Let’s Hold Hands

– “Penguïni wants to give you a high-five!”

My 4 year-old pulled up a chair next to me. I was trying to quietly finish my cold coffee after sending the older two kids off to school.

He climbed onto the chair with Penguïni, a well-nourished 3 ft. tall emperor penguïn stuffy.

Then he asked for my hand and we just sat there holding hands for a few minutes.

I was immediately reminded of our recent trip (we’ve been back for about a week, haha). I held his and his brothers’ hands so much during this trip! Sometimes I grabbed them to cross a street, sometimes their hands found me on their own and just hung on for the walk.

Apparently we don’t do that a lot here at home. We rarely walk far, and when we do, it’s a hike and kids are playing and bouncing, which is great. At a store parking lot of course, for safety. Almost all the rest of the ‘travel’ time we are in the car. We could talk but it’s difficult with the 3 of them yelling from the back seat while you are trying to drive. It’s not the 1:1 experience you get while walking somewhere and holding hands. I’m noting this as is another benefit of living in a walkable environment – one of the reasons we want to move to Spain.

Yes, this could probably be somewhat solved without moving across the Atlantic, but it’s only one of the reasons. There are many more.