New Shoes All Around

Josephine is speaking so well lately! She's saying complete sentences, such as, "I eat all blueberry." And she's telling me things that I need to know. The other day, we were leaving a store in our neighborhood, and I told her that we needed to go to Maison Blanc to get something for dessert. She pointed in the proper direction and said, "Maison Blanc -- that way." I was so impressed.

On the subject of dessert, the French bakeries here are just wonderful, and they're on every street corner. They have the best macaroons imaginable. On the other hand, there are NO Italian bakeries here. I really miss the cannoli in New Jersey.

I watched the final season of the Sopranos a while back, and it brought with it a sudden wave of homesickness for New Jersey. That part right at the beginning where Tony is driving all over the place and you can see the montage of Jersey sights got me all choked up. I'm over it, though.

There was this pair of shoes at Harvey Nichols that I tried on last September or so, and they were so amazing, but they were just too expensive. Then after a while, the disappeared from the shoe department, which was sort of a relief because then I was no longer tempted to part with the cash for them. But during their recent sale, the shoes were BACK. But I still did not buy them at first. I went back last week, and it was the last week of the sale and they had their final reductions. I decided I just had to have them, even though, at 60% off, they still cost a fortune. They remind me of geisha shoes. I need to start frequenting fabulous places so I can wear them.

The girls got new shoes this week, too. Josephine's light up when she walks.


I tried to get a photo of them both in midair jumping off chairs, but it just did not happen:

These English gardeners are amazing. It's January, for crying out loud. Cold and dark all the time, but the local park looks like some sort of a tropical paradise.

The girls got new bath crayons to play with:

The obligatory playground pic:

New dresses:

Gambado

Yesterday, we went to Gambado, which is this huge indoor play space not too far from here. It was a huge hit with the girls. They have a massive jungle gym, a carousel, bumper cars and trampolines.

That's Pascale on the left-hand slide and Josephine way at the top of the middle slide:


Here's Josephine eating a chocolate croissant. She opens up the bread part, takes out the chocolate, eats the chocolate and discards the bread. To her mind, the bread is unnecessary packaging.


Here they are at the playground:


Josephine wants to go barefoot:


Pascale scooting backwards down an incline:


Relaxing at home:


Dancing on the banks of the Thames:

Birthdays, School

Pascale went back to school this week. I thought I would be anxious for her to start, but it was actually kind of nice having her home, and not having to drag her out of the house in the morning. It does not help that it's always cold and raining in the morning when I walk her to school, and I don't even want to drag myself out of the house, let alone 2 kids. It was also Bernie's birthday this week. He's suitably traumatized about being another year older, but he'll get used to it.

We went to the fabled London Whole Foods today! It is a 3-story extravaganza of fancy food and slick presentation. They have a lot of the products that they sell at WF in the States, including a nice selection of California wines, which are not readily available here. We stocked up on some of our favorites. One thing that we were looking for that they do not have is Annie's organic Macaroni and Cheese. It was a little disappointing, because that's one of very few things that I use regularly that you can't buy here. I'll have to stock up when we go back to the US in the summer.

I read the book "We Need To Talk About Kevin" last week. I'm under the impression that it's supposed to be literary fiction, but it was truly the most horrifying book I've ever read. It might as well have been written by Stephen King. It was a total nail-biting roller coaster ride of a book. The narrator is the mother of a teenager who killed several of his classmates, Columbine-style. I'd recommend it if you can handle the content.

Pascale and Josephine worked on their building skills:


I dragged them to the playground as soon as it stopped raining:


They have started assigning HOMEWORK at Pascale's school! They are perhaps a little too academic in the early years here. This is what a 3-year-old's homework looks like:


Pascale did some amazing artwork, including some flowers and a snowman:


Pascale and Josephine picked out pajamas for Bernie for his birthday, but of course they had to try them on themselves before they allowed Bernie near them:


Bernie worked from home on Friday, and Josephine was extremely helpful:


Here's our birthday celebration:

Post-Christmas follies

Happy New Year everyone! Pascale is still on school break. They have several long breaks in the school year here, rather than one really long summer break. Pascale has been out of school since December 12, and she goes back on January 9. We are somehow managing to fill the time. It helps a lot that we were away for a week, and that Bernie was off work until after New Year's. While we were eating dinner the other night, Pascale asked why we could not just live in a hotel. Wouldn't that be nice?

Last weekend, we all went to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. It's this little carnival with lots of rides that they put on to amuse the kids during the school break. It was really nice to go there and be outside for a while. One thing that's different here is that they don't tell you which rides your kids can go on. There's no sign outside the rides saying "You must be this tall to go on this ride." It's up to the parent to determine whether their kid can handle it. Josephine went on several rides that she probably should not have, but she did just fine.

Here are some pics of the girls opening their Christmas presents. We opened gifts on the morning of the 28th, which was the day after we returned from our trip. Josephine got a new blanket for Christmas, so every time she gets in bed now, she looks at her blanket and says, "Santa!"




Playing with the new presents:



Here's the Winter Wonderland. In the first photo, that's actually Josephine in the red car:




At the Violett Melchett Childrens Center: