More planning

We've booked the airline tickets and our various accommodations, set an itinerary, booked rail tickets, emailed family, made lists, made other lists, visited the passport office, ordered activity books for the kids, consulted teachers, alerted our employers, and debated back packs vs luggage. And there's still a lot to do: shop for (wrinkle resistant) summer clothes for the kids and myself, get Euros, book museum tickets, and finally buy a cell phone are the big ones.

We've travelled abroad with Maïa when she was a baby, and that certainly involved more gear (pack-n-play, diapers, food, bottles, wipes, tons of tiny clothes, etc etc), but it feels like there's more to do now. I always say that children are portable, and they are, but there's a lot of planning involved.

Keeping them entertained is key to both their enjoyment and our sanity. They'll be kept plenty busy visiting various cities. It's the travel time that'll get them. So we have story books featuring Florence and Rome, a couple of Roald Dahl books to read to them, sticker books, an ipod, a sketch/scrap book, colouring pencils, they're favourite friends, and a tiny tent for said friends (which kept them incredibly entertained in BC, where we bought it).

School work needs to be kept up, too. Maïa's teacher has assigned one math problem per school day, daily reading en français, and practicing calligraphy. Solanne has no assigned homework, but we'll have both kids do lots of drawing and journaling about their travels.

And we've managed to find lots of fun stuff for the kids to do in each of the cities. Treasure Hunt Florence will keep us busy, finding famous paintings, sketching the David, talking about how we feel about the paintings, counting fountains and towers, and finding hidden treasures. We haven't found a similar guide to Rome (which seems astonishing), but we have quite a few surprises in store for the girls there. They already recognise the Colosseum and the Spanish Steps, and we've been talking about ancient Rome, so I think they'll enjoy seeing the sights there.

The rest of our travels will be in smaller centres, including Cinque Terre by the seaside, and Aosta in the Alps. And, of course, visiting family, where they'll have a chance to practice their Italian–which currently consists of about a dozen words. That was the extent of my Italian when I was five, and I came back having forgotten most of my French and English, so I know they'll pick up enough to get by.

As for the backpack vs luggage debate, backpacks won, hands down. We'll be on and off enough trains that it makes more sense to strap something to our backs than try to roll luggage on endless cobblestone, while trying to hold small hands. The down side, of course, is the restricted space. So we're carefully planning our wardrobes, which is a challenge when you're going from the Mediterranean to an elevation of over 2000 feet. I'm not quite sure how we'll pack for that... stay tuned.