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