Fritag

This morning Joey joined his siblings in returning to school: it was his first day back at our Blumentots playgroup, and he was so excited when I told him where we were going this morning: "Yay! My friends!" I really can't wait to get him into our little co-op preschool when we return to Kirkland. He'll love it so much.

But once we got to playgroup, Joey was sorely disappointed.  Because of the beautiful weather, the parents decided to keep the kids outside on the playground instead of going into our little windowless basement classroom. "But...but....my cars! My toys!" Joey couldn't believe that, after five weeks of patient waiting, he was going to be deprived of his classroom.  He eventually conceded that it was fun on the playground, too: he discovered how to twist a swing and then twirl on it, with his tummy on the seat.

Ella and Alex had a good close to their first week, but, oh (say it with me...) poor Ella. She didn't have any Joker assignments today, finally, but she did decide to spend part of her lunch break writing up a spare Joker, tucking it away in the office for the future: she was sure she'd need it eventually.  "It seemed like everyone was getting into trouble today!" I'm hoping that the teachers are just being particularly strict to get the kids in line after the summer break.

When Ella was done with the second half of her school day, we went straight to the pool.  As I was pulling on my suit, I noticed that it was getting a little faded on the bottom. I haven't seen that pattern of wear on my since I was a little kid, when we spent our summers at Pioneer Water Land and Geauga Lake. I have Water Slide Butt! But I can't say I really mind.

I've been sparing you the wonderful details of toilet training for Joey: it's actually been going really well, lately.  So well that when he resisted putting on a swim diaper for the pool, I decided it would be fine.  And you know what, it was: he called to me and we ran off to the bathroom when it was time to pee.  So if you're swimming in a pool with children and you hit a suspiciously warm patch...well, I'm telling you, it's not my kids.

Today Joey discovered that if he stands in front of the water jets in the pool, they're strong enough to lift him off his feet and push him about five feet away from the wall.  So when we weren't running laps around the waterslide, Joey road the water jet again and again. It looked like a lot of fun and kind of made me wish that I weighed about twenty-five pounds, too.

Susannah and her family joined us for dinner tonight, and then Dennis treated himself to a movie, the only one he's seen this year apart from Kung Fu Panda II.  (Distressingly, it looks like we won't be taking our kids to see Cars II this summer, after all.  There's only one showing in English anywhere in the whole country, and it's at 8:30 PM! It'll be the first time ever that we haven't seen a Pixar movie when it was first released: we're huge fans.)

Alone with the kids, we had a very special movie night of our own.  Before school started, I talked with Ella about how we could encourage her to make more of an effort to speak German with her classmates and teachers.  As is her wont, Ella devised a very elaborate system: each day, if she could speak a sentence or two a given number of times (increasing each week), and if she could keep no tics against her on the behavior chart, then on Friday she'd get a reward: a grown-up movie with Mommy.  To her, a grown-up movie means something that's not animated: we don't really watch anything other than cartoons in our house.

She did a wonderful job this week, pushing herself: "Mom, I spoke thirteen times this morning!"  And she was on green on the behavior chart as of this afternoon. So after dinner we curled up and looked to see what Netflix had on demand for our celebratory movie.

We chose Labyrinth: I let Alex stay up to watch it, too, and the kids loved it.  I kind of loved it, too: I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, but I'm a sucker for Muppetry.

Mid-movie, when I paused the show to make some popcorn, I overheard Ella and Alex discussing the movie.  "Well, said Ella, "I think that the Goblin King is very handsome. But all the same, I certainly would never want to meet him." David Bowie, huh.  Interesting choice.  So now we know Ella's type: