Shiny shoes and other party lessons

Alex is excited for lunch but Coco is not convinced

I first realized there was a problem with the shininess of my shoes while seated at a restaurant on a date night with Alex. An immaculately dressed older woman seated next to us glanced down at my well-loved, scuffed-up boots and made a grimace. Then she looked at me with an expression on her face that seemed to suggest I was not a good person, or at least kind of a gross one.

I assumed it was a freak occurrence because who couldn't love my gnarly boots? I also suspected it was my outfit as a whole that offended because I am chronically under-dressed when out on the town in Mexico City. When others wear short fancy designer dresses with sky high heels, I wear my favorite baggy harem pants -- the Aztec printed ones, the ones I wear more often to bed than outside the house -- and my aforementioned scruffy boots.

I didn't really plan to wear pajama pants out on date night. I was just so comfortable in my day clothes I didn't want it to end.

I realized the severity of my shoe situation when shoe shiners began following me down the street on a regular basis, pointing at my boots and begging me to let them shine my shoes, so horrified were they by their appearance. Then Coco's school sent an email reminding us that part of keeping their uniforms clean is keeping their shoes properly shined. What is with these people and shiny shoes?

I suspect the school's shoe message was directed at me because I dug Coco's school shoes out from under the couch and sure enough, they looked like she's never walked in them, only been dragged long distances in them. How does she manage to scuff the tops so terribly? She must be wrestling gators in gravel pits when I'm not looking.

I applied a little spit polish and rubbed them with a washcloth and the shoes marginally improved. I'll be expecting another email from the school soon.

easy on the shoes, girl, you're getting me in trouble

Coco's class put on a circus at her school Friday. The regular homework for the week was scrapped so kids could use their after school time to "make an authentic clown costume, no costume rental nor new purchases permitted, work with what you already have at home."

There's a lot of panic in those instructions, especially for short-timers like us who brought precious few supplies to Mexico City, and definitely none of the clown costume making variety. Coco thankfully has a craft kit full of pom poms so pom poms were promptly glued all over any brightly colored piece of clothing we could find in her closet. It was a pretty lame clown costume but definitely showed we obeyed the "no costume rental nor purchase" instruction.

Coco's clown costume began falling apart before she even left the apartment on the morning of the circus. She left a trail of pom poms all the way out the door of the building. I kissed her at the door with a bright, "You look great, honey, I'll see you at the circus later!" and secretly prayed some other parent had done even less with their clown than my half-assed efforts. Hopefully someone had quarter-assed.

Getting to Coco's circus show was harder than I expected. I had to walk to the school because our driver was still occupied getting Alex through rush hour traffic to his job. No biggie, the school isn't too far and I love walking around the city even on days when pollution is really bad and it burns your eyes.

The problem that morning wasn't pollution, it was crossing Paseo de la Reforma, the main drag through town with four lanes of traffic in either direction. Crossing a street isn't straightforward business here in Mexico. Traffic lights aren't always obeyed and crosswalks are sometimes few and far between. Most people just kind of cross wherever they happen to be and dart around like a real life game of Frogger.

I am not yet that bold. I instead stand by the road for half the day waiting for a "safe" opportunity. When no safe opportunities present themselves willingly, I jog anxiously up and down alongside the road looking for a crosswalk or traffic light. After awhile I reach a breaking point, "Dammit, I've been standing on the side of the road for seven hours, it's time to get serious" and just kind of plunge recklessly into the fray.

It's easier to cross when traffic is heavy because at some point it gets backed up and cars are forced to slow down. Then you make your move, dodging around bumpers as quickly as possible before they pick up speed again.

After I'd successfully crossed the street and made it to school, I witnessed my daughter rock that circus in her very nearly pom pom-less outfit. Her part in the performance was "Coco the Magician." She successfully performed her several magic tricks with confidence and only a few minor (and pretty adorable) hitches.

But I'm suspecting her magician's assistant, Victor, did not listen to the "no costume rental, use stuff you have at home" directive. His clown outfit was straight out of a Ringling Brothers picture book. Regardless of my suspicions, Victor has a place in my heart because he has declared his fervent love for Coco several times and wrote her the funniest love letter for Valentine's Day.

