Bonne Annee

We had friends over for lunch on Thursday.  They have a little girl about 8 months older than Samuel.  We had them eat lunch together and Samuel actually ate some of Emily's food.  They were sitting at Samuel's small table and he reached over and grabbed a few pieces of her ham and cheese.  It may be time to move him onto bigger kid food.  He is not too keen on eating his puree.  Thursday night we were watching the Return of the King and I was eating popcorn.  Of course, Samuel, as usual, wanted to share.  Normally he would chew and suck on the popcorn and then spit it out.  Last night he actually ate most of it.  This morning Julia was having rice krispies for breakfast and she shared some with Samuel and he was so enthusiastic that she put some in his smallest stacking cup(A very popular christmas gift) and he gladly lifted the cup to his mouth and let the rice krispies fall in and he ate them all with only a few spilling onto the floor.  Another positive of having friends over was that we were able to have another buche.

Since Julia has become pregnant she has had cravings for chocolate chip cookies.  She baked some the other day and this is a picture of Samuel enjoying his first chocolate chip cookie.

Okay, Julia stole most of my thunder.  I will just have to sit here being happy loading songs into my new ipod, courtesy of the P & G works council.  There are benefits to being in a socialist country.   The works council at P & G has a line item in the budget to provide Christmas gifts to the entire staff. This year the choices were an ipod or a coffee maker.  Julia chose the ipod and gave it to me as a Christmas present.  The works council gets all the credit and the company pays for it.  I do love living here.

Learned over the past few days that we will actually receive cold hard cash from the government after we have the babies.  Not sure how much it will be but we will take all that we can get.  Do feel a little guilty as we have yet to pay our taxes, but we will eventually pay them, we promise.

Samuel's new favorite word is no.  Everything is no.   Except food, where everything is O.  As in CheeriO's.  An American breakfast cereal that serves as a snack for toddlers.

Samuel and I have been trying to go for a walk everyday, despite the cold weather. The highs the last few days have been 0 or 1.  We take day old baguette and try to feed the ducks.  Unfortunately most of the ducks seem to have finally felt the cold and flown south.  There are a few hardy individuals left but not many.  We still have swarms of white birds, which resemble sea gulls, hanging around.  The white birds are quite aggressive when it comes to bread in the water.  They first team up to ward off any ducks that may be in the vicinity.  Once the ducks are out of the picture the white birds turn individual and begin to attack each other for the bread.  Quite an interesting social dynamic.

Julia and I were finally able to take advantage of the holiday season and watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Had forgotten what wonderful films they are.  It took us 6 days to watch the entire trilogy, an hour here and hour there, but we finished it and we were both glad that we found the time to do it.

Samuel is enjoying the fruits of his Christmas.  Good thing is he doesn't seem to favor any one toy.  He plays with everything.  The above picture is Samuel riding his new bike.  Don't worry it does not have pedals.  He holds onto the handlebars, sits on the seat and pushes off with his legs.  He loved the bike when we opened the box and we let him ride it for a few minutes in the house.  He did not enjoy it so much when we took him outside.  Between Julia and I we have about 25 new books which should keep us busy for awhile.  We learned from Samuel that our reading time will decrease significantly upon arrival of the twins.

Samuel sitting on the couch trying to drink out of one of his new stacking cups while surrounded by new cars and trucks.  He is a very happy little boy.

Happy New Year!

Very best wishes to all for a wonderful, happy and healthy New Year.  We hope to see as many as possible of you over the next year... or at least talk to you frequently, since we won't be travelling much!

We have had a very peaceful and restful holiday week.  Samuel has really enjoyed everything about Christmas.  He was so excited when we brought home the tree and has loved playing with the decorations and seeing the lights come on every evening.  Today we took the tree down and he was a great little helper, finding ornaments and giving them to us.  He loved seeing the lights up all over the house, and clapped sometimes when they would come on.  He discovered the joy of presents - opening shiny wrapping paper and boxes, and discovering wonderful new toys to play with.  Luckily, he isn't the sort of child who focuses only on one thing - he really has no favorite toy, but enjoys playing with nearly everything, so he has really appreciated everything that he received this year (many thanks to all those who sent him presents!).  We have spread out the new toys through the house (his room, office, living room) so that he has fun new things to play with in the areas where he usually spends time.  It will be interesting to see how much he remembers - if anything - by the time we get to Christmas next year!

Samuel has even started the New Year with a big step forward in his eating habits.  Over the last couple of months he has increasingly wanted to share our food - but most of what he would chew on would be pushed back out of his mouth again.  Last night and this morning however he ate solid food (popcorn and dry rice krispies) and swallowed nearly all of it! 

The cats greatly enjoyed their Christmas turkey, having been stuffed full of leftovers during the last few days.  If it weren't for the fact that they both react to the presence of The Bird in the house as if they hadn't eaten since the previous Christmas and the turkey was stuffed full of catnip, all would have gone smoothly... Instead, however, I had to exile the cats from the house as I took apart what was left of The Bird (to avoid relentless howling, desperate attempts to snatch morsels and pathetic displays of fake starvation).  While Molson rapidly found a space where he could stare me down through a window, Preacher decided to hide under the deck.  Bad idea.  She is either losing her mind or her eyesight... she couldn't seem to find her way out again and would only miaow pathetically from underneath the deck.  Everntually, late that night, we were able to encourage her to come out by getting her to follow a light and our calls.  Silly cat.  But, who knows... maybe we foiled a dastardly plot by Molson to monopolize all The Bird for himself... !

