Rain, Rain, Go Away…

This morning we showed Mamau our favorite crepe place, Notre Dame, and Luxembourg Gardens.  Unfortunately the weather was rainy and we got quite wet.  It makes it a little harder to enjoy the sights when your shoulders are hunched and your head wants to face the pavement to avoid the rain.

But rain makes a good excuse for more coffee and hot chocolate, and for a rousing game of “Pantomime."  This version has little pictures that need to be acted out (rather than words) and it was fun for everyone. 

Jack limited his normal gregarious vibe to a very small space.  He would shyly draw the item in the air, or act out one small action.  A wrong answer received closed eyes, pursed lips, and a quick shake of the head.  Then his eyes would pop open and he would wait for the next answer.  His actions were amazingly good for a 5-year old!

Owen was energized and loved the game, but he was a little too  accurate in his actions for his own liking.  We would yell out the correct answer and he would continue  acting for a minute or so before smiling and announcing, “Oh yeah, you guys got it when you said, ____.”

Poor Mamau has to do elaborate scenes for 5 minutes at a time because I thought it was much funnier to play dumb while the boys worked hard to get the answers. 

The best one was when she was working on the word, “umbrella.”  Little sprinkling fingers coming down to show rain, then the obvious actions of opening an umbrella, then putting her hands in a big arc of the shape of the umbrella.   The kids were yelling, “a mountain! a mountain!”  back to the rain fingers for Mamau  “oh, it’s snowing!!!  You are sledding on a mountain!”  -Forget that we had spent the day in the rain, my poor Seattleite children – they have seen an umbrella, but not actually used it for protecting themselves from rain… and while the apartment came with two umbrellas, I didn’t think to bring them with me on any of our outings…

Tomorrow is Bastille Day.  We are supposed to go to the military parade in the morning and watch the fireworks at night.  Hope we don’t’ get rained out!

Mamau Has Arrived!

Today’s adventure was a trip to the airport to pick up our Grandma Mamau.  We arrived before her plane landed, and eagerly waited outside the customs doors.  After an hour and a half, I started to get nervous, and with no wifi or phone service there wasn’t a way to contact her.  I went to a service counter and gave them her name and flight information, and they were quite helpful telling me that she had not made her connection.  (later I realized that they were so open with the information because I had gone to the unaccompanied minor window, and they thought she was my child!  oops, glad I made that mistake though) 

I was finally able to get a wifi service and downloaded a message from her that she made it on the next flight.  We were in for at least another hour wait, so we raided the vending machines and staked out a spot where we could see the baggage claim area for her plane. 

We spotted her and waved frantically for some time, drawing the attention of many, but not the one we wanted.  She would look up occasionally, and we would begin our frantic wave but she would glance past us.  It was pretty funny. (and yes, Eric – I am my mother’s daughter…)

 

We finally spotted each other, and the boys raced down the hall where they know she would emerge.  They almost set off a security alert by going through the exit doors, but Maumau came through just in time!

We have two weeks to share Paris with Grandma!

Fancy Workmen

The owner’s brother showed up today in a suit.  He looked good, but a little dressy for fixing a washing machine.  What do I know about the French though?

I showed him the PDF of the manual for the washing machine and we went about cleaning out the drain catch.  I was very glad that I had done this very same thing at home with my own wash machine and had towels and a tray for water handy.  The brother seemed rather surprised by the whole ordeal, but not remotely hesitant to kneel on the wet floor in his suit and pull disgusting lint from the machine.  (Maybe he was cursing me in French in his head, but outwardly, he was great.)

I felt very glad that I was correct in my assessment of the problem and the brother’s time wasn’t wasted, a repairman didn’t have to be called, and there was no way I could be blamed for the problem…

Mostly, I am excited to get the laundry going. Even if one wash cycle takes almost two hours (and I have to go to the laundromat if I need something put in a dryer.) Clean clothes make me happy!

Laundry

On Sunday I put a load of wash in the washing machine and got it started (it took me a while to figure out that you have to plug it in with an extension cord to the kitchen…I know plugging something in sounds basic, but a washing machine?!?!  It reminded me of when the first dishwashers had to be rolled in front of the sink and hooked up by hand to the kitchen faucet!) After a long while, I heard a loud beep and figured that the cycle was done.  Then the darn thing started beeping every few seconds – loudly.  When I went to take a look, the little screen had “E20” written on it.  While I was able to get the load going again, the error code just came back , and the clothes were sitting in lots of water.  I was able to finally get enough water out of the machine to remove and dry the clothes on a line – though they were not exactly clean. 