Coco's glorious clown hat. 
 We made that beauty ourselves out of construction paper and scotch tape 
after watching several YouTube tutorials

There aren't just circuses happening around here. There are also parties. We attended three parties over the weekend and I was under-dressed for every single one, trust it.

The first party was a child's birthday party thrown by Alex's co-worker for his two daughters. I couldn't find wrapping paper in our neighborhood so wrapped one of the girl's gifts in the brown paper used as packing material in our recent Amazon order. Then I covered the brown paper with a sheet of Coco's stickers, which upset her but sometimes we are called upon to sacrifice for the family, little girl.

The other daughter's gift was oddly shaped so I stuffed it into the paper bag recently used to bring home our Indian takeout. The bag still smelled pretty tasty. More stickers were applied to the outside. Whatever, let's party.

Children's birthday parties in Mexico City are big productions. There is a lot of entertainment. We were treated to a "My Little Pony" show that lasted an hour and involved smoke machines, singing and dancing. Alex was disturbed by how attracted he was to both Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie and wanted to process his feelings about it at great length.

A new fetish may have been born. Please stay away from Coco's actual My Little Ponies, Al, or we're gonna have to put her in therapy way sooner than we planned.

The birthday party had it all; there was a bouncy house, arts and crafts, full catering and an open bar for the hundred or so guests, a "candy table" and the biggest damn candles I've ever seen stuck into two gigantic My Little Pony cakes. Those things were more like distress flares than candles; flames shot out of them forcefully at least two feet into the air. One of the distress flares was tossed into the garbage afterwards but it was not yet fully extinguished so the garbage can began to smoke excessively. It was Lucien who first saw it and yelled "Fuego!" which, understandably, alarmed us all until a pitcher of water was dumped into the can as well.

Perhaps most distressing was the My Little Pony pinata that, after being decapitated and losing two legs, was finally broken all the way open by a very strong little girl. The disembowelment immediately sent the smallest of guests into hysterical crying fits and I have to agree with them; it was surprisingly disturbing to watch a smiley My Little Pony get beaten to pieces with a bat.

But I love when the teeniest guests take their turns at the beginning.

It's a real uterus explosion.

The kids who weren't crying over the violent death of Pinkie Pie flew into Wrestlemania XVI on the floor. There was so much candy coming out of that pinata, I was getting cavities just looking at it. So imagine my surprise when the animators of the party brought out MORE bags of candy, ripped them open and dumped the contents onto the floor along with all the pinata candy. More wrestling, more tripping over candy, more bonked heads.

The second party was Saturday at our ex-pat friends' house, Seattle Mom and Bolivia Dad. The occasion was "Spring!" I suppose Spring is something to celebrate in Mexico even though the weather doesn't change much. Monsoon season begins, though, with its brief daily downpours, so that's exciting.

House parties in the DF (that's cool speak for Mexico City) are different from those at home in that parties here are often heavily staffed. There were los animadores keeping the kids entertained with games in the yard, servers walking around replenishing drinks before they were even empty, a man stationed at the pool to make sure no kids drowned, some ladies in the parlor helping kids paint flower pots, and a fully catered gourmet pizza buffet that blessedly included a Nutella dessert pizza topped with strawberries.

Los animadores, the fun men in red.

My kids said "they were way more fun than parents!"

My kids really know how to hurt my feelings.

Alex and Bolivia Dad crashed the kids' sack race.

Alex and Bolivia Dad are similar people.

When we go back home to Seattle, money will not go nearly as far as it does in Mexico. There will be no room in a party budget for staff. I will mix the mimosas myself and turn on a movie for the kids halfway through the party to buy us adults a little more time, as per our usual. And it will be fun and I will be happy but I may miss the people in red shirts and white coats just a little.

Seattle Mom and Bolivia Dad's gorgeous home

Alex and I have been lucky to meet great people wherever we go. How is it possible there are great people everywhere? And do you think there's a place in the world that's full of only shitty people? If there is, I hope we don't get sent there for Al's work because we are really on a roll.

