I've started coming up with our list of what to bring. I keep debating on the stroller. We are planning on bringing the Bob jogging stroller, I'm just not sure how much we will use it with Callie actually in it. She has been all about being held so she can see people and what is going on. I'm guessing we will be using the Moby and the Ergo more than the Bob. The concerns with the Bob are storage when we are out and about, say at a cafe or something. The bob doesn't lock when it is folded up, so it may be tricky to keep it out of the way in small places. It also will most likely be problematic on the metro. But in my reearch, the buses reserve spots just for strollers so we may go that route instead.
On the upside, I won't ever have to manage all of this on my own. Grandma Tere is coming with us and I am so glad we will have her with us! It will be great to not be on our own when Bill is at his meetings. And I can't wait to share Paris with her! It was my favorite city on our honeymoon. I can't wait to go back to Notre Dame and Versailles.
The biggest hurdle is finding a place to stay. We obviously didn't have a whole lot of time to reserve accommodations ahead of time. And honestly, it is tough for me to research while I am at home with Callie. She doesn't give me a whole lot of time on tripadvisor, so we decided to get the professionals involved. We decided to go with our travel agents at Willow Glen Travel. They planned our honeymoon for us and it was in a word: unforgettable. We are hoping to stay in an apartment so we will be able to spread out a bit, not worry too much about a crying baby disturbing people and have access to a washer and dryer as well as a kitchen and a place to store pumped milk. So hopefully we will have a place to stay in the next day or so with any luck.
It felt so good to pass this one off so I could concentrate on other things like passports! Mine is all set from my trip to the UK last year. So today I spent most of the day getting Callie's documents in order. I went and got her birth certificate, filled in her passport application and even managed to snap a picture that should work! The photos are the tricky part! She has to have a white background (yet another use for our cloth diapers!), eyes open, alert, not crying, nothing in her mouth, around her face, supporting her head, etc. Clearly, someone who had never spent much time around infants came up with these rules! The really crazy part? Its good for 5 years!
So I laid her on the changing table with a cloth diaper under her head and it turned out pretty well!
The other thing I've been looking into is attitudes towards breastfeeding in Paris. From what I've been able to ascertain, for the most part, France has a bottlefeeding culture and it is pretty unusual to breastfeed past 6 months there. Its been a little tough to get a straight answer on the sights I've been reseraching because it always turns into a fight: "Why would you want to expose your breasts like that anyway? Peeing is natural too, but I wouldn't do it public." Which for the record is the stupidest argument against breastfeeding in public. But my absolute favorite was "I am from France and I refuse to breastfeed. I am not a cow." I almost died laughing.
The same de-evoling happened when I was trying to decide whether or not to bring the stroller or just bring baby carriers. I found responses like this one: "Strollers are such a nuisance. Why would you bring your baby on vacation anyway. Why don't you just come and say that you don't want to be away from them rather than trying to convince us that you hope to give them a cultural experience."
So ya, fun stuff out there! That's where we are at for the moment. More to come soon I imagine!
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