Ella's Big Girl Room

I've been busy this week trying to finish up Ella's new Big Girl Room. Obviously, the bed and the desk are the big changes but once they were in place, I realized that are are lots of little things that need tweaking to make the new room work. Of course, the girls already LOVE it- Ella spends hours sitting at her desk drawing and even Georgia has decided that she prefers playing in there to anywhere else in the house.

The things that I would still like to do are find a new chair that is a bit curvy and reuphulster it with the green fabric that I used on the window seat. I also need to paint the little set of drawers on the desk and do something with the cork frame before hanging it. In these pictures, you can't really see that the bit of wall at the end of Ella's bed is a blank space. Before I had a set of 9 framed Chinese flower prints (the crib bedding was an Asian flower design which I really liked and used as the theme in her nursery) hanging there. I am thinking that instead of hanging them back up, I would like to get a giant wall decal of a tree with birds, something like this. I have seen a few that I like and I think that they are adorable.

I love the raspberry linen duvet from Caravane. It cost a fortune but it is so soft and cuddly and the color! I knew that it would match the red in the green flower print on the window seat pillows. The big pillow that used to be in the rocker doesn't really work on the bed but I can't get rid of it! That print is what pulls everything together. i think that I might end up taking it apart and sewing some smaller throw pillows for the bed. Like I said, this is still a work in progress so I am still waiting for inspiration to strike.

On Ella's desk I got rid of the giant flower pot that I used to collect all her markers and crayons and scissors and bits and pieces and instead sorted them in three tea containers covered in origami paper that I found at Palace des Thes. I think that they are adorable and actually its been working great for keeping things organized. Rather than having to empty that giant pot to find something, ella just takes one of the containers at a time- markers or crayons or colored pencils.


The big vase of peonies looks so perfect sitting there that I wish I could have them all year round. I LOVE peonies. At my grandfather's hotel, there was an old, abandoned garden under some pine trees that no one took care of. The only thing that still grew was an old peony plant. Every spring, for a few weeks, it would be covered in giant white blossoms that smelled so strongly that I knew that plant was in blossom the moment I opened the car door. I used to fill the house with vases of those flowers- no one else seemed to notice them much at all, which I could never understand. I waited all year for those flowers. I have spent years trying to convince my mother to plant some in her garden and she refuses. She thinks that the plants are messy, since they end up all flopped over when the blooms get too heavy. I dream of the day when I have an actual yard of my own that I can fill with peonies. Until then, I guess I'll have to make do with bouquets like this one.


Like I said, Georgia has decided that she would rather play in this room than her own, which is such a bother because that means making an inspection every morning to make sure that the room has been baby-proofed. But the real issue is why won't Georgia play in her own room? Personally, I think it is because of the orange colored walls. Its a perfectly nice color and it feels so warm in there in the wintertime especially, but it just doesn't work for a child's room. I put my foot down the other day and said to B that the wallpaper has got to go. He can choose whether he wants to replace it with another wallpaper or with paint but the decision to change the color has been made. Of course he refused to answer, as he thinks that it is a stupid project and he doesn't want to change anything. I don't care anymore. I like it best when we agree but in this case, I've made a real effort to make it work and it doesn't. Now it has to go; the only thing is, I'm not sure I am quite capable of doing it all on my own and if he gets stubborn about this, I won't have any choice. Yikes. Do I dare?

Irritations- in bullet points

* you know what is bad for a diet? Birthdays.

* I've finally convinced B that now is a good time to replace Ella's junior bed with a grown-up bed, but it turns out that finding a lit gigogne is going to be a bit of a pain. The big department stores don't have anything great and on the internet, I'm finding nice stuff but all the shops are on the other side of Paris, miles and miles apart. I was 'supposed' to go and look at things this morning. Honestly, I can't be bothered.

* I need to get my haircut, but I don't want to make another appointment at David Mallet after my last visit cost so much. Also, as my hair has grown out, I've realized that the girl who cut my hair just gave me the same haircut as her own. Except we look NOTHING alike. So she looks super cute and I look like an Afghan Hound. Torturous decision- do I give her a second chance (since she was also trying to repair a really horrible cut) or do I find someone new to cut my hair?

* I have a list of about 5 doctor's appointments that I need to make and there is nothing that I hate more than seeing doctors. Not because I am scared but because I consider it such an appalling waste of money. And time. And yet, my teeth won't clean themselves.

* My Outlook Express won't open and I hate looking at my email online.

* I desperately need to go to the grocery store. But it seems like I am at the bloody grocery store every damn day of the week. How is that even possible?!!

