Riding the Metro

Letting everyone know "Here comes our train!"

"That my track!"

So, if you don't have a car here in Paris you have to ride the metro. The train system here is good and pretty much takes you where ever you need to go. Carson LOVES riding the metro. Whenever we get ready to leave the house he asks "ride train?". It's a workout to get where we need to go. Especially with a 2 and 1/2 year old. We have to walk to the station, down a few flights of step, through the turnstiles and onto the platform to wait for the train. When we get to the tracks Carson is always on the lookout. If a train pulls up to the other side of the platform he informs everyone (loudly) "No, that's not our train." When our train does come into site he screams "Here it comes! That's our train!"When riding the metro here in France there are a few unspoken rules. Children should be seen and not heard. Children should not move from place to place on the train. Adults do not look at or acknowledge one another. Nobody should make small talk. With those rules in mind, riding the metro can be painful. Carson is so excited and loud when on the train. He disregards all of the unspoken French rules. At each stop he yells "this not our stop!" or "We here!" I do mean at EVERY STOP! When a new passenger gets on the train he points and says with surprise "he/she rides the train too!" Then he points and waves at them till they either get off or a new passenger gets his attention. When he's sitting in his seat he loves to turn around and pet the passenger's hair that is sitting behind him. The thing that seems to irritate the French most about Carson is his loud constant talking. If any of you have met or spent any time with Carson you know that he talks non-stop! He touches everything and never stops talking. He's also a wiggle worm and can't sit still. All these thing combined can make train rides painful. In the beginning I dreaded taking him on the train, but over the past few months I've learned to ignore the looks and not let it bother me. I can't make him sit 100% still. I can't keep him from talking. I can't keep him from being himself! I think he's funny and I love that he gets so much joy out of riding on the train.
Funny story that happened to us yesterday at one of the train stations. As I have mentioned before public urination is a common occurrence, especially in the train stations. Knowing this, some of the stations smell like a toilet. I'm not looking forward to the summer months when they smell like a hot toilet! The station we were in yesterday smelled very bad. As we were walking in the crowd to get to the next train Carson was yelling "Mommy Stinky in here!" Then he was holding his nose and saying "Shooo Weee!" "It stinky Daddy!" Ryan and I were smiling, but trying to ignore him.... Didn't work because he was now screaming "Yuck! It stinkies! YUCK!!!" He got some attention and a few looks, but he was right it was stinky and I did think it was yuck! We think he's pretty cute and funny, too bad the French do not!

One Crazy Night!

So we had an interesting night on Friday night. We put Carson to bed around 8:30pm. Both of the bedrooms in our apartment and the storage closet are on the second floor and the living space and kitchen are on the first. About 8:45pm I heard a large crash and stumbling around in our storage closet. The closet has two doors, one leads from the outside into the storage closet and the other leads from the storage closet to our apartment next to our bedrooms. I called Ryan to come upstairs to see if he heard the noise too. We stood by the door and listened to someone in the room banging around, falling down and dragging things around! Someone was robbing us!!! Ryan banged on the door and said "Hello?". We heard more stumbling around then then what sounded like someone falling against our apartment door. Then we heard the outside door shut and quiet. The door from our apartment to the storage closet has a lock on it (thank God!) so Ryan unlocked it and opened it armed with a butcher knife! The door to the outside had been shut and locked back and all of our suitcases and a bag were gone. We also noticed that the air conditioner that we had bought from some other Cerner expats who just moved back to K.C., was moved closer to the door. Ryan and I had no idea what to do in a situation like this? We didn't know how to get in touch with the French police by phone. We don't speak French, so how would we even tell them what happened. We remembered that we had just met our downstairs neighbor and he speaks English, so Ryan went down to tell him what happened and to see if he could give us some help with information and translation. Max (that is our neighbors name) came up to check out the scene. Max and Ryan noticed that they could see our suitcases through the window on the there side of the door that leads to the outside. They went out and brought the cases in. We all talked about what we thought had happened. We figured it was someone in the building, that had a key to that door because they obviously had gotten in with a key. We thought they were after the air conditioner and that's why they took the suitcases out and set them to the side so they could get out with the air conditioner. We also decided that the person was not very smart or was very drunk because they were not quiet at all and were falling all over the place! Definitely not a cat burglar. Max told us that our next door neighbor one building over (our walls connect) is known to be a drunk and his outside storage area door is right next to ours. We knew there was something odd about him because he blares his music at all hours of the night and we here lots of crashes and slams through the wall. So looking back on all the facts and happenings. Ryan and I were 95% sure it was our loud drunk neighbor next door. Max told us he would go with us to the guardian (she's like the super of our building) to tell her what had happened and see what we needed to do. We thanked him and Ryan and I opened a bottle of wine to calm our nerves and hopefully make sleeping a little easier. It did..... : )
The next day Max came up to our apartment to tell us he had done some investigating. He had actually gone to the drunk neighbors apartment to talk to him about something else. He said he wanted to kind of feel him out for information. The drunk neighbor brought up the incident from the night before about the "stupid new neighbors who have all their junk in my space!" and how he was mad about it and that he went in there last night to take everything out! He told Max that he owns that space and has a key and will throw all of our junk away if we don't get it out! That news came as a surprise to us, because we were told when we rented the apartment that we owned the space and could use it for storage......which we were doing! We are still unclear on who actually owns the space since it looks like we both own a key to the room. We are going to get in touch with our landlord to find out the real scoop on the room rights. I'm still wondering why the drunk neighbor never came to our door to explain the situation and come to a resolution. Instead he waited till he was lit up and came over unannounced to take take care of business on his own! Ryan and I feel much better knowing that it wasn't a burglary, but a drunk neighbor and some miss information! I'm amazed at his behavior but I guess I shouldn't expect too much out of a drunk..... Oh how I love apartment living!

