The 100th Day

This morning Joey and I spent some time with some new friends, ones who had only arrived last weekend.  The resourceful mommy looked a little dealt with her jet-lag as her 4-year-old crayoned all over their mountains of packing paper.  That was us, and only a hundred days ago.

When we first were conceiving this move, we were planning a trip of six or seven months.  We thought we'd leave in December, as we did, and then Dennis could work at Google through June.  We'd take July to travel,  and then we'd get Ella and Alex home in time to start their next school year in the states.

But it turned out that the six-month visa was discontinued in Switzerland, and so our trip would have to be for a year.  I had it in my head that it was terribly important for Alex to start kindergarten with his class, and if it hadn't been for a sense of obligation to Google for all the planning they'd already done, we might well have balked.  But we were already caught up in the inertia, and somehow we found ourselves, looking at each other, profoundly overwhelmed and exhausted, wondering how on earth we ended up in this mess.

And now, of course, with summer approaching, I'm so glad that things worked out the way they did.  The kids are just starting to get comfortable, and so are we.  Ella and Alex are just starting to be able to communicate with their German friends, and they found little buddies who feel comfortable enough to climb through the patio, to come over to play for a quick half-hour before dinnertime.  How I love that.

The tram ride to Google. Car seats are going to be a real
come-down when we return to Seattle.

I've actually had many people tell me that it takes a year to really become comfortable in a place, and that two years would really have been the ideal length of stay.  And, as I type that, I can see my mother-in-law's mouth begin to tighten.  Don't worry, Joani, we're coming home.  But still, I'm glad that we'll be able to see Switzerland in all of its seasons, and I'm really, really looking forward to our next 265 days.

To celebrate our triumph, we joined Dennis at Google for Ella's and Alex's first lunch there. The kids told their dad about their days at school.  Ella had gone swimming for most of the morning, while Alex's class had gotten to play with a visiting fireman.

I understand that Seattle has seen 40 days of cloudy weather and now April snow showers. I apologize for my schadenfreude, but I felt pretty smug as I sat in the 70-degree sunshine on the Google patio.

Google seemed to have designed this patio with exactly our children in mind.  In amongst the gravel, they sprinkled a rainbow of little clear-resin pebbles.  So Dennis and I had an extremely relaxing lunch as the children, all three, gobbled their food so that they'd be able to spend the rest of their hour crawling around amongst the picnic tables, trying to find the best pebble of each color.  Dennis and I have thought about covering over a little corner of our yard where grass just won't grow.  I think I may have to investigate rainbow gravel.

Dennis had to leave abruptly for a German class, but the kids and I meandered home, stopping at two playgrounds on the way.  But the dangerous playground got the best of one of my kids for the first time: Ella skinned an elbow, and so it was time to go home, to get that homework done.  It was just as well, because Ella still had enough energy to rush through her math exercises. Dennis and I promised her if she finished her homework quickly, we'd play the ridiculously complicated board game that I'd given her for her birthday in a moment of questionable sanity.

The boys scooted and chased each other for the rest of the evening, and they were tired enough that I was able to get them to sleep by 7:00, and so we were able to round out the day with Ella's game and then folding laundry and watching House.  It was a really peaceful, utterly average day.

And I feel really proud that we've gotten to the point where we can enjoy such normal days.