4 posts tagged “kids”
My ensuite bathroom in Apt is the size of my apartment in Paris. That is not an exaggeration.
I also never have to make my bed, do laundry, cook, or even clean my bathroom. There is full maid service, every day. The house is actually too big, as it's really inconvenient for the kids. The gardens and grounds are immense. I haven't even begun to see all of it. There are no barriers or safety gates, so A. can run around everywhere and his mom is constantly panicking that he's going to get hurt. I have tons of scars from my early days, and I turned out fine. I definitely think I'm more easy-going about letting kids fall, as I think that's how they learn. It can be a bit frustrating to have to bow to a parent that wants to protect their kid from everything. It's just not possible.
Hopefully they'll loosen up a bit. In the meantime, I eat my breakfast in the self-serve summer kitchen, and then get waited on for lunch and dinner. The food is amazing, as the private cook is a former restaurant chef. I wouldn't mind if someone offered me a glass of wine with dinner, but I have a feeling I can sneak it once I'm "off duty."
Shower time!
Three days a week I tutor an adorable 5-and-a-half year-old boy, Lucas. Lucas is Irish/French, and I'm teaching him how to read. It's really satisfying work, and Lucas is very perceptive. Sometimes it's easy to forget just how little he is, 'cause he never lets me get away with anything: trying to let him win at tic-tac-toe ("but why did you go there?!"), making up the rules of a game as we go along, or trying to answer a question with "because."
I haven't seen him in three weeks, because of Christmas vacation, and today was our first day back together. When you spend three hours a week with a little guy like that, you get kind of attached. And I almost squeezed him when introducing me to his Christmas present, a really big stuffed dog. I asked if the dog has a name, and he said, "yes, his name is Big Dog."
And then he told me a knock-knock joke, and laughed himself silly.
Lucas: Knock knock!
Me: Who's there?
Lucas: Who!
Seriously, he thought this was the funniest thing ever. It made me really happy, and I wanted to freeze him in that moment. Or maybe I wanted to go back to when I thought knock-knock jokes were the height of humor?
When I was that age, I attended an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva. I was there from nursery four through third grade, and I was really happy. Half the day was in English, and half in Hebrew. I had lots of friends, and was good at school. I wasn't great at Hebrew, but I was in the gifted program for the English part of the day. I remember learning about Greek myths and Braille when the rest of the class was doing their Social Studies. Eventually my parents took me out, which they were very right to do. Math, History, English . . . all of it was getting short-changed in exchange for the Hebrew and Jewish studies. And seriously, I knew like four alphabets, and that's just not necessary in an eight year-old.
The school I moved to was a historically Episcopalian school, although it has been secular for about a hundred years. My mom always used to joke that half of my high school was half-Jewish, and she was probably right. Still, the parents of my former classmates were not very happy to let their kids play with me. And that really sucked. I stayed in touch with a bunch of them for a while, but then our lives just went different ways. Most of them went to Israel for a year between high school and college, and got married by their mid-twenties.
A little while back, I got a message out of the blue from my very first boyfriend. We were together in kindergarten and first grade (what can I say? I started young), and he was just the cutest. We would sit together on the bus for field trips, and I still have the birthday presents he gave me for my 6th and 7th birthdays. Somehow he found me on LinkedIn, and it was great to hear from him. He's married, of course, with two kids, and living in Florida.
Hearing from him inspired me to search for all the other friends I lost touch with ages ago. I found a bunch of them on facebook, and it's such a trip to see their faces all grown up. I have such vivid memories of that time: slumber parties, clapping games at recess, eating tuna fish sandwiches with potato chips smushed in the buns at Friday lunches, ballet and gymnastics classes after school, and the constantly changing alliances that are part and parcel of any group of young girls. Seeing pictures of them all in their wedding dresses and holding babies is just plain weird. And it really shows me just how far from ready I am for that life.
It's strange, since we all started out the same. We learned about sex at the same time and had our first crushes on the same boys. So when does the switch get flipped? How did they ALL end up married before 30, while I have no interest in even sharing a bathroom for the near future?
While Halloween 2008 was sadly costume-free for me, I did spend most of the day with kiddies, and that, to me, is just as important as the candy.
Okay, who am I kidding? I want candy corn and those chocolate-covered marshmallow things and I want them NOW!
Lee Ann is back in town, visiting her old haunts and Parisian friends. I haven't seen her since May 2007, and that means that I never got to meet Mateo, her exquisite 16-month-old son. I have been tracking Teo's growth through Lee's blog and flickr pics, and am truly sad I missed his roly-poly baby stage. He's a full-fledged toddler now, and still pretty damned cute. See?:
And by the way, Lee, I may have cropped you out of that picture (you know which one I mean), but I still have it on my hard drive, so don't cross me or I WILL use it. ;)
I did day five of the Shred, and some exercises are getting easier, while others are getting harder. I no longer have sore abs, which I think is not a good sign, since Jillian says our body only changes when we put it under stress. But I'm doing the crunches and the reverse crunches and the oblique crunches and the bicycle crunches! I'm doing them! Just maybe not correctly? I dunno.
I'm really pushing myself on all the lunges and cardio exercises, and am definitely feeling a difference there. Crap, those side lunges are hard. What I really like about this workout is that it goes super quickly. Even if I don't really feel like doing it, I know that in 30 minutes I'll be finished and in the shower. I can handle that.
I probably undid lots of my work with tonight's dinner, unfortunately. My cousin Martin turned five on Monday, so tonight we went out to celebrate at a great resto in the 17th, l'Accolade. I highly recommend it. For a prix fixe of 32€ I had the tartare of bar, magret of duck with pumpkin purée and girolles, and a banana dessert that was a bit too heavy. My taste of Gerard's langoustine tempura was amazing, but nothing can top watching a five-year-old boy demand to order the oreilles de cochon. That's pig ears.
I've known Martin since he had his very first coke, at age 18 months, so realizing that he's now five is weird. But it was a great dinner, and I feel really lucky to have family here.
There is still all sorts of fall-out from the fire the other day, including my possible eviction and other fun topics. But I'm honestly so completely drained right now that I just can't talk about it. So I'm going to write about babies, instead.
Last Sunday Mike and Rion had a few friends over to meet their six-week-old bundle of love, Dante:
After snorgling Dante for hours, Rion and Mike told me that he smelled like my perfume for the rest of the night. I'm not sure that Opium is baby-proof, but I guess we'll find out.
I love this shot I got of Mike and Dante. Mike's all, "where did this thing come from?"
I know she was just trying to stay awake a bit longer, but come on! How could I not fall for it?
