Saturday at the Barber

This is Herni serving up imaginary ice cream at the playground. You can pick your flavors, but you do have to at least pretend to taste the little handful of sand, so not to hurt his hospitable feelings.

Boys day out. Since

the upcoming move will fill our days with myriads of activities and chores, we took advantage of the breezy Saturday to stroll over to Francesco, our favorite barber. Henri fell fast asleep onthe way, so it was Karl and me first,

Karl enjoying a reading of "Asterix, the Gladiator". Enjoying it so much in fact, that he didn't even notice that Francesco could sneak a healthy dose of gel onto his new cut, which Karl abhors, like all other sticky stuffs to be applied to hair or skin. When he saw that this made him look like his other favorite comic book character Tintin he was actually quite excited. Henri on the other hand didn't forgive the betrayal that easily. When he woke up it was off to the ice cream parlor first. When we returned to pick up the stroller, we just sat down and while I fed him some gummy bears, Francesco just started to snip away. Henri didn't resist, but retreated into a deeply gloomy sneer of disaproval, which he kept for a few hours.

Well, neither the gloom nor the gel lasted for too long. At the playground Karl fast turned his spiffy new style into the more rugged look of the California gold rush ca. 1852.

Henri in the meantime put on his favorite hat and impressed fellow kids and dads with his climbing skills. This jungle gym goes up about 12 feet, where there's a landing for a great slide. Henri's rather proud that he can follow his big brother up there since a few weeks. Staying up there - different story. He took a nosedive and bounced down between the ropes. I caught him halfway down. Big tears, but only small scratches. When asked, if he wants to try again, he just said, "but you go with me". And climbed up again right away. Trooper.