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Showing posts from June, 2009

Happy 25th Anniversary, Children's Pre-School Center

A few weeks ago, Daniel's daycare ( The Children's Pre-School Center in Palo Alto) celebrated its 25th anniversary. It was a great milestone: a daycare welcomes quite a number of children in 25 years and some of them are already adults by now! But the main reason why this was a significant event is that the school's founder, Rachel Samoff, is still the director - and a great one- after 25 years. What a dedication to taking care of children over the years! The celebrations included well-deserved recognition for her fantastic work and achievements. Daniel joined CPSC in October 2008, at 9 months. Since then, he has been thriving: looking forward to daycare every morning (eager to leave the house as soon as he wakes up!), and learning a lot. He loves his teachers: they really spend time with the children, and offer activities/learning opportunities that fit each kid's development stage. At the end of each day, the teachers can tell me a lot about Daniel's day: his new

Why the Bay Area is great to raise multi-cultural kids

As a parent who speaks exclusively French to my baby Daniel while living in the US, I often feel unsure when talking to him in public places. I always wonder if other parents are thinking that this is strange or even worse, that this represents a lack of respect for the country I live in. It's true that it makes things more difficult: people around us don't understand what I tell Daniel, so they don't know if I am suggesting him to play with the other kids and be gentle, or to do something completely different. How can they know of my and my baby's good intentions if they don't understand what I say to him? After 17 months however, my brain has gotten so used to speaking French with Daniel, that I can't speak with him in English even if I try hard. Words will come in French, that's all. Today was a typical Sunday for us: brunch with friends, visit at the playground. Nothing special, but plenty of time spent with other people. This could have brought a lot of

United Airlines Premier status at 24 months: a frequent flyer baby

Our recent trip to Turkey and France included 6 flights across the US, Germany, Turkey and France. As my husband and I were carrying our luggage and baby through the Frankfurt airport, we reflected about how happy we were that our 16-month old toddler was usually so good with flying. Especially at this age, he was so excited about vehicles, and airplanes in particular, that he was eager to fly. He loved airplanes so much, that he had to blow several kisses to one of our planes to say "good bye" after we got off. (At another time, he also threw a tantrum as he wanted to run to the plane even though the gates hadn't been opened yet... fortunately, they opened soon and we ended up the first ones to "rush" to the plane). Another thought that occurred to us was that Daniel would probably become a United Airlines Premier member before he turned 2: two annual return trips to Europe and a few domestic flights would make him a frequent flyer baby. Overall, since birth D