Staying in, and going out

I'm a huge believer in dress-up cloths for little kids. I have been since I was a little girl myself.  After their visits to St. Louis, my grandparents used to bring home huge bags of hand-me-down clothing from my cousins, and I'll never forget the time when one of these contained a little pink ballerina outfit. I wore it constantly, but still not as often as I wanted.

When I couldn't squeeze into it any longer, mom took pity on my. I came home from my first day of first grade, and she handed me a little white tutu "for being such a brave girl all day." I wore it until it was completely frazzled.  It was my best thing.

So I got a real kick out of watching my little daughter dress up each and every day, from about age two to age six, coming up with some of the most inventive outfits I ever did see. I loved combing the after-Halloween sales at Target and pre-Halloween racks at Thrift Stores for her.

But it's harder to find really excellent dress-up clothing for little boys. When I was packing for Zürich, I didn't think I had room for the cowboy duster jacket and hat or the superhero suit that I got for Alex, and I really regret that.  Because little boys love to dress up, too.  And here's the thing: they like shiny, fancy things just as much as any girl.

Today, after school, the boys got into our little stash of dress-up outfits, and here's what happened:

"See! I pretty merman!" Joey informed me. And he swam away from Alex, the fearsome, high-crotched dragon.

But then Joey mutated back into a human when he noticed the king costume we picked up at Legoland, and Alex cast him as the hero-dragon, charged with nursing the ailing dragon back to health.  I suspect it was all a scheme of Alex's, to get Joey to feed him puff-ball cereal, or magic healing potion, if you will.

But my favorite moment of the day was before all this, when I stumbled on all three kids quietly playing Candyland together. They were so peaceful and happy that I brought their lunch into the living room, where they played for their full lunch hour.

Well, actually, maybe that wasn't my favorite part of the day, because I also got a great treat this evening, a dinner out with my friends, celebrating, as it turned out, a new engagement for one of them.  We went to our favorite Flammenküche restaurant, where we each ate an entire pizza.  The owner of the restaurant came out and surveyed our empty plates, and asked if we'd like another pizza or perhaps three.  I think she was making fun of us, but I can't be sure. But I'll forgive her if she was teasing, because she sent out dessert on the house "because you liked our food so much." We devoured those, too.

One of the reasons I love that restaurant so much is that they have tables outside, in a quiet and pretty alley of Zürich's old town. But there are some drawbacks to dining outside: often, it's the smoke from neighboring diners, but tonight it was the flies, which were out in force on that hot night.

The restaurant had an interesting way of dealing with them, though: our server carefully laid three 5-Rappen coins (made of copper) on our table, informing that those would keep the flies away. "Really, it works!" The coins didn't appear to be soaked in deet, so I'm not really sure what they were meant to do. Again, I'm not sure whether they were making fun of us. But I do know what I'm going to suggest that Ella do for her next science fair project.