     

Eight different home countries in this picture alone.

It's the luck of an ex-pat to hang out with the world.

At Spring Party we learned if you start drinking mimosas and cubanas in the sun before noon, you will all be sound asleep by 7:00 p.m.  And speaking of the sun, the sun in Mexico is stronger than you think it is. It's not the same as standing in the sun in Seattle. You can stand in Seattle sun all day long and barely register a pink tinge.

But at Spring Party, when Seattle Mom said, "Why didn't you bring your sunhat?"and Alex said, "Have you applied sunscreen to your shoulders lately?" I said, "Chill, overreactors. I've been standing in the sun only half an hour, I think I'm going to be OK." But I was not OK, I was sunburned and it was still hurting two days later.

The dude tug-o-war took a toll on a few backs
that were also sore two days later.

Is everyone still with me? It's OK if not, this post is a long one.

Our fantastic new party lives weren't over yet, much as we kind of desperately wanted them to be. We were very tired but couldn't turn down the third party of the weekend when the occasion was revealed to be -- meat.

some people are living very well in Mexico City

Alex's co-worker, Mexico Dad, invited us to his big beautiful home out in the suburbs with the invite, "Come for carne asada, I want to make you carne asada, let's eat carne asada." Al and I began referring to it as "the meat party" because 1) that's what it was and 2) it sounds dirty.

Mexico Dad is talkative, jovial, a born entertainer. He also apparently really loves to make carne asada because the amount of meat he grilled was enough to feed fifty people even though we numbered only ten.

The most important thing we learned at the meat party, aside from the fact Mexico Dad likes to grill meat so much I felt compelled to hide the family dog, was don't try to keep up with a Mexican man when it comes to drinking tequila. Alex tried and it didn't end well. It may or may not have resulted in Alex stripping down to his underwear and going for a very cold swim in their pool in the rain. Alex wasn't able to feel cold at that point thanks to tequila's numbing properties but I think I got hypothermia just watching him.

Alex rarely overdoes it on the drinking. He's a man who knows his limits and is just as likely to be drinking mineral water with lemon slices than alcohol. But things get disorienting when your enthusiastic host keeps refilling your glass and insisting "You gotta try this one! You're gonna love it!" Jovial hosts always make tequila sound like a good idea but it's not always true.

As Alex's condition deteriorated before my eyes, I knew I could get him home OK in a taxi and maybe ask the doorman to help me drag him into the building. I also knew I'd made the right decision in not drinking tequila.

To recap, this is what we've learned the past few days in our new party heavy lifestyle:

1.) wear heels. no pjs. shiny shoes.
2.) don't hump My Little Ponies. for the love of god stop, man.
3.) sunscreen and lots of it. the sun is an asshole.
4.) don't drink tequila. tackle your host to the ground to prevent this from happening if you must.


Mario just brought me a baggie of pom poms he found rolling around in the car.
Her costume was awful but my clown was so happy,
MJ

It begins again

Two days ago Lucien came home from school and said, "Mom, I got in trouble today!" Perhaps it was the shade of enthusiasm in his voice that gave me Paris flashbacks but my heart immediately sank a little.

It happened in Spanish class, a class that is making Lucien's head explode on the daily. The teacher calls on him often in an attempt to give him as much practice as possible, which he claims is "kinda mean" since he can't answer any of her questions. He studies lists of Spanish words in his bed at night; we know he's doing it when we hear a lot of "aghh!" and "this is impossible!" coming from his room.

Two days ago, the teacher was giving him a particularly grueling time, quizzing him on vocabulary and verb conjugation. Another student raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom. As that student walked across the room and placed his hand on the classroom's doorknob, Lucien yelled, "SAVE YOURSELF!!"

The class cracked up. The teacher did not. She warned him that if he was going to be Mr. Funny Guy in class, he was going to find himself in the office more often than not. Well that's just great and here we are again. Those still reading from the Paris years probably remember Lucien did not fit in very well at his French school. He stood out from the much more subdued French children. He was in trouble all the time, had teachers tearing their hair out on the regular. La betise! La betise! The Loosh was an...ahem...spirited child in a non-spirited environment.

