Speed. It's relative.

One thing I have learned about life with little children - it's going to be slow. Children just don't move quickly. Of course, there are times I am amazed at how quickly they can do some things, like empty an entire load of just folded laundry from the laundry basket, or cover every square inch of the living room carpet with toys. But, generally speaking, I wouldn't describe my girls as 'speedy'.

This is an especially big reality for me because we walk almost everywhere we go. It's me and the girls out on the town, and our main mode of transport is the stroller. As I like to say, we don't sneak up on people!

A few days ago the zipper to Julianna's jacket broke as we were heading outside to run some errands. I put all my domestic skills to work and immediately declared "no problem honey, we'll drop it off at the tailor's and she can fix it for you". I do not own a sewing machine and would not know how to use one even if I did.... unlike some of my more talented friends! One problem with my lack of sewing skills is no motivation - we have lots of local tailors, who will make or fix just about anything, for very low prices.

So, Julianna wears her unzipped jacket and we head out to the local 'grocery' store, which is actually more like a glorified convenience mart. The girls LOVE to shop there - and it is a riot to watch assuming you have the patience to spend a half hour following them around the shelves. Under my careful guidance, after about 30 minutes of shopping, they each ended up with a bag of banana chips. We also dropped Julianna's jacket at the tailor, and she promised to have it ready the following day, for the bargain basement price of 1 usd (which included her labor and the replacement zipper - now do you see why I haven't learned how to sew??) The entire outing took the better part of our morning.

Today I decided it was time to return to the tailor and get that jacket. On my own, with no little girls in tow, I can make it from our apartment door to the tailor and back in under 20 minutes. Today, 20 minutes after the girls and I left our apartment door, we were just leaving the main gate of our apartment complex. We did finally make it all the way to the tailor's, but she wasn't even open - after all that walking and stopping and picking up leaves and asking questions and .... well, whatever it is that the two girls are doing when they aren't putting one foot in front of the other in a quick and orderly fashion.

One hour and 15 minutes after we left the apartment, we were finally back at the entrance to our stairwell. And we didn't even have the jacket! But we had a lot of fun :) Maybe we'll try again tomorrow!