Salted butter and Bordeaux

I can't believe it; nearly a month has passed since we arrived in Paris (with too much stuff!)...The time has passed so quickly and I've had hardly a moment to tell you that our lives, for the most part, feel settled. We have a routine during the weekdays. Jon goes to the archives and Maggie and I walk to the playground near our apartment. We play in the sandbox, kick a ball around, take Maggie's doll down the slide a few times and then sit on a bench in the sun and share a baguette sandwich. After lunch we return to the apartment, and if we have time, draw or add some things to Maggie's scrapbook. Then she takes a nap, and for that 45 minutes+ I write/read/knit. After nap we play around the house. I make maggie a snack, drink some tea, and we wait for daddy to return. Typically, he's home around 4, and at that point we often take a walk together. Sometimes we go down to Rue des Abbesses and Maggie takes a ride on the carousel. We do our daily grocery shopping. We might go back to the sandbox, or sometimes we get on the metro to explore other parts of Paris. Life, for the most part isn't very different.

Except that of course it is. I could tell you the bad parts of living in Paris; that it is in fact a city, and that we often return home after being squeezed together on the train and up the cramped elevator at our metro station that smells, quite frankly of piss and sometimes vomit, and after a day surrounded by wafting smoke, I lay my sweet girl down for the night and kiss her forehead and she smells like cigarettes. And although in my heart I'm a country girl who longs for some land and maybe a nice cow, and sheep and horses and a garden, and nights on a porch with my kids running around, there is no denying the charm, magic even, of this city. it is amazing.

It is no secret that Paris is amazing--even if you haven't been here, you have most likely seen pictures or movies. And I have to report that it is just as amazing and romantic as you might imagine. Yesterday, Sunday, we went to the Marais with the intention of ending up at L'as du Falafel for dinner. I've been going to this delicious falafel spot since I was here ten years ago, and it is still as good as it was then (and affordable!) We stepped off the metro and the Marais was busy. The streets were filled to the point where no car dared drive on the them, as most people had given up trying to walk on the narrow sidewalks. We walked into a museum (free for a european heritage day) and there in the courtyard a choir was singing. We strolled through rooms filled with art and furniture representing the history of Paris. Then we walked towards Place des Vosgues, stopping to listen to incredible band playing in the street. At Place des Vosgues Maggie went on the see-saw then built a sandcastle and then we all lay in the grass looking up at the sky.

It was an amazing day, although I must admit this kind of magic seems to surround us here. Dare I say ordinary? No. Which is why I need to turn the conversation towards food. This is what I've really wanted to talk about all this time (get to the point, right?)... Food. Butter, and baguette and divine milk, "Lait cru" is incredible whole, raw milk. It tastes so good. And the salted butter? Can I please stuff a whole suitcase and bring that home with me when I go? And pastries? Ok I haven't even touched chocolate or wine yet. Divine. So good. After maggie went to bed the other night we each had a glass of this incredible Bordeaux and then ate some Maison du chocolat. I got up and started twirling around it was so good.

I can't help but think Jon and I are living our very own "Eat, Pray, Love;" Paris is our eat, Senegal will be Pray and Aix en Provence will be Love?? Ok maybe it doesn't fit exactly, but there is definitely some eating and indulgence happening here.

Now to change the subject again. Check out my two year old. She puts outfits like this together herself. Insists on pulling her own backpack at the airport. Holds on the railing on the train "all by myself!" Attitude and cuteness and talking, talking, talking.

London

At two years old, Maggie has done a considerable amount of travel, and I have to say, she is a champ. When we packed up our suitcase to make another trip only two weeks after arriving in Paris, I told maggie that we were going to London to visit nanny and baba and benny and heather. "Like Katy in London!" she said enthusiastically, referring to a book we have read often and loved.

She immediately ran out of the room to tell her dad. "We're going on an aventurrr!" The fact that we were taking the train, through a tunnel under the water no less, only added to the excitement. So on Saturday of last week, we boarded our train for the two hour ride to London.

I was equally excited, although not for the reasons you would expect. It was not Big Ben or Buckingham Palace or even the promise of tea (oh delicious tea), but the excitement of seeing my family. It had been only two weeks and already I missed everything and everyone. Mountains and ocean and eucalyptus and friends and maggie's friends, and of course, my family. All this seems even more important now that I have a daughter.

Admittedly it was a relief to arrive in London, a place where at the least they speak english. And it was comforting to see, as we sat in the taxi on the way to our hotel, that unlike Paris, not everyone in London was impossibly well dressed, polished, in dark tones of black, grey etc. Don't get me wrong--I happen to love neutral colors and think the french have incredible taste--but so much perfection? The woman in black heels in the sandbox? The kids in shades of grey, tasteful, tucked, braided? How could it be? I was happy to see color, messiness. I relaxed.