Dave and I have had a peaceful time, mostly just reading and enjoying Samuel's company.  All still seems to be going well with the pregnancy (now 21 weeks along!), although unfortunately since just before Christmas my pelvic ligaments turned into loose bungee cords and I now walk like Frankenstein... nothing serious for the babies, just a lot of pain and frustration for me (and more work for Dave) as I can barely walk or drive.  Not much anyone can do about it, and hopefully it should go away after the babies are born.  In the meantime though, I most likely have to work from home for the next couple of months as I won't be able to make it into the office anymore.

With very best wishes to you all, from all of us

Julia, Dave, Samuel, Bo and Go (for those of you that haven't got this yet - Buy One, Get One free...) - and Molson and Preacher

Christmas videos

The videos of Christmas 2009 are now posted to youtube.

Christmas pictures

     

                                                             The Buche!!!!!

Julia waking up Samuel on Christmas morning.  How did that stocking end up in Samuel's crib?

Samuel wearing his new tool belt.



















Samuel enjoying his new rocking horse.

Samuel and Julia after the opening of the crackers.

Samuel and the Christmas tree seconds after Samuel came downstairs.  He was quite excited.

Samuel's Christmas message

/xx/./////p[cp0-phi898888888888ujjrjjjj;dlw2ibopiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ji][0-jb-0;[][]
[089999http://thechartersabroad0o99r845ptr45.blogwww80iiiioooooooooo90spot.com/[0#'34optplh,;,h.mkkkkkoyoikl7ik5 fellol3p/klek;rf234uhhhhhh2iiiii............./2/1po-------------=3nm;[phttp://thechartersabroad.blogspot.com/,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,i900dn7m,233028##;;es mnkluioo90,l9999

Bonne Noel from Chatou

Samuel did not have a good Christmas eve.  We did not go to church because of his behaviour.  Twice during the day he had to be put into timeout.  The terrible twos have started early.

While we were having our traditional Christmas eve family meal of fondue Samuel was quietly sitting in his high chair, chewing on his baguette when he would suddenly throw it to the floor and begin to move his hands rapidly through the crumbs laying on the tray of his high chair, sending them to the floor also.  We don't know if he feels ignored and this is his way of grabbing attention or if he is bored and wants to move on to other things.  Looking forward to the day he can talk and tell us what he is feeling.  Of course, he will be open and honest and tell us the truth when we ask.

The rest of the day went relatively as planned.  The fuse to our electrical transformer blew as I was making the pastry for the pumpkin and mince pies.  We had to scramble to finish a few items but everything was finished on time.

Samuel and I made a late afternoon run to the city centre to pick up the turkey(7 kilos), fondue meat, baguette and buche de noel.  The buche de noel may replace pumpkin pie as my favorite christmas dessert.  It has clearly surpassed mince pie as number two. Our buche is very light and creamy, made mostly of a chocolate mousse.(A picture will be posted soon).

With Samuels cooperation we hope to go to church on Christmas morning.  The difficulty is that the American Cathedral does not offer babysitting services for either the 1700 service on Christmas eve or the 1100 service on Christmas morning.  It has been awhile since we tried to have Samuel in the sanctuary as last time we attempted it he did not have a good reaction to the organ music.

After we finished our fondue we brought Samuel upstairs and while sitting on our bed I read him Twas the night before Christmas and then Julia read him La mysterieuse nuit de noel(the french version of the same title).

Earlier in the day we had continued our tradition of watching how the grinch stole christmas and a charlie brown christmas.  We watched the grinch first and Samuel was fascinated.  He sat quietly(for the first time all day) between us on the couch with his eyes fixed on the TV screen.  This lasted for about 15 minutes until he became bored and started climbing all over us.

I also introduced Julia to the Santa tracking technology.  She did not know it was possible to know where Santa was on his day long journey.

If all goes well, pictures and videos will be posted on boxing day.

Ttfn

-Dave

It never snows in paris, part deux......

Christmas in Paris means not being able to go anywhere.  The RER A is still on strike. The French cannot drive in the snow.

I do admire our post woman.  Thursday I was thinking that the poste would not be delivered due to the weather.  Especially since our recycling was not picked up on  Wednesday and our trash had not yet been picked up on Thursday.  Much to my surprise I spied our post woman, on her bike(the traditional French method of postal delivery), delivering our mail. She was riding her bike while wrapped in a very large parka and scarves with a very small slit through which one could barely see her eyes.

Left a little after 0900 this morning to drop off Samuel at the HG and was amazed to see a line of cars(about 10 cars/trucks) slowly moving along the avenue gambetta at about 10 KPH.  A car was driving that slowly along a major access to the quai.  The road was wet from Thursday's snow and it had started snowing about 10 minutes before we left but there was absolutely no excuse to be going that slow.

On Thursday, Samuel and I drove to the city centre after he woke from his nap in the afternoon.  It had stopped snowing around 1100 and the roads were not snow packed, just wet.  As we pulled out of our street we ended up behind an old woman who was driving slowly but stopped for every curve in the road and almost stopped for every car coming from the other direction.  Very, very frustrating.  There were just enough cars coming from the other direction that we were unable to pass.

When we did return home on Thursday it was quite beautiful at the house.  If you look at the picture posted yesterday the little tree in the left of the picture is adorned with christmas lights.  When we returned on Thursday we turned on the lights on the tree and stood in the living room watching the lights twinkle in the darkening night and shining off the snow sitting on the branches of the tree.  Even Samuel stood still for a few seconds and marvelled at the sight.