Oh France

On Wednesday I was in a fight with France.  To be more specific, it really seemed the French people had decided they were in a fight with me.  First, at the park, I was lectured by some grandfather after Baby Oil took a tiny fall - when the only reason he fell at all was because the grandkid of said grandfather was in the way of me reaching my own kid (and also because Baby Oil thinks he can walk down steps without help).  He was fine, by the way, no blood or anything.  Take that, grandpa. 

Then, I received 360 degrees of dirty looks from all the French moms at the aquarium that afternoon when Baby Oil took a tiny fall (he had not learned his lesson from the morning, and again tried to go down steps without me).  Yeah, so my kid was screaming his lungs out for 30 seconds.  It's an aquarium, Frenchies.  Everyone there is a kid. Or a parent (and occasional nanny). Sometimes they yell (the kids, primarily). Thanks for the support, Parisian moms. I'll be sure to have your back when your kid decides he won't eat Roquefort, or whatever it is that French kids do to rebel.

The dirty looks continued on the bus home from the aquarium.  Baby Oil decided to exert one of his new toddler tricks, yelling for no reason.  And the kid is loud (to be fair, he comes by this honestly.  If you've met me, you know this is true).  And if you give him a pacifier when he's already really pissed off, he likes to chuck the pacifier as hard and far as possible.  Apparently nobody on the bus had ever experienced this before.  I was not winning any awards for super-cool-American-in-Paris-mom, even if I was wearing a scarf. 

Our final set of springtime visitors arrived today.  She's currently pregnant with their first, and when she stopped into a fromagerie and asked which cheeses were appropriate for pregnant women, the confused cheese guy looked at her and said, "All of them?"  Oh France, you can be so cruel, then you turn around and become loveable again.