Thankfully it's been smooth sailing the past handful of years.  He's matured so much, is a good student and is finally able to control the more severe of his spaz-tastic impulses. He's the class clown for sure but good natured, rarely in trouble, and his teachers usually get a kick out of him. Maybe Americans are more flexible with those kinds of things, I don't know, but it seems apparent the teachers at the British School, at least the Spanish ones, are not as amused.

I gave him a talking-to about picking his moments. The classroom is not an appropriate place to crack jokes. Save it for the playground, save it for the bus, save it for anywhere besides the Spanish teacher's classroom because IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE for principals in foreign countries to be part of our daily lives again, comprendes, little dude?

Lucien replied, "But Mom, I'm funny and I think my classmates have a right to know that." Great. This should go fine.

Coco's head is also exploding in Spanish because not only does she not speak Spanish, but everyone in her class is already writing cursive. Her First Grade classmates are writing Spanish in cursive, two things that could not be further from Coco's wheelhouse, goddammit, and I have to help her with her homework every afternoon.

Her homework, twice the amount of what other kids have because she's so far behind, is the most godawful painful hour... or two....or three.... of the day.  She whines and throws pencils, I cry and scour the kitchen cabinets for wine. It's pretty awful. Paulina has swooped in to save the day on a couple Spanish lessons and that may become the norm because when it comes to Spanish, surprise, I'm not much help. I wish Paulina could teach cursive, too.

Speaking of Spanish, the building's cleaning lady tried to chat me up in the elevator today. She sees me around the building daily and probably couldn't tell from my simple "buenos dias" and "hasta luego"s that I didn't know many more words than those. She stepped into the elevator with me this morning and immediately launched into some incomprehensible thing. There were definitely questions involved based on her inflection and her looking at me with her head tilted slightly to the side.

The realization struck her immediately that she was talking to a wall, probably because my eyes had gone wide and I was just staring at her frozen-like. I finally managed a "no comprendo" and she nodded, seemed embarrassed for the both of us. She hustled off the elevator a couple floors later.

Poor lady tried to be friendly and get to know me but ha! She won't try that again.


PS. Spanish in small elevators is much more uncomfortable than Spanish in larger open spaces. I need the breathing room, and the option to run away if/when I need to.

SAVE YOURSELF,
MJ

20 wallets, embroidery, and a bigger bowl

The kids have been bickering near non-stop since we came to Mexico. I've never seen them so constantly annoyed with each other. Every little thing sets them off, a situation made more fun by the fact they share a bedroom. As a means of dealing with the escalating situation, Coco built a wall out of our moving boxes and put her mattress on the other side of them.

The box wall does not even nearly reach the ceiling so count on it, they are throwing things over those boxes and yelling at each other every night. We may have had a little too much "togetherness" the past handful of weeks.

Maybe it's all for the best, then, because the original plan was to put both kids in the same international school in Mexico City. There was a snag in the plan, however, as there often is but sometimes you're too stupidly optimistic to see it coming.

Coco's writing is damn near illegible.  Coco doesn't care much about writing, she cares more about making messes and then making bigger, bolder, more intricate messes. When you are Coco's kind of messy, handwriting can be a challenge. The necessary precision of it is at odds with her personality.

Coco and Lucien had evaluation exams at the international school before they were able to be officially enrolled.  Lucien sailed through his exam and was offered a 5th Grade spot that same day. Coco, however, totally bombed the handwriting portion of her exam.  The school said they could not offer her a spot in 1st Grade because she would be too far behind in their writing-intensive curriculum. They instead offered her a spot in K-3.

Al and I were shocked but our shock was nothing compared to Coco's outrage. She took extreme umbrage. "I am NOT going back to Kindergarten" (at ever increasing volume) became our family's soundtrack for the next couple days while Alex and I debated what to do. So much glaring, I swear she can pierce holes through our pitifully weak souls. 

