Growing kids update

It's been a while since I write an update about the kids. Time flies when you are busy... And we have been busy over the last couple of months. In September, we had a fun trip to Napa for a wedding. We had fun at Train Town and were able to get great shots of Charlotte at her best.
She is really becoming a flirty little girl with a oh-so cute smile! Charming!

Shortly after that, we had a great camping trip to Pinnacles. Sadly, with no photo.

Then, my inlaws came to town for a visit, which kept us very busy. At the end of their visit, which coincided with the first rainy weekend of the season, we went to Palm Springs, and enjoyed another few days of hot weather. The kids had so much fun playing in the pool!

So, what's up with the kids after all of this?
First, one key thing is that traveling is getting easier and easier. Daniel can sit in the car for a long time without getting bored. Charlotte is starting to understand her environment better and she loved discovering new things. It doesn't hurt that she loves water and animals, 2 things we were able to find in our trips.
On the way back from Palm Springs, our plane had a 2-hour delay, which could have been a disaster a few months ago. It was hard (because it was in the middle of nap time), but both kids did OK waiting in this tiny airport, and finding activities out of nothing. Progress! Daniel is also becoming a lot more mature, understanding the rules and going along with changes required by travel. It's really a lot of fun discovering new places with him now.

On a different note, Daniel's trilingualism is developing, slowly but surely. My inlaws' most recent visit provided a boost in German language, which is now established as the home language. That said, French is making a come back. A few weeks ago, I was talking to my parents on the phone and Daniel got involved, telling them about his day in French, with absolutely no prompting from me. He also sometimes starts talking to me in French for a few sentences. Still very little, but more than ever.
In terms of other progress, Daniel is starting to read/guess easy words. He really understands the concept of putting sounds together. It should only be a matter of practice from now on.

As for Charlotte, she is still not saying much even at 18 months. But she understands a lot and expresses herself very well through signs. She definitely knows what she wants. In a lot of cases, she loves sitting down with us to read books. So, her routine is to get a book from her room, show us (hmmm order us) to sit in the sofa, read the book in a few minutes and repeat. This is fun, such a great way to spend time together. Charlotte seems to love doing art projects at school and always takes the opportunity when Daniel wants to draw or paint to do the same. In general, she loves following what he does.
While she is so cute most of the time, her tantrums are also pretty extreme: throwing herself on the floor, hitting her head. She doesn't do things half way! This happens every time she doesn't get what she wants, which is quite frequent. Good I know that by the time she is Daniel's age maturity should have kicked in. Unfortunately, by then, the cuteness will probably have faded as well...

I think these are the updates for this month. I hope I will have a opportunity to write more updates soon. Maybe when Charlotte has a break through in language?

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Parents: Beware of Avis... They don't care about the safety of your kids

I had the most frustrating and scary experience with Avis tonight. We are preparing to take a trip to South California at the end of next week, where we will have our 2 young kids (3.5 and 1.5 year olds) with us. My in-laws will be coming with us as well, they were the ones who made the reservation for a car with 2 child safety seats, from Germany. Through the process, someone had suggested that it might be helpful to confirm that the car seats were really going to be available when we come to pick up our car. I thought it seemed a little but unnecessary since the reservation clearly stated that they had reserved - and paid for - 2 car seats. But to appease everyone before the trip, I went ahead and called Avis.

OMG - What a scary experience. I talked to 3 people, including the shift manager (Andrew Diaz) and got told that Avis can not guarantee that we will have car seats when we come pick up the car. Even though, it's written in our contract, they might not be able to fulfill their obligations at the end! Apparently their systems can take the reservation, but they don't sync up with their car seat inventory. And, these 3 agents were able to tell this to me in a straight voice, without blinking!? There are so many wrong things with this.
1. How hard is it to build a system that tracks car seat inventory? They have to know how many cars they can offer. Can't they do the same for car seats?
2. More concerning, they don't seem to care about breaching a contract that they let customers get into!
3. And most concerning, they don't care about the implications of not having car seats available for parents who need them to drive away from the airport. When I asked Andrew if I might have to drive my kids without car seats if Avis can't provide them, he couldn't deny that possible scenario. WOW! I see a huge legal liability in Avis' future if this policy gets exposed.

Really, Avis, is this what you stand for? Not caring for kids or for the law?
Sadly, it seems that it's not the first time that customers have horrible experiences with Avis and their ignorance of car seat safety rules
Is someone in their Legal department aware of this?

Sadly, we can't wait for the pending lawsuit to happen. I think we will probably just cancel our reservation (since Avis isn't able to fulfill their side of the contract, this shouldn't be too hard anyways).
Does someone know any good rental car agency that is reliable with car seats?


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A redo of Pinnacles, with camping

This weekend, we tried camping with our kids (3.5 years old and 16 months old) for the first time. Daniel had been asking about camping for a while, he is curious about everything that sounds adventurous! Since we ourselves love outdoors, we wanted him to be able to experience the joys of camping sooner rather than later. We had talked about it for a few months already, but decided to wait for the end of the summer for 2 reasons: the weather wouldn't be too hot and Charlotte had a better chance to enjoy the trip.

It turned out it was a good decision. We went to Pinnacle National Monument, where we had visited the Bear Gulch Cave a few years ago. For our first test, we only spent 24 hours there, arriving in the afternoon and leaving on the next day. It was perfect. It allowed us to get things done at home before and after our trip, which was needed after a busy week. And the 24 hours were just what the kids needed to get a sense of the adventure without getting fussy. For Charlotte, it was clear that it was worth waiting a few more months. She thoroughly enjoyed the new experience in the nature, but she also showed signed that it was borderline too overwhelming, especially on the 2nd day.

As we arrived to the campground, it was still very hot and we could enjoy the pool before going back to our campsite where the kids loved playing with the many sticks available around us. We saw birds, turkeys and a deer in front of us, right in the campground! On the next day, we went back to Bear Gulch Cave, where Daniel the explorer led the way. It was a lot of fun to see him enjoy the adventure. And good to see he could hike the entire trail this time. Sadly, we were so busy enjoying our trip that we didn't take any photo.

Overall, it was a great first test for camping. We are thinking we will do this again more often now that the kids are older. Daniel is already asking to spend 5 nights in a row camping! We'll see.
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Hotel Klopp - CenterHotels: Avoid at any cost

On our way back from our wonderful Greenland trip, we had to spend a short (aka 5 hour) night in Reykjavik. I had booked the Hotel Klopp from CenterHotel in advance and it turned out to be the biggest disappointment in the entire trip.
The management is incompetent and irresponsible. We were expecting to arrive late at the hotel due to our flight schedule. I had informed over email that we would be late, but this wouldn't be a no show. We needed the room to sleep. even for just a couple of hours, before heading to our next flight. I had received a response that it would be no problem and the reception would be open 24/7. We arrived, with 2 sleepy kids and tired adults and the front desk person told us that there was no room for us! They had "upgraded" us to another hotel of their chain, and we had to take another taxi to get to the other hotel. This, in the middle of the night, during Gay Pride! It took us 20 minutes to even get a hold of a taxi, and by then we were so irritated. They had ripped us of 10% of the sleep we would be able to get that night, the kids were so unhappy, and the front-desk manager just kept saying there was nothing he could do. We ended up asking them to book us into a different hotel, where the location would be more convenient (since we had to find another room anyways). I am still trying to negotiate to get a partial refund for this awful customer service, but without success so far. Not a good track record.
I hope this blog article can be useful to anyone who is looking to book a hotel in Reykjavik. Please avoid Centerhotels in Reykjavik if you want to have a good stay.
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Traveling with kids in Greenland

We recently traveled to Greenland for a week with our 3.5 year-old son and our 15-month daughter, for a variety of reasons. We were obviously not necessarily trying to optimize for a kid-friendly destination, and one of my concerns was how the kids would react on a trip with 3 destinations in a short week, plane, helicopter, boat, jeep rides, etc... and a limited amount of entertainment for them.

The good news is that the logistics was much easier than expected, with high quality hotels and restaurants, punctual flights, etc... So we didn't have any issue to deal with on this front. We also got much better weather than expected, which helped with everyone's well-being. That said, emotionally, this trip could have been - and to be fair was at times- overwhelming for the kids. But overall, the kids did really great and I am sure they grew and learned a lot during that time. Charlotte, 15 months, got completely familiarized with the word/concept of "airplane" after flying in 10 of them in a 2-week period. Talk about learning by experience! And the bonus benefit was that the time difference between Greenland and California was only 5 hours, which helped us readjust to our timing after only 2 days. Much better than dealing with jetlag in Europe.

Daniel, our 3.5 year-old, was required to step up to the task. His baby sister was somewhat uncomfortable with the new environment, and she needed a lot of our attention. She had the benefit of being carried in the baby backpack or in our arms most of the tour, though. So, she had it easy, being able to stay close to us and to sleep whenever she needed. Daniel had to act as a big boy. He had to be self-reliant in a lot of situations and he had to walk everywhere with us, whether it was long and strenuous or right during his nap time. He was a real trooper. He barely complained a few times that he wanted to get more of my attention (this was fair). We never had any issue with him not being up for the physical challenges, and this was a big relief. To these days, he still reminds us proudly how he climbed all the way to the glacier by himself. And he thoroughly enjoyed all the new experiences, whether it was the helicopter ride or seeing the iceberg collapse from the boat.
Explorer at the top of the world

Made it to the top!

Evenings were sometimes a little bit tough with him, probably due to exhaustion, the irregular schedule and the fact that our hotel room, which comfortable and clean, didn't have much to offer to an active kid. Also, given that the sun never set down, Daniel was often confused about what time it was (he had to ask for every meal what type of meal it was to reassure himself) and he often questioned whether it was really time to sleep. We ended up having to deal with tantrums and time-outs a lot more than we usually have to at home, which was so disappointing since he was doing so awesome during the day. At our last destination, Ilulissat, we ended up finding a playground where we tried to go every day, so that the kids could enjoy some unstructured, kid-friendly activities.

Charlotte had obviously a different take on our trip. I think for her the main learning was dealing with new surroundings and a variety of experiences she was not prepared for. The first trip in a helicopter was definitely not her favorite, but by the time we flew back, she seemed to have already learned how to cope with it better. Overall, despite being very clingy, she seemed happy overall. She still tried to do her silly jokes at dinner table like she does at home, and she enjoyed the playground. She also learned a lot of new concepts from seeing new objects and hearing new sounds she hadn't been exposed to before. So, I hope that, despite the difficulties in adapting, she got some positive experiences out of this trip. At least, we have great photos from her to remember it!
First helicopter flight


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