Parents' Day

Feb. 2 was parents' day at Betsy's school, a day when the normal Saturday attendance (about 5 or 6 out of a class of 27) ballooned as proud five-year-olds came with their parents to show off their year's work so far. Betsy had a wonderful time showing Dave and Cricket several notebooks' worth of work, as in the first picture. The Saturday attendance issue is actually kind of amusing; perhaps we'll write a post about it one of these days.

In the second picture, Betsy and her buddy Susanne (and Susanne's father) are chatting with Julie, which really is how the littles refer to their teacher. Betsy LOVES Julie and can be counted on to fashion some piece of trash (scrap of wrapping paper, milk-bottle lid, used sticker) into a heartfelt gift for her two, three times a week. Julie, for her part, seems to be a genius in dealing with the inhabitants of the Grande Section, graciously accepting the gifts but slyly never displaying them. She is clearly quite young and seemed very nervous about having a non-French-speaker at the beginning of the year, which is quite funny in hindsight because both she and Betsy have mastered this situation beautifully.

At some point, Betsy and Susanne noticed that the date / weather / attendance at the front of the room had not been changed, so they took on the task with gusto, even re-securing some of the signs that were getting a bit loose. Betsy is not fluent in French by any stretch of the imagination, but she is completely fluent when it comes to situations like jabbering with Susanne.

Playtime with friends is totally easy for both Molly and Betsy now, just shy of the halfway mark of our sabbatical year. Between the girls' abilities and our own improvements, we now feel competent enough to have only one of us supervise long playdates chez nous. We still have more than our fair share of crossed signals regarding dropoffs and pickups, though. Just ask Armelle!