Day 651. Today they are a year and 7 months old biologically. Last night I went to bed at 12:30 am, and this morning we got up around 8 as usual. After breakfast, I took them downstairs where we worshipped God and prayed and then read Bible stories. When Randy arrived with his breakfast, I grabbed my computer and went upstairs to clean up and then do office work.
At 11 o'clock I went to the kitchen to make their food, and that is also when Sonja arrived today. At 12:30 they came upstairs to eat. Chicken and rice with vegetables, and they ate well, especially the chicken. I had to fill Tammy's plate with chicken three times. After their fruit and leftover breakfast cereal with milk that Tammy nearly drank all by herself, I cleaned them up, dressed them, and Sonja went downstairs with Tammy and Emmy. When I changed Emmy, he saw the fan going in our bedroom; it's the first time this year. I told him the German word for it, "Ventilator", and he said "late" for it several times. Good job, Emmy! He's the furthest when it comes to speaking.
Sammy went to bed at his regular 12:15 time, while I was still making my food and then eating it. At 12:40 I put Emmy to bed, as usual, and once he was asleep a few minutes later, I put Tammy to bed, who always needs a while to fall asleep. Today it was about 1:30 before that happened, which is just before Sammy wakes up. At 1:45 I picked up Sammy and took him downstairs to Sonja, and he was not at all happy, when I passed him on. I did not take any breaks today, but went straight to work cleaning everything up thoroughly, the way I do every night. I also got everything ready for our trip. When Emmy woke up not long after Sammy left, Randy sat down with him for a while, and then took him downstairs as well. Just after 2 pm, Sonja and Randy fed the boys their afternoon meal downstairs, while the girl was still sleeping. As 2:30 was approaching, they came upstairs, and I was surprised that Tammy continued sleeping even with the noise, and that Emmy stayed away from here. We dressed the boys in their travel clothes, and then finally Emmy went to Tammy to wake her up. I picked her up, held her, and dressed her. She was gonna get food on the road.
We left early, just before 3 pm, to catch the 3:20 S-train. Sonja came with us but got off the train before we did. We had to wait quite some time on the platform. Thankfully the modern trains without steps were back today. When we crossed the Danube, Emmy started saying "Wasser" (water), which he does every time we do now. Another word he's mastering.
We went further than ever before with this train and got off at another train station, where we had to switch to the train leaving town. We went to another platform, and Emmy always gets to push the elevator buttons which he enjoys doing. As we had 20 minutes between trains, they were watching trains come and go from the different platforms. They would wave and say "baba" (bye-bye), when a train left. I then said the train was "weg" (gone), and Tammy repeated it after me, saying it quite a bit after that.
Our train arrived, and it was very full. This has been a long weekend, and the first one since the loosening of the Corona restrictions, so a lot of people had been moving. We were lucky to get one bench in there, and we ended up getting all three kids out of the strollers for the half-hour ride. They kept us pretty busy. I don't know how we'd take the train for longer than that.
We arrived in St. Pölten at 4:30 pm and started walking to our friends' house that we have only seen once since the little ones were born, before the pandemic. There weren't a lot of people on the street, but people were walking their dogs. One elderly lady was so nice to stop and offered for the kids to pet the dog. Emmy was too scared, but Tammy even came out of the stroller and happily petted the 6-month old puppy. The lady also held the dog to Sammy, so he could pet it, and was curious to hear the story of how the little ones came about.
We made it to our friends' house and were happy to see them again. This was our first trip out of Vienna (except for Mali). The kids LOVED their time there. So much to explore, so much fun to have, and then there was a cat. They kept going after the cat, even Emmy, and Tammy petted it. Emmy also touched the cat once, with adults being close by his side.
We had cake at first, and then dinner later. Their first meals at somebody else's house, and it went well. They did keep us on our toes the whole time, having to remove knives and other things to put them out of their reach. And when they'd go off, we had to go after them to make sure they weren't getting a hold of anything they shouldn't. They had two stools they enjoyed pushing around the room, and they enjoyed climbing up on the couches, and even ended up on the window sill. We were on the top floor of an apartment building, so they had a great view above the houses around us.
Before we left just after 7 pm, we prayed for our friend who needs healing. All three of our next-generation ministers laid hands on her, while we prayed. Then we put their shoes back on and took the elevator back downstairs, where we had left the strollers. Our friends accompanied us back to the train station and to the platform. The train came really early, and it was very full again, but we again had a bench to ourselves. Emmy and Tammy were sitting on the table and waving at our friends who were on the platform waving at them. It was really cute, as the waving was going on for minutes, and Sammy, who was still in the stroller, joined in as well. The train left at 7:30 pm, which is already half an hour later than their bed time. Emmy was a little cranky, but we had a good ride back to Vienna. There were lots of people to watch around us, and Sammy also stood at the bench turned towards the people sitting behind us. I noticed how wet Emmy's clothes were from when he had drunk water out of a glass, and so I took him to the bathroom to put dry clothes on him. A few minutes before we were supposed to arrive, we put them back into the strollers. Or tried to. Emmy was screaming and did not want to get in at all. I finally succeeded in getting him in, but he continued screaming the whole time until we arrived. And so did Sammy. Tammy was the only one sitting happily in the stroller. They did stop screaming, when we got off the train at 8 pm. We went to the platform our train back home would leave from, which was not far. But we again had a 20-minute wait time, which is pretty long. They again watched the trains come and go, and I had Emmy out on the bench with me, which made him happy. When we got on the train, there was an elderly lady with a dog right there next to us, which always scares Emmy. The lady was nice again and said how much her dog likes kids. I knew Emmy wasn't gonna pet him, but Tammy would, and the lady was so kind to walk over to Tammy with him, who got to pet him. Then she started telling us everything about her dog. It was like he was her child.
We finally got of the train at our station, and walked to our apartment. I let them out of the stroller once we reached our building, as they love walking/running to our apartment door. Thankfully they didn't try to push anybody's doorbell. Once home, we immediately started undressed them, changing the, putting their pj's on and brushing their teeth, and put them to be. They were still very active, but all fell asleep fast today, thank God.
It was about 9 pm, when they went to bed, so two hours later than usual. I immediately started working on the pictures, which took a while, since I took a lot today, and so it's already 2 am now. This is gonna be an extremely short night for me, and tomorrow we again have to go somewhere.