While I had someone leave a message (in French) on the owner’s answering machine, I had not heard back from him and started wondering how many days I should wait until I just went to a Laundromat.  I know it is a bit silly, but I was hoping to wash all the towels and linen myself so that I know everything is really clean.  That is not happening right now…

This morning we woke up to NO running water!  I sent an urgent email to the owner, and decided that the washer would probably take a back seat to a bigger plumbing issue.  So this morning we headed out to the laundromat.

The first location we went to was actually a dry-cleaners, but we soon made it to a real coin-laundry.  The excursion via the dry-cleaners brought us by a little grocery stand that had very small heads of lettuce that Jack was ga-ga over. (too funny) I promised we would return…

Once the washer cycle had started, Owen and I wanted to get coffee and croissants. But Jack was enamored with the washing machine, so we waited for him to get bored

– but he didn’t!  Owen and I got bored of waiting for Jack to get bored, and Owen started to work in his French workbook.

Suddenly Jack was bored, and not entertained by his French workbook.  He got naughty, and I felt pretty un-glad that I had talked Owen into indulging Jack’s whim of watching laundry spin…kids are still kids in Paris and parenting is still parenting…so we started a rousing card-game of War, and things looked much better.

The water in our apartment was back on!

And an email from the owner came, saying that the washer worked just fine two weeks ago (super helpful).  I downloaded the PDF file for the washer, and think the fix is easy (the same one I recently did to my own washer at home)  I forwarded the info to the owner so hopefully it will get fixed soon… (Especially at 8.5 euros – about $10-  a load at the coin-laundry!)  Wish me luck!

Later in the day we got Jack’s adored lettuce and all the other vegetables that the boys wanted for their salad.  Jack was our salad chef, cleaning and cutting the vegetables. He made individual salads on each of our plates catering to the vegetables that each person wanted.  We had some pasta with crème fraiche and ham, and some fresh French bread – yum!   

Jack takes great ownership in dinner when he helps to make it  - calling Owen to the table and naming the ingredients.  Near the end of the meal, Jack said “I am so impressed that you are eating this good salad that I made, Owen!”

Jack’s Photos

(vivienne is the name of a friend of his)

Owen’s Photos

Scooters Trump Feet

The scooters stayed at home today and we went walking instead.  I let the boys bring their cameras that my dad gave them, which was good entertainment for them – and franky, for me as their idea of the best views of Paris are hilarious (see photos in the following post).  But, five miles of walking is MUCH harder than scootering with the boys.  Their walking paces is slower- so it takes longer, there are no “free” downhill rides, blisters happen, and there are 700 million more things to argue about.  One really nice thing was that we got to pop in and out of stores or buildings that we thought were interesting and we also got to chat much more. 

One of the goals of the day was to find soccer balls.  We were successful, and we walked to Luxemburg park to try them out.

(these pictures show why I am carrying the balls to and from the park from now on…just too tempting to be crazy) 

These next photos are totally fuzzy, but I just love them because they show the energy the boys have – this is AFTER the 5 mile walk, at about 9PM….I am not sure if I should worry about this or not, but none of us are eating very much.  I made eggs on toast for breakfast, and both boys had a cup of milk and a yogurt.  Later we each had a croissant, because nothing else sounded good.  I admit that I let the boys have ice-cream – since I still owed it to them with an earlier bribe…gotta stick to my promises…. but that never ruined their appetite any other time in their lives.  We each had cheese and wasa crackers and an apple for dinner.  Jack had another yogurt before bed, but that was it.  I couldn’t convince them to eat anything else.

Normally Jack begs for food all day so this is strange for me– It was pretty comical the few days that we stayed with Katie and Sarah before we came to Paris.  Lisa spent much of her time convincing the girls to eat something, and I spent the same amount of time convincing my boys that they could wait until the next meal to eat – and they wouldn’t starve in the meantime.

Maybe I should have just been taking the kids out for 5 mile walks every day – or rather, scooter rides…