Tour de Spielplätze, Part 2

After a lazy morning of playing with toys and watching Disney Junior (auf Deutsch: Joey pronounces the station name with a German soft J, now: "We watch Disney Yoon-yor?") I decided to take the kids to the Gemideschaftzentrum that Joey and I had discovered the other day during our walk along the Limmat.  Dennis had suggested I bring the kids to Google after lunch for some ice cream, since he'd be watching them for my German lesson.  So I decided to make a full day of it: we'd go to the GZ, and then we'd make our inevitably slow way to Google.

Inspired by the rock stackers on the shores
of the Zürichsee

At the hand-operated fountain: I kept telling Joey there
were easier ways to get a drink, but he'd have none of it.

Most of the stairways in Zürich have these
little ramps for bicycles and strollers.  Joey
was determined to make it work for his
scooter as well.

 I really have to figure out a faster route to get to that GZ, because it's such a lovely park.  I had the kids bring their scooters because I thought it would be faster and more fun for them if they had them; while Alex and Joey were definitely faster, Joey was much, much slower. In charge of his destiny instead of being strapped into a stroller, he found no end of little things to stop and look at, and at his own pace.  Which is fine, but I think it took us no less than an hour to get to the playground.

Ella and Alex didn't seem to mind too much: they circled forward and back on their scooters, and watched the fish in the river while they waited.  And they really enjoyed the route, which went over several boardwalks that were satisfyingly noisy and bumpy on their scooters, and also past some really colorful scenery.

And, of course, they thought the playground was pretty excellent. After they'd climbed over every bit of every play structure, both were eager to help show Joey the ropes.  Which gave me a chance to go and find myself a little treat.

Sorry, Alex....my focus is elsewhere at the moment.

Proud of his climbing skillz, Alex asked
me to take this photo.

And while I was drinking, I noticed Ella and Joey were talking to someone...and there was Susannah and company, proving, as she put it, that great moms think alike.  So that was a really fun surprise and treat, getting to hang with my mommy friend for an hour or so.

This was probably the kids' favorite: a little conveyor belt strung up across
a sandbox, which they used to play sand-cookie factory.

I had the kids nibble while they were playing on the playground, and they finished up their lunch on the tram rides to Google.  Alex, for some reason, really wanted to practice addition. He kept asking me for problems, and so I gave him some: 6+6? 7+2? 9+3? 8+4? 10+2? Every time he did the math and came up with the same answer, Alex broke into gut-splitting peals of laughter, as though it were the best joke he'd ever heard.  See, kids? Math is fun.

A little reluctant to bring my evidentally punchy son inside Dennis's workplace, I suggested he meet us outside.  Dennis took us on a walk to a little hilltop playground close to his work, where the four of them stayed for the whole 90 minutes of my German class.

I ended up having a private lesson today: the other Spoogler who comes the most regularly is home in Egypt for the summer, and the other people in our class decided to ditch.  And that was pretty wonderful for me.

On the way home, on a whim, I decided to take the kids through the resale store (Brockiland) near Google.  Ella and Alex love "garage sale stores," as they call them, and had a lot of fun combing through the toy aisle.  They found a game of triominos and a large box of a click-together building toy, but the real treasure, in Ella's eyes, was a tiny xylophone, apparently someone's school instrument from long ago.  It's a flimsy little thing, with tarnished keys and one broken mallet, but Ella couldn't believe her good fortune.  "How could someone give this away??"  When I went to check out, the cashier looked at our pile and announced "$800!"  Ella, who truly seems to believe her instrument is invaluable, didn't understand the joke.  Her she got a very sad look and said, "I'm sorry, Mom.  I guess I should go put this back. It's too much."  She was very confused when, in the end, I got the lot for five francs.  I must be a bargaining genius!

On the way home, Ella carefully cradled her xylophone, saying softly to herself, "I can't believe it. My first musical instrument."  When we got home, she carefully, solemnly washed the keys, and then she started playing "Bruder Jakob," ad nauseam.

So I think it might be time to teach her to read sheet music.