Ole, Ole matador!

Over the weekend we celebrated Abe's birthday. We spent Sunday at the Louvre where we spent quite a bit of time in the Italian sculpture room (mostly in front of Canova's Cupid and Psyche). We also discovered the little-known tactile gallery. This gallery, intended for visually handicapped people, but perfectly suited to children too, presents models of several key sculptures and invites you to touch them. Sunday night, Abe got his requested galette de roi and through some not-too-subtle planning on Ella's part, Abe found the feve and got to wear the crown.

On Monday, we went to the movies to complete his celebration (we saw "Munich" - not exactly an uplifting birthday flick, but a good movie nonetheless). Abe came home in time to make some day care negotiation related phone calls.

Meanwhile the kids went back to school. Ella was happy to see her teacher and friends again, and is excited about the work they are doing on writing in script. We were glad to take Jonah back to school so that we could ask his teachers about the song he has been singing endlessly. We had determined with some degree of confidence that the chorus went "ole, ole, matador"(despite Jonah's insistence that it is the "water song") and we had decided that the rest of the words must be in Spanish. It turns out, that it was the popular children's song "Il etait une petite navire" ("Ohe, ohe, matelot") which is about boats and sailors, not at all about bullfighters. Meanwhile, Ella has been intent on learning all of the verses to "Au clair de la lune" (I would imagine that most French kids probably don't know past the first verse). She's mastered the first two and is working on the third. Today she came down with a cold (luckily it was Wednesday). Hopefully, she'll be back in action soon. We've had more than enough of illness this winter!

Tonight, Jonah got up to use the bathroom, and when he got back into bed he asked me, with the great seriousness befitting a 10 pm conversation, "Mom, are boys kittycats?" "No," I told him "boys are people." "I mean are kittycats boys?" "Kittycats can be either boys or girls." "No," he insisted, "Kittycats are just girls. I'm a boy. That's why I'm a doggy. Woof. Woof." This resolved, he went back to sleep.