Archive for April, 2009

Bonjour from Paris!

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but we’ve been busy these last 11 days.

The weather has been near perfect most of our trip, the place is MUCH cleaner and friendlier that I remember, the food is absolutely amazing, bringing the nanny along with the BEST idea ever, and the wine – oh the wine -- I’m now completely addicted to 2005 Bordeaux’s.

Oh and I’ve mastered the entire French language: I speak English in a heavy French accent while occasionally throwing in a French word or two – when English speakers ask me for directions.

Anyhow, here’s a small sampling of what we’ve been up to:

Jardin du Luxembourg (guess what happens when you walk on the grass? They shoot you)
Chateau de Versailles (It's HUGE. No wonder why they hung him. Note to self when I become king - don't flaunt the money, hide it in a big hole instead)
Sacré Coeur de Montmartre (used my heavy French accent many times here)
Notre Dame (no Football team here or Irish people boxing)Picnic on Seine/Bike ride in Giverny (wine, cheese, and... chips)
Claude Monet's garden at Giverny (he actually planted the place himself... and dug the pond with an old spoon)
Musée d'Orsay (This was once an old train station...and roller skating disco for 3 months in 1979)
Musée de l'Orangeries (Monet's waterlillies on the wall and no they don't sell Oranges)
Musée des Egouts (aka "sewer tour" – our nanny and my daughter wanted to go. It stunk really, really, really bad down there. I still threaten to send my daughter down there when she isn't behaving)
Moulin Rouge (Magicians, jugglers, live snakes & ponies, and topless women)"The" Louvre (how do you keep a 3-year old entertained for 5 hours in the largest museum in the world...?)
Disneyland Paris (...you bribe her with a trip here. I'm convinced that's why they built it)
France Miniature (see all of France in 3 hours... built out of Lego's and cheese)

More to come later... à plus tard!

Posted in Family Vacation, Kids, Paris | Comments Off

My Son Picked Up Inappropriate Words From Daycare

Saturday, April 18th, 2009


Tonight I am totally shocked and scared.

My son has said a few words that just freaked me out.

And these words were not “shit” and “fuck” — those would have been nice!!!

What he said was “I’ll cut you in half” and “I’ll kill you” during his “no-nap, long-day-running-around meltdown” from 7:30-8pm tonight. And he was saying that directly at his sister since he wanted Mommy to put him to bed. My wife heard him say that an immediately asked him where he heard such words. His response, “[name removed] from Pre-K2 at school.”

Great!!!

Well the unnamed child is the same one that less than a year ago was talking about guns and stuff — and he was only 3 years old then!  This is going to be A PROBLEM! And one that I am addressing with my child’s daycare immediately via email to the Director as well as on Monday morning with a phone call or face to face. Something like this needs to be addressed immediately by the school and a resolution to the issue by removal of the problem student and any siblings.  Harsh? No, not at all…it’s a private daycare, one where I’m paying $1200 for both kids to attend. This situation calls for an immediate and appropriate response from the school’s director. If not, then I’ll have to go to the corporate office for satisfactory resolution….which in my mind is the immediate removal of the problem child.

Not only were these words just awful to hear…I also find out that the same child is making all of the boys in the pre-K room speak like robots or people with traceotomy tubes. Ok that isn’t anywhere near as bad as cutting someone in half, but still it’s an annoyance I, and my son, don’t need. My wife learned about the annoying voices while at soccer practice today. There is a child in the earlier soccer class, and that goes to my son’s same daycare,  that came up and said hi to my son in that weird voice. My wife looked and said to the other child’s mom, “Your son does that too!??” And the mom said, “YES! It’s annoying and he’s learned it from another boy in his daycare class”…ends up being the same child that is alleged to have said the bad words and phrases.

Anyway…Over the past two weeks my wife and I noticed that our son just didn’t seem himself at daycare/school. I even emailed his teacher directly to ask her if everything was ok. She replied and said everything seemed to be ok and that my son was playing with all of his friends like normal.  For all of you…my son is very affectionate, caring and considerate and while talking with my wife before writing this post we think our son was acting the way he was because of things going on at school. He knows not to say bad words and stuff and if he was hearing those things he might have felt out of place and unsure of what to do.

My wife finally got my son to calm down and like I said, he told us where and from whom he heard “cut you in half” (just say that like 3x to yourself and think about those words coming from your child’s mouth) it’s sickening. He’s never said anything bad like that.

Do any of you [other parents] reading this have any advice for me? Do you have children in daycare and pre-k that are learning inappropriate phrases or behaviors? I’m not sure what to do?!?  Any thoughts?