    

But what could we do?  Many other international schools we'd contacted were full, others were not very highly recommended.  Plus we had all fallen head over heels for this particular school, Coco included -- its sprawling pretty campus, its swimming pool and giant soccer field, its perfect mix of friendly and welcoming kids, both ex-pats and locals.

But Coco back to Kindergarten? In class with kids over a year younger than her, and only because she couldn't write for shit?  It seemed way too harsh. Al and I advocated hard for a 1st Grade spot but the school stood firm. I briefly considered homeschooling but that idea disappeared when Alex looked at me and said flatly, "You would die." True, true, an effective and well developed argument, Alex.

She stayed home with me for another week as we grappled with indecision. Lucien started school and acclimated to his new life easily. His teacher is a kind British man and his circle of friends is growing. Kids at his school are used to high ex-pat turnover, their social circles are always changing so they are easy to approach and are helpful and welcoming. It hasn't been as hard as he feared to be "the new kid."

Meanwhile, Coco and I hung out at home. We walked the neighborhood and did as much math, reading, and writing as I could stand. I've got the patience of a puppy and the attention span of a fruit fly. At least our PE class was fun --

I'm so glad we survived the sewer stink and could keep the pool

With great reservation, we decided to take the K-3 spot just to get Coco around kids again, get her learning Spanish, get her out of my face because she talks all the time and I need a breather. 

Last weekend, our family hit the streets with school supply checklists in hand.  The first stop was a large department store in our neighborhood called Liverpool where we hoped to buy several specific pairs of shoes for the kids' uniforms.

We got lost in Liverpool for hours because Alex, who speaks fluent Spanish, is apparently too goddamn proud to ask where the kid shoes are and I, being fluent in English and not much else, have no idea how to ask for shoes of any kind. It was a bad combo. The kids asked at one point, "Are we ever leaving this place?" and I responded honestly, "I'm not sure."

We eventually found kid shoes after wandering the labyrinth of Liverpool for the better part of our lives. We picked a few pairs to try from the specific "school shoe" section and then waited, and waited, and waited.  There was only one employee working the kid shoe department that day. She was a very flustered employee, as two of her co-workers had called in sick that morning. It was most unfortunate for all involved.

We waited so long to try on those goddamn shoes, I got very crabby and began muttering things like, "I don't care if those things are a full size too small, we're buying them immediately and getting the hell out of here." I'm an introvert, you see, so being stuck like purgatory in a crowded noisy department store eats my happiness until there's nothing left but death and black holes. 

I was the only one losing my shit, apparently, because other than me you've never seen such a festive shoe department. Everyone else accepted the long waits for shoes with zen-like calm and struck up conversations with each other. One little kid, maybe four years old, had the time of his life grabbing shoes off the racks and tossing them over his shoulder while laughing like a tiny maniac.

(This was one of the many times I have thought, despite being here a mere two weeks, "This would never happen in Paris.")

The shoes finally, thankfully bought, we headed to a nearby Office Max to purchase more supplies. My already sour mood turned sour-er as I looked over the list of supplies sent by the school. The list was written by British people and it's never been more obvious we use different terms for things. What the hell were "20 plastic wallets for your folded portfolio?" We did not leave with everything on the list because some of it just made no damn sense.

On our walk home, I read from the school supply list that students' names were to be embroidered on every item of their uniforms. It had been a long day and I was in no state of mind to commit to embroidery so I yelled much louder than I intended to, and unfortunately part of it in the face of a shocked valet parking attendant who had the misfortune of standing behind me when I spun around assuming he was Alex, "F*ck that, F*ck that, I'm scrawling their goddamn names on everything with a Sharpie, they can suck it."  

Lucien promptly lost both his tie and his PE sweatshirt in the first two days of school because there were no tags on those things upon which to scrawl his name with a Sharpie. I understand the importance of embroidery in a school full of identical uniforms now and I'm sorry I lost my mind on you, international school, you were absolutely right. But I'm still not going to embroider. We will instead likely buy a new set of uniforms every week.

They are so cute in their uniforms.

