In which Sapphire and Cherry say goodbye to their friends

Both Sapphire and Cherry wanted to have parties for their friends before school got out, both to say goodbye and because they have summer birthdays. Ezio was given the option of a farewell party as well, but he hasn't really made any good friends while we've been here (he had kids to play with at recesses, but he never really hit it off with anyone at school), and so when we gave him the option of doing something fun in Paris with just a parent and no siblings instead, he jumped at the chance.

Since so many French families leave town for much of the summer, we wanted to schedule the parties for the last part of the school year, and, of course, they needed to be on different days. Since the last day of school was July 2nd, that meant June 26th for Sapphire's party, and June 30th (no Wednesday school) for Cherry's. Sapphire really, really, really wanted to make her invitations herself, so she took note cards and decorated them individually for the four girls that she wanted to invite: two from her CLIN class, one from her mathematics class, and one who she's just become close friends with at recess. Then we typed the invitation, printed it out, and she glued the invitations to the backs of her note cards to give to her friends at school. Her two French friends, Samantha and Léa, immediately said that they would come, but her friends from CLIN were less certain. (The CLIN class pulls in kids from a fairly wide area--only about a third of the kids actually live in Fontenay-sous-Bois--and so it is a bit more of a project for some of them to come into town.) Ultimately, neither of the CLIN kids were able to come, but the Samantha and Léa arrived as expected.

Since we were billing this as a farewell celebration rather than a birthday celebration, there was no cake. Instead, Sapphire and I mixed the dough for cutout cookies earlier in the day and let it chill while we all went outside and played games. I learned the French names for hide-and-seek (cache-cache), red light, green light (un, deux, trois, soleil!), charades (mîmes), and tag (chat). (Actually, I already knew the first and the last because we'd played them with French kids before, but the other two were new names to me, and to Sapphire as well.) Then we headed inside, and I rolled out cookie dough with a vinegar bottle and the kids cut out shapes with knives and then sprinkled colored sugar on them with spoons. Then we slipped them in the oven, and once we had baked most of the dough we all had cookies and milk. By that time it was almost time for Samantha and Léa to be picked up, and so Sapphire opened the goodbye presents and then the buzzer sounded and we all said goodbye.

Since Cherry was a lot less pushy about getting invitations out (Sapphire would have sent hers in March if I would have let her), and I am nothing if not a procrastinator, Cherry's invitations didn't go to her classmates (actually, to their mothers, since she was only inviting four kids) until two days before we were having people over. Then, Wednesday morning when we were at the playground, I noticed a funny bubbly looking spot on her forehead. By lunchtime it was twice as big, and she said it really hurt when I touched it, and so I called the pediatrician and asked if I could have it looked at. Of course, the time slot he offered (and I wasn't confident enough in my French to ask for a different one) was smack in the middle of the party time. Since I wasn't sure whether what was going on might be contagious or not, we ended up meeting all of her party guests at the door and telling them that instead of having a party we were going to the doctor. Safia was leaving for vacation the next day, and Katarina ended up not showing up at all, but Colleen and Nathan's mom said that they wouldn't be leaving for vacation, and that they would be able to come sometime the next week, after school was out for the summer. She needed to check her calendar, but we exchanged phone numbers, and a couple of days later she called to confirm that Friday, the 9th, would work for them. I called to tell Katarina's mom.

Then, much to our surprise, we saw Safia and her mom at the carrousel outside of the Auchan on Thursday afternoon, and so we invited her to come over on Friday as well. Blaise took Ezio to the Galeries Lafayette, where they looked at all of the stuffed animals and Lego and Playmobil and everything else in the toy section, and then went upstairs and looked at all of the sirop and the 5 kg jars of Nutella. Cherry and I sat out on the front step of the building and waited for her friends to show up. Colleen and Nathan showed up (a little bit late) followed by Safia (not Katarina, which didn't surprise me too much) and Aurore (the twins' mom) and I and all the kids headed up to our apartment (Safia's mom left to spend some quality time with Safia's sister). And then Aurore and I talked and the kids played with playdough and duplos for almost 2 hours. It was with great difficulty that I convinced them to go and eat their cookies and drink their juice. And clearly all of the actual activities that I had planned fell by the wayside. Then, after Safia's mom picked her up, we took the other 3 kids outside to the playground for a little bit before dinner.