Back from France

Maman and I made it back from Papi and Mamie’s place in France where we stayed for 25 days… and everybody seems to have survived. 

Let me tell you though, I thought it was only in the USA that I was misunderstood, but it seems that in France I have the same problem. People just don’t seem to get me wherever I go. 

 

Take hugging for example. I certainly have a different technique than most: if you are sitting, I find a way to climb on you or most accurately, to jump on you. It’s incredible how people are sensitive and my hugging is met by shouts and screams as I bump in faces, torsos and stomachs. 

People then tend to want to put me down as I pull on every part of their body that I can reach, laughing hysterically while I am at it.

If you are standing, my preferred huggable part is legs. I hold super tight to one leg and in return I get a lot of shaking going on, like people want to get rid of me or something. I even tried this with my cousin who is over 6 feet tall.

My communication style is also totally misunderstood. People can’t seem to decipher my codes. If I am asked a direct question, I will often answer with some made up words like “gagagougou” or my preferred one at the moment “poop, poop, poop”. It’s a code people, it is supposed to be funny. Apparently even Maman is not getting that at all and always gets mad at me. Come on, I know I am not the only one doing that. The other day I laughed so hard reading that Calvin and Hobbes story where Calvin is asked to explain in his own words what gravity is and he answers: “Prot zan cot ra tzigo zo.” I wish I could meet that Calvin kid.

Another one of my attributes that results in a lot of misunderstanding is my throwing of a variety of objects. My intent here is to see people’s reflexes. Believe me, people are no better in France than they are in the USA. Bad, bad reflexes. Take throwing my stuffed animal at Papi while he is having his breakfast dunking his bread into his bowl of coffee. Did he catch it? No; bad reflexes that ended in my animal face first in a coffee bowl, Papi  and the kitchen floor all covered in coffee. And who gets in trouble? ME. Unbelievable. And that’s just one example of a throwing that went bad. 

Meeting a lot of new people has never been my forte but Maman seems to think that if I was not making a big deal out of it, it would go smoothly: just say a quick hi or wave to all and say hi, she would say to me in an attempt to prep me before any new encountering. That is definitely not my style though. I prefer to hide for a while and if you send kids to try to get me to come and meet the crowd, it could be a good technique but not when I find a hose behind the house we are at and I begin spraying whoever is attempting to get me to just come and have fun. That day I got 4 people soaking wet before somebody thought about turning the water off and thus stopping the fun I was having. 

 But what gets misunderstood the most by all I met is what I call opposite language. Sure I don't advertise that I function using opposite language but that's what I do. Let's say you tell me "Come here right now", you know that I obviously heard "Run away in the other direction". If you say "Stop that" I hear "Keep doing this annoying thing you are doing". And so forth. You get it right? So why is it so hard for others to understand that. 

And why was Maman constantly apologizing to people about my behavior during this trip when they are the ones that did not get me? Like you, it leaves me speechless. 

Maman says that luckily I also got to show signs that I can be quite normal (Pfff, whatever THAT means) and we had quite some fun together and with others too.

The weather was super fantastic for our entire stay and we went to the beach countless times, even enjoying the warmish water when it was high tide.

My favorite experience was acrobatics in trees where you get to walk from one tree to the other passing through a variety of obstacles or going down zip lines. Very much fun for me… I needed to keep encouraging Maman who was quite the scaredy cat on that one. 

We visited castles too and I could not get enough of going up and down those old towers and thinking it was a good thing I was not living at that place during night time… too scary for me this time.

We went on a boat to visit an island and walked from one end of the island to the other. 

We visited Le village Gaulois that was super fun and reminded me of the books of Asterix and Obelix: an amusement park with zero electronics but wooden toys and games using ingenious pulleys, gears and other mechanical systems. 

We went fishing with Papi too when the tide was super low and we got crabs, shrimp that we ate and little fish that we would end up putting back in the sea. 

 

We spend a lot of time with Maman’s friends and visited with a lot of family members too. We even had a private celtic music concert by Maman's cousins and their kids. Quite cool!

I had the most fun with my younger cousins as we got to spend nearly 4 days together. They were all older than me and would also wonder if I was always acting this wild, but we still had a good time together. 

So voilà, my trip in a nutshell, and there are some more pictures about it in the little videos we made. 

In the meantime, Papa was busy working his normal hours and working at home on remodeling my bathroom. Yep, he was barely done with the master bathroom when we left for France but still decided to bulldoze the other bathroom and use his time off from me to work nonstop… not that smart of a choice I am telling you because you need a lot of energy and patience when I am around.

But of course there is still a lot to do and more week-ends dedicated to remodeling are on the agenda.

I also just turned 6 and will tell you more about that in another post.

