8. Learn Playground Etiquette

I lived in New York for ten years, but if you asked me to name the location of a playground, I couldn't tell you. They were invisible to me. But now in Paris, I know the location of every playground, park, carousel, and puppet theater in most neighborhoods.

For the past 3 years, I've spent countless hours in playgrounds, trying to tire my toddler out. In Paris, you don't need to have kids to hang out around playgrounds. People smoke, argue, and eat lunch in front of the monkey bars. I'm always aware of these people's presence because all the angry mommy Facebook groups have an ongoing vendetta about this.

Then there's the nanny surveillance. On these same groups, there will be daily posts reporting a woman seen pulling a kid's arm a little too roughly or another alleged nanny seen playing Candy Crush while a baby fell down a sinkhole. As someone who is frequently mistaken for being my kids' nanny, I fear one day I'll be the subject of one of these posts when I finally snap after hearing the opening notes of Cocomelon one too many times.