Joyeuses Pâques! Happy Easter!

As you can see, the Easter Bunny made a visit to our house! That must have been quite an undertaking for him what with all the travel restrictions and the immense amount of French red tape for obtaining a work permit. You see, France is outside outside the Easter Bunny's jurisdiction. In France, children do get chocolate on Easter Sunday, but it's delivered by flying church bells. They wing off to the Vatican on Good Friday, taking with them all the misery and sadness of Lent. There they exchange all the bad stuff for chocolate and other treats, which they deliver the French children on their return on Easter Sunday. So, it's just as common to see a chocolate bell here as a bunny, chicken, or egg.

We started off the morning with homemade "Banana Bites", recipe courtesy of Weelicious. They're slices of banana dipped in pancake batter and cooked till the banana is warm and gooey.

I thought they were pretty yummy. Santi, as usual when I cook for him, looked at them, licked them, offered his to me, pulled it apart into little pieces, then threw them on the floor. It's times like these that I remember why it is I feed him so much supermarker baby food (and I don't feel so bad about it).

Finally we had he main event. Chocolate Bunny! This is the one that didn't survive the Abbesses Baguette Incident

Santi instinctively understood the correct way to eat a chocolate bunny is to grab it by one ear and try to bite off the other. For a first effort, he did a pretty good job! Here's my little bunny eating his:

Happy Easter!

What we have to work with: Part I. Transportation

I think it is essential at this point to describe our home and a bit of the logistics involved with bringing up an active, walking, tri-national boy of mystery. I get some comments from people who apparently think I complain a bit much about normal aspects of daily life. But I think when you understand a bit more about the reality of life in Paris, and how it differs enourmously from American standards, you'll see where I'm coming from.

Contrary to popular belief, we do not live a stone's throw from the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, or the Pompidou Center. The closest tourist zone that you might recognize is Montmartre and the Sacré Coeur Basilica. Monmartre is the only major hill/butte in Paris and is where the movie "Amélie" was filmed. It's where you go to buy paintings of famous Parisian landmarks from local artists. At its foot you'll find the Montmartre cemetary and the Moulin Rouge. Well, we live on the OTHER side of the Montmartre Butte, which is just an ordinary neighborhood, very calm, with lots of great cheese shops and delis, plus some great bakeries and cafés.

The Montmartre Butte is already on the very northwest edge of Paris, so we're not even really living in the city ourselves. To get into downtown Paris, where all the fun stuff is, we need to take a subway or bus. Like most Parisians, we don't have a car because there is literally nowhere to park it, and you'll spend half your life sitting in traffic. So, getting downtown is about 20 minutes on the subway and 40 minutes on the bus. The bus is nice because you can see the street as you go, and they have these large "bays" set up to hold baby strollers. The bus is slow though, and there aren't so many routes, so there often isn't a bus going where we need to go. Enter the Metro!

The good parts: the Metropolitan subway system is fantastic. I think you are never more than 500 meters from a metro station in Paris. You can get almost anywhere without having to change trains more than one time. It's fast, efficient, safe, and pretty clean. I loved the metro before having a child.

The bad parts: The metro is how most people get around Paris. So it can get crowded. Very, very crowded! During rush hour you may learn more about your neighbor's personal hygene than you ever hoped to. Ugh! This is particularly difficult when you are manoeuvering even a small stroller into the cramped cars. And forget about getting out! You have to fight and push your way back to the door before it automatically shuts after each stop. And Parisians in general don't cut people with children any extra slack.

