Just as I suspected...

Went swimming again. It was great.

Well, mostly, anyway: there was one little hitch. Ella grew careless on the water slide and didn't look where she was going as she was shooting into the pool.  She landed on top of two teenagers, who brought her over, hysterical and spurting blood from her nose.  Yikes. 

Luckily, the Swiss are trained from a very young age to always, always have a little packet of tissues with them.  Seriously, it's part of the requirements for school, from Kindergarten on up.  (Alex, however, has decided he prefers handkerchiefs.  He's fastidious about carrying one, always has an enormous, adult-sized hankie stuffed into his pocket.  He's my little Hobbit.)  Anyway, within seconds, half a dozen different mothers and fathers had offered me tissues.  And a good thing: it took many and many to staunch the bleeding.  I think Ella's pride was hurt most of all, but she didn't feel much like swimming afterward.  She was a little nauseous from swallowing blood, and curled up quietly with her book for the rest of the afternoon.

But before that she had a great time swimming and playing, and she spent a good time reading then, as well.  I gaped, watching her sit on the merry-go-round for at least fifteen minutes, spinning and reading her book.  I can't even read on a car anymore.

And Alex and Joey were perfectly, completely happy.  It was the warmest day we've had yet, into the 80s, and the water felt fine.  I got in and played with them some, and, when I wasn't swimming, I marveled at how much fun two little boys can have with four Ikea drinking cups. I swear, they were occupied with them for at least a forty-five minutes, pouring water on the sidewalk, the slide, each other.  And it wasn't just them: I only brought those cups today because I'd noticed that, at any given time, over half of the kids in the wading pool are clutching the same drinking cups from Ikea, and my boys were always watching covetously. 

I'm always amused by how many of us here patronize the super-affordable Ikea. I see the twinkling from most apartments (and many stores, too) of the same Ikea lamps. And in the sandbox, every kid has the same Ikea bucket and shovel. And, apparently, every house has a healthy supply of the same Ikea plastic dishes. I suppose this is only on my mind because I had to trudge up to Ikea this morning for some sundries.  That 45-minute trip has long since ceased feeling like an adventure, but at least there's always that bottomless cup of coffee and two croissants for the low, low price of 1.50 CHF to look forward to. I took two.


Also in the realm of the day-to-day, Alex brought home a notice (not a permission slip--just a notice) for a field trip that he'll be having next week.  It had me in stitches:

The sheet was a template that the teacher had filled in, and, immediately after the date and time, the next most important piece of information was "Wir machen ein Feuer" or "Wir machen kein Feuer."  Sadly for Alex, they will be making no fire on this particular Ausflug.  You know why it's important to note that, right?  So that the moms know whether or not they should pack sausages in their kid's lunch sack.  I love this nation.

Strong!

And, for my the day's final bit of miscellany, I found that I failed terribly in my first attempt at buying clothes for Joey with the European sizing system.  Just a touch small.  But maybe he can wear them the next time we go to the pool as a bathing costume and pretend that he's at Coney Island, circa the 1920s.