Date night and the sneaky wife....

We had our last date night while living in Paris last night.  In the future we will be able to come into the city for a date but it will involve driving or multiple changes of trains but we will continue to have our date night, once we find a suitable baby sitter.

Last night we went to see Star Trek, in English.  This was the first time we had attended a movie at this particular chain and were quite taken aback to see people walking in with bags of chips/crisps that they had purchased at the theatre.  We discovered that our worries were for naught as the trailers/commercials lasted for 21 minutes and all the bags of chips/crisps were consumed before the movie began. Next movie, Harry Potter 6!!!

we then had dinner at the Le Chalet, a very nice fondue place near the market area where we currently live.  Will definitely continue to eat there, only in winter as last night it was chilly but we were sweating while eating the fondue.  Very reasonably priced for Paris as two starters, the fondue , two desserts and a nice bottle of wine cost us only 84 euros.

Now for the sneaky wife.  On Friday Julia stopped by the boulangerie to pick up a baguette for dinner.  She said that she only had a 50 euro note and the clerk was unable to make change so the clerk agreed that she could pay for the baguette on Sunday.  Well, this morning comes and Julia is not feeling well so I have to go to the boulangerie to pick up breakfast and pay for the baguette.  First I ask the clerk if she speaks English and she says no.  But I guess the lessons are having some impact as I was able to tell her that my wife had been in the shop on Friday and been unable to pay for the baguette and that I was paying for it today.  Sneaky, sneaky wife!

Wish us luck as this evening we will be transporting the cats to the new house where we will leave them in the basement with food, water and litter boxes so they will not be so traumatized by the movers here for the next two days.  On Wednesday when everything will be delivered to the new house we will either lock them in a bathroom or on the terrace off of our bedroom so that they are out of the way.

Pre-move update.....

Forgot to post Samuel's vitals from his 1 year exam.

9.1 k = 20.1 lbs.  15%

75.6 cm = 29.76 inches  55%

His weight is still on the low end so we are trying to set up an appointment for a taste/texture/swallow test to determine if his lack of desire for solid foods is physiological. Will keep you posted on the results, if there ever are any as the clinic never answers their phone or returns messages when we are able to leave one.

We will be moving beginning Monday.  If there is a reason to call us please try us on our cells as we may not know our new home number until next week.  If you do not have our cell numbers please send us an e-mail and we will forward to you.

I set up my first haircut appointment this week.  Also had my first solo haircut(without Julia in the salon to ensure hat I did not ask for the wrong procedure).  All went well.  Julia wanted only court(short) but I asked for tres, tres court. She is not happy.

Our lift(elevator) has been out of commission since Tuesday morning.  Makes it very difficult to do anything with Samuel as it is 5 flights of stairs but we only have to deal with it for a few more days.

We are not at all worried about Samuel being decisive and assertive.  When we are in the kitchen cooking or doing dishes Samuel will cruise using the kitchen cabinets.  When he reaches us standing in front of a cabinet he just pushes his way in front of us and continues on his journey.  He will, on occasion, go around behind us but this does not occur very often.

Samuel update-1 June

Samuel is into everything these days.  he has lately taken to cruising into the office, pulling himself up on the desk and playing with the Mac keyboard.  We think he should be walking very soon.  Moving to the new house should help him as we will be able to take him outside, on grass, and allow him to fall down so that he realizes that he will not get hurt if he does fall down.  It did take him quite a while to learn to get back down onto the floor once he had learned to pull himself up.  But now he gets up and down too quickly.

Samuel has learned the meaning of the word no.  When he starts to do something that we do not want him to do we tell him no,  he stops looks at us, smiles(or laughs), and then continues upon his way.  His hesitation does give us time to catch up to him and take away the object he should not have or to remove him from an area in which he should not be. 

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