Superheros

We love superheros. Here are a few of them:

sometimes sweet and a little bit funny (weird not ha ha)

They all have this thing where they like to touch skin when they relax and watch tv. Weirdly it always has to be someone else's, though I have seen E resort to rubbing her palms across her soft cheeks when alone. The twins never have to resort to any self soothing considering their near inability to be apart. Often they look like a litter of puppies rolling around in their quest for skin to skin contact: heads to legs, arms to tummies, legs on legs, arms to faces and on the sequences go. The usual habit is for all three or any number of them cuddling up to a parent, but more recently when parents are busy (usually cleaning up the trail of chaos in their wake) they have looked cute relaxing together such as like this.

Flying the coop

A few weeks ago the twins went for their first sleep-over at a friends house. I was really unsure about how it would go, but could totally picture their loving father stumbling over to the friends house at 3am to collect tear stained faces desperate to return to the loving arms of their devoted parents. So far from life long friends and family, and no regular stays with Grandparents or anything, I really thought this was a rather hefty milestone we had reached. I was clinging to those apron strings, content if the little munchkins wanted to hold on for dear life still.

As much as I know the kids are very comfortable with these particular friends, we spend every Wednesday with the kids and their mother, and they absolutely idolize the son for whom they would do whatever crazy antics he requests (one year older, one year wiser!) not to forget they own a much coveted Wii with sword fighting games. Still, being their first night away from both parents, along with many a comment on how young they still are, I really did believe this was not going to go completely smoothly.

this would be the 'older and wiser' idolised friend.

Dropping them off, I stayed on a while to make sure they were comfortable and OK, and had a chat with the boys going something like:

‘So, if you want to speak to us, C will call us on the telephone, don’t be afraid to ask her at any time to call us, and if you really want to come home again it is not a problem we will come right over and get you, and anyway, just one sleep and we will come back in the morning to get you.’

‘that is after one sleep?’ Oscar confirmed

‘yes, just one sleep and then I will come back’

‘Oh, please make it two!’ begged Oscar

Well, it was obviously time for me to go, carrying those severed apron strings in hand, and dragging that third little cherub with me, I mean she is only 2 and way too young to reject me yet (surely!).

We did take the opportunity to go to dinner, sure with one child, but when you have 3 dinner with one child is a breeze. Again though, on settling into bed, he and I did have a chuckle about how we would be probably up in a couple of hours anyway to collect the not so brave ones after all.

It was nearly a shock to wake at 8am in our beds from an uninterrupted sleep. My first thought was, we have sooooo got to do this more often! My second thought was I hope they were OK. Is that bad??

It was egg in my face again when C called to see when we were coming over (for all their troubles we were coming over baring breakfast goodies). She had to battle H off the phone who was begging her not to call me as then I would come over!!!!

I will try to get photos from C… meanwhile:

kids are obviously terrified of J

I went away

Every now and again, maybe twice a year, I go away without husband or children. Usually it is with one other friend, but this time it was with two other friends. It is great fun, completely relaxing (isn't anything without children!), and completely confidential. My lips are S.E.A.L.E.D.

Meanwhile, my the other half takes on the tribe solo for the weekend. There are photos:

they played Kapla

he fed them sandwiches in the park, and managed to take the dog out too

hmm, they also ate pizza in the park

dressed Parisian style for forest walking

looks like he made them forage for dinner

fruit! wow, he must have got a few food groups in

hmmm, another picnic, I guess he didn't want to wash up

oh, and ball sports, looks like it was all exercise and picnics

these are a few of my favourite things:

SPRING

Flowers, flowers everywhere

SPRING

Warm days

The screaming faces of my kids when a bug comes near them - they don't even realise how lucky they have it, imagine if they were actually in Australia. Can you get any more bugs than in that country? (their country of heritage!) I don't even see the bugs here they are so very few, until ofcourse kids are hyperventilating and near tears freaking out about a 1mm bug touching them

Blue skies after the endless months of grey

Happy faces

SPRING

Strolling along with an ice cream

Chatty Parisiens (they are willingly talking to people in the streets! I have had so many conversations with near strangers. I do say 'near' as I have seen them around for years, it could be that after over 3 years in the hood they are finally welcoming me!)

