Swim Meet

Noah joined the swim team in January after he completed his last round of lessons, so this was his first swim meet. He got a swim team towel along with his medal, because he had the distinction of being the team's youngest swimmer this time around.

Even with different-colored goggles, they are kind of hard to tell apart at the pool. Maybe we need to find more distinctive swim caps.

What do tornadoes look like at night?

Have you ever wondered what becomes of a tornado once it's all spun out? Wonder no longer:

 

Gymnastics and Montataire

Benjamin had a gymnastics competition in the town of Montataire. He did a great job, and his coach was happy with his performance. We love watching all the progress he's made!


In between his part of the competition and the awards, we had time for a walk around town. We saw the Jubilee Fountain, the church, and the cemetery.

Is this what they call a fixer-upper in France?

And we were treated to this lovely moon on the way home.

Vocabulary Lessons

The boys are great at inventing words... here are three of my latest favorites:

Homme à bulle :

[literally, bubble man] Benjamin's pronunciation of "somnambule," a sleepwalker. When he figured out we were laughing at his pronunciation, he corrected it to "homme à boule" [literally, ball man]

Eparpouillé :

From the verb "éparpiller", "to scatter", comes Noah's latest favorite, which seems to mean the same as the original, but it can apply to "scattered" behavior as well.

Contagionner :

[the act of being contagious] Like when Benjamin tells Noah, "Ne me touche pas, tu vas me contagionner !" [Don't touch me, you will contagious me!]

Six Year Old Whirlwind!

Congratulations to us, we have survived six years!!

Noah insisted on making his own birthday cake this year.

In true Noah fashion, he decided to "invent" his own recipe for it. It was a chocolate cinnamon cake, which he gave the working title of "Rafistolage" (sort of like "patching up").

His final name for it is "Gateau Cinnamonté". (Cinnamon is really "cannelle" in French, but isn't "cinnamonté" much cuter than "cannellé"?)

Those hieroglyphics on the right hand side spell out Noah. When you're just learning cursive, and just learning to decorate cakes, combining the two might be a bit of a lofty goal.

We had our friends over for cake and ice cream with us, and Noah was thrilled with his presents, particularly the tractor and the construction machine.



Frédéric, Benjamin, and Noah also went out to see the Lego movie earlier this week as part of Noah's birthday celebration.

February Vacation

Since the boys went skiing over Christmas, there was no traveling during February vacation this year.

Instead, Noah baked another original creation...

Benjamin and Frédéric built a model airplane ....

 

Noah lost his first tooth, so got a visit from the little mouse / Tooth Fairy / Mommy (depending on who you ask)....

And Noah stole my camera one morning and took his first selfie. (When I was his age, that word hadn't even been invented yet.)