our day

a bike ride to pick up the guys following an awkward classroom discussion (best case scenario, chalk it up to cultural differences, where i was on the (culturally) shocked end of it), to a little henry who fought, as he so often does, getting into the burley (no amount of turning my back bike light on and off could appease his desire to not sit down), to the grocery store with william hanging on to the side of the cart (which i think he's allowed to do here, though he does tend to bump into people the slightest bit with his helmet when he wears it into the store), back out to the burley and another struggle for autonomy from little henry, who is always on the losing end of such battles at his young age, and i'm always on the feeling guilty end that i so often cannot disarm him peacefully but eventually use the fact that i'm bigger than him to simply buckle his struggling self in, and pulling my backpack out of the back of the burley to wear it home so as to minimize the time he sits unhappily fastened after we've come to a stop in the driveway, and the shift in weight dumping my bike over and all the milks and mittens the boys refuse to wear in this below freezing climate spill onto the ground, and it's beginning to feel like one of those kinds of days when pulling into the driveway we find waiting for us, a package from back home and it lifts all our spirits and it is filled with food (and so much more) and i don't know how they did it because i swore you could not send food to this country from that one, but somehow they did!

william with very first (?) pez dispenser... 'do i eat the polar bear, mama?'  and later, as he's filling it full of candy: 'i once had a (pauses) Z.E.P. shooter." 

henry attacked the pirate's booty for awhile...

and a new calendar to replace the old, and peanut butter (have i given that impression?) and chocolate chips, which do not seem to exist here...




and space ships...

and beautiful cards...

and colorful paintings...

and clever prose...

just to name a few... 

thank you, thank you neighbors!  you made our day.