Fingerling turns 2 #Partyinthepark #Collisioncourse #Fun&games

So this post was meant to be about Fingerling's second birthday party...but it almost never happened.

That's because at 11am I stepped outside our front door and walked right into a pole. With my head. The same pole that I have walked around every day for 4 years.

In all fairness I was blinded by the sun and was talking animatedly with El Puma so I wasn't concentrating, but it's not like he grabbed my arm to pull me to safety. In fact, he looked about as surprised as I felt when I smashed right into it head first. At least I think he did. I couldn't really see that well through the tears.

I was half-laughing (because it was so stupid) and half-crying (because I was so hurt) but in the end I could feel an egg developing and had to go back upstairs to put ice on it. Even so, it pounded for the rest of the day, which was surely that and not that I was catering for 36 people in the park.

Yes, 36! 10 of Fingerling's friends, assorted older siblings and their parents. So we all only got a teeny tiny smidgen of rainbow roll. But the weather was glorious and we decorated a little corner in rainbow colours, her birthday theme. We had a fantastic time catching up with friends, and this time didn't even lose Fingerling once*.

Preface

Trying to get the decorations up

The finished version

The party in full swing

Shall we freak our parents out by scootering away at speed laughing and not coming back when they call?
Lead the way sista!

And what I stupidly forgot to do was take a photo of The Most Amazing Rainbow Jelly. I had no less than 12 flavours! Thank you Tante Margret and Sonic!

Abuelo, Moon, Mamie and Pacotio also turned up to help lug lots of things around celebrate.

What do you mean you didn't steal the batter?

An exhausted Fingerling finally opened her presents later - with an awful lot more help from her brother than she wanted - and found some amazing gifts. The most impressive was a craft felt 'book' from Eleanor and Wendy's mama with zippers, buttons, beads and laces inside. Perfect! And home made! Wowzers. She also got a lot of baby/dolly gear (nappies for a dolly anyone?) and was quite taken with the baby backpack. Plus she loves her bags and added a couple more to her pram collection. Have no idea where she gets it from. 

Let the terrible 2s begin!

*Actually, I say that but the only reason we didn't actually lose her was because El Puma spotted her  about 100m away scootering merrily along. We need an electronic tag on that one.

Fingerling turns 2 #keepsusonourtoes #wouldn'thaveitanyotherway

2 years! TWO YEARS!! Where does the time go?

Happy Birthday Fingerling!

Some of her faces just today:

Yes, this is how they posed when I said 'time for a picture'!

The less scripted version!

Continuing the air and space theme #Wednesdayswithmama

Laughing till I cry #weekendaway

Maybe not the best film ever, but I laughed so, so hard that I cried. That for me is good enough....and a great middle to a lovely weekend home in Scotland. Without children. Which makes having a hot drink on a flight a total luxury. Actually, it just makes flying in general a total luxury. Going to the loo when I want! Using the electronic passport control! Hand luggage that is all mine! A book!!

Thanks to El Puma, Moon and Abuelo who held the fort!

Some things just get better with age #Happy70th!

Let's face it, nobody wants to be in hospital on their birthday, let alone their 70th, especially when the alternative had been a boat tour along the west coast of Scotland, but you know, we each define success in different ways, and I recently found this little jiffy:

At age 4, success is not peeing your pants

At age 12, success is having friends

At age 17, success is having a driver's license

At age 20, success is having sex

At age 35 success is having money

At age 50 success is having money

At age 60, success is having sex

At age 70, success is having a driver's license

At age 75, success is having friends

At age 80, success is not peeing your pants

I know, very funny, but take El Puma and I for example. Neither of us is yet 40 and we are both creaking. El Puma feels a football game for days and my memory's not as sharp as it used to be. And my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.

So, honouring papa's "if you rest, you rust" approach to life, we went instead to the local lake on a gloriously sunny afternoon, took photos and then headed back for afternoon tea and present opening. 

Anyway, ageing is the only available way to live a long life, so on that note, Happy Birthday Papa!

Visiting Air and Space #LeBourget #Mommy&Me

So, as you know, I have been doing a bit of child-led home education on Wednesday mornings with Small Fry now that he's not in school. It all sounds a bit fancier than it is (and child-led learning is actually an educational approach), because basically I have zero learning objectives. I think his own school covers reading, writing and arithmetic pretty well, so I'm just concentrating on enjoying mum-son moments with him, and trying to nurture his interests, curiosity, imagination and exploration. If that's learning, then so be it.

So his super duper main interest at the moment is air travel and I therefore decided we would go to the Air and Space museum at Le Bourget, which is itself a working business-traveller airport around 10km north of Paris and halfway to Charles de Gaulle airport.

Inaugurated in 1919, it is one of the oldest aviation museums in the world. It contains over 20,000 items back to the 16th century. But we were basically there to see the modern stuff: rockets, Concorde, water planes and a 747.

The sun was too bright for him: standing in front of one of the hangars.

And we loved it. Even I found it all very fascinating. Maybe my enthusiasm was catching, but this evening he declared it the highlight of his day, even better than the bonbons he got later.

The 747 has two levels and we could go upstairs and see the first class lounge and cockpit (both equally off limits to us haha). They had also stripped out everything inside so you could explore the storage areas for luggage, pets and cargo; fuel tanks (under business class..deliberate?); and see all the insulation, wiring, and the dinky economy seats at the back of the plane that we know so well.

Standing in front of the 747's outer engine

The 747 with the Ariane 5 behind it (a rocket that takes payloads into Low Earth Orbit)

Up close. And pretty cool to stand right under the engines.

