Archive for 2009-06
Alex’s 3rd Birthday
2009-06-20 17:12Anatomy of a Sunday Afternoon
2009-06-14 16:43We got off to a late start in order to let Arianna and Dina sleep in. After some lunch, Alex and I hit the town.
- 14:11 train into the city.
- Blue ice cream.
- Toddlers walk slowly when eating ice cream.
- Walk around the Trachtenfest. Basically, people wearing traditional Swiss costumes.
- Buy a glass ball / Christmas tree ornament for Dina. Worry that Alex will break said ornament for the next few hours. Update: Ball made it home. Lasted until 18:37 before Alex dropped it off the counter and onto our tile floor.
- Decide against buying Swiss whiskey (they have many kinds, and yes, one of them is called Swisskey) or honey wine.
- Wash Alex’s face in one of the fountains. Lips still stained blue.
- Explain to Alex that the woman knits with straw the way mommy knits with string.
- See the main church with the red towers. Listen to choir dressed in traditional Swiss costumes warm up. Admire art and pipe organ. Notice that there is a sundial and an astrological sign dial on the side of the church. Spiffy.
- Play with Alex on bench that looks like a dog and snake.
- See the Winterthur Gewerbemuseum (trade/craft museum). Manage to see the clocks part of the exhibit before Alex’s attention span runs out.
- Play with Alex on bench that looks like a dog and snake.
- Quick walk through 3 rooms of the Briner und Kern Museum. Thank goodness for the Swiss Museum Annual Pass.
- Play on the playground. Help Alex throw pebbles up the metal slide. Squee!
- Quickly duck into the Oskar Reinhart Museum. Picasso, Rembrandt, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, … Having a tired toddler an my shoulders doesn’t diminish it at all.
- Take #3 bus home. Alex falls asleep on bus.
- Home by 16:50.
Why Babies Cry
2009-06-06 13:04As I was cooking lunch, I figured it out… babies cry because they can’t eat bacon for the first few months of their lives.
Outside x 2
2009-06-05 21:03- Thanks to the nice weather, our balcony, and the fact that I don’t really eat breakfast or lunch (I graze), I’ve eaten the majority of my meals outside the last few days. Very nice.
- A few days ago, we (me, Alex, Ari, Dina, and her parents) went shopping. Alex put away his little cart, returned the 2 CHF deposit to Dina, and, somehow, while Dina was putting the coin in her pocket and I was returning the cart, disappeared. Somewhere between 5 and 15 minutes later (time flies when you’re panicked) we found him. He was tired of waiting for us and wanted to go home. He went down the escalator, through the mall, and was outside, waiting on the stairs for us. “I had to wait for you because I can’t cross the street by myself. Hurry! Let’s go home.” At least he listens to us… right?
Vocabulary
2009-06-05 15:00[Rollerblader passes by]
Nick: Look Alex, he has wheels on his shoes. You know what those are called?
Alex: Dangerous.
Vocabulary
2009-06-03 13:28- We can’t use “timeout” with Alex as that’s a punishment / distraction technique.
- We tried “pause”, but that doesn’t really work.
- Apparently, what works is “buffer”. Why? When we pause a show streamed from our SlingBox, we tell Alex that the video is buffering. He has mapped the word “buffer” to “pause”.
Arianna’s First Days
2009-06-03 10:32Huh? What’s This?
2009-06-01 16:27Both kids are sleeping soundly at the same time. No one warned me about this.