Much ado about baked goods

The cutest morning commuter.

It occurred to me recently that our time in Switzerland is half over, and I've scarcely tried any of delicious European pastries available.  So I've started making a point of stopping in bakeries when we're out and about, buying gooey things filled with chopped sweetened nuts or vanilla cream.  The best bakery is one train stop up, the famous Buchmann Bäckerei, which apparently was founded back in 1660.  But instead of taking the train, we usually walk or scoot, because the path there is wide and smooth and too tempting to resist.

Today Joey and I bought some sort of a sweet bread with nuts and raisins mixed in, and I told Joey that we'd eat it at the little playground by our house.  But for some reason, he didn't quite pick up on the fact that we'd be sharing.  When it came time to tear the bread in two, Joey was very put out.  "NO! My butter bread!" (For Joey, all bread-like substances are "butter bread.") Well! I explained, cajoled, scolded, offered him his choice of halves, and finally gave up and stuffed my half in my mouth, glaring back at my angry little boy. What was wrong with him? Why was he having such a problem with this. And then I remembered:

I actually ordered this t-shirt for Joey
over the weekend, at my sister's
suggestion.  And apparently I need a
t-shirt to remind me of his policy...

Joey then changed tactics from tears to negotiation, trying to talk me into returning to the store for another whole slice, just for him. He handed me the bag, saying "This mommy's. My butter-bread at store." But when I laid down in the sunshine and closed my eyes, it finally sank in that I wasn't budging, and Joey resigned himself to a mere half a piece of bread.  And, after two bites, he realized that it was a good thing that he caved. He curled up next to me and said. "This good. I happy boy!"

And I sat up. "See, Joey! It's nice to share food sometimes."

"NO!"  He was not willing to go that far.  But he was willing to eat his half of the pastry, all up.

As you may have noticed, Joey's been kind of tetchy lately. I think that age two has been harder on him than it was on either of my other kids.  As another example, Dennis told me a story this morning. Joey was playing with stickers and started talking to Dennis about them, particularly about a picture of Mickey Mouse.  Except Joey pronounced it, as he always does, "Monkey Mouse."  It's a cute little idiosyncrasy,  but we weren't sure if he uses that name because Mickey looks a little like a monkey, or if it is just a mispronunciation.

The latter, it turns out.  When Dennis responded to Joey, "Oh, yes, Look! There's Monkey Mouse!" Joey's face darkened and his voice lowered to match his scowl.

"No. Make. Fun. Me!"

Oops!

Our trip out this morning was an attempt to get a haircut for Joey, whose situation up top was getting a little out of hand.

So I fired up google translate and learned how to say "I'd like a haircut for my son," and "Not too short in front," and we headed out.  Dennis took Alex for his own haircut last weekend, and he recommended a pair of barbershops, next to each other, on his way to work.  Both owners, a man and a woman, were outside chatting in front of their shops when I walked up: I approached them and gave my new handy phrase a whirl. "Bitte, Ich möchte einen Haarschnitt für meinen Sohn."


The woman smiled at me. "Do you speak English?"  Oh, thank goodness. Because after that, I had nothing.


But she was all booked up, with nothing available until tomorrow, so she graciously handed me over to her competition next door, and translated for us, too, since he didn't have any English.  And so we were set up for a 2:00 appointment.


After lunch, we scooted on back, this time with Alex, who gave a very funny commentary of the hair models pictures posted around the shop.  "That one looks like he should be a rollerskater. He looks really cool.  And that one, he looks like the boy from Tangled, like he's been riding a horse."   Meanwhile, Joey sat straight upright and still for the whole haircut; Alex noticed and told him, at the end, "Joey, you did such a good job for your haircut! You made me proud!" Those boys can be so wonderful.


And do you know what else is wonderful?  Getting two big packages from America in the same afternoon!  We haven't delved too deeply into the one from Dennis's family because there's birthday presents for him and me in there, so we're setting it aside for next week.  But things inside look very promising...I see chocolate birthday cake mix!

The other package, from our friend Todd, was a belated Christmas present, so we dug on in after Dennis got home from work. Until then, all afternoon, I smiled every time I passed by the package: Todd had shipped his gift in a Girl Scout Thin Mints packing box box.  Years ago, when Todd was living with us, he bought something like $200 worth of Girl Scout cookies.  I was glad to see his priorities were still right on.

(It should be mentioned that those cookies weren't just for himself.  Todd was just about to head out for an internship at the Point Reyes Bird Observatory.  When you'll be staying in a dormitory with several young ornithologists, Thin Mints and Samoas are an excellent currency to have on hand.)

I don't know why (perhaps because it would be too much good fortune to contemplate) but it didn't occur to me that Todd would actually send us Thin Mints in that Thin Mints packing box.  All three kids, but especially my lapsed Girl Scout daughter, were doing the happy dance. And Dennis and I quietly set aside one of the boxes to eat ourselves...shhh. Todd, everything else was appreciated, too: Ella is drooling over the grown-up looking colored pencil set,  the boys made me "read" for their bedtime story the coloring books he sent, and all three now have little brain-shaped stress balls on their night stands.  Score!

Before I sign out for the night, I want to mention that we're going to be on the road for the next few days.  You all had your vacation last weekend; here, Ascension (or "Auffahrt") is an official holiday.  So we'll be taking advantage of that with a long weekend in Germany to visit Legoland and Munich.  So if you don't hear from me for a little while, it's because I'm knee-deep in Duplos.

Whee!