Parc Floral

Photo's of our trip out to our local park / gardens with Zoe's friend Mia. I think their friendship is based on their shared ability not to speak french but to be good at singing it. Mia has Polish and French parents, They do one parent one language and read to her in English, now she comes to the Anglophone playgroup and plays with us. Her mum speaks Polish, French, English and Spanish so can speak to me to arrange playdates for them. Also Mia's cousins live in England so she knows all about In the night garden and Peppa pig, so like Zoe appreciates falling over like a tombliboo whilst snorting like a pig!

Works of Art

by Zoe aged 2 &1/2.

Mardi -Gras / Le Carnival (France) Shove Tuesday (UK)

There seems to be a joke amongst the incredibly thin french woman that there is never a good time in the year to start a diet. I have never seen so many people with thighs thinner than their knees - I mean how does that happen?

In December, its christmas need I say more? Le Réveillon is christmas dinner and traditionally eaten before midnight mass on Christmas eve, this is basically like 'the big long meal' and this is for a nation who happily eats seven courses which takes hours. This is followed by 13 deserts for Jesus and the 12 apostles, I bet they are canape sized and they don't crack open the 1kg tin of quality street after. In fact they only sell the 500g tins for about 15 Euro and definitely no buy one get one free!

In January there is Galette des Rois / King Cake which is puff pastry with marzipan in the middle and traditionally eaten to celebrate Epiphany on the 6th January. Need to know information - it contains a porcelain figurine! We first tried this when we were invited around to the gite owners for cider & King cake. James got the figure in his slice and as we knew nothing about this tradition he raised his eyebrows and tried to hide it on the edge of his plate under a bit of pastry. The gite owner spots it starts clapping and makes James wear a golden crown as he is declared king for the day!

At the beginning of Febuary there is a crepe party, TEFAL sell special crepe maker so you can cook six at one time and nobody has to wait.

In March its carnival and with it comes a big cinnamon roll decorated with purple, yellow and green icing again with a hidden figurine to break your teeth on.  In the schools make costumes and masks and parade through the village and the Garderie are attending a show at the Mediatheque on Wednesday.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Mardi-Gras-King-Cake

Zoe has made a mask at our Anglophone playgroup, although actually I made it whilst Zoe hid on her own with the bag of feathers in a different room, sorting them into there colours & putting them in different places.

Next comes Easter with chocolates and chocolate eggs, they only come on sale a few weeks before easter not months before as in the UK and saves me from eating far too many creme eggs.

Zoe's imagination is remarkable, this causes James to worry as its a symbol of her innocence but it simply captivates me and it is resparking my ability to play. When we were driving into the city last week we saw some black birds fly past, of course Zoe told me about these big BLUE birds who were stuck in the tree but then they went up high (and as we drove over the river) they met the ducks on the river on the boat (there was no sign of a boat). I was then able to make up a story featuring lots of animals with noises and their adventures on their journey, before Zoe came into our lives I had completely lost my ability to imagine and be creativity, probably not the most useful talent but my beautiful daughter has taught me that I can make up stupid stories!

Have you read more than 6 of these books?

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3035775.stm

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - N
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - N
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - N
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - N
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 0

6 The Bible - N
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - N
8 1984 - George Orwell - N
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - N
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - N
TOTAL SO FAR:0

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Y
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - N
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - N
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - N
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - Y
TOTAL SO FAR: 2

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - N
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - N
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - N
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - Y
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 3

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - N
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - N
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - N
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - N
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -N
TOTAL SO FAR: 3

26 Tess Of The D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - N
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - N
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - N
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - N
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 3

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - N
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - N
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - N
34 Emma - Jane Austen - N
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 3

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - N
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein - N
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - N
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - N
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 3

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - Y
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Y
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - N
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - N
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 5

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - Y
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - N
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - N
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - Y
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 7

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - N
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - N
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - N
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - N
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 7

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - N
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - N
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - N
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - N
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 7

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - N
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - N
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - N
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - N
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 7

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - N
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - N
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - N
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - N
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 7

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - N
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - N
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - Y
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - Y
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 9

76 The Inferno - Dante - N
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - Y
78 Germinal - Emile Zola - N
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - N
80 Possession - AS Byatt - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 10

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - N
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - N
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - N
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - N
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 10

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - N
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - Y
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - N
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - N
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 11

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - N
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - N
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - Y
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - N
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 12

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - N
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - N
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - N
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - N
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - N
TOTAL SO FAR: 12

I might stop reading trash and start on 'the list' it will give me something to do this year. Love in the time of Chlorea had better be a comedy!

