Lazy Sunday

We had a fairly lazy Sunday. It was a beautiful day -- mid-80s with a strong breeze. Fall has finally come to Madrid! It feels odd that mid-80s would mean fall, but that's really what it feels like after weeks of mid-90s; it even set off my (Heather's) craving for apple picking.

While it was nice to have warm weather this far into fall, by the end it was getting to us; when one is in the shade (or pool) the mid-90s in Madrid are not bad at all. But when one is walking to fetch the kids after school (4:00) under the beating sun, the mid-90s are pretty awful.

In any case, after pancakes and apartment clean-up, Nora and Nathan went with Jon to a soccer match; Seth and I took the bus around the Alcobendas loop. Such is Seth's dedication to buses that he waited patiently almost 40 minutes for the bus to arrive, never complaining once. After regrouping for lunch, Nora went down to the courtyard and spent the next 5 hours running around the complex with friends; Seth napped and then went downstairs to run around with Nora's friends, whom he adores; Nathan went to a friend's birthday party, at which Jon gathered all sorts of good intelligence about the Jewish community in Madrid.

Also, Seth threw a pretty good tantrum at breakfast today -- it brought back memories at Nora at her toddler best. This one was triggered by something so small it wasn't noticable by the rest of the family; the content mainly included Seth writhing on the floor, screaming "I can't get up! I can't get up! Help me!" for about 20 minutes. Occasionally he'd rise to his knees and then fall back down only to writhe and scream some more. I can only imagine what our Norwegian bachelor neighbor must be thinking.

Finally, since we've been here, Seth's gotten in the habit of saying the same thing to us at bedtime. Based on similar data from our older children, one might imagine he'd say something like "I love you to the moon and back" or "Come back to check on me and leave the light on and the door open" or even a plain "Night night Mommie." But here's what Seth actually says:

"When I wake up, I want tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money. And breakfast."

Every night, like clockwork. The tiny money is actually a centavo -- 1/100th of a Euro. The EU learned its lesson from the penny (which costs far more than one cent to produce) and the centavos are indeed tiny.