A prayer or two

Continuing from yesterday, random notes about how we're doing.

I'm sure you're dying to know what my day looks like.  Feel free to skip the next paragraph full of run on sentences about my life as a stay at home mom.  Of course, I love being a SAHM and count it a huge blessing.

The day to day:  Carter wakes around 5am to feed.  Then I try to go back to sleep.  Maddie wakes up at 6 or 6:30am.  Bryce wakes up with her and makes the coffee.  I get up about 7am or a little before.  It's sad to think that 7am is "sleeping in" nowadays.  Bryce gets ready and leaves for work around 7:45/8am.  Maddie eats breakfast-a banana and toast or yogurt- and watches Dora or Diego on the ipad.  We play with toys and lounge around in our jammies until about 9am.  Carter goes down for a short nap.  Maddie and I get dressed, brush teeth, and usually read books in her room to keep her from running in and waking him up in our room which is on the other side of the apartment.  When he wakes up, I feed him and we head outside with Carter in the umbrella stroller.  We usually go to for a walk around town, to the park, and sometimes a quick trip to the grocery store.  We get back about 12pm.  I feed Maddie lunch and put her down.  If she is in a not-so-great mood and won't eat, I let her watch a show and eat.  She only naps about 40 minutes these days.  I am trying to get Carter to nap at the same time, but it doesn't always happen.  If it does, I check email, blog, wash dishes, pick up, make the bed, or waste time on social media until she walks out of her room and decides that it's time to wake up.  We play with toys, do puzzles, color on a cardboard box with markers, have a tea party, play cars or trains.  We eat a snack.  Then we head outside.  Usually, I am in running clothes and do a short run with the big stroller then let her down and we walk around.  She likes to play with rocks or pick flowers.  We head back home.  I try to figure out what's for dinner.  Then we play with toys again or dance or do front rolls and wrestle on the gymnastic mat from Ikea that I bought the other day.  Right now, we are waiting for Bryce to get home, playing oldies on youtube (All Shook up/Signed, Sealed, Delivered/etc) and dancing, and she's playing with my jewelry while I finish writing this.  Bryce gets home and hopefully dinner is getting ready.  Carter takes a nap sometime in the late afternoon.  Hopefully when Bryce walks in the door, both kids aren't screaming.  He usually takes one of them while I finish up dinner.  He feeds Maddie.  We eat.  One of us gives her a bath.  One of us puts her down about 7:30pm.  One of us cleans the kitchen.  We take showers.  We either get on our computers or watch a show.  Then we go to bed around 9:30/10pm.

Friends: I am here with my best friend.  Thank God for him!  HOWEVER, girls need girl friends.  I have none here.  Well, okay, I have one, but I've only just met her one time for a couple hours.  Bryce's coworker introduced us to a couple that live about 15 minutes away (closer to Zurich).  They both are working right now.  They have a sweet toddler boy.  They're both from the USA but have lived here for 5+ years and don't planning on leaving as far as I know.  I'm hoping that her and I can be friends and hang out more.  I am home with the kids all day every day.  We get out of the apartment once or twice every day, but that doesn't matter when you have zero friends and zero interaction and for me, zero adult conversation ALL day (except for any emails I get and have time to respond to, or if I am able to facetime with someone which usually only happens about 1x/during the week).  This is my biggest prayer request right now.  Being a SAHM is amazing, but going on 4 weeks without any mommy play dates or Bible study, or mom groups to go to is getting rough.  Like, want-to-cry rough.  You fellow mommy friends, you don't realize how important that community is until you don't have it at all.  As in, the only interactions I have had in the past 4 weeks have been with Bryce and the kids, the occasional facetime or email from a friend, and then a "hello" and "thank you" at the grocery store or park.  I see many of the same moms and children at the park, but haven't met any that speak English more than a couple words.  I hear Russian, Italian, and German on the playground.  Also, there are a lot of nannies but not a ton of stay at home moms.  Plus, we are moving in a week, so motivation for me to try and find friends here is lower since I will be about 10 minutes away.  I'm trying to do my research on play groups and mom groups in the area.

Proud moment: Without a church and not knowing the language has been a double-whammy for this loner SAHM.  In my research, I found a "meetup" group online.  I literally just googled "moms zurich english speaking" and somehow found this meetup.com group.  Have you ever heard of that site?  I'm sure there are meetups all over the world.  It was completely new to me.  So, I signed up to be on the listserv of all the play dates and events that they have.  It's basically 400+ moms that speak English in the area (a pretty large area).  So a couple weeks ago, I got the courage to respond "yes" to one of the meet ups in the center of Zurich.  It was at a big bookstore similar to Barnes & Noble that had a fun kids area with a little tree house in the kids section.  Only one other mom showed up with her toddler boy.  She is actually the organizer of the whole online group.  She was really nice and has lived here for 8 years.  She's from Russia but lived in the States and speaks English.  We talked and I learned quite a lot about mommy resources and how things are here with day care, play groups, and with this online group of moms.  I was there for not even two hours, but it was nice to get out.  The only thing was, it wasn't easy.  I drove into a huge city, got there 30 minutes early to find parking, then went to the bookstore and waited.  Then I paid $11 US dollars for said parking and drove 30 minutes home, which was past naptime, which then ruined naptime for the day, which made the rest of the day not-so-fun for anyone.  I did all of that with the two babies by myself without knowing the language or what many road signs mean driving to meet strangers that I found online.  After getting home, even though the rest of the day wasn't great, I felt so proud of myself for doing it and courageous for actually going.  It may seem really silly to you, but it was a lot.  This same meet up happens every week at the same place.  I want to go back, but haven't yet.  When we move, we will be 10 minutes further down the road.  There are play dates at other places and other times, but none are within 10 minutes of where we will live.  She did explain to me that more people show up if it's at your house and you offer coffee or tea.  And she said that it's better to find people within the group that live near you and form a smaller play group.  Anyways, that was my one solo outing with the kids in an effort to make friends.  It's a start.

To learn German or not to learn German:  Language lessons.  We both really should take them.  The thing is, you don't NEED to know it, but it would be nice to know it.  Many people speak the basics of English and we've already gone a month without needing it.  Plus, for me with the kids, having a tutor that came to our place would be best but that is really expensive.  If I went to a language school in Zurich in the evening, that would be logistics to figure out with Bryce and the kids plus a late night out when I am still waking up 3+ times a night AND I would probably have to bring Carter to nurse him which I don't even know if you are allowed to bring a baby into a school class like that...I don't really know if I'd want to be "that person" either.  So at this point, we are holding off and leaving it up for discussion.  We have Rosetta Stone which we plan on doing.  At least that will give us the basics and maybe we'll be fine with just that.

Church:  I have researched churches in the Zurich area.  I found 5 English speaking churches in Zurich city.  One of them is a huge church that has microphones for the English translation.  A friend who had contacts in Switzerland actually recommended one of them to me (which I already found through research).  We will definitely try it, but we haven't yet.  Again, that will be a trek into the city with two kids who have odd nap schedules.  A trek worth making, of course, but a trek nonetheless.  We will go soon, I am sure.  I think we are just wanting to move and get settled into our place first.  At this point, we've just been listening to sermons online.

These were two very long posts.  You've made it to the end.  Thanks for reading and caring about us.

Like I said before, there are amazing things about being here and tough things.  I will keep trying to share both, because I really value the act of being real.

We covet your prayers in the tough things because we know God will answer them in His time and in His way.  He has already answered so many!