New Shoes for Avery

Today I ventured into no-man's land: shopping in kids' clothing and book stores with three children. It was a very succesful experience. Here's how it went: Avery needed new shoes so I packed play-doh, crayons and paper, and W's favorite magazine and walked down the street with all three kids in the stroller to D'un mome a l'autre, "From One Kid to the Other," a kids resale place. I told the kids that I had suckers for kids who stayed in the stroller the whole time. I lifted the stroller up the huge step into the store--we took up half of the open space with our mobile home, as I like to call it--and saw the cute shoes you can see Avery wearing and holding in this picture. A few minutes and 6 euros later--a fabulous price for kids shoes here or anywhere--we were off to a bookstore/toyshop by a nearby park. For Abigail's birthday, I wanted to get her some French children's books, and this store looked promising. We walked the short distance and went in the store, no step this time, and the kids stayed happily in the stroller sucking their suckers--thank you G-ma Lindy!--while I perused the large assortment of books and then coveted all the cute toys, too. My French isn't good enough to understand the entire book of any book I looked at, so we played at the park until Andy met us there after work and we went back to the store together. This time it had begun to rain, and the store was busier, so I left the stroller outside and took the kids in without it. We did okay, but I was glad to go. Luckily, it had stopped raining.
Now the kids are asleep and Andy is working. I just walked up to Sacre-Coeur and back; there was a light rain, the lights were reflecting in the streets, people were eating dinner in their apartments, the windows were open, couples were snuggling under umbrellas..it was picturesque. I saw the Eiffel Tower lit up for the first time. Sacre-Coeur, too. Paris is so beautiful at night.