hot princess

I got a report today from one of the teachers that after the girls told Sophie how beautiful she was, one of the boys told her she looked hot. Inappropriate but flattering. I'm conflicted.

Princess U

In the summer, we get to lounge a bit more in the mornings before heading off to school. Usually this suits Sophie just fine. But today was dress-up day at school. At about 9.00am, having dressed herself in a pink princess dress, she came into the living room and asked, "Can you take this little princess to school?" Well, yes I can. So off we went. Upon arrival, she was collectively greeted by her friends with "You are so pretty." and one gasping "You are beautiful." Who wouldn't want to be at school with that kind of reception?

near San Marco in Venice Italy

Ciao Italy. We ended our trip to Venice with a gondola ride with a the nicest gondolier.

I think austria was created for children. Oddly, everywhere we went in Spain, they showered Sophie with candy. None of this happened in Austria, but everywhere they had the coolest parks for kids.

fun at the fair

We went to the fair when it was 105 degrees. We rode all the rides until we were tired, pet all the animals and ate crappy fair food Even though Sophie was a good two or three inches too small to ride the bumper cars, they didn't seem to care too much.

No Eiffel Tower, but we do have carousels

At least one major reason we went to Paris was because Sophie expressed interest in seeing the Eiffel Tower. When she told us she wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower we booked plane tickets and an apartment. When we arrived, it turned out the tower was under some pretty major renovation. Lines to go up were easily over three hours. This was a tough moment when the whole raison d'être was to go up the tower (I'm not even sure you can use raison d'être this way, but whatever). So when it became clear we just weren't going to wait in line for the rest of the day, we drew from our bag of parent tricks and diverted attention. Luckily, there were at least two carousels within eyeshot from the base of the tower. If Sophie remembers nothing else about Paris, I at least hope she remembers any of the number of carousels she rode around town. We found at least four and rode most of them at least three times.

Parisian Bateau