Ok. So its true that when we got the taxi it took me a moment to figure out how to open the door, and Jon went around to the trunk of the taxi to put our luggage only to discover there is no trunk, and the luggage goes up front with the driver, and this little thing where they drive on the left side of the road, which sounds like no big deal, only you realize everything is reversed and therefore your whole world feels mixed up. Really, no big deal. I had been to London a couple of times, and while it is, culturally speaking, closer to America than France or Italy perhaps, it is very different.

But then we met my family at Liberty's for the Cream tea and oh! Tea and scones and clotted cream. Clotted cream! That stuff is divine. I mean why don't they serve that everywhere, all the time? If I think back to one thing about London it was this daily ritual.

Maggie, on the other hand, enjoyed the scones and cream and strawberry jam, but I think I can safely say the highlight for her was the guards. More specifically the horse guards. Our first full day in London Jon, Maggie, my dad, my mom, my brother and I walked through the park to Buckingham Palace, and because we had missed the changing of the guards, continued on to see the horse guards. After the obligatory photo with one of the guards, we continued through the archway, hoping to catch a glimpse of the horses or even the stables.

What happened next was a big event, at least in the mind of a two year old, and I think she will be talking about it for some time. A second guard was standing near a gate, behind which, we assumed was the stables. Maggie loves horses. So do I. So does my mother. We peered around, hoping there was some way to get in. THen Ben stepped right up to the gate, to left and behind the guard.

Suddenly we all heard the guard yelling in a very low, loud voice. He drew his sword. For some reason I remember him pointing it out in the air towards Ben, but everyone claims that did not happen. He did begin to bang the sword on the ground and continued yelling, although honestly it was difficult to make out what he was saying. "Sir, step away from the gate!" something to that effect. We were all a bit shocked, and I'm afraid to say, not entirely intimidated. Maggie was frightened. She buried herself in my chest, and began to tear up a bit and so I led her away and explained that everything was ok.

I wasn't sure how she would react to the incident, but her fear only seemed to make her more interested in the guards. She began to tell the story to us all the time. "The guard got mad at Benny. He said aghh aghh aghh aghhh." In later versions of the story, when the fear was not so fresh in her mind perhaps, she added "the guards are so funny."

So we spent the rest of the week looking for guards. We watched the changing of the horse guard, we went to Saint Paul's Cathedral, we went to Windsor Castle (more guards!), and many other things. Being a tourist is pretty exhausting, but on the last night, after Heather had joined us and we were having another dinner past Maggie's bed time, we walked back to the hotels and prepared to say goodbye.

Up until recently Maggie has been particularly sensitive to anyone but Jon and I holding her. Even with family, who she saw quite frequently, she would cry and want mommy. Only recently has this changed. At dinner I explained to Maggie that the next day we would be leaving. We would go back to Paris, and Heather, Benny, nanny and baba would be leaving to go somewhere else, and we wouldn't see heather or Benny for awhile. She immediately went to sit with them and give them kisses.

On the way home she did something that made me tear up a bit. Heather was holding her and whispered to her that she could lay her head down if she wanted and Maggie put her head on Heather's chest and stayed that way for the whole walk home. It was such a sweet moment, not only because we were leaving and wouldn't be seeing them for awhile, but because I saw how lucky Maggie is, how lucky I am too, to have so much love around her. She has grandma and grandpas, and aunts and uncles and nieces and a nephew who all adore her, but she also has friends from her playgroup and their wonderful mothers, who I know hold and love Maggie in just that same way as Heather did then. SO much love!

Montmartre, Je t'aime, but why all the hills and stairs?

We live in paradise. North of sacre coeur. Lamarck-Calaincourt. Ill admit that now. There may be 92 steps up from the metro, and stairs and hills everywhere, but look at this. this is where we walk each day.

The last vineyard in paris:
steps like this everywhere.

Why words failed me

When I was twenty-one years old, a junior in college, I left my home in iowa and travelled to Paris to study for six months. My parents had arranged for me to stay with the sister of a french woman we knew from the horse world, and I would take part in a program sponsored by New York University in Paris.

After a few days sleeping off the jetleg in a temporary NYU dorm, I took a taxi to meet my french family. It was nearly nine o'clock, but the family was just sitting down for dinner when I arrived. I sat in the middle of a long table--surely seeming timid and quiet--and waited as they dished out heaping spoonfuls of meat soup. I say "meat" because I honestly don't know what kind of meat it was. I was a vegetarian; I had been for my entire life. But as I sat there, watching the soup disappear into my mouth, bite by bite, I thought, so this is the moment--I am no longer a vegetarian.

It wasn't that I liked the soup or the taste of meat; I was simply to scared to speak up for myself. I assumed I had a choice: use my poor french to tell the nice woman in whose home I was staying that I didn't care for the food, or stay silent, endure. I was fully prepared to pretend for six months, trick myself if need be, rather than embarrass myself in french. So I swallowed. Perhaps I mustered something like "C'est bonne" or "merci," and that is all.