Enjoy the pics and the videos,

Noah

Les plages


Accrobranches


Châteaux et Village Gaulois


En Famille... chez Papi et Mamie


En Famille... Oncles, Tante, Cousins, Cousines
 

Summer... the start

I am out of school!
We have had false Summer start in April and in early June, but now it is taking its sweet time to make an appearance. It is supposed to be too hot in a few days but that will be a welcomed break from the rain we have had lately.
I was certainly counting the days until school would be out. The past 5 months have been rough both at school and at home and, based on Maman's exasperated look this morning, I can safely say that it is not going smoother on this first week of our extended vacation.
I try hard to break the parents down so they finally let me do what I want.  They are tough to break, let me tell you. But I am also relentless so it sure is a fun tug of war in this house.

Maman is a tad worried about next month. See, we are flying to France to be with Papi and Mamie for 3 weeks. And while I am super excited about it, she thinks that we might get thrown out of my grand-parents' house if I still insist on being the King there. Nonsense I say: grand-parents' role is to spoil their grand-kids right? So obviously, they will let me do a lot more than I am allowed to do here. ( Maman is rolling her eyes).

Yesterday I actually declared that I went from 100% difficult behavior down to 50%. Sure by the end of the evening, as I told Maman, I went up a notch, a mere 1% I said. She did not quite agree with that but seemed to like the hours where I was at 50%!  And most days, I have about 10% dedicated to be fairly pleasant and it certainly allows us to have some fun time.

In May we went to Bend for the yearly reunion of the Pole Pedal Paddle team. I had a great time and although the previous years I barely looked at him, this year I was glued to the hip to my cool friend Grant. Because you have to be cool to handle all my craziness! 

 I also got to row with the girls in front of the house we were staying at, during one of the few shower breaks. Quite fun!

 There was also a big party where I got to help our friend Paula celebrate her 50th birthday. The best was the spread of food and the easy access to anything I wanted. I probably had a few more desserts than I am usually allowed to have ( I know that Maman reads this otherwise I would have written "a tons more" instead of a "few more".)

 We ended the week-end with a hike for most and a bike ride for me. Beautiful area just on the outskirts of Bend.

 The early June sun had helped with the growth of our strawberry patch and by mid-June, after I finally stopped eating all the berries that were ripening every day, we were able to get our first big batch. One out of already 3. Papa thought he would have the strawberries all for himself in July while we would be gone in France, since it is when they usually were good to eat, but the weather decided in my favor!

 And then came the last week of school. Papa came with my friends and I to the end of the year field trip. It was a fun bike ride at Vancouver Lake. I was proud to ride with Papa but soon, the taller kids with their taller bikes were pedaling faster than I could with my short legs and Papa had to go with them.
I still got to have my picnic next to Papa and that was nice.  Notice the stash of cookies I found!

 My buddies and I got quite wet in the Lake but that was part of the fun. 3 of those 4 boys have nearly drawn their kindergarten teacher to take an early retirement this year  ( although she is still about 20 years away from retirement age!)... One of the four is trying to keep all the other ones sane... and it's not me :)

And finally, on June 20, it was the end of the year for students and with it came the end of the maternelle years at the school for me. Three years where I have built quite a reputation of being the cutest kid ever! Wait, what? That's not quite the reputation I have? How could it not be, look at those pictures!

 Maman asked me those two questions on the last day:
- What did you not like about Kindergarten: "Being sent to other teachers' classrooms."
- What did you really like about Kindergarten: "Recess and FREE time".
We are in for a long road of schooling years she said.

I'll give you more news from or about France in a few weeks. In the meantime, be nice to each others.

Spring Break 2013

There we go, it has been seven weeks so it must mean that I am on a break!

Let’s see, what has happened since February…  I am still very much a handful, well make it two while you are at it. The way I see it, is that it keeps the parents busy and up on their toes. 

Since rewards did not work, since removing privileges did not work, they decided to try a new approach with me. They read this book from Dr Jane Nelsen called Positive Discipline. No more rewards, no more removal of privileges? Really? I wonder how they are going to pull that one off.

It turns out that I am also in charge of making some decisions in the family and we end up meeting every Sunday morning to make those decisions. I decide on my own consequences and I am sometimes harder on myself than my parents would be.

Of course, like with any system, I am pushing on it hard, very hard. I still try to turn it to my advantage because, after all, I am King Noah.

Luckily, I am much more than that and hopefully, when I figure all this relationship thingy, there will be less power struggles…

In March, we had a great Summer day and Maman and I spent a leisurely day riding our bikes, having a picnic and enjoying a sun time on the side of the river Willamette.

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In April, it was Tina’s birthday and I worked super hard on making a project for her. I was really proud of what I did and Tina seemed to like it too!

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Then, it was finally time for a little break. En route to Seaside we went. End of April, at the Ocean, in Oregon? Not much chance for sun and warmth you think. That’s what we thought too, but this was the sunniest Spring break in a long time and it was warm enough to be in shorts and t-shirts at the Ocean.

