A Still Heart; A Knowing Mind: Jardin d'Acclimation

This last Thursday our family took an outing to the Jardin d'Acclimation! This is a children's play park/farm/amusement park that is connected to the Bois de Boulogne, which is a great place for hiking and getting out of the city. Anyway, we went with on of the French mothers that I am getting to know in our neighborhood and her twin girls. I have some pictures of the park to show you, but before I do I must tell you the story of taking a double wide stroller into the metro!

I will call my friend "A" just so the phrase "my friend" doesn't get obnoxious. Anyway, A's twins are barely 2, so going to a place like the Jardin d'Acclimation can be quite the pain without a double stroller. A has a double wide stroller, and so she asked if Jonathan wouldn't mind if she brought it and then he could help her down the metro stairs with it. Anyone that has ever ridden the Paris metro (or any subway for that matter) knows that there are a lot of stairs. So, I took Micah in my wrap and had my other two kids hold my hands. Jonathan threw our small stroller on his back and helped A up and down the stairs with the stroller. It was heavy, but he didn't complain once. What a man! However, the stairs were the least of our problems with a stroller that wide on the metro. At the ticket turn stiles, there are usually gates to let strollers through, so we had no issues with those. The problem came getting out of the metro.

Picture this scene with me...In many metro exits there are doors that swing outward to let people exit, but only when there is enough weight on the pad in front of it. If there is not enough weight, they close (this keeps people from coming in from the outside without paying). However, these doors are only big enough for one person to walk through at a time (when we walk through with the kids, they are right in front of us). Therefore, when we arrived at our exit and found that these doors were what we had to exit through there was a problem. Both of her girls had fallen asleep 5 minutes earlier, so they tried squeezing it through, but simply could not. Then, A took one of her girls out and they folded up one part of the stroller. However, it still did not quite fit through; but a nice man saw our problem. While he pushed and held the door open as far as it would go, Jonathan squeezed the stroller through the door. The scene was quite commical to watch, because the man had to hold it open until the entire stroller was through, so he was stratling the stroller at one point. Meanwhile, many other people were exiting the station and looking at us like we were crazy. Thankfully, there were not as many stairs on the way home and no exit doors like those. But the double stroller did come in quite handy. :)

Here are some pictures from the park. The kids had a great time, and the weather was great!

Sorry the pictures aren't very good. We had our little camera with us.

Riding the train to get to the park.