More flowers

Pollen that freaks out my kids because they think it is a bug (it makes me laugh out loud at them, erm yes, that is to their dismay)

The park after school pick up: sand flying everywhere, kids clamouring for a place on the playgym, desperate pleas for FOOD, my kids slowly removing shoes, socks, and tops (me wondering why it is my kids that feel the need to remove as much clothing as possible at all times, and why is it that other kids actually listen to their mothers saying "no, do not get undressed")

SPRING

Spring rain, it is not even cold

Colourful silk scarves everywhere

Sunglasses dug out from a long hiatus tucked away in drawers

SPRING!!!!!!

∗thanks to E for being my spring model specially for this post - you are a star for taking out that wretched dummy and actually smiling at me on occaision - yes like 3 times in 75 or so photos.

domestic changes

We have this past week been experiencing some rather long needed and certainly long delayed changes on the domestic front. Our unintended co-sleeping with youngest is now over. Only some 2 years later.

You can surmise from this that we tend not to be hasty making changes in this family, and well, you would be right. I have realised it is perhaps a personal trait of mine. I would have thought that I was a person who copes well with change and actually enjoys it. But I am wondering if I am not (three country changes, 3 children, and a dog in 8 years later). There are many indicators that this may be the case, even though on the surface I look unruffled and easy going with change. I have, however, recently realised that I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about a change. I visualise it over a terribly long period before I actually do anything. The doing tends not to take very long at all, but that thought process can be as long as a year. When I do it, I am totally at zen with it, surprise surprise. I mean, who wouldn't be with that amount of mental preparation! But really, is it really necessary to take a year to think like that. In some ways I guess it means potentially I am going to have a lot of changes in my life, if every year we make changes, but on another level I am realising that I am not spontaneous at all. These bedroom changes I have been brooding over for about a year. The thought process on the kitchen changes might even have taken longer than a year. Argh, yes, that's right, this might also be called procrastination. Yes, I am a Master of Procrastination, obviously. There are more changes afoot, but really, don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen, you'll die.

So on the home front we now have E in her own bedroom. The dining room has been converted to a her little girl domaine. While I talk of ending co-sleeping, it has not been as easy as now I don't sleep with her, it just means that now I sleep much of the evening in her bed rather than hers in mine. But hey, it is a step towards (who knows where) I guess. Oh and she did inform me that she does not like her babies bed. I bought her a wooden bed for her dolls, that I painted a really lovely deep red colour, or that is lovely from my perspective. She does not like it as 'it is not pink'. My heart sank, and I think so did her father's, as she repeated to him. Her favourite colour is pink, her favourite animal a horse, she wants to be a ballerina and she only wears dresses. I never thought I would have one, but it appears E is as sugar and spice and all things nice as her brothers are snips and snails and puppy dog tails. I really thought with two older rambuctious brothers she would be mostly tomboy with a touch of girl, when infact she is all girl with maybe just the tiniest bit of acquisance to boys things, mostly because they insist and she seems relatively easy going at the moment, not because it is her choice.

the despised 'not pink' baby bed

The boys have a bunk bed, and somehow way more room in their bedroom now. They have spent the whole of their lives sleeping together, often wound around and tangled in each other like little puppies. I was a little sad to think they no longer had their double bed and would now be sleeping individually, H on top, O on bottom as they decided. Crazy really, and now I wonder why I even thought it would be so conventional and automatic to take a bed each. No, while the beds are allocated, it appears they are just taking turns sleeping together in either of the beds; the first day saw them both asleep on the top and the next together on the bottom. It generally rotates as such. Oh and ofcourse we don't cosleep with them either, I have never, not even all of last week (after the earlier part of the evening being in their sister's bed) ended up in one (usually the bottom one) of their new single beds with a boy on either side, all of us lying on our sides to fit, and there is no way S woke up in their bed this morning at all. AND there is no way that the parental bed was actually empty last night...