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Posted in Bad Words, Behavior, Child, Daycare, General | Comments Off

How to Survive Long Trips With a Preschooler Without Going Crazy

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

What does your kid do at 6AM? Mine has been walking into my room and yelling “ARE WE GOING TO PARIS TODAY!?”

And then when I say not today, she lets out a big sigh and then asks when is the Easter Bunny coming back because she’s out of candy.

Her excitement is contagious, but I worry about one thing: the 12-hour plane ride.

(Why did they have to build that Paris so far away…)

Our previous long airplane ride of 13 hours when my daughter was nearly 2 didn’t go well at all. We made the unintelligent decision of giving her Benadryl on that flight which had exactly the opposite effect we wanted. It made her irritable, extremely cranky, and borderline hyper for about 4 hours.
When we later told our pediatrician about the strange outcome of the miracle drug, we found out that giving a child Benadryl to make them sleep is a myth completely made up by people that don’t have kids but love giving out parenting advice because they watch a lot of TV and have cats.

Well, not really. I made the cat’s thing up. But wouldn’t be surprised if they did own them.

Some tips I’ve gathered so far on flying with kids:
  1. If they understand what money is, bribing works.
  2. Take new toys that they haven’t seen before. But make sure the toys don’t talk or make noise – especially if they have Dora or her live-in boyfriend San Diego.
  3. Bring a portable DVD player, or even better an iPhone with lots of movies and preschool apps.
  4. Take a redeye flight. But don’t tell them that it’s a redeye flight because they might think zombies are on the plane.
  5. Bring plenty of snacks, and use Souplantation packaging whenever possible.
  6. Create an Art kit – tape, crayons, stickers and activity books – all with Princesses feeding unicorns near a Christmas tree on them.
  7. Convince why cats are evil and why people should never own one. 12-hours should be more than enough time to have some affect.
  8. Talk about how great it is that there’s a KFC in Paris and that’s only a few blocks away from where we’re staying! (I swear I didn’t plan that- it just magically happened that way.)
  9. Introduce “Where’s Waldo” books on the plane. Make up other stuff to find that isn’t there.
  10. Bring a Nintendo DSi – not for her, but to keep me occupied.

So tell me -- what tricks do you do when taking your kids on long trips?

Posted in Advice, Paris, Tips, Traveling with Kids | Comments Off

How to Celebrate a 10-Year Wedding Anniversary Without a Coupon

Saturday, April 4th, 2009

It’s hard to believe that it was 10 years ago today that the wife and I were married on a perfect spring day, among friends and family, on the cliffs of Palos Verdes overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

I still remember just about every detail of that day right down to the feeling of seeing my wife-to-be walking down the aisle, to the decadent taste of the crushed chocolate peanut butter cup cake.
It all still seems like it was only yesterday, or maybe just a few years ago.

And how do you think we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary day? Maybe a candlelit dinner comes to mind? Or perhaps a Depeche Mode concert with a special intermission shout-out by Martin Gore yelling out “Happy Anniversary to ma’ mates!” pointing to us in the front row. Or maybe just a simple private jet ride to Catalina Island for an intimate dinner and a private movie screening of “Rambo” on the beach and then later parachuting back home softly tapping wine glasses while we float back down to earth landing on a freshly manicured lawn, near a bucket of KFC chicken.

If you guessed any of those you’d be wrong.

I had a tough day at work, as it was my boss’s last day with the company. My daughter picked up the pace of asking for an (evil) cat. My wife was sick and has 3 papers due next week (closer to that MBA.) So what do we do? We went to Souplantation -- my daughter’s favorite restaurant in the entire universe.
When I told the cashier it was our 10-year wedding anniversary she gave me a 15% discount. She said the AAA discount doesn’t work anymore, but she can still give it to friends and family (thank you Geneveva.)
On the upside, in addition to the discount, things weren’t all that bad. Souplantation wasn’t nearly as crazy as it usually is on a Friday night - no screaming babies, no kids running too fast through the buffet area, and no clam chowder with all of the clams fished out. And it’s ‘lemon month’ so the summer lemon salad and lemon cream pasta were both nothing to complain about.
In fact, if you replace Geneveva with Martin Gore, you can almost say it was like Martin gave me a 15% discount!

Or maybe not…

Oh well, it's my birthday Monday and I’m planning on paying a visit to KFC (my once every 6 weeks indulgence!) Oh yeah, and this will be our apartment’s view 2 weeks from today...

ce poulet est merveilleux!

Posted in Celebrate, France, Paris, Wedding Anniversary | Comments Off