Deceiving Calm

This is a very non-winter-wonderland season, so Sunday it was off to the museum of technology to escape the dreadful icy drizzle. Henri was in full excited curiosity mode, testing his expanding vocabulary (boat! ship! diver! helicopter! airplane!... all with a few letters missing, which makes it all the more fun to decipher his fluid narrative).



After checking out the history of naval technology and some of the marvels of aerial warfare the brothers teamed up to do some major construction work in the kiddie land part of the museum. Defending their temporary Lego homestead against hordes of snotnosed huns they set up a mighty castle designated to the Knights of the Lion (another Playmobil storyline) with Henri as living proof that no toddler of insufficient height dare to scale the walls of this unconquerable fortress.

The early evening hours the brothers split their activities according to their age appopriate interests. Henri played with a train set. Karl pursued his research of the fact that TV rules! Well, itunes via Apple TV streaming rules so far.



All the weekend calm was a bit deceiving though, since Monday brought on a full force hurricane of Munich social reality. Some bureacrats from the department of sports, education and culture stopped by Henri's (private) daycare and shut it down. For good. From one day to the other. After ten years of spotless operation and very loving care. On the day our paper ran a story how the city wants to increase support to private daycare (because as of next year there is a law guaranteeing daycare and the city of Munich can't even provide five percent of the necessary slots). One of the main reasons for the shutdown was that there are some structural changes that should be made to have the place up to code, but can't be made, because it's a landmarked building. To add insult to injury - for referrals to other (in Munich non-existing) daycare slots they sent the parents to another department, which is actually responsible to refer sexually and other abused children to foster homes and such and help asylum seeker families from war-torn countries to find a place to stay. So with Karl and Henri in private daycare and Karl now in a Catholic kindergarten, the only contribution this mighty state of ours has made to the upbringing of our children has been to shut down a major support of our and especially Fred's work life. We are considering joining an occupy and/or tax resister movement. More on this case and why Fred once more is the designated superhero of this family soon.