We’ve been visiting London these last few days and have been introduced to a little bear named Paddington.  With the new movie coming out based on him there are 50 statues of him around the city that have been placed to celebrate.  Paddington first appeared in children’s books in 1958 and was named after Paddington Station, which was near the authors home in London.  Bryce has been very excited with every statue we see and we picked up a few of his books to read at the Paddington Bear store at Paddington Station today.  He’s a little bear with good intentions but seems to get into occasional “pinch of trouble.”  Well, Bryce and him have quite a bit in common.  I love my son dearly but he has brought as many trials to my patience and my parenting, somedays it feels like more than all three of the girls combined.  He is such a smart boy and when he is in his routine he is great but outside of that, which has pretty much been this whole year, it’s been a challenge.  Today for example he threw a fit of monumental proportion inside of the worlds oldest toy store.  Thankfully it was crowded and loud enough that no one seemed to notice.  Still, it was pretty bad.  He later told me “mommy, I want to be good but sometimes, I just don’t know how.”  I told him it was my job to help him know how.  On the flip side of that, earlier that morning he comes running in our room telling me he needs love and gives me hugs and kisses on my cheek.  He tells me all the time how it’s his job to protect me and I’ll protect him.  He loves to hold my hand.  He melts my heart most days.

He likes to make up stories too with names of different animals and then he will tell you about the animals.  Earlier the same day on the train on the way into London, he was telling me about one of these animals.  It was called “crack holes” or something similar to it.  That coming out of a four year olds mouth may sound a little different and when he said it the lady sitting across from us, her eyes got big and she looked surprised.  He proceeds to tell me how they live in zoos and eat penguins.  That was fun.

His birthday was a last week and he got a new bath toy for his birthday and wanted to take a bath to play with it.  I told him he had to wait till after dinner.  His solution, two minutes later I hear him yelling from the top of the stairs, “I’m naked and I don’t know how it happened, can I take a bath now?”  Well, hopefully that will be the last time he ever says those words.

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We’ve managed to fumble our way through the first week and a half without any major incidents.  Germany is a beautiful country and for having as many people as they do the amount of farm land you see is rather surprising.  There are always lots of people out walking and riding bikes.  With the trees changing color driving from town to town is very enjoyable.

Speaking of driving, we broke down and rented a car.  I wouldn’t really call it a car, it’s more of a small bus, but with six people in the family it was the only car they had to fit us all.  She had originally told me it would be stick shift so I was pleasantly surprised it was an automatic.  It hangs about halfway over the sidewalk when it’s parked at our little temp house driveway.  I’ve managed to maneuver it through some pretty small streets, surprisingly without taking any mirrors off.  Though, I almost didn’t make it out of a parking garage today.  Because it’s so tall it won’t fit in most parking garages here.  We attempted to go to a little town called Esslingen today and being a German holiday I didn’t expect it to be busy.  I just wanted to walk around the town square and let the kids play at the park.  Well, after driving around for 30 mins looking for parking for the haus that is our rental car, we finally found a parking garage that had a height that the van would fit in.  The directions said to veer to the left for taller vehicles and smaller one’s to the right.  Well, we get past the booth to get the ticket and go to veer left and its gated off.  I’m not stuck between both lanes going into the parking garage and trying turn the van around to go up the exit ramp.  The kids were were commenting in the back, “Mom!  The car’s stuck!  What are we going to do!.”  Of course their’s a median in the middle of the ramp so I’m now wedged between the median, wall and taking up almost both ramps.  I just about have it turned around enough to get up the exit ramp and the wheel was stuck on the median.  The driver side of the van was hovering maybe two inches from a concrete pole and the front and rear sensors of the car are beeping at me telling me I’m too close to things.  I knew I had to get the tire over the corner of the median, I really didn’t have much of a choice.  I looked at Jon and told him,  I have to go up over the curve, it’ll either get us out of here or crash us into the wall in front of us.  I tapped the gas and by the grace of God we were on our way out.  Lesson of the day, if the destination is fairly close and has public transportation, take the train and leave the car.

I think I’ll be able to manage my Sienna just fine when it gets here.