April 2016

This month wasn't terribly eventful.  It was mostly consumed by getting bureaucratic stuff taken care of for the move to Paris.  So, other than that I have to say that the weather started being a bit nicer (off and on) and that E go a little closer to crawling.  He just likes to tantalize us!  We keep thinking, "he's getting closer!  He's getting closer!" but he never gets there!  I am not a patient person.  But, as of this month, he regularly gets up on all fours and rocks, he easily moves from sitting to belly and back and he moves all around, including backwards, just not from point A to point B or from the all fours position.  He has also gotten pretty good at standing up if he's holding onto something.  He can't pull to stand or stand without holding on or anything though.  Progress!  He's doing better with food too, but just won't eat any fruit.  Like, at all.  Oh, and I weaned him!  He's always been a fussy nurser and I was always wondering how much he was getting (didn't seem like much), plus he was biting  a lot.  So, I decided weaning him would be best.  I'm so glad I did!  It had gotten to the point where I couldn't be in the same room as him without him crying until I nursed him, so it was affecting our relationship and everyone else in the family too.  Now, he's actually happy when I'm around, I know how much milk he's getting and I have freedom to boot!  Woohoo!

On with the pictures:

The cousins lovin' on E + hottie hubby.

Sad and funny - Tom was playing basketball with the girls.  They were running all over, squealing and having a great time.  Then, Tom dunked it and the ball landed right on Ellie's head!  I caught it all on video:

Flower lover.

Love looking at these pictures in a series:

Oh childhood: not feeling awkward about holding hands with the little girl who you just met while you're riding the swings.  So sweet:

"It's like a noodle Mom!"

At Buy Buy Baby trying to decide what to use our giftcard on.

Cuties.

 We went on a hike.  When Harp was younger I always wanted her to be into the outdoors, but she always kind of hated it.  Lately, (thanks to Daniel Tiger) she's gotten a lot more into it!  She wants to "explore" and go on "adventures."  When we used to go on hikes she'd be crying and whining the whole time, nervous about being off the path and on the dirt.  This time she was running up the trail, wandering into the foliage on the sides and just having a blast.  Made my heart happy!

Cutest bandaid face ever.  She didn't really need it, but is obsessed with bandaids and made her feel better about her bloody nose.

High-heels!  Ahh!  She loves them.

E was in such a good mood this one day and was just talking up a storm.  He kept popping off while I was nursing him, to talk to me:

 Went to the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point with friends:

Baby buddies.

Water baby.

She said it was a parrot.  Pretty impressive for a 2 year old!

Went to baby storytime and they gave her a bear to be her baby.  She loved it and was really good at following along and doing the same things with her bear that I was doing with E!  E loved it too!

Then, at the end of storytime, they blew bubbles.  E turned around so he was just watching the people and couldn't care less about the bubbles:

stud

Had a nice warm (almost hot) day and decided to go to Blackridge (Blackhurst?) Reservoir, a.k.a. Utah's beach.  I thought surely everyone would have the same idea and the place would be packed, but Utahns are crazy and love to stay inside, so we had it all to ourselves!!  Kids were in heaven.

Sunscreen mohawk.

She climbed up all by herself!  So proud of her since she's usually pretty timid with stuff like that.

Happy about her "fruit shirt."

Cute friends.

I came in to get her after naptime one day and found her like this.  She had pulled out all the wipes and said they were her blanket.  She was pretty stoked about it.  Hard to get mad!

Daddy's work.

 Were bored on day and headed to Barnes and Noble to play with their trains and legos.  When we got there this was just one layer of legos in a square.  She turned it into this and I loved it.  Love to see kids create things!

Switching roles.

Tried on his 6-12 month coat.  Way too big still but will be so so cute next year (in Paris!)!

They are such buddies.

All fours.

Got free pretzels at the mall!  Too bad Harp was so blinded by her rage at my refusal to allow her to drink my entire lemonade that she never realized how yummy the pretzels were!  Normally she loves anything bread-y.

 Went to the Gateway Children's Museum on a free day:

Piano just his size!  He LOVED it!

She stood up on the table, looked around at herself and then at me and said, "I'm a temple!"

Harper loves to play with these guys.  Let me introduce you to (from the top) Minnie's daddy, Minnie's mommy, Minnie and Minnie's baby brother (an egg/pancake thing with Minnie ears).  Ah kids.

Tom's grandpa came for a visit, so we had a family get-together.  The kids LOVED it so much.  They are so social, so this kind of thing is heaven for them!  They got all kinds of attention and just ate it all up:

Paris

Eventually, I'm pretty sure this whole moving to Paris thing will be awesome (and I'll talk about that part in a bit), but right now we're slogging through the bureaucratic muck.  This month we sent in for passports for the babes and renewed mine, we found and signed a lease for an apartment (technically, that was beginning of May, but I wanna talk about it, so oh well), and we dealt with a bunch of visa interview prep. I had no idea getting a visa for France would be so hard!  We've already spent a ton of time gathering everything we need and we have a lot more to do.  And, at this point, I'm not even close to sure that they'll grant us one!  That would be terrible.  There are definitely some items further down on the list that I look forward to (making plans for our arrival, compiling recipes that will be easy to make in France, packing), but all the fun stuff is also the least urgent.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are the passport photos we used, plus a bunch of the outtakes (because they're amusing).  We took them ourselves because passport photos are a ripoff:

The one we chose.

Haha, this was what happened when we kept telling her to look right at the camera!  Taking passport photos of toddler and babies is pure comedy.

The one we chose.

That said, I'm so glad we found our apartment because it's so much more fun now that I know where our base for exploration will be!  Even though figuring out where the closest fromagerie (cheese shop), patisserie (pastry shop), boulangerie (bread shop), supermarche (supermarket), bibliotheque (library), parks, etc. are is way down on the list of urgency I haven't been able to stop myself.  It's too much fun!  And I have NOT been disappointed.  

Originally, we were looking for a 2 bedroom apartment.  We figured we probably wouldn't find anything in the city on our budget, so we were including the close suburbs in our search.  But, we couldn't go too far out because we won't have a car, so we need a place that is entirely walkable and close enough to Tom's school.  We still weren't finding anything in our budget, so we decided we could make a 1 bedroom work.  Secretly I was desperately hoping that we would miraculously find a place within city limits, but I wasn't getting my hopes up.  Then, somehow, we ended up finding a place that was not only within city limits, but right in the center of Paris in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the whole city!  What???  I'm thinking that since it's a fairly new landlord, she still doesn't realize she can charge more.  At any rate, I could not be more excited about our apartment!  Well, unless it was a two bedroom, I guess!  

Since this is a public blog, I won't post the address (though feel free to ask, if we're friends), but I will say that it is a block or so away from the Musee D'Orsay.  We are, therefore, walking distance from the Musee D'Orsay (my favorite museum), the Louvre, the Tuilleries, Tom's building (13 minutes!), Place de la Concorde, le Champs Elysee, le Notre Dame, our church building (we walk by the Notre Dame on the way to church - who does that?), Invalides, le Centre de Pompidou and more!  Plus, we have the French version of Walmart (Carrefour), Target (Monoprix), Smith's (Franprix) and an entire grocery store devoted just to frozen foods (Picard) all within walking distance.  To top it off, when I went to Paris 10 years ago my favorite favorite pastry shop was right by the Musee D'Orsay.  Now, it's on our street, just a few doors down.  Out of the entirety of Paris (+suburbs) we ended up on the same street as my favorite pastry shop!  So crazy!  

Here is a picture of the apartment:

We are on the 2nd (American) floor and when we first found it I was a little worried that the street noise would be really loud.  Then, I looked at the descriptions again and realized that our windows face the courtyard, not the street!  So, it will be fairly quiet and a nice pretty view!

I could go on and on about Paris, but the last thing I will say to give you an idea of how great the location of the apartment is, is that I've been looking for some good Paris themed books to read and the last one I read started with the author describing the view of the city from her hotel and a how her hotel used to be the meetingplace for all the famous writers, like Hemingway, Sartre, etc.  The spot she was describing was located about a block away from our place!  The book before that, the author was describing how he lives in the same building that a famous writer used to live in (can't remember which one) and whenever he'd walk out there'd be a group of tourists there being lectured on the history of the building.  That building was right across the street from Tom's building for school.  So, basically, we're going to be living in a book.