Happy Holidays! (Long Version)

For those of you with more patience for our Josie imagery (and if you weren't you probably wouldn't be here)... Happy Holidays with the longer version of our Holiday film!

Settling in

Well, we're almost a month into our Paris experience, and everyone seems to be settling in well. Our air shipment arrived - clothes, boom bucket, toys...so we finally have more than 3 outfits... but a sinking feeling about how all our stuff will fit into an apartment with three small closets. Luckily we both have lots of practice at apartment-living and space-making. We're anxious for our sea shipment to arrive so the place will really start to look like home.

We continue to enjoy the perks of our fabulous neighborhood -- the thrice-weekly organic farmers' market two blocks down our street, the beautiful Luxembourg gardens, the gorgeous views from Rue de Seine. Josie and I have fairly busy weeks - we've been on a couple of play dates and play groups with Anglophone moms in our area, and I finally started French lessons this week! They've alternated between wildly discouraging and mildly painful... but I feel like I'm at least engaging and making a real effort to learn the language.

While I'm gone we have a wonderful Swedish babysitter, Josefin, watching Josie. While no one will ever replace either Gertie or Gram, Josefin is warm and fun and Josie is always excited when she arrives which is a good sign. They get along fabulously. We also have a very nice American girl named Nicole as a standing Saturday night babysitter - last weekend we got out to a sushi dinner AND a movie (the new Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was fabulous).

We had a nice if slightly lonely Thanksgiving, with a chicken instead of turkey but all the trimmings including Jeff's fave Sweet potato and marshmallow dish and cranberries! Thanks to technology we got to spend parts of the day with both our families. Also thanks to technology and Jeff's savvy, our new TV and Jeff's laptop, we've been able to keep up with most of our favorite TV shows! We've got lots of fun plans for the next month, including a Chanukah party at the Anglo-French reform Synagogue here, our traditional dinner-and-store-windows for my birthday... it should be a fun holiday season.

Sadly Josie has been sick for the past week and a half with a playgroup-aquired cold, and I seem to have caught it as well. So cross your fingers I get past that soon!! Love to all (and new photos and movies!) Au revoir!

Josie's new tricks: