Survived first Paris con game with no loss, only a smile.

While Samuel and I were tacky souvenir shopping near the Louvre on Friday a man stood next to us as we were waiting to cross the street.  He suddenly bent over and appeared to pick up a gold ring from the ground.  He then proceeded to point out an engraving on the inside and showed me that the ring was not his by trying it on all his fingers.  At this point he tried to give me the ring. Under no circumstance was I going to take it but I thought I would play along at least until the light changed.  I kept pointing to my ring telling him that I was already married but thanked him anyway.  He did not see the humor in that statement.  While this was going on I was glad that I had all my valuables in my murse (man purse) and that I was holding it tight as it dawned on me that this may be a setup for a pick pocket ring.  I thought what else could it be because if I took the ring from the man what could he then do to me.  If he asks for money and I refuse to pay, what is he going to do, call the cops?

Time to go watch Chelsea beat Everton for their second FA cup in three years.

TTFN

-Dave

Samuel loves the trash bin

Samuel has many, many toys.  More than enough to keep a 13 month old engaged and happy. Why then does he insist on trying to play with the trash.  He can now cruise into the kitchen and while standing he can reach up and open the top of the trash bin?  Whereupon he attempts to pull out and play with whatever trash is near the top of the bin.

Samuel has officially outgrown his Baby Bjorn

Julia is going to New York for the next few days and in anticipation of her trip Samuel and I did some chocolate and tacky souvenir shopping.  In order to do this we had to take the metro so I transported Samuel in his baby bjorn.  As we were at the chocolate shop watching the woman complete our order Samuel began to kick his legs and I discovered(rather painfully) that Samuel's legs have reached a very sensitive area of my body when he is hanging from the baby bjorn. Needless to say I spent most of the trip with one arm holding Samuel's legs still.

One of the things Julia will be picking up in New York is a baby carrier that attaches similar to a backpack so his legs will only be able to kick us in the back.

Our travels this morning highlighted the best and the worst of living in Paris/any big city.  In order to complete our trip we had to be on 5 trains.  The first two were rather full but in both carriages a person offered us their seat.  On the next two trains there were plenty of seats and we were able to sit without issue.  On the return train, which was surprisingly full, a young lady offered us her seat.  I politely declined as the two men who were seated directly in front of us had immediately closed their eyes and tilted their heads and pretended to be asleep as soon as they saw us enter the carriage.  So I did a bad thing and stood as close to the two men as I could with Samuel's legs occasionally kicking them in the shoulders and chest.  They kept their eyes closed the entire trip(a total of 8 stops).

It's Official!

We are now the proud renters of our 6th home in less than 11 months - we signed the lease on our house today! It was wonderful to be back at the house that we chose in Chatou. Samuel became very excited when he saw the pool and was crawling and walking all over the house and outside terrasse. He was particularly keen on exploring the stairs, so baby gates will be one of the first things we need to install.

We met the owner of the house today, who seemed like a very nice man and who also spoke English well. He is letting us keep an old fridge/freezer and 3 portable air conditioning units in the house (great news... particularly with the hot weather we have already started to have) as well as a child's tent with many little plastic balls that Samuel is very excited with. The house is really wonderful - calm, peaceful, beautiful garden and view, quite warm and full of light inside and in extremely good condition. We can't wait to move.

P&G have extremely graciously agreed to foot a significant amount of the bill for our move. We now need to negotiate our way out of our current lease to reduce the notice period and to negotiate low estimates from moving companies. That will be fun for the rest of this week. Oh... and buying a cheap 2nd car, since we will now be suburbanites (the nearest RER station is a 15 min walk). Dave will now have to drive in France!

The imperative to move became even more apparent this weekend. Not only do we have 15 individual rooms rented out above our heads, with no soundproofing at all between us, with the communal showers almost immediately above our bedroom and much of this done in blatant violation of the law (on the basis that it will take years in France to resolve this in court). In addition, in the span of the last 3 weeks, we have seen a plumber (neighbours had a leak due to poor quality plumbing work done for the illegal construction above), the police (burglary in the basement due to front doors left open all the time), and now the firemen as this weekend we smelt a very strong odor of burning paint - quite scary - and had to call the firemen to check it out as it seemed linked to the work done on the rooms above. All this in addition to the fact that the elevator will be out of service for 5 weeks (minimum!!) starting next week.

So..... we plan to move starting on June 8th! And we look forward to welcoming you to our new home. We don't intend to move again for quite a while... at least a year or two :-)

-Julia