4/22/2005

Touring with two year olds--Can't recommend it

Picture a beautiful, serene, manicured garden next to a quiet river in a restricted area of Cambridge University. We were allowed into this area because we were accompanied by Charlie who is a Fellow (and a jolly, good fellow) at Clare college (within Cambridge). Imagine yourself strolling down this beautiful peaceful area where even the ducks are quiet, they are British after all. And suddenly your two year old boy crashes the scene. Well, it wasn't sudden because we decided to let the kids out of their strollers (since strollers are sort of frowned upon in this particular area) but Ethan was intoxicated by his new-found freedom and took off at a sprint, laughing, as I gave chase.

Now, it hardly seems appropriate to raise your voice in such a place, or to run but I ended up doing both. The view was beautiful but I really wasn't appreciating it at that point. I finally corralled him and tried to punish him quietly but he did pretty well the rest of the time. Lexie was really quite good and Arthur never made a sound.

We explored some of the college area, saw where Charlie works and took lots of pictures. Overall the kids did really well for the amount of time we were out but exploration was surely limited. Another perfect weather day.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, yes... the fellow gardens. That was one of my favorite spots in our speedy Britain tour last spring. And I remember the feistiness about "pushchairs" (or whatever they call strollers over there). Some old gardener dude was getting on our case. I think he was also skeptical that my dad, TJ and I were Fellows ("are we not FELLOWEY enough for the FELLOW club?"). We pretended not to understand British and ran away from him. So I can understand the challenge of Ethan vs. the inner sanctum.

I'm so glad you guys are there and having such a fabulous time! Keep it up!

~Melissa