So this year we decided not to go to Norway for the most part of our yearly vacation. We moved near to mountains, anyway, and it all was pretty costly, we thought, and we bought a couple of things that were long on our agenda, like a trampoline for the kids (which, by the way, has turned out to be an exceptional value “per hour of child’s time engaged”. In general, I thought recently while munching on my dinner, the price to engage a child in some activity, however meaningful, seems to be around 10€ per hour. This is what we have been paying a baby-sitter some years ago, but also lots of other things fall roughly in that region: climbing/trampoline hall costs 8-12€ on average per hour, LEGO [cost of a set divided by the number of hours it takes for a child to assemble it less number of hours for parents to repair a wrongly built, usually a dozen steps behind, model], bike park incl cable car [needs a bike though]. Even a big 4.95€ Aldi lasagne takes about half an hour to eat.
There are probably some outliers from that rule, with some of those probably having costs that are hidden. A child can play Fortnite for what seems like forever, on a free tier, but what kind of opportunity cost is that?
Anyways, coming back to the trampoline, and ending this lengthy digress, it was pretty expensive but by now I reckon it already falls in the 10€ region, having been bought just a couple of months back, and without any costly maintenance , hopefully the cost per hour will be get to 1-2€ until they grow out of that thing too).
Another unexpected, and in some way sad, reason for our “staycation” this year is that our children grow, and so does their willingness to bicker about the tiniest details with everyone, especially with siblings, asserting their dominance in the subjects they usually have only the slightest idea about; and while we adults want to loose some of the social baggage accumulated over the year, a growing child is interested exactly in the opposite and prefers to pontificate about the latest shoe trends in their school, and what do neighborhood kids wear (Air Force VS Jordans, for gods sake) instead of enjoying being together in the nature. An idyllic day spent in the long and quiet Norwegian summer glow, alone on a mountainous plateau with children frolicking in the stream, blissfully picnicking in the low northern sun – this may be forever in the past. Our toddlers are growing up, after all, and it will never be as it has been with them then.
But there are still moments of unity and bliss as it has been once; its just harder to synchronize between four of us now that there are two “opinionated baboons”, as I sometimes lovingly call them, in addition to adults 🙂
On one of the good days, after a great hike, the topic of “religion” came up during the dinner and we talked about how it appeared, and what might have been the reasons for that in the first place. As an non-Church goer, my views on that are far from mysticism, and so I dug up the old copy of “Leap of Faith” which we all then thoroughly enjoyed 😀 I was literally rolling on the floor laughing about 15 years ago as I watched it first time.
This time, however, I actually understood the story, which turned out to be more tragic, deeper and smarter, that I had in my memory, just again demonstrating to me how slow poke I am [I watched one of my faviorite films, “Hero”, exactly three times until now, enjoying it thoroughly every single time, but fully understanding the story only on the third run.. Or may be I didn’t? Only 4th view will tell.]