I'm very content in Germany and I wouldn't change my situation for the world. Well, Barbados maybe but I'm not holding my breath for that opportunity to come knocking. It throws up challenges of course, living in a foreign country. Grappling with the language being high on the list of battles, closely followed by lack of decent tea bags and the absence of mushy peas and malt vinegar for your chips. Tough, but you learn to live with it.
More troublesome is the isolation from family and friends back home. We chose to live out in the sticks, we love it but occasionally I do long for a close friend or relative nearby. Nor for me you understand, for my sanity.
Our daughter is driving us to mental decay! She's about to turn four and I think she's hit adolescence. I'm sure it's all normal, but one more hissy fit, one more door slam, one more refusal to get in the car seat and I shall loose my moxie!
Just as I was considering the usual options, nunnery (for me not her), child labour, selling my kidney on eBay to pay for a full-time nanny, my parents-in-law rode in on their white horse. They live a few hours away so we don't see them often which I guess is why they naively asked if they could have Finje for a week! I'm pretty sure I managed to control the whooping and air punching until the receiver was safely back on it's cradle but I can't be 100% sure.
If Finje was excited, I was positively buoyant. She was definitely looking forward to the trip. Why not? She was on her way to the House of Overindulgence. Chocolate-'til-you-puke and more mollycoddling than you can shake a Lego tower at. She'd probably return worse than before, but for a couple who, since the birth of their daughter, can count their child free nights out on one hand, the risk was worth taking.
We dropped her at her grandparents at 11am, by 11.05am I was blubbering in car and by 11.22am I was over it and getting giddy about the prospect of a Finje-free week.
The reality? I called her every day and traipsed around a eerily quiet house wondering what to do with my pathetic self.
On her return, there were hugs and smiles and laughs and after about 10 minutes I was pondering over the appropriate length of time to leave before we could repeat the process!
Kids, can't live with them, can't live without them!