Hausaufgaben

For the last several days, Alex has been coming home, saying he had a really good day at school.  Sometimes even he might even go so far as to call the day "great." He usually doesn't elaborate, wanting to get down to the important business of lunch, but just seeing him come home from school with a smile I find so reassuring.

Ella burst through the door with a huge grin, too, begging me to be allowed to go play at her friend Ella's (who Dennis and I have taken to calling nochElla) house.  Well, Ella, you have school after lunch.  But no, she told me triumphantly. I don't have school today! It was canceled in the afternoon!  I don't know why, but it was canceled!

And so here's a dilemma: what do you do when you haven't heard a peep about afternoon school being canceled, and you don't have a phone number for a central office. But your daughter insists it's true, because nochElla told her so. I decided to proceed as normal, but to escort her back to school after lunch. But then nochElla and her brother road up on their scooters, saying they were sorry, their mom said Ella couldn't come over yet because they had to go shopping. But they assured me that Ella's class had school canceled in the afternoon because the teacher had to go to a funeral.

Imagine how complicated it would be to be a working mother in Switzerland (without a Hausmann, that is).  It must be hard enough trying to find accommodations for children who come home for an hour and a half, midday, for lunch, but then to have school without a robust system for substitute teachers...my.

But, as it was, Ella ended up working hard until about 3:00, anyway, because, as usual, she had a pile of homework.  In case you're interested in what a homework load for my second grader looks like, here's what was in her backpack today:

• A math worksheet, with about fifty multiplication problems.
• A poster to complete on "What we need to live." She had to erase everything she'd done and re-do it in German.  Ella's list of things essential to life included, beyond food, water, and shelter, also creativity, imagination, love, and brothers. 
• Spelling corrections for two written assignments.
• Recopying some math homework from yesterday.  All math homework is done on graph paper, with the problems copied carefully from her textbook before calculating the answers.  When recopying the problems, the ones, tens, and hundreds columns, as well as the equals signs, need to align, and there needs to be five spaces between math problems. And the sevens need a little slash through the middle.  The problems are easy, but the aesthetics are driving Ella batty.
• A punishment "joker" assignment, copying a half-page of German text, because she lost her pencil and needing to borrow a new one.

I have an uneasy feeling that there was something else she was supposed to do this afternoon, something about an interview. Her teacher scribbles assignments, in German, in a little book for Ella each day, and, subsequently, Dennis and I scratch our heads, trying to decipher what she wants Ella to do, trying to wade through illegible handwriting in a foreign language.  Today I eventually gave up and wrote the teacher, asking her for a translation.

Homework usually takes at least an hour, and today it took almost two.  When we first started school here, Ella, used to maybe ten minutes of spelling a day, really resisted and complained, but she's gotten to the point of going automatically to her little desk after lunch and settling in. She's resigned.  But still, I usually have to sit there, right next to her, translating and encouraging her, so I've taken to paying Alex a franc an hour to "babysit" Joey while Ella, GoogleTranslate, and I wade through her assignments.

Alex absolutely loves the responsibility, and reads his brother books and sets up toys for him, and, when Joey starts to get fussy, bribes him into good behavior with his little hoard of candy.  He's going to be a fine parent some day.

Ella's slingshot

As soon as she was done, Ella burst out the patio door and vaulted over the patio railing into the sunshine, with Alex hot on her heels.  Inspired by the little bows and arrows they made yesterday, Ella wanted to make a really big bow, big enough to shoot a branch, and so tied a string between our balcony and a tree across the courtyard and set in to her experimenting. I need to remind her that we're living in a neutral country, and that these fortifications probably aren't necessary.


NochElla and Paul showed up about two minutes later on their scooters (they'd been circling the neighborhood for a while, waiting for her), and the kids settled in to an afternoon of fun.  I was so glad to see how sweetly the older kids included Alex in their play.  He's absolutely twitterpated with his new friends, doing all he can to impress them.  Paul, especially, is really kind to Alex: seeing him bounce up and down, he asked Alex, "Hey, do you want to chase me, mate?" Did he! The two of them dashed off into a game of tag.


I've been blowing out eggs for a couple of days now, since Easter is approaching.  As a kid, I used to hate watching my parents crack open the Easter eggs we'd worked so hard to decorate, so with my kids I always pre-empty our eggs.  It's always been an excellent incentive for my kids to eat their protein, too.  I remember one day, when Ella was four years old, she ate six eggs scrambled eggs for lunch because she wanted decorate the shells.  Nobody ever eat six eggs!


So I gave the kids a bunch of shells and permanent markers, in return, received some treasures.

After dinner tonight, Alex begged me to be allowed to go outside "because I need more fresh air and energy."  Dennis noticed him out there and asked why Alex was wandering back and forth in front of the apartment.  Transparent Alex, he was hoping his friends would show up.

As we settled into our evening, Dennis watched Ella, who needed to dash into her room for something, first stop and pull out her cardboard key card.  She frantically read her code off the card, punching the buttons, before bursting into the room.  And he idly wondered what would happen if she lost her card or forgot her code.  Even Joey has been carefully, religiously using his security system, pushing his card in the scanner and pressing some buttons before entering. 

But he spent the evening in less-endearing pursuits, carefully opening and emptying out every single one of the kids' stash of KinderEgg toys.  This is actually a favorite pasttime of Joey's, and at least a dozen times I've spent my evenings, while watching imported Castle or Firefly or House or How I Met Your Mother with Dennis, restuffing those KinderEggs. As long as it takes him longer to open them than it takes me to restuff them, I suppose I'm willing to do it.