On the menu for the 3 days: reading ( yes I still do that A LOT), 

eating, but mainly playing on the beach, getting wet in the salty water of the ocean, 

 finding sea anenomies, building sand castle, getting more wet in the water and playing games with Papa and Maman.   

The bonus was also the fact that the place we stayed at had an outdoor pool open year round and boy, that was fun! It was even warm outside on the last morning of our stay.

Pictures and videos will speak for themselves. ( There are some weird kinks in the movie but Maman has spent too much time on it already and does not feel like redoing it- sorry!)

On Thursday, it was take your kid to work so Papa took me to his work. 

 There were a lot of talks before hand to make sure that I would behave well. But, come on, this place is the heaven for physical sciences and I LOVE physical sciences.

There were a lot of kids there but we were about 20 in each group, moving from one lab to the other. Since you can come only when you are 6, at 5 ½ years old, I was one of the youngest and was surrounded by kids that were up to 10 years old.

I was super interested by all the things they showed us and as you will see in the video, parents and other kids in my group seemed to be quite impressed by what I knew. Most kids were quiet, but I sure was not, making surer to try to answer every question, raising my hand high.

“Do you guys know the name of a gas?”

“Carbon dioxide” said I, the first answer that got heads to turn to me and my small stature and high pitched voice.

“You guys know about acids, but do you know what the opposite of acids is?”

I gave a few seconds for others to interject but since nobody jumped in I said: “Bases”.

Parents looked at each other surprised and the other kids kept looking at me with a “who is this kid?” kind of look. Turns out that even Maman did not know the answer to that one.

At the electromagnetic lab, they were trying to help us learn about electricity and I was unstoppable on the subject. At some point the guy was showing wires and a battery and I raised my hand high to say: “If you hook those wires to the battery and make a circuit, it will wear out the battery pretty fast and make a short circuit. That made the parents chuckle this time because I was probably beginning to sound like a know it all.

Anyway, I had a good time there and it made the P’s wish that they could find a school that is just about Sciences because I clearly enjoy that stuff. 

Now we are back to old school time schedule. Although the weather still feels like Summer... which was great this week-end as I got to baby sit 2 of the chicks that hatched 3 weeks ago in my classroom. Lemon and Cookie, that's how I call them. Sure it was fun having them around but they did not seem too interested in going down the slide or playing soccer with me.

That's all for now. Seven more weeks and then Maman and I will get ready to leave for our trip to France. 

A bientôt!

The February break...

Yes, it has already been seven weeks since I last posted. Well, eight if you count this past week. It was a week to be home and have fun... and I mostly did!
See, it is hard to make the adults realize that the whole entire World should revolve around ME. My last inquiry unit in my kindergarten class was about the rights of children in their families. Yes, you read it: the rights. Sure there might have been something about responsibilities too, but I studied hard on the RIGHTS part.

Here is a list of the kind of rights I feel entitled to:
- Stomp my feet when somebody, mainly the Ps, are not giving into my demands.
- Raise my fist towards unwilling adults, ahem, mainly the Ps again.
- Scream and fake-cry if demands are not met... by Ps.
- Say NO, before even hearing what the Ps are asking me to do.
- Becoming deaf or hard of hearing when asked to do something.
- Pushing adults buttons to see how fast they can loose their cool ( just ask my teachers and Ps).

Aren't those reasonable rights? Somehow, I seem to be the only one thinking so because there are no adults in sight who seem willing to give in. I might actually file a complaint for loss of privileges. Can you believe that I sometimes go without dessert, that I have to sit my butt in the laundry room when I stomp my feet or raise my fists, that I only have 30 minutes ( timer on!) to brush teeth- put pajamas on and get ready to listen to my story ( and I have had no time left for stories many times). But worst of all is the loss of tablet privilege... no Angry Birds, no Apparatus, no Bad Piggies, no Phineas and Ferb. I am telling you, it's the worst punishment of all.

When I am left to be, my bestest, favoritest pass-time is, and remains, reading. I have always spent hours with books but now that I read fluently in both languages I read, read and read again. I love comics in the newspaper for breakfast, love comic books all day long ( I am into Spirou and Fantasio right now) , love documentaries type of books and I am even beginning to learn things in my sciences books that Maman does not even know about. She even had to check if I was right about a science fact the other day. Pff.

Here is a little photo show of what we did this week. Outdoor and indoor.
And the video is of our fun filled day trying to come up with Rube-Goldberg-like chain reaction systems. Pretty cool and requiring a LOT of patience.

Tuesday- 8.5 miles bike ride from Oaks Park to OMSI

 Wednesday- Making a cool castle with my magna-tiles

 Wednesday- Listening to my radio in my fort.

 Friday- Portland Children's Museum- Always fun-

 Thursday- Rube Goldberg's contraptions day... you have to watch the video!