Saturday, July 10, 2010

Cartwheels

My turn for authorship - first timer, here.
Another day littered with great moments and, well, others. Teo and Mara went to bed last night having decided that today would be Mother’s Day, and that Kim should sleep while the three of us went running. A fine plan. We woke up, they had a bite to eat, I made some unreasonably strong coffee, and we were good to go. Until Teo went for a pre-run pit stop (like a good runner), and then biffed it on the stairs between floors on the way back down. He says he did two cartwheels before skidding on his back. I can’t confirm the cartwheels, but his back is pretty scraped up, he’ll have a shiner tomorrow on the left side of his face, and a bump on his knee. Throughout the course of the day, as the kids continued to not understand why we are careful on stairs, tempers flared repeatedly. Even mine, which is saying something.

Once the physical and emotional recoveries were underway, we went with Kasia to Wolfgangsee – a lake town about 45 minutes from here (if you can find your way out of Salzburg on the first try, which was not our experience this morning….). Still, we go there, we had a nice lunch, we strolled, watched para-gliders from the mountains above, Teo bought an Austria cap (not an Österreich cap, which tells you something about the audience and the price), we went for two swims (one free, one not), had some ice cream, and played in a playground. A grand time, topped off by an Austrian wedding parade down the streets of town. Teo and Mara marched along with them. Silliness and such. 


Since getting home, there have been four more discussions about being careful, preceded by four not-careful incidents. This is getting tiring. I thought they were supposed to learn from their experiences. Is that not true? Kasia made a great quinoa/broccoli/tomato dinner, we had a nice iChat with the Coles clan in California, and now, at last, the kids are asleep. I’m guessing Kim and I will be out within five minutes of posting. Tomorrow: a percussion concert with some of the Montessori parents and kids here. And another early-morning attempt at a run with the kids. Here’s hoping we get out the door this time!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Sounds like real life. I suspect that the Redlands students will fall on the stairs, too, once they arrive. But for different reasons.

Meredith and I had a great hike at Wolfgangsee one February while we were faculty-in-residence.

Nice to read your posts.

-- Jim Spickard