Lily

Little Miss Lily did all these all by herself, she looks pretty proud of herself no?



Little Miss Lily was invited to a birthday party...so pretty!!

On the way to the party, she said to me a little pensively....

Mom, when we arrive at the party can you...leave?

*Sheesh* already?

Spring Flowers

Oooh... the daffodils have just broken the surface here...I heard them go POP!!! out.

Here is a craft we did yesterday in honor of the flowers to come...

I LOVE spring...

Scone?

Lily is going through what shall we say is a "Sensitive" food period...it has been going on for a while now and ooooh, as patient as I am, I am beginning to loose it...the patience that is.

It usually starts out as some quiet whining, then escalates to something a bit louder and more difficult to ignore. About midway through the meal after she has succeeded in garnering everyone at the tables attention she starts telling me that she is "full" even though she has eaten almost nothing on her plate and is still carrying around the "before-dinner-when-I-was-still-grumpy-and-hungry-look" on her face. I have tried ignoring it, I know it is stage that WILL PASS...but arghh!!

Today after exactly the same routine and with her plate (on which there was origionally only a teeny tiny portion) still more than half full I decided to let it go and ...well, not worry about it. When I offered her a tiny piece of freshly baked scone she immediately gobbled it up, promptly asked for another with Jam.

!!!

I am loathe to admit that I am being manipulated by my children as I prefer to think of it as them expressing their needs in a child's way...(any way they can and who can blame them) but I must confess I think I am being dangled a bit and ...and well... I guess she got me, (right where she wants me) again...

Gingerbread

Sort of a ho hum day today, the children are really tired as the week moves along. They have been fighting, gosh it makes me want to just wrap them up tight in blankets with just their heads sticking out, end the day and just put them to bed for the night…which by the way is what I have done albeit after baths and dinner with their little limbs loose and unfettered…as normal.

Anyway got through all the whining and screaming without loosing my cool…pat on the back for me.

TBG is in Germany until Thursday for the second or third week in a row and I must confess this routine is getting a little tiring.

Lily and I prepared all the dough for our annual ginger bread Christmas activities this year. I hope to do a little house, some big kid shaped cookies for the children to decorate and cookies to eat and gift.
I love doing this every year and it has become a bit of a tradition. I love the smell and the tang of the ginger and the silky feel of the dough. It was fun doing this with Lily though at one point it was getting a little scary with two bowls of unmixed dough, a bowl or two of flour and other ingredients lurking around and a big sink of goopy water, what with her intense desire to have one hand in every pot as it were. Lily had a great time in the mess, watching the mixer do its efficient job, sifting and stirring and washing.

So now we have a great big bowl of dough all ready to go, waiting for little hands to shape, form, bake and eat.

Oui Oui

My BIG girl made her very own bed this morning and when I went into her room after she had left for school this morning this is what I found.



So sweet!!

"Sheepskin"

Today Riel was at school all day and I kept Lily home for the afternoon. She has been having trouble going to sleep the past few nights and last night for the first time ever she was talking about all the things she felt afraid of. Imagine almost four years old and never a word before about fear?

I sort of felt like my absence in Chicago this last weekend kind of made her feel a bit on shaky ground. Now you see Mommy.....Now you don't kind of thing.

Soooo anyway I decided to keep her with me this afternoon so we could spend a little bit of girlie time together. Well girlie time turned out to be an afternoon at Ikea buying a new office chair for Mommy to try to seduce Mommy's back back up to work in her office again...apparently in so far as unsuccessful as evidenced by semi reclined typist on heating pads on the couch writing blog entries while the kids sleep...*ahem* anywhoo..back to the story...

Lily is so cheerful and so interested in it ALL, we had a great time poking around, touching, feeling and chattering about everything there (plus Mom kinda likes Ikea too...)

At one point we came across a big bin of fluffy sheepskin pelts for bedside carpets to warm early-morning-just-out-of-bed-toes and Lily was very happy to stop and feel how lovely and soft they were.

I explained to her that they were sheepskins.

Lily looked sharply at me with her big chocolate coloured eyes wrinkled into a puzzled expression and said "But Mommy, the sheeps can't put them on ....because there aren't any sheeps around here!!"

LOL

Little Miss Lily Turns Three!!

Lily has had a pretty good time of it this year, what with a birthday party with my family, another with Bruce‘s and still a third here in Dijon with her two best buddies Hannah and Lea.

So what does a three year old like for a Birthday?

Lily was lucky enough to get Polly Pocket, Playdough, a Doctors kit and a bath for her baby doll “Lulu”.

