Kidspeed

 

If I had been written into that movie "Dances with Wolves," my Native American name would have been She Who Points Out the Obvious.

But, *dang*--kids slow you down!

My lovely offspring are ages five and six right now.  And while they have handled all the upheaval of the recent months with great aplomb, I do see how they physically, well, poop out, earlier than my husband and I.

Yesterday, Helena (the youngest) was dragging her feet on the way to the museum.  Even though they had wonderful kids' activity/guidebooks, she was clingy and tearful during the visit.  We sped through our site-seeing and then I took them back to the apartment early.

This isn't, of course, unexpected.  I knew my typical itinerary of visiting or seeing two or three things per day while traveling would not work the whole time in Paris.  What seems to work is to wake up, breakfast and try to get out by around 10.  Between showers, hanging up last night's laundry, email checks, potty stops and hair/makeup/jewelry (an experiment I'm trying), we usually get out at 11 AM.

We grab a sandwich on the way to our first stop and get there slightly ahead of noon. This generally helps us avoid crowds, so that's nice.  We tour the first place until 1:30 PM or so.  Then we head to spot two.  Hunger usually rushes us through the end of our second stop.  At this point, we either find a cafe for a snack or head back to the apartment.  If we're truly lucky, I can squeeze in about five hours of activity per day with the kids.

Funnily enough, Olivia enjoys listening to the audioguides at the museums and sites.  Helena will listen for a while, but gets bored sooner.  One day, in frustration, I plugged them into my Ipod and they walked around the Latin Quarter listening to a Zumba music playlist.  They were happy as clams and with a little steering guidance from us, Bryan and I enjoyed a nice walk.  Olivia's been asking for a cell phone, but who knew what she really needs is an Ipod?

Anyway--thanks to this little period of unemployment (which I hope soon comes to an end, stay tuned), we have a full month in Paris.  I am very glad of that because it will take that long to truly see and do everything I want to do at kid-pace.  I worry about how much of this is really soaking in for the kids, but whatever memories they're storing will be fine.  They might remember the pigeons, a toy we found, the boots we bought for Helena and a beignet they shared--instead of art, music, food, museums and monuments.  But I get my nerd/museum fix, they get an expanded world view and Capital One credit card company is not doing so bad for themselves.

Everything's going really well.  At kidspeed, that is.