Alice did great at the doctor's appointment. Her regular doctor was out on vacation, and the new doctor was young and was great with kids. The doctor said she thought Alice had an ear infection and maybe her eardrum had burst. She prescribed antibiotics, which always seems to be the case. But, she said Alice was fine to go to school, so I dropped her off just in time for the gift exchange, and headed on to work.
After work, I picked up the kids and their presents from the gift exchange, and headed to Guasaca, a nearby Venezuelen restaurant, to meet with Zac and two other couples who had kids that go to Alice and Simon's daycare. I did this with Alice last year, and the restaurant was nearly empty. But tonight for some reason it was packed. This was good, in that the kid's noise wasn't disturbing anyone, but it made it rather chaotic.
Alice had a breakdown while she was waiting for the food, but luckily once she got it and started eating, she powered up again and was fine. She sat between Anna and one of Anna's mom's and she later reported that he favorite part of the evening was "When Anna's mom said Anna needs to take bites like me." Alice is rarely held up as the role-model eater, so that must by why this made Alice so happy.
After we survived the meal, during which nearly every child cried at least once and a couple of kids made getaways, we headed over to the art museum. The parking was a nightmare, which foreshadowed that this too was going to be crowded and crazy. Trying to keep track of Alice and Anna was like a moving Where's Waldo game. The museum was swarming with little kids, making them hard to find in a crowd. Every time they took a few steps away, someone would cross my line of vision, and then it would seem the child had vanished. So the kids had a blast, but the adults were rather harried. We met Grayson's family there briefly, but then they had to go, so mostly it was just Alice and Anna. But seriously, just keeping track of those two was insane. Simon was pretty clingy and wanted to be held most of the time, so he at least was easy to keep track of. He did enjoy playing with the Velcro gingerbread house.
Back at home, we were barely in the door when Alice ripped open her present from the gift exchange at school. It must have been quite trying to wait all day to open it. She got some markers and this bath paint, that the kids had great fun playing with.
Finally, we got the kids to bed, and put the presents under the tree, for tomorrow we were continuing our weird (but quite pragmatic) tradition of opening presents on the weekend before Christmas.