Yup...it sure is good to be three.

Lily LOVES to bake with me and was more than pleased to help make her own yummy chocolate birthday cake.



And then to blow out her three birthday candles and share her cake with her friends.



We played the Lily’s favorite games
”Charades”,“Hot Potato”,“What Animal am I?" and “Pin the Present on Lily“... made even more fabulous by the creative efforts of Riel...



Happy Birthday Lily!! We love you!!

Badge of Honor

Riel is a carbon copy of me in little boy format. He can be very gentle, funny and gregarious and at the same time kind of barky…oooh who knew our kids would be such accurate mirrors of our own personalities…

He is so sweet now that he has started CP, the French version of Grade one. He sort of wears it like a badge of honor. He is very proud of himself since he has HOMEWORK to do unlike his little sister (underprivileged home-work-less child she is who is just 3) and approaches it all with great seriousness.
He adores his teacher and she tells me he is a dream.

Riel can now go into the school by himself which is a big deal if you are 6 (or his mother watching carefully from the car) and we have just removed the child lock form his side of the car door…you know the stages of independence.

On my return from dropping Lily off in her class I have just discovered that I can catch a glimpse of Riel intently setting up his things at his desk. So I wait to catch his eye to blow him a kiss silently across the room and then I do.

I love the way his eyes light up with a start when he sees me and secretly sends one back.

Helmets and Crowns

So I have to write about our last Sunday, it was sort of like a bear (or rather mother bear and her young) coming out of hibernation….With the two weeks of stress getting over jet lag and back into the rhythm of school, Bruce gone for a week…Lily yelling and then Riel yelling at her and then me yelling….my goodness why are we ALL yelling????

Figuring out all the details for school every morning in which order everyone does what and all the minutae of what makes for a smooth or rocky start to the day…not too mention all the bureaucratic paper work imaginable for school activities, fees to be paid, photos signed, permission slips delivered…. we emerged **ahhhhh** into the sunshine of a weekend day.

Suddenly we all seemed refreshed, rested and ready. At the same time. Miraculous.

Soooo… what to do.

Ok Mom has a great idea….. let’s do papier mache for your Halloween costumes!!!!!!

(enthusiastic yes it is a great idea pitch to kids who have absolutely no idea what in the world I am talking about…)

What am I talking about?? (ever do Papier Mache with a three year old??)

So I get busy



and mix up 8 (please note quantity) cups of sticky warm gloopy paste and strip kids down to skivvies and we all enthusiastically get to work.

A crown for Lily




and a knights helmet for Riel.





Everything was going so well until some one’s elbow connected with the gloop and then you guessed it….

Oh la la.

So to those of you who have been checking and have had no blog joy my apologies.

I will try to post a little more regularly and try to get over my blog fright…kind of like stage fright.
Let me know what you want to hear about. (Is mundane OK??)

So we had a fabulous trip back to France, the gods were all looking the right way (either away from us or towards us not sure….) We had bulkhead seat so the kids could stretch out . I could stand sleepy guard (not sure where they will go on a plane but none the less feel compelled) and we all managed to get a little shut eye….tho I caught Riel peeping a few times at whatever in flight (“in fright” in his case) adult movie was on the big screen.

The kids (I have to hand it to them) really seem to know the drill now and were just as good as gold all round. Our train trip was uneventful even tho there was some Old "Gaseous Grand Dame" in the truest sense of the word who happened to have the 4th of our 4 seat booth (to her obvious delight) giving us the hairy eyeball for most of the trip. Like it is a crime to be a kid. Sheesh.

So we are back in Dijon.
You ever feel like you are moving from one series of piles to another?
For this summer for us it was a rather consistent stream of

**pack** unpack** pack**laundry** pack** unpack** pack**laundry**

and then all over again. I guess I have nothing to complain about.

I must confess I was starting to feel a pull to come back here around the start of school (quelle surprise), as it is hard to leave home and all the nearest and dearest. As you can see by the photo went throught this bizarre uncontrollably tacky desire for Canadiana... even bought some good old red and white roots gear...now to see if I have the guts to wear it.

Sooo..We are now back in the throws of settling into the new routine for the school year. Riel is starting "CP" which is the French equivalent to Grade one and Lily is in “Petite Section” like PRE jk (if you can believe that). For those of you who may not know the school day is staggeringly long, starts at 8:45 and ends at 4:45.Oh my goodness!!! Poor little souls. Riel is so proud of his new “homework” he brings home every night. (See how long that lasts….)

The kids are settling in better than ever before after the jetlag. So either they are figuring it out or we are. (not sure)??

It seems to be a case of anticipating the natural rhythms of the last time zone and not letting them fall asleep when their bodies want them to until the “new” right time in the current zone.
No easy task …like feeding them candy non-stop all the way to my Mom’s on the Canada end while singing songs at the top of our lungs to bribing them with movies to keep them up at this end…

Oh La La.

"A Sailing boy"
Riel with a bit of trepidation departing with his dad, his uncle and his Grandpa for a sail across Lake Ontario. The first night it was very windy and what else blowing out of the wrong direction, so they had to turn around and go the other way than intended. Gladly it meant a nice downwind sail directly across the lake from the Eastern side of Toronto to a small historic village called Niagara on the Lake.

“Children of the Corn”
Riel is back from his sailing trip and we are shucking corn for supper, Bruce text messaged me at 5A.M “Made it” so presumably he is safely back in France. (I just heard my phone go bloop bloop…)
The cottage has a fabulous hammock right on the edge of the bluff overlooking the lake, great for a book or a romp with the kids or…shucking corn.
It has been unseasonably cold and windy so even thought the lake has been glorious in its surf I must confess our visions of sand digging and sunbathing are fading just like our tans from last week. 

"Bubbling with Lily on the front lawn"
It was so great to be able to spend a little quality time with just Lily this week while Riel was with his Dad on the boat. We did some crafts, spent lots of time reading and napping together, swung on the swing and just chatted. It is amazing what a 2 year old has to say. Lily got her own special pedicure as well.
She is always so full of ideas and questions. Such an great age. My Little Lily.

"Thanks Mom"
Oh my goodness I LOVE visiting with my mom, just past those angst ridden 30’s into a really wonderful place where you forgive all those perceived “mistakes” and into a great space where you really appreciate them for the great and amazing women they are.
We had such a fabulous time, every evening just talking and us both doing our own quiet thing while thankfully this kids slept exhausted from the day activities.
My mom is someone I can really be with and really be myself with….what can be better than that??
I admire her, all the amazing things she does, so many talents and skills always learning and always doing and like myself a little more than obsessed. I love to see her with my kids, it makes me realize all the great gifts she has given me by just being herself.

Thanks Mom.

Oh my goodness the torment continues….

I actually had an almost panic attack when Bruce told me that indeed they had tendered an offer…you mean I might actually know where we will be living?

The normal has become not knowing and suddenly I appreciated the freedom that no plan allows…everything is possible, there is no down side- no upside- just one great big possibility.

And now we might actually know??? No way.

Back to the 1000 Islands

We have had Bruce’s family all week… it has been so nice to have people around who really know us and are interested in all the minutiae of our lives. I think they were a bit shocked by the new belligerent Lily as she bellows her way out of the last half of her 2nd year...in like a lamb out like a Lion for her. (I am shocked!!) Why is it that all those normal developmental stages catch you by surprise anyway… She is still her sweet funny self in between all those No’s.
We had a great time, lots of good meals and conversations. It feels so easy for us to be with them. We miss them.

Then a really good friend of mine from my college days dropped y for several days with her little boy…so good to see how the great people in your life really just don’t change…

Blue Belly Button

When asked why her belly button was Blue Lily said matter of factly…Because I colored it!!
So why is that adults are so slow on the uptake anyway??

So finally after a week or 10 days in Canada of “other things” we have finally arrived in the 1000 Islands to relax and unwind. In true Canadian tradition, the cottage is earthy, has a screen door that swings and slams and we have a fabulous view of the lake or in this case the Saint Lawrence river.
We can hear the loons calling at night, and the first night we were here we observed a heron feeding by the little willow tree on an island metres from our dock. This morning I counted 16 adolescent ducks nibbling on river grass near the shoreline.

The first day is always frenetic as the children instinctively explore every inch of our digs as we discover together all the dos and don’ts for anyone under the age of 10. Then we settle into a bit of a routine. I made a huge trip to Dollarama and came home with almost every craft supply they had (I think) so we can do a different craft every day. This morning we made magic wands out of errant tree branches and sprinkled them with “Magic Dust” in preparation for their first solo spells. We have a few days of just ourselves to ourselves before our family and friends arrive. A nice reprieve from the last weeks of activity.

The kids and Bruce are setting a fire ready to light to roast marshmallows before bed and the meet is thawing in the sink for tonight’s barbeque.

A perfect cottage evening…Oh my…where is my glass of wine anyway?
Later….

Never Too Cool to Brush

Title says it ALL!