Happy Easter

I hope the Easter Bunny has hopped into your homes today (or last night… or whenever it is that he hops about). He brought the kids a very small chocolate bunny each, and a book … thankfully it was a small chocolate, because Amie, predictably insisted on eating it all after her breakfast. Noah is as yet ignorant to the pleasures of chocolate, and hopefully will remain so for a little while longer… I can’t handle the competition.. .Amie is bad enough, but with Noah’s reputation for sniffing out food items from 100 miles away and stuffing them into his mouth (no matter if they are a few days old).. I don’t know how manages to find crusty bread every day, I honestly do clean the floor in the evenings.

Anyway, today the weather was beautiful.. very clear and sunny and not too cold. So instead of staying indoors we braved a trip on public transport. I loaded up my rucksack with the usual nappies, wipes, 2 changes of bottoms for Amie (just in case), change of clothes for Noah, spoons, jars, bibs, water beakers…and set off, rather slowly. We had a 20 minute train ride, a lucky toilet stop at the Botanical Gardens (luckily free entry), and then a bus ride to a children’s museum in Hamburg.

http://www.kindermuseum-hamburg.de/

The website is really bad and doesn’t have any photos, so I wasn’t holding out too much hope. But it was really wonderful.. designed for 3+ so Amie could really get stuck in and touch everything. She especially liked being inside a womb! A giant figure of a woman, and you pull apart her clothes and can climb into a hammock type contraption that makes you have to squeeze up small… to stimulate what it’s like for a baby inside the womb (though thankfully without the amniotic fluid).

There were also little baby chicks to hold. The lady handed one to me, thinking it was safer with me than with Amie, but since I had Noah also on my knee the poor thing was in real peril.. I managed to give it back in one piece though. There was an egg hunt, and Amie really enjoyed painting the eggs she found.

So now that I’ve braved a day out on my own with the two kids, there’ll be no stopping me. I’m no longer condemned to trap the Bahnhofstrasse of Wedel (the one and only street with shops on it). Though it did occur to me, as I passed another mother who was pushing a buggy with a baby in it, and carrying the buggy that her older daughter had decided was too much work, that there could be a new sport set up. Mommyathalons… take a few average women, deprive them from sleep, adult conversation and a full length mirror for a few months. Then give them a buggy, at least two children and a rucksack that weighs more than a baby elephant and see how quickly they can navigate their way home from a certain starting point… overcoming obstacles such as lifts that are broken, people who look like they are going to hold a door open and slam it in your face, and at least 2 bouts of toddler tantrums. The first one to reach home without either losing “it’.. (whatever ‘it’ is) or one of their children wins a month in the Bahamas on their own… heaven.

Will update some pictures when Rich gets back… he not only took a break, he took the camera with him as well!