pictures of new beds to follow soon!

he did it

It is disappointing when you think you have taken a bunch of great photos on your mobile phone (mentioned two posts ago) only to realise you haven't many weeks or months later. Granted, having a camera would be the most desirable option for capturing special moments of your children's life, but that would require a functioning memory to put the camera in my bag. Mostly I figure I am doing pretty well if I have remembered to clothe and feed them before taking them out and generally I mentally give myself a congratulatory pat on the back that I have even managed to take three kids somewhere and actually returned from said somewhere with the same three kids I started with, particularly if they are all in the same state of health on return. I always wish I had remembered the camera to record these moments for the kids, but alas it is often to the mobile phone camera I resort. Actually 'resort' is probably the wrong word, I am pretty much giving myself another self congratulatory pat on the back for being so organised that I even have the phone with me. Finally, I just go the third self adulation, the truly wonderful mother who takes them out on educational and interesting activities and even gets photographic evidence of it!

That is until he finally gets a moment to download the photos and I start to see a lot of this...

That's when reality sets in and I have to acknowledge that my awesome photos were infact not awesome at all, they were not even recognisable, and maybe, just maybe, that self congratulatory pat on the back number 3 was infact a little premature. Those little telephone screens, and no I don't mean on a lovely and desirable i-phone, I mean on an everyday ordinary mobile phone, tend to delude you that you may just have taken a reasonable photo, a reliable memory of the moment. Certainly one worth keeping, and definitely good enough to make it not worth forcing children to stand still to take another. I shrugged off any concerns I might have had about clarity to the scratched and dirty telephone screen ruining my perfect photo that lay beneath, when infact it was a moving child indoors without a flash, or my inability to keep my hand still, or even more likely my absolute lack of photographic talent. Probably also a really dirty lens, I mean it has just been free riding it in my handbag full of crumbs from biscuit packets, semi-eaten lollie pops being kept safe for future licking, keys, park sand and on it goes. Hardly the fresh pristine lens for photo ops. What was I thinking! Oh that's right, I was thinking I am so totally awesome for doing this, forgetting entirely to actually be awesome in the execution of it.

Anyway, not to be too hard on myself there are a couple of photos that you can make out the subject matter:

Cite des Enfants, E in construction zone.

Another day, another inspiring activity - making bread dough

checking out things on a farm

things - that would be baby goats

this is O at the movies

oh, and this is actually months ago, but it was the really only very clear photo on the phone, and must have been before the lens got really dirty.

Thanks go to him for doing his thing and finally getting these photos from phone to computer. One day I will thank you properly by making it worthwhile spending an hour of your very rare personal time to download 75 unusable photos.

I love Cambridge

the grounds of where we stayed in Barrington

We spent a weekend in Cambridge in early Feb, or should I say 7 miles out of Cambridge in a place called Barrington. A cute little village, with not much more than a church, which has a perfect set of hand pulled bells that we heard ringing out through the countryside. Turns out it’s a hobby for bell enthusiasts, seems they have them in churches and people love ringing them so they rotate through the counties till you’re the lucky ones who get them clamouring (in a good way) away for hours in your village. We know this as we went over and had a chat to the bell pullers. Though it does appear I spoke to the man with dementia and found out mostly rather detailed information on delayed train journeys from Essex, than about the bells and was filled in with the bell story much much later when I could extricate myself from the old man’s tales, which not even a whining child pulling my arm from it’s socket to the tune of ‘let’s go mummy’ seemed to deter. But I digress majorly there, for the trip was lovely as we caught up with our first time round birth friends.

more on the grounds, giant sized trampoline fun!

