A busy week!

Whew, I'm not even sure which day of the week it is, my head is spinning!

The girls were both home on Monday because they seemed a little bit sick. Nina had been running a slight fever overnight in Prague, and then on Sunday her nose was running and she was sneezing nonstop. Interestingly, the runny nose began very suddenly when we were on the train, so I wasn't sure if it was allergies. Maybe someone had a cat? But Maggie was sneezing too. And, it's just impossible to tell allergies from sickness. So I had her take a shower when we got home, because that usually helps if it's allergies. In the morning they both still had runny noses so they stayed home, but by bedtime they were 100% fine. Either that was the quickest recovery in the history of the Halter household, or it was indeed allergies. We'll never know.

Regardless, it was back to school on Tuesday. The girls are still a bit reluctant to go to school, and Nina had to be heavily persuaded to go back. Maggie cried for the entire half hour I was gone. This was the beginning of her third week! I was hoping for more progress by now.

Well, I told them they'd both done a fantastic job that day, because even though they weren't excited to go to school, they'd done it, and that takes a lot of bravery. So we celebrated by meeting some friends in Vienna at Nina's favorite playground (the one with the really fast zip line). We had a blast and didn't get home until 7 pm. Late!

School went much, much better today. Nina's class took a field trip and Nick got to chaperone! They went on a hike at the Kurpark, the large park in central Baden. They had a fantastic time. Nina even discovered some (likely) snake's eggs in a tree! How exciting! And gross!

Maggie did a great job too. I ended up staying the whole time, but I think it was worth it. I sat in the coat room and she came to me when she needed reassurance. At first she came every 2 minutes, than 5 minutes, then 20 minutes! Hopefully I'll be able to leave again tomorrow. I think she just needed to have a good day there to remember how much she likes it. She was beaming when we left! She played with the erector set practically the whole time.

Tonight Nina was talking again about not wanting to go to school, so we had a conversation about the importance of an education to prepare you for life. Nina's really upset about the existence of malaria (why did I think a book about parasites was a good idea for an anxious child??), so I told her that if she learns a lot and stuides hard, she can find a cure for malaria one day and save millions of children's lives. Then I thought better of talking about dying children right before bedtime (oops, should have thought of that about 5 seconds sooner. Well, live and learn), but it was all good, they moved on. Maggie decided that she wants to be an artist when she grows up, and make the world a better place by giving everyone art for their walls. She and Nina refer to their art as "Baby Famous Paintings," so her exact words were that she'd make a baby famous painting for everyone. Plan B is to be an astronaut and build a moon colony, in case something happens to the Earth (mutated malaria? Ha ha! No, sorry, not funny.)

It was a real tiger mom moment. I don't care if you like school, but you'd better be good at it! No, that's not what I said. Cross your fingers for tomorrow!