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A kid-friendly trip to Paris

Published by Oana

Paris is one of those cities that everyone has to go to once in their lives. Known as the city of love, it’s an ideal destination for a romantic weekend getaway but it’s not always somewhere that people think of taking their kids. However, if you do have young children, there’s no reason to be putting off this beautiful French city and taking the kids with you. You just have to pick and choose what you do while you’re there to make sure it’s a trip that makes everyone happy.

The best time to visit
Paris is a great place to visit year-round. It’s not a city that slows down at any point. You might want to avoid the hottest months of the year as you don’t want the kids wilting as you take them sight-seeing. And another reason to avoid Paris in June and July next year is because of the huge influx of visitors who will be there for Euro 2016.
Equally the winter’s not an ideal time to go, as part of the fun of being in Paris is walking from one great monument or site to another. Travelling with kids, the October and May half-terms are ideal times to visit the French capital or during the Easter holidays.

What to do while you’re there
Of course, there’s one place you’re almost obliged to include if you’re taking little ones to Paris – and that’s Disneyland. It’s a rite of passage for most kids – and, logically, their parents – to go to Disney at least once. If you’re not really keen on the idea yourself, then Paris’s Disneyland allows you to make it an add-on rather than planning a whole trip around it. Only about 40 minutes from the centre of Paris by train, it’s really easy to incorporate a day at Disney in your trip. Thanks to the existence of the entertainment park, there are also plenty of family-friendly accommodation options on that side of Paris in suburbs such as Chessy or Magny-le-Hongre, where it’s equally easy to hop on the train in the other direction to go to the city centre.

Aside from Disney, there are plenty of other child-friendly places to visit in Paris. For children with a sense of adventure, the Paris Catacombs are a must. These underground burial chambers have been a tourist attraction for more than a hundred years.

For children interested in art and art history, we wholeheartedly recommend the Musee D’Orsee, which we visited a few years back and remember as extremely child-friendly(rare for any French public services, as we came to realise!) and absolutely fascinating:

No trip to Paris would be complete without going to the Eiffel Tower and it’s worth booking tickets to go all the way to the top. Booking online, you’ll avoid the worst of the queues, although you’ll still have to wait a while to get from the second level to the top.

The view is worth the wait though, as you can tell from the picture below:

We are planning on returning to Paris with Emma next summer, as last time we visited she was a little small for it and didn’t really enjoy the travelling about for long periods of time.

Have you visited Paris with children and what are your tips for us if we have?

On judgement

Published by Oana

We sat around the kitchen table, over a rushed bowl a soup and a quick chat.

I love and care for her deeply, even if we have only been friends for three quarters of the past year. I don’t know if the affinity is that of souls who have known the pain of loss or the similarity of our existences.

And she told me about her worries about how people perceive her.

And I heard myself say to her what I had said to many others before:

“Why do you care what others think of you?“

But then, perhaps because of my love for her, my soul found a way to enunciate it clearer than ever before.

It said:

“We are multifaceted beings, my dear, and what people usually judge us by is the one facet they know or need us to be. But you are more, much more than that.”

It was like a revelation, the thought so clearly formed and put into almost visual shape.

In the days that have passed, since we had that kitchen conversation, it made me realise that judgement and its spews are never to be taken as absolutes.

We always judge people by the one side of them we most often interact with.

I judged the Church and found it lacking in transparency and post-loss pastoral care. Full stop.

My outbursts never went down too well. People got ruffled and offended and defensive. They made assumptions, pulled back from the “straying sheep”, felt justified to take sides, to preach at me, to “pray” for me..etc…etc.

But what most failed to understand was that, at that moment in time, to me, as a bereaved parent, the need for genuineness and care were like water to a man lost in the desert. Essential for survival. Simple as that.

What people also failed to understand was that I wasn’t judging the Church on all its multifaceted aspects. I couldn’t simply because I lack the evidence and the knowledge to do so. I judged one aspect of the Church, the one I had need most of at that time and the lack of which caused me a lot of pain and feelings of utter isolation.

I am teaching my daughter the same thing, from a very early age and I will drum it into her until she gets it.

When she comes home from school, soul bruised by mean words or quarrels in the playground, I ask her the very same thing: “why is this so important to you, my love?“

I also tell her that even if friends’ opinions are important, they are never more important than knowing in ourselves that those words, those quarrels do not define the whole of us and do not make us who we are.

In this way, I am raising my girl to stand tall and stay strong in the knowledge that one judgement spoken over her does not make her bad.

I wish people would grasp this very empowering revelation as I recognise its potential to change our lives. Judgement, in spite of our terror if its outbursts, is natural and healthy, as it streams from an unfulfilled need, from discontentment, anger or pain. Judgement usually focuses on one aspect and not the whole of who we are. And judgement, as we have come to falsely dread it, can actually be accepted for what it is, an alarm signal of things that could be done better. Can we embrace this truth?

Clarks Children’s Winter Boots-A Review

Published by Oana

Autumn, as sweet and bright as this one has been so far, has taken reign over the land well and truly and we have all started to feel the need for cozy knits and warm boots, especially early in the morning and in the evening, as soon as the sun goes down.

If your children, just like my Emma, are in the annoying habit of growing out of their last year’s everythings, then you would soon (if you haven’t already) be looking for sturdy, reliable, reasonably priced and comfortable boots for them to wear.

Clarks were kind to approach us and offer Emma the choice of a pair of magnificently looking leather boots from their new autumn-winter collection.

We had a good look on the website (Emma has big feet and some of her choices simply weren’t available in her size) and settled on the Epsie Skye boots, which arrived promptly, within a few days of placing the order.

I had thought myself clever and did order a 12 1/2 F for her, since at her last measurement, she had been a 11 1/2 but to my surprise, when the boots arrived, she declared them too small so we had to go and change them in one of our local Clarks shops.

We went last Sunday, right after lunch, when the shops were only opening and we got a wonderful shop assistant who not only measured Emma’s feet (declaring them 13 1/2 G, no surprise she was complaining of the previous pair, poor mite!) but also exchanged our boots swiftly, with courtesy and understanding.

The boots have been everywhere ever since, and Emma has got a lot of compliments thanks to them. I love the fact that they are so versatile and can be dressed up, with a skirt and tights (as we intend to do tomorrow, for her neon day in school!) or down, with a pair of jeans and a jumper, like Emma prefers to.

But most importantly, Emma has declared them her favourite pair and describes the feeling of wearing them, “like walking on air, mummy!”

Disclaimer: we were sent the Espie Skye Boots for the purpose of this review. All opinions expressed in this article are truthful and entirely our own.

Parenting with Purpose – Book Review

Published by Oana

Who do you go to for parenting advice? If you are like me, mothers are almost always the first port of call, followed by well-meaning friends. Without meaning no harm to the two groups mentioned above, I had come to realise that more often than not, they advise, yes, out of love and care but without the knowledge or expertise required and can do more harm than good.

Back in 2012, when I was toying with the idea of starting my own little blog and I was the mother of a very headstrong toddler, who kept me on my toes and whose upbringing threw steep learning curves at me daily, I came across this amazing blog, called Sleeping Should Be Easy.

I loved Nina’s approachable style immediately and found great comfort in the fact that, despite being a busy mother of a toddler herself, with a full time job, she found the time to blog about her parenting experience with grace and would always respond to any comments or questions I would have left on her blog posts.

In many ways, Nina inspired me to start blogging and I did aspire to become an expert in raising well-balanced children, like she was.

Life never turns as you expect it to and a few years down the line, I found myself an expert in subjects like grief and loss but my connection to Nina never ceased, despite the loss we experienced as a family or the fact that she had had twins meanwhile and was, for a while, leading a very busy and stressful life.

So when the email came from Nina a few weeks back that she had written a book and that it was all ready to go out, I was more than happy to let my readers know about it, as I knew it would be an excellent tool for “beginner” parents and seasoned “veterans” alike, in relearning to reconnect with our children and raise them with the respect they deserve.

Dear parents, I am honoured to bring to your attention Parenting with Purpose and all the wealth of experience and knowledge that made Nina’s blog so popular over the years, condensed into a handy guide.

For the next 24 hours, the Kindle edition of the book is free, so why don’t you benefit from the generous offer and download it for future reference and as material to consult when the parenting waters get murky?

Disclaimer: we were sent Nina’s electronic book for the purpose of this review but the opinions expressed in this post are entirely our own.

An Extraordinary Saturday Out with McDonald’s!

Published by Oana

Last Saturday, we were the honoured guests of a very well organised and intimate blogger event organised by McDonald’s UK, as part of their current Happy Readers campaign.

McDonald’s Happy Readers campaign was created to put more books into the hands of families, with recent research from the National Literacy Trust showing that only half of children enjoy reading and almost one in seven don’t have a book of their own. Since the campaign launched, McDonald’s has fast become one of the UK’s biggest book distributors and have given away over 32.8m million books via their Happy Meals and online.

Young at Art, Northern Ireland’s leading arts provider for children and young people, were invited along for an “extraordinary” story telling session and they did marvelously in bringing to life excerpts from Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” to the utter delight of their young audience!

The choice of Matilda for the story telling session was not coincidental, as in a new inter-generational UK survey by McDonald’s, the book, first published in the UK in 1988, was revealed to be the most read book in Belfast, with 56% of book lovers having been enthralled by the story.

What did we think of the event?

We loved the special attention the children received from the moment we arrived: the warm welcome, the face painting and the interaction with the lovely (and very talented!) Young At Art actresses, all made possible by the intimate space and the lovely settings!

We were delighted to learn of the new Happy Studio app and its new Roald Dahl feature, which allows for some quite special sound effects while the eight specially created books, included in the Happy Meal at the moment, are being read :-)! There are also plenty of other activities the app provides for the smaller children, which we did try out while there, like puzzles and dot to dot activities.

We enjoyed a morning of fun, learned so much about the amazing work of the Happy Readers campaign and we left with a host of brilliant tips from the National Literacy Trust to make reading more fun at home and get our family to read even more together!

Do check my little reader in this video of the event:

Disclaimer: we were invited as bloggers to the event and were served a McDonald’s meal of our choice. The opinions expressed in this blog post are entirely our own.