in the morning, they put the finishing touches on william's new k'nex roller coaster...
and then william rode to his friend's house. his second trip sans parental units. well no. scratch that. he's gone home to a different friend's house a couple times with that friend. this was his second official solo trip somewhere. so not counting all the times henry is dragging hours behind on his bike and william has tired of waiting and gone home without us. it's our foray into giving him some independence. of course that's a very big topic in the u.s. right now. here, it's just a way of life. we're pretty much on the same independence-timeframe as the danish parents of his peers. maybe even a little ahead of the curve compared to some, as we're probably in a bigger rush to get him out on his own while we're here, in this relatively safe country (you know, the place where people leave their babies outside alone, to sleep), so he (and we) can start to gain that confidence that he knows what he's doing, just like we knew what we were doing when we were his age.
the rest of us stayed home and tackled the little walk-in closet under the stairs. greg and i organized it back before christmas and chaos overtook it and two birthdays took place and suddenly we needed to make everything fit again (or get rid of it if it didn't).
later i walked to the nearby farm store. no big grocery trips for now as our grocery store is closed for these next two days (then open again on saturday, then closed again until tuesday = easter in denmark.)
to the farm store for milk and butter...
it's located at a nearby co-housing neighborhood. here's just a section of some of the homes. these homes are part of the 'owner-occupied, single-family homes.' there's another section for young people, another for seniors, another that's sort of a part individually-owned, part collectively-owned section.
the farm store...
and walking home behind another group out for a stroll on this cool day...
pausing at our back door to notice the chard that's making its return for this new spring...
and later on, movie night. this time, greg's choice, 'the hobbit' cartoon from 1977.
here are the boys. william's in his hobbit attire. henry in his outfit of choice.
and that's it for today. tomorrow promises to make its appearance. goodnight!
2 comments:
Just the other day I speculated (with Ed)whether there is in fact a greater real danger for kids/women alone or merely a perceived greater danger in the States. It came up when once again I felt no trepidation about hiking alone along empty trails (though crossing paths with the rare hiker, nearly always male). Are kids/women more at risk here or do we hear reports of abduction/rape/murder and created images of a danger that is in fact far less common? Perhaps the answer is different for rape/murder and child abduction. In Madison, we get email alerts when there is a reported assault in or around campus. It's rare, but it does happen. But maybe child abduction is really much much rarer? And the risk is grossly overblown? In any case, it is unquestionably true that I feel safer in just about any place in Europe than I do alone in the States and I have no problem heading out alone at night or into more remote areas there, but I cannot tell if it's just in my head or if it's based on fact.
I don't know... I think statistically there is no real question that there are far fewer abductions and less crime in general in the U.S. than there was when I was a kid. But I suppose that leads to the question-- is it safer because parents are now so hyper vigilant and won't let their kids out of their sight? Or, another question-- with so many less children out and about-- if yours is the one kid on the block out playing, because no one else is allowed to go out and play-- is yours suddenly at a (however slightly) higher risk for something like abduction because there's no one else to choose from? As safe as the U.S. probably in reality is, Denmark is even safer, but it's not perfect. There was just a big warning going out amongst parents over this Easter break because at the end of last week a man was hiding in the bushes and tried to grab a girl. Parents here are cautious and certainly don't like that something like that would happen, but I think they're more of a 1980s kind of cautious. As far as I can tell, people aren't pulling their kids off the street because of it.
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