To make things easier for Dennis, we only sent in one kid at a time: Ella's a morning girl, so she took the first shift, sharing breakfast with her daddy. She was incredibly excited about the day: because of her school schedule, it had been a really long time since she'd visited the office, and she was eager to play in the foam pit and ride on the slide. (Sadly, visitors are no longer allowed to use the fireman's pole.) She did both before accompanying Dennis to his desk, to read while he worked.
Meanwhile, Alex told me last night how much he was craving farm-fresh Milch and cider, so we made plans to visit the farm before dropping Alex off for his turn at Google. It was a misty, cold morning, and Alex soon realized he'd made a grievous mistake in refusing his coat and only wearing a fleece. He didn't complain, though, bless him, but I did overhear him whispering to himself "Just a few minutes, and soon I'll be in a toasty warm bus." Joey, meanwhile, was less tolerant of the cold weather, but he was appeased by the fun of feeding coins into the dispensing machines.They had fresh-picked apples for sale as well, this morning, and Alex had one for his Znüni, rhapsodizing as he crunched it: "This is even better than apple juice!"
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| With all that walking around, I paused to take a photo of Susannah's favorite window display, for hair removal. Lovely, no? There's also a hairy woman, but my photo is blurry. Next time. |
Then we made our way to Google. On the bus ride there, we had an elderly gentleman as our driver: when the kids boarded, he walked back to us to give them each a hard candy, and he came onto the loudspeaker when later passengers, just to say "Grüzi, Mitenand." Hello, everybody! One of the other passengers caught my eye and rolled his own, but he got no sympathy from me. I loved that Mr. Busdriver was having a fun morning.
Alex got his turn with Dennis at 11:00, leaving Ella and Joey and I with a couple of hours to pass before picking him up. We went to the Asian food store for shrimp crackers and other fried goodies, and McPaperLand for glitter and stickers, and then to the grocery store for everything else. Joey fell asleep halfway through our shopping, so I tucked him in with my parka. By the time we headed home, with eight liters of milk and juice and three stores worth of shopping, and an unconscious three-year-old, lifting our stroller onto the tram was well outside the realm of possibilities. We had no choice but to wait in the cold for fifteen minutes, until the next handicapped-accessible tram came by. It was one of the very few times this year when I missed my minivan.
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| Meanwhile, toasty-warm at Google, Alex worked hard. |
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| Can you tell when an art project is made entirely of random office supplies? |
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| Joey's learned how to pull himself up for a drink from our too-tall neighborhood fountain. Little dude is strong! |
When all of the kid were back home and conscious, we made yet another trip out, this time to the community library. Some other kids were making Advent calendars in the children's art room, but Joey seemed short on endurance. Instead, Ella improvised and made a calendar of her own at home, bringing our total number of advent calendars this year to five: besides this one, there's a Lego calendar and three Kinder chocolate calendars for the kids.
I'm tempted daily by other adorable calendars for sale toy stores and the Hauptbahnhof, particularly the book-a-day ones, but also the beautiful chocolate calendars of all price ranges and descriptions. But we'll scarcely need a single advent calendar to keep track of the days, this year, since we'll also be counting the days until we go home.
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