M and R were first time mums with me, and we spent our last few months before children drinking hot chocolates and eating bonbons together, and then the first year of motherhood baking cookies and muffins and eating them over playdates together (ofcourse the kids were too young to eat so you can imagine where they all ended up). They were marvelous days together, and I look back at it all so very fondly. Second time round was not so perfect for friends and babies for me, for while I did meet some lovely people, suddenly I was also school bound with the boys, and really E’s babyhood had more to do with running errands for or picking up boys over lolling around playing babies with my friends. I didn’t realize how lucky I was at the time, thinking I was busy juggling twins, which I probably was, but I was also not busy with anything else and thus did do a lot of playing about with my beautiful friends M and R and their lovely baby daughters. It was a truly wonderful time and introduction to motherhood.

the park near M's place in Cambridge - no free swings in Paris so our kids are in heaven

Things have changed dramatically now though, we were 6 adults and 7 children this visit (three extra girl children in the picture now). M lives in Cambridge with her family now and is an amazing full time working mother juggling it all, and R is in London with hers. It was amazing and fun and beautiful to see all the kids playing together 4 years later, incident free (except for the wrestle mania between H and O, but their injuries don’t count, or what I mean is, as long as they don’t inflict injuries on other peoples children I am fine about it). Although O did steal a bike light from S that I must post back soon… seems he is rather light fingered, a point I am trying to ignore until it becomes kleptomania for sure, over two or three incidences of toy envy… is there a difference?

Holidaze

It was school holidays recently, and during that time I did actually write a blog post. I just never got the time to post it. It is a pity, writing all those superfluous words; lost and now irrelevant.

I do have some photos during this school holiday period, of the only three activities we did in the entire two weeks. While others seem to schedule the heck out of their holidays if not with a well deserved and enjoyed holiday elsewhere (in this case mostly wonderful skiing adventures, one with a personal chef even!), then with atelier (work shops) on every thing you can imagine from museum’s to kite flying, or with playdates and general visits to top museums and other educational or cultural experiences. My children, the future generation we are all pinning our hopes on, demanded home time, usually in pyjamas with occaisional nude time thrown in, scattering lego and playmobil pieces throughout the house and in extremely hard to reach crannies (those damn ancient floorboards and their ancient sized cracks), building cubbies under the dining table, painting a few obvious masterpieces, eating their way through entire baguettes laden with ham or chocolate (we’re French now, that’s normal and not considered bad nutrition), and generally being unscheduled tearaways. They learnt nothing educational, unless you count memorizing the rather witty one liners of Batman, but actually did make big decisions on their futures: when H grows up he is going to be Ironman, O is going to be Batman and E is going to be a ballerina (she has recently decided she is not going to be Tinkerbell anymore). So we are all lofty and realistic ambitions here, though I did try a little realism and education to tell the twins that superheros usually have working alter egos, and they will still need to make a career choice that earns money regardless of their superhero ambitions. But I divert… yes, that is right we were not doing anything much more than hanging at home playing aimlessly when I finally felt guilty and that I was letting my children down intellectually and experientially (as conversations about whether road runner was faster than speed racer were not really cutting it educationally – though I was surprised by how reality based that scene in Standby Me is when the kids are by the campfire debating the strengths of superheroes) and scheduled three activities in the last three days of the holidays. Not a bad way to end the holidays at all, as then you end thinking, ‘Wow, we really did a lot’, over “Wow, we sure have worked out how to pass days and days doing nothing all together’. I managed to take them to Ferme de Gally enroll them in a bread making atelier (in which they do all the hard work to prepare the bread dough, only to realize they have a disappointing parent who forgets to take it out of her jacket pocket which she leaves beside a radiator over night and turns dough into unuseable mush and so they never get to see the fruits of all their hard labour), took them to Cite des Enfants for a discovery science session (which actually was not as successful as the previous 15 times they have been there, mostly because they have been there 15 times previously and nothing was new, which is a note to book twins into the next age bracket sessions in future, and thus renders this no longer a good holiday activity considering the need therefore for two accompanying parents for three children) and finally a movie Gnomeo and Juliette (and yes the burnt smell wafting through the cinema was my homemade burnt popcorn snuck into my bag to avoid spending a fortune at the food counter, hello mean miser mum! But, like the mushy bread dough, they are still too young to linger too long over these disappointments thank goodness).

So yes, there are a few photos of these quality moments of parenting I engaged in, but they are on my telephone and I have no idea how to get them off the phone and onto my computer, as my computer keeps telling me that my phone is incompatible, though I know the other half has done it before. We await him having a moment to do something as trivial as download some photos for me. Which is a dig at him for being so busy at the moment. I rarely see him, he is a ghost. I have a ghost husband. Proved by last night being in bed hours before him (as usual tapping away at his laptop, which I think if I was more savvy I would refer to as his mac) and when I woke in the middle of the night he was still no where in sight, though I did look to the top of the headboard where he habitually keeps his glasses when sleeping and notice their presence, so just assumed he was in bed, I just wasn’t seeing him. See, ghost husband!

He does read this, and yes I know he is thinking if only you readers knew how in saying that I have just highlighted how hard working AND responsible the man is. However, there is nothing worse than inflated ego (or deflated in my case), so pretty much leave the story there, you all knowing that deep down ghost man was actually being very attentive father at that point while mother was blissfully snoring away unawares.

and talking of superfluous words...

Finally, no, there is still no smiling photo of all three.

does this count?

Three kids facing the camera with their tongues curling up at the sides as a faux smile???

father care

and finally while I am on a comeback roll, here is E left in the care of her father:

What this really is, is a testament to how hard he has been working. He is rather like a walking zombie on the weekends, I come across him passed out sitting up half way through lego construction, or dozing on the sofa with three kids hanging off him watching television, or as this case may be, leaving a room with the lid off the nutella. Atleast he is not ashamed to capture it for my benefit!

Christmas wasn't any better

Carrying on from the last post about my trouble to get a photo of all the kids, Christmas wasn't any better. Here is what we got:

a positive start, one child smiling:

things are looking good, two kids smiling, a father and a dog, all looking at the camera!

enter number 3, exit number 1 and the dog (compounded by pathetic mother photography):

hmmm, regression:

that's it, they are gone, a series of about 8 photos were taken of them hiding behind the tree, not a single face to the camera:

until there is only the tree, though there are three kids in behind it:

and then, there is one crazy parental sucker left:

Back?

Well, it appears I may just be back after a year and a half hiatus.

what can I say...

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

I didn't get around to blogging again for the New Year into 2011 (though I did have grand ambitions), instead I am going for the Chinese New Year. Yes, I am one of those people who needs the perfect starting moment to begin anything, not able to start unless it is the beginning of the week, month, or year (an even number, a leap year, a blue moon...). So really it is a big concession for me to use Chinese NY as a re-commencement point, being that it fell mid-week and on the 3rd of the month!

So, in celebration of my new openness to mid-week commencement (really because we thought it cute to capture this moment of the kids all excited and dressed up in their Chinese clothes), we tried to get photos of the kids. It is such a major ordeal to get three kids looking neat and at the camera at the same time. It would be an absolute miracle if they were also smiling (which was given us last year as seen in an old post) and really we have given up on ever achieving that again, so instead we are just satisfied with three in the shot, well done and pat on the back!

This is what we got:

Oh yes, one can only be proud. Not a single photo for the grandparents to frame. I guess they probably think we are neglectful and inconsiderate for not sending them more beautiful pictoral updates of their grandkids, but the reality is rarely will one have the urge to stand still and smile for the camera, and never ever is that urge times three and synchronised. I do remember receiving cards from people all through my childhood, and actually even now at times, of happy smiling and obedient children in family photos for Christmas cards, and not only this but also perfectly performing synchronised smiles. It was before photoshop too, so it was not a sham. I am gobsmacked at how they did it, as our kids seem to be so anti performance that no bribe, treat or threat works to tame them into submission for photos. I am talking major harsh words here, but you know, not so harsh that you negate any chance of random smile being thrown in. But really, I would LOVE to know what the magic is to achieve this... though I have a feeling genetics might come into play. Sean and I are both naughty number 3 probably having created enough cheeky karma that is returning 10 fold to us, coupled with us both having fathers whose childhoods appear filled with rambunctious antics. There is potentially no hope in our genetics for neat, amenable, synchronised smiling spawn photos.

Happy Chinese New Year!