Small Fry's summer obsession was the Canadair (water planes)

And clearly the only time I'll get to set foot in one of these: Concorde. It was really narrow inside and could make it to New York in only 3.5 hours, over 2.5 of which it flew supersonic (conventional jets take around 8 hours).

In front of am Airbus A380 engine

Looking out an old Dakota

Inside the old aircraft hangar

 And to top off a fun day: mucking about with babybel packaging on the bus. Actually pretty funny.

I have no clue if he's actually learning anything but we have great fun doing it!

Diggertastic #Welliftheywillleavetheirmachineryaround

When a toddler can open your camera phone #97identicalphotos

...although the ones where you found the panoramic setting were quite cool... 

New wheels #thisishowweroll

Our 7th pram in 4 years. Yes, it's all quite ridiculous, but I've had my eye on this Babyzen Yoyo for a while. Not only is it super cool but it rolls fantastically well, folds up in seconds to the size of aeroplane hand luggage, and is narrow and light for public transport use (handy in Paris where there is little disabled access). 

What it is not so good at is enabling a child to nap flat, enabling a mama or a papa to store lots of may-need-them-one-day essentials under the pram, or getting bashed about going up and down curbs (although it is very manoeuvrable at avoiding dog poo).

Now that Small Fry doesn't need a pram at all and Fingerling only really uses hers for the garderie run, we've decided to finally sell the double Phil & Teds that has served us so well. It was a fantastic pram and great for the 22 month age gap. But as Fingerling is already 24 months, I reckon we're not going to need it again.

Nothing will ever convert me away from the Jané nanuq that we have, so we will still be a two-pram family. But these will be Fingerling's main wheels these days, with her most treasured accessory on her lap:

The after school crowd #meandmygang

Spinning around #paperaeroplanes

Small Fry has an enormous capacity for learning. Maybe all 3 year olds are curious and interested about life and how things work, but Small Fry really goes for it. One week it might be dinosaurs, the next week lighthouses, the next race cars...and the current one is air travel, rapidly moving into space travel.

Our Special Time on Wednesday mornings when it's just him and I is a great opportunity to explore some of these ideas in new and adventurous ways (when I can find ideas online to help me) alongside throwing in a few life skills and learning outcomes I want to see achieved. 

For example, last Wednesday we created a routine chart together. The idea is that you take photos of the child doing the activities they need to do between wake up and school (like eat breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed, and make the bed (shouldn't every 3 year old be able to make his bed??!). The child then follows the routine chart in the morning. Hey presto, reduced nagging from you and greater independence and responsibility for the child.

And really, so far, so good. He seems to be super excited to see himself in the photos and he's done a pretty good job of following it. If he gets distracted, it's easy enough to remind him to go and check what the routine chart says to do next. 

This Wednesday I'm thinking of taking him to a recycling place thingy, even though he really wants to learn about space, mostly because it's Zak's last Wednesday in Paris and we wanted them to do something fun yet educational together. Anyway, the space thing in particular and air travel in general is what led to this over the weekend:

Small Fry's paper aeroplane collection

Noel, the bus driver for the Forest School that Small Fry went to during the Easter holidays, was the first person to make him a paper aeroplane. He flew it diligently until the thing had basically fallen apart. They we heard no more about it until he randomly asked me to make him one on Friday night. Yes, that's my sorry looking basic version (third in from the right). The shame.

So El Puma took to making him a better one (second in from the right) but that still didn't fly so well. So El Puma got his hands dirty. He got on youtube and found out how to make a ROCKET.

Cool, no? I was pretty impressed. He then started on an F16 but that was proving tricky, and in any case Pacotio had turned up to babysit and we had to head out.

And when we got home, we found this:

But Small Fry is a tough nut to crack. It took the F16 AND the world's fastest paper aeroplane before he would give his Pacotio the title of Best Paper Aeroplane Maker Ever.

And honestly, you have to see this one fly to believe it. It's a beast. The only thing limiting it was our tiny flat, although it does seem to practically go around walls...somehow.

That, and Pacotio getting them to have a full night's sleep without EITHER of them waking once, UNTIL 8AM (unheard of), means that he's also now our Best Babysitter EVER! hahahahaha.

Helping papa with his morning exercises #Superman #Weightedplank

So happy to be collecting Small Fry after a full day apart #Sisterlove

Back to the Rentrée #Sadkids #happyparents #nextholiday

On Thursday, 1 September was La Rentrée, a really enormous deal in France as it marks the beginning of the new school year and thereby the end of the summer. The weekly routine is more or less established for the coming year, and you have to wait a whole year until the following summer break. I know that's the same everywhere but it does feel like a return already to metro boulot dodo (metro, work, sleep...basically, the daily grind) and it's only been two days.

Still, we added our own photos to National Post A Photo Of Your Children Standing Together Wearing Schoolbags week. Small Fry starts doyenne section (second year or nursery) and Fingerling is now chez les grands (in with the big kids) at her garderie.

It all went fairly smoothly for Fingerling who is back at the same location with the same teachers and companions. Although she hadn't been back 2 days before she got her first taste of collective childcare: a roaring cold.

Small Fry was also back at the same location and mostly with the same companions and with a lovely new teacher, but he didn't settle quite so well. I think it must be a shock to be in school for 7 hours a day after a summer of holidays. I certainly needed a couple of days myself to get back into the swing of things at work. It might also be because he is there for the first time without his school BFF, who is moving to Mallorca next week for one year. The walk home without him and his mum is already a drag, so I feel sorry that Small Fry has the whole day without Zak too.

Good job then that we've just booked our next holiday: one week in Mallorca in the October holidays!