Father and son excursion

Today I went to downtown Paris with my 3 1/2 year old son. I needed to go to the huge police station at "Cité" to get my newest one year residence card stamped in my passport. This is just a stone's throw from the Notre Dame Cathedral, as well as very close to the "Paris Plage" (Paris beach) activities. So I brought J.D. with me with the promise that he would get to play in the cool, sand covered playland with the fun pirate ship.

One of my earliest memories is of going to Grand Bible Christian Bookstore in Detroit with my dad. I would even get to sit in the front seat, something illegal for young kids nowadays with the car seat laws. Being Parisiens, J.D. and I took a bus and 2 métro (underground or subway) lines to get there. He's not used to the métro, so he sat very close to me.

After my dad did his business in the bookstore, we would go to the Red Barn restaurant next door and share an order of french fries (actually, they should be called "Belgian fries"). After I got my visa stamped in today, I bought a croissant for J.D., which he ate while crossing a bridge over the Seine River.

We eventually caught another bus that dropped us off right by the play area. The weather was beautiful, so there were at least twice as many kids at the 4:30-5:30 p.m. play time as there were last Saturday. Despite the crowd in the large sandbox, it was fun to be there together.

After the bell rang, we shared a chocolate and vanilla cone. I could have bought nearly 5 boxes of ice cream for what I paid for this double cone. However, it is one of those create a memory times that merits paying an exhorbitant price. Hopefully, J.D. will eventually have as good of memories of the croissants, ice cream cones, and play areas shared together with me as I have of my times with my dad as a young child.

J.D. starts school in a month. He'll be in a French school called a "jardin d'enfants." We looked at this school, as well as the local "école maternelle" just 70 metres from our apartment. We both felt that he would have the best chance of starting out well in this "jardin d'enfant," as classes are smaller and the families in the school become tightknit.

His English is taking off now. In some ways, we wish that he would be in an English-speaking school. It will be a shock to start out school immersed in French, a language that he doesn't hardly know. I expect that the first month especially will be tough, so I want to be there as much as I can to help with this adaptation. I'm praying a lot about this initial experience in school for J.D.