I'm going to make them wear them even when we return to the U.S.

The school situation wasn't over, though. Because when all was processed and debated and advocated and (we thought) decided, it still wasn't sitting right. We could not accept putting Coco back a year based on only one subject. 

Alex and I sent a few Hail Mary emails to schools we'd already contacted but didn't have space at the time. One school, a tiny thing with a good reputation, responded the next morning that indeed, a space had just opened up in J-1 and they'd love to meet Coco. She went and interviewed that very day and took another evaluation exam. 

Her writing still sucked, no surprise there, but this school had a plan. They wanted to keep her with her peers, put her in First Grade but have a teaching assistant with her one-on-one during writing periods. Holy hell, SOLD, and yes of course I can stop humping your leg if it makes you "extremely uncomfortable."

Coco is sad to be at a different school than Lucien even though they are currently fighting all the time. She's sad her school is tiny and much quieter when his is huge and exciting. 25% of Coco's day is going to be in Spanish, which will also be a challenge, but in our minds a positive one.  She liked it way more on Day Two than Day One, that is progress, and we'll take it.

There's another little blonde American girl in her class. She is so happy about Coco's arrival. They are glued to each other like a two-headed blonde American monster, giggling and hugging all the time. Coco said when she came home her first day, "I think she's been waiting for me a long time." 

It's a different thing, kids in school here versus at home. I no longer take them to school or pick them up. Lucien is now signed up for the school bus, which he loves, but before that our driver, Leo, took him to school each morning and brought him home each afternoon. I tagged along for the first couple days to make sure he knew where he was going, to pay the tuition bill and sort out uniform pieces and whatnot but after that Lucien said, "Mom, no other parents go, it's just the drivers, it's OK."

So I gave him that space, instead watched every morning from our 7th floor balcony as he climbed into Leo's car to be driven the half hour to school alone.

That's my green boot self
watching the brown dot, my backpacked son,

climb into our driver's car.
It's a whole new world.

My friend here, Seattle Mom (will the "Seattle Mom" madness ever end, apparently not), whose house we stayed in back in July when we visited Mexico City, invited me to a ladies night with her circle of friends last week. 

Once again, sitting there with the lot of them, I was reminded of the beauty of ex-pat friendships. They spring up almost immediately. You meet, you decide within seconds whether or not you like each other, then suddenly you're friends on Facebook and soon thereafter have plans together every day for the rest of eternity. 

There were fifteen of us that night, from New Zealand, Ireland, the US, Canada, Uruguay and Mexico among others I've forgotten. We met at a gin bar in Polanquito, which may have been a tactical error because none of us like gin. We instead wanted red wine, which perplexed the servers. The servers disappeared for awhile, returned with the manager and a handful of bottles of red wine they had dug out of storage. When we finished all of those, I'm pretty sure the manager handed a server some money to go buy more wine down the street.  

A group of 15 women out in Polanquito have a damn good time. But figuring out the bill at the end of the night is still an exercise in futility. We all just threw money at the bill until it went away. I think I spent five trillion pesos on a few glasses of wine.

counting pesos late at night by cell phone flashlight

Our apartment no longer smells like a sewer but the pipe leading to our dishwasher recently sprang a leak.  Alex and I were very diligent about tending to the leak until Sergio, our cheerful relocation guy, could get another plumber here. We put a bowl under the leak, mopped up around it when the bowl overflowed. The owner of this apartment owes us many beers.

Cheerful Sergio arrived with the building manager and two plumbers on Monday morning. Sergio said, "OK, we see the problem, we are going to buy supplies and will be right back." The building manager then turned to me and said in English, "We are going to buy you a bigger bowl so you don't have to empty it as often" and then laughed at his own joke for about five minutes.  I like that guy.

And I really like Mexico City

Now that the kids are both in school, may my blog posts come fast and furious and my Paris book finally get whittled down to a readable thing. It may get a bit muddled, writing about Paris in Mexico. I may end up with sentences like, "I walked the streets of Paris, intoxicated by the aroma of fresh tortilla."

No embroidery 4-ever,
MJ