first museum & first pastries

Today Eva slept in until 9:30 -- hallelujah! And the boys got up at 10:30, so that is progress. We left the apartment at 1:00 today, which is our best time yet.

When we live here, I pace myself. We just can't be on the go all day every day. (When we have guests, we are out and about more for their sake.) My ideal Paris day is to go on an excursion in the morning(ish), come home, relax for awhile, put in a load of laundry, then figure out what to do for dinner.

Max requested the Centre Pompidou today (modern art museum). Lucas was on board, Eva was not, but we take turns choosing what we want to do! Right now they have a special exhibit of female artists, which I found very interesting.

I loved this girly-girl piece, complete with jewelry, hair accessories, ribbons, and trims, all in various shades of pink.

One of my favorite color combos, this one spoke to me.

And I loved how text was incorporated into so many things:

So, yeah, I'm a word aficionado. Just this plain text makes my heart sing. The font, the words, the spacing, I love it all. (this was an art piece, not a museum commentary)

The words were cut out and illuminated from behind. Love it!

This is tongue in cheek, of course. Funny. (My ayatollah??)

This one was knitted! Just a huge, knitted panel, with the words. Cool.

This piece was made of wood and had letters strewn about. It made the best shadows. Eva had to get out of her stroller and dance around in this room. (She also announced today that she wants to take ballet and tap. How does she even know about tap?)

This looks like a cool book that we could reproduce! (Amy? Hannah?) What a fun project.

Come on, how can you not love this?

This one was fascinating -- it was a series of 8 panels. The 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th all had the same photo. Each one tells how many days it's been since the man she loved left. The even-numbered panels continued the story of their relationship with different photos. I stood there a long time reading the whole thing.

We discovered that Lucas and I have a faster museum pace than Max -- he was always lagging behind, and later told me that we were going too fast for him. Good thing he is old enough for me to not worry when he is not at my side!

At a certain point, it became clear that Eva couldn't handle any more museum time, so we wandered around the Stravinsky Fountain and then made our way home. Then we took a stroll along Rue Cler to buy baguettes and pastries. The baguettes were hot out of the oven! Such a treat. And it was the first time we have gotten pastries -- I have no idea how we waited this long. Max had a divorce (like a big éclair with chocolate custard on one side and coffee custard on the other), I had a religieuse (chocolate cream puff with another smaller cream puff on top), Lucas had a pain au chocolat (croissant with chocolate inside), and Eva had a chocolate sablé cookie that was almost as big as her head.

My blisters have not improved and my feet are in bad shape. It's a good thing I brought my favorite rhinestone wedge flip-flops, or I would not have been able to go out at all today. Here's a bit of good news: after carrying the stroller with Eva in it up and down many flights of stairs today, I can report that my knees are doing fine! So much easier than 2007, when I was just post-knee surgery.

Marc was gone all day helping the students to get to their host families. When he got home, we had raclette for dinner. I should have taken photos (next time). Basically it's melted cheese with boiled potatoes, ham, baguettes, and apples. The easiest dinner, yet delicious and very filling.

Today was so much more promising than yesterday.