Happy 3rd Birthday Jonah

Saturday afternoon, our family had a wonderful visit with Sarah's family (our summer au pair). It was really nice for the kids to have a chance to play with Sarah a bit more and start to feel at ease. Even more so, I think it was good for her mother to see that we are a nice normal family and that her daughter will be fine living with us for 2 months. Sarah's mother works for the Caisse of the 11th arrondisement - the organization which, among other things, organizes the lunches for the schools. She was thrilled to hear how much Ella likes the school lunches, and she and I talked shop for a while about feeding kids, encouraging them to try new foods and so on. Sarah's father is an architect (Sarah and her boyfriend, Francois are also architecture students), so they all talked shop for a while too - mac vs. pc, autocad vs. archicad. Sarah's sister, Lola, and brother, Valentin, brought out toy after toy to entertain the kids (what is it with teenage French boys named Valentin being so sweet with kids?). By the end of the visit, Jonah was asking, "Will Sarah come live with us today?"

Sunday was Jonah's 3rd birthday. He loved his gifts: a princess towel (from Ella), a barbapapa board game, a babar book, and an Eiffel Tower snow globe. He was also thrilled by the life size cinderella portrait that Abe had painted for him. After breakfast, Jonah chose to go to the Pompidou center (and to think, back home, he probably would have chosen to go to Chuckie Cheese!). There was a great kids' exhibit on heads. It was about how heads are portrayed in art using sculpture, painting, engraving, photograph, video. It was in conjunction with the Louvre, so we are looking forward to seeing the Louvre's part soon. We went out for a Pizzeria lunch where, in the great cognitive leap that is 3-years-old, Jonah started a new game of "what does r-e-s-t-a-u-r-a-n-t spell?" Fortunately, he fell asleep in the stroller on the way home - which made the time until the play date with Louise pass more quickly. Louise came over for a gouter in the afternoon. In true Louise style (she's rather eccentric), she had picked out for him a gift of pink plate with colored polka dots. As Louise and Jonah share the same taste, he loved it, and now he can think of his favorite friend each night at dinner. They spent a happy 2 hours coloring princess pictures, eating ice cream and cake shaped like a castle with princess cake toppers (thanks to Marianna - I have no idea where one would buy princess cake toppers here in Paris), dressing up, running, giggling, and dancing.

A final note. Ella and Olivia have been having lots of play dates lately - trying to make the most of our last weeks here. Since Cindy sets a high standard for the afterschool snack whenever they are over there, my crepe making skills have improved dramatically for the times when Olivia comes over here. Strangely, today, Ella and Olivia are playing exclusively in French.