Day 1314. I did not have the headsets with the stories laying out this morning. When Emmy wanted them early in the morning, I told him to lie back down to sleep again, and he did. When he woke up later, I let him listen to the new fairy tales, and Tammy lying next to me heard that and got up as well to join her brother listening to the story. Of course Sammy was up as well, and Randy then also got up around 8 am. That meant they were done with breakfast and dressed by 9 am - an hour before we needed to leave the house. For that reason they went downstairs with Randy, while I turned my computer on to work until departure time.
At 10 am we left the house, took the subway, then still had to walk a bit. This morning all three had hardly eaten anything for breakfast, and so they were already hungry. We walked by a bakery, and so I went in and got them two pastries, and the three of them ate it all. We then reached the music school, took our coats and shoes off and went into the classroom. We were perfectly on time.
Today there were more kids than I've ever seen in that class. The teacher even had to leave to go get another keyboard. Sammy was immediately drawn to the keyboard and wanted to play it. I gave him one, until more kids arrived who then needed that keyboard. Then he shared the one his brother had until the class started. The teacher went from child to child singing the greeting song, then asked them to come sit in the front, where she did the "Five Little Monkeys" song with them. Next she put the colors of a traffic light on the board that represent the low, middle and high tones. She also had 3 instruments playing those sounds, and the stick wandered from person to person so that the kids could play low, middle and high sounds. Emmy hit the instruments very hard, harder than anyone else.
Then the kids sat down by their pianos. She gave them a hands chart to put on their desks, then the kids put their hands on them and wiggled the fingers that she asked for in her song. It's to teach them what number each finger is. Then she gave them a little animal, where the mouth makes a noise, when you hit it, and they had to hit it with the respective fingers. Then she had them play low, middle and high tones on the piano, before they got their books out and had to color one page with the correct low, middle and high colors. Today Emmy behaved well and participated well the whole time.
Then the teacher called us to the front for a dance. I went with the kids to do the song, which they enjoyed. I returned to the back, where Sammy was, while the kids sat down on the floor and each had to draw a quarter note on the board. Once again Tammy wanted to color in her note really well, while the teacher wanted her to get on with it. After they had all drawn it, she gave them wipes to wipe their drawings back off. Tammy then came to the back to wipe her keyboard off, which they had done before but not today.
Next each child got a guitar to play. They sat down on the floor and all played their guitars with the teacher who was singing a song, once again inserting the kids' names every time she sung it. Then the class was over, and the teacher sang the good-bye song. Each child received a sticker for their sticker book, then we left to put their coats and shoes back on. When I returned from the bathroom, I found a high tower the kids had built out of the cubes sitting there. They were pretty proud of it, and I added the last missing piece on top. Then we left to walk back to the subway.
By noon we were back home. The kids wanted to finish their video and did so while I made the quickest meal possible. We sat down to eat, but once again their appetite was pretty small. After lunch they got to listen to more fairy tales, but I already put them to bed at 1 pm today, much to their dismay. They were pretty tired and fell asleep as fast as always. I was able to soon left them, but was doing stuff for longer than expected. And so my nap was way too short, as Emmy already woke me at 2:15 pm, after about half an hour of sleep. Within minutes all three were up. And at 3 pm we all left the house together to go to church.
We took the train and then the subway. The chestnut stand is now gone until next winter. We got to church just before the 4 pm service started. We hadn't been there in weeks for various reasons and had found out that there had been a break-in, which is why the service was in a different room than usual. We got to talk to a few people, including the pastor, before the service started. The kids were then dancing and having fun during worship, and it was Sammy who was the first one to ask to go to the baby room. He even said "Baby Raum", putting two words together, which he doesn't do much yet. At about 4:20 we finally took our stuff to move in that direction, as they were getting a little disruptive.
They were excited about being back in the baby room with the toys there. The leader of the kids' program (that starts at the age of 4) came and told us the kids could participate in the games they were doing in the beginning. I first went to the other room with only Tammy, and the two of us participated in the game, but it was really too hard for Tammy, and so we returned. Later the teacher came to us, asking to borrow our shoes for another game, and this time Emmy also came with us. We watched them play the game, and then it was Tammy's and Emmy's turn. Instead of blindfolding them, they had to find the two matching shows by looking around. In the end Tammy had 5 pair and Emmy 4, so Tammy won. Then we returned to the baby room, where they continued playing. Sammy spent much time on a little horse that he could make move by himself.
By 5 pm we decided to leave, as we had already talked to people and didn't see the point of being in the baby room for another hour. Considering the early hour, we decided to go to an Easter market downtown; we hadn't been to any yet, and I knew that that one had a crafts station for kids. The subway was a straight shot there. On it, there was an older couple, and the wife was really sweet and started talking with our kids and having lots of fun with them. She even had Emmy sitting on her knee. She shared how she already had great-grandkids and what a deep bond she had with her grandkids, as they had even gone on vacations together. I told her I wished our kids had a Grandma that would spend much time with them. I would have loved to exchange contact details with her, considering how much she enjoyed our kids.
Once we got off the subway, we still had quite a walk ahead of us to get to the Easter market, but we got there. We walked through it, saw the many Easter eggs they were selling and the oversized one. Then I saw a program that told me when they had stuff for kids going on, which was welcome information. The crafts booth was already closed for the day. We bought a portion of traditional Austrian dessert - torn up pancake (Kaiserschmarrn) with nutella - and sat down to eat it. All three kids loved it, especially Tammy, who loves chocolate more than her brothers. Then we continued walking in the direction of the subway to go home.
However, I remembered that there was a nice playground on the way there, and they had not really been at a playground since winter. They were really excited, when we got there and started playing hard. Tammy surprised me, when she was able to climb up a climbing wall all by herself. I hadn't thought she was able to do that. Emmy was a little fearful and needed help, but he also did not have ideal shoes on either. They were having fun going up the different ways and then sliding down the curved slide. Sammy was having the most fun in the swing, laughing most of the time. He started crying, when another child wanted to swing as well and I had to pull him out. I put him back in, once the other child was gone. By 6:45 pm there were fewer and fewer kids, and we decided that it was time for us to leave as well. We continued on our way to the subway and rode it home, where we arrived at 7:20 pm.
The kids sat down to finish their video, while I cut up some fruit. Then they went into the bathtub, where they ate that fruit while playing in the water. We then got them out and ready for bed. I read a few Bible stories to them, prayed for them and flew them into bed. It was already around 8:30 pm. I sat down by them for a little bit, then Randy took my place. Sammy always wants Daddy there. When I asked him yesterday, whether he does not like Mommy, he said yes. I told him I was sad and pretended to cry, so he changed his mind and said he did. Randy sat down by them, while I went to the kitchen to get myself something to eat. After having eaten, I started working on the many pictures of today. Now it's 1:30 and time to clean up the kitchen and go to bed. It's gonna be an early morning tomorrow.
