an adjustment period

It would appear that the start of first grade is quite an adjustment period.

I suppose it would have been for Max and Lucas as well, but I just don't remember. Maybe because I had another little one at home to distract me at the time.

She couldn't wait for kindergarten to be over so she could move on to first grade. She couldn't wait to get a lunch box so she could take her lunch to school and stay all day. I was similarly excited.

But now that it's here, there have been quite a few mornings where she hasn't wanted to go to school.

Maybe she needs more sleep – maybe she's just a little tired and cranky. Maybe her little cold is getting her down. Maybe she misses having lots of time at home (I could certainly understand that).

Maybe that big backpack weighs more heavily on her shoulders than I thought.

Even more surprising to me than her school reluctance is the way I miss her when she's gone. (Not enough to keep her home, mind you!) Especially when she goes to play with a friend after school, then I feel as though I've hardly seen her all day, and it is such a stark contrast to having my little buddy around all the time.

But then she starts whining about not wanting to clean her room or practice piano and I remember what it's like having a constant buddy all the time.

I tell you, motherhood is perpetually perplexing.

Happy Pioneer Day

I'm not much of a parade girl (although we did watch part of the Days of '47 parade on tv this morning), so I honored the pioneers the best way I knew how:

industry.

After being sick for almost two weeks, the house and yard really needed some attention. I spent most of the day cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry, vacuuming, and watering the lawn. Very satisfying.

my new favorite tool

Do you know about Amazon's universal wish list?

If you don't, you should. It's pretty much the coolest thing ever. (Jessie turned me on to it.)

Simply add their "Add to Wish List" button to your browser toolbar, and you can add items from any website to your Amazon wish list. That way, you can keep track of any and all gifts you are wishing for in one centralized place.

Mine has items I am wishing for, and ideas for gifts I want to give to others. Marc tells me this is stupid, and I should separate my lists, but it works for me (for now, anyway). Jessie has a list for herself, and another one for her girls.

Basically, I wish everyone I know would have one of these wish lists, it makes gift buying SO much easier! (Dad, this means you.)

And with the free Amazon Prime membership that Jill hooked me up with, I am just an Amazon devotee right now. With no shipping to worry about, I am ordering online gifts left and right!

(This is not a paid endorsement. Obviously.)

I am thankful for...

This stuff rocks. (Thanks, Denise, for introducing it to me!) It's like pure essence of lime.

So far, it's a tie for my favorite use: in my diet pomegranate 7up, or in my Coke Zero (trust me, it's a million times better than lime-flavored cola). But I'm sure there's a whole world of uses left to discover.

favorites

Clear mascara. I've had several people ask me what I do to my eyebrows. Here's the deal: I pluck them every now and again, and I brush them up with clear mascara every day. It shapes them and holds them in place, and once it dries, you can't even tell it's there. (I use Cover Girl.) Trust me on this one.

Peaches & cream. Especially with peach sauce. I just can't get enough right now.

Kindergarten. The excitement hasn't worn off. Even though I usually have things I need to do while Eva's gone, and I've been driving a lot, I still just love knowing that I'll have at least some time to myself every day. Even working alone is a nice breather. And sometimes, just sometimes, I can even do something fun during that time:

I went out to lunch yesterday with Amie, Crystal, and Jill. Kid-free conversation, laughter, and food. It was so nice!

Clean Mama. I'm not sure how I stumbled onto this blog, but I'm glad I did. She is doing a whole bunch of posts in September about meal planning, with several free printables. I've been working on my list of family favorite meals and I will definitely be doing some prep-ahead stuff that I can keep in my freezer. I'm hoping that this will help me get over my dread of what to make for dinner.

These tags that Marc brought me from the Paris flea market. I may never use them.

Do you have any current favorites?

free photo book

I found out about this promotion today: you can make a free photo book! You pay only the cost of shipping.

But beware, the promotion ends on March 31st, so do not delay. Go and make photo books. They are most satisfying.

cool opportunity

Utah locals, you've got to check this out.

Provo photographer Justin Hackworth is doing another 30 Strangers project. He will be taking portraits of one mother/daughter pair every day during the month of April. Subjects will receive an 8x10 print from the session.

