Today is Wednesday, which means the little kids don't have school, though Magda has a half day.  They are all playing in the boys' room and I am sneaking some time on the computer.  The neglected fifth child in our family has asserted her existence by developing an infection in her rear end, caused, in all likelihood, by any numbers of parasites: fleas, worms, ticks, all of which proliferate here in such abundance, I'm starting to think we moved to Africa, not France.  Anyway, french vets are as bad as french doctors for the overmedication of their patients.  I now have to give Tipomme 3 different kinds of pills in different doses twice a day, and spray her rear end with calming medicine once a day.  She hates me.  On top of it, I have to put the cone of shame (I tried to joke about that but the vet had not seen UP) on her whenever I can't supervise her.  She looks like a little pioneer girl who's done something naughty, the way she hangs her head in shame.  Oh, and speaking of parasites, all the pharmacies have huge advertisements for lice medicine in their windows, and we've been warned that in all likelihood, the kids will get it not just once.  (Ingrid, if you're reading this, I'm sorry I was so mean at the Broadway park party before we left!)

I now have to spend every evening doing French homework with Magdalene, and I'm sorry to say (sorry about my own abilities, that is) that I am working at the very edge of my understanding.  We have to distinguish between possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives and demonstrative adjectives and indefinite pronouns...  Do any of you know the difference in English?  On the other hand, we're doing some pretty fun stuff with textual analysis, and I'm glad she's being made to do it.  On the social side, Magdalene made two friends both named Elliot(t), one of which is funny and the other not, one of which is good at math and the other not.  She seemed delighted with that.  She's still tentative, and thinks every friendship is a pity friendship, and she still has complete breakdowns and says everything (from laws of phonetics to the ridiculous demands of her teachers) is stupid.  But on the whole I think she's adjusting well.  Mimi still cries, but she confessed to me yesterday that she did want to go to her new school (!), that she positively LIKED one of the teachers there, the one who takes them out to recess (for recess, that is, not when she's being kicked out of the classroom for screaming).

Simeon is still thriving.  He exchanged phone numbers with a boy named Matteo, and he comes out of school mobbed by kids every day.  His teacher is very kind to him, lets him write in print (rather than cursive, which the kids learn first here, as I discovered thirty three years ago when I moved from Switzerland and got pegged as a bad student because I could not write cursive 'l' or 'e').  But Matthias is actually not doing well at all (as is counterillustrated by this photo).  I guess in Bellingham, he gets a lot of his self-worth from all his friendships and from being a good student at school.  Here he seems completely defeated by the fact that he cannot do what the teacher tells him at school, and cannot really make friends.  He only thrives during bouts of physical activity (as here) or in ball games at school.  We're trying to enroll him in Judo, but enrolling your kids in activities here seems to be harder than enrolling yourself in various social programs (which I've been trying to do without success every moment of Miriam's trials at school)

I have been invited to 'prendre un cafe' by a mother who has one child in Mimi's school and two in the boys'.  She and her husband own an Irish coffee shop a ten minutes walk away.  This is my first social success of this trip, I'll have to wear something nice!