June 24, 2025
I woke up before everyone today to get out for a morning walk. I meandered for an hour, to the Seine, by the Pantheon and Notre Dame. I also caught a few Pokemon along the way because I couldn’t help myself.
We were anxious about Lenny’s leg after his limping and inability to walk home yesterday. He woke today saying it was sore but after a few chewable Tylenol he was good to go and thankfully didn’t complain about it once today. His dead tooth is the only ongoing health ailment but we’re hopeful to get that sorted Wednesday.
The Cecchinis swung by this morning as we were nearly wrapped with home school. They had already eaten breakfast so didn’t join on our brunch walk. We found a spot near the Pantheon that reminded us of a more NYC/US styled cafe. I had my first solid cortado since South Africa and was happy to see this cafe was one of few places with a takeaway window so I plan to return. The boys got in a fairly intense spat over coloring sheets that the waitress had given us. Ollie was working on drawing mini Pokemon figures and Len maybe got jealous of the attention we were giving him and did a little scribble on his page. Ollie retaliated by making a huge gold scribble on Len’s page and Len proceeded to lose it– lying down on the bench, crying, huffing and puffing and finally his pièce de résistance was making scribbles over all of the characters Ollie had just drawn. He also protested eating until we were nearly ready to leave. “I’m just SO MAD Ollie did that big scribble scrabble!!”
My good friend Sydney was in town with her family and a few friends and we planned to meet up at Luxembourg garden today. Before meeting up, we played at Ludo Jardin for a bit and Len made a friend all on his own. He didn’t catch her name, but he happily shared some of her popscicle as they climbed the big slide together. He was overjoyed. We then had our first gelato of the day, met up with the Cecchinis and tossed the rugby ball for a bit. We then met up with Sydney, Akira and their kids Hiro and Luciana and their friends Christina and Jeff and their kids Paloma and Pablo. It was so lovely to have a gang of kids to play together at the playground and thankfully they were all fast friends. There was a brief biting incident where Len attempted to avenge himself when Ollie cut him in line for the zipline, but it blew over quickly.
There was another round of popsicles before leaving the park and taking a ride on the carousel. To Ollie and Lenny’s eternal disappointment, Hiro crushed the field by collecting ~12 rings compared to their sub 5 total. They both fought tears but moved on quickly, eager to continue their fun day with friends. I heard Hiro say to Ollie at one point, “Want to be friends? Our parents are already friends so we definitely should be to!” The adorable things that kids say to one another in earnest at this age crushes me, especially knowing that there may only be a few years left of this type of vulnerable communication.
Our friends suggested taking the kids for a brief indoor adventure next. They had been in Paris before and had already sorted the bus system so Kyle and I were thrilled to abscond the roles of activity planner and travel director for the afternoon as our crew of 12 boarded the bus en route to Deyrolle. This taxidermy shop or “Paris’s cabinet of curiosities” instantly reminded us of the room of curiosity back in the BnB in Montagu, South Africa. They didn’t allow photos, but had animals big (Lions, hyenas, rhino heads) and small (dung beetles, stick bugs) and ours took joy in pointing out all the animals that they’ve seen so far on the trip.
We then searched for a cafe that could accommodate our crew outside, away from a busy street with fries on the menu. We settled for the first bistro that would seat 12 and were sat in a back corner away from any windows, but were all happy to have drinks and food on the way. All families agreed to let the kids sit together and mess around on PokemonGo which made for a more peaceful happy hour for all.
We said goodbye to our friends with Ollie making an emotional goodbye to his new buddy, Hiro. The boys have been so hungry for friendship during this 3 month solo stint. Lucky for them, we will overlap with Hiro and his family in Amsterdam for a day and hope to cross paths again.
Kyle’s parents met us at our apartment to hang out with the kids so we could head out to dinner solo. Having eaten a good amount of apertivo at happy hour, we instead biked up and down the Seine for an hour to work up an appetite. We ended up eating at a Korean restaurant on our block and made it in just before the kitchen closed at 10:30pm. We got home close to 11pm with both kids still awake but for good reason— Ollie had pulled out a loose tooth just before bedtime. We got his tooth sorted on his side table so he could wait for a gift from la petite souris— the little mouse in France who takes over over tooth fairy duties.
