Things have been a little crazy/busy lately. In a way time has just been flying by, and yet at the same time this past week has been dragging on forever.

Last Friday was a rough day for Pauline. First, she was playing around in the sink while she was supposed to be washing her hands (as usual) and she somehow managed to hit her face on the sink. She hit her mouth, and it cut open the inside of her upper lip, so she was bleeding a little bit. Then, when we went to take Amelie out in the afternoon, I decided to hook up the child seat to the bike so that we could take Amelie on a real walk and let her enjoy running around a bit. I had Pauline in the seat but had dropped the house key on the floor next to the bicycle. I told Pauline to sit still for a second and bent down to pick up the key. So what does Pauline do? She leans as far to the other side as she possibly can, causing the bike to fall over away from where I was standing. It scared the shit out of her. Luckily she already had a helmet on and she didn't try to use her arms to stop herself from falling, so she didn't actually get hurt, but she was really scared. Then, in the evening while Esther was out in the garden, Pauline was playing in the flower bed, slipped, and fell into the roses. She got 2 thorns in her foot and got a scratch as wide as her foot across the bottom of her arch. She was obviously not a happy camper. The poor thing basically went straight to bed once Esther got the thorns out of her foot.

Friday was also an interesting day for Gustav. They conducted a speech test that day at the Kindergarten. It's something that every child is required to do, usually at the age of 4, to make sure that they will be ready to start school in terms of their language and speaking abilities. They did the test in small groups, and basically it was just a series of little games in which the kids had to do a lot of speaking. How did Gustav do? He failed. Miserably. Apparently he simply refused to participate and sat there with his arms crossed the whole time without saying a word. All he had to do was talk, which he does all the time, and he refused. Esther was so mad, but Olaf thought it was hilarious. That's probably because what Gustav did was an Olaf characteristic, and one that Esther has a hard time dealing with. Nonetheless, Olaf took Gustav to buy his first bicycle after he picked him up from the Kindergarten. Gustav's still a little unsure of it, and spends more time on his laufrad, but he's really excited about his bike.

Saturday was more or less a good day. The only problem really was that Gustav was being excessively whiny all day. He was really fussy about everything, and he cried for about 20 minutes simply because he didn't want to learn how to take his bike helmet off. Everything was cause for a hissy fit, in his opinion. In the late afternoon we all went over to the Wievers' for a barbecue. Unfortunately it got cold and then started raining, so we were inside pretty much the whole time, but it was still a lot of fun. David said my name for the first time, too. He has this little dancing cow that sang "My Girl" and danced when you squeezed its hoof. He came running over to me holding it and saying, "Manda! Manda!" to show it to me and have me turn it on for him. It was really cute.

Sunday was a little rough. Gustav threw up in his bed Saturday night, and again on the sofa Sunday morning. That explains why he was being so fussy on Saturday. We were all supposed to go with the neighbors to a community swimming pool, but instead Esther stayed home with Gustav and Olaf and I took Pauline. I don't know why Esther and Olaf didn't switch, since Olaf hates swimming pools, but whatever. Pauline wrapped herself around Olaf's neck and clung to him like a monkey, and that's where she stayed for the first half of the time we were there. She refused to let go of him for any reason, whether it was to grab a toy, or to come to me, or whatever. Eventually Olaf convinced her to go down the slide, and that's what she did for the rest of the time we were there. I tried to take a picture of her on the slide, but the lifeguard came out and told me that I had to put the camera away because we're not allowed to take pictures. Really?! That's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Olaf said that it's to prevent people from selling pictures to child pornography rings, but still. It's not like there's a law against taking pictures elsewhere in public. I don't know. I just think it was kind of annoying.

After we got back from the swimming pool we went over to Britta's to have lunch with the family. Gustav was feeling a little better, but still didn't feel like eating anything, so he, Malte, Jette and Pauline basically just hung out and played the whole time.

On Monday Gustav stayed home with me. He could've gone to the Kindergarten I'm sure, but Esther had him stay home just in case. He and I played with Legos literally all day until we had to go pick up Pauline in the afternoon. Esther didn't get much sleep over the weekend because of Gustav, so she stayed home and slept the whole afternoon, pretty much until it was time for me to go to class.

Tuesday was a normal day, but yesterday really sucked. Tuesday night I hardly slept at all because I felt like crap. It felt kind of like I was dehydrated, which didn't make sense because I'd been drinking water all day, and I felt like I had to throw up. Something was wrong with Pauline, too, because she started crying and screaming uncontrollably in the middle of the night. I woke up at about 7 in the morning because I had to throw up, and then I took a quick shower to try to calm my body down before I went back to bed. At 8 Esther came and woke me up to ask me to take Amelie for a walk and inform me that Pauline was staying home from Maria's because she was sick. Awesome. I can never be sick on my own; I always have to have a kid home sick that I need to take care of at the same time. So Olaf left in the morning, Esther took Gustav to the Kindergarten and then went to her office. She had an appointment at 10, so she had to be there for that, but then she was going to come back at 11 and take over so that I could relax and recover. I got a phone call from her at 10:30 saying her client was late and asking if I could make it until 12. Then at 12 I got another phone call saying she wouldn't make it until 1. I basically sat on the sofa in a stupor the whole time (except for when I had to go throw up again) because I was too tired and too miserable to do anything. I did get some of the laundry folded, though. Pauline was feeling way better than me, but was still tired and wanted to cuddle, so it wasn't so bad that I wasn't able to do anything.

After Esther got home I basically went straight to bed. That was the only thing I wanted to do. I had made some chicken noodle soup from scratch for me and Pauline while we waited for Esther, but the smell of food as I was cooking made me feel sick so I didn't eat any of it. I put on a movie on my computer for some background noise (and to muffle the sounds of Pauline in case she decided to be loud for whatever reason) and got into bed. Esther woke me up a couple hours later because we needed to take Amelie for a walk. She had been downstairs with Pauline (who threw up again in Esther's bed while the 2 of them were trying to take a nap) and Gustav watching a puppet show on DVD. I took Amelie for a quick walk, and then Esther ran to the store to get some pretzel sticks for me and Pauline and to pick up a pizza for her and Gustav. Once Esther got back I took a package of pretzels and a bottle of water upstairs, got a cold, damp washcloth for my head, found a website where I could watch "Mulan" and went to bed. For a while I was just lying there, chowing down on pretzels and feeling miserable, but eventually I fell asleep.

When I woke up this morning, I felt way better. There was no more nausea or anything, I just felt a little bit tired/weak. I slept in my clothes last night, so I just hopped out of bed and took Amelie for a walk while Esther got herself ready for work. When I got back I helped Gustav get finished, then dropped him off at the Kindergarten and came back to take care of Pauline. Since yesterday was still kind of rough for her she stayed home again today. Before she left to go to her office Esther brought a new game out of the cellar for me and Pauline to play so that Pauline had something new and exciting to do. It's a fishing game, where these little cardboard fish (there's also a bottle, a treasure chest, a can, and a boot) with metal rings in them go in a box, and using a magnetic "fishing pole" you fish them out and add up the points. Pauline's still too young to understand or care about points or winning, so we basically just sat around retrieving the fish out of the box so that we could put them all back in and start over again. That was most of our day. Pauline took a nap, too. At first she complained that she didn't want to go to her bed, and I didn't expect her to sleep at all, but she got in her bed and passed out. I woke her up 2 hours later and she was really reluctant to get out of bed. Hopefully this nap won't keep her from sleeping tonight. We shall see how that goes.