Carrefour, Climbing

I woke up this morning to see a light rain soaking the street. So much for my plan to take Zoe out on bikes! Instead, I started systematically looking at the webcams of all the local ski resorts, in the hopes of taking Zoe up there for her first ski lesson. Unfortunately, it was raining everywhere, so we settled instead upon going to the climbing gym. After a hasty shower and SMS rendezvous with Simon and Vanessa, Zoe and I were off! Ten minutes later, we were back at the apartment, and I was running upstairs to get all the things that I had managed to forget the first time.

Once at the gym, I had to physically hold Zoe in place to prevent her from free soloing the climbs. We eventually got both of our harnesses on though, and she absolutely CRUISED all the climbs! I was so proud of her! Since I have been fully addicted to climbing every since I touched my first hold, and my enthusiasm for it has not diminished at all over the years, I have of course been hoping that Zoe might share some of this enthusiasm. I am, however, very conscious of the fact that children frequently have no interest in the activities of their parents, so I am trying to be careful not to force this upon her. I will be very happy if she likes it, but I absolutely will not be one of those dads that drags their kids into the gym and tries to scream them up the walls. As it happens, there was one of those dads right next to us, who was yelling at his daughter to keep trying, and she ended up bursting into tears. He was yelling so loud that at one point Zoe though he was talking to HER, and looked a bit frightened. I guess I should have said something, but I didn't really want to get myself (and Zoe) into a situation. Soon after Wonderdad left, Simon and Vanessa showed up, and more climbing, running around and somersaults ensued. EV is actually very well set up for kids. I think this might become a common rainy day activity!


Next, it was shopping time. Shopping turned out to be a bit of a disaster. I forgot to bring bags, and then realized that I did not have our fidelity card. No fidelity card means no in-cart barcode scanning, which is the main reason why Zoe likes to go shopping. I bought her some bracelets to compensate. Then I got on line, and had it close after I had been waiting for five minutes. Yes, in Carrefour, when the checker decides to close, everyone after then next in line gets ejected. It's an efficient system! Next, we went to the little kid rides, where a guy actually ran in front of us to make sure he got his token first! In the end, Zoe got on her favorite ride though, so all was well.


We cooked broccoli tomato pasta together for dinner. Zoe really likes cookling!