Family photo

In September, Lucie's grandparents were all together for a dinner.

The many uses of a hallway (aka: who needs toys?)

Lucie's grandparents came over for lunch last weekend. Lucie and her grand-pere had a great time playing with the diaper box. Who says a long hallway isn't useful?

A few pictures

Lucie was a bit sick last weekend, and she stayed up all night. The next day, Michele got a great snuggle.
Lucie loves to read all kinds of books while wearing her super shaggy indoor jacket (courtesy of one of her grandmother's friends, Christiana).


But of course, nothing quite beats shuffling along in your gigoteuse, which is the French word for sleep sack, and literaly means "the wiggler".

The Lucie and Julie Show

Julie is the little girl that Lucie shares her nanny with. In this video, you can see Julie, who is just starting to walk, pushing Lucie around in the blue hippo push toy. In general, they have a great time together.

the aquarium

Since she really enjoyed the zoo, we took Lucie to the aquarium at the Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie, a great a science and technology expo center (if unfortunately named in semi-communist manner) mostly aimed at kids. Lucie definitely liked the fish.

Lucie running all over a great big map of France (even if France is a small country, you can still make a big map of it, the better to fool the Germans...). Lucie is playing with Adele, who is the daughter of Greg's running partner.

A day in Paris

On November 11th, France celebrates the end of WWI, and everybody takes a day off. We decided to trek across Paris for a noontime visit to the world's oldest zoo, which happens to be at the Jardin des Plantes. Just getting there was exhausting...
Once she woke up, Lucie wanted to walk and step in the puddles.
She asked whether we could take Gatsby's friend home.
She really dug the turtle tank.
and understandably so...
At the zoo, we met cousins Isabelle, Thierry, and their daughter Fanny.
All the women very intently observing a baby monkey on the other side of the glass.
at the end of the day, we all headed home on the metro.
Lucie's an old hand at public transit: her carbon footprint is tiny.
When we all got home, Lucie played in the new bookshelf that we bought. The completed version has doors, the better to prevent our daughter from taking all of our books off of the shelves...

The pasta monster

Lucie likes to eat pasta with tomato sauce. Fusilli are easy to grab, and they contain enough pasta in their coils to guarantee a mess of Roman proportions.

Here are some of Lucie's special instructions for other 1 year olds who might be new to this.

Use both hands, it's more efficient, and you can build little pasta castles in your plate.
Focus... with mouth open, preferably.
Insert pasta into mouth. Dispense with fork and knife, don't worry about getting some tomato sauce in your eyes, into your nose, or in your hair: it's only a small price to pay for the delicious taste of self-eaten fusilli al pomodoro.

Once in a while, one of those wily bitses of pasta will escape its ordained fate and make a break for the door.
Thankfully, most don't.

In the meantime, your father might be frantically looking for alternative recipes with stainless sauce options, so be sure to tell him how good dinner was.

A message to my fans, part deux

Thank you.

Crisis averted.

Kisses,
Lucie

A message to my fans

This is what will happen if you don't vote for Obama on Nov 4th:

Now that you've been warned, please be sure to measure the consequences of your actions...
Thank you.
Lucie.

Trick-or-Treat

For Halloween, Michele made (hand-made, that is) a costume for Lucie. Personally, I am very excited that she's learned to sew, which means I no longer have to duke it out with my ripped out shirt buttons...

My guess is that Lucie was the cutest baby at the anglophone parents' Halloween party.
Later in the week, we all headed out to the park on a dreary Paris fall day. Lucie had had enough kisses already.
She got to wear a great hat that aunt Morgane brought back for her from NYC for her birthday.
As usual, she had a blast at the park

She got to go on the swing.

and she's learned how to climb up the stairs to the slide...