Happiness is ...

As you may know, if you've been reading along, Wednesday is a very happy day around here. So, as today was Wednesday, here are some things that made us very happy today.

For Ella, Happiness is...
- No school on Wednesdays. Although, interestingly, in that way that immigrants are always slightly in the dark, we just figured out that Ella does have a half day of school on Saturday. No one bothered to mention it when we enrolled her (they didn't want to insult us by implying we didn't know, I guess). Last Saturday, on my way to the grocery store, I thought I saw a lot of people milling around the school, but assumed it was something that didn't involve us. Then, Tuesday, there was an announcement posted that the next two Saturdays would be parent/teacher conferences (except for Ella's class, which will have conferences in October, because then we can meet with both her current teacher and her regular teacher, who has been out on adoption leave). I started to have a suspicion, so Abe asked Cindy (the other American parent in the class, who has lived in France longer than we have), and she confirmed that there is school on Saturday mornings, it's more casual, and rather optional (lots of kids, including Cindy's daughter Olivia, don't go). But, I think Ella might enjoy it - since fewer kids will mean more individual teacher attention. We'll try it out one of these weeks.
- Playing with her Samantha doll. Ella's current obsession is her Samantha doll, from the American Girl series. It would be hard to sufficiently express the level of emotional committment that Ella has to this doll. I'm sure if you ask her sometime, she'd be thrilled to tell you at great length what Samantha's favorite foods are (surprisingly, Samantha drinks coffee), what games she likes to play, what accessories she comes with, etc.
- Art ateliers at the Louvre. In what seems to us the height of idyllic chlidhood in Paris, Ella attended an art workshop at the Louvre today. She loved it. The theme was color games. Each child (there were 10) got a colored smock to wear (Ella was green). Then, they played lots of games with each child's color (choosing two children and figuring out which color [child] you would get if you mixed them together, each finding their own color and each other's colors in the art in the galleries, etc). After the atelier, we had lunch in the food court, in the I. M. Pei shopping mall under the pyramid. The food court features cuisine from about a dozen countries around the world. Ella was very happy to have pizza for lunch.

For Jonah, Happiness is ...
- Getting used to daycare. Kids who go to day care are not quite as lucky as kids who go to Maternelle (Kindergarten), because the creches are open on Wednesday. But, Jonah is becoming much more comfortable there. Although he still cried a bit when we dropped him off, his teachers report that he didn't cry the rest of the morning, and he took a nap there! When we picked him up after nap time, he was playing happily with puzzles with his teacher, Natalie, and even gave her a kiss before we left.
- Riding the funicular. Jonah's creche (daycare) is on the top of a mountain. It's a bit of a trip to get there each day (it takes about 1/2 hour), but Jonah loves taking the train. The best part of the commute by far, however, is the 30 second trip up the side of the hill in the funicular, which never fails to receive a "this cool, Mommy" endorsement.
- Learning French songs. Last night, Jonah announced, "I learned a song at school." We very much doubted this, but he went on to sing, "Le petit poisson in Seine." This morning, I asked his teachers if they had sung such a song. Stunned, they agreed they had (the actual song says the petit poisson is swimming in the water - Jonah made up the part about it being the Seine), and joked that they were going to stop speaking in English to him, as they do from time to time, since he was clearly understanding plenty of their French!

For Abe and Dara, Happiness is ...
- Getting a clean bill of health from the daycare doctor. As part of the extraordinary preventative medicine system here, Jonah's daycare engages a pediatrician who comes to the center two afternoons a week to check any kid whom the parents have a concern or question about. He also, as a rule, checks out each kid who enters the center, to screen for any health concerns, developmental delays, etc. Jonah had his visit with this very charming doctor today and passed with flying colors.
- Exploring the halls of the Louvre without children in tow. Although our kids are excellent museum goers, it is occasionally nice to have time to linger longer in the galleries than their attention spans might allow. Today, while Ella was in her atelier, we found 2 highlights. The Napoleon III apartments are incredible - nicer, though smaller, than Versailles, in my opinion. We also spent a long time in a room that contains a series of Rubens paintings. These canvases were commissioned by Marie de Medici (the wife of King Henry IV and the mother of King Louis XIII) to document her life historically and allegorically. Fascinating.
- Abe "passing" his French placement test. The municipal adult education course in French that Abe is going to take 2 evenings a week (starting the end of this month) had a mandatory placement test today. On the way home from picking up Jonah, Ella quizzed Abe on French vocabulary to prepare. As it turned out the "test" consisted of hearing Abe say he was here for the test (they could apparently determine his level pretty accurately from that), taking his check, and giving him his auditor's card.

For all of us, Happiness is ...
- New library books. We've made a routine of returning our library books and getting new ones each Wednesday afternoon. Since we read these French story books for bedtime stories each evening, by the time we've had them a week, we're all starting to get tired of them and ready for some new ones. When we first started going to the library, the kids were most excited when they found a book they knew from home translated into French. Although they still enjoy that somewhat, what's really neat now is to see how excited they get to find a new book with one of the French characters that they are starting to recognize (e.g., Barbapapa - a pink cotton candy schmoo kind of creature, Zuza - a funny little girl into whose stories a crocodile always finds his way, and Mimi - a mouse who in English is Maisy).