Do You Want to Play a Game?

Somehow, all three of my kids have developed a loud, hacking cough that is keeping us all up at night.  I used my handy Berlitz vocabulary at the Apothek (Sie husten! Immer!) and they gave me a thick, supposedly-caramel flavored syrup that makes all of the kids wince and gag, but also quiets their cough completely.

I also have been sending Ella and Alex to school with their pockets stuffed with Ricola: it doesn't say anything on the package about age limits, but figure it must be safe enough for kids, since they tossed it like candy at the Sechseläuten parade.

All the same, when I picked Ella up from school for her weekly trip to the doctor, she was back to coughing, loudly and constantly.

We bumped into her teacher, Frau Klossner, as we walked by Ella's school, and she and I stopped to talk for  a little bit.  I asked how things were going in class, and why she thought those boys were picking on her last week.  She told me that eight and nine is the age when boys and girls start to pull apart, and the boys in her class don't seem to know what to make of Ella, because she really wants to play with them.  So they chase her, and tease.

Ella has a lot of anxiety about whether her friends back in Kirkland will still remember and like her when she returns...and now so do I, especially since she has a half-dozen boys that she counts among her favorite people.  I know she'd be devastated if they didn't want anything to do with her when we got back.

However, Alex and Joey seem to be the only boys who play with girls in their classes here, and I don't think that's coincidental.  I think people in Kirkland encourage the boys and girls to play together much more than they do here in Switzerland. Hopefully that might mean that Ella has a little longer, when she can still play innocently with all of her boy friends, when we get back home.

Getting her homework done on
the tram ride home

While I was talking with Ella's teacher, I worked into the conversation the fact that Ella was trying really hard to follow the class rules, but that, sometimes, she simply isn't aware that something is important or isn't allowed...for example, how surprised she was that you could get in trouble for not having your hair tied back for gym class.  I'm not sure Frau Klossner understood a thing I was saying, though, because she just nodded and smiled and interjected "Great!" and "Yep!"  and "Super!" I wanted to shake her and shout, "No! Not 'super!'" It was so frustrating, and it made me understand a little bit better Ella's resignation about just not being able to ask questions about the classroom rules, instead deciding her best option is to stumble into them and learn them as she goes.

We left and coughed our way to the doctor's office to have Ella's finger treated again, and he insisted on a strep test while we were there.  Ella was negative, but so he gave her a prescription for the same icky cough medicine that she'd already been taking.  He also scolded her sternly each time she coughed, telling her there was no coughing allowed in his office at all.  He and I both tried to explain that coughing wasn't allowed because it aggravated her throat and made it worse, but Ella just looked at me helplessly: more incomprehensible rules!

She bounced back, though, especially since we had some fun things at home to look forward to.  For one thing, Susannah, who knows me so well, had taken a trip to the thrift shop.  She thoughtfully picked a half-dozen pocket handkerchiefs for Alex, my little hobbit, and for me, she got the most wonderful thing: I mentioned  Sechseläuten earlier...well, Susannah found a Sechseläuten-themed board game.

I don't know if you remember, but Sechseläuten is a local Zürich festival, in which the guilds burn a snowman in effigy. They stuff its head and hat with explosives, and the less time it takes for the head to explode, the sooner spring will come.  Susannah decided this game was worth getting, just on the basis of the little snowman figurine, alone (with removable basket hat), but we're totally going to play that game...unless I frame the board.

I love my country, but I have to say, this is one area where Switzerland is just so much better.  In America, they probably wouldn't have gone any farther than making a Secheseläuten-themed Monopoly game.

The board is a map of all of the regional "S" trains.

Considering my enthusiasm, I suppose it's no wonder that we have three kids obsessed with playing card and board games.  Joey and I spent most of the morning doing just that, and I and his little Playmobil dolly, whom he carefully manipulated and helped pick up cards.  Joey's always really careful to play by the rules, but apparently he's decided that he can pull one over on on little plastic doll: whenever the dolly won a round, Joey slyly claiming those as his turn, instead.

He did make a nod to sportsmanship, though.  We always have the kids shake hands and say "good game" at the end of anything they play...I think that's part of the reason the kids rarely get grouchy when they lose.  (That, and the knowledge that we're alway willing to play another game with them.) Joey very solemnly shook his dolly's hand at the end of the game, and then held her out, for me to do the same.