantly saying, "Dropped it!"

Catacombs Valentine

Add to the list of things that are blooming anemones, the first tulips, and the whole plum/cherry genus.

It's amazing how much easier child care is when you can take them outside. I think a lot of my frustration this winter had more to do with having a one-year-old cooped up in a two-bedroom apartment for days on end than anything else. I hope wherever we move to next has nearby parks & playgrounds, too!

We've been going to the park at least once a day, and Tris is quite the little explorer. He's starting to get the hang of approaching other kids, at least as far as realizing that it's better to approach slowly than to run up and jump on their toys. French kids, or at least Parisian kids, in general are pretty good about understanding that babies act like babies, which is a boon for us. I think it's because urban density is so much higher here, and so few people have yards of their own for their kids to play in, that just about all playtime is in public space and they have to get used to all ages of kids milling about from the get-go.

For that matter, playgrounds as an institution are much more of a shared space here. Now that it's nice out, you see people every day who don't have kids but have gone to the playground for lunch to eat in the sun and watch kids play. Partly that's because the French just like kids more (maybe because the birth rate is lower--the highest in Europe, at 1.9), so watching kids play is a "bonheur," whereas in the U.S. other people's kids are much more often seen as a nuisance to be avoided or ignored. Partly it's because parks & playgrounds are seen as shared spaces for the whole community, whereas in the U.S. it would be creepy and suspicious to just go sit in a playground and watch other people's children. But I like it, because you do see a lot more kids playing independently outside like Americans lament that they can't do anymore. There's more of an expectation that the whole community will help watch over them.

Tristram is saying new words every day now. Mostly he likes words that end in "t" (although he says "cack" for "cat"), but he's got some two-syllable words in there now: turtle, baby, water, apple, and orange. I'm not sure that last really counts, since he says "orch." He also has started making telegraphic sentences, like "I don't" or "I want" or "go out." He tells us most days which park he wants to go to by making a sign for the animal most likely to be seen there. Yesterday he requested dogs, and we'd been planning to go to the Foret de la Malmaison anyway, so we figured that worked out nicely. He got to eat lunch by the pond, and play with some dogs, and watch some ducks and coots. Now that he can do more, we've scaled back our activities quite a bit--we took the bus to the forest, walked to the pond, let him out and ate while slowly roaming halfway around the pond. Then we had to put him back in the stroller and go catch our bus home. We considered that quite a successful outing. In a certain mood it's frustrating, but for the most part it's very liberating to let go of all expectations to make it a certain distance or do a certain number of things. If he finds a tree stump he wants to explore for a long time, well, fine.

Here's our new problem, though: He loves the seal GrandRobyn and GrandDan gave him a little too much. That is to say, he won't willingly let go of it for bathtime, and we don't think the stuffed animal he's about to take to bed should get a good soaking. How do we pry it out of his hands to bathe him without him screaming desperately through a fast-as-possible bath? He used to love bathtime.

The Empire of Death

We went to the Picasso Museum this weekend. Tristram's favorite was a sculpture of a goat. Mine was Matisse's Marguerite, which is there because it was part of Picasso's collection. The museum is a good overview of his different media and periods, but of course doesn't have any of his most famous works. My favorite Picasso there was a very small piece in a side case, a cut-out hand with female profiles worked in. I'm apparently alone in that opinion, as I can't find a picture or even a description online.

The museum in the old Hotel Sale (with an accent that this program won't put in--the salty hotel, not the dirty hotel), which has been renovated with an in situ work by Daniel Buren. With the new installation, it's joined the great Parisian tradition of buildings that are more impressive than what's inside them. My one complaint is that, in the low postmodern tradition of laziness and bad taste, he's left the scaffolding up and written some BS about how it's "an integral part of the piece." But the piece itself is nice, if they ever get around to taking away its uglifying support--it's basically two huge mirrored triangles, one silver and one black, put together to form a rectangle that extends through the building. Inside, they've used the mirrors to create some really complicated frames for doorways and antechambers, and as a bonus the mirrors are really good for keeping toddlers amused while you look at the art. There's also a very nice garden out back where we ate lunch and let Tristram run around, though it follows the other great Parisian tradition of fencing off the grass in parks. He's not so into grass right now, though; the new obsession is steps. He loves to practice steps holding just one of our hands.

We've also been taking him to the playgrounds around here a lot, and he's starting to try to figure out how to play with other kids. This is where I feel most at a loss as a parent. I have a much harder time understanding kids' French--adult women are the easiest, then most men, then kids, then men with that midlife peasant mumble that just sounds like one extended "uuurrrhhhh,,,." Of course, I probably wouldn't be able to help him make friends even if there were no language barrier; he'll just have to tough it out while he learns. But I also feel like I don't have a good grasp of playground etiquette. How much do I let him get in other kids' ways? Do I let him pick up their toys unless they say no? Do I intervene if they take his beloved seal (which he loves so much he cries at bathtime now because he can't take his stuffed seal in the tub)?

Fortunately, so far he's reacted well when other kids have grabbed his seal. He's even offered it once or twice as an ultimate gesture of friendship, though its recipients didn't quite understand its value. He is good-natured, so that'll count for a lot in the whole making friends endeavor. Meanwhile I'll gradually figure out the playground parenting rules--I've already had to take him out of the playground once or twice for refusing to take turns on play equipment. He'll get it.

Shopping for Babies

It's been a good week. He's through that awful teething patch he was in, and he's pleasant to be around once more. Sleeping better, too! And playing pretend. He likes to pretend to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a bear, and a cat, ideally while being chased by someone pretending to be the same thing. He also likes to be a bear who shouts, "Boom!" A boom-bear, I suppose.

This week he splashed in a mud puddle for the first time. I started to go to get him out, but then I thought, well, you don't have kids to keep things clean, and what kind of miserable childhood will he have if he can't even play in a puddle on a warm spring day? The nicest thing about having it be spring again is that we can get him out to run around just about every day,

We are into the second phase of spring, even. The first crocuses are just about done, and now we have daffodils and hyacinths, and a flower I can't identify that doesn't look like a bulb but must be. Tulip leaves are up all over, though I don't see flowers or even buds showing yet.

Yesterday at the next-door park we saw a good, old-fashioned duckfight. There's a mated pair that lives on that pond, and Tristram often watches them for a long time. Yesterday, two other drakes showed up to see if they get in on some of that hot hen action. They were sort of paired up against the resident drake, but they couldn't really cooperate very well. There was a lot of chasing, and splashing, and rearing up and flapping. There was also a lot of jumping on top of the female and holding her underwater--having seen ducks mating now, I have to say I am very glad I am not a female duck. Fortunately, having three trying to pile on at once meant they were all distracted, and she dove, came up far away, and sensibly flew off. Two of the drakes got into a big fight then, spinning around in a tight circle and beating each other with their wings. I think I am glad I am not a male duck either.

All of this was very entertaining to Tristram, though he seemed more puzzled than pleased by it. He was also very entertained by the teenagers making out next to the pond--he kept running up and shouting "Ha HAH!," which the girl found adorable and the boy found embarrassing.

The public displays of affection are one of the things I will miss most about France. It was a little strange at first, but now it just fills me with delight to see happy couples enjoying themselves all over the place. And you can bet on finding at least one couple making out in any given park on any given day. Since no one minds, it's not rude, and now it just seems very sweet to me. I have refrained from taking pictures to post for your enjoyment, though, as that would probably be taken amiss by both you and them.

The Mistletoe-est Tree

Yes, that's right--all of that is mistletoe. Not a leaf of its own on that tree yet.

Tristram has a new word: hot. He thinks that is what grown-up food is called, so when he gets hungry he comes up to us making his sign for "more" and saying, "Hot! Hot!" It took us a while to figure that one out; at first we though maybe he was telling us to turn the heat up. We realized that it's because when we give him bites of our dinners, we always say, "It's hot" to warn him. Subject, linking verb, subject complement. He, however, is too young to appreciate the difference between a predicate adjective and a predicate noun, so he thinks "hot" is the name of the food. Now he is very careful to specify, when telling us he is hungry, that he wants real food and not baby food. His favorite "hot" at the moment is avocado smeared on bread.

He has lots of new abilities. He picks up about a sign a day now, and I can't imagine how frustrating life would be for him without them. He is talking to us all the time with his signs. Sometimes he just starts listing animals that he would like to see, like when we are on a walk and he points out a "bird." Then, likely as not he asks to see a "dog." Then he says "cat," because sometimes we see those, and then "horse," because we might head over to the Poney Club, and then he wonders if perhaps we might see "hippopotamus" or "cow," and on it goes.

He can put his blocks together now! The ones that GrandBob and GrandToni gave him for Sparkly Day. They're like supersized legos for baby hands. Two weeks ago he was so close that they just made him scream with rage because he couldn't QUITE do it. We tried again a couple of days ago, and now he has it down cold. Also, he likes to dance, especially to Velvet Underground.

What he does not like to do is nap. He is clearly starting to cut himself down to one nap a day, which does not bode well for my ability to get anything at all done. It does bode well for our ability to go out and do fun things.

Springtime!

Sunday was free day at the Louvre. Tristram was an angel when we went last week with Dan and Robyn; it was a dramatic mark of how much more mature he is now than when we last went in January. He was good for a couple of hours, having fun finding animals in the pictures and flirting with people walking around. Sunday he was not as good; he'd refused to eat breakfast and then missed his morning nap, so it was what Jonathan likes to call "a lightning strike into the heart of the Louvre."

We did the high points that you really must do: the Nike of Samothrace (aka Winged Victory), the Mona Lisa, and the grand gallery. All very impressive, and of course moreso in person. The great hall of the Louvre is actually more impressive in its architecture than in most of the paintings hung there--one can only look at so many BJs and BDJs and the standard set of biblical stories and Greek myths before it all blurs. Besides, of course, the Mona Lisa and the Nike, my favorite painting by far was John Marten's Pandemonium. My favorite when we went with Dan and Robyn was Champaigne's dead Jesus--it's such a striking contrast to all the BDJs. It seems ridiculous that they used to keep it behind a curtain so as not to upset people--I mean, if you are Christian, isn't Jesus's death kind of the whole point? Is it supposed to be a secret? Anyway, that was all the more impressive to me in that I have a general policy against paying attention to religious art with its dreary similitude.

The weather has turned so nice, and I am enjoying the flowers (crocus, snowdrops, hellebores, the earliest flowering shrubs and irises, and the daffodils that are still in the buds) so much that we have been taking Tristram out every day. It's a big relief, both for him and for us, to let him run in the park and get tired instead of trying to keep him amused indoors. Today he was enthralled with watching ducks swim and fish eat, and he (sort of) learned about not touching rosebushes. That is to say, we explained it many times and finally let him touch one to see for himself. Then he wanted to touch every single rosebush in the spirit of experimentation shared only by toddlers and 18th-19th century physicists & chemists, and he kept saying "Owww" in his best E.T. voice. I don't know if he learned anything about thorns, but he got a good long walk out of it. He astounds us with how far he can walk once you turn him loose. And with how much he loves to go down slides.

Hopefully blogger.com will get their picture-posting dealy working again soon. I have quite a backlog of pictures.