Lost Time (or, mid-year update a little late)

We're now past the midway point in our year abroad. Our sense of time has been fittingly warped. The first six months have whipped by in a blink, and yet it feels like ages since we inhabited our real home. I have to concentrate to remember all the belongings left behind.

[Sidebar: this touches on our continuing debate over what we really need to live, what superfluous objects we can purge upon our return. What didn't fall victim to my pregnant nesting instinct last summer may well get tossed out next winter. We are on a mission to simplify! (save the shoes and handbags, of course.)]

The boys, sadly, are not impervious to time. A tee-shirt we bought for Sam in Thailand in February now fits better on Finn. Sam's legs seem so long to me. He scrambles up jungle gyms that were too intimidating in the early spring, and he's started climbing in and out of his crib. His face just looks different, more like a little boy and less like a baby.

His speech advanced rapidly in the spring but now seems to be stalling as he becomes more immersed in French. He's picked up a few expressions, such as ça va pas (that's no good), ça suffit (that's enough, used mostly when Finn is crying), and faux pas (stated when he has both index fingers up his nose). Sometimes when I have no idea what he's saying, I assume it's something he learned at daycare.

This was his last week at the halte-garderie before it closes for summer vacation. In the fall, at la rentrée, he will start nursery school. While I have no doubt he will benefit from the new environment, I was a little sad for him to say good-bye to the teachers to whom he has become so attached over the last months.

.....

I wrote the above over a month ago but never got around to posting it. Summer got in the way, with a long weekend in Toulouse, lots of outings and picnics, Finn's birthday, and potty training. In a few days we leave for Collioure, a small beach town near the Spanish border, and when we come back it will be September--just four months left.