Book Report: Scrappy Little Nobody

When the going gets tough, the tough... distract themselves with celebrity memoirs.

At dinner we do the classic highlight and lowlight routine with the kids. Each child shares a good thing and a bad thing that happened that day. Ideally they talk in some semblance of order because, see point two of the "candy after dinner check-list":

This week my highlight is that Paul started a new job on Wednesday. I know nothing about how it's going because he got food poisoning on his first day and then he spent the rest of his non-working hours helping me navigate one of the most annoying German bureaucracy dramas to date. After around five hours waiting for doctors, I got the exact medically redundant form so that Carmen could go back to Kita with a rash which is the hallmark of fifth disease no longer being contagious.  

As you can see from this peak rash photo, she was very unwell.

Once I had an empty house, I finished Anna Kendrick's memoir while stress cleaning. I generally like hearing people's stories but mostly I was interested in her perspective of being a small person in a normal sized person's world. Her childhood experiences of looking much younger than her age were very similar to mine. It was a welcome point of connection when bureaucracy had me questioning my sanity and place in the universe. Also, she has some silly musings on life which I needed to hear before a long weekend with kiddos. Stay sane out there!
 

Bastelnmeister

A glorious thing happened... Team Biggs was healthy for an entire month. I'm not jinxing it by declaring my recent good fortune. Hugo and Carmen were sick four out of five days this past school week. The new fever, cough, non-covid routine. Luckily Hugo and I recently picked up some new furniture for the boys to have more building space. 

The dimensions on the Kleinanzeige (local Ebay equivalent) description were a little off. AKA the table ended up being twice as long.

As such, the 2 mile/5 KM ride home took twice as long. 

Thus, Hugo and I ended up missing our weekly swim/sauna date. But bacon bread and a hot chocolate made up for it.

The plan for the table was lego building but recently Hugo has gotten into creating with cardboard. Here are some of his recent projects:

"I'm basically Leonardo da Vinci." Also, mommy was out of town when this device was created.

Desk Name Plate

"Mommy Giving Daddy a Present"

Playground with two slides, a basketball hoop, climbing wall, teeter-totter, and swing. Of course, no German playground would be complete without sand and a ping pong table. 

Human Robot?

Kita was the inspiration for cardboard play. Every year before Christmas, the Kita puts all the toys away. There is a phase-out period of a couple weeks, six weeks of no toys, and then a couple weeks of phasing toys back in. The kids do imaginary play and make their toys out of recyclables "basteln". The concept behind "Spielzeuge machen Urlaub" or "toys go on vacation" has its origin in addiction prevention. 

For the toy-free time, Hugo engineered his pièce de résistance. 

This week while Hugo was crafting, Carmen was:

But, thankfully they are on the mend so they can get back to their buddies: 

Bonus points if you can pick out Hugo in this photo.