* B was really a PITA this morning. Since this is a giant letter of complaint, no point in sparing him (although I probably should...) 1st. He didn't clean up dinner dishes last night, although all he had to do was stick things in the dishwasher and start the machine. And instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour, he stayed up til midnight and had plenty of time to do this. So I had to do it this morning while he was tired and cranky on the living room sofa. 2nd: I asked him to make Georgia's bottle up before he went to bed. He didn't. So this morning I got up and, in the dark with no glasses on, I had to do it. I HATE this so much. I literally cannot see a thing and her shouts increase in volume with every breath so by the time I manage to pour a reasonable amount of milk in the bottle without spilling it all on the floor and then get the bottle safely capped and in the microwave, a good 5 minutes have passed, by which time Ella and our upstairs and downstairs neighbors are all up and slamming doors. 3rd: He took the computer this morning- interrupting my morning routing- while I was cleaning up last night's dishes, to look at the same computer sites that he was looking at til midnight last night. He KNOWS that this pisses me off. I did refrain from yelling because its not unreasonable for him to use the computer when I am not there, especially if he has something important to do before work where he doesn't really have a chance to sit at the computer (even if it did look like he was just dawdling). Still, on top of all the other things, I did feel like he was really trying to push my buttons this morning. And if he had just said something like, 'I'm sorry I am being such a slacker. I feel awful due to this cold/a bad nights sleep/work stress (or anything basically).', then I would have forgiven him immediately. But he has got that awful man habit of clamming up just when he most needs to explain stuff to me.

* Ugh- no babysitter for tonight and I have two vernissage that I would love to see. Rosy Lamb, who sculpted the bust of Ella, is opening her atelier tonight and the Felli Galerie is having a vernissage of Pietropoli- and I love both the galerie owner and the painter. If I was feeling up to it, I suppose I could try and dig up a girlfriend to do the rounds with me but its another one of these miserable cold days and I do not feel like spending my evening dragging myself around in a pair of heels in the dark.

* We have a party to go to on Saturday night to celebrate the PACS of a friend of B's. And I'm irritated that they didn't just get married because I don't know if I need to get them a gift or not and, as a final indication of my rotten mood, I am unreasonably irritated about this. Do they have a registry? B had no idea. Because if they do, I would just go and buy something off of it. But maybe they don't because they plan on getting actually married somewhere on down the line. Do I just get a card and stick money in it once I do a quick survey of the other guests who might have a better idea of what is going on? These are not my friends and I don't care, I just want to be nice. Why can't they help me out and do the normal thing and get married, which has a clear cut set of guidelines regarding the present giving. Christ, people irritate me.
And more irritatingly, B said that I can't go and buy that DVF dress that I spied last Friday- even though it would be the PERFECT thing for this party. He insists that I have something I can wear already hanging in my closet. NOT THE POINT.

* Oh- one more. Why are all the shows I download on some weird mid-winter hiatus? I keep checking my account, ready to sit down to an evening of mindless American television viewing, only to be disappointed by an empty screen.

(Editted to add: Hey guess what? I took an hour and a half nap and ate 5 (!) Milano cookies for my gouter and now I'm not cranky anymore. Hmm. I guess I might need a mommy around here to manage me because it never dawned on me that I might just need a bit more sleep. (Last night at 4:30 a.m. the upstairs neighbor fell down and I laid in bed for probably an hour, straining to hear what was going on upstairs. If you have read this blog long enough, you'll remember that our downstairs neighbor fell out of his bed the first year we were living here and yelled for help because he had broken his hip. But we didn't realize that he lived alone. So we did nothing. And he died. I think that I am understandably a teensy bit nervous about bumps in the night...) I am going to have to think of a pretty amazing treat for little Georgie-boo to thank her for collapsing in bed for 3 1/2 hours. )

Piggy flu?

I don't know what Georgia has picked up, but she is FINALLY taking a nap and I'm hoping that when she wakes up, she is feeling a bit better. She has had a fever of 39.5/103 since Wednesday, more or less. She has a bit of a runny nose and on Thursday her diapers were toxic* and she is a bit cranky but after some Doliprane, seems just fine. I can't bear the thought of going to sit in my pediatrician's waiting room for an entire afternoon, just to have him tell me, 'I don't know what she's got. Just keep giving her paracetamol, I guess.' So we'll wait this one out. Oh, how did I manage to suppress the horrible memories of ella's first year in daycare, when she caught every single bloody cold, cough, gastro, flu, and ski disease (foot and mouth disease was my favorite, if you're keeping track at home) that when around. Guess we are in for a few more months of fun until her immune system is a lean, mean fightin' machine. I'll just keep downing vitamin C and taking power naps so that I can keep up.

*This is a blog post in and of itself- she has started rejecting baby food and insisting on eating food off of our plates. Her poor little digestive system is having a rough time of it, I imagine. I'm going to need to see some sort of improvement soon or desperate measures will need to be employed (Declare her changing table a Superfund site? Buy a hazmat suit? ) I may need to look into that thing where you balance your infant on the toilet seat 25 times a day, until she figures it out and is potty-trained before she can walk. I actually know someone who did this successfully, with her two kids. And yes, I would qualify her as certifiably insane.

Due to Mystery Illness #359, she didn't go to daycare on Wednesday, got kicked out early on Thursday, and we missed playgroup on Friday. So I did not get a lot done this week. I did finish up Ella's album, which feels like an enormous accomplishment. I ran out of picture corners though (I think I went through about 1000 on Ella. Yikes) so that threw up a roadblock for a few days. I did manage to get over to Bon Marche one morning to pick up some more and was bummed to see that they had all the picture frames marked down an extra 40%, making it a total of 64% off regular price! But since I hadn't had a chance to go through my stuff and figure out what I wanted framed and where I wanted to hang it, I couldn't take advantage. Rats.

I did go out and buy a new desk chair on Friday. I should have done this in December because there is the usual 8 week delivery delay, which sucks. And even though we had pretty much decided on the model back before Christmas, I only went to look through their fabric selection yesterday. The salesperson told me that they had like a thousand different fabrics to choose from so i had high hopes of getting exactly what I had been imagining in my head. Imagine my joy to find out that they actually had about 950 different types of linen, in different weaves of the same 35 colors. Arg. I chose this fabric, mainly because B was really excited about it, but I'm not that sure. I think the color is good for the living room, but my worry is that the chair will be sitting in front of curtains that are basically the same color, a little lighter. I think it might be a bit too blah. But it will also be sitting in front of a built in desk unit that is all dark wood, so a brown/beige would have been too dark, I think. And although I was fairly sure that I nice ivory would have been great, we have two small children (one of whom is Georgia...) so there is no way that a white chair would survive the year. I'm just hoping that I can easily sew up a slipcover for the chair, if it turns out to look all wrong. See, this is where I always wish that I had a very talented decorator girlfriend who could pop over to give me a bit of advice. I have lots of opinions about whether or not something looks right, but not enough experience to know ahead of time.

In any case, this chair is our test case since it isn't too expensive. We need two chairs for the ends of the dining table and I wanted to buy this one, but it costs a fortune. We decided to try out a cheaper chair to see if we could live with it before committing to the expensive Baker version. We already blew our budget when we got the Charm Chair by Studiovolto for the side chairs, so a little effort is required, unless I want to spend the next year serving buttered pasta to my children.

Speaking of expensive stuff, the only other thing that I accomplished this week was buying Ella's ski gear. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that she doesn't grow more than 2 inches in the next year (or two, that would be nice) so that it fits for more than 5 mintues. She looks so cute though! And to top it all off, I cracked for a pair of Moonboots. I don't remember them being this awesome when I was a kid. I think I kind of remember hating them because they seemed so big and heavy. She loves them because they make her about 5 cms taller. I love them because they make her little legs look like toothpicks. I wish I had a photo but it takes like 20 minutes to get her stuffed and zipped and buckled into everything, so you'll just have to wait til we get to the mountains.

I also sorted out my jacket situation. I tried on the Pyrenex jacket and, frankly, I looked stupid. I think its one of those things that you need to be a 6 ft tall model to wear without looking like a linebacker for the Bears. I ended up getting a really nice fleece and a vest with a fur hood (makes me feel like a snow bunny) from Narapujri. I looked at proper ski jackets but the ones I liked were over 300 euros, and lets face it, my ski skills do no merit 300 euros of gear. They probably ring up at around 1.50 to be honest. Ella is only doing half days at ski school so I will definitely only be doing half days of skiing, with the other half spent at the pool. Or reading. Or napping. Yeah, probably napping. I wonder if that vest makes a good pillow? Then I would definitely get my money's worth.

Hopefully by teh end of the weekend, I'll have my album all caught up on so I can (finally) cross that off my To Do list. I also need to start ordering stuff ASAP for Ella's birthday, which is in less than 3 weeks. She has decided to do a Sam Sam/superhero party, which I think sounds fun. I wanted to order personalized superhero capes for all the kids, but she will not stick to a guest list for more than 5 minutes. Sigh. 4 year-olds are fickle friends. What do you do in this situation? Do you just say, Suck it up. I'm making the guest list and you just have to try and stay friends with all these kids til the big day. Or do you sort of hold out til the last possible minute for invites. Hmmm. To be decided.

I've also got to figure out a way to build Sam Sam's spaceship, I've got my heart set on it. But I can't think of anything bigger than a salade bowl made of clear plastic that can serve as the lid. Any ideas? Also need to find a place where I can have t-shirts embroidered. If I have to, I'll have it done in the States and have them shipped here with the capes, but all those shipping problems just add an extra unwanted layer of stress. And I'm already at my limit, hoping that Benedicte and Orna stop insisting on being Barbie Mousequetaires at recre and play Tinker Fairies with Ella so that they can stay on the guest list.