The first picture is the view from outside of our storage closet door. The door with the lock on it is the closet and the other two are our bedrooms. Carson was sleeping in the far room when it all went down!!! The next picture is the inside of the closet and the door that our neighbor has a key to. He doesn't have a key to our apartment door and we don't have a key to the outside. So we both own a key. Time will tell who really owns the space!

New Year's Eve

New Years Eve was quiet for us this year. We had big plans, but they didn't develop. Our first plan was to go out for dinner and then head down to the Eiffel Tower to watch a fireworks display we had heard about. On further investigation we found out the display would start at Midnight and we thought that would be too late for Carson (and too cold). So since we can see the Eiffel Tower from our balcony we decided to just go out to dinner and head home to put Carson to bed, hang out, watch the fireworks from our apartment and toast the New Year! We headed out to the restaurant that we knew accepted children. An unspoken rule in Paris is that if a restaurant has a children's menu than children are welcomed. If they do not, then be prepared to get lots a dirty looks, sighs and nonexistent service to prove the point that children are not welcomed in their establishment! So, we headed out for Bistro Romain to enjoy a nice dinner. When we got there we found that the restaurant had been rented out, so there went our plan. We looked around for another place to eat, but all the line were either super long to get in or you had to have a reservation. We ended up on the Champs Elysee to take one last look for a place to eat but we were all losing patience. The Champs was soooo crowded and all the shops were getting ready to close and brace themselves for the New Years party. Lots of stores were dropping down metal fencing or putting up plexiglass reinforcements over there windows to protect from the party that was about to begin. It looked like it was about to get wild! We decided to grab a sandwich on the street and head home. After eating and putting Carson to bed Ryan and I enjoyed a quiet evening at home. At the stroke of midnight we heard the fireworks start. I was disappointed and glad we didn't make the trip to the tower for a closer look. The fireworks were over before they started! The city became crazy at midnight. We watched as our across the street neighbors dropped what looked like all of their trash (bottles, cans and boxes) onto the cars parked below. Hooting and hollering with every crash. It also sounded like this was happening on all the streets around us. Lots a loud crashes, car alarms and roars of cheers! To top it off every car in Paris was honking their horn and people were screaming at the tops of their lungs! It was loud and wild and unlike anything I've ever witnessed before. Pretty interesting start to 2009! Let's see what Paris has in store for us this year!

A view of the Eiffle Tower from our apartment!

"No Pee Pee on Melmo!"

The Throne.....

and the Man!

So, last week we woke up and I decided that since it was so cold outside and we really couldn't go anywhere that I was going to potty train Carson. He's been interested and peeing on the potty every so often, but this would be the first day of wearing his new Elmo underwear. I explained to him about how he was too big for a diaper and since he sleeps in a big boy bed he needed to wear big boy Elmo underwear, but if he wore Elmo he couldn't get Elmo wet because it would make him sad. Also if he peed in the potty I would give him 2 jelly beans (one for each hand). Carson was excited! So we slipped on the undies and started the experiment. For the first 2 hours he stayed dry but didn't do any peeing on the potty. He sat on his potty lots of times, but nothing happened. Every time he sat on the potty he would look at me very seriously and say "No pee pee in Melmo Mommy!" Being our first day trying this I knew an accident was going to happen, and then it did.....the title wave! I heard Carson yell "OH NO MY MELMO'S!!!" There he was standing in a big puddle. We cleaned him up and slipped on a new dry pair. We talked about where we go potty and how he needs to tell me when he has to go and reminded him about the candy bribe. He said "Mommy, no pee pee in Melmo and no pee pee on the floor" (it's really hard for me to be serious with him because he's so cute and funny standing in his tiny Elmo undies). The one accident and the promise of candy seemed to have done the trick because from then on he told me when he needed to go potty and he did. He's only had 2 minor accidents (he will start and then stop himself and finish on the potty) but no more puddles on the floor. I'm in amazement that he's doing so well so far. Keep your fingers crossed that my boy will be fully potty trained soon!!!
Now, on the flip side.....the pooping (Carson calls it stinkies) is not going so well. He's not too sure about going stinky in the potty. He usually will wait till I put a diaper on him for nap to go, or he waits for me to be busy and Ryan to be in charge. Poor Ryan has had to clean up more stinky accidents than I have. Yesterday in the commotion of the clean up, the poop fell onto the floor and Carson stepped into it...... It was pretty comical to watch the two of them. Carson: "Oh no, my stepped in the sticky!" Ryan: "OH God, JEN I could use your help!" "Buddy don't move.....I said don't move! Oh, you got it on the floor! JEN....."I'll keep everyone updated on how potty training a child in Paris is going. Remember that there are not lots of public restrooms at our disposal. I'm nervous to take him out and about in his Elmo's. Maybe I will do like the French do and have him pee on the streets! When in Rome...... (or Paris)

Model Shots!