I wish I wish I could put my name in the lottery, but your daughter needs to be at least 6 years old. This is one cool opportunity that I hope to be able to participate in sometime in the future. Check it out!

p.s. March 5th is the last day to put your name in the pool.

some current favorites

this toy -- I want to make one!

This book -- finally started it last night.

Homemade cookies have always been a weakness of mine, but I took a page out of my aunt Denise's book: package cooled cookies 2 to a sandwich bag and store in a ziploc in the freezer. My boys have been thrilled with their lunch treats and the cookies are defrosted and fresh when it's lunchtime at school. Added bonus -- I haven't been eating them all!!


This photo of one of our backyard trees -- which will be mentioned again in tomorrow's post, aren't you excited?


This girl: every time I pick her up from preschool, she runs towards me yelling, "Mama!" in her sweetest, happiest voice. It's so endearing. And almost makes up for the fact that she was sickly and whiny today.


This album. I'm a little late to the Rufus Wainwright party, but I am smitten. I am listening to this album on a loop, and when I wake up in the morning (or the middle of the night, as the case may be), it's in my head.



This foundation. My mom turned me on to it. I believe it's called "Simply Ageless." Would that it could truly live up to that claim. However, it provides greater coverage that I apparently need now that I'm looking old, and it's easy to apply.


This blog: www.thismamamakesstuff.com

a night at the opera

Opéra Garnier, that is. But we actually attended a ballet there, not an opera. Marc got tickets for all of his interested students to attend a modern ballet performance, and we went on Saturday night for a stand-out date. This is the kind of thing that makes you excited to be in Paris.

(Incidentally, I attended another performance at Opéra Garnier many years ago with my friend Katrina -- that time it was an opera.)

The opera house is all glitz and glamour, inside and out. It is fun to look at, and it's fun to see the people there, many of them dressed to the hilt. We saw several people drinking champagne before the show started -- I found it funny that you can order things like potato chips and candy to go with your champagne.

This is what I would expect the ceilings to look like in this building (this is the main hall).

So the first time I saw the Chagall ceiling in the theater room, I was taken aback. To me, it just doesn't seem to go. But then, I'm not a big Chagall fan, so I'm sure others think it's fabulous.

I think the rest is fabulous.

We were sitting in the deuxième loge, which is a second balcony box. It sounded great, but our box was a narrow, cramped one with a column obstructing our view. I was sitting in front of Marc, and there was also a Japanese couple, a woman from England, and a woman from Greece in our box.

It was shocking, really, how little of the stage we could see (maybe 1/4), and we were really disappointed. After intermission, however, I moved a chair to the back of the box onto a raised step, and suddenly I could see everything! Funny that I could see so much more from the back than at the front seat. Anyway. The woman from Greece took my front spot and Marc took her seat back by me. Needless to say, we enjoyed the last part of the show much more than the first.

There were three different sections with three separate choreographers. The music, costumes, and choreography was very obviously very different in each of the three parts. It's hard to say if what contributed to our liking the last part more -- the production elements or the increased visibility -- but it was stunning. At one point, they had images projected on a screen of text, beautiful old handwriting, natural history photos, etc. and then a dancer would come in front of the screen and the projections would be on the dancer as well. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that that was a highlight for me.

If you ever have the chance to attend a performance at Opéra Garnier, take it!

gallery of horrors

On Thursday, I offered to take the kids to the paleontology gallery of the natural history museum. (The natural history museum here is marvelous, but Eva was really only interested in the dinosaurs. They have separate buildings for paleontology and minerology.)

Apparently, last week was a school vacation, and everyone must have had the same idea. We had to wait in line for an hour and a half just to get into the building! Normally when we go to the Jardin des Plantes, we hardly even see any other people.

Max and Lucas wandered the gardens and took pictures while I waited in line with Eva. By the time we got in to the register, the museum was going to be closing in 45 minutes, so they didn't charge us admission (a bright spot in the day).

I love the attention to detail in these old museums. Even the stairs are interesting!

Eva was terribly excited that they had skeletons of dinosaurs we had never heard of, which is really something considering the number of dinosaur books we have read.

The boys and I were fascinated by the work in progress. They taped off a little section of the floor so they could continue assembly of a new skeleton.


Lucas photographing a creature "who forgot to brush his teeth."

One floor is devoted to Darwin's comparative anatomy. This is the true gallery of horrors section, containing creepiness in many forms, including a giant wall of jarred specimens in formaldehyde. (I tried to quickly steer Eva past the worst of it.)

The looks on their faces says so much. (Although Lucas is photographing whatever inspired those expressions of disgusted fascination.)

Of course I loved all of these old, hand-lettered signs. This one cracked me up, as it ends in a question mark. Apparently they're not quite sure what it is -- it might be a two-horned rhinoceros head -- but they just thought it was cool anyway?


Hard to believe, but this was the least creepy of the jarred specimens. Take my word for it. If you even knew, you'd thank me for my discretion.

It was an appropriate outing so close to Halloween...

Friday flânerie, part I

*Jill left early Monday morning. Already it almost doesn't seem real. Good thing I still have some catch-up blogging to do!!*

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Friday was a perfect day.

First, we decided to go to the Musée d'Orsay.

Two accordion players on the metro! Usually I am annoyed by musicians on the metro (particularly the karaoke singers, they're the very worst). Everyone either has a book or headphones or is carrying on a conversation and is obviously not wanting to hear the "music" of someone else's choice (and quite often the music is questionable). But I make an exception for accordion players. That just seems authentic.

We passed this shop window for dandies. I don't know any American men who could wear this ensemble without feeling that their masculinity was in question. That doesn't seem to be an issue for French men! (I can't get over the layering of a shirt, tie, sweater, blazer, scarf, and coat. I'd have to be in Siberia to wear all that!)

Someone thought it was a good idea to name a boutique Smuggler. Do you think something was lost in translation?

I don't think I could love the museum's logo more. Of course, it helps that it's also my initials!

Musée d'Orsay self-portrait

Hooray! We saw an artist at work. That always feels like a special museum treat to me. While I know that only a select few artists are granted permission to make reproductions in the museums, the question remains: what happens to those paintings? Are they sold as reproductions or kept in the artist's personal collection? As Jill said, we have so many more questions than answers.

The super-ornate M'O clock.

I enjoy the architecture of the museum as much as the works of art, and love that someone had the vision to make something so great out of this train station.

We went through the new art nouveau exhibit and were heartily disappointed. I wasn't a big fan of art nouveau before, and that clinched it. (I wasn't even sad that photos were not allowed, if that tells you anything.)

We kept running into this field trip of children who looked to be about kindergarten age. They were so cute and so well-behaved, I was smitten.

We weren't clear on what this room was, it seemed to be a ballroom of sorts.

Marc recently bought a photography book all about people reading. I looooved the idea. Of course I started seeing people reading in the paintings, such a happy sight.

and writing!

This Degas sculpture is one of my all-time favorite things. It is so beautiful, and I think the way he combined fabric with the bronze is pure genius. It's very hard to photograph as it is always surrounded by admirers.

Still, I found this shot with the girl in the background kind of cool. Maybe she'll be dancer someday.

This Caillebotte is another one of my favorites.

Every time I see this painting, I am impressed anew. It has so much movement.

Is it wrong that I'm drawn to food even in painting?

The windows provide good views here as well (note the Louvre across the river).

Jill and I had several discussions about artists. How do they do it? How do they paint those (sometimes) giant canvases without losing the perspective of the whole? How do they come up with so many new techniques? How do they use so many colors to express what they see? This Van Gogh self-portrait is a perfect example -- I just know I would not use those colors if I were painting a face -- but yet it works. Jill said she is convinced that they just see things differently, and I am inclined to agree.

The low point of the day was lunch. We had spent so much time in the museum that we were famished, and decided to sit at one of the museum cafés. The food was definitely sub-par. But the setting was sublime, so we didn't mind all that much. (Okay, so better food would have improved the day somewhat, but only a little.)

We thought these waffles with ice cream and chocolate sauce would redeem the bad lunch, but sadly, they weren't that good either. Looks can be deceiving! A recommendation: if you ever go to the Musée d'Orsay, eat before or after. Stick with hot chocolate if you want to sit down within the museum. Trust me on this.

These just make me happy.

We had to agree that walking on the glass bridge was a bit disconcerting, but I love looking up at others walking by.

Although we didn't see all of the museum, we finally decided to move on. You can only do museums for so long before you start to burn out.