How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

There was no Kindergarten today because they were having a staff development day (that's our name for it, not theirs) so I had Gustav with me for most of the day. It actually went surprisingly well. The only trouble he gave me the entire day was at lunchtime when I wouldn't give him a gummy bear until he ate some lunch. He threw himself on the floor and started whining, complaining that he wanted a gummy bear. It didn't last long, though, and it was really weak in comparison to his usual hissy fits. I think it's because he knew that it wasn't going to work anyway. I knew it was just a matter of time before I would break him.

This morning I took Pauline to Maria's so that Esther could start her work a little earlier, and I brought Gustav and Amelie with me. After we dropped Pauline off I drove to the woods and we walked around there for about half an hour. It was getting windy and about to rain, so we didn't stay too long; Gustav was cold and wanted to go home. When we got back to where the car was parked, Amelie ran and hid behind a tree. She really wasn't ready to go home. She had the saddest look on her face, too. It was really cute but really pathetic at the same time.

When we got back to the house I made some hot chocolate for Gustav and sat down to have some breakfast. He was riding around the table on a little bike-type thing because he didn't want to eat breakfast, but when he saw my toast he stopped and looked at it longingly. I gave him a bite of it, and then he sat in Pauline's stool (he wanted to sit next to me and not across the table from me) and had breakfast with me. Then we went upstairs and played Legos and looked at books for a couple of hours. He was tired, probably because he's getting sick, so it was a pretty easygoing day for us. After lunch he was tired and wanted to take a nap, so he went upstairs and I took Amelie for a walk. By the time I got back, Eshter had already taken Gustav to his friend Dominic's house to play, and Esther was going to pick up Pauline in the afternoon, so I took a nap.

When the kids were both at home, we all sat down to make more cookies. Tomorrow at the Kindergarten some of the mothers are going in to bake cookies with the kids (Esther was planning on going but cancelled later this night because she just has too much going on this week) and Eshter wanted to try out this recipe first. The cookies are hazelnut cookies that are thin and crispy, and they are delicious. Esther and I have decided, though, that from now on we should do our baking with the kids on Sundays and Wednesdays, because that way Emma comes in the next morning to clean and we don't get sugar and flour all over a freshly cleaned house.

My walk with Amelie this afternoon was a hell of a workout. There's a big storm outside right now, and it was just getting started when I took her out to the field. At first it was just a few gusts of wind and some really light sprinkles. The further we went, though, the rougher it got. By the time we got back to the house it was raining pretty hard and the wind was blowing like crazy. At one point we had to walk about 200 yards against the wind, and it was like trying to walk through a wall. It reminded me of that scene from The Queit Man where the wind's blowing really hard, and her hair and skirt are going crazy and she can't keep the door shut because the wind is too strong. The rain was blowing directly into us, and I had to close my jacket up as much as possible just because the rain drops stung so badly when they hit my neck. Amelie was loving it. She kept running way far ahead of me, and she was doing circles in the fields and charging through puddles. When things really started to pick up I wasn't sure if she was just having fun or if she was trying to get me to go faster so that we could go inside, because she kept turning around to look at me as she ran further and further ahead. When we got to the edge of the field, though, I knew that she didn't want to go home because she tried to hide behind a sappling (which obviously didn't work) so that I couldn't make her go home. I'm sure to most people this sounds miserable, but it was a really nice walk.

I also got a new sim card to replace the one that was in the phone that I lost, but now we can't find a charger for the other old phone that Esther was going to give me to use. Apparently a replacement charger costs about 40 Euro, so tomorrow Eshter and I are going to see if we can just find a new phone for cheaper than that.

Yesterday I forgot to mention 2 really cute things that the kids did. First, Pauline was playing with the napkin holder at breakfast and was trying to take all of the napkins out. She started crying when Esther took it away from her, so Esther told her that she was only allowed to look at it, not play with it. Pauline wasn't very happy, but she said ok. She took the napkin holder, set it on the table, and literally put her face up against it so that she was looking directly at it. Olaf and I both started cracking up. She sat like this for about 15 seconds before she sat up and said "Bitte schoen" as she handed it back to Esther. Freakin' cute. Then, at dinner, Olaf was having problems with Gustav because Gustav's in a faze right now where he thinks hitting people is a fun game and he doesn't seem to think we're serious when we tell him to stop. Finally Olaf got up from the table, picked up Gustav and made him sit on the sofa. He told Gustav that if he hit somebody one more time, he was going to put him in his room and lock the door so he couldn't come out. Gustav's response was "No you're not, because there's no key so you can't lock the door." He wasn't being argumentative or trying to challenge Olaf, he was just pointing out that the punishment wouldn't work. Smart ass. Olaf couldn't help but laugh, and neither could Esther. It was just typical Gustav.