Another epic weekend! The second in a string of four planned weekend extravaganzas! (exhausting already!!)
Although it did have a bit of a rocky start… Mum had to head into Monaco on Friday for some very important meetings with her client. But the client has a little girl (Natalia) who’s only 2 years older, so we were invited to bring Liam out, who could hang out with Natalia and her nanny during the meetings. A long overdue playdate!
Unfortunately just as we neared Monaco Liam was carsick. Again. Spewed all over the backseat, and all over himself. And unfortunately we didn’t have a change of clothes in the car — this carsick thing is new behaviour!! We don’t know why he’s suddenly developing car sickness, but showing up for my meetings with a small boy smelling of vomit was a bad way to start the morning. Fortunately I was able to quickly pop him into Natalia’s shower on their boat, and their captain found a small adult Tshirt for him to wear for the morning. They were boat-bound because Liam certainly couldn’t head down to the beach or the playground in a tshirt without underpants!! But he had a lovely time with Natalia until we were done work, and we could go home. And he thought it was cool to be on a yacht all day. Although I’m not sure Natalia was very happy to have his little naked bum sitting on her sofas!!
Mum’s good friend Admira is in town for a week, so we managed to get away for a girls dinner on Friday night out to catch up (and mum was able to unwind from a very stressful day with a couple of glasses of wine and copious amounts of Lebanese food!!). And Daddy had a ‘Liam and Daddy’ evening, which was apparently totally enjoyable for both of them. Win-Win-Win, I’d say!! 🙂
We had friends around for a BBQ on Saturday, with their almost-three-year old daughter (Iris). Liam and Iris had LOADS of fun, especially once they started dancing!! Liam was a perfect host. He easily shared all of his toys, he was very polite in asking Iris if she’d like to play games with him, and he even serenaded her with ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ — he even let Iris wear his princess dress — which is actually an old cocktail dress of mum’s that was about to get thrown in the bin — but he REALLY WANTED IT SO HE COULD BE A PRINCESS. It was great to get to know Frances & Tim (the parents) a bit better, and lunch was great: Shrimp shish-kebabs, shrimp caesar salad with homemade dressing, and freshly made tomato-basil bruschetta.
It was an early start today (Sunday) as we’d scheduled a Skype call with Auntie Sarah and Meg (New Zealand)… breakfast time for us, bedtime for them — but after such an exhausting Saturday we were all still fast alseep when the sound of the Skype call woke us!! That’s okay, because there was a lot to prepare….
… because we hosted another BBQ on our terrace! Admira, along with her sister, mother and great-Aunt came over for the afternoon. The weather was spectacular — the best its been in weeks — and the company was great. Admira’s great-aunt lives in Nice (who knew!!) but is starting to struggle with age and they all wanted to get over here to make sure she is coping okay. We were so happy to open our home to them, and they were equally happy to be made to feel at home over here. Liam showed off almost every car in his collection, and we had yet another feast!! A wheel of coulommiers cheese and jam baked into puff pastry to start, freshly made gazpacho soup, tomato basil bruschetta, pissaladiere (an onion and anchovy tart) and grilled chicken caesar salad.
We are culinarily pleased with ourselves this weekend!!!
We’re pretty tired, and it’s all starting again in just a few days when Nicole arrives for a long weekend.
PS There will be more photos from today’s BBQ with Admira and family, but I won’t have them for another week or so!!