Oh, and I should mention the primary dificulty in using the Metro with a small child who needs a stroller. It's underground and there are no elevators! Well, there are a few newer stations that have elevators (that are sometimes working), but these are rare and not on any of our regular routes. So you have to carry the stroller up and down at least two flight of stairs (often more) to get in, out, change trains, etc. This is annoying, but doable if someone is traveling with you. If you are alone, you need to ask a stranger to help you. This is a fairly common sight and most people are willing to help, but it can be harder during peak hours. You can instead just leave the stroller home and carry your child in your arms or in some kind of sling or pack, but then you will need to continue to do that all day. But, that may not be such a bad idea because many stores and restaurants don't have the space to accomodate a stroller (this isn't the US where wheelchairs have to be accomodated or where there is cheap land to expand to so that you can have large buildings, wide streets and sidewalks. Plus, the rents per square meter in Paris are astronomical, so people make do with less). So you develop really strong arms since you need to carry your child PLUS all of the stuff you need for your child, and any stuff you might buy (no covenient stroller "donkey" to hang everything on).

I am very glad that Santi is taking enthusiastically to walking and that eventually we'll be able to throw off the shackles of the stroller. Once we get to the point where he can walk fairly reliably, getting out and about in this city will be so much easier!

(Part II. Living Quarters, coming soon!)

My breakfast with Santi

Santi starts off his morning with a big bottle of toddler milk (lait de croissance for you gourmets). After that, he usually has a banana (which he's just learned to hold and eat all by himself) and then a wheat cracker called a cracotte. Breakfast is eaten on-the-go by the international boy of mystery...

Gouter! Miam!

Here is Santi getting ready to chow down on the best baguette in Paris:

Shoes and scribbles

For papa, here are Santi's new (and first) shoes:

Here are also his latest works of art:

Shameless self-promotion

I'm single momma for the next couple of weeks since Greg is in Mexico getting a field project started. Santi and I will be joining him in mid-April, but until then, we're fending for ourselves! If you have any tips, they're welcome! I find the whole living on the 6th floor with no elevator thing pretty daunting when there's no one around to help haul stuff up the stairs.

If you are interested in the grown-up perspective on this (and many other themes), come on over to "Chichimeca Forever", sister-blog to "The Adventures of Santiago". That's where I blog my own experience. Like this blog, it's actually been around for a while and has had long periods of inactivity, but I'm trying to change that now. Looking forward to see you there!

Á Table!!!

So my mom sent me an article from the latest "Time" called Postcards from Paris that talks about the food served to French children in elementary schools. It basically details how they are served a 4 course meal daily that doesn't repeat for at least 32 days, are taught proper table manners, and are allowed to take their time in eating. The foods are all made fresh. They even send home suggestions to the parents for what dinner would best complement what was served at lunch. My mom was really excited and wanted to know if Santi would get that kind of treatment when he starts school.

It made me laugh because most of that already happens at the daycare for kids under 3! Even for the babies who just eat purées! I guess if he were going to a home daycare with only one person working, it wouldn't be that way, but his center has a full-time kitchen staff. At the end of every day they tell me what he ate for his lunch and his gouter (afternoon snack), and they detail which items he seemed to like and which he didn't. I realize that he tries more new things there than he does at home (I also have learned that there are things he refuses to eat at home that he gobbles down there with no problem). The kids learn to sit at a table on little chairs and feed themselves as soon as they show an interest (they start encouraging them to give it a try around a year-old). And their food is really GOOD. What the toddlers get served looks and smells much better than what I eat for lunch, that's for sure. Even the purées for the babies taste like real, grown-up food (part of helping Santi get used to attending the center involved me feeding him meals there several times, so I got a chance to sneak a taste of various menus).

I just now learned through a google search that the "mairie" (town hall) for our district has a section of their webpage with the menu of the week for every public school in its jurisdiction, from preschool to high school. Not only does it list what the children are eating (again, it sounds much better and more imaginative than what I eat), but there are also links that take you to pictures and explanations of all of the products that are used in the menu, and other links with information about general nutrition and health issues. I've already learned the names, regions of origin, production methods, and nutritional data on 12 kinds of cheese (and I think that's only half of those on the menu).

I'm feeling a little insecure culinarily now! How can I compete? He'll be the kid who'd rather eat at the cafeteria than at home!