Perhaps this is the reason I may never learn the language that well: too afraid to make mistakes, too embarrassed. In the six months that followed my french certainly did improve. I began to feel confident; I knew my way around the city, particularly the 5th district, which I walked each day--past the Pantheon, through Luxembourg gardens, down rue Mouffetard...I took classes in French, listened to lectures, wrote papers.

Why is it that I must start over now, 10 years later? We are in a different neighborhood. I don't know my way around. I feel lost.

Yesterday, at the playground I met my match: an 18 month old french toddler. Maggie and I were coming into the sandbox with our new pail and shovel. We had only just discovered the playground, hidden around the corner from our apartment.

It is a gorgeous playground; as romantic as anything in Paris. You wind around a cluster of trees to the top of a hill and it feels like you've stumbled on paradise. Couples laying on benches in the sun. Kids playing soccer. A play structure under a canopy of trees. And then there are the children. Kids howling, laughing, jumping, dashing. Kids are kids, no matter where you go, and some ways this is comforting. But what is different about this playground is the density of madness. Its as if all of Montmartre has been cooped up in their cages and suddenly let out at the same moment.

We decided to start with the sandbox, as it was a bit calmer, and seemed to be where most of the toddlers were. The moment we sat down in the sand I saw him. He eyed the pail in maggie's hands. He moved towards us. And already I felt it: paralysis.

Interventions are always complex: when do you let the kids work it out? Is it the other parent's responsibility to tell their own child no? Shouldn't you teach your child to share?

But I wasn't going to let this boy rip Maggie's new toy from her hands. I just wasn't. When he grabbed, I grabbed. I tried to mumble something in french, but mostly I felt all my language skills slip away completely. I had become a toddler myself--unable to communicate in words, grabbing and winning by strength alone.

I tried not to rip the bucket from this boy. I tried. When I looked up and saw the dad hovering there, I just kept thinking, why don't you tell your son that this toy is not his? Why don't you intervene? He never did. So I took the boys hands, pried them from the pail, and handed the pail to maggie.

And then I sat there, in the sand, feeling like a complete idiot. I had failed. completely. Words had failed me.

But Maggie played happily. She dove into the chaos on the playground. She smiled at the kids and listened and watched and climbed. She was comfortable. She was awesome.

This story doesn't have a happy ending. at least not yet. I hope my french improves. I hope. Fortunately, I do understand most french, and I did have french people ask me directions a couple times in the last week...That counts for something, right?

Maggie is 2!

I think the pictures say it all with this one. Let's just say this birthday will be hard to top! Pony and carousel rides in the Jardin des Tuilleries followed by hot chocolat and macaroons at Angelinas? Does it get any better?

We're here! Paris!

We're here! Or at least I think we are. Night is still day, and we've spent hours in the dark telling maggie "Fia stories:" essentially, our little made up adventures about Maggie and Nanna's corgi--at the zoo, the horse stable, the park, on a hike, etc...It all feels a little like one of those dreams where you're looking for something, reaching your hands out in the dark but can't, for the life of you, get your hands, or eyes, or legs to move.

I didn't think I would ever want to travel again after the flight to paris. We had a lot of luggage--a lot. I look back now and realize that no item could be worth the pain of lugging it across the Atlantic. In total we brought almost 250 pounds of STUFF. Before you call us totally crazy, what we brought wasn't so unreasonable: 4 suitcases, a guitar, and my sewing machine (yes, a sewing machine..) Come on...this is our life...we are living abroad for a year. But after the customs line, and the baggage claim (have you ever balanced that much luggage and a car seat and a crib, and a guitar on one of those carts??) Actually we didn't have to fit the guitar on the cart because we forget it at the Charles de Gaulle airport, but that's another story. So we fill up the back of a mini van with stuff, and begin the drive towards our apartment in Montmartre.

And here is where the hero in the story comes in: Jon. Of course, my husband with infinite strength and patience. When we rented the apartment we were told it was on the fourth floor with a lift. In France, the fourth floor is actually the fifth floor, and of course there is the flight of stairs to climb to get to the lift, and after that, another small flight of stairs from the lift to the apartment. So how did we get 250 pounds of stuff up to the fifth floor after no sleep, lines, airplane exhaust in our lungs? Jon, or course. When it was all over, he was finally done, Jon came into the apartment and I watched the sweat fall in large drops from his face onto the wood table and all I could think was, after all this, how are we going to take care of our cranky, exhausted toddler?

That night we had the windows open and we could hear piano, talking, babies crying from the neighboring apartments. We looked up and saw Sacre Coeur outside our window, glowing on its hilltop, and it was kind of magical. Then it began to rain. We listened to the water falling on the stone below, and breathed in that wonderful sweet air, and for that moment, it seemed that everything would be ok.

The views from our apartment:

Walking to Sacre Coeur