Zu heiss!

Joey, reveling in being the big kid, showing off for
baby Christopher

The kids may have to go to school, but I'm a grown-up now, and today I just didn't wanna.

My Swiss integration class was on hold over the summer and started up again this morning, but when the teacher e-mailed us, reminding us of today's topic (insurance), I checked the weather (90s and sunny) and decided school just wasn't for me today.

Without too much trouble, I convinced Susannah to play hooky with me this morning: Joey and I went to hers, and Joey spent a happy morning playing with Caroline's toys.

Because she's very kind, and probably also because she's sick to death of hearing me moan about how much I miss sweet corn every time we wander through the feed corn fields of Meyer's Obstgarten, Susannah has been scouting the stores for me in search of heartland-quality sweet corn. And so, when I arrived at her house, there was a precious ear of corn (found at a health food store) waiting next to a pot of boiling water.

We dragged Joey away from Caroline's musical instruments toward the end of our visit and walked through a few playgrounds. Susannah took me past one I'd never seen before, with the play area completely covered by powdery sand and some surprisingly bouncy built-in trampolines. Because we saw no reason to let Joey have all the fun, she and I started jumping, but almost immediately a groundskeeper called to us, scolding "Nichts für die Erwachsenen!"  But...but!  What good is skipping school if you can't play?

I wasn't the only one today to have a run-in with The Man this morning. My poor daughter: she's been doing her best to get off on the right foot at school, but she came home this morning with two Joker assignments (punishment pages), one for not having covered her math textbook, and the other for not returning, signed, her last semester's report card. Of course, she didn't know that she was to do either. But, as she usually is when punished for her ignorance, Ella was pretty philosophical about the whole thing. Of the two of us, I was much more annoyed.

Luckily, she was in a sort of industrious mood and it didn't take Ella long to finish her homework. And since neither of the kids have school on Wednesday afternoons, we had plenty of time this afternoon to walk up to the Letzigraben pool, to take full advantage of our beautiful weather.

Joey, protecting himself from the sun

That was a great afternoon. Joey finally rediscovered how much fun it is to kick around inside an inner tube ring, giggling at his newfound freedom and kicking after Alex. And Alex proudly did a pretty fine backstroke two times across a 25-meter pool, while Ella got her fill of the wave pool.

While I watched the kids swim, I noticed a few of the other kids at the pool, too.  Just as you see at every pool in America, the edge of the wave pool has large "No Diving" signs painted every five feet. I guess the kids at this pool weren't technically diving, most of them; they were doing flips off the side of the pool, or pushing each other, or throwing each other in. In general, they missed one another's heads by centimeters as they splashed in.  At one point a lifeguard did walk by them, but he didn't even glance in their direction.

I suppose I'll have to live here a little a while longer before I internalize the Swiss rules, and, more importantly, figure out which ones are meant to be broken.

Dennis wasn't due home until later today, so we decided to have an early dinner at the pool. But after dinner the kids decided to forgo one last round in the wave pool in exchange for being allowed to stop at our neighborhood pool on the way home for few turns on the water slide, to cool off from the 2-kilometer walk home.

I think I must have mentioned this before, but I think it's so great that my kids think nothing walking or scooting so far, now, not even after a long afternoon of swimming.  I remember last hear, riding our bikes to their school, just over a mile away, was an epic journey, not for the faint of heart.

While we were walking home, Ella and Alex walked together, chattering. For some reason, they got on the topic of Christmas wish-lists. Ella had obviously been giving this some thought, and put forth a proposal for Alex. If the two of them were to ask for a gift from Santa together, they might be able to get something extra extravagant. The discussed what they might dare request. A gumball machine? A trampoline? Or maybe they could talk him into a new pet? Ella has got it into her head that she might like a parrot, but she was willing to demure to Alex's deep yearning for a kitten.

As his brother and sister were discussing the merits of different pets, Joey was listening carefully.  When he realized what they were talking about, he craned his neck back toward me.  "Mommy, I want...I want...a tiger! No I want...a lion! Yeah! I want a LION! And...I want a baseball bat! And...and...grandpas. And 'murfs!  And I want a hi-pad! And I want...I want...CAKE!!"

Mission accomplished: I finally wore them out

The kids still had energy to spare when we got to the our Heuried pool. Joey stripped off his shirt and shucked his shoes and took off running for the water slide. "Hey! Joey! Slow down!" I called, as I chased him.  He stopped and turned to me, genuinely confused: "Why? It's running time!"

But later, after several laps around the pool, he was starting to lag far behind his brother and sister. I tried to urge him to hurry up so that we could catch him.  "No," he said, shaking his head. "It's walking time."