Every year it never fails in the fact that May in Paris is probably the best of the 12 months in the year. In the span of 2 weeks you get 4 holidays. This year 2 of them fell on a Thursday. Which means you have the option of coming into work on Friday with that huge hangover bouncing in your head. Or you take a bridge day "Le Pont". I did neither of those. Instead I worked through the mind numbing heat clearing up workload and getting ready for the weekend.
Also the sun is setting progressively later. Which makes it almost impossible to get the little guy to sleep at any decent hour. Before it was 8h00, 8h30, now we are lucky if he's asleep by ten since the sun won't go down before 9.
But all this great weather means it would be neglectful for me not to take my son to the park. Which I've done almost daily this month. I could enjoy the park more but I loathe the older kids. My son is just learning to walk. And I could lie and say he's great at it, but he does that slightly goofy baby walk parents will etch in their memory and save on a dvd for special occasions. Well that special walk he does makes him prone to stumble. I could give him wrist guards since his palms are turning into grated cheese. But man has been walking for millions of years and this is just a thing he's going to have to learn. So the big kids at the park generally stick to their side (big swings, jungle gym, table tennis, etc) until one of them gets the big idea to go to the sandbox. And like an invading hoard they all descend on it with the swiftness. A few of them assume they can take whatever shovel or bucket from the little tikes in their. Others will ask the parents. They prefer to ask me, because I look at them like I have a laser trained on them and will fire at the thought of someone jackin' juniors' toys. Usually their is a lot of sand being thrown and an occasional bucket of water.
On quite a few outings I've run across the parents smoking in the sandbox. I'm normally nonchalant about smoking and not as militant as some others about smoking. But I do think it's rude to smoke in close proximity to kids. I chastised one woman that was smoking in the box right next to my son. My colleagues says their is nothing wrong with that (her smoking). But I reminded them that she has the entire park and the box is infinitesimally small compared to the rest of the park. If they have to light up they can go anywhere else. Which they did to the other end of the box.
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