kids say the darndest things

I wanted to write a little about the precious children that I spend time with in exchange for my home here in Paris. They are a franco-american family living one floor below me in a beautiful apartment building right in the heart of the city. The four children are Zoe (14), Ella (12), Paul (9), and Georges (4), and they are amazing. Zaza and Lala (as Georges calls them) are lovely, sophisticated, typically French young ladies with pizzazz and flare to go around, but they laugh and joke with their brothers and are generally pretty level-headed and kind. Paul and Georges are incredibly unique, and today I had the pleasure of walking around Paris with Paul, just the two of us. It was fantastic because it helped me to adore him, whereas before Georges required so much attention that Paul was just kind of in the way, unfortunately. Paul is so cool! I'm teaching him how to solve the Rubik's cube and today we played piano and Wii and Life and had such a blast. We made each other laugh so hard that it hurt, and I'm so happy to be bonding with him. Georges is such a charmer. He is very much a four-year-old, especially in that he shifts instantly from elated to enraged based on seemingly nothing at all. Yesterday we were playing and all of a sudden he frowned and shouted, "You huht me! I'm bweeding!" (which, of course, I didn't and he wasn't), and it took an intervention from his twelve-year-old sister for him to say "sorry" and for us to become friends again. :) Of course after about ten minutes I don't think he remembered it at all and he was back to being my best friend and clinging to my hand all the time. Love is a beautiful thing. The other night I was giving him a bath for the first time, and he wanted the independence of putting the shampoo in by himself. Of course he got too much in his hands which then went quickly into his eyes (by the way, all parents of toddlers should purchase kids' tear-free shampoo - gentle and wonderful), so I had him screaming bloody murder for a little while. If it wasn't the suds in his eyes, then it was the water being too cold and then too hot ("it buhns!"), and you know the drill. But finally I got him calmed down and we'd wait each time until the temperature felt just right (he'd let me know by the progression of, "too cold... too hot... nice" in a very gentle voice) and slowly but surely rinsed out all that silly shampoo. My heart melted and all the frustration was washed away in an instant when he gently said, "Katie? I love you." Sometimes love is all it takes to remind us that the buhns and the scwapes aren't so important in the end.