Mountainmania

Helping the ladies prepare a feast.

Joey and I got to spend the morning at his Blumen Tots playgroup. It's always amazing to me how well this group works, with so little effort.  There are no snack schedules: moms just bring what they want, when they can. When they show up, the kids wander into the toy cupboard and bring out whichever toy strikes their fancy. They wander over to the snack table when they're hungry. And they're pretty darn happy. Joey especially: he loves to play with the little girls in the group, especially, and is always happy to join in their formal tea parties.

When Ella came home from school at lunchtime, she mentioned, a little too casually, that she'd overheard a girl in her class say how glad she'd be when Ella left the school for America. So lovely.

Ella told me she wanted to ask her teacher for advice, but she was too shy, so she asked me if I could help her. I wrote her teacher an e-mail over lunchtime, letting her know that Ella needed a little pep talk, which she gave my daughter in the second half of the day.  "She agreed with you, mom, that I've had a tough year with some of my classmates, but that it's made me a better person. She also said that I really know how to handle Swiss kids now. Not that it's ever going to come in useful again!" I told Ella, absolutely, that she's gained quite a bit of character this year.

Her response? "Character, oh yes, I know all about that!" And then she struck the pose she always takes when she's quoting, with the corners of her mouth twitching. "Ella, go do something you hate! Being miserable builds character!"

Alex learned some gentler lessons today at school. Particularly, today was street-crossing day, where all of the kids in the class walk to a semi-busy street and practice looking both ways, and crossing on their own, one at a time.  I once watched another class of kindergartners do this, and just before one of the kids was ready to cross, two cars decided they were going the wrong way and made sloppy, slow, three-point turns in the intersection. The poor child was waiting for about two minutes for his turn to go, twitching nervously on the sidewalk.

Alex learned his lesson well: when it's time for him to come home, I usually peer out the window, watching for him, and he always stops abruptly at the street in front of our house, looking right and left twice over. Today, after school, I had him and Joey playing outside, and Alex gave Joey little street-crossing lessons, too.  Mid-lesson, they had to pause for nochElla, walking down the street, rolling two bicycles.   She had her half day today, and she was going in to school to pick up her brother and Ella.

About twenty minutes later, the girls came rolling down the street, Ella wobbly and triumphant. NochElla's brother was nowhere to be found, so Ella offered to ride his bike home. She hasn't ridden a bicycle since last winter, and she never got past the shaky stage.  I asked if she was feeling better, and she told me "Yes! I just rode bicycle down two hills! This is the best day!"

As soon as she got home, Ella realized she'd left her homework at school. We all walked her over to the school so that she could get her assignment, and she asked Alex if he'd like to go in with her.  Two minutes later, my kids burst out of the schoolhouse doors, laughing, with four boys from Ella's class in mock pursuit, my kids disengaging by yelling "Ciao! Bis später!" So I guess it's true: she's learned how to handle Swiss kids.

Ella planned our afternoon outing.  Our Migros grocery store's latest give-away is collectible stickers, two hundred of them, picturing mountain-dwelling plants and animals around the world, for pasting into a kids' book with facts about each of the species. We've accumulated quite a stack, especially since Susannah's been stashing them away for us, but of course we weren't able to collect all two hundred, and Ella, to her annoyance, wasn't able able to find the ones at school that she needed, either.  But Migros shows mercy toward little obsessive collectors, and they hold trading events at some of their grocery stores.  The event that was held this evening was a little too far away to be considered convenient, but if the kids didn't mind, then neither did I.

And it turned out I was really glad, too, that we went to the store, or else I would have missed out on these fine moments.

The store had set up little explorer-themed games for the kids, and they had a large trunk of costumes. They also had a little craft table, where Ella hunkered down and spent about an hour, decompressing, while I joined the little huddle of grandmothers, carefully sorting through the sticker collections that they'd gathered for their grandchildren, and finally filled in the gaps in my kids' set.

After we got home and the boys went to bed, Ella and I curled up for our Friday night movie. This time we watched Ghostbusters, in honor of Halloween, and Ella found it hilarious. At one point, midway through the movie, Ella commented, "They're going to cross the streams, aren't they, Mom. They wouldn't have mentioned something like that if it wasn't going to come up later." Excellent recognition of foreshadowing, my dear.