Today was 80% shuffling from one place to another. Millie and I hung out this morning and packed while Nick went to get his hair cut. At noon we set off. I took this selfie of all 4 of us (Judy is real) as we were waiting for our first of the four trains we took today.

Everything went smoothly, with an average layer of transportation stress: sardinelike underground trains, making sure our bags were all accounted for, child refusing to wear her backpack, etc.

At the station Millie and I browsed the magazine shop and she laid eyes on a Frozen-themed activity book that came with a “free phone” ie. a piece of plastic made to look like a iPhone, but all the app icons are frozen characters. This is exactly the type of thing that I would have seen and thought “I would never let my child get that” before having a child, but here we are. The pretend phone entertained her all day. She pretended to take calls, she pretended to FaceTime with Judy, and she even stared at the non-interactive sticker as if she was in a TikTok rabbit hole. Grim. But £3 well spent for the joy it brought her.

One funny thing I noticed all over London is people with Canadian flags all over their luggage. I always wonder if they are Canadians trying not to be mistaken for Americans, or Americans trying to go undercover as Canadians. It is definitely a sign of the times.

After a couple of hours on the train, we arrived. We metro’d to our Airbnb and got all checked in. We saw a park so despite Millie’s extreme tiredness we had to stop to play before getting dinner.

Nick and I marveled at how fashionable everyone was. Even the kids are chic. The stereotype is very accurate.

We walked to a bistro and had a delicious meal and some of that warm friendly service the French are known for. Millie was beyond tired and had a freakout that her pamplemousse juice was too bitter (the horror!!). It was one of those meals where we needed to physically pick her up and walk her away from the other patrons to calm her down and preserve the peace for those around us. She perked up for the second half of the meal.

I had to laugh when we got home and she said “oh that dinner was so gooooood!” – she cried for half of it and ate one bite of salmon, one sweet potato fry, and one slice of baguette.

Ultimately, she’s just tired and needs to sleep more, which is tough when the sun goes down at 10pm and comes up at 5am, and nowhere we’re staying has blackout shades. We’ve agreed that if tomorrow is another early morning wake up, we’ll have a very early night and attempt a hard reset.