The World Turned Upside-Down

My parents brought Hannah and me coordinating bonnets from Colonial Williamsburg when we were little. So it seemed somehow full circle or something for us to visit with our own kids, especially since Eloise gave Jane a little girl’s bonnet for Christmas this year.

Here’s how to do Colonial Williamsburg with tiny kids and babies: get there as early as possible. Get tickets and go on a carriage ride. Have lunch in a tavern. Take a selfie in the stocks (Hannah). Go home.

We generally followed this plan, except we tried to walk past the legislature building on the way out. DO NOT PASS GO. JUST GO HOME. We would have been perfect without that extra detour!

The carriage ride is the best way to see Williamsburg within your abilities with tots. Eloise dropped her paci out the window. Jane’s favorite part of the carriage ride was watching the horse poop. I left the cooler in the car and all the kids were hungry and crying by the end of our 15 minute ride, but we were prepared for that. To lunch! To lunch immediately!

There, all the adults had local Williamsburg beer, and consequently that was our most cheerful and favorite part of the day. The kids were all hungry and stuffed their faces with overpriced Thomas Jefferson mac n cheese while the music man serenaded our table with music from the Colonial Williamsburg album we know so well from childhood (the World Turned Upside-Down). The kids were very interested and not so sure about him.

I don’t know what Isaac and Ezekiel thought of Colonial Williamsburg because they only ever talked to each other. Toward the end of their long weekend with us, Hannah remarked, “I feel like I haven’t seen Ezekiel at all since we got here.” “I was thinking the same thing!” I said. The boys were inseparable: playing diggers in the garden or trains in the attic, hiding from their sisters, or grunting at each other at the table. I love it! Eloise and Jane are…growing into their relationship. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, women only call each other sisters when they have called each other a lot of other things first! So they’re mostly there.