Orleans & The Loire River - a history lesson.

Orleans is said to be the capital of the Loire Valley and the Loire Valley France's heart. The Loire River is the longest river in France, 630 miles long or over 1000km as we should say in Europe. It rises in the Mountains, southeast somewhere and flows via Orleans to the coastal cities of Nantes and Saint-Nazaire on the west coast where it reaches the Atlantic Ocean. We are on a flood plain (which is similar to New Orleans in America and why it got its name), so if the Loire does burst its levies we will be under 10m of water.  I'm not too worried as the last flood was 100 years ago and the emergency sirens are still tested on the first wednesday of every month at midday, so we will be alerted if the river is coming.
The first time we heard the sirens it was a bit of a shock, not knowing what to do we followed the 'foreigner in France regime' which works in almost all occassions... Look out the window and copy what everyone else is doing! Which in this case was nothing, Ok then air raid sirens going off in the middle of the day is normal.

The 'Loire river valley', is now all about the 100 Châteaux built along the river and the wine, a little Joan of Arc and a weekend getaway for Parisans. Walking or cycling along the levies, stopping in a small restaurant for lunch, wandering around a château and sampling wine from local caves is pretty much all there is to do. Hmmm this all reminds me of the wonderfully beautiful English county of Somerset (maybe my 'sun'glasses are starting to get a little rosetinted)? simply exchange the levies for the Levels, poncy restaurants for a pub, châteaux for Glastonbury Tor, Burrow Mump or Wells and of course scrumpy cider.

A two year olds love for Christmas!

The thing that is interesting me most about Zoe development at the moment is that since she turned two she is actually able to do stuff! By that statement I mean that something to do with her physical development, coordination and manual dexterity has clicked. Where alot of toddlers have been sat quietly puzzling and shape sorting for a year or so Zoe has only ever spent a few seconds, got fed up, frustrated, thrown the toy across the room and gone for a good jump. I have taken advantage of the new skill but getting stuck into some good ol' crafty christmas activities and I am very proud of  our Zoe's achievements! So this months blog is lots of photo's to celebrate her new found skills.

Making tree decorations from saltdough. Zoe made "wiggy worms", (she adores making worms after James showed her with playdough) which I cunningly turned into candy canes and a couple of handprints. I made a snowman and a christmas tree. To be honest I thought salt dough was a bit rubbish, most of the time was spent trying to prevent Zoe from eating it, I put bucketloads of salt into it thinking this would stop her but no this just made me worry about her cells shrivling up as they desperately tried to dilute the amount of salt in her bloodstream.

Properly building a Snowman by picking up snow putting it on the snowman and patting it down, she even copied us rolling a ball around the garden to make a head!Amazing!  

We had fun decorating the christmas tree, OK with this I have to admit she put at least two decorations on each branch and I had to keep turning the tree to get them spread out.

but this table decorations she did do all by herself!

Biscuits, just like doing playdough "really easy"

and eating them (much more fun)!

"Colouring, colouring pens, colouring book, Baby doooooo it", this image doesn't show it very well but I wanted to continue the christmas theme, now lines don't only exist but there is an attempt to stay between them! This takes alot of concentration and thankfully for me uses up alot of time - here's hoping for lots more colouring in the future.

The best thing of all.... dispite all this grown up baby girl stuff she is young enough to be able to take to the toy shop with us to buy her christmas presents (our family have sent us money & chosen toys they like from an online catalogue of a huge toy shop called Maxi Toys the equivalent of Toys r us), boxes mean nothing and and we were able to hide a few things behind the pushchair, I have a feeling next year will not be so easy!

Turkey - Lurkey (a twenty eight year olds love for turkey)!

Papa Noel is definitely visiting Appartement Un on